Christmas at Allsorts

Morning everyone, a new theme at Allsorts and this week I am your host again, it's a simple theme of Christmas. Prize are Lavinia goodies, in fact some are the very same products I've used for my card below (our winners will get new ones mind you!).

A bit of a rustic feel to the one above but I am a sucker for a floral/foliage wreath. First I stamped Fairy Catkins into a circle and applied masking fluid to the Catkins. When dry, using a widish flat head brush pained watered down Elements over the entire piece. Next  filled in the gaps with Holly, Mini Pinecone and Mini Leaf. Rubbed off the masking fluid, the Catkins stayed fairly white so just added a little extra to one or two to make them pop. Finally some red and green stickles and wood mounted Art Impression sentiment which is donkeys years old. There's a new challenge at the Path of Positivity where I would like to share the above card. This month the focus is on The Power of Words Friends/Family, I don't really like going down the A/G route but am this time as I can find no stamps in my stash that seem to fit, I felt sure I had a PB one that would so need to find it for another time.

Above it's that jar again, I must be a tad obsessed but it's so perfect for creating little scenes inside. Using Lavinia Starr, Leaf Bouquet and Woodland Ferns I created the scene into Sticker Stencil 9. Shaded around the inside of jar with Elements, I've now cracked open all 23 and a couple of firm favourites are Mulberry which I used here, others getting regular use are some of the darker blues and olive which is perfect for Holly. I do like the strong pigmentation and perfect for a bit of paining to carry the colour, I always find DI's lose intensity when you add water. 

Outside the jar and on the envie I stamped Bramble and Holly and also added some stencilling - wasn't my intention originally but inky fingers needed disguising. That's probably the only downside I've discovered with Elements, my dexterity is dodgy to say the least and the shape of the inkpad with very shallow bases means I invariably have problems opening them, hence even inkier fingers than normal.

I made mention in my previous post of Craft Suppliers Direct which you can find here, it's a collaboration of craft companies doing their best to recover from the huge losses incurred by Create and Craft not paying them for months. They need our support more than ever and many are selling products at greatly reduce prices so worth checking out. 

Pink Frog are part of the collaboration, I ordered this week and got a great discount, free pps for orders over £10 plus a free gift for those over £60, my gift was a 12x12 pack of Disney DP's plus it arrived within a couple of days with Royal Mail.......sadly RM didn't do as well with a Lavinia delivery, sent tracked 24 Monday, arrived yesterday but absolutely no idea who the hand and front door are in their photo but not mine, or any of the nine houses in our hamlet. Apparently we now have to allow RM a few days to investigate which isn't encouraging.