Opulence

Hi everyone, and a Happy New Year to all - hope everyone has had an enjoyable festive break. I’ve had a bit of a break from both blogging and crafting over the holiday period… I was away in Derbyshire for 12 days and although I took a limited crafting kit with me I didn’t really do anything with it. Santa was very kind and I have a new set of Kuretake Zig watercolour brush pens to play with, but I must admit I haven’t yet sat down to really get a grip of them so watch this space!!

As I have previously mentioned I am a member of Tracy Evans’ FB group where a lovely lady Ruth started up a monthly ATC swap in October. I didn’t have time to make any ATC’s for the December swap as I was too busy knocking out Christmas cards, but luckily she has given us an extension due to the holidays so I have been able to make a last minute entry for the December theme of “Opulence”.

Talking of last minute entries … for this set of ATC’s I was determined to go all in making an inroad into my snippets mountain so that I could participate in the fabulous festive challenge over at the Snippets Playground. After over 2 weeks without a care I have finally buckled down to my homework, diligently researched my snippets (and even taken a photo of them this time!) and am now running hell for leather towards the playground gates waving my completed project in the air before they clang shut tomorrow morning - phew!!  (I think I need a bit of strong refreshment from the tree house after all that!!)

The theme of “Opulence” suggested to me gold embossing, jewel colours, metallic paints, sparkle and gems, so I decided to go with gold embossed butterflies on plain black card stock and then matted onto gold card. I dug out a few snippets as per picture above (I wasn’t sure at this stage which gold card I would end up using!) , and off I went! Here’s the result.

I cut my larger snippet of black card into a few pieces and stamped and heat embossed my butterfly stamp three times for the ATC bases, and a further three times for the extra butterflies. The stamp I used is very large so I only cut my ATC bases to size after stamping. I actually had to cut into a new piece of black card as well as I had exhausted my plain black card snippets .. can you believe it?? (I still have enough black linen card stock snippets though to keep me going for the next millennium!!)  

I coloured the butterfly on each ATC base by painting with a different colour Posca Sparkle pen which I had dabbed onto an acrylic block, then I coloured the 3 spare butterflies in the same colours and fussy cut. I coloured the background circles and the fussy cut butterflies with a wash of Wink of Stella, then reached out a further couple of small snippets of white card, and painted a strip of each colour sparkle pen to match the butterfly wings. When dry I stamped a sentiment on each, cut out and attached, then cut 3 pieces each 3.5” x 2.5” from my gold glitter card and matted the ATC’s. Finally I attached the fussy cut butterflies to the base and bent their wings, and added some teeny gems.

Here they are in closeup.

1/3

2/3

3/3

... and an angled picture to really show the shine and dimension.

Stamps: AALL & Create #449 Through the Meadows, #533 Bring On the Sentiments;

Media: Versamark, WOW Gold Metallic regular embossing powder; Versafine Clair (Nocturne); Posca Sparkle pens (red, blue, purple); Wink of Stella;

Other: gems from my stash.

Challenges I would like to enter:

ATC’s Around the World #109 - Anything Goes

Birthstone Challenges #7 - Garnet and Amethyst

C.R.A.F.T. #703 - Anything Goes

Craft Rocket #110 - Use Embossing

Crafty Addicts #9 - Anything Goes

Krafty Chicks #697 - Stamps

Lost Coast Portal to Creativity #181 - Anything Goes

Snippets Playground #470 - Anything But Christmas

Triple B (January) - Birds, Blooms and/or Butterflies

Word Art Wednesday #629/630 - Anything Goes

That's all for today, but I will be back soon with a couple of Guest Designer spots.Take care, and thanks for visiting. Here's to a happy, healthy and creative 2024!

Hugs