Oh No the Big 40!

My husband's cousin celebrates his 40th birthday this week. I'm sure it makes him feel old, but it makes me feel REALLY old because I've known him since he was 8! This week's sketch over at Clean & Simple Stamping appealed to me so I used it as a basis for this card:

I started by taking some chipboard numbers, colouring them with a black Promarker and then embossing multiple times with black embossing powder then ultra thick embossing powder. They proved very difficult to photograph because of reflections but you can see them a little better here:

The zigzags are from the Chevron set of stamps by Uniko Studio, stamped in Versamark then embossed in Wow Detail Clear embossing powder. The greeting, a long-retired stamp by Elzybells, was treated in a similar way. There seemed to be too big a gap under the greeting so I filled it with a plain black brad.

Celebrate the Wonder

I don't normally make many Christmas cards, and the ones I do make are usually last minute. This year is a little bit different: I'm not last minute! Although I haven't made lots of cards, making even one is an improvement on my usual effort. This latest card involves a stamp by Crafty Impressions called Wise Men by Sue Dix, which to my eyes was just begging to be brightly coloured:

I stamped it in VersaColor Charcoal then embossed it with clear embossing powder to make the colouring easier. I used lots of different Promarker colours & finished off with gold & silver gel pens for some of the details.

I finished off with a Penny Black stamp (free with a magazine) embossed with Wow Neutral Ultra Shimmer Embossing Glitter. I'm going to make this my second entry for the Christmas challenge over at Less is More.

CAS Christmas Wreaths

The sketch over at Clean & Simple Stamping caught my eye recently so I used it as the basis for another Christmas card:

The wreath stamp by Penny Black was free with a magazine & I stamped it in Memento Cottage Ivy & Bamboo Leaves. Then I picked out some of the "leaves" in red Copic marker to make them look like berries and used a Quickie glue pen to pick out a few more, sprinkling on some Crystal Glamour Dust.

This was the original sketch:

It took me ages to work out what to do for the sentiment until eventually I looked through my stamps and found a tag stamp which I've had for ages but can't remember who it's by. I stamped it in Bamboo Leaves & used Wink of Stella over the top to add a little more glitz which you can see in the photo below:

I'm also going to enter this into this week's challenge over at Less is More where the theme is Jingle all the Way!, i.e. anything Christmassy.

And lastly, I can't resist showing a photo I took this afternoon over at Formby Point, where the red squirrels at long last seem to be increasing in numbers after a bout of squirrel pox: