Wintery card

I used the Arctic bears stamp set for this card, it's a new set and is available from Stampin'up.
Stamping this card took a little working out. I stamped the large bear first, then masked her off and stamped the small bear, overlapping the masked off bear. 

Then I masked off the small bear and stamped the icy edge three times along the side of the card. With a pen I drew in the horizon.

I added a touch of cool grey ink to the bears and coloured the sea with Copic markers.

I heat embossed some silver snowflakes along the top edge and down the opposite side to the ice flow.

I mounted the scene on marina mist card  and then on to a piece of night of navy card stock , which I had heat embossed more snowflakes in silver.  The snowflakes are from the serene snowflakes set.

Climbing Roses

You won't find many cards on my blog using yellow or orange. They are not colours I like. But for some strange reason I decided to use yellows to colour the roses from the  Climbing Rose set. Perhaps I got fed up using pinks and purples, I really don't know. The image was coloured many months ago and I didn't really like it, so it was cast aside.  I found it when I was sorting through  my coloured images and deciding which ones to keep, which ones to throw out or ones that could donate to a colleague who uses all my rejects and scraps for craft projects with the children she works with. This image nearly got put in the donation pile, until I realized,  I had a new sentiment stamp set that might work well with the roses.

 I embossed a piece of Basic grey card using the script embossing folder from S.U. after cutting an oval the aperture.

 Then adhered the embossed card front over the roses. somehow the card looked amateurish and unfinished.  I really didn't like it at all. So I die cut a yellow oval  frame to give a neater finish to the aperture. I think adding the frame improved the overall look giving it a more professional finish.

Sadly the yellow ribbon is not an exact match to the yellow in the roses, but it was the closest yellow ribbon I could find.

 

High Tide

I have been putting off buying this set called "High Tide" because it's a polymer set and I very rarely get good results with this type of stamp set. But I have seen so many lovely cards made with this set that I relented when it went on the retired list. The fact it was discounted was a bonus too. 

These two cards are my first attempts with this set and I am really pleased with the way they have  turned out, especially for my first attempts. Of course this could be a fluke and I may never get such good results ever again. Now You may think I am jesting but I kid you not I have several stamp sets where I have managed to get great results first time but never again.

To create the clouds, I cut cloud shapes in different shapes and sizes around the sides of a sheet of acetate to create a mask.  When I want to create clouds I select a section of the acetate sheet and lay it across  my card stock. Using a blending brush and a tiny amount of ink, I apply the ink to the mask and then lightly brush the ink over the edge of the mask to create the blue of the  sky, leaving the masked off area white and cloud shaped.