Guest Post - Santa by Venronica Pell

This is the last of Vernoica's mini series of guest posts and today she has designed a cheery Santa card using the Santa Baby stamp set.

I used a piece of card that had been sprinkled with grey and turquoise Brusho ink powders after being splodged with Perfect Pearls on crumpled cling film. By some minor miracle, it looked like mountains in snow, so perfect for Santa and his sleigh.

My usual technique of stamping with Versafine and clear embossing powder didn’t work very well over the pearly bits, so I ended up stamping the sleigh again onto white card, colouring with Promarkers and cutting out the main body and presents and glueing onto the original stamped image.

Santa was also done separately, cut out and glued in front of the sleigh after I had sponged some Stormy Sky Distress ink across the bottom of the card  to give him something to stand on.

Matted onto silver and blue (the blue was card coloured along the edge with a Promarker to give a better match to the background) then onto a 7” square base card.

Have to admit I stamped and embossed the greeting in silver before I added the image – I am very good at getting greetings crooked, but the clear greeting stamps make life a lot easier! I have this small one stuck onto the flat side of a small clear ruler, so it is straight in the first place, and I can use the ruler to make sure it is straight on the card as well.

That's a great tip about placing the greeting stamp onto a clear ruler Veronica. Thank you for the wonderful designs you have made for us over the past three weeks and for telling it like it is. We all have projects that don't go the way we planned but it's how you turn then around that's important and you have shared your skills beautifully. 

Don't forget to leave a comment to show your appreciation for all Veronica's hard work and remember to visit her blog, Vrons Cards.

Guest Post - Holly Spray (or how not to do it!) by Veronica Pell

This is the second week of Veronica's guest spot and this time she is featuring three cards using the Holly Bells stamp set. Enjoy this weeks musings.

This was the stamp I went for immediately as i thought it would go well with brusho inks – BIG mistake! Brushos need a really bold stamp, as I discovered...................

Many  sheets of card later, I finally got an idea I thought might work, stamp the image first, emboss, then thoroughly damp the card before adding the tiniest amount of powder using a very fine brush just where I wanted it............................I really thought I’d cracked it, until the colour started spreading ....and spreading.... spraying with more water and blotting with klitchen roll finally toned down the colours, but the rest of the piece of card was a very splodgy mess. In desperation I trimmed it down fairly close to the image, mounted it onto a red panel, then onto the white 7" x 7" base card, added the greeting.

Back to ‘normal’ it was!

Masked off the panel towards the top of the 7" x 7" card blank, stamped the holly spray with black Versafine and clear embossed. 

Brushed Scattered Straw and Wild Honey Distress inks round the image, then added a line of brown watercolour pencil  under the panel and brushed it with a water brush then replaced the bottom piece of masking paper and added more wild honey.

Coloured the image with water-based marker pens, stamped a greeting using the bold clear stamp and gold embossed along the base of the card.

This is a smaller version on a 6" x 6" card, using Fired Brick and Forest Moss Distress inks, and a smaller clear greeting.

Really appreciate you sharing all of this Veronica, let's face it we've all been there at some time or another. I know our fantastic blog readers will be leaving a comment in support of your wonderful ideas. Don't forget to catch up with Veronica on her blog, Vrons Cards