M - Mrs Claus

To everyone who sent me good wishes for my birthday I'd like to send a big THANKS. I had a lovely day, mostly pottering away in my craft room, and DH spoilt me totally by making me a lovely birthday dinner and even washed up afterwards. A perfect day : )

I finished a couple of cards yesterday but haven't photographed them yet so more of them later. In the meantime, here is the M card, easel shaped, in the Alphabet series - M for Mrs Claus.

Apologies for the quality of the images but the light is really bad at the moment and despite wandering all over the house looking for the perfect light I can't improve on this. The sexy lady is a Kenny K digi stamp - one of quite a selection, some rather more risque than others!

Coloured, as usual, with Promarkers and I still haven't developed the habit of keeping a record of which colours I've used, but includes:

soft peach, blush, ivory (skin), black, ice grey 5 & 1,  indigo blue, powder blue (hair, sack, belt, stockings & boots), burgundy, cardinal red (dress and hat), pastel yellow, marsh green, poppy (bells, holly and belt buckle) and not forgetting the trusty blender.

For the dress I tried out a technique called 'tip-to-tip' using the burgundy with the black - you put the tip of the burgundy to the tip of the black, it darkens the burgundy, not too much but enough, to use to define the shadows.

The two sentiments are also digi stamps from different sources, the round 'Baby . . . It's Cold Outside' is from Sentiments 4 You and the 'Be Naughty' is a Maloorney digi available at Digital Stamping by Louby Lou.  I blinged them up with silver and red glitter.

The red backing paper is one of my Christmas favourites, a freebie from Bearly Mine Designs, and the striped one is from Papermania's Mono Paper Pack by Tina Higgins.

The black & silver trim and the tartan ribbon are from my local knitting/craft shop; the bow is made from black metallic mesh ribbon from Ribbonbox. This is quite different from normal ribbon - you shape it first by pulling tight before shaping into a bow and then pull out again to form the fullness of the bow. (I'm not sure I've described this well, I think it is one of these things you have to see to get the idea - but the effect is good!)

The flower is actually a white poppy is from Wild Orchid Crafts - I just embossed it with silver to fit with my design. As usual, I decorated the inside with the papers before calling it finished.

I'll be back later, once I've photographed the other two cards, but in the meantime I hope you all have a lovely day and for those of you suffering the white stuff do keep warm.

Bye for now,

Elizabeth