Today Only Sale and Stamp-a-day Giveaways!

TODAY ONLY!! 25% off ALL the rubber or digital images I have done for Whimsy Stamps!  Find my rubber collection HERE and my digital collection HERE.  ALSO, as part of the ongoing 2 year anniversary sale-abrations at Whimsy Stamps, Denise is giving away one rubber stamp and one digi stamp from now til Friday!   Here's what she has to say on the Whimsy Blog:

You can enter each day, but please only enter one time for each drawing. We will offer up a chance at a rubber stamp here on the blog and a chance to win a digi stamp over on our Facebook page each day from now through end of day on Friday this week! 

And you can visit the Whimsy shop to find special savings on select stamps and collections each day this week!

So here's what you gotta do to enter:  Sign up on the Whimsy Blog to win this rubber stamp, "Starry Night"

And leave a comment on the Whimsy Facebook page to win Little Christmas Angel. 

All the Whimsy artists will have their own special day of sales this week, so every day from now til Friday you can save $ at Whimsy!

Just lettin' y'all know about it!!

Name the stamp contest!

Hi Peeps!  Whimsy is holding a contest to name one of my soon-to-be-released rubber stamp images.  The winner will get the stamp!  It is just a small part of the goings-on all month long at Whimsy.  They are having a 2 yr anniversary celebration with loads of sales and giveaways!  See the button on my right side bar for details and click on it to go to the store.
This stamp will be released in December.  If you can think of a cute name for it, e-mail Denise at   whimsystamps@gmail.com .   Denise is the one giving the stamp away, so you must contact her.  Please do not enter the contest here in the comment section or it won't count!!
You may enter as many name choices as you'd like.
You have until next Wednesday the 24th to send in your entry.
Here is a copy of the image:

Have fun peeps!!

Winner for my blog hop post!!

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

5

Timestamp: 2010-11-18 14:52:15 UTC

Congratulations! number 5 is

 

5. GenCur 

Please contact me with your snail mail info so Denise can send out your prize!!!

The Invitation

Imagine!  It has finally happened!! You have received the coveted envelope with the gold embossed letters and your name printed on the front; you will be going to the most exclusive, most elaborate, most desired of places in the whole world.    Finally, you have been granted access.

 You will get to taste the rich delicacies that have been prepared in the royal kitchen.  You will get to rub shoulders with all the other invited guests.  But most importantly, you will finally get the privilege of being with Her.  Butterflies start fluttering inside you and your pulse rushes with excitement at the very thought.   It seems you have been waiting for all eternity for this moment to arrive! And now it finally has! At last you have received the invitation…

One has to wonder, what took her so long to invite you?   Did she not notice the many ways you expressed your love to her?   Did she not receive the expensive gifts you kept sending to her?  Did she not hear the gentlemanly way you spoke of her – and so highly too?  Any listener would have read the love between the lines.  It is downright impossible to hide how lovesick you are.  Perhaps this was the very thing that scared her. 

Maybe she thought you were a crazy man, out of your mind.  But you gave her so many gifts of love!  You let her be herself always.  You never demanded a thing from her.  All you wanted was to be close to her.  And yet you promised her everything.  Promised to share your entire fortunes with her.  And that is saying a lot, since you are the richest man in the world!

You think to yourself, perhaps she listened to some close advisors who misrepresented you, and gave you a bad name.  It is quite possible they distorted all your loving actions and warned her that you had mixed motives.  Or perhaps they told her bold-faced lies, accusing you of being critical and hard to please.  Maybe they convinced her that you had an ugly, angry side and that you could be really mean and vengeful when crossed.   What is a guy to do with advisors like that whispering lies about you in her ears!

But all those love gifts and words of praise you kept lavishing on her finally broke her resolve.  Melted her heart.  Must have, because here you are holding that invitation in your hand.  Now you are standing on the doorstep of her palace!  And now, you are knocking at the door… your heart is pounding… this is the moment you have been waiting for!

 You can hear her footsteps from behind the door… the click, click of the locks as they are released… the sound of the handle as it turns… the creak of the door as it opens.  There she is, standing before you in all her glorious beauty.  Until now, you have never been this close to her.  You gasp.  Her beauty shocks you. You swallow hard.

 If your heart was pounding before, now it is about to jump out of your chest… you can feel it drumming in your ears and you feel your face flush.  And then you hear the sweetest words dripping like honey from the lips of the one you love… “Lord Jesus, please… come in…  Forgive me for making you wait so long.  I see your love for me now…. I didn’t before, but now I do… you are welcome to stay… forever.”

Whimsy Hop! New Rubber! New DP! Metal Dies!

I'm starting off the latest Whimsy Blog Hop today, yay!  Welcome precious peeps! There are a ton of prizes to be won along the way, and lots of time to enter, so I hope you'll hop along with us!  The hop starts today (Wed Nov 10) and goes til noon Wed Nov 17th.
There are lots of new rubber stamps by the Whimsy Artists, so I hope you'll check out the fun we've been having drawing and designing them!

I'm giving away (well, Denise of Whimsy Stamps is!!) my Peace on Earth rubber stamp set!  I have used the angel from the set on my card.  See the entire set here.  If you are entering for the draw, leave a link to your blog by using Inlinkz at the bottom of this post.  If you don't have a blog, just make sure you tell me so in a comment and I'll make sure you are entered.  I'll be using Random.org to pick the winner on the 17th!

Well, I have some news for you! I have been secretly working away along with Denise and Ann of Whimsy on some special projects!  We have come up with some original 6 x 6 designer paper, AND some metal dies!!!  Ann developed a metal die for all her ticket sentiments and I designed (with some help from the Whimsy Studios) a snowflake die I call, "Winter's Jewel 1" !   I'm so excited to see my illustrations being used in these new ways!

My Winter Jewel 1 is on pre-order and will start shipping around Nov 22.  But the ticket die and papers are available now!  I can't wait for you to see!  And tell me what you think!

Ann did the bulk of the work for the paper packs.  Most of the images she used are my rubber stamp illustrations for Whimsy, which I hand painted.  But she used her graphic art design skills to arrange them in various patterns for the papers!  I think she did a fantastic job myself!

There are two packs that will be for sale.  Each pack will have two each of twelve designs for a total of 24 sheets per pack.  Here is a sample of one of the 6 x 6 papers from the Holiday Folly collection: 

And this is the snowflake I designed!  I actually had a lot of graphic help -- I needed it!  The Whimsy Studios artists helped me tweak it to get it perfect.  Without their input and know-how, it would not be symmetrical at all.  I'm afraid I've never had a course on computer graphic design, and when you are drawing a snowflake, you really need the help of a computer if you want it to look right. 

It wasn't ready for me to use on my card today, but I can't wait to get mine and start using it!  I'm rather pleased with how it turned out!  This die will cut and emboss just like the big name brand dies out there.  Cool, huh? heh - heh, yeah, cool (snowflakes -- cool -- get it??) Actual die measures two inches.

          

Now on to the details of my card!

I stamped my Angel from my Peace on Earth set in Versafine Onyx Black ink onto 140 lb. cold press watercolour paper by Canson. I used Distress Inks to water colour.  The background was done using a very loose brush stroke and two brushes; a round size 6 and size 10. 

I used Twinklets Diamond Dust glitter on the snowflakes and on the wings.  I used gold Smooch Spritz all over the card, but it is impossible to see the delicate gold sheen it gave it.  So nice IRL though!

The two white panels were embossed with the Spellbinders Impressability snowflake die.  I then used Vintage Photo Distress ink to distress just about everything!! lol

Snowflakes are from some Martha Steware punches and also some Spellbinders snowflake dies. 

The circle tag is from the new Winter Letter Seals by Raindrop Echo Designs (Ann Vento for Whimsy Stamps).  It cuts perfectly using the circle dies by Spellbinder! She's a smartie, designing a lot of her sentiments with those popular dies in mind! You can find all her Whimsy graphic work in rubber here and digital here. 

Below is another example of her beautiful work.  She does custom rubber stamps for crafters!! There are a ton of beautiful designs and fonts to choose from!  This is what she did for me that I can put on the back of all my cards.  And see how beautifully it fits my Spellbinders frame too! 

Not to mention, the custom stamps are made in grey rubber to save on costs.  They stamp well and yet are very affordable!!  AND she also does custom digital work too -- signatures and watermarks.  You can find the many templates she has available here.  And here's a hint: November 15 thru 21, Whimsy has a 20% off sale on all their rubber and digital Custom stamps! And this week, November 8 thru 14, all their digital stamps are 50% off!! They are having their 2nd birthday bash sale-abration all month long.  Check the blinkie on my right side bar near the top for details.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Kaboodledoodles Challenge Blog: Vintage

The Crazy Challenge: Things with Wings

Stampin' Sisters in Christ Challenge: Display weather (snow, ice, rain, sun)

Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge: Red and Gold

One Stop Craft Challenge Blog: Embossing

Drunken Stampers: Punch Me!

Paper Sundaes: Let it Snow!

Craft Your Passion Challenges: Use double anything (two embossed panels on mine)

Crafty Calendar Challenge Blog: Winter Snowflakes

 Seven of us are offering blog candy prizes, so you won't want to miss out on your chance to win!  And one of the blogs has the GRAND PRIZE of ALL the stamps being released today!  If you get lost in the hop, here is the hop order.  Don't forget to sign up below that with Inlinkz!!

Hop begins here Crissy Armstrong (that's me, that's me!!)

Simonne Clay

Marley van der Heljden

Debbie Eastman

Patricia Garcia

Claudia Rosa

Annika Ryan

Erin Bailey

Ann Vento

Chris Olsen

Beate Johns

Lori Pachkowsky

Denise Lynn

Iris Wiechmann

Deb Routledge

Crytal Irwin

Linda Coughlin

Vanja Stevanovic

Donna Smith

Vicky Parson

Kathy Page

Bev Rochester

Phew, so that was a lot to tell you!  Now if you want to continue on with the hop, go to

  Simonne's blog to see what she has cooked up for you! 

Hubby's B-day card

I wanted to make a birthday card for hubby Mike with my new digital image, "Ride 'em Cowboy" from Whimsy Stamps.  I remembered that Anna Wight had some really sweet western cards in her gallery on Splitcoast Stampers, and so I went through her gallery and found this beauty of a card here.  It isn't exactly a CASE but I did keep her card up on my screen so I could copy the sketch and a bit of her embellishing style.   I love Anna's art and attribute a lot of what I learned about colouring to her.  I really appreciate her talent!

I coloured the image with Copics.  Now, I did something I would not normally do: I wanted to get the look of a buckskin horse, and I was not pleased with any of my choices in my Copic bucket.  So I started with E31 all over the horse body, and added E93 overtop.  The colour was a beautiful buckskin with those two shades.  HOWEVER!! This created a real problem for myself, that I was not anticipating.  What happened was, when I began to shade using E33 and 35, I was unable to get a good blend.  I tried going over everything with E31 to blend out the darker colours, but it actually just began to look like a dull grey!  I decided to quit trying to blend with Copics and instead use coloured pencil.  This was an attempt to rescue the colouring I had done, and it worked, thankfully. 

I won't bother giving you the Copic colours for this one, because I went over most of it, even the saddle, with coloured pencil, which altered the colours entirely.  Sigh... lesson learned! 

As in the Autumn Harvest Ride card I did with the workhorse two posts ago, I looked at various photos of horses so that I could get a realistic rendering of the shadows of the muscles. 

I am entering this card into the following challenges:

Craft Your Passion: Anything Goes

Lexi's Creations: Anything Goes

Cards for Men: Anything Goes

Freshly Brewed: Anything Goes

Copic Creations: Brown and/or Make a Scene

Digi's With Attitude!: Anything Western

For Fun Challenges: Use Metal

Little Red Wagon: Use the colour Red

A Spoon Full of Sugar: Relish to Embellish

Anything Goes Challenge Blog: The Letter B (my card is for a Boy and I used Black and Blue!)

Papertake Weekly Challenge: Penny For The Guy (guy cards)

Paper Sundaes: For the Boys

Splitcoast Stampers Free 4 All: Tail Waggin' Greetings (use an image with a tail)

Anyway, Mikey loved his card and I loved making it for him!  Here is the inside.  I thought of photoshopping out what I had written and then thought nah.  I don't mind sharing what I wrote to my Luvy with you.  I'm not embarrassed over how much I love him!  He is truly a gift from the Lord to me. I love him so much!   We just celebrated 25 years of marriage last month.   It doesn't feel like its been that long.  I'm so blessed!  

The beautiful birthday greeting is actually two stamps, from Oval Snippets.  They are in a beautiful set from Whimsy Stamps and are designed by Raindropecho Designs.  I think they are gorgeous! 

Well I've chatted on long enough! Don't forget that all month long there are fantastic sales and specials and giveaways going on at Whimsy. It's their second anniversary sale-abration! Check out the button at the top of my side bar for details. 

AND

A new rubber release is coming up in just a few days!!  So stay tuned, I will be in the hop on Wed Nov 10th to help launch that release!

God bless you and thank you for your kind visit today!

Whimsy Blog Hop plus New Challenge for November!

Hello Blogging Buddies!  Whimsy Stamps is having their digital release party today, with a blog hop for you to participate in and have chances to win free digi's! 

If you have landed here from Sandra's blog, you are right on track. If you have landed here randomly and want to start at the beginning, go to the Whimsy Inspirations Blog.  They also have a complete list of the order of the hop if you need it. 

I have illustrated four new Christmas themed digi's for you this month.   I hope you like them!

The one on my card is Little Christmas Angel.  She is available to purchase through Whimsy right now. There are many more new images being released today from all the Whimsy illustrators, so you might want to go check them out. 

And, the whole month of November is Whimsy's 2nd Anniversary celebration!  There are fantastic specials and

  giveaways all month long!  The first special starts now and runs all week with 25% off all rubber stamps (excluding custom rubber designs).  The following week there will be 50% discount off all digital images, wow!  That's just a couple of the many fun things going on! Check out all the details by clicking on the little blinkie I have on the sidebar. 

Be sure to hop around to all the blogs on this hop and leave a comment on each one, because there will be two winners chosen randomly from the comments on all the blogs!   They will get a free digi of their choice from Whimsy.  And, there will be a grand prize winner, and get this; the grand prize winner will get to choose five digi's of their choice from Whimsy AND, they will be our guest designer for the whole month of November!  How cool is that!

The hop starts today and runs through til Sunday Nov 7 at 12 noon EST.  So you have lots of time to hop from blog to blog and enter to win the blog candy!

Now since it is the first of the month, it is also time for a new challenge at Sundays With Crissy.  And the theme I have chosen for this month is a colour recipe: Red, Green and Gold.

If you are also interested in making a card or project with that colour combo, click here and follow the guidelines for the challenge.  If you use one of my digital images from Whimsy, Squigglefly or Wags 'n Whiskers, you also have a chance to win some blog candy.  Check it out on my challenge blog here. 

I coloured Little Christmas Angel with the following Copics:

White Gown:

B91, C0, Blender

Hair:

E50, 33, 35, 37, 59

Skin: 

E000, 11, 13, 21

Birdie:

R00, 35, 39, beak: YR15

Holly: 

G40, 28, YG05

Background:

E40, 41, Blender

I am also entering this project into the following challenges:

Sundays With Crissy (no duh!):  Red, Green and Gold

WT294 on SCS: Frames

The Secret Crafter: Anything That Flies

One Stitch At A Time:  Christmas

Kenny K's Krafty Girlz:  Anything Goes

Die Cut Dreams Christmas Club:  Use a Christmas Digi

I Did It Creations:  Use a Charm

One Stop Craft Challenge:  Anything Goes

A Spoon Full of Sugar:  Lets Get Punchy (punches or die cuts)

Next stop on the hop, go see what Debbie cooked up for you!

Thanks for stopping by today!  God bless you!

Autumn Harvest Ride

Hi Precious Peeps!

How are you enjoying fall these days?  I feel like I missed a lot of it because I was indoors recovering from pneumonia.  I am all done with that now, thank you Jesus.  And thank you to anyone who prayed for me! 

 I have also missed making cards and blogging though, and it is good to be back!

You may or may not have noticed that I draw a lot of horses (no duh).  I happen to be of the opinion that they are the most beautiful of all the animals God made.  I have always been fascinated with these creatures, and have been drawing them since I was a kid.   My favourite ride at the fair was the real pony ride, but the merry-go-round, aka carousel came in at a close second!   Here is another one of my carousel horses (a digital image I did for Whimsy sold here) to celebrate the fall harvest and Thanksgiving time.  Here in Canada, we already had our Thanksgiving weekend, but I know our neighbours to the south still have that weekend coming up in November.  

I enjoyed playing with shadows and light on the Clydesdale's body to make it resemble the true muscular form of a work horse!  I studied photographs of these beautiful creatures to suggest where the light and shadows would go. 

The blender pen came in handy in this case, to lighten up areas that needed to have that shiny appearance, suggesting areas that reflect a lot of sunlight.  I loooove my blender pen for that purpose!  Makes my job a lot easier!

I have coloured Autumn Harvest Ride with the following Copics (get ready, its a long list, lol!)

Horse's body: 

E07, 08, 09, 19, 49 plus blender pen to highlight

Horse's muzzle: 

E50, R00, R20, W1

Horse's fetters (fluffy white lower legs): E50, W00, 1, 3, 4

Pole, harness and bridle: 

I started off making it blue with B21 and 23, but decided to change it to more of a blue-green by adding Y11 all over it.

Green summer squash: 

G28, 29, 40, Y11

Pumpkin:

YR15, 16, 18, 00, 23, Y35, 38, E37 in the deepest shadows

Red apple: 

R35, 37, 89, blender pen in the highlight

Metallic buckles on the harness: 

Y11, YR21, 23, Y28

Mane:

W00, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10

I added some very thin lines with a Copic liner pen in the mane, plus in the fetters, just to add more of a texture to the hair. 

I used some B0000 around the horse, but also I added some blue, yellow and pink pencil crayon to the background, and blended it with Turpenoid (odorless mineral spirits).  I was careful to use them only after I was finished with the Copics.  Never use Copic markers on top of pencil crayon! The alcohol will melt the wax of the pencil crayon, and it will collect on the tip of your marker, eventually clogging it. 

I also used some Distress inks and sponged them on the background while it was still in the Spellbinder die. 

The sentiment is by Raindrop Echo Designs and it is also a digi, found here at Whimsy Stamps.

Here is the complete card:

I am entering this card into the following challenges:

Sundays With Crissy - buttons and bows (the wooden leaf is actually a button!)

Copic Creations - Colourless Blender Technique (used to get the highlights on the horse's muscular structure)

Paper Playtime - Pumpkins or spiders

Basic Grey - Autumn/Harvest Time (the orange bg layer and the distressed green mat layer are both Basic Grey papers)

Daring Card Makers - Autumn Leaves

Creative Belli Blog - Pumpkins and Fall Sketch

Stamp Something - Digi day

No Time To Stamp? - Count Your Blessings  (I am thankful to have my health back and for the harvest of blessings in my life - they are abundant for sure, too many to count!)

Paper Garden Projects - Holiday card.  This one is for Thanksgiving (no duh)

Thank you so much for stopping by for a visit!  I hope you come again.

God Bless!

Blog Hop Winner~

I have a winner from the Whimsy blog hop last week!  I included those who joined in by comment and numbered them after the ones who used inlinkz.  Here is the choice by Random.org:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

56

Timestamp: 2010-10-12 17:50:58 UTC

And that number is: 

 
56. Lisa T 

Congratulations Lisa T!  E-mail me with your snail mail addy and I'll get Denise of Whimsy Stamps to get the "Starry Night"stamp mailed to you!

I hope my Canadian friends had a good Thanksgiving weekend!

On Hearing God Speak

This is another post in which I share my heartfelt beliefs about God.  To me, this is an act of worship to my God.  You can choose to tune in or tune out.  I will not be offended either way.  Bless you!

Do you know the voice of God?  Do you know what He says to you every day?  Did you ever hear Him, not with your physical ears, but with the ears of your heart?  Have you sensed Him trying to communicate to you, somewhere on a deeper level within you, in your subconscious mind, also known as your heart?
  I listen to God talk to me daily.  I used to think that only really "spiritual people" could hear God speak.  Just those prophets in the Bible, or those who worked miracles on the earth.  I didn't know He spoke to regular every day people like me.
  And I certainly didn't know He would be talking to me all the time.  I never knew He had so much to say to me personally!  But He does!  In fact, every time I tune in to listen, He is speaking to me!
  And I am drawn to listen.  Why? Because whenever I do, I get encouraged.  I get uplifted.  I get told of my enormous worth to Him.  I hear Him say how special I am to Him.  How highly He thinks of me.  How affectionately He loves me.  I wish I could convey just how life giving it is to hear Him speak these things to me.  His thoughts towards me are always good and always uplifting.  Even when He corrects me, it is with gentleness, love and affection.  I never feel condemned when He speaks to me.  I always feel peace.
  Hearing Him say these things to me gives me a strength that I would not have otherwise.  It gives me a deep abiding peace and joy.  I revel in the love I hear!  It carries me through circumstances and makes everything easier to handle.
  And if this is what He does for me, then this is what He does for you too, because He doesn't play favourites.  He loves all His children with the same intensity and He wishes to have a close relationship with everyone He made.
  I haven't always been able to hear Him clearly.  One of the things that kept me from hearing Him was that I thought I had to do something to earn an audience with Him.  You know, like He was a really busy guy, running the world and all, and how important was I really, for Him to take time out of His busy schedule to come and talk to me.  And who was I, just a nobody, doing nothing significant for Him.   I had to see that that type of thinking kept me from hearing Him.  Because I could not believe I was important enough for Him to talk to.
  Another barrier I used to have was, I didn't know how truly GOOD He is.  I thought, God is good, but... maybe He is mad at me... or, maybe He is going to ask me to do something that will scare me to death...  Those thoughts came from the devil, to keep me from hearing God.  Once I recognized that, and changed my heart beliefs to better reflect the Truth, that God is good ALL the time, those fears just disappeared.  And then I was able to hear Him.
  God will not speak evil to you.  He is not mad at you.  He does not want you to be afraid of Him.  And He wants you to know, that you are the most important thing on His agenda for today and indeed for every day.  You are the apple of His eye.  The child born of His heart.  He can't help but love you!
  If hearing God's voice is new to you, one of the ways you can practice hearing God is by using music.  Put on a love song.  A song you really love.  It doesn't have to be a song of worship from church.  Any good love song will do.  Now as you listen to that song, close your eyes and imagine the face of God -- see Him looking intently into your eyes as He cups His hands around your face -- and hear Him sing that song TO YOU.  As if He was the lovesick poet who penned those words for you.  Just listen like that for the duration of the whole song and keep picturing Him singing it to you!  Tell me if you try this and tell me what your experience is!  I'm curious to know if anyone tries it!
  I look around at the beauty of the world He created, and think to myself, I know the Guy who created all this!  I hear Hims speak to me every day.  Wow.  Amazing, that we can be so intimately acquainted with the most powerful being who ever was or will be.  And even more amazing still that I am so important to Him that He WANTS to speak to me, and tell me how much He loves me, every single day.
You are that important to Him too!
I dare you to tune in to listen!!
Bless you big time!

Whimsy Blog Hop! New Rubber Stamps! Blog Candy!

Welcome! 

If you have landed here randomly, you are in the middle of a blog hop by Whimsy Stamps.  If you would like to start at the beginning, go to Bev's blog.  If you have come here from Elaine's blog, you are right on track!

This is a rather exciting blog hop, that will be running from today (Sunday at noon) until Thursday Oc 7th at noon.   So you have a few days to hop along and see all the DT and Guest DT's creations, and enter to win the many prizes up for grabs!  

And I happen to be one of the SIX blogs that is offering blog candy!  If you enter, you get a chance at this new  image I illustrated that I called, "Starry Night":

  It's made with deeply etched red rubber - top of the line quality.   It is in the style you are used to seeing from me.  But!

  I also branched out into a different style this time and did some more serious designs for Christmas.  I could hardly wait to show you! I did a poinsettia, a sprig of holly and some candy canes.  I wanted to do something a little different, because I love realistic images as well as fun whimisical ones.  It isn't the style of drawing you are used to seeing from me.  What do you think??

 It is quite a large set that includes these candy canes I used on my card (I used the large version) the poinsettia I used on the background paper in a large and small version (I used the small version) a sprig of holly and also 5 sentiments by Ann Vento of Raindropecho Designs.   Click on the following links to see the full VINTAGE CHRISTMAS SET

all of my new illustrated stamps

Ann's new Christmas sentiments and background stamps.

 I used beige card stock; a light beige for the candy canes, and a medium beige for the poinsettias. Before I started stamping, I sprayed on Coffee Shop Glimmer Mist and gold Smooch Spritz.  The Smooch gives it a really subtle and beautiful golden sparkle that the photo would not convey.  

I used the watercolour stamping technique.  I coloured the actual rubber stamp with Tombow pens, water based markers, and then spritzed the stamp with water a few times before stamping the image.  As with real water colouring, the outcome is never predictable!  Some of them pooled a lot while others, with less water, remained an outline.

For the candy canes, I went back in after stamping and picked up some more ink colour with a very wet water colour brush and washed some more colour onto the leaves, the red stripes of the candy cane and also the berries.  Then I painted Copic White onto the white of the candy canes. 

 When all was dry, I painted Smooch Pearlized Top Coat all over the candy canes.  They really do sparkle!   

I put two coats of Ultra Thick Embossing Powder on the main image panel to give it even more of a glow.   I tried to capture the sparkle and glow in this photo, but still, it didn't translate well.

Now here is an example of one of the sentiments in the set that Ann designed (with my holly sprig on either side).  It is a part of the Vintage Christmas set AND it is also being sold on its own.  I just love the font Ann used!  Keep in mind the extra dots are from the Glimmer Mist.  I put this panel on the inside of the card:

I painted the panel edges and the Tim Holtz grungeboard with a gold craft paint found at Michael's. 

There are so many more stamps being released today; some super cool newsprint stamps that Ann designed as well as a cute Santa AND a new Christmas carousel horse from me!  I hope you will do the whole hop to see what the DT did with them.  AND we have some uber talented guests on board for this hop too, you won't want to miss seeing what they did as well!

If you want a chance to win this Vintage Christmas set, you need to use the inlinkz option below.  Just link up your blog or online gallery so we'll know how to contact you, and your name will be entered into the draw!  You have until Th Oc 7 at noon cuz that's when I'll pick a winner!

Next stop on the hop: 

Suzanne

If you do not have a blog or online gallery to link to and you wish to enter for the draw, please let me know in your comment and you will be included! 

Sundays With Crissy Challenge #10, "Buttons and Bows"

Hi Peeps!

I have another challenge happening all month long at Sundays With Crissy!  Its an easy peasy theme: Buttons and Bows.  I hope you will hop over to my challenge blog and take a look.  As always I am offering blog candy!

  I used "Trimming the Tree", one of my digital images I did for Whimsy Stamps. 

White fur, or white anything can be tricky to capture.  Some stampers prefer to just not colour something that is white.  But the realist in me can't leave white alone!  White does have shadows.  So you do have to colour it with something!  The thing to remember is to use the lighter shades.  I didn't use anything over a 3.  White shadows are rarely very dark.  I used a variety of colour families as well, which seems to have worked well.  You can use your grey shades.  However, my personal preference is to use a variety of colours.  I find it is more vibrant and life-like that way.  Greys can be kind of flat and boring, but that's just my opinion. 

Here is the list of Copics I used:

Polar Bear Fur:

E70, 50, BV20, 23, B63, 91, R20 (for the blush) and 0 blender all over.

Penguin hat and candy canes:

R12, 14, 17, 27

Tree branches: 

G20, 24, 28 29, YG21

Blue balls:

B12, 14, 18

Red balls:

R12, 14, 17

Star: 

Y21, 23, 28, E99

Penguin:

T1, 3, 5, 8, 10

Beak:

Y38, E99

Scarf:

YG21, 23, 25, 17 B000

Background:

R000, 11, blender

Ground:

C0, 2, 4

I'd also like to announce that I have another set of four new digital images released today in the Whimsy store!  Two digital carousel horses, and two kids dressed up to trick or treat.  I hope you'll check them out!

And on Sunday, Whimsy is releasing my new set of rubber stamps, and there will be a blog hop, so stay tuned for that too!  Some of them are in a style you may not have seen me do before, so I am excited to see your reaction. :-)

Here is my full card:

I also wanted you to see the stamp I now have to put on the back of all my cards.  It was a custom design made by Ann Vento of Raindrop Echo Designs.  She is a talented graphic artist and she has a huge variety of templates to choose from.  They are priced very affordably too.  Check them out at the Whimsy Store!

Hope to see you back for the Whimsy hop in a couple of days! Thanks for coming by today. 

Blessings!