Life is a bowl of Cherries

 I have to say this this Cherry stamp from the Giggle Greeting stamp set from S U has taken up a lot of  my time over the last two days.
I have a cherry tree in my garden which produces the the most luscious black cherries every year. 
So my instinct was to colour these cherries the same colour or as close as possible to my cherries.
Ummm big mistake as I lost the the outline of the cherries in the bowl leaving  me with what looked a bowl of jam.
I tried different colouring mediums over and over again before I got one I was happy with...... then I smudged the inks on two of them and had to start again. I must have done a dozen of these before I got this one. I can't say I will be in a rush to use this stamp again.

Here is how I achieved this  look

I outlined the cherries with the fine end of the bravo burgundy marker before colouring with  a mix of cherry cobbler and real red. 

Once they were all coloured,  I then outlined them again in bravo burgundy.

With the sharp end of a pin I added just a dot of white paint for the highlight ( my  white gel pen died). 

I can't say I will be in a hurry to  colour this stamp again. lol

The frame  was an experiment with the new Gingham wheel stamp. It goes perfectly with food themed stamps.

 For my first attempts I thought I would roll the stamp directly onto the card using thin scrap paper  masking  off parts of the corners  so that I would have mitred corners.

 This took a little practise but  it looked a little odd. So I opted to stamp straight lines cut them out and make the frame from the stamped strips matching up the corners. I have to say after all the time and effort that went into this card I am actually quite pleased with the way it turned out and that it actually turn out at all.....  It could easily  have  been turned out in the bin.

Now I just need the right reason and person to send this card too.

Giggle Greetings Card.

The cat from Giggle Greetings stamp set.  I have to I am a little disappointed with the final result,
 I guess  my heart wasn't really in this project after spending many hours colouring cherries and  throwing them away, but that's another story.
Here I've  used  Copic markers to colour the cat. Because I like the way they blend.

Cheesy Birthday Card

Here's a quickie I knocked up this afternoon while trying to create  some sort of order in my craft room.
I was getting on well until the UPS man knocked on the door with my order.
Then I was distracted by the goodies in the box.
No hope of getting back to tidying up now.
This Giggles Greetings  set has been on my wish list since I first saw the new catalogue.
I thought , I'd just test out my colouring skills on this images and before I knew it. I had made this card.
Can't wait to do the cat one, but must get back to putting things away and clearing some space before  anything else.
Colours used...Tempting Turquoise, Whisper White card stock and Bashful blue DSP, Basic Grey ink pad,  a few Copic Markers and one Amber coloured crystal.