PJ's in the daytime

I normally play along with the PJ Party late at night as it starts but my hubby is working away this weekend and had to be up at 5am today so we had an early night last night.  So - as I'm alone, I can still be in my PJ's at noon ;-)

There were 4 play ahead challenges plus the bedtime story sketch this month - I've managed 3 of them and will back to play the sketch later  http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/welcome-to-november-pajama-party.html

Challenge 2 was to make a Christmas card and I couldn't resist playing with my new Alpine Christmas set.

This set is soooo much fun to play with!  I stamped the village twice (masking off the church on the second with a scrap of tape) using momento luxe ink.  I have to say I have been searching for a decent white ink for a long time and Wedding Dress from this range is STUNNING!  I used it for the hill in the background too and used a cotton bud to dot some snow around to ground the village.  The trees were stamped in olive grove and the sentiment in black.  Simples.

Challenge 3 is a doozy - make a Tag - but Claire is judging this round so you have to make a tag she will like - yikes!  I went old school with Festive Foliage.

I started with a kraft tag and stamped the mini pinstripe background across it in pearlescent ivy.  I added my holly sprig in bamboo leaves over the stripes and masked it off so I could stamp the pine leaves behind in the same ivy colour as the background.  Pinecones (adirondack ginger) and berries (SU real red) finished off the stamping.  To add some texture, rather than stamping the mistletoe directly to the card, I used some of my favourite material - cloud clay - and stamped it in the ivy colour (ink stops the stamp sticking to the clay) before letting it dry overnight.  Once dry I cut it out with scissors and painted on a wash of ink and shimmer.  I used liquid pearls and glossy accents to give dimension to the berries and a bow before sticking it to the tag.  I cut a larger tag from DP and tied the two together with some green twine.  I finished with a sentiment from the opera tags Christmas set stamped over the holly.   Hope you like it Claire ;-)

Challenge 4 was actually the one I tackled first - I did it as soon as I got my alpine set as the darling little chalet was screaming decoration to me!

I stamped it 4 times on copic card so the corners touched at the base and then coloured it in and very carefully cut out all the teen-tiny little windows!

I cut it out and and used the up and under method around the eaves - so for two facing each other I cut a slit up and for the other two I cut a slit down from the top of the roof - so once folded you can get it to hold together to make a little decoration without the need for any glue.  Pretty, but really, it doesn't come into it's own until the lights go out.....

Sorry for the dodgy photo - it's very hard to photograph - but you can now see the point of cutting out all the tiny windows - this makes THE most perfect tea light holder.  [BATTERY TEA LIGHTS ONLY PLEASE - don't burn the house down with flames and paper!]  I wish I could show you it properly but hopefully you get the idea - I plan on using them to decorate my Christmas table :-D

See you all later with my bedtime story sketch.

Fanatics Challenge No 2

So just to keep you all your toes - our challenge this fortnight at Waltzingmouse Fanatics is NOT a sketch but a colour challenge - based on the lovely image above ;-)

Now I made a card as soon as I set this challenge - and it worked out brilliantly - but then when I looked ahead of what dastardly really fun and interesting challenges we had coming up, I realised that it would be much more appropriate for another challenge so I had to rush and make another......

I decided to try to use all the colours and whilst the chillies themselves didn't speak to me (I'm a wimp with hot food!) I did stick to a foodie theme and pulled out the little bargain set Big Berries - Strawberry which I've only used a couple of times to date.  I simply inked two berries with two different shades of red ink (HA pale tomato shadow and SU real red) and the stems with two different shades of green (SU certainly celery and gumball green which I know is a bit off for the shade on the photo but we're not that strict at Waltzingmouse Fanatics so I think I'll get away with it lol!)

For the background I used the other two shades - loosely interpreted by me as a kraft base which I stamped with the super cute Pinstripe Mini Backgrounder using Brilliance Pearlescent Chocolate ink which is one of my all time favourite inks - I use it a lot as an alternative to black on masculine cards as the shimmer is subtle and not too girly ;-)  Then it was simple a case of finding an interesting arrangement of the fruits - hard with 2 - 3 would have been more eye pleasing but I didn't have room so I used my sentiment to form an interesting visual triangle and distract the eye from the oddly even fruit.....

Possibly not my best work but I found the colours rather, well, challenging actually - just who sets these challenges?  Oh yeah, that would be me lol ;-)    I hope you all find it much more inspirational than I did - we had such great cards in the gallery for our first challenge so I can't wait to see how creative you can all be.

We're just playing for fun this fortnight but we'd love to see if we can beat the 20 entrants we had last time so I do hope you'll join in :-)    Waltzingmouse Fanatics Challenge No 2