Simon Says Stamp Stamptember - my first two cards.....

The wonderful online company Simon Says Stamp are holding a month long stamp party, they generously sent me this set to play with

and here are the first couple of cards I made today. This first one was done on watercolour paper, I just used a blending tool to swirl around chipped sapphire, tumbled glass and evergreen bough distress inks then used the Simon Says Stamps Falling Snow stencil to add some texture paste

 the silver thread is just regular silver sewing thread. The medallion snowflake was stamped onto white card with chipped sapphire ink and given three coats of clear gloss embossing powder by Wow

and the stars? I use this oldie but goodie border punch by Martha Stewart, I don't think I've ever used it for a border, but I love the tiny little stars it punches out, and use them a lot, especially around Christmastime.... 

For my next card I thought it would be fun to stamp the word merry over and over in different shades of green, then cut the panel into a tree shape. I used the tiny trees border for a background....

both the cards were made using a 4 1/2 x 4 1/2 white card base from Craftwork cards - my size of choice at Christmas, smaller than I usually make, but I have a horror of being thought a bit over the top when my friends and family open their mail!

You can get a lot of inspiration about using their products by following their blog - I do! Talking of blog parties, I may be having a big party myself very soon - I am one person away from 3,000 followers (that's not counting the other 4,000+ who are email subscribers), so that seems like a good excuse for a party to me. I am getting in touch with everyone I have done work for since starting the blog to beg some prizes to give out to you, so it should be fun....

I found myself all set up with my tripod, camera, all the gear, then realized I didn't really have a clue what to make a video of. So I have set up a poll in the sidebar, giving you a few options of what you would like to see. If you get an email when I post, I would appreciate it if you can click on the grey Going Buggy header at the top of your email which will bring you over here so that you can also have a choice. You can check as many of the boxes as you would like, I'll keep it running for a week and see how it goes. I almost put a box in saying 'no videos, please, no videos' but decided against it! If none of you vote, I'll get the message.....

I'll tell you about my afternoon at the charity shop tomorrow, see you then x