gansai tambi

Christmas Spirits….

Hello once again. I hope you are keeping safe. I have a CAS card to share today:

I took a square base card and stamped some images from a newly purchased Clearly Besotted stamp set ‘ Drink and Be Merry’ in Gina K Amalgam ink, then very simply coloured with Copics.

The berries are one of the gold’s from my Gansai Tambi set – and those little berries are exactly that – little!

The sentiment is from the same stamp set – and there are loads of sentiments with this actually quite small set – you certainly get a lot for your money.

I have a confession to make – this is my second attempt! The first did go in the bin – I couldn’t save it……………I took ages creating a mask for the glasses on the original card, then used a circle stencil and Distress Oxide Speckled Egg as a background – it looked absolutely horrendous!

Really – I mean horrendous! It was only because the Speckled Egg is a greyish-blue, and covered some of the black lines up – my fussy-cutting isn’t the best in the world – so I drew over them in black pen – went squiggly without even touching a drop of alcohol……..I still thought I could save it – coloured the images, stamped the sentiment……nope! Binned.

The version you see here is much better and I feel a whole load happier. I keep trying new things – but sometimes going back to what you know is better. I’m not having a very patient day………………..warn hubby now!

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Color Throwdown – blue, green, peach, metallic gold

Aud Sentiments – Christmas in July with a sentiment

Simply Less Is More – CAS one layer Christmas

Christmas Blog Challenge – Christmas and a square card

christmasblog

Three Kings – ABC Christmas Challenge

Hi there. A new challenge has begun at ABC Christmas Challenge, and this time we want to see ‘J’ for Joy, and/or ‘K’ for Kings. Here is my card:

I used the three kings and the camel image from Digi Doodle Studios and coloured with Copics, then cutting out using my Scan’n’cut – heart pounding during the cutting just in case it got messed up………….but it didn’t! Thank goodness – after all that colouring!

The background is several blue Distress Oxides blended then splashed with Gansai Tambi silver shiny silver paint.

The ‘sand banks’ were cut from some brown/Kraft card-stock using Lawn Fawn dies, and all attached with either wet glue or dimensionals.

I hope you can come and join us for this challenge, and there is a prize for the top pick by Dorte. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

A Bit More Time To Craft Challenge 115 – anything goes

Creatalicious Challenge – anything goes – option add sparkle

Colour Crazy Challenge week 17 – anything goes colouring

A Perfect Time To Craft – anything goes

Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge – anything goes Christmas

Colourful and blingy

Hello again. I have been playing with colours, and trying to create a scenic card, and a second card which made me smile as I was colouring it.

First is the scenic card:

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and a close-up of the silver bling:

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The base is water-colour card and blended blues from my Distress Oxide collection. I then took the die cut from Avery Elle ‘Let it Snow‘ and cut the little holes/stars into it. I then splashed it with Gansai Tambi ‘Starry Colours‘ for some extra shimmer.

The Santa Clause and Reindeer are from the same stamp set as the two critters – Lawn Fawn ‘Winter Skies‘, stamped in black and heat embossed.

The hills and little town are cut out of silver glitter card, and again cut using the hillside dies – both from Lawn Fawn – and layered out of sync – so they create some dimensional hills.

The two little critters are coloured with my Zigs, as are the trees.

The second card:

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This is a cheshire cat stamp from Visible Image. stamped first and masked off, then using a stencil to create a weird background…….then coloured with my Zigs.

This card will be entered into the following challenges:

Daring Cardmakers – pets

Time Out Challenges – colourful

The first scenic card will be entered into the following challenges:

Just Us Girls – celestial elements

52cct – Christmas and silver

I now have three days off work, and I plan to craft and craft and craft to get a substantial stock of Christmas cards – but as I have also received a bunch of the new Altenew stamps – there may be some general cards too…………you can’t have too many of them, either, can you?

 

 

Floral and space

Hello there. No – it isn’t a flower in space. I have two cards – one floral and one galaxy/space – to share with you today. Two completely different cards. I have been missing my florals, even though I have been having messy and Distress Oxide fun.

This first card:

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is quite a simple card – I think I might be getting there with this style – though it still scares me!

Having seen quite a few butterflies around the garden whilst I’ve off work the past few days, I took the Honey Doo ‘Butterfly Border‘ stamp and heat embossed into a piece of card using white embossing powder, then blended my Distress Oxides over it. The embossing resisted the colour. I used a couple of the orange and yellow oxides, to create a summer feel.

I then took the matching die and cut that out of a 6×6 inch piece of card, first working out where I wanted it to be, and ensuring I could match it up (!!) then adhered the stamped and inked piece behind it.

I was going to go with a coloured border around this piece, but I like just a slightly bigger white base instead, as I think more colour would detract from the main element.

The sentiment is from the Concord and 9th ‘Painted Rose’ die set. I love this font, and that the words are separate to place where ever you like. I die cut this twice in white card, then the third time was from another piece of card I used the same distress Oxides on, and layered them all together.

This card will be entered into the current challenge at The Paper Players – to use negative space on a clean and simple card, and the current challenge at Addicted to CAS – with the theme of Summertime.

This second card is completely different to enter the current challenge at Lil Red Wagon:

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The current theme is to use anything to do with space, aliens planets etc. I did a few galaxy backgrounds – getting inky and messy again – then looked for my alien stamps. I started stamping and colouring these little creatures, before my sister reminded me they were monsters and not aliens, from Hero Arts ‘Monster Greetings‘ stamp and die set.

To me they are aliens, so I used my artistic license and carried on using them. I went for strong and vibrant colours with my Zigs, so they would stand out from the background, and then stamped and embossed the greeting in white, from another stamp set – I can’t remember what the name or make of this is.

 

 

More Monsters

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Hell again. I have been doing a little crafting over the weekend, but nothing too major. I may be able to craft more later today, and I am sure I will let you know what I come up with.

This layout of this card was inspired by the sketch challenge from MFT, but initially I didn’t really have a clue about what theme I wanted to go with. My obvious go-to would be flowers, but I had a think about it for a few days.

Whilst I was sorting my stamp sets out into make, then alphabetical (OCD much??) – and found this ‘More Monsters’ stamp and die set. I then thought about a galaxy background – which I haven’t done many of – and decided to take an hour or so out of sorting and tidying to play.

I used Distress Oxides then Gansai Tambi splatters for the background, sticking that down beneath a plain white rectangle.

There are six monsters in the set, so I took 6 Catherine Pooler inks and stamped them all out. As these monsters are solid images, I knew these inks would be more suited for coverage.

After die-cutting them, I then played with the lay-out, stamped a greeting – there are quite a few in this stamp set – and there we are.

I obviously have 6 monsters of 6 colours, so I am currently playing with putting some more cards together along the same lines, and if I complete them today, I may add them to this posting later. Here is a close-up of the shiny splatters, using gold and white:

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I shall be entering the following challenges:

MFT sketch challenge –

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: anything goes

JUGS CAS challenge:

Galaxy background

Now, I know I’m coming late to the party, but I have never done a galaxy background. It has never interested me, and the more people that did one – the more I stayed away. I’m funny like that – not really following trends until they are over. I have watched numerous videos about the galaxy backgrounds, but it wasn’t until I saw the Simon Says Stamps Monday challenge, and having just had my Uniko delivery, then I thought I would have a go.

Why inspired now? No clue. No idea………but having all the stamp sets from Uniko based around stars, and wanting to do a less than simple card – well, out came my Gansai Tambi, and distress inks, and I set to it.

I used the stamps from Uniko ‘Background Builders’ and mixed in MFT ‘Stars Above’, embossing onto water-colour card with white. I then created a mess with my Gansai Tambi water-colours, pastels, starry colours, Brusho’s – you name it, I seemed the throw everything at it! I didn’t know when to stop. I just know I had to have some bright colours in the background showing through when I covered the piece with distress ink Black Soot, splashed with water, then splashed with white…………Actually, I can’t remember half of what I did to it!

The sentiment is from MFT, and a coloured base card just to bring some of the colour together from the background.

I don’t know if I’ll be doing this frequently, but I had some fun. Maybe when I am in the mood not to think, but just play, I’ll have a go again.

The challenges I will be entering:

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge – it’s written in the stars

QKR Stampede – anything goes

Colour Crazy Challenge – anything goes

 

 

 

 

 

Spitfire

Hello there, everyone. I have been playing with one of the stamps I bought at Doncaster last week. For some reason the spitfire stamp from Stamposaurus appealed to me on the day, and I have no idea why it did. My sister gave me rather a weird and strange look when she saw I had bought it! Then along came some challenges where I immediately thought of using it. How funny is that?

I stamped the image onto water-colour card, using Versafine black onyx, then turned my mind to how to colour the image, and using which of my mediums. I was using the colours from Color Throwdown – green, yellow, red, aqua – and knew I had to mix things up a little.

One of the images I coloured using my Zigs – the one with the lighter green, with red and yellow for the targets, and the other I used my Gansai Tambi water-colours. That all came together quite well, I thought. I had tried using some masking fluid over the plane, to ink blend the background, but the card didn’t like me removing it and then colouring on top of it……….became all bobbly and useless. I really don’t have much luck with that fluid!

For the background, I used a small paint brush to wet around the plane, then dabbed in some Catherine Pooler ‘Aquatini’ ink, which spread very nicely, I must say.

To put the card together, I folded and scored an A4 piece of card, then put the planes at a jaunty angle. One of the planes I coloured the whole of the base with the plane on it, the other I left ‘messy’. One of them I put the card down on the base without trimming, the other I put the card down off-setting it to the base card, then just trimmed around said base card.

I just happened to have a Card-io stamp set called ‘Up, up and away’, and used that for the sentiment. As if by magic, matched completely what I wanted to do.

I shall be entering this onto the following challenges:

Color Throwdown – green, yellow, red, aqua

QKR Stampede – anything goes with twist up, up, an away

Just add ink – photo inspiration

Happy Little Stampers water colour challenge – anything goes optional twist blue

 

 

Green and copper

For todays cards, I had a little play with my water-colour paints and tried out different ways of using them with a stamped image. The inspiration for these cards came from the Chocolate Baroque challenge, and one of their stamps I have recently purchased.

The stamp is ‘Rose Script’ and I loved the simplicity of the design, incorporating its own background with the script behind the rose, and the sentiments that come with the stamp set are going to be used a lot in my crafting – I can tell!

The challenge was a colour swatch of the greens, and one metallic element – copper. I realised that the only copper item I possessed was an embossing powder from Cosmic Shimmer, so I that’s where I started. Do I emboss the stamp? Do I emboss the sentiment? How about an embossed edging to the card? As I was in a conundrum – I decided to do them all….in conjunction with some water colouring.

I know, I just started to play with water colouring – and loving it. It may not be technically correct, it may not be what is taught in class rooms around the world – but in my little personal universe (I call it the Loopylooverse) – I’m enjoying playing and creating.

The darkest coloured card I started by embossing the stamped image in copper, wet down the whole piece of card, and just swept my water-colour greens across the image. I liked how some of the colours pooled within some parts of the embossed image, especially on the leaves, and decided to let it dry as it was.

Another piece of water-colour card and I embossed the stamp in clear embossing powder, and again swept the colours across the image. The embossing resisted the water-colours, highlighting the stamp. I added sentiment in the copper embossing powder, and also edged the piece in the ‘Be Creative’ double-sided sticky tape (again) added embossing powder, heat setting it, which created another dimension on the card.

The third card was a little mistake – but I actually like it. I wet the card, swept my colours over it, dried it with my heat tool, then stamped over that with my Ranger perfect Medium. I couldn’t see the stamp, so I wet the card again, and took most of the colour away, and it left the stamped image with an outline in the three different greens.

As I had used quite a bit of colour with those three cards, I decided to do a fourth (I had cut my A4 water colour card into four pieces) quite plain and simple. I stamped the image and embossed in copper. I used a small amount of each of the three green colours to a different part of the image, but I wanted most of it clean. The darkest green is on the stem, then the next two greens are on three of the leaves. That’s it. I put it down and refused to add any further detail, as occasionally I don’t know when to stop!

I used Crafters Companion water colour card, Gansai Tambi water colours, Chocolate Baroque stamp set – ‘Rose Script’, Cosmic Shimmer copper embossing powder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adore you and smile

After a fairly decent day at work, I wanted to craft and play with some of my starry and shiny water colours.

Once again I have turned to the Altenew stamp set ‘I Adore you’ for a variation on a background. Again I stamped one image several times in Ranger Perfect Medium, and embossed the outline of the flowers with a copper embossing powder. I felt this particular flower had a lot of detail in it, and I liked the way it looked when stamped in different directions.

I also stamped some of the smaller flower/bud images in a couple of places where I felt it needed something extra, or there was too much white space. The flowers themselves I coloured in my Gansai Tambi starry colours to add some depth and sheen, using the white gold shade for  a lighter look which didn’t detract from the copper embossing on the flowers. I decided to change from colouring the background, and instead wanted the flowers themselves to be the centre of attention.

The sentiment is Altenew ‘Half Tone Smile’, stamped and embossed in copper, and cut out using the matching die, and added some sequins which seemed to match the colour tone, and one black jewel for the dot above the ‘i’.

I seem to be enjoying stamping and embossing at the moment, especially creating my own backgrounds, with a simple sentiment. Sometimes a card doesn’t have to say a lot to mean a lot. If you know what I mean.

I’ll be entering this card into the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge, with a theme of Anything Goes.