All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Leaftastic".  I just love Autumn, the changing colours of the leaves, the hint of a chill in the moist air and the start of "comfort food" season :)  I ordered a set of Tim's Autumn Blueprint stamps as soon as I saw them, I'm a sucker for anything leafy.  Most of my immediate family have birthdays in September (me included) so I thought I'd make some season-appropriate giftwrap.

My starting point was a roll of cheap kraft wrapping paper, which can be had for a handful of beans from your local Swedish furniture superstore (c'mon, don't play dumb, you know you know the one I'm talking about!).  The kraft colour is a perfect base for some autumnal goodness and it lends itself well to the hand-drawn feel of the stamped images.

The paper has a shiny side and a matt side, I chose to work on the matt side as I thought it would take the stamping and colouring better.  There are 4 stamps in the set, so I used large acrylic blocks with 2 stamps side-by-side on each, to make the stamping faster and easier to line up.  The images were stamped with black Archival ink, which is waterproof, useful as I went on to "paint" the leaves.

I dabbed various autumn-hued distress ink pads onto my non-stick craft mat and then used a water brush to pick up the colour and paint the leaves, blending colours together as I painted, to give that variagated autumn leaf colouring.

The co-ordinating gift card was stamped on Kraft Resist cardstock, painted in the same way and then I blended Aged Mahogany ink around the edges to complete the look.  I'm really pleased with the end result and the recipient absolutely loved their one-of-a-kind gift wrap!

 Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!

Sparkle the Dark Up!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "for the love of sparkle".  I've been getting quite into the Christmas spirit with this one - all those cosy thoughts of snuggling up to a log fire and watching the snow sparkle in the light outside.  Of course, I don't actually have a log fire and I'm much more likely to be digging my car out of the snow than sitting back and watching it sparkle, but that's hardly the point!  It's so magical to be out in a thick snow fall, watching the flakes slowly fall to the ground where they twinkle and sparkle - roll on December!

I've used this theme as an excuse to make a start on my holiday cards (I just hope that the next one I make isn't in a rush on Christmas Eve, lol).  I stamped the snowflake 4 times with Versamark watermark ink to create a resist on the background and then applied Distress Inks in various shades of blue over the top.

The main snowflake was stamped with black archival ink and then filled with a white paint pen.  I used the same technique on the "merry" panel, using the white pen and a grey Promarker to highlight the lettering.  Both panels were mounted on white card that had been lightly inked in blue and the card was assembled.

Oh, and "Sparkle the dark up"?  A line from my favourite Christmas song, "December will be magic again" by Kate Bush!

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!

Tray Bon!

I know, I know, that title is a really cheesy pun! lol Cut me some slack, we're all allowed one every now and then, as long as we don't make a habit of it. Come to think of it, I often have cheesy puns as my post titles, so it's a little late for you to start complaining about it now! :)

This weeks theme on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "No Rules". I've had this vintage printer's tray for quite some time now, it was a gift from a friend (thank you Andrea!).  A similar effect can be achieved using the Tim Holtz Configurations printers tray.

I'm not really quite sure why, but when I started this piece I really hadn't taken on board quite how much work it was going to involve!  28 or so individual panels to create is quite a task!

I won't go into detail on all the panels, but a few highlights...

The subway sign was embossed on black card with the Tim Holtz Subway embossing folder, then I sponged white paint onto it to highlight the lettering.  Some of the panels were covered with tissue tape, others were from the Retro Grunge, Kraft Resist and Lost and Found paper stacks.

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)