The background is from The Graphics Fairy (thank you), there are some great images here to enjoy. I printed off the image and duplicated two more smaller ones at the bottom - spookily it looks as if there is someone looking up, and aged the edges with walnut stain Distress Inks.
I coloured the main eye image iris with stream Adirondack Ink and clear embossed over it. Not sure it shows up too well on this scan. The Gothic arch windows was a picture on the net from who knows where, who knows when now - sorry. I printed it out and cut out the insides of the frame using a craft knife. I inked the frame with scattered straw Distress Inks and printed off the words and coloured with lettuce and cranberry Adirondack Inks - the inside of the O in the word window was coloured with stream Acrylic by Ranger. 
I liked the cranberry french dots on the yellow card which were applied with Adirondack Acrylics straight from the bottle. I will certainly use this again on a different project. I liked the disco black embossing on black card on the reverse of the card (using an Anna Griffin background stamp) and I was fairly pleased with the white embossing on black card filled in with Twinkling H2O's. After a couple of failed attempts I was happy with the template I had made to produce the design.
Have you guessed what it is yet?
This was my attempt at a Russian Doll! So why was I not happy? Well, the gold embossing had sunk into the red card in places, the black embossing on the bow was a bit dodgy, I wasn't happy with the sentiment part on the reverse and the worst part was that the base black card was proving to be too flimsy with the doll parts attached so I decided to use and extra layer on the reverse and use P.V.A. glue to make sure they were sandwiched together and would not come apart. Unfortunately the two different cards must have reacted with the glue and bent at different rates and no matter what I did (I had them under about 7 editions of an encyclopedia for 5 days) they would not stay straight and I had lost the will by then to make the effort to make another!!
All in all the end result just did not feel quite right so i scrapped it.
Hope you have a successful Arty week.
This is a little card that is a mixture of traditional paper & digital (hybrid). I matted & layered a couple of different texture purple card and papers. I then created the background digitally by altering an image of an Australian stamp that had a koala bear on it and then printed it out. I scanned the original envelope that had the purple angel and air mail stamp on it and printed it out at a smaller size to use behind the main image. The main image of the stamp was printed out at a larger size & printed onto photo paper to add a bit of gloss and matted onto a piece of the shiney purple paper.
Just a quick post that I thought might be interesting. If you saw my earlier post for the Arty Girlz challenge #52 this is the same only as a totally digital image. You can see I swapped the music part around (I now remember it was a bit of 7 Gypsies paper I had left over). Sometimes it is quite easy to make a digital and a hybrid project look alike sometimes not. This was one of the easier ones.
This weeks challenge at Arty Girlz is to use clip art in your work and amazingly I found nearly all the parts in my project on the Microsoft website. As soon as I saw the ship bow an idea started to form. Please, please tell me it is a Viking ship and not something else!!
Here are the photo's of the girls trip to Santander. I could not decide which to use so I made a bit of a montage of my favourites using a template that was a freebie from Designer Digitals I think you might find it under ad or web challenge. I have added more segments to it to accommodate more pictures. Just click on them to enlarge. 
We arrived in Santander to a bit of a dull day on the Monday but it steadily improved and it could not have been hotter in southern Spain I'm sure! The coach from the ferry to the Hotel Chique was in with the price and El Sardinero beach is a real stunner, although it does shrink a little at high tide. We had a relaxing time just wandering, soaking up the atmosphere, stopping for a drink at a cafe, & long lunches - hey - we had to sit down, it was too hot to walk around all day!! One of the best was in the park on the headland. There is a cafe there and we had the best chorizo concoction ever. Do try it out if you ever get there. However the best meal of the trip for me had to be the Italian (yes Italian in Spain!) it was the most fun night which was helped along by the attentive waiter, the meal itself was pretty good too. The crossing back on the Thursday night was a bit rougher and one of the girls felt ill and had to miss the evening meal. I felt fine but you could tell it must have been rough as during the night I kept being woken up as the rocking of the ship made you feel as if you were going to fall out of bed! Honestly, I did not get my land legs back for nearly a week after we got back!!
So, I would go to Santander again it is a great beach resort. In many ways it reminded me of Torbay in Devon as it has the same backdrop of green hills behind the town. Next time it would be nice to have a car and see a bit of the country side around. Hope you enjoy the pictures. :)
I thought I would post an image of the card I made last Christmas. Seeing that I make about 80 of them I am always faced with the same challenge to make a design that
All the images are my own. I was lucky enough to go to Budapest a couple of years ago, somewhere I have had a romantic notion about for years, and it did not disappoint. It was another trip with the girls and I would recommend it to anyone. I watch TW1 in the morning before I go to work to see the mountains of Austria, which I also love, and they show Budapest as well, it's nice to dream.
This is all done digitally, I am sorry if that does not count but I could not see anything that said it can't be and as soon as I saw this idea I couldn't wait to try it out. Anyway, I usually tweak my designs digitally and then get round to trying to replicate them in the real world! The horse statue is actually on the Buda side of the Danube and the Church is on the Pest side. The stamp is from my husbands collection he has had since he was little and I digitally extracted it for this layout.
I am so new to this and this is the first time I have posted anything at Arty Girlz. Just found this blog and thought I would give it a go as there is so much to enjoy here. As I am monetary challenged I do my best with limited funds. Here is a hybrid card that uses digital designs that I have printed out. The background paper was a freebie from Scrapgirls.com, unfortunately I have lost track of where the others were from, very sorry. I printed out the Birthday wishes onto Safemat and made an insert to match. It says "Drink wine, and you will sleep well. Sleep, and you will not sin. Avoid sin, and you will be saved. Therefore, drink wine and be saved!"
I use a programme called Serif which I find excellent to work with. I am a self taught digital artist and love to dabble, the time just flies by when I am immersed in design. I will be posting more designs in the weeks to come, work permitting!! It would also be nice to pass on some tips and maybe some digital freebies in future as well.
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