New Year and New Challenge

Hope it's not too late to say Happy New Year everyone, and to wish you everything you wish yourself for 2013.

Being the first Sunday of the month, we have a new challenge for you at Stamping Sensations, and what better theme to begin the new year with than

** FRIENDSHIP ** 

I think that speaks for itself, and we would love to see your interpretation of what Friendship means to you.

We have a fabulous sponsor for you this month - STIX2! They have given us a wonderful prize. A huge selection of essential items, well worth an entry!

Now, my usual new year's resolution is not to make any! However, if I were to make any crafty ones for this year, it might be along the lines of thinking outside the box, or at least getting out of my comfort zone and challenging myself to do something different. So here's my card for "Friendship".

What's different about that then, I hear you ask! Flowers and butterflies are never far from my cards. Well, yes, but - they're red! Red is not my first colour of choice for a card. I don't like colours that shout at me, I much prefer cool, soothing ones - blues, purples, and greens. But having said that,  I do love poppies, and poppies are red, so....

It might also have something to do with the fact that Brenda sent me a package of gorgeous goodies for Christmas, which included some delightful dotty red ribbon which I couldn't wait until next Christmas to use!

I decided that it would go beautifully with some Chocolate Baroque poppies, which I stamped on to red spotty paper and on to plain white and then I paper pieced just the flowers. 

 I cut out the image and the red spotty frame with Spellbinders dies, and then added just a touch of colouring to the butterfly and bud with a red Promarker. I tried paper piecing the leaves too in green, but felt that introducing a second colour lessened the impact, so I left them plain. 

I didn't have any suitable background paper, so I made some with some more Chocolate Baroque stamps. A lovely friendship sentiment (also by Choc B) and a few punched  butterflies (Martha Stewart) completed the card.

So that's my celebration of friendship. My lovely teamies have made some gorgeous samples to show you, so do go and have a look at them on the Challenge Blog. I look forward to seeing yours!

Happy New Year! In Monochrome!

Happy 2012 everyone! I hope you all had a great Christmas. My resolution for this year will be to get back to the blogging and blog hopping as often as possible! Thank you to all my lovely blogging friends, who have stuck with me even though I haven't been able to reciprocate. We're still busy getting things sorted in the new house, but I should have a bit more spare time before very much longer. My DH has almost finished the final phase of the shelves in my craft room, and I'm looking forward to being able to get all my stuff organised. Photos will follow in due course!

Anyway, being the first Sunday of the month, it's time for the first Stampalot Challenge of the year. For January, our theme is

Monochromatic

In other words, your entry must use a single colour, though of course variations of that colour from light to dark are fine, as long as they are all of the same colour "tone" (eg. all blue-purple rather than a mixture of blue-purple and pinky purple). I chose Adirondack "Eggplant" dye ink for all the stamping on my card, coloured the ribbon with Promarker "Lilac", and used a dark purple toning paper for the scalloped frame.

All the stamps I've used are by Hero Arts. The dogwood flowers and the butterfly are from a HA Stamp & Die Cut set (Antique Flowers and Butterflies), and I diecut the butterfly to add a bit of dimension. I could have cut out the flowers too, but the card will eventually be posted so I didn't want too much depth. To colour the flowers and butterfly I employed one of my favourite techniques - using a paintbrush and clean water to draw the colour from the stamped image, and just adding a spot more colour picked up from the inkpad where it needed to be a bit darker. The words on the punched circle tag are from an old set called "Conversation Dots", which I keep coming back to every now and then. The corner pieces are also punched. I've distressed various edges with the Adirondack ink.

There will, of course, be the usual fantastic Stampalot Challenge prize up for grabs this month, but for the moment it's a secret!

The lovely Stampalot crew are having a well earned break, but I'm sure they'll reveal the goodies very soon! Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing all your monochromatic designs, and if you need any inspiration, just hop over to the Stampalot Challenge Blog and have a look at the DT's gorgeous creations.

I hope 2012 will be a wonderfully crafty year for everyone. I wonder what's going to be the big crafting trend this year.....