Happy New Year, Ombre Coloured Embossing Paste and Light!

Hello Everyone,
I trust your holiday season has been full of joy and hopefully some rest too. I must say that compared to last year's deep freeze, this year's weather has been much milder, however it has meant the first green Christmas I can remember in a long time. Today I am happy to play along with  CAS-ology where the cue card is light. I did want to link up to Make It Monday over at Nicole Heady's blog, but I don't have any PTI schtuff on my card.

Over at Make It Monday, it is an a la carte challenge - you can choose from any of the Make it Monday tutorials. I decided to use one that Laura Bassen did on creating backgrounds with embossing paste. I decided to combine this with the CASology cue card this week. I created my embossing paste background a little differently than the way Laura did it. I mixed some translucent paste with transparent microfine glitter from Glitter Ritz and then spread it on the cardstock using a stencil from Simon Says Stamp. Once it was dry, I placed the stencil back over it to create a mask and then I sponged the paste with Distress Inks: Picked Raspberry, Spiced Marmalade, and Mustard Seed. How does this tie into the cue word light? Well the result is like some of the spectacular colours of morning light first thing in the a.m. I love the way inking the embossing paste really brings out the glitter. I die cut the Hello from several pieces of white cardstock and then used my Xyron to add stick to the front, so that I could cover it with white glitter. Once covered, I inked it up with the same colours of Distress inks. It needed more depth for the Sentiment to pop, so I die cut it out of black cs and offset it. Then I added the black shadow panel before mounting it on the cardstock. After all that beutiful morning light does create shadows! Here is a closer look at the glitteriness of the background.

Thanks so much for stopping by. I love to hear your feedback, so feel free to leave a comment. Have a Happy New Year!

Paper Smooches Sparks: Anything goes

Hello Everyone,

I hope you are all enjoying the lead up to Christmas. I am so glad to be off for the Christmas break. I am not sure how I did it, but I managed to get all my Christmas cards done on time. Today I am playing along with Paper Smooches Sparks. It is an Anything Goes challenge. So, I broke out my favourite die sentiments from Paper Smooches. I am now on a mission to have all my "thank you" cards done prior to the hols and this little die is perfect.

The background is stamped with Hero Arts Looped Circle BG stamp embossed in white on watercolour paper. I watercoloured it with Picked Raspberry Distress Ink. I used a bit of Perfect Pearls with the water and it gives the watercolouring a beautiful sheen. I did a general wash and then when it was dry went back to darken the centers of the looped circles. I die the "thanks" four times and layered them. The top layer has been glitterized with Glitter Ritz glitter. It has the most beautiful glittery effect.It is hard to see in the photo - here is a close-up to try to capture it.

I love the way this simple card turned out. Thanks for stopping by and leaving your feedback.

Happy Stamping,

Meg

Bling on the Silver

Hello Everyone,
I have been crafting like mad trying to catch up on my Christmas Cards - not having my craft space for a couple of months and a super-busy school year has made it difficult to create. I am way behind, but having fun all the same! Here is another entry for CASology's Silver Challenge and I am going to link it up to Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Bling it on! Here is my creation:

I used a Memory Box die to create the ornament. The base is a dark purple paint chip that I coloured with Wink of Stella and then clear embossed - it is quite sparkly in real life although it was really hard to photograph. The fancy loopy overlay is cut from some silver metallic paper. The branch is a die I had in my stash - I don't know what company it is - I also cut this from a paint chip and treated it with Wink of Stella and clear EP. The sentiment is from a PTI set called Holiday Cheer. I am pleased with the solid colour block effect. The deep purple is gorgeous on the rich red. I wish you could see the sparkle. 

Not even this pic shows it off - oh well. Thanks for stopping by - I love tohear your feedback!

Happy Stamping,

Meg

CASology: Silver

Hello Everyone,

What a week! I have never been so happy to arrive at the weekend. School has been crazy busy - I have been out of school at least one day almost every week for the last month or so because of meetings etc... at the school board. Most of the time I enjoy this time out as it is invigorating for the old brain to have adult conversation all day; however, the frequency of this time away has become a little disruptive to the classroom. Every time I am away, it requires about three hours of prep work to provide lessons for my supply teacher... Anyway - as I said, so happy it is the weekend.

I was thrilled with this week's CASology cue card: Silver. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a fabulous 12 x 12 pad of metallic papers. There was one silver one with a hexagonal white pattern throughout it that just really looked cool. So  I die cut the Avery Elle sentiment from it and placed it on a white embossed panel; Then I layered this diagonally across the card base. It looked a little to stark on its own, so i added the strips of the metallic paper. Still felt it looked a little unfinished, so I popped on the holly and berries - Perfect! I love the way it turned out.  It was really hard to photograph - here is a side view, so that you can see the sheen of the metallic paper.

We got quite a bit of snow this week and the silver on the card reminds of the crisp sparkliness of the snow in the sunshine! Thanks for stopping by... It is always great to hear your feedback.

Happy Stamping,

Meg