A Peaceful Christmas Bird

There's a new challenge starting today over at CAS Christmas - our host, Christine, is asking for "Christmas Birds".

I decided to go with a dove as I love Christmas cards with "Peace on Earth" as the sentiment and that always seems to go best with a dove.

I put the stamp in my MISTI and coloured it with Gelatos, then lightly spritzed it with water, and stamped it onto watercolour paper.  Because it was in the MISTI, I was able to redo any sections that didn't stamp clearly.  I then stamped the sentiment in a similar ink and fussy cut the image.  I popped it up on fun foam and added it to a linen card base.

Please come and join us at with your clean and simple cards featuring Christmas birds.  For more inspiration, head over to CAS Christmas and check out the cards by the rest of the Design Team and this month's Guest Designer, Anita (Stampin with Anita).

Supplies:
Stamps - Serendipity dove, Northwoods sentiment
Ink - Memento Bahama Blue
Paper - watercolour paper, linen cs
Size - A2
Accessories - Gelatos, fun foam

Swallowtail Coloured Three Ways

I was at my Stampin' Up rep's catalogue release party last weekend and she offered a great deal on retired stamps so I picked up the very large Swallowtail stamp - I've always admired cards made with it but was never sure how I'd use it.  So I bought it and decided to use it right away, and experiment with inking it up with three different mediums (other than straightforward ink).

This first one uses markers so I'm putting it in as my reminder card for the CAS Mix Up Design Team, since this month's challenge is markers.

For my July 1st CAS Mix UpDesign Team card here, I inked up my stamp with markers and then stamped immediately.  For this card, I inked up with Tombow markers and then spritzed with water to get a soft watercolour look.

I used my MISTI to make sure I got it stamped well.  I made a mask of the stamp and covered my image and splattered some brown watered down Vintage Photo ink.

I trimmed it down to a square and added a very narrow brown border and the white heat embossed sentiment on brown.  Two iridescent gemstones filled in the holes in the die cut sentiment label.

Staying in a similar colour range, I then tried inking up the stamp with watercolour crayons and spritzing with Tsukineko Shimmer Spritz spray instead of plain water.

Either I used less water or the watercolour crayons don't react as much with water, but I got a lot more detail and less of a watercolour look than I achieved in the first card.

I bordered it with a Spellbinders decorative border for the SU Ways to Use It challenge "Decorative Borders", used a shimmery copper card base, and die cut the sentiment from the same cs.  Some iridescent sequins finished it off.

My third medium was gelatos - and I totally changed my colour scheme as I only have a few gelatos.

Again, I scribbled on the stamp with a few colours, spritzed with water, and stamped on watercolour paper.   I prefer the results I got with the Tombow markers and the watercolour crayons to this.

I masked the butterfly, added a bit of pale blue text and some black splatters in the background, and made a white heat embossed sentiment.  I bordered with black to tie in the sentiment.  My embellishments are tiny flower sequins.

My favourite of the three is the first one - I love the watercolour look I got from using the Tombow markers.  How about you?

You have until July 24th to join us at CAS Mix Up if you want to try your hand at a clean and simple card using stamping, markers, and at least one other element.

Supplies:

Stamps - SU Swallowtail, SU sentiment, Wendy Vechhi text background

Ink - ColorBox white, ColorBox Cape Cod, Distress Black Soot and Vintage Photo

Paper - white, copper shimmer, brown, and black cs; watercolour paper

Accessories - Tombow markers, SU watercolour crayons, Gelatos, white embossing powder, iridescent gemstones, iridescent sequins, flower sequins, Memory Box label die, Spellbinders fancy border die, Nesties label die