Hardware

The challenge this week at Less is More is "hardware"  http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/week-94-theme.html with the idea that we use something metal on our cards.

I've had a pretty stressful week - work is busy, family life is still tough and the stress made my hubby scrape all down one side of our brand new car :-(   So today I definitely needed a little stress relief and for me, that means some serious colouring!   So I took out one of my new kraftin kimmie stamps and set to work on my entry:

I coloured the image with my copics on blending paper and then cut it out to mount it directly onto the base card.  I trimmed another piece of white card with candy cane washi tape and die cut a circle from the middle to reveal the Santa coming down the chimney image.  For my hardware I added a Father Christmas brad and stamped the "no peeking!" sentiment above in red to match the washi tape.

Then I had a flash of inspiration for an alternative take on hardware - I always like to have plenty of male cards in stock so this is my second take on hardware:

For this one I stamped some hardware tools (woodware stamps) onto blending card and coloured with copics.  To add to the hardware theme, I stamped the "metal" parts of the tools using stazon onto plumbers aluminium tape (it's dead cool stuff and only a £1 a roll and its sticky backed!)  I finished with some strips of blue card with a birthday message embossed in white and a few stars punched from the aluminium tape.

So, that's my stress free couple of hours taken care of - back to the grind and the chores.