Flights of fancy and some playtime

This week's Challenge at the Secret Crafter is to make something with "anything with wings". I had some free time yesterday and booked a class at Made by You in Swindon at the last minute. The class was using Nestabilities, which of course I have and use. However Pat who runs the shop is very flexible and I ended up playing and making some lovely backgrounds. I did make this card using the Nesties and the papers which Pat had for us. I think the butterfly is a Creative Expression stamp. I've gold embossed the butterfly onto white card and painted him with Cosmic Shimmers powders, mixed into a paint. All papers, ribbons etc. from Made by You. I think the colours work really well together and this is my card for Flights of Fancy.

Pat demoed using Cosmic Shimmer powders onto Versamark inked images so I had a play with this lovely ivy stamp. I added the gold embossed flowers as there was a small patch that hadn't inked up, which was difficult to see on the black card. Then disaster struck and I sprayed some Cosmic Shimmer Mist and caught the corner of this one. What to do? OK I sprayed some more with the idea that it then looked intentional :). Matted onto gold card and waiting a Christmas sentiment.
Then I made this beautiful background from Cosmic Shimmer paints, with a little Distress Ink added and spritzed with water till I liked the effect. I used a scroll stamp and repeatedly white embossed it around the edges. Again this will be a Christmas card background of some kind, seems almost too pretty to add to! The scroll is from a Creative Expressions set that Pat said she sells lots of. At under a fiver I can see why and of course I also succumbed :)
The final picture is of experiments with another set of stamps that I picked up there yesterday. This time they are a Christmas set from a new to me Belgian company called Artemio. There are Christmas trees, holly, snowflakes, pine cones, stars and beautiful stylised script. These look like being my main Christmas card set - just lovely. The clear stamps take Versafine perfectly but are repellent of some of my other inks, so I've been washing them and rubbing them with an eraser to bring them into line. I want to play some more with these, I think they are just perfect