Trendy Metals

I have a couple of cards to share today.

Firstly, I managed to have a go at the WPlus9 birthday challenge which is all about trend watching. http://www.stampawaywithme.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/birthday-celebration-week-3-trend-watch.html

I think I may have thrown one too many trends onto one card lol!  I went with metallics, grunge, misting, diagonals and sequins!  I stamped and embossed the fish from Fish More in gold and die cut them with the matching dies and adhered them to a diagonal blue strip with sentiments embossed on the diagonal too.  I added some grungy splatters using a distress stain and them misted over that with some metallic blue spritz before running the dried piece through an embossing folder and adding some dotty gold washi tape and 3 sequin "bubbles"

My second card is my take on this week's LIM theme of "metal" and is my make for my Store's blog today.

I started with the super-cute owl from Papersmooches Hooties set - you get 3 in different sizes and there are dies to match so there's always an owl to fit your branch!   I die cut him from kraft, coloured him with polychromos pencils and blended with paper stumps and then redrew the lines in a shiny black pen for a comic book look.

For my branch I die cut a branch using a Clearly Besotted die as sadly PS didn't do dies to match the branches only the owl from some thin copper sheet and embossed it with a woodgrain folder.  The leaves are die cut from green metal sheet using leaves from WPlus9's Fresh Cut Florals (currently oos but more are en-route) and then the detail hand embossed with a ball tool.

I created a background for the branch with a die cut circle of striped blue vellum and added my traditional dotted line finish around it before adhering the metal with glossy accents.

Now, if there is one thing I think every crafter needs it's sentiment stamps and that's why I couldn't wait to get my hands on this new Happy Birthday set from Papersmooches - it's jam packed full of lots of lovely, interesting and unusual sentiments perfect for birthday cards for young and old, male and female.  I finished my card with one from the set which had the right shape and size to add balance to my CAS design.