Swapping the Swaps

August was our *Swapping the Swaps* month. All the bits & bobs I'd given to Liz & Terri & they'd given to me & each other over the previous months, the bits that we'd not got round to using or didn't know what to do with, were bunged into envelopes & sent on their way, in the hopes that inspiration & imagination would spring forth when we tore open the parcels :o)

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . . .

I'll let others be the judge of that :o)

First up, Terri's parcel. This month I made 3 cards.

I bought this old car stamp in a sale at Hobbycraft & hadn't used it, but when I saw the browns & creams of the paper & card in the parcel, I thought if I used brown ink, it would give the card a sort of sepia look. I used the same brown ink pad to stamp the greeting.The photo is a bit blurry & it doesn't do it justice AT ALL, but I really like this card. It turned out just how I wanted it to.

I really wasn't sure what I was going to do with this image, but after a while, decided to use a flourish type stamp on the plain green background paper to make it a bit more interesting. I stuck to different shades of green, mounted the fairy image on a slightly different green patterned paper & stamped the sentiment on white card, which I then edged with a green ProMarker.

A Christmas card ??? Already ??!! Yes, I know it's only 1 September, but Christmas isn't far away. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that it's down the road, round the corner, first left, third right, over the crossroads, right at the traffic lights & there it is, on the left hand side :o)

This little image is such a simple design, it doesn't need much to go with it. I just coloured it with Promarkers, plonked it on some silver mirror board & then stuck it on the check paper, which I'd already stuck on to a plain white card. I punched out 3 snowflakes from the same mirror board, stuck the greeting on to white card & then more of the silver & that was it.

I also made 3 cards from Liz's parcel :o)

I really must take more care photographing cards. They aren't really on a wonk :o)

This image was already coloured in, so all I did was use the green & cream paper Liz had included. I embossed the cream card, die cut the green, stuck the image on the green & stamped a greeting on what was left. I cut the greeting out, edged it with black ink & that was it. Plain & simple.

This little snowman is one of my favourite stamps. I have NOOOOOOO idea why she'd send it back to me !!! :o) Again, plain & simple - I embossed the red card, die cut a circle from the patterned creamy colour paper & edged the image with red ink. I then used a silver glitter strip across the middle & embellished that with 3 silver leaves I had in my stash. I stuck the image on top & added the silver greeting.

When I saw this image in the parcel, it just shouted *Cold, wintery Christmas !!* at me. So, all I did was colour it with grey Promarkers & mount it on a bit of silver mirror board. I used the green card as a background, edged it with silver glitter strips, stamped the greeting & added three white card candi.  

As my Mother in law would say - it's a NEAT card :o) 

So, that's August's challenge all done & now it's on to September - stripes !! My favourite :o)