CAS Mix Up .......

Happy Friday evening folks ......

Whoo hoo!! .... it's the weekend (happy dance time).  

It's one of my favourite weekends on the island too.   Oh yes ........ the Isle of Man Food and Drink Festival takes place this weekend in the Villa Marina Gardens (just round the corner from us!)
The festival showcases all the fabulous local food and produce ...... and when I say local I mean it's grown, reared, caught, cooked, baked or processed on the island, or it's surrounding waters ..... yum! yum!  As you've probably guessed by now, we love our food so yes ..... we'll be there.  Well I need to get this years Christmas pudding!!

Before all that though it's time to play along with September's CAS Mix Up challenge.

This month as you can see, we have to include ..... Stamping - check! Marbling - check! Plus an element of your won choice .... I went for die cuts, oh and acetate smooshing

So .... marbling ..... hmmmm,  there's a few fun ways of doing this, alcohol inks on water,  the shaving foam technique .... always fun!   If you pop over to the CAS Mix Up Blog you'll find some really useful links on there to some great tutorials. If you've never tried this technique why not give it a go.

I used a Marbling with Distress Paints technique from Tim Holtz, which is basically, applying Picket Fence Distress Paint to a craft sheet, plus 2 or 3 other colours of Distress Paint around it, and then swiping a piece of card through the paints to pick up the colours.  Do this until the card is covered, dry the paint off a little ... not too much though ... and then spritz with water to blend, or marble the colours together ...... and either dry with a heat tool, or I left mine overnight which seemed to work too.

I used a couple of different paint combinations and made a few marbled piece of cardstcok and then used my dies and stamps to put my card together.

I die cut the Birthday from one colour, and again from black card, and then layered the two together, slightly off setting them to give the look of a shadow.  I love the font on this die .... it's one of the new CUTplorations range of thin metal dies from STAMPlorations.

I stamped my little Crazy Bird and his birthday balloons onto pieces of the marbled card and then fussy cut around them ........  love how all the colours blend

I then stamped the bird directly onto my card and paper pieced over the top of him ...... oooh!  I suppose Paper Piecing could be an additional element too!

 

I took a piece of acetate and smooshed the same colours in Distress Ink as I'd used in paint for the marbling, onto the background,  and then stamped and embossed the Happy part of my greeting ....

I then put the die cut Birthday and the balloons in place, and finished off by applying a thin coat of Glossy Accents to highlight and bring out the colours a little more .....

Look he's sneaked onto the inside too .....

Now he's in the mood ... he's got his party hat on ....

Well that's it from me .... I've just noticed the time.  Ooops! ....... it's getting a little late and it's suddenly gone dark.  Have I been in the old craft room that long!!!  OK I confess ..... I got distracted by the man himself ... yes Mr Tim Holtz has been on Facebook Live again with the release of this year's Christmas Idea-ology. I missed the live showing but the video popped up on my Facebook news feed and it would have been rude not to watch now wouldn't it.   All I'm saying is .... OMG!!! Talk about a wish list!!

Thanks for popping by .... enjoy the rest of your day and have a fun filled weekend.

Cheerio until next time

PS .... almost forgot ..... I'm also linking this up to the STAMPlorations CUTplorations Blog Hop and Linky Party that's going on at the moment

They're celebrating the release of their brand new Christmas themed stamps and dies ..... be warned you're going to want them all!!