Tuesday 30 January 2018

Five little robins

I love this sweet Woodware robin stamp set that I won a couple of years ago in the playground. There are so many different poses and orientations, making them great for horizontal or vertical DL cards.

I've used 5 of the images for this card


I wanted a "torn edge" effect to the white panel, but it was too thick to tear so I used deckle edged scissors freehand so that the edge wasn't too regular. My deckle edged tearing guide still came in handy though as I used it with a fine marker to draw in the "earth", then stamped the sentiment, also from the robin set, below it.

I arranged the robins to fill the earth line then used the Misti to stamp them, stamping again onto red and brown paper, then paper pieced the coloured papers over the stamped images and backed the panel with more of the red paper. I used a white gel pen to add highlights to the robins' eyes.

I'm going to be putting this aside to send to one of my Twitter friends, but in the meantime I am sharing it at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown where this week's challenge is Paper Piecing.

Black and silver

.. .when used together, are an absolute pain in the whatsit to photograph!


It took me many attempts to get this photo and I'm still not convinced I've actually got all the silver to look like silver!
The two background papers I used, holly leaves and Merry Christmas, are black with silver print and are very old ones from my stash. The topper is stamped with a Uniko stamp - it is all one stamp, stamped and heat embossed in silver.  I love all the little details and the songs  that so much of the text refers to - every time I use the stamp it makes me sing.
 
I'm sharing this with
 
Jingle Belles - Text me
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Anything goes/no sentiment  (I'm using the logic that although there's lots and lots of text, there's nothing that could count as a standalone sentiment)

Music at Cardz 4 Guyz

|Our latest challenge is just starting at Cardz 4 Guyz and  the theme is Music, so we'd like to see something connected with music on your card - and don't forget it needs to be suitable for a man or boy.


I used The Saxophonist digi set from The Paper Shelter -  the set includes the background and outline or pre-coloured images. I was pretty busy at the time so chose the pre-coloured one and I'm glad I did as it works so well with the background.

I've added die cuts of music staves - these are actually a rich dark brown, although on my screen they look black.

Monday 29 January 2018

Gardening Bunny

This cute bunny stamp is one I got many years ago from an American company called Raindrops on Roses - I don't think they are around any more.


I stamped it, along with a magazine freebie sentiment, and coloured with Promarkers, then die cut the image and layers with Gummiapan stitched Square dies. Heart shaped pearls in the corners finished it off.

I am sharing this with
Sweet Stampin  - Valentines/Love
Cuttlebugmania - Valentine's Day

Couture du Jour

Recently a friend tagged me in a competition on Facebook and won for us both a collection of goodies from the dovecraft Couture du Jour range.

The goodies included a pad of glittered die cut decoupage and I have to say I am really impressed with the quality. Whenever I've used die cut decoupage before I've been disappointed - either the printing and cutting didn't line up or the cutting left ungainly borders and I've had to re-cut all the pieces, but although this decoupage is really intricate it is beautifully cut and I really couldn't have hand-cut it any better.

I've used one of the sheets for the left hand panel on this card.


The background papers and rosette heart also came from the goodies - I distressed the edges of the papers and covered up the join with some lace.
The die cut bird cage is there to reflect the bird cages on the blue background paper - the only snag is, all the bird cages have been covered up by other stuff! But I know they are there, so it still counts! It isn't actually a die cut, it's a panel trimmed from one meant to be made into a wedding favour. I got a pack of 10 quite cheaply from a local shop and as each cuts into four panels, that's 40 little bird cage embellishments ready to be used!

I am sharing this with

C.R.A.F.T. - Distress/vintage
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - January

Sunday 28 January 2018

Light as a Feather

I've used one of my very oldest stamps on this card, a beautiful and versatile feather stamp from PSX.


First I stamped it randomly over a piece of vellum, using white Stazon ink, then used a Kaleidacolor Autumn Leaves pad to stamp it on a snippet of white card which I matted and layered with chocolate brown (which for some reason always looks black on photos) and orange snippets. 

The sentiment, a magazine freebie, is stamped with rusty brown Stazon - I find it's the ink least likely to smudge on vellum and even then it takes a few minutes to dry - and then the velum panel attached to the card using adhesive only behind the stamped images and the topper, to reduce the show through. It's hard to see the feather background on a photo but in real life it looks really effective, almost textured.

I am sharing this with
Addicted to Stamps and More - Anything Goes
Allsorts Challenge - Old Favourites
Alphabet Challenge - V is for Vellum
Crafty Creations Challenge - Anything Goes
Shopping Our Stash - Birthday 

Saturday 27 January 2018

Farm Life at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers

Our new challenge at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers is Farm Life.




I've used an image printed out from a Polyanna Pickering CD teamed with tweedy patterned papers and some hillside-heather coloured card to give it a highlandy  feel in keeping with the magnificent beast, then injected a healthy dose of snark with a So Suzy sentiment stamp


I'm rather chuffed with the way it looks like a classy, traditional card and then you get up close and WHAM! The snark gets you!

Thursday 25 January 2018

Chloe Stem again

I never seem to go for very long without using the old favourite Memory Box Chloe Stem die.


Today I've used watercolour to make an ombré background for it, by starting off at the bottom with the concentrated colour then gradually blending in more and more water to make it paler as I worked up the card. TIP - instead of blending the colour on your craft mat or in a palette, do it on an acrylic block resting on top of white card to give you a good idea of how the shade will look when painted onto white card.

The sentiment was added with a magazine freebie stamp.

I am sharing this with:

Addicted to CAS - Ombré
Sparkles Monthly Challenge - Thank You

January Rudolph Day

Can you believe it's January 25th already and that means Christmas is a whole month ago? Hands up if you still have festive leftovers in the house? I think apart from some frozen stock made with the turkey carcase, ours is all gone now. And being the 25th, it is Rudolph Day at Scrappymo's, so here goes with my first Rudolph Day card of the year.

My iris folding kits are almost all finished - after this, I only have one blank left to use.


I chose cool blues and silver tones for this card, embellishing it in the good old fashioned way with peel offs which must be about as old as the iris folding kits themselves. With all that glitter in the candle it really doesn't need anything else!

I am also sharing this with Watercooler Wednesday - All about Christmas 

Wednesday 24 January 2018

The Winter Fairy

I'm not a great fairy lover, and have very few fairy stamps, but I do love this Bugaboo digi of a Christmas fairy, probably because it's more of a funky fairy than an ethereal one.

This time I've coloured her in lilac, blue and pink  and mounted her on lilac card that does actually match the colour on the image. (Don't you just hate these gloomy winter days when all photos need to be taken in electric light?).

The snowy background is stamped with a Uniko snowflake stamp and heat embossed in silver, the sentiment stamped with a stamp from the lovely Inkylicious set I won in the Playground and the border is made using a magazine freebie embossing folder (several years old and NBUS)

I am sharing this with

52 Christmas Card Throwdown - Fairies 
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - add a sentiment/anything goes
Winter Wonderland - Embossing, heat or dry

More X is for.....

As I told you last week, I'm delighted to be the guest designer for the current challenge at The Butterfly Challenge - X is for Xtra Fold and/or the colour Peacock blue/green  and as I love the themes so much, I decided to make you a mid-challenge inspiration card.



This card is really a bit of a cheat, it's made from a Hunkydory kit that I won and there's actually almost no creativity involved, just a simple assembly job, but everything is so beautifully designed and printed and it is fascinating to see two flat sheets of card quickly transformed into something with so much depth and dimension.

I am sharing this with Make My Monday - Fancy Folds

Tuesday 23 January 2018

Little dinosaurs

I've made this card for the current challenge at Less is More, which is One layer- Cute.


I'm not a huge fan of cute, and don't have many suitable stamps, but I do love these dinosaur stamps from Clearly Besotted. I usually colour them in with Promarkers, but they show through on the back so are not really good for one layer fans, so I coloured my design - stamped using lots of masking - using the new pencils I got from Santa, but as you can see, I really need a lot more practise with them!

Monday 22 January 2018

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

They go up tiddly up up
They go down tiddly own down


The main image I have used is from a design sheet printed out from Joanna Sheen's Victorian Birthday Cards CD and the stamped tags are individual images cut from a stamped Crafty Individuals stamp - I can't locate it on their site at the moment but it's a collage of a whole range of vintage transport themed tags - I selected the ones showing aircraft  and kept the rest for another time. The Tim Holtz words and all the papers are from my stash.

I am sharing this with

The Male Room - Vintage
Sweet Stampin - Men's Cards

Sunday 21 January 2018

Three flowers

You'll probably be mystified when I say that this card was inspired by Di's lovely wreath card in this post  but I used her suggestion of positioning a stamp on the Misti then moving the card, rather than the stamp, to get the sprays of leaves evenly positioned around the card. The difference is that in order to make a spray rather than a circle, I had the stamps pointing outwards rather than roundwards. (Is that a word? It should be!).


The stamps are from a Crafters Companion clear set and I die cut the flowers from teal, mustard and orange snippets using the First Edition Layered Flower die, switching around the lacy and solid layers.

I am sharing this with

Pixie's Snippets Playground - weeks 317/318
Just Us Girls - Teal, Mustard and Orange

Lacy layers

Before I start, just a note to say that instead of the comments box at the bottom of this post, you *should* see the words "Post a comment" and clicking on it will open up a pop up box for your comment. This is to try to get round the issue of having to click scores of times or wait about 45 seconds for a comment to go through, which seems to be affecting most Blogger blogs at the moment. Those with a pop up box appear to be unaffected by it, so I'm giving it a try, fingers crossed that it helps to speed things up for you when you visit. Don't worry about the "I'm not a robot" thingy, just ignore it and your comment will go through anyway!

Now, on to the card.


The white layers are made using a Spellbinders die set. I saved the waste and used some of it for the corners. I love this die set but it's a right pain to get the cut out of the die - I killed my Tool'n'One getting this one out and will be picking bristles out of the carpet for weeks. All the usual tricks for helping to make dies easy to release seem to hit a brick wall when faced with this particular die, which is why you don't see it on here as often as it deserves to be.

The butterfly is an Indigo Blu stamp that was part of a cover gift set on a magazine 2-3 years ago.

I am sharing this with

Allsorts Challenge - Butterflies (and where I also picked up the tip about the comments box)
Retro Rubber - White out 

RRCB 78

Winter in the Mountains at CD Sundays

It's time for our latest challenge at CD Sundays and Margaret has chosen "Winter in the Mountains".

 
I've used an image and paper from Joanna Sheen's wonderful triple CD, Vintage Christmas Cards, but by omitting the sentiment I've made a card that isn't specifically Christmassy - I have a lot of winter birthdays in the family and this would be perfect for a winter birthday.
 
There was plenty left over on the image and paper sheets, so I decorated the inside too.
 
 
I used the little gift tag from the image sheet as a tiny "inner card" where the sender can write their chosen greeting.

I am sharing this with
Craft Rocket Challenge - Winter

Saturday 20 January 2018

Getting Sentimental

Over at Shopping Our Stash this week they want to see the sentiment as the main feature on our cards.

I was, however, in the mood for stamping and colouring some flowers - so I made them into a background.


The flower stamp is a very old one (about 20 years) from Raindrops on Roses, which I stamped randomly in Memento ink over a larger piece of white card then used a stitched square die to cut out the square. Doing it this way round ensured I could stamp over the edges without the "stitchy bits" making the stamp miss bits.

Next I stamped the "Just for you" sentiment from Stampin Up using black Versafine ink and heat embossed with black powder. Then I coloured the flowers with Promarkers, mounted it on the base card and added the second part of the sentiment on a white strip cut into a banner.

Friday 19 January 2018

The Stag's Head

.. sounds like a pub name, so if you've dropped in expecting to read about a trip to a pub, I'm sorry to disappoint!


I was inspired to make this by the photo inspiration which is this week's challenge at Addicted to Stamps and More  


You can probably see that I was inspired by the black, white and gold colour scheme, the stags' heads and the spots and stripes.

The background is made using a Uniko stencil that I won before Christmas but hadn't used yet, on black card with Imagination Crafts Sparkle Medium. The stag topper is cut with a die I've had for years, part of an X-cut Build-a-Scene set. I positioned it in the centre of the bigger square and it didn't quite look "pulled together". Two stripes of spotty washi tape put that right!

I am also sharing this with

Uniko Studio challenge - Something old, something new 
Crafty Gals Corner - Anything Goes
Watercooler Wednesday - Masculine Anything Goes
 

Another Iris Folded Ballgown

I've had a bit of a break from Iris folding but the kits are almost finished now and I'm determined to use them up as part of my "spring clean".
 

I kept to purples and pinks for this one and the papers are all embedded with tiny silver sparkly specks rather than full-on glitter,  giving a pearlescent look, an effect I have emphasised by embellishing with pearls around  the waistline and hem. I have finished it with peel offs from the same prehistoric set I used on the reindeer card a few days ago - I have a feeling that could be the next set of old goodies I work on trying to use up.

I an sharing this with
Cardz 4 Galz - Anything but square
Fab n Funky - Girly  

Thursday 18 January 2018

The first of the year

... Valentine, that is. I'm not a big fan of Valentines cards, I don't think I have a romantic bone in my body, but people want them so I make them.


This very CAS one uses a background made with a Santoro embossing folder, two different washi tapes, a pair of hearts cut with a Gummiapan die and a sentiment cut with a die a friend sent me from America - it has no brand name on it and is a flat sheet that cuts all manner of useful words at once - you can cut them all and save the spares for when you need then or do what I did today and tape a snippet of card over just the word you want.

I am sharing this with

Cuttlebugmania - Valentines Day
Use Your Stuff - Monochromatic  
CAS on Friday - Love 
C.R.A.F.T. - Love/Valentines

Wednesday 17 January 2018

X is for......

I'm delighted to have been invited to be this fortnight's guest designer at The Butterfly Challenge and the first task Mrs A gave me was to pick the letter for the theme. I was very brave and chose X, which stands for Xtra Fold so this time's challenge is

#93 Butterflies + X is for Xtra  Fold and/or the colour Zomp

Now please don't do what I did and google the word Zomp, if you do a search, do an image search, because after what I found in a text search I had to scrub my eyeballs and wash my computer out with soap! However despite that, Zomp is apparently a beautiful blue green colour, somewhere between jade green and turquoise, reminiscent of the colours in a peacock's tail.

So Mrs A would like to see a card with more than one fold, OR a card using this lovely colour, OR (for extra brownie points and a chance of a bonus prize) BOTH. And of course there must a butterfly on it somewhere.

Here's my card, a zig zag fold that uses rather a lot of Zomp as well.



The panels are covered in card from a lovely Hunkydory kit and the extra butterflies die cut from snippets using a Dovecraft layering butterfly die set.

Now I'd love to see what you can make for the challenge - I'm looking forward to visiting you all when you link up to The Butterfly Challenge - see you there!

 .

Post script - I see Mrs A has changed the name of the colour to Blue/Green now - it's the same colour though and I'm leaving the chatter about zomp in my post to give you a giggle!

Tuesday 16 January 2018

Romantic music

There's a very beautiful inspiration photo at Inkspirational Challenges this time


I've taken the violin as my main inspiration, and also gone with the lace and pearls, roses and overall romantic feel of the image.


The violin is a very old unmounted stamp from my stash - it must be around 20 years old and I think was originally from a grab bag bought from the American company Raindrops on Roses (I don't know whether they are still around). After stamping and cutting out, I covered it with Glossy Accents.
The stamped music background uses a Kanban stamp and the embossed one a Darice folder. I've added ribbon, lace, pearls, resin roses and die cut leaves to make a card oozing with springtime romance.

I'm sharing this with
Inkspirational  - photo challenge
A bit more time to craft - anything goes

January Blues at Cardz 4 Guyz

Time for our first challenge of the year at Cardz 4 Guyz and our theme is January Blues

I printed off papers and a design sheet from Debbie Moore's CD Cards for Men - Silhouettes to make my card.



Monday 15 January 2018

Deer Deer Deer

Today's card uses the Lili of the Valley Reindeer Trio stamp set - one I don't use often enough!


I coloured them in with Promarkers and cut them out slightly outside the stamped area. Red and brown matting on a cream DL card, and a sentiment stamped with a Studio G mini stamp. The border is from a set of peel offs I bought some time round about the invention of the wheel.

I am sharing this with
52 Christmas Card Throwdown - Brown, Red and Cream 
C.R.A.F.T - Christmas
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Feature a Creature
Jingle Belles - We THREE Kings
The Holly and Ivy - anything Christmas goes   

Saturday 13 January 2018

Feathers for Twofers

In case you haven't heard, in which case you must have spent the last few weeks hiding under a mountain of mince pies (have you finished them all yet?) there's a brand new challenge in the blogosphere - Twofers, the brainchild of the lovely and talented Darnell.

The idea is to make two different cards, for different occasions, using the same stamp or die, and the theme for the very first challenge is FEATHERS.


Here is my pair of cards, using a beautifully opulent feather stamp which was designed some years ago by Linda Luckin - I'm afraid it is no longer available. I've used it to make two very, very different cards,  but as you can see I chose to emphasise the twoferliciousness by using the same layout for both.

So, I'm linking this first image up to Twofers - now for a closer look at the individual cards and the challenges I am linking them to.

First of all, the left hand, inky card.


This started off as something of an experiment -  I sometimes stamp an image in Versamark ink and then brush mica powders over it. I wondered if I could get a more two tone effect by substituting the Versamark for a coloured Versafine ink, so that's what I tried. I used a blue ink and a green powder - the result was very much NOT what I'd expected or hoped for but I rather liked it, so hastily planned a completely different card from the one that I'd had in mind.

Going back to the Versamark ink, I stamped the feather randomly over white card for the background, embossing with clear powder, then sponged purple, blue and olive green inks all over the card and buffed with a tissue to give a resist effect. The sentiment (a magazine freebie) is stamped in olive green although it looks black on the photo, and all the elements edged with purple.

I chose the "Congratulations" sentiment because I was thinking of the phrase "That's a feather in your cap!". In fact if I can find a suitable font I might print out an insert saying exactly that.

I am sharing this with
Rubber Dance - Purple, Blue and Olive green
Allsorts - No Patterned Paper

Now onto the second card


I always think feathers look lovely on sympathy cards, as do CAS styles and shades of purple, and today I decided to use the words "Thinking of you" rather than "With deepest sympathy" simply because I only have one deepest sympathy card and I wanted a change. The stamp is a very old HOTP one and I stamped it directly onto the card. I'm so much braver about doing that now I have a Misti!

I stamped the feather in deep purple and coloured it with pencils (all the bits of this card that look black are actually deep purple)  then layered it on to two shades of purple from my snippets box and added it to the card.

I am sharing this one with
Addicted to stamps and more - Clean and simple
Pixie's Snippets Playground weeks 315/316
Less is More - Purples
Watercooler Wednesday - All About Occasions
  

Technique at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers

Today at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers it's all about technique - Edna would like you to showcase a favourite technique.



One technique I came to not all that long ago is using bleach  in my cardmaking, and I have a fab NBUS set of Rubber Dance stamps where the main image just cries out to be bleached, so here is what I created.


The bathing beauty is stamped and heat embossed in black on blue card, and then painted in with a waterbrush filled with cheap bleach -  it has to be the really cheap, thin type, not the more common (and more expensive) thick kind. I outlined her and added a few waves to the sea with a blue gel pen slightly darker than the card.

For the background I spritzed more of the blue card with bleach, shaking a few bigger drops on from  paintbrush to give a splashy effect,  then when it was dry, overstamped with the life saver image. Now, is life saver a bit of a controversial word? Do my transatlantic friends use the word to describe a PERSON who saves lives, who I would call a lifeguard, rather than a THING? I can see a discussion starting to form in my head...

Anyway, back to the card - the sentiment and poster images are also from the same stamped set.

I am sharing this with
Use Your Stuff - Something new (the stamp set)
Crafty Creations Challenges - Anything Goes
Rubber Dance Forever Challenge
Sweet Stampin - Lots of Layers  

Monday 8 January 2018

Rhapsody in Blue

I was so pleased with this card that I just had to make another masked-border card straight away!


This time I inked the border with a pale blue ink and stamped musical symbols (from a Kanban set) with a darker blue. To keep the card CAS, all I added to the central white space was a die cut music score cut with the Memory Box Music Party die, one of my most often-used dies. I kept the centres of all the "open" notes in place with a dab of glue, again to keep it as CAS as possible. In real life, the die cut is a much brighter blue than it looks, a pretty close match to the darker blue stamping.

I am sharing this with

Addicted to CAS - Music 
Dies R Us - Anything goes (using a brand of die they stock)
Make My Monday - Blue and white

Iris folded ball gown

Yes, it's iris folding time again! Today I've used a ball gown kit.


The card blank and the sparkly iris folding papers are very, very old stash but this time I've brought it right up to the minute by adding elements I got at Christmas time from Dovecraft's new Couture du Jour range. I'd packed my craft stuff away for the festive period when they arrived so this is the first time I've played with them.

The pleated hearts come as ready made stickers, and the spotty and stripey papers from the 6x6 pad. The shoe and flower embellishments, all gloriously sparkly to go with the sparkle of the gown, are actually from one of the designs in the decoupage pad. I reckon the designs have so many layers that nobody's going to notice if one or two of them get "repurposed".

I'm sharing this with Allsorts challenge - Something new

Is it Christmas already?

.. because I'm already well into making cards for Christmas 2018!


For this card I have used a very old unmounted rubber stamp that I think was designed by Trish Bayley, probably about 20 years ago. I stamped and embossed it in silver. (What a palaver that was - I forgot to swipe the card with my anti static pad and got powder everywhere, tried to clean it off with a soft brush but the brush slipped and took some of  the powder off the design so I had to add more powder and got even MORE on the card. Repeated this three times then finally decided to heat emboss it anyway hoping the stray powder would look like snowflakes. It didn't, it looked a mess, so I had to start again).

The background is embossed using a folder that was free with Quick Cards Made Easy a couple of years ago and the poinsettia is also cut with a magazine freebie die. The leaves are actually holly leaves cut with a Sizzix die because I don't have a poinsettia leaf die.

I am sharing this with
52 Christmas Card Throwdown - sketch

Cuttlebugmnania - Flowers
Sweet Stampin - Winter White

Sunday 7 January 2018

Cling film..... I tried!

So.... cling film. That's the compulsory element at CAS Mix Up this month. I watched the videos, took notes, followed the instructions step by step - and you can't tell, without a magnifying glass, that I had cling film anywhere near this!


I laid the cling film out on my work surface, shook small amounts of brushos in greens, yellow and orange over it,  spritzed with water, laid my card down on top of it, turned the card over, scrunched the cling film around a bit then left it to dry with the cling film still in place, peeling it off once dry.

If you look really, really closely you can see a few "scrunch lines" close to the left hand edge of the panel. On the other hand, the cling film did seem to help the brushos to blend prettily and give a "cloudy" effect rather than a "blotchy" one (which is what I usually end up with) so it DID make a difference, even if it wasn't the one I was hoping for!

To make up for the lack of crease lines and patterns, I stamped and heat embossed a vine leaf panel over my background. The stamp is a very old UM that I got in a grab bag. I coloured the leaves in with a green marker then added a die cut sentiment, cutting it twice, once from black and the second from white, to add a slight shadow to help it to stand out.

I am sharing this with
CAS Mix Up - Cling film (plus optional elements die cutting and heat embossing)
CAS Watercolour - Birthday 
Shopping our Stash - Watercolour

Shocking Pink!

I don't use a lot of pink, but the current Butterfly challenge is One Layer or Ultra Pink so I had a look through my inkpads and decided that Picked Raspberry Distress Ink is about as Ultra as a pink can get!


This card is just one layer although it looks like several - I used masking to create the effect.

First I cut a piece of card 1cm smaller all round than the blank, to use as a mask, and masked off the centre. Then I sponged the pink ink all around it and stamped with a selection of tiny butterflies (from a set I won in the Butterfly Challenge last year. When I removed the mask, I used a fine marker to add a black edge to the inside of the frame.

Next I used scrap paper to mask off all but a rectangle in the centre of the card, and filled it in with sponged pink and grey inks. Once I'd removed all the masking, I used stamps from two old Kanban sets to add the flower silhouettes and butterfly.

I am sharing this with

Butterfly Challenge - One Layer and the colour Ultra Pink 
Country View Challenge - Anything Goes
Mix it Up - Anything Goes & Masking
Inkspirational - Stamping Only

J is for.... at CD Sundays

It's our first challenge of 2018 at CD Sundays starting today, and our theme is J is for..... 

Well, of course J is for January, but what else does it stand for?

 
 
J is for JAGUAR. I had to do a bit of research to find out the difference between a jaguar and a leopard to make sure I got the right one, and apparently jaguars are indigenous to the South American continent and as this handsome beast from Pollyanna Pickering's CD "A Walk in the Wild" is surrounded by Mayan carvings, I knew I had the right cat.

The images and papers are all from the CD and there were enough to decorate the inside as well as the outside.

I am sharing this with
The Alphabet Challenge - use 3 of something (3 leaves, 3 pieces of Candi)
Just Us Girls - Anything Goes