Vintage Poinsettia and Multi Coloured Holly

It's beautiful weather here at the moment - perfect for gardening.  Fortunately for my Christmas card quota, I can no longer garden all day like I could when younger (or my back protests very painfully) so I'm forced to do other things during the day.  Today I got a couple of cards made.

For The 12 Months of Christmas Link-up "Vintage" and the Christmas Kickstart "Positively Poinsettia" challenges:

With the stamp in my MISTI, I stamped it first in Antique Linen, then inked up the poinsettia with red and green TH crayons, misting lightly, and going back and forth until I was happy with the results. Trimmed it, bordered it with dark gold, added the sentiment, a dark gold border, and some champagne-coloured pearls in the centre of the flower.  

Then for Sparkles Christmas Challenge "Christmas Foliage" and Christmas All Year Round (be inspired by a line from Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree - I went with "Deck the halls with boughs of holly"):

I stamped the holly stamp twice with an old Kaleidacolor pad to get the lovely colour variation, added the sentiment, trimmed with a stitched rectangle and popped it up on fun foam, added red Stickles to the berries and a little red bow.

 

 

Supplies for card 1:
Stamps - TH poinsettia postcard, Mama Elephant sentiment
Ink - Distress Antique Linen, Versafine Clair Nocturne
Paper - off white and dark gold cs
Size - A2
Accessories - TH crayons, champagne pearls

Supplies for card 2:
Stamps - Penny Black
Ink - Kaleidacolor Caribbean Sea
Paper - off white cs
Size - A2
Accessories - Lil Inker stitched rectangle die, red Stickles, red cord, fun foam

NBUS Seahorse

Week 2 of Darnell's NBUS (Never Before Used Stuff) challenge!

Darnell posed a couple of optional elements, one of which is to CASE a card at the same time as using some of our never-before-used-stuff.  I chose this card by Christine Alexander (aka calex on SCS):

Here's my CASE:

This is the first time I've ever tried using Distress crayons.  I laid down three colours in bands across a piece of watercolour paper and then spritzed with water and got them to blend and move with a waterbrush.

It ended up looking like water so it seemed the perfect opportunity to use my new seahorse die and CASE Christine's seahorse card.  I die cut it twice to give it more substance and sponged it with a couple of shades of Distress inks.

Using glass bead gel, I went over a section of a stencil to create the bubbles blown out by the seahorse, as my way of CASEing Christine's stencilled bubbles.

Thanks for dropping by!  And thanks, Darnell, for inspiring to use our NBUS!

Supplies:

Stamps - Rosie's Roadshow sentiment

Ink - Versafine Onyx Black, various Distress inks

Paper - watercolour and white cs

Size - A2

Accessories - Gina Marie seahorse die, glass bead gel, TCW stencil, Distress crayons, clear embossing powder, fun foam