Another Crafty Sunday

I seem to be in a bit of a pattern at the moment - tired, inspiration and time limited during the week then crafting like mad on Sunday!!  Not that I mind, but would be nice to be able to spread it out a bit....anyhoo...this is what I've made today -  

This is my entry for Linda's Compendium of Curiosities challenge over at StudioL3. This week we had to use Distress stickles as detailed on P46 of Tim Holtz's book. Now I only have one colour of Distress stickles - Milled Lavender,  so the colour scheme was pretty clear! I made the background paper with distress inks and stamps - Hero Arts dots and Judikins Arabesque flourish. The image is a Hero Arts poetic petals stamp which I've masked and stamped and masked again to stamp the leaves. Flowers are painted with H20s and I've then added the stickles - if you enlarge the pic you should be able to see it better.  I'm also adding this to Hels Sunday Stampers challenge  'You don't bring me flowers'.  I then turned my attention to Christmas again - I'm trying to combine entering challenges with getting my Christmas cards made so this is what happened for the Simon Says Stamp Show and Tell Challenge - A little gift card wallet

The challenge theme was to make art inspired by The Wendy Vecchi; Studio 490 Style! Now I'm not lucky enough to have any of Wendy's stamps so I tried my best without - I was inspired by this entry on her blog, (although didn't use the tutorial technique) and also used the sketch for The Penny Black Saturday Challenge so am entering this over there too. The Poinsettia stamp is by Penny Black, and I've also used Hero Arts Dots (rapidly becoming one of my most used stamps!!) and a sentiment from Elusive Images. The Poinsettias are stamped and coloured with Distress inks with a blob of glossy accents in the middle.

I found time for another Christmas card which I've made using the colours from The playdate cafe challenge inspired by this picture. I know the pic is fresh and summer looking but - I must make Christmas cards!!

So I made this -

I love this Angel by Elusive Images which I have paper pieced using several images stamped and embossed onto glossy card coloured with alcohol inks. I've used this technique with this stamp before and really liked the way it turned so knew exactly how I wanted to do it this time.  I used distress inks on the background (its not quite as yellow looking in real life) and spritzed with Moonglow glitz Spritz, I then stamped with Hero Arts Dots stamp (notice a theme going on??) and the snowflake which is from Elusive images. A little gem in the centre of the snowflakes finished off nicely.

I embossed the angel in Moonglow two tone embossing powder - I know this pic is blurry but I wanted to give you an idea of the loveliness of this powder which shimmers beautifully with gold in the light, I love it.

In addition to TPDC I'm also entering this at

Creative Inspirations  -  Christmas in August theme,

Artful Inkables  - Bling it on

Stampin for the Weekend - Anything Goes

I also just want to say a huge thank you for all the WOYWW comments this week and apologise, hanging my head in shame, for my poor effort in visiting - I just don't know where the week has gone but will try and get to some more before next week!  Hope you've all had great weekends......Esther xx