By Mary Gillingham: Stampathon - Part 2

So, following on from my Halloween cards, I set about making some samples with another great BRAND NEW stamp set from Craftwork Cards. This time the gorgeous Gingerbread Lane stamps! These stamp designs were hand drawn by Steph Morgan, Senior Designer up at CWC HQ and they're so lush - Go Steph!

There's lots of different styles and sizes of gingerbread houses, a darling little street sign and 3 little accents they're just so cute!

This was an ideal opportunity for me to get my colouring pens out! I chose to use my Kuretake Clean Color Real Brush pens - well I had to as I'd already stamped in Versafine Onyx Black and I would have needed to use my memento if I wanted to use the Copics.

So I set about stamping lots of the houses on both cream and white cardstock so I could sit and colour whilst watching television. I also stamped some onto kraft cardstock with versamark sticky ink and embossed in gold to give a true gingerbread look without having to colour in.

You'll see from the samples that I made, I stuck with traditional gingerbread for some of them but then for others chose a different, contemporary colour scheme for a modern, different looking card. Just goes to show how far these stamps with stretch!

So, here goes...

For this card I covered the base card in a spotty paper I printed out from the CWC Festive USB. I had no idea how far this USB would stretch across other stamps, kits and collections! Then I've layered up the gold embossed gingerbread houses with some of the trees and the little street sign. This was quite a quick card to start off with as there was hardly any colouring. I've just used a white gel pen to highlight some of the designs on the houses and the street sign. I think that really sets it off.

This second card I've stamped in black Versafine and coloured in with the Kuretake pens. I've coloured then n traditional gingerbread colours to keep it traditional. I've cut a square aperture from the base card, stamped the accents on the front and doodled around the aperture. I've attached two of the houses on the outside of the aperture and then stuck one to the inside of the card on a square of kraft cardstock. This way gives a bit of depth and dimension to the card and also leaves some of the design on the inside when the card is open, which as cardmakers, we don't always do.

Similar to the last card, this time I've cut a circle aperture from the front of this card and inked around the edge, then added dots of stickles glitter glue all around the outside. This time I coloured the houses in shades of pink. I've added some of the small pink trees to the foreground along with the little street sign. If you look closely (it was difficult to capture in the photograph) you can see I've added stickles stardust glitter glue to the foreground also to look like glistening snow. Quite a CAS card. Really like this one!

Last by but no means least, I've saved my favourite for the last one again!! This one took a little more work and construction - and definitely a lot more colouring on the inside of the card!!

Okay, so this is the front of the card as you'd see it when it came out the envelope! Very simple and understated. A simple warm grey line drawn for a hill, 3 trees stamped and shadows drawn in, along with the street sign and some snowflakes. Keeping it very clean and simple.

This card is actually made of two cards sandwiched together. The outer card has the stamped images and the front cover design and the inside card has the strutts cut to make the houses pop up. The inside has a piece of black card with silver embossed stars on it and the strutts have all been coloured in black so they blend into the background. The strutts have all been cut at different length, heights and widths so the houses stand out differently.

In this photograph you can see the card from the front. I've done some more wobbly lines with a feint warm grey pen and added stickles glitter glue to the lines to look like snow. I've done this in the shadows at the foot of all the houses too.

I hope you like these cards - there's more stamping to follow so I hope you're enjoyed my stampathon diary!

Happy stamping!!