Japanese Lady

Hi everybody.  I hope that January is going well for you.  We are about three quarters  of the way through it and already the nights are beginning to be lighter which pleases me greatly.  I have felt very lacklustre and have not really got going with my cardmaking since Christmas.  I did spend quite a bit of time after Christmas and into the new year sorting out my crafting area and that is done now and everything is a lot more tidy, well, at the moment..lol.

Anyway, getting to the point, our lovely friend Darnell over at djkardkreations is hosting her NBUS Challenge No 8 to celebrate her 5th Blogaversary and having done a staggering 1000 posts and having over 1000 followers, is no mean feat I feel.  In case you are not aware NBUS stands for Never Before Used Schtuff and I know we all have some of that kicking about the place so this is a great time to use it.  She is generously offering some lovely prizes and this is the first of three challenges back to back too.  Darnell also has an optional theme for this challenge which is to 'Use Coloured Pencils on Kraft'.  I don't have many pencils but did the best with what I had, so here it is.

For this card I used:

Japanese Tea Garden Embossing Folder and Lady Stamp (magazine freebie).
Crealies Pierced Rectangle Nesting Dies. 
Adirondack Espresso Ink.
Versafine Smokey Gray Ink.
Spectrum Noir Coloured Pencils.
8" x 8" White Base Card with the width cut down to 6".
Kraft Card.
Sentiment Stamp.

I'm afraid I'm a bit addicted to magazine freebies and I picked this one out, back in December I think, because it had a lovely embossing folder and a border folder too and this very pretty lady stamp, so I thought it was a good deal, and this is its first outing.   I have to say that sometimes the stamps do not stamp that crisply, but now I have a MISTI to help me, instead of putting too much ink on to make sure that there are no bare patches, you can go easier on the ink and stamp as many times as it takes to get a good image, and it is so much better and easier.

I started by cutting a piece of kraft card using the second largest Crealies Die which was just the right size for the embossing folder, which I then used to make the pretty flower frame.  I then placed the lady and stamped with the Espresso ink using the MISTI.  When it was perfectly dry I used the coloured pencils to colour her in.  To finish I adhered this to the white card base and stamped the sentiment, again using the MISTI and the Smokey Gray ink.

Thank you for dropping by and I'll be back soon.

I am also entering the following challenges:

Penny Black and More January Challenge - Anything Goes.
Country View Challenge January -  Anything Goes.