Breezy Birthday and Sleigh Time

Hi there,

time again for Makeesha challenge this week a sketch. Here it is:

I liked the sketch as soon as I saw it , but for some reason struggled to come up with an idea. Late Sunday, like 10:30 Pm (this is really late for me) I was still browsing through my stamp file (this was a fantastic idea I picked up several years ago from Tracey Harp, basically when you get a new set, you photocopy the label stickers before you mount them on the stamps and you put that set image in a little folder. That way you can always see everything you have just by flicking through the folder). Ok back to the cards, anyway thankfully courtesy of inspiration from flicking through my stamp file and just plain lots of mulling on it I did some up with some ideas. In the end I couldn't help myself I had to make two if them.

The first one "Breezy Birthday" is intended for my Dad for his birthday (today - its going to be a little late). Here is it.

A close up of the dragonfly

I used the Parisian Breeze DSP as inspiration for the colours. I did the image panel first - stamping the tips of the grass from Inspired by nature across the panel. I decided to wanted to have a dragonfly up on the top LHS as per sketch. So I dug out my Winged Things set (retired) and I wanted it to be sort of translucent. So first I stamped it in Brown Satzon on acetate. Then I tried colouring in his wings with Copics - but it was just too faint. I then stamped a second dragonfly on vellum, and coloured the vellum in with two copics (BG13 and BG18), cut out the wings from the vellum, and adhered them to the acetate dragonfly (also trimmed out). Now I got the effect I wanted - his wings were a lovely bluey colour but still translucent. To finish it off I added a silver brad through the head and stuck it on the the grass panel with two glue dots. The sentiment (from Upsy Daisy) was added at the bottom, accented with a little Baja circle. Below the image panel I added a strip of Kraft taffeta that had been knotted three times - it was that or hemp and I decided to go with this in the end. The broad stripes from the Parisian Breeze DSP seemed to complement the image so that what I went for as the main matte on the card. The inside is just finished off very simply with a bit more of the DSP.

Now for card two - this time a christmas card. I realised in the process of thinking this one up that all my Christmas sets are retired bar Tree Trimmings - sorry about that but retired sets are part of my stash and so far have stayed with me.

Obviously a red and white theme, (real red and Whisper White) I think my initial thought was that I wanted to white emboss the sleigh onto red, so all the layering worked out from there. The white main layer is stamped with stars also from the same set. The embossed central panel was set off with the holiday sentiment from Rivetting (also retired but so very useful) at the top and with a Button Latte button threaded with red embroidery cotton and backed by a little looped white grosgrain ribbon. I added the scalloped border at the bottom to represent the element Keesh had at the bottom of the sketch.

Hope you liked them and thanks for visiting.

Kim

I am running really late with getting dinner ready so I am going to have to leave this without adding the recipes, any questions please just ask.