Christmas Card Kit #2 from Marina: "Cute Christmas"

Hi guys!

It's again time to post cards me, Marina and Pia have been making from the same materials. This time the wonderful Marina send us the items to play with and I had real fun working with the cute goodies she included in her kit! Let's get right to the cards. In the end of this post you'll see the photo of the whole kit. 

Card #1 is my favorite. Marina included wonderful, snowy acetate in her kit and I just looooooved it! The bad news is I was only able to use the acetate in this one card... I experimented with heat embossing ON the acetate and that DID NOT WORK... Which was a real shame because I absolutely loved the acetate. Anyway, for this card, I sponged a night sky background, heat embossed a sentiment on that and adhered the acetate on it by hiding the adhesive under the die cut snowbank. I also used a wooden Christmas tree from the kit which I heat embossed twice: first with pearl white powder, then with transparent glittery powder. The embossing powders still show some wood through so I thought a kraft card base would be a good choice to match the natural feel. Please click the photo larger for all the details -I was unable to use the largest photo settings with blogger with this one. It's a nice card! :) 

I like this card so much I'd like to try my luck at the big DT call that's going on at Happy Little Stampers here. I think my card qualifies both for the CAS team and the Christmas team... Would be wonderful to join one of these groups. So, fingers crossed! :) 

Then, card #2, my next favorite. :) The super cute cut out penguin digi stamp is from Marina's kit. I first tried to go for a night sky scene (similar to my first card) with the penguin but in the end it all looked a bit boring... So I ended up cutting out some squares from the night sky and making a sort of layered CAS layout. I also used my own snowflakes embossing folder (bought second hand from facebook crafts group) and colored in the penguin with Copics. The balloon is sparkled up with Stickles. The sentiment comes from an older Simon Says Stamp set.

My cards #3 and #4 are both made around cute images that Marina sent. Both are colored in with Copics. In the dog-card I also used a charm Marina added in her kit. I chose to use a snowflake stencil I own for grounding these images and I think it worked out nicely. Marina's kit also included pretty papers -the second card here has one of those papers as background. I like the layered look of card #3 -cards with tags are one of my faves and I like the look of this card although it's more "full" and busy that my cards usually are. 

Our plan is always to make 4 cards with the kit materials but this time I ended up making five! My card #5 uses patterned papers from the kit and I simply combined them with a stamped sentiment, die cut snowflakes and rhinestones. Super simple. :)

Thank you so much Marina for this inspirational kit! I hope you'll now head on over to Marina's and Pia's blogs and have a look what they have made. I'm sure you'll enjoy your visits! I'll end this post with the photo of the kit. Thank you everyone for popping by! 

New Challenge at Inkspirational!

Hi guys!

We have a new challenge for you at Inkspirational and this time it's a super fun one for me because I've got to choose the topic, yay! I chose

"Use 5 or more stamps"

When you look at my card you might be all "What?!? Where are all the five stamps?!?" I wanted to create a subtle background stamping with several background stamps -well 3 this time to be exact- and used a very light blue ink for this. This kind of stamping gives a wonderful airy look and adds a lot of interest to the eye when you try to catch the light, faded patterns and images from the background. 

My Hero Arts butterfly is colored in with Copics and I added some white gel pen too. I love this stamp-die set, so beautiful. Sentiment is by Chocolate Baroque. I hope you like my card and I hope to see you playing along at Inkspirational! 

Close up: The background consists of stamping with 3 background stamps: a grid stamp (Kaiserkraft) , a "tile" stamp (Stamping Up) and a dotty, mixed media-sort of background stamp (Prima)

Ghost Stamping

Hi friends!

CAS Mix Up Card Challenge has just begun with a new monthly challenge and this time the theme is ghosting. This is not a completely new technique to me but I still enjoyed watching the video tutorials provided in the challenge. In the end I decided to go with stamping with water on distress inked background. The stamp I used is an older STAMPlorations sunflower stamp. I used it both for the ghosted background and then stamping normally with brown ink. Loll suggested using mixed media paper for ghosting in her video and that's what I picked and I do think it worked wonders! My "your choice"-mixed media element is heat embossing and I also used linen card stock for card base for extra texture. 

CAS Mix Up Card Challenge now also has a sister challenge blog: CAS Watercolor Challenge. What a cool and unique idea for a challenge blog! The first challenge is autumn and I made my card this in mind, I chose autumnal colors and a fall flower. It's amazing, the fall has been so warm here in Finland this year that the sun flowers are still growing in my neighbor's garden! They are super tall and so beautiful.

 Both CAS Mix Up and CAS Watercolor challenges have a DT Call and I'm thinking to "throw my hat in the ring" for both of these challenges -would be great to be picked for one of them! Wish me luck friends and thanks for popping by!