A Riot of Colour For March!

We have a great theme for our March Challenge at Stamping Sensations, and there'll be no difficult decisions about which colours to choose for your project, as you can use all of them! We'd like to see your take on

* * * * * SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW * * * * *

You can take inspiration from either the colours of the rainbow or from the well known song. All we ask is that your main image is stamped and that your project adheres to our Challenge Rules, otherwise it will not be eligible for our fab prize, and may not be commented on. Our lucky winner this month will receive a lovely selection of dies.

I've gone for rainbow colours for my card, and kept the design quite simple to let the colours stand out.

I've had this very pretty Woodware flower stamp in my stash for a while and never got round to inking it up until now, but I thought it would be perfect to show off our rainbow theme. The sentiment is part of the same stamp set.

The card was very quick to make. I used ink dusters and Distress Inks to make the rainbow background, and the same inks to colour the flowers. I cut the border with a Spellbinders die and added some sparkle to the flowers with a Spectrum Noir sparkle pen. You can see the effect better in the next photo.

I know I say this often, but my brilliant teamies really have outdone themselves with their projects this month! Go and feast your eyes on the rainbow of stunning samples over on the Challenge Blog, and then see what you can come up with to rival them! We're looking forward to seeing a riot of colourful entries!

Autumn Glory

Well, it doesn't seem five minutes since September arrived, and here we are at the start of October! This year is flying by! It means, of course, that it's time for our next challenge at Stamping Sensations, and this month we have one of my favourite themes -

* * * * * AUTUMN GLORY * * * * *

Not my favourite season of the year, as it reminds me that we are getting closer to winter (hate the cold and the long dark nights) but I do love the autumn leaves, trees and colours. So I will be hoping to see lots of those in our challenge entries. As usual, you may interpret the theme however you wish, but please do remember that stamping (rubber, clear or non-pre-coloured digi) must be the focal or predominant element of your project.

Our October sponsor is the wonderful Penny Black, and we have a fab selection of their products for our winner.

Recently I came across Andy Skinner's video showing how to do the alcohol ink float technique. Haven't used my alcohol inks for ages, so I decided to try the technique for my Autumn card. It was very easy to do!

The effect, produced on porous paper or card, is much softer than that obtained by using the inks on non-porous surfaces, and it makes lovely backgrounds. Having made mine, I stamped over it with Inkylicious leaf stamps, which I then coloured with diluted distress inks. Being water based, the DIs didn't affect the alcohol ink background. The next step was to stamp some of the flowers and the butterfly from Penny Black's "Enamor" set, which I also coloured with distress inks. The sentiment is from the same set. 

I added some shading around the leaves, flowers and butterfly with a Spectrum Noir pencil to make them stand out a bit more. The finished picture was then mounted with various layers on to a 7" x 7" card. The patterned paper is by Bo Bunny. A snippet of ribbon, a few punched leaves and a flower button were the finishing touches. I didn't look in my button box for a suitable button until after I had coloured the flowers, and it is a lucky coincidence that I just happened to have one in the same style and colour, which I'd forgotten I had!

I thoroughly enjoyed trying out the technique, and it's one I think I'll be using again. If you'd like to try it too, you can watch Andy's video tutorial here.

 My lovely teamies have some gorgeous projects to inspire you on the Challenge Blog, so do pop over and take a look, and we will look forward to seeing lots of awesome autumn entries!

One For The Guys

 Making my sample for our March Challenge at Stamping Sensations was certainly a challenge for me! Our theme for this month is

* * * * * ONE FOR THE GUYS * * * * *

and it is the subject I struggle with the most, being more inclined towards pretty floral or nature motifs than macho masculine stuff !

However, I rose to the challenge and came up with this. I'm on a mission at the moment to revisit some of my oldest stamps, especially those that haven't seen daylight for a long time, in order to justify still giving them houseroom! This lovely Boat Scene (by Stamps Happen, now sadly defunct) was always one of my favourites and I don't know why I haven't used it more often, except that just about all the men in my family have received an example of it at one time or another.

I began by stamping it twice, on white card and a mottled sandy coloured card (another ancient item of stash!). I cut the framed part out of the sandy card, lined it up with the image on the white card, fixed them together and then coloured the whole image with Spectrum Noir pencils. I stamped the birds (Stampin' Up) at the bottom and finally used an old toothbrush to flick various shades of watercolour paint all over the card.

We have a lovely new sponsor for March!  Foil Play have "an extensive choice of over 11,000 products to help you to create beautiful and enjoyable craft projects, including a huge selection of rub on foils, ultra fine glitters, toppers, die cut and traditional decoupage".No minimum order is required, and postage is free if you spend over £10. They are offering the lucky winner a whopping £35 voucher to spend in their online store.

We've had some fantastic entries for our last few challenges, and I'm sure this one is going to be no exception. I'm really looking forward to seeing lots of projects for the men (or boys)! Should you need any inspiration, pop over to the Challenge Blog, where my brilliant teamies have some great stuff to show you. Good luck, everyone, and thanks for looking.