Artists' Trading Card (ATC) - November

Here is the penultimate card in my monthly ATC project.  It is again a little more literal, with a simple stencilled background to suggest the breezes and tumbling leaves.  The gemstones I have chosen also reflect the more muted colours of autumn, with oranges and browns.  They are red agate, golden rutile quartz, Tiger's eye, grey moonstone, black rutile quartz (x3) and smoky quartz.  The gemstone of the month is topaz or citrine and I have gone for citrine.

I stamped the leaves, painted them with gouache then cut them out, stuck them on and applied glossy accents to give them a shine (you can just about see it shining on the leaf on the left).

 The back reflects the front, with stencilled leaves this time.  One more left to do and the project is finished.

I am entering this in the Country View Crafts Challenge - 'Anything but a card' - wish me luck!

Creativity

I have been busy creating this week.  First there is a birthday card for our nephew.  I do like the vintage look the brown ink and Kraft card gives. I made the stripy envelope just for something different.

 This was made for a colleague at work who keeps forgetting to drink her water.  It actually worked yesterday too as she finished the bottle.  I put some Glossy Accents on the water droplets to make them shine.

 I have recently got a couple of new stamps about being creative.  At work, I often get bogged down in the constant filing, updating spreadsheets, recording information, photocopying, etc. that are part of an admin job.  I made these to remind me to be a bit more positive and remember that there is more to life than work, although I do realise I am lucky to be able to work part time and lucky to have a job.  I really enjoyed making this one, using stencils and stamps.

 More reminders to be positive... I really like the girl's 'sassy' attitude.

This one was inspired by hearing the song 'Life's what you make it' by Talk Talk which is on Youtube here.  It's really bright and colourful and I used lots of ink splat stamps to make the background.  Now I just need to practise what I preach!

Cakes and cards

 In amongst preparing for the craft fair, birthdays of friends and colleagues have come and gone.  My colleague, Leanne, had a big birthday last year and I made her the cake above with birthday bunting.

 This year, it was the same 'Russion Roulette Revels cake', minus the bunting.  I have written about this cake before and it is a great recipe, keeps moist and has the most delicious chocolate fudge icing, but works equally well with chocolate buttercream.  The Revels are a chocolate coated sweet, with various fillings - honeycomb, toffee, orange, chocolate, raisins and coffee.  The last two are my least favourite and I usually get more than my fair share of them!  Leanne says she always looks forward to this cake.

 I have also been making cards, again with bunting (a bit of a theme is developing here, but it is very celebratory, isn't it?).  This was for a birthday in September.

 This was Leanne's card this year.  I used glossy accents on the bunting to make it shine and used a kit to create the card.

 This is for a colleague's 50th birthday this week and involved stamping, heat embossing, glitter and glitter paper.  It was very enjoyable to make too.

 I added a few stamps and die cut numbers to the inside too.

The great thing about using stamps is that the envelope can be decorated too.  I have a feeling that I may be making more cards in the future... in fact, my mum is 80 in less than a month, so that is a perfect reason to make another card.