Inspired Again!

Welcome to Magpieheaven, where I've actually made a start on Christmas cards at last! Alison Bomber has been creating such beauty over at Paper Artsy that I just had to do another project as a result of her inspiration. I would love to have made a little house and I might try this as a kind of Christmas decoration, but all I had time for before Sunday noon is a card, so I decided to adapt Alison's use of backgrounds and her Crackle Glaze technique again for my first Christmas Card of the Season. Also I wanted to meet the challenge of Fashionable Stamping for the first time. The challenge this time is Laura's and it's to stamp with anything other than ink, so I decided to see how I got on with stamping using Fresco Finish paint and then embossing with clear enamel: something I've wanted to try for a long time. Do take a look at Alison's wonderful PA projects and the inspiration offered over at The Fashionable Stamping Challenge. I should like to enter this card for the Paper Artsy Draw and The Fashionable Stamping Challenge #60.

If you are a follower, you will know how much I love detail! Probably by the time I've reached the week before Christmas I'll be admitting defeat and going for the Clean and Simple approach, but for this first card I really wanted to play with ideas and techniques. I always connect fairy stories with Christmas - they are a tradition just like ghost stories! And the story I always loved and then came to share with my own children is that of 'The Snow Queen'. The card I created reminded me of Hans Christian Andersen's tale. Maybe it all grew out of trying out Alison's technique of stencilling backgrounds, spritzing them and adding distress inks and stamping and this reminded me of frost fronds, which in turn starting me thinking about little Girda and Kay who loved to watch the frost patterns on their window pane in the story. I created a background on a tag and a rectangle of card using stencils and Fresco Finish paints in Lake Wanaka, Mermaid, Cinnamon, Honeydew and - of course - Snowflake. I made my own snowflake stencil, which I dabbed on in Snowflake FF and then embossed with clear embossing powder. I used Squeezed lemonade, Broken China and Walnut Stain distress inks too. On the card itself I made my base Claudine Helmuth's Gesso with Frantage scattered
over it in shades of Shabby Blue and Aged Rose. Now for my central stamped image! As always, if you would like to see more detail just click on the images themselves.

I was really nervous about this, my heart was in my mouth, as I had only ever stamped with paint for backgrounds and the script had always been rather blurry! For this image I used a 'Lost Coast' stamp of a kind of butterfly woman. I think the Snow Queen was a bit of shape changer, so I reckon this could be a form she might take, a kind of frost fairy! I stamped South Pacific  Fresco onto a background of blended Lake Wanaka and Mermaid and then very quickly covered with Stampendous clear embossing powder! To my amazement, I was really pleased with the lovely, glossy result. I cleaned the stamp quickly too, so the paint didn't stain it. I then accented the wings with some Frantage and had a tiny leaf punched from a Woodware punch fluttering in front. I stuck the image on with tiny sponge pads to give a 3D impression.

I loved the Crackled arches that Alison used on both her projects. On this one I decided to create the impression of a mirror peeping out from behind my tag, the mirror that is so important in the Snow Queen story. For this I used the Tim Holtz frame/bookplate from his tag die. I painted it with Little Black Dress, then Crackle glaze and a top coat of Lake Wanaka. I've edged it with Treasure Gold and added a silvery pearl. You might be able to see how I stuck a strip of transparent ribbon along the top and bottom of the card so that the Gesso and Frantage 'snow' would show through the frosty ribbon. I really played around with Stickles and Frantage everywhere too!

The Christmas sentiment is from a Lynne Perrella Christmas plate from Paper Artsy LP 016. I used seam-binding dyed in the colours of distress inks used on the card and used a Tim Holtz 'On the Edge' die, frantaged and painted to form a border of snow crystals. I should like to enter this card for the Paper Artsy Challenge and Fashionable Stamping Challenges. Thank you for stopping by to look at what I have been doing today and thank you to Alison for her inspiration at Paper Artsy this week and to Laura and her colleagues at Fashionable Stamping Challenges for challenging me to use 'anything but ink' on my first Christmas Card of 2013.