Winter - Happy New Year

I cannot believe it October already where has this year gone.

I spent Saturday at the Happy Stampers show in Port Sunny and the lovely Maria Simms was demoing on the Claritystamp stand - sadly Barbara was down in Exeter, but both of them will be on duty on Saturday at the Harrogate show - yay another day out and then the next weekend will be Barbara weekend on the telly .

It's the first of the month and so time to showcase my dt sample from the Claritystamp challenge blog. where it has been all change.  Due to other commitments it is with deep sadness that Hellen, Karen and Rae have said goodbye to us and I wish them all well for the future.  On the upside we have three lovely new ladies Jo Rice, Sam Crowe and Amand Branston - so welcome ladies great to have you on board and looking forward to seeing your future masterpieces.

Last months entries were as usual outstanding  and it was very difficult to chose just my fave five . ..we all pick our own personal favourites and the lovely Sally Anne Haynes works out the five most popular from all the dt faves.  These then become the top five over on the challenge blog.  The winner is of course picked randomly so that it is fair to all entries.  Have you entered any challenges - you should there is an amazing £50 voucher up for grabs - so go on give it a go!

The theme this month is Winter and I am sorry that this picture is not very good but I struggled with the reflection bouncing back off the card.

What should I do for a winter card?  I wasn't feeling particularly Christmassy  when I did the card and so I didn't fancy doing a snowy scene.  Then I hit on the idea of the fireworks that go off in London at New Year - and New Year is in Winter innit so off I went.

I started with a gelli print and I used black, silver and white pearly paint and the sunburst stamp which always reminds me of fireworks.  I used the black Clarity card for the main picture and the sentiments.

I took the London Skyline mask and dragged versamark down from the top - I didn't drag it all the way to the bottom as I wanted to leave that dark. I then used white perfect pearls I stamped the Clarity characters in versamark again to form a crowd watching the fireworks and again used the perfect pearls white.

I left it all to dry for yonks before I then covered them up with the other half of the mask so that I could stamp the sky.  I also used the Aliums as well as the sun burst stamp and the lines over tower bridge were made by using just the stem.

I hope you like it and it inspires you to take part in the challenge.