Cards from New Year Masterboard

I managed to make six cards from yesterday's masterboard.  

Again, it was just a matter of putting the pieces of the masterboard against various colours of card.  Red was the first colour that clicked for me:

Then burgundy:

I came round to the teal last:

A close up of this last one:

All of the cards have 'Happy New Year' penned inside using gold ink and a calligraphy nib:

And one more snap of them all together:

Happy New Year!

A New Year Masterboard

I've been enthralled by the white fairy lights on trees and windows at this time of year, and so I decided to try my hand at a masterboard of whites and golds.  I really enjoyed the last one and have been itching to do another.

I started with white and buff acrylic paint pulled with an old credit card across a page of A4 prepped with gesso.  I then did a second layer with white and metallic gold acrylic paint.  It would have been good to snap a photo at this stage, but it did not occur to me until later... 😒

I then mixed a bit of golden yellow with white to make cream, and stencilled very small cream snowflakes over the gold bits.  I then stencilled very small acrylic metallic gold snowflakes over the white bits.  Finally, I used individual letters and numbers to stamp '1 Jan' and '2018'.  I also have a stamp that is slightly suggestive of a firework, so I also randomly stamped that all over as well.

These close-ups show a bit more detail:

Next, the tough part . . . cutting it all up:

This next photo show how the gold paint reflects the light:

So now to turn these into New Year cards ...

(...which are now posted here).

A Simple Christmas Card

Work and other things have taken over my last 6-8 weeks, leaving almost no time or energy for card making or other creative endeavours.

This morning I rose early to make at least one seasonal card.  I've had this stamp (made by A Stamp in the Hand) for several years now and I never could figure out what to do with it.  It just didn't seem to combine well with any of my other stamps, and it felt too simple just to stamp it (and possibly layer it) on a card.  

As it turns out, simple is exactly what I needed.  It's probably what I need every year, in terms of how long it's been since I've managed more than one or two hand-made seasonal cards.  

I did edge the top layer with white pigment ink and subtly whitened the snow with white pencil -- gel pen and paint  were too prominent and disrupted the coherence of the image.  

It was nice to get the sleeves rolled up and briefly dip into a bit of creativity.  Maybe I should make a couple more and send a few belated season's greetings...