Oooh lovely new stamps

If you have been following my blog for a while - hello :)
You might remember that I used to frequent the wonderful craft shop Imagine That in Upminster where I was lucky enough to teach a few classes as well. The shop is no more, but the brand lives on and the fabulous Emma Godfrey who runs it also works for Paperartsy and has just brought out a range of stamps under the Paperartsy umbrella. How happy was I when she contacted me to see if I would like to do some samples?
Very.
is an understatement.
You can see the whole range here. I had plate three to play with.
Here are my samples

This one took sooooo long to do.
That is because I tried to do a Paperartsy type of background to begin with - splodges and stencils and all sorts and it was a massive failure.
So I sat in the corner and cried a bit.
And then decided that as Emma knows my style then my style would be perfectly fine.
I'm still a bit sad about not being able to achieve what I had planned but hey ho.
As well as the stamps I was sent some lovely, lovely Paperartsy Fresco Finish paints in pinks and teal and a gorgeous old gold.
The background to this had lots of teal to start with but now has a colour scheme that reminds me of a licourice allsort :)
So instead this has layers - Sherbert, Old Gold and plain white cardstock. The top and bottom layers had slightly diluted Old Gold flicked on them. The pink strip was painted with Candy Floss . While all of those layers were drying I stamped and painted various elements from the stamp set. I had to add a Sharpie outline to everything (I really did)  and then stuck it all together. I tried to write "Christmas" to match "selfie", but didn't really manage it :)

Whereas this one took about 10 minutes....

The paints are just the bees knees for doing ombre effects. They manage to both hold their own AND mix beautifully. I didn't try to paint the outline of the frame, instead I used a krylon pen - my hand is too wobbly for such detail :) But I did paint the camera with slightly watered down paint so you could still see the text.

I loved the ombre so much I did it again!

this time just with the pink colours. I stamped directly onto the painted surface (with my toes crossed. I would have crossed my fingers but that would have interfered with the stamping) and it all lined up perfectly. Again I diluted the paints so that the text would show.

And I have just discovered a mistake - some bits that should have been painted - have you?

thanks again Emma for doing me the honour of asking me to be a Guest Designer - any time! (as long as you don't want the signature Paperartsy style...)

In other news as it is past Friday that means I have another Daring Card to reveal.

And as it was the first Friday in Feb it was a fabulous Elemental Inspiration, this one chose by Sharon

For this challenge we need to use at least three elements from the photo on our cards.

I went with the doodling, the paisley feature, the scallop and the blue edging. I doodled the image and coloured it in using water colour paints. Some pink cardstock was put through a paisley embossing folder and I dug out my old scallop scissors for the edging. Some black pen work, a Dienamics die and a Clearly Besotted sentiment and it was all done.

Rising to the challenge?

Having a few hours off and nothing on my craft to do list (well loads really but nothing urgent), I decided to play along with a few challenges. I save sketches and card challenges to my computer but almost never, ever use them - let alone manage to be able to submit within a time limit :)

The first one to share is Curtain Call Inspiration Challenge which has a photo to draw features from.

 Here is my card...

 Some more hand drawn watercoloured lines. I decided that hand drawn chevrons was beyond my skill set :) I added pennants in the featured colourways but also an old sizzlet heart die, some silver and red large sequins and a hand written sentiment. The papers used are mostly very old Kaisercraft.

I managed to complete two of Nat's card challenges for the month (the other one scares me a bit - don't know why!) but as it is only 2nd Feb I still have time to give that one a go too.
Firstly a colour inspiration

Mmmmmmm meringues

I have these wonderful WPlus9 Spring Blooms stamps that I have seen so many amazing cards created with. I still haven't quite got the measure of them. Sigh. Anyway I stamped with pale distress ink onto watercolour paper and stamped the flowers, colouring them with watercolour paints. The little blue flowers, leaves and stems are all hand painted. Everything was outlined with gold pen and sprinkled with Heidi Swap mist - as was the base Crate Paper layer. I added a gold outline to all the papers and some extra stripes to one of the papers. The gold is where I departed from the inspiration piece. The flowers were all given a Wink of Stella glitter covering

The sentiment was stamped with Delicata gold ink and cut with a fishtail die. Finally a big pink Docrafts button was added with some gold thread. It actually tones better with the card in real life than in the photo.

Then came a card sketch...

which I kept to quite slavishly. I either follow a sketch completely or you can't tell I used it at all...

The papers are from the Park Bench paper pad by Fancy Pants. I used a brand new Avery Elle dotted borders die and an almost as new Lawn Fawn stitched circle  combined with an old school retro daisy flower punch. I punched the flower three times and stuck them together and then after shaping the petals smothered it in glossy accents. A Clearly Besotted sentiment was embossed with Liquid Platinum embossing powder.

And finally (because if I put this in a different post I would probably not get round to the post so its better to put all of my eggs in this basket)
a scrap book sketch from Studio Challenges

Again, pretty well followed to the letter - even down to the yellow border. The striped paper had to be moved over slightly to hide a dirty mark on the white cardstock otherwise there would have been even more matchiness

There is a mix of papers here - some are Studio Calico, but there is also some WRMemory Keepers (Kaleidescope and Natural) and Simple Stories DIY Boutique (the background yellow). I was going to use a circle frame I have had for ages to draw around - and the circle was going to be yellow. But then I decided that I might as well use the circle in the layout and add some more of the colours from the photo. So first I traced and cut anyway for the green backing paper and then gessoed and watercoloured the chipboard circle a soft blue. When that was dry everything was given the black pen outlining treatment. The chipboard stickers are American Crafts, the stars are from Chickaniddy Crafts, brad and some of the stickers Simple Stories and the black/white one is Theresa Collins. The leaf is a Prima canvas one, inked with Mowed Lawn Distress ink.

Because of using the chipboard circle, the page has ended up with oodles of dimension.

and using the sketch means it came together really quickly.

Right, off for a lie down after that burst of creativity....