CAS at Allsorts

This is what the professional photographer who took this rather good photo said in his piece: "A special team vest, a well chosen spot with a view of the Eiffel tower, and a runner towards the front of the 30, 000 pack. If only it was always this easy to spot them!"

Before I go on to this weeks Allsorts challenge I wanted to share the above photo of one of our son's Alex running the Paris Marathon, it was a while ago but I only just received this photo and it's such a good one I wanted to share. He runs a sub three (under three hours) which gives him automatic entry to London and elite position start. We were there with him in Paris and the whole event had a really laid back feel to it and Alex being sponsored by Asics gave us entry to their hospitality enclosure right on the finish line.

OK, now on to our new challenge at Allsorts and this week Annie has chosen the theme of  'CAS'. Our sponsor this week is Digistamp Boutique and Tattered Lace, so twice the reason to join in.

Further down I also have a couple of shares using stamps from a new UK based on line craft store Swedish House Crafts and..............you can get a 10% discount off your order using this code: FROMSANTABRENDA. Further down you will also find my entry to this weeks Snippets Playground, I'm mighty late to the party this week but should sneak in before the gates close.

I have used a new image from Stamps by Me, it's called simply Daisy. It's one of Toni's lamination stamps with a silhouette and an outline stamp, I used an Adirondack dye ink for the silhouette element and a slightly darker one for the outline and sentiment which is from Inkylicous. The great thing about the lamination sets is that you can't go wrong as the whole idea is to give a very random finish. Please do pop over to the challenge blog to see all the inspiration on offer from my team mates.

Now for the cards using the stamps from Swedish House Crafts, the background of the above card was created with gesso, distress crayons and lots of water. I then stamped the Butterfly stamp.....a lovely wood mounted one..........centrally and then twice more using just part of the stamp to create a kaleidoscope of Butterflies. I then stamped again onto offcuts of card coloured with the same crayons and decoupaged. Next I randomly stamped Splats with distress inks then some deeper colouring ones using purple gilding polish which I also used around the edges. This one is also my Snippets share, using lots of offcuts for the Butterflies.

For this one I masked a section of the base card and used Pan Pastels and a sun mask to create the background,  then using dye ink stamped Daisy and Little Rudbeckia, removed the mask and added the rather nice flourishy Happy Birthday and some gems. And don't forget you can get a 10% discount off any orders placed using this code: FROMSANTABRENDA

Happy weekend all.