UK Stampers ATC Swap - May

This month's song for the ATC swap on UK Stampers is Ebony & Ivory. It took me ages to figure out what to do and I finally went for an abstract interpretation using some lyrics from the song.
I used a poppy die by Memory Box over a grid stamp by Kaisercraft. A candi dot, a photo corner and some computer text finished the ATC.

Craft Barn Weekly Challenge - Words

This week's challenge on the Craft Barn blog is on the theme of words. I wanted to use lots of different words but highlight just one so I stamped a text stamp and die cut the word hello. I layered this onto various coloured papers including a white piece that I stamped with another text stamp. I used a script embossing folder on the card blank.

Katzelkraft Challenge - May

This month's challenge on the Katzelkraft blog is to use a stamp 3 times. My first thought was of those Andy Warhol images repeated in different colours so this is my very pared down version of that. I used a stamp from the contes et merveilles set and stamped it with 3 different inks on 3 different coloured papers. I matted these onto  some card stamped with the clock image from KTZ118. This was put onto a pearlescent lilac long card blank and finished with a sentiment from contes et merveilles.

UK Stampers Postcard Swap - May

For this month's postcard swap on the UK Stampers forum, Sam has decided to allow us to choose our own theme. This is always a tough choice for me because I can never decide what to do but this postcard came about through a combination of recent events and things on my desk. As these go through the post naked ie with no envelope, the embellishments have to be firmly stuck on and flat.
Firstly the stamp, which is not a rubber one but a hand-carved wooden one. Many years ago I was lucky enough to visit Jaipur in India for a wedding. Whilst there, I had a chance to visit a workshop where they hand printed fabric. I saw this elephant wood block and asked if I could buy it as it reminded me of the elephants who took part in the wedding festivities. This has been sitting on my desk recently as I found it while sorting through some things. As it is wooden, you cannot get as clean an impression as you would from a rubber stamp but it printed fairly well. I've been wanting to try some zentangling for a while and thought this would be a good place to start. My conclusion was I don't have the patience or the attention to detail for zentangling and did not feel at all 'zen' by the time I'd finished!
The background involved a stencil, some punched and die cut shapes, gesso, gold gelato and DIs. I then stamped a paisley pattern with Brilliance platinum planet which only shows when it catches the light. Finally I used a splatter stamp with gold embossing powder. This was inspired by a recent trip to India and a trip to St Petersburg where I saw so many ornate rooms sumptuously decorated with gold.
I matted onto a black base card to provide a frame for the image. I shall have to figure out how to put the recipient's address on the back so that the postman can read it!
Edited to add: I felt the card lacked something so I decided to add a few punched flowers to the postcard and this is the final result:

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge - May

Another month and another page for my calendar for next year. This month's recipe asks for magenta and flowers so I decided to make my flower magenta.
The flower in question is Chloe by Woodware which I heat embossed and painted with Twinkling H2Os on some scrap card. The background card was meant to have an ombré effect but it got lost in the subsequent layers. I used a stencil and some Ferro paste over the bottom third and brushed dusty concord DI through a stencil over the top two thirds. I stamped the flower image again onto the card and laid the cut out, painted flower over it. To finish I added black enamel accents to the stamens.

Craft Barn Weekly Challenge - Night & Day

This week's challenge on the Craft Barn blog is called night and day. The idea is to take a stamp and colour it 2 ways - 1 to represent day and 1 night - not as easy as I first thought it would be. The first problem was deciding which stamp to use - I chose a Stampendous one called mum spray. The card above shows the 'night' version. It was stamped in black, clear embossed and painted with Twinkling H2Os. I used a pearlescent grey card base and some scraps of pearlescent paper.
The 'day' version was stamped in grey, clear embossed and coloured in with coloursoft pencils.

Stitched Birthday Card

I was inspired by this idea on Miriam Prantner's blog and decided to try out the technique with my new Paper Smooches stitched dies. I think I need a bit of practice in placing the die but I like the effect. I added colour with chalks which I haven't used for ages. The sentiment is from Winnie & Walter's the Big, the Bold and the Happy.