A couple of quickie cards!

Its that time of year - as Looby said yesterday - so busy for a lot of us! So here are a couple of quick cards I made using some stuff from my kit, plus some gorgeous Winter Swirl stamps available at the Crop Til You Drop Webshop. The stamps are so versatile - I have a few different sets of swirly type stamps, but as soon as I saw these stamps, I thought - gotta have em! The swirls are really elegant, and one has some gorgeous little snowflakes on. The pic of my Christmas card doesnt really do the stamps justice at all - you get a nice clear and crisp image - I decided to do something a little different using a resist technique on this first card. You can achieve similar results by randomly stamping onto a piece of card and embossing with clear powder (in fact you could use any colour, just bear in mind that whatever colour you use will be visible after you have inked over it!). Then ink over with your chosen final colour. This technique works particularly well with gloss card. I added the chipboard frame after painting it with red acrylic paint, then giving a quick coat of clear glue like these here, to give a shiny finish. Added a little red wire heart and some ribbon, matted and layered onto a red card and hey presto! Oh not forgetting the snowflake brads, snowflake border overlay and that gorgeous little glittery red heart - I hope our Guv will step in here to pop in where I can find that though because I have hunted high and low and cant find it! Check out our Guv's blog for some more fab ideas for the winter swirls too!

Next is this little card for my brother's birthday next week! For this I used the busy scrappers boys to men paper pack - and all the letter tiles and little star embellies that come with it. The only thing I used that wasnt in the pack was the little brad buddie present that you see to the right of the card, but I thought it went well with the colours of the card (after I inked it up with blue ink!) and added the little red bow!

So thats all folks - if you invest in anything over the Christmas crafty season though (apart from all the fab paper and other crafty bits on offer at the webshop!!) I would definitely get my hands on some of the winter swirls stamps (PS why not take advantage of this fab offer and subscribe to the stamps only kit?? There's a freebie in it for ya, check it out!!) - they're not just for Christmas you know - they're for life! Lol have fun creating!

Edited by the Guv to say: more than happy to jump in and solve the mystery of the missing red glittery heart! LOL. They are actually in this mixed pack of buttons & flatbacks. HTH