Countdown to Christmas

It's September, it's rainy and chilly here and the leaves are already falling off the trees.  My coal order has arrived and we've already had to light the fire at night. And Strictly has started!  Now if that isn't a combination of signs that Christmas is coming, I don't know what is!

Thank goodness, then, for Christmas at Sweet Stampin', where we try to inspire you to get ahead with your Christmas cardmaking projects.  Our theme is always Anything Goes and our September challenge starts today!

I adapted a My Favourite Things non-Christmas stamp by using traditional colours (no surprises there) and combined it with a Christmas tree from Purple Onion stamps:

Everything was coloured with Copics in my favourite reds (R32, 35, 37 & 39) and greens (G82, 94 & 99). I used a mixture of red Nuvo Drops and Glossy Accents to create some dimension on the baubles and a gold Sakura pen added some sparkle to the star.

I hope you can join in with us this month. You can see the challenge details and check out the inspiration projects that the lovely CaSSettes have made here.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tracey xx

About time...

Thought it was about time I put something on my blog!  It's been a very busy few weeks, with the Boy Wonder heading off to college in Glasgow and me trying to deal with empty nest syndrome by keeping myself busy every waking hour.

Fortunately the BW seems to have settled in to college life very well and, most importantly, sounds very happy.  That, of course, has helped me hugely although my heart aches every time I walk past his room.

Summer is well and truly over here. We've been harvesting our fruit and veg from the garden - lots of potatoes, beans and peas and enough tomatoes from the greenhouse to keep us in pasta sauce for months!  Sadly the bloody birds have had all of my damsons (well, actually they left me 3 over 3 trees, what use is that?) and they've been at the apples as well.  Still, we've managed to save enough for some apple pies and apple sauce, so all isn't lost.

All this autumnal activity prompted me to get the orange and brown Copics out and do a little colouring.

I haven't done anything with my Hanglar & Stanglar stamps in way too long and they are so lovely to colour.  I used Versamark ink to create the tone on tone background on the orange card base and kept everything else really CAS.  Just a touch of Diamond Dust for some sparkle on her wings to give the whole thing a bit of a lift.

I really should try to get back into this blogging lark a bit more regularly.  Think I'll enter this in Simon Say's Stamp's Wednesday challenge which is Stamp It!

Thanks for stopping by.

Tracey xxx