Keeping my hands busy.

Hi Everybody, February at long last lol, hasn't January gone slow? Well it has for me anyway, maybe its because I've been counting the days from when I quit smoking, did I say days? well...days, hours, minutes.. To be honest the last few days have been easy, I haven't given the dreaded weed much thought, so onward and upward.  As you can see I've been keeping my hands busy, these are a few cards I had on order and I'm really pleased as to how they turned out. For the top one I used a retired stamp set that I still love called 'Best Blossoms' and I have used a technique called 'Gradation' this is when you use two or more colours and gradually blend them together where they meet on the stamp, you can get some gorgeous results especially when you use the Stampin' Write markers and a sponge dauber.

This second card is made using a technique called 'Spotlighting' this is when you take a section of an image and 'spotlight' it in some way eg. I took stamped a section of my main image and coloured it using the Stampin' Write markers, I then layered this onto some real red cardstock and using dimentionals I have placed it ontop of my main image. Just another cute technique to add to your collection and a totally new look for your stamps.

No special technique to this card, just plain matting and layering with a bit of embossing here and there but I love these colours together, they aren't colours I would use often but I think you'll be seeing a lot more of them from now on, they are Ballet Blue, Night of Navy and Very Vanilla. The stamp set used on this card is of course the Flight of the Butterfly, I love the swirling sentiments that come with this set and the fabulous butterfly punch that coordinates with it. I am entering these cards into a few challenges they are:

Creative Card Crew~ Punch it ( Big wave, hello girls!)

Cute Card Thursday~ Blooming Gorgegous

Dutch Dare~ Summer In Winter

Secret Crafter Challenge~ Hearts (Heart embellishement on Wife card)

One Stop Craft Challenge~ Make it Personal (big wave again)