Robin and a Plant Pot

I love it when I see a mood board or an inspiration challenge that immediately makes me think of a stamp I have!  That's what happened with this card for the new Peace on Earth Challenge.

Stamped and watercoloured, bordered with copper shimmer cs, and embellished with a Quickie glue pen and glitter on the snowy bits.

Here's the mood board for Peace on Earth.  You'll immediately know which image inspired me!

Please come and join us at Peace on Earth.  You can be inspired by the mood board or you can enter an "anything Christmas goes" card.  There's lots of inspiration from the rest of the Design Team.

Supplies:
Stamps - Penny Black
Ink - Versafine Onyx Black
Paper - watercolour paper, cream cs, copper shimmer cs
Size - A2
Accessories - watercolour paints, glitter

The First Spring Flowers

My garden was awash with clumps of snowflakes all through March.  They truly are one of the joys of spring.  So they are my choice for The Paper Players "Springtime Flowers" challenge.

Stamped, watercoloured, bordered with a bit of dp that picks up the colours in the image, and popped up on fun foam.

The Paper Players "Springtime Flowers" challenge

Supplies:
Stamps - Penny Black snowdrops, Rosie's Roadshow sentiment
Ink - Versafine Onyx Black
Paper - mixed media cs, white cs, unknown dp
Size - A2
Accessories - watercolour paints, fun foam

Twofer Snowdrops

I don't very often do my friend, Darnell's Twofer Challenge as my brain doesn't seem to want to come up with two very different designs for two different occasions using the same stamp at the same time.  But this month it is "Flowers" and, while I was making a belated birthday card for a friend yesterday, my brain decided that it did have an idea for using the same stamp differently.  Here are the two cards:

The one on the left is a card to celebrate spring, the one on the right is the belated birthday card (people really shouldn't have birthdays in early January - it's just too darn close to Christmas!).

I made the birthday one first:

It's for a friend who loves birds and is a keen gardener.  Last year she asked me to split up some of my clumps of snowdrops so that she could get them growing in her garden so this seems the perfect image for her January birthday - my snowdrops are already poking their heads up in my garden.

Very simple to make - stamped, watercoloured, trimmed, bordered with green shimmer cs to match the snowdrop leaves, and embellished with some glitter on the snowy bits of the image.

The Twofer uses just the snowdrops part of the stamp:

For this one, I restamped part of the image and watercoloured, then die cut it into a circle, and die cut a circular frame from the same cs as the rest of the card.  I stencilled the background leaves in two shades of green Distress Oxide ink and stamped a definition of spring over it.  And added glitter to the snowy bits of the image.

Thank you, Darnell, for getting my brain to come up with a Twofer this month by giving it a theme that it likes!!!

Twofer Card Challenge "Flowers"   

   
  

I'm also adding it to Seize the Birthday "Snowy Background".

 

Supplies:
Stamps - Penny Black robin and snowdrops stamp, SU birthday sentiment, Purple Onion spring stamp
Ink - Archival Jet Black, Distress Oxide Bundled Sage and Evergreen Bough, Memento London Fog
Paper - watercolour paper, white cs, cream cs, green shimmer cs
Size - A2
Accessories - watercolour paints, glitter, Spellbinders circle dies, Dina Wakely leaf stencil

Winter into Spring in the Garden

Over at CAS Watercolour we have a theme for March that is dear to my heart.

Gardening is one of my main activities - I have a vegetable garden, perennial borders, and lots of plants in pots on my patio.  The earliest sign of spring in my garden is the snowdrop.  They had started blooming a couple of weeks ago and then last week, we had an unexpected (and unusual for Vancouver) snowstorm and my snowdrops ended up under 8" of snow!  So I was inspired to make this card as it truly is representative of my garden right now!

I stamped the image with Archival ink, watercoloured with my Gansai Tambi paints, added a sentiment (to me, the snowdrops truly do say "Hello Spring"), trimmed the panel, popped it up on fun foam, and added a bit of glitter to the snowy areas.

Here's a close-up:

Please come and join us at CAS Watercolour for our theme of "Garden".  Your card should feature something more than just a flower - the emphasis is on "garden" not just "flowers".  Take a look at the inspiration from our Design Team and this month's Guest Designer, Nonni (Nonni's Handmade Cards), at CAS Watercolour.  You have until March 24th to link up your card.  Looking forward to seeing your card!

Supplies:

Stamps - Penny Black Pretty Perch, Rosie's Roadshow sentiment

Ink - Archival Jet Black

Paper - watercolour paper, white cs

Size - A2

Accessories - Gansai Tambi watercolour paints, Quickie Glue Pen, glitter, fun foam

First Signs of Spring

Vancouver has had a crazy winter - lots more snow and colder temperatures than normal.  But the birds are coming back and the snowdrops in my garden have been coming up.  Here are some almost ready to flower in the rock wall in my front yard despite the snow:

So when SCS's CAS Challenge was "Think Spring" this week, I immediately thought of a stamp I have of snowdrops in snow and created this card:

It's stamped and watercoloured, framed with a die cut frame, and a tiny bit of glitter put on some of the snow.

For those of you in the northern hemisphere, I hope you're seeing some signs of spring!

Supplies:

Stamps - Penny Black

Ink - Ranger Archival Jet Black

Paper - white cs, watercolour paper

Size - A2

Accessories - Gansai watercolour paints, MFT Pierced Rectangle frame die, glitter, Quickie glue pen

Spring Birds

Just lately I've been woken up every morning by the singing of the spring birds - they're so busy starting their nests and courting!  Appropriate then, that I've done two cards of spring birds today.

First up is one that is still a bit wintery as it's got some snow on it, but the snowdrops are blooming on it so definitely a spring card. I made it for the SCS Free for All challenge, "Going to Pot" - use any type of pot or container on your card.

I watercoloured the image with my Gansai Tambi watercolours - love those paints! Added a Quickie glue pen and snow glitter to the snow on the edges of the pot, leaves, and branches, and along the ground lines.  And then popped it up on fun foam.

The second one is for the SCS Ways to Use It challenge to use book pages on your card.

As some of you may know, I'm a retired librarian so my professional instinct is to rebel against cutting a page out of a book!  But I have an old copy of the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady that was discarded from the library because it was falling apart so I decided it wouldn't be too painful to take a page out of it!

I found a page in the entries for the month of March that refers to various birds' nests - perfect to use with my stamp of bird, nest, and blossom.

I used mixed media cs for the image as the Zig brush markers work really well on it. And it's a fairly heavy cs so works well when popped up on foam tape. I painted it quite pale first as that's the look I like for blossom, but it looked lost against the book page so went over it all more heavily - and now it looks too bright!

I sponged the edges of the piece of the book page with Distress Brushed Corduroy and then splattered some watered down ink over it.

I'm stamping Happy Easter inside it and giving it to my best friend's mother who has invited me to Easter brunch. The dates on the book page are so perfect for it as it includes the date of the brunch! Ironically my BF's mother is also a retired librarian so I'll see how she reacts to a page cut out of a book!

Happy Easter!

Supplies for the Robin and Pot card:

Stamps: Penny Black
Paper: cream cs, watercolour paper
Paper Size: A2
Ink: Archival Jet Black
Accessories: Gansai Tambi watercolour paints, Quickie glue pen, snow glitter, fun foam

Supplies for the Bird Nest and Book Page card: 

Stamps: B-Line Designs bird and nest

Paper: cream cs, mixed media cs, page from a book

Paper Size: A2

Ink: Archival Jet Black, Distress Brushed Corduroy

Accessories: Zig brush markers, foam tape