Another Landscape Christmas card

Back to my favourite stamp, SU Lovely as a Tree! 

I stamped the trees and did some shmooshing with Distress Oxides for the background, masking off a circle for the moon.  Then I stamped the sleigh (Inkylicious).
A slight problem then was to work out where to put the sentiment!  So I incorporated it into the black mat :-)
I made three altogether, made easy by the stamp positioner, after all if you can stamp one, you can stamp three!!

Lovely as a Tree - gilding flakes

I had what I thought was a brilliant idea ...... using the stamperatus, I stamped the main image on white and ivory card, in black and brown respectively.  Leaving the stamp in position, I 'inked' up the stamp with Flitterglu and applied gilding flakes to the branches.  It should have been spectacular - but - it wasn't!!  Out of 16 images stamped, I got 2 decent cards.  The idea needs re-thinking..... LOL.
However, I am very pleased with the two cards I did make, only one shown here as the other proved too difficult to photograph with the gilding showing up.

Front and side view shown :-)  I haven't made an easel card for ages, but when I noticed that the Back to Basics current challenge is asking for one, this was the perfect thing to do with the topper.
The sentiment is from Visible Image, the trees from SU and the sleigh from Lavina stamps.

Retreat Layouts 2

Two more layouts done at the retreat.

Here be Dragons? - G had made some giant eggs, using plaster and balloons, they looked like dragon eggs and one had cracked, giving it the appearance of something having hatched :-)  I used a Kaisercraft background paper, added splatty stamping and some texture paste "eggshell" through stencils.  The title is die-cut, twice, to give a shadow effect.
Look Up is a photo from a few years back, we had taken our visitor to London for the day and went to the London Aquarium.  Next door was a Star Wars exhibition and the stormtroopers were posed above us as we queued, clearly ready to take over the world :-)

Lovely as a Tree Christmas cards

Lovely as a Tree is one of my favourite SU stamp sets.  Although when it came out, I did read it at first glance as "lonely" as a tree ..... :-)  Though not a specifically seasonal stamp, it does lend itself very well to Christmas cards.

A nice simple card, embossed in silver and gold, on aqua and red mats respectively.  I assembled four each of these at the retreat, but ran out of plain white card blanks and had to use deckled edge ones for the aqua/silver cards.  I think I like them better..... LOL.

Retreat Layouts 1

I got seven layouts completed and a few more partially done at the ADTML retreat.  I hadn't actually scrapped since the previous retreat last April, but it was like meeting up with an old friend, I just took up where we left off!
Here are two:

The photos have come out a little dark!  Silver Birch has a beautiful background paper which didn't really need much adding to it.  I used this sketch from Pinterest, the banners and long strip are punched, the doily is die-cut, as is the title.  It is also straight in real life, not as wonky as it looks, I swear!
The Mad Hatters also lets the background paper do most of the work.  I punched out two different Martha Stewart snowflakes, several times, to make a flurry.  The journalling and date tags at the side of the photo were supposed to be done with a label punch, halved - until I discovered I hadn't packed it!  But in my die folder I had the nestabilities labels four set and it was perfect.  The title is die-cut.

Steampunk candle stand

I was browsing in a charity shop, when something caught my eye - a rather naff candle stand with some plastic 'crystals' suspended from the top plate.

I thought ... I could steampunk that to within an inch of its life!  It was in the half price bric-a-brac sale at £2.50, a bargain LOL.  It did come with a wax pillar candle, held by a spike in the centre of the top plate.  But I knew I wanted to put an LED candle on the top, so that spike had to go.
First I found some MDF cogs and gears, two assorted sizes packs I had bought at a show a while back.  There were two large ones for a base and top plate and some smaller ones for decoration and also to sit over the spike.
I sprayed with a metal primer and then with a matt black.  The base and top plates, plus two smaller cogs were painted with a black acrylic and matt varnished.  The wings were made by die-cutting the openwork wing, then drawing around the solid shape left in the die-cut waste and hand cutting the solid backgrounds - four of each as I wanted them to be dimensional two-sided wings.  The front and back were then joined by a strip of the same heavy black card, with cuts made to each side of the strip so it would bend to the shape of the wing (thanks Sy!).
The decorative trim around the base and the clock face on the top plate were die-cut in the same bronze card as the openwork wings.
I found some metal cogs in gunmetal and copper, fixed two small copper cogs to the 'twirly' bits to frame the mask.  For the small MDF cogs, I used large gunmetal and small copper cogs on top. Then it was time for assembly!  It all came together quite well, though I had a bit of trouble hanging the ornaments from the edge, until I worked out I could turn it upside down rather than trying to fiddle with it from underneath ... duh.  The ornaments are souvenir key-rings from our travels.
The last thing to go on were the masks, front and back - they are tiny fridge magnets from Venice, so cling to the stand without the need to stick them down.
The finished candle stand:

Here it is in its final position :-)

The only thing I had to buy was the spray primer, which will get used for other projects, everything else was dug out from stash.  I absolutely love it :-)

Distress Oxides over white embossing

My PC hasn't flaked out for a while now ..... fingers crossed!
The weekend before last, I went to the ATDML retreat, had a fab time as always and got a reasonable amount done.
I made these cards:

The image is a Woodware stamp, heat embossed in white and Distress Oxides shmooshed over the top.  They look very delicate :-)