APC Week 3 plus a few other cards

Hi Everyone!  I have had a very lazy week since our return from overseas, reading and the odd bit of crafting here and there.

I am still nowhere caught up with the Altered Playing Card Challenge but here are my cards for week 3.

I am trying to follow at least the background techniques shown by Claudine each week.

The first card uses Alcohol Inks.  I only own three colors so used these with a little blending solution to create the background.  I then stamped some leaves and my sentiment onto the background with Black Staz On.  Coloring my leaves with a Memento Marker.  Before adding some butterflies that had been stamped on white paper and colored with distress ink and finished with a few rhinestonesbh.

My second APC has been colored with Mustard Seed, Rusty Hinge and a touch of Aged Maghony Distress Ink all blended with a baby wipe.  I also added a sand texture to this with a touch of sepia ink.  I then used this same color in archival ink to stamp my sentiment before adding my stamped leaf which was fussy cut and colored before outlining with a white gel pen.

All the stamps I used on these cards were from Unity Stamp Co.

Also this week I have made a start on my swap cards for a PAT (Pick a Theme Swap) over at ATC's for All.  For these types of swaps each participant (5 in a group) picks a theme they would like a card to be made for.  Everyone makes one card for each participant in line with the chosen theme and then sends them to the host who then sends them out.  This type of swap is great if you are collecting particular themed cards as you end up with four cards to add to your collection.

Here are the first two.  I am playing in the Mixed Media/Collage Catergory, the first card theme was Buddah's and the second was Vintage Halloween.

The buddah image is one I have in my stash as I love buddah's myself and have a great collection of them.  The background is a gelli print with some black stamping (a flourish) down one side.  I then took a selection of off cuts from my G45 Birdsong Papers and layered these before adding my buddah and some Cherry Blossoms cut from another collage image.  The Geisha Stamp Image was from a collage sheet by Joanna Grant and I edged one side with a touch of Gold Leaf (I think this is what is causing my camera to put a fuzzy blur down the side of the buddah).

For my Vintage Halloween Card I used this delightful collage image from an Altered Pages Collage Sheet and layered once again some G45 papers (Steampunk Spells) over a black painted background.