One of my favourites

For challenge 77 on Ann's creative nook, Ann asked who is one of our favourites. Ann said: '
So, for this week's challenge I want to you chose one of your favorite stampers and CASE one, or two, of their cards ... just remember that you MUST change at least 2 things on your card.'

A stamper who I greatly admire is Sheila Oliver - she is known as Manic stamper - I've had the pleasure of meeting the lovely Sheila at a forum meet up about five years ago and I have great memories of her demonstrating all sorts of stamping techniques. She is a great inspiration to so many, including me.

I found this post on her blog (I had great pleasure in looking through lots of her wonderful creations this evening.

Sheila describes how she put together a card using metal magic EP by Debbi Moore. I used some of this recently and thought it would be good to use some for triple embossing. Sheila said that she felt it a bit wasteful to use three layers of metal magic, so she used two layers of clear UTEE and then topped it with a layer of metal magic, so I did the same.

Ann said that we should change at least two things when CASE-ing the card - I've really only used the triple embossing and stamping - the rest of the card is different, but it was very much inspired by Sheila's original card.

I stamped into the molten metal magic with a Dawn Bibby flower stamp and it so happened that I've had a bag of matching vellum flowers and butterflies for ages wondering what to do with them. And I added some bling silver gems to the centres of the flowers and three on each of the bodies of the butterflies.

So I used them all to make a card for Sketchy Colors 10:
I'm also linking the card for:

Doodle palace: 'lots of layers' - the triple embossing, as well as the layers of silver mirror card and pearlised pink
Another for Pollycraft 33: 'things with wings'
Another for La-la land 25: 'no designer paper'
Theme Thursday: 'flowers'
Another for Alphabet: 'P is for pink'
Clearly inspired 7: 'glam it up' - the silver mirror card and the gemstones
Fussy & fancy 4: 'dazzle us'
Humble pie: 'dies' - the triple embossed item started life as a chipboard die cut
Allsorts 39: 'a recipe with a difference - 3, 2, 1 - you decide' - I've used 3 vellum flowers, 2 vellum butterflies and 1 triple embossed flower
Our creative corner: 'something old that's new' - the vellum flowers and butterflies that have been stashed away for a long, long time
Sweet stampin' 12: 'floral frenzy'
Hand full of stamps: 'open the fun'

As is often the case, it was difficult to get a photo because of the flash bouncing off the silver, but you get the general idea it's better irl.

Guardian angel

This picture is the inspiration on Art Creations this week:


I've used another of the Nasa photos - this time part of the earth at night - and superimposed the picture of the angel on to it - a guardian angel watches over the night sky.

I'm linking this as well as another picture for this week's Soartful 'out of this world'.

Out of this world

When I saw the topic for this week on Soartful, I started looking for appropriate pictures for 'out of this world'.

Wow! take a look at this site and you won't be disappointed - absolutely stunning photography - certainly 'out of this world'!

I imported the 'cat's eye nebula from hubble' into Picture It and then superimposed a picture of a cat over this, using a transparent fade to send this behind the original picture.


I'm also linking this for Sunday postcard, where this week the theme is 'cats' - it's just the right postcard size when printed out.

Romance is alive and well

A while ago there was a ring at the doorbell - I thought it was the nurse to dress John's foot - and there was a delivery lady with a bouquet of roses for Valentine's day:

I could be cynical and say 'what an expense!', but instead I'm thankful that I have a husband who still arranges surprises, although I suppose it's not too much of a surprise because this is the 20th Valentine bouquet I've had. Not that such gestures are confined to Valentine's day.