Christmas Card Club Challenge 11- Mistletoe & Wine

This fortnights challenge has been set by Rita, and is called 'Mistletoe & Wine'.
Well, the card I ended up making is nothing like I originally had in my head, mainly because when I finally found the word stamp I knew had the phrase on it, the words were nowhere near as large as I'd remembered, so wasn't going to work for what I had in mind.
You can see, they are just tiny words in one corner, even though the stamp, from The Stamp Bug Artifacts range, is actually called Mistletoe & Wine!



So, I needed a Plan B. Which is when my eye was caught by a stamp set I'd seen at Happy Stampers, but had sold out so I ordered it online when we got back. It was lay on my desk. waiting for me to get round to putting it away.

It's from a company called Stamps by Me, and is called 'Cheers'. 
 You get the two wine glasses, and in the top left corner, the splodgey shapes are wine to go in them. The guy at HS said that if you ink the stamp, then spritz with water,  it looks totally realistic.
 Anyway, I now had a new plan, so hunted out some heat resistant acetate, some  pigment inks and embossing powders, and set to work.

I stamped the wine glasses twice, once in gold pigment ink, once in silver, both by Encore. Heat embossed them in gold & silver detail powder- even though the acetate is heat resistant, you really do need to watch it carefully, and keep the heat gun moving. I had it in one spot on the silver for a second or two too long, and it buckled a little. It did flatten a little after it cooled, so I may still be able to use it. But went with the Gold ones for this card.

 For the 'red wine', I used Brilliance
Pearlescent ink in Crimson, and for the 'white wine', Encore Champagne metallic. Both heat embossed with clear powder. One thing I did notice was that the 'wine' doesn't fit the glasses perfectly, I had to fill in at the bottom, using a cotton bud dabbed on the inkpad. It probably works fine if you mist with water, but that wasn't going to work with pigment ink & acetate. I cut out both pairs of wine glasses.

 Now for the 'Mistletoe' part! I have a Sweet Poppy stencil of a Mistletoe wreath, and decided to use this, onto white cardstock. I mixed a custom colour for the mistletoe, using Cosmic Shimmer Clear stencil paste, and adding some Adirondack Meadow re-inker, as well as a dollop of darkish green Mica powder.

Spread over the stencil, no idea whether I'll get a shimmery paste or not, just an experiment!
It seemed to work ok, got a little shimmer, and a fairly realistic colour for the mistletoe.

I used an 8"x8" square base card, as the 'wine' showed up better against a white background. The patterned paper down the left side  just broke up the plainness a little. I matted the wreath onto dark green, then red cardstock, and fixed it off centre, so I could add the wine glasses. I stuck them down with a few blobs of Glossy Accents behind the embossing & wine.
 Some half pearls were added as mistletoe berries, and finally a small peel off greeting in gold.

WOYWW #416- It's our Birthday!

Indeed, Happy Birthday to us! 416 weeks of amazing deskers sharing their workspace, and of course, 416 weeks of our much loved leader, Julia, organising us from her home at The Stamping Ground- well, minus a few when the awesome LLJ stepped in to help out. But even so, it's an incredible achievement that it's still going strong, and we get to 'meet', 'chat' and share our desks every week.

Not a lot to be seen on my desk this week, just the completed backs of my ATC's, and a randomness of inkpads.

 Sunday night we went to see Iron Maiden, and had a fantastic night.
 Today, I seem to have managed to pull some muscles in my COPD exercise Rehab lessons this afternoon. And I'm just shocked and saddened by the awful event in Manchester. And so I'm struggling a little, to be honest.

 This pic shows how packed it was, and the shot is of roughly half of the hall.
 Everyone having a good time- just like they would have been in Manchester.

So, I'm done. Other than to say my Oncologist appointment got cancelled again on Monday- 45 minutes before we were due there!
 Apparently, they still haven't had time to discuss my scan at the MDT meeting. Which makes me think, as he obviously wants to get other opinions, that there is something that shouldn't be there on the scan. But equally, it can't be all that much to worry about, as I'm clearly not a priority for the team.
 Next appointment will be in two weeks, as his clinic day for Redditch is Monday, and next weeks a Bank Holiday. She did say she would see if she could get me into his Worcester clinic, which would be sooner, so we'll see. Good job I don't let this stuff stress me out, is all I can say.😊
I'll be adding an asterisk to swap ATC, and if there is anyone who I said I'd swap with who hasn't let me have their addy yet, theres an email link in my sidebar.
 So far, the names I have to swap with are:
Ali Wade, Sandra De, Neet, Anne( Copper Beech),Margaret(Glitter& Glue),Sylvia(Little Treasures),Donna Garner(Doone),Twiglet & Wipso,ShazinOz, Sharon Madson,Kay Hammock,Kelly, Kim Young, then Jan, Julia and my swappee. If anyone else wants a swap, just let me know in the comments. I have some spare, and can make more if I need to.😉

WOYWW #415

Wednesday once more, and a week away from our 8th Birthday. I can't imagine our lovely Leader, Julia, over at The Stamping Ground, had the slightest idea this blog hop would still be going strong after 8 years, when she first started it. On my desk this week, are mainly the makings of my ATC's.

The backs all stamped, ready for filling in. Behind them are some pots of acrylic paint, £1 each in The Works.
 The old Ferrero Rocher tub holds my spare round sponges for the blending tool. A handful of stencils to the left. A selection of inkpads at the back. And of course, the Tim Holtz/Tonic Stamping Platform, which did make stamping all the backs a breeze.
 On Saturday we had an impromptu day out. I'd seen something on Facebook about the RHS Spring Show at Malvern, and as the weather forecast for Saturday was good, we took ourselves off.

Some glorious gardens,this Meditation Garden was so tranquil, and on the left of it was a decking area to sit.

So many beautiful plants, far too many to show them all.

I loved this pure white Aquilegia, they are one of my favourite flowers.

This one too was gorgeous, a sort of Raspberry Ripple type of colour.
 Both were quite short, compact plants, all those I have at the moment are quite tall.

A happy little bee visiting a pansy.

This Iberis was a stunning sight,as white as snow.

Did a lot of walking, bought a number of plants, lol, but my legs ached after all that. But it's the exercise that improves things, so all good.
 I have the appointment now to see the Oncologist again, next Monday the 21st, so they clearly have the info they needed now.

Sound advice.

Christmas Card Club Challenge #10- Christmas Carol

Hi folks, and this 10th challenge of the year is set by Christine. My apologies for being a day late, we had an impromptu day out at the RHS Spring Show at Malvern on Saturday, and boy were my legs and back feeling it yesterday.
I've definitely got one carol on here- Jingle Bells is printed on the backing paper- and I remember reading somewhere that the music background for the Rubber Stampede Angel Chorus Collage stamp is 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing,' so it *may* be two!
 I stamped the image twice, once on white card, and once on vellum, using Brilliance Pearlescent Blue Pigment ink, and heat set with clear EP.
 The white card image was matted onto gold cardstock, then I added a little colour on the reverse of the vellum. Next, I gently tore around the two angels on the vellum, and attached them over the angels on the card. I saw this done in a magazine, many years ago, which was what prompted me to buy the stamp.
 The backing paper is from a Christmas Paper Pad from years ago, and wasn't quite wide enough for my card base, so I filled the edges with some glitter and snowflake peeloff borders.

 I mounted the image at an angle, added some flourishes in the same gold card as the matt. A few white flowers, and a Poinsettia finished it off.

A second version is matted onto an old Kay & Co backing paper, a really thick, embossed vellum.

 You can find the links to see all the other ladies cards at The Christmas Card Club.

WOYWW #414

Right then folks, here we are at yet another Wednesday, and I'm pretty sure the last one was not a week ago! As usual, we start off at Auntie Julias place, The Stamping Ground. Then travel the world viewing desks of wonderment, delight, and in some cases, shame. 😎

 The first few pics are from Happy Stampers- first pic shows Sarah Brennan(Sarahscraftshed), then me, next to me is Neet(Hickdorums).
 Chris( Pearshapedcrafting) is stood by the doorway.

 This shot has Mark Alexander, from Visible Image, along with a lady called Rachel Fisher. I know Rachel from the Christmas Card Club,(Fishers cards & crafts) and in an amazing coincidence, she had won last week in their Facebook draw to celebrate hitting 3000 likes, so was there spending her prize.

Back at our lunch break for this shot, the lady on the far left is Lyn Hardy, who I met through Neet.
 We also bumped into Cara(Craftingbunnies)  on our way around, but didn't get a photo at the time.

Talking of coincidences, some of you may remember me making some Christmas Cards last year, using the Tim Holtz mixed media dies & poinsettias. I'd cased the card from Pinterest, and linked to the lady who made it first, Avril, of Mrs B's Crafting Addiction. Lo and behold, our Chris knows her, and she was there on Saturday, so Chris introduced us.
The other really funny part was how many ladies came up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was Shaz, or Silverwolf! Rofl. Ladies who'd been visiting my blog, looking at projects I'd done. That was totally surreal.
So, onto the goodies then.

Some lovely new stencils from Sweet Poppy- the tree one at the back has a distinct bonsai look to it, and as that is one of Ants hobbies, will make a great birthday card for him.

On to Lavinia stamps, and top of my shopping list were the Green Man stamps!
 Some lovely fairy houses also dropped into the basket, but that was Hubby.

As were almost all of these. The only one I'd picked up was the Eclectica flowers- Hubby took a fancy to the rest.

These stencils were 50/50. I picked the top two, Hubby liked the two trees.

More Owls.  The stamps are really quite large, but there were some gorgeous samples done with them.

Finally, not a purchase, but a gift from Neet. She knows I love my Stampscapes stamps, and brought this with her for me. I love it, that will definitely get some use when I do some more, thank you so much Neet.

 Almost forgot about these- some loose stamps bought from Chocolate Baroque. There are some fab textures, and a couple of small stamps that will go well with my Lavinia Stamp for scene building.
 Also had a chat with Lesley Wharton, the owner. Lovely lady.
Okay, I'll stop there. I'm sure you will come across more photos of our meeting on the other ladies blogs, and there will be quite a few pics of stamps purchased, I'm sure.
 Oh, almost forgot- went to the appointment on Monday, for the results, only to find they hadn't arrived, as yet. They are chasing them for the next MDT meeting, so we have to go back in two weeks. A bit annoying, but to be honest, we almost expected it. A lot of the hospitals have had services downgraded in the Worcestershire area,including our own, and those services put onto Worcester Royal, and that was where I was sent for my scan. They were struggling under the weight even before that, so it really didn't surprise me they hadn't got here. I had expected my Oncologist to have put my appointment to see him off, when I had the scan date for just a week before we were due to see him. Oh well,  it is what it is.😏

WOYWW #413

 Not actually a lot on my desk today, as Saturday I had to go for a CT Scan, we get the results on Monday 8th May, so not long to wait.
 On Monday we decided to get my hair dyed- I'd be worth a fortune now if I'd bought shares in a hair dye company when I was younger.😁
Today(Tuesday) I had to go for my annual kidney stent change, and that went fine, lucky me was first on the list, so went down about 9.15, was waking up in recovery at 10.00. Which was great, as I was gasping for a coffee, lol.😈

 So, I'm writing this now and scheduling, as otherwise I will forget it's Wednesday- it only needs a bank holiday to throw me completely.

Something you may be interested in arrived in my hot, sticky mitts on Saturday.

The Tim Holtz/Tonic Stamping Platform. The full post I did on the unboxing and try out is HERE, if you want to read about it, but in a nutshell, it's great!

Things I started last week, and then played with over the weekend are in THIS POST.
 Used some inkpads I've had for years, and some Brushos too.

 This was just some cardstock cut down to roughly A5, then spritzed with an assortment of sprays- some Tim Holtz, some Dylusions, and I think a couple of  Tattered Angels.
 They've flattened down nicely now, so I can use them to stamp on, and also get some cards made up from the others.



We are off to Happy Stampers On Saturday- we drive up Friday afternoon, and stay overnight,- so there will be some new goodies to show you next week. I do have a few items on my shopping list.😎.
 And I have a few people to meet up with, Neet, Sarah Brennan and Cara.Will be lovely to meet the second two for the first time. Anyone else going, let me know and we'll meet up & say Hi.
Final subject, the ATC swap for WOYWW 8th Birthday. I am going to join in- I must tell the truth, despite me keep saying I will make some, this Birthday swap is the only time I actually get round to it!
 Anyway, as well as my swap person, I'm happy to swap with anyone else who would like to do so- I don't mind where in the world you are- so if anyone would like to, please leave me a message in the comments, and email me your snail mail- my email link is in the sidebar. Then I can get an idea of how many I'll need to make, and I'll email you my snail mail too.
 Right then, kept fairly short & sweet, just how Auntie Julia over at The Stamping Ground likes it.