46 days still to go...back in the game

Happy New Year everyone, and lets hope 2016 is good to us all, and exciting!

I'm so sorry I didn't do my blog post yesterday.  I would like to say it was because of a horrid hangover...however it was literally down to feeling horrible still.  We did have a good party, and a few glasses of fizz, and I managed to get up for a walk with my friends and the dogs to the beach - but by the time I got home I was fit for nothing.  I gave up, had Night Nurse, and, thankfully, a good nights sleep.  I'm now on day 4 of not having a voice.  Can you imagine, me without working vocal cords.  It's driving me mad.  There are loads of people with the usual winter lurgy, so I know I'm definitely not on my own.  Anyhow, at least today I felt like crafting - and blogging.

I was chatting about the stamps I decided to use, just the other day.  I'm not sure who I was chatting too, unfortunately.  These are lovely stamps from Hero Arts, and were so popular when I worked at Dawn's shop.  Honestly, we couldn't keep them on the shelves.  They are classy, and beautiful.  And the reason I love stamps, they are such a good investment.  They last such a long time, and still look fabulous.

I wanted to do something different for the background again, so picked one of my masks:

And stippled through it using Tim Holtz distress paints.  This will give a lovely stippled effect:

When you remove the mask, it does look really effective

However, look at all the lovely paint left on the mask

As a crafter, there's no way we can leave this paint.  So, I spritzed it with water

I then placed a piece of card over the top and pressed it down to soak up the paint

and then, there's the paint left on the mat!!  

I had a stamped image that was just sitting there, so I dumped it onto my mat

Love this!  I blasted it dry with my heat gun

And then matted it onto the background I created, as the colours will match perfectly.  I then stamped a sentiment. 

I then got my lovely Hero Art stamps ready

And stamped one onto plain white card

I also stamped the image onto some of the scrap which has part of the paint on.  I much preferred this to be honest, as it had more interest.  I coloured the hat in with a glitter pen.  I then decided to stamp the Style is Eternal stamp along the bottom of the card, and added paint and glitter

Which I completely fell out with, and decided to chop it off.  I mat and layered my image using craft metal, which can easily be textured with embossing folders, or just scissors

Now, I layered the sentiment, and the image, and added a ribbon knot to the left, and little gems at the bottom of the card

See, it looks much better at the bottom of the card now doesn't it.