Hello crafty friends. Well, here we are at Friday again and I’ve got our new challenge at As You See It to share with you. It’s the return of our speed stamping round, where we challenge you to make a card in less than 10 minutes – this time it was my turn to select the theme, so I went with ‘shades of green’ which I thought was sufficiently broad to make the challenge that bit easier (not that I ever find this one ‘easy’!) This time round, I found one of the new Snow Globe toppers in green tones and built my card from there, with the help of the Christmas Friends & Family stamps and the new Vintage Christmas papers.

Now, there are no step-by-step pics for this one as, with only 10 minutes to make my card, I wasn’t wasting any of it on taking photos! I had thought through my design so got everything together on my desk (which regular readers of my crafty musings will know is not my usual way of working!) Our rules for this at AYSI say you have to start your timer as soon as you make the first paper cut or ink a stamp, so…

…off I went! I laid low tack tape across the bottom edge of the globe, traced the shape with a pencil and trimmed it out, so I could mask off the base. I quickly inked the little trees from the stamp set with ‘peat moss’ Archival and stamped each of them into place, then removed the tape. I added one of the Christmas Statement Sentiments, then cut the Vintage Christmas paper down to the right size and mounted the topper. The whole piece went onto a 6×6 card blank and I had a few minutes to add the finishing touches. First was to dot the snow in the sky with a fine white Posca pen, which is also used to draw the triangle highlights on the globe to give the effect of a reflection. I also used my ink eraser pencil to lift a little of the colour from the base, which also gives the effect of light shining on it (inspired by one of Barbara’s demos!)

And with that, it was done and I stopped the timer! Here’s how I did! I have to say, these speed challenges always get my pulse racing, but it is fun! Come on over to AYSI and show us what you can do in 10 minutes with the green tones in your stash – and don’t forget to tell us how long your creation took to make.

And now my heart rate is back to normal, I’m going to share this with The Paper Players, whose ‘plaid’ theme inspired my choice of paper for the mount and with 613 Avenue Create for their ‘anything goes’ option.