January Challenge #7

Hello!  Here's a card I made yesterday but didn't get a chance to blog about.  We were having too much fun!  First was an outing to Mad About Patchwork to get some Kaffe Fassett shot cottons (yum - and more will be blogged about those on my Daley Quilter blog), then was an outing to the National Arts Centre for the family show, then a nice dinner out with the family courtesy some Christmas gift cards. 

The family show at the NAC was outstanding.  It was a tribute to winter sports, in light of the upcoming winter Olympics.  The orchestra started with the Olympic Fanfare, and then Ken Dryden, hockey legend, came out to be guest host.  Not only is he a hockey legend, but he is an incredible Canadian figure - lawyer, businessman, former Member of Parliament, officer of the Order of Canada, the list goes on.  I'm not the president of the Ken Dryden Appreciation Society, I just want you to picture someone warm and intelligent and synonymous with winter sports (he was a goalie for the Montreal Canadiens and won the Stanley Cup six times in eight years).  Anyway, enough on Ken Dryden - but you can see how he would be a gripping host for the show.  The orchestra played skating music and had winter sport videos and paintings showing in the background.  Then the Propeller Dance company came out and danced for us to the most stirring music. It was so beautifully moving.  The final part of the show was a telling of the iconic Canadian story, The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier.  Basically the story is one of Roch's childhood in the early 1950's in Quebec, where Rocket Richard and his fellow Montreal Canadiens were the heroes of every boy and man and lots of women too no doubt.  The Toronto Maple Leafs were the arch-rivals, as the only other Canadian team in the NHL at that time.  The story tells of hockey sweaters and what happens when a catalogue order goes awry and the wrong jersey is delivered.  And all this was told with the classic illustrations showing in the background and special music composed just to accompany the story.  It was magical! 

Well, before we headed out to enjoy that feast for the senses, I had time to make a quick card.  I had been tidying away a bag of stuff in my stamp room and found a set of Local King stamps and matching dies.  The set is called Chinese Flowers 2.  I stamped the image on a scrap of Dylusions paper (I always mop up the over spray with a scrap of either watercolour or marl or similar and save it for something like this).  I embossed it with some Chameleon embossing powder, which was on sale at Heather's.  It's really cool - a bit multicolour with a lovely sheen.  Hard to describe, but really neat.  Then I trimmed out the image with the die and adhered it to a scrap of black, and then to a scrap of light purple Bazzill.  Under all that is some textured cardstock stamped with a Penny Black background stamp using Pink Pastel fluid chalk ink, and arranged over more scraps in the background.  The card base is a neutral grey, and even though it's an odd size, I can always make an envelope to fit with my envelope punch board - yay!

That brings me to the end of this lengthy post.  Hope you get some stamping time in today. Thanks for stopping by!

October Stamping Challenge #3

Hello!  Here I am with the third installment of my October Stamping Challenge.  In real life it looks much better.  For some reason, the file is saving as 83 kb, so no wonder.  My husband was using my scanning program and obviously changed the settings.  I don't have time to fix it now, but I will try to get a better scan, because this card is really lovely.

Edited to add:  hubby showed me how to fix the file size issue.  This one has come out much better!  I can stop blaming Sauron the Scanner now that I know it was a box that was selected three layers deep in the Save dialogue box.  Silly me for not finding that!

I used a die cut for the ginger jar, and stamped it in gray flannel Memento ink using a pretty little floral stamp (newly inked) from Impression Obsession.  I coloured it with Copic markers and added some shading with Stormy Sky distress ink around the edges.  Then I gave it a good coating of Distress Crackle Paint in Rock Candy and set aside to dry.  When it was dry, I sponged on more Stormy Sky into the cracks.  The background pieces are all scraps.  The background panel is stamped in Hero Arts Shadow Ink (Soft Olive) using a Local King rubber stamp.  The card base is a lovely dusty green textured cardstock.  I accented the card with a couple of dots of Viva Decor dimensional paint.  This morning I realized the jar needed gold trim so I added it, using the outside of the die cut paper as a mortise mask so I didn't get any on the card itself.  The card is 4 1/4" square.  This challenge did take a little longer than 15 minutes, but only because of paint drying time and I am also not counting the time it took to colour the first ginger jar which I stamped upside down. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Clean and Simple Birthday Card

Hello! I made this clean and simple birthday card for a friend using a brand new stamp (Local King) that I got for Christmas. (Thanks Mum!!!) I love how it stamps - I used Fresh Ink here, in Slate, and heat set it with the iron. I had used chalk inks for a few tries, but settled on this one, for a more muted colour scheme. They say on design shows on tv that you should look at what people choose for their clothes to see what colours they like, and my friend wears a lot of black, charcoal, grey, slate, and white. I didn't go black and white (though I think that would look amazing with this stamp), rather with shades of grey. I was unable to resist a splash of colour, added with some red embroidery floss. The image is matted on silver cardstock, the lone nod to sparkle on this card. I am going against the grain here - no big experiments with colour, no distressing, no stickles, no colouring, just simple stamp+ink+paper (+thread). I can see making a few like this in various colours - would make a good gift set. I haven't tried Local King stamps before, but they seem quite good quality rubber. They come on cling cushion and they're a Canadian company, with a variety of styles of images.

Thanks for stopping by!
Wheeee - it's Friday!!!!