Well, day 3 of my challenge has arrived and there are no French Hens in sight. Instead my offering today is a magenta coloured card, stamped with a Magenta image and trimmed with Magenta flower peel offs - so at least it has 3 of something. I began this one by painting a piece of silver metal shim with Burgundy, Crimson and Pearlescent Magenta Lumiere paints making sure I blended the edges really well and when it was dry, I stamped the image (41.007.N) with Jet Black StazOn ink. You don't have to use shim for this card - a piece of smooth white card stock would work equally as well - I just happened to have shim handy on my desk! I created the tree outline with gold embroidery floss which is tucked around the back of the shim and taped in place. The purple background on this card is silk paper. It's called paper, but it's more like fabric. Silk paper is really tough, almost impossible to tear, and yet it looks quite delicate when you hold it up to the light. This one is ......

It's the second day of my Twelve Days of Christmas period and sadly, I have no Turtle Doves to offer. But instead, I have this card which I've called Joy, Joy, Joy . Once again it features Magenta's My Christmas Tree / Mon Arbre and it is again using turqouise and copper. But this time, I've also added white and silver. The image is stamped onto silver metal shim. You could use a silver pie plate or a Milo tin seal for this technique and it would look equally as good. After tracing the stamped image with a metal stylus, I painted the shim with 2 very light coats of Pearlescent Turquoise Lumiere paint, leaving the silver of the tree to show through. That really helps to draw your eye to the main image. The hanging stars are cut from copper-coloured shim which I've stamped with a metal alphabet set and they're attached with copper embroidery floss to the silver lurex ribbon running up the side of the card. I attached Christmas wrapping paper to the card front and ......

Back in an April post, I chatted about how I'd been playing with Core'dinations cardstock and I wrote about some of the distressing techniques I had tried on it. This is the background from that post but, at the time, I couldn't share the card I made with it as I'd submitted it for a magazine challenge. But at last I can share the finished card. To get this look, I scrunched it, sanded the creases and then inked some of them to add a little more interest. The two moulded pieces are cast from Krafty Lady moulds (AM250 Ornate Vase and AM085 Crest) and the stamps are from Krafty Lady and Stamps in Motion. You can find more detailed instructions on how to make the card in the June issue of Vamp Stamp News in the challege combining stamping with Art Moulds....