Happy New Year - Banish the Blues

Hello Dear Bloggers, may I wish you all a Very Happy New Year - may 2014 bring us all Good Health, Happiness and Prosperity.

I'd like to apologise to my regular visitors as I haven't posted anything new on here since Christmas Day.  Unfortunately, I managed to catch some evil cold bugs which made me feel quite ill for a few days.  I'm recovering now, but the evil bugs have now attacked 'The Hubbs' although they have developed from a cold into 'Man Flu' - as you would expect LOL  - and he has 'taken to his bed' !  Guess I'll need to be wearing my Nursie hat for a couple of days then Ha Ha !

Anyway, I do hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year celebration, wherever you were and whoever you were with.

I guess that life will now return to 'normal' and as a first step in the direction of normality, today sees a new challenge starting over on the Cute Card Thursday Blog.  This week our theme is 'Banish the Blues' and our prize sponsor is Bunny Zoe Crafts.

Here's my DT card for this week's challenge

January can see a bit of a 'lull' for some people and after all the frantic effort preparing for Christmas and celebrating a new year arriving, energies and spirits can take a dive when 'real life' kicks back in again.   Nice bright colours and using new stamps can help to 'Banish The Blues' for me so it was fun to get back to crafting and create my DT card for this week's challenge. 

I received the fabulous 'Urban Beats' set of stamps by Creative Expressions from a lovely crafting pal as a Christmas gift.  They will be perfect for creating cards for men, and especially teenage boys - thanks so much Kathy, I know you'll be seeing these beauties quite often in the future! 

I created my design as a birthday card for a pal, it's his birthday on 10 January and he's a real music lover, so this design is just perfect for him. 

Firstly I used a tag-shaped mask and Distress Inks in squeezed lemonade; mustard seed and festive berries - applied through the mask onto the base card using Inkyliscious brushes.  I then used Archival Black ink to stamp the images over the DI background.  I stamped the record image five times along the bottom of the card, again using the Archival ink.

The cassette image was stamped on to a scrap of card coloured with DIs, cut out and layered onto a scrap of black card, to create an embellishment, before attaching to the base card.   I used the Happy Birthday sentiment from the same stamp set, stamping at the top of the tag shape, with the Archival ink.

Finally, using a clear Wink of Stella Pen, I added some twinkle and sparkle over the sentiment, records and parts of the stamped design.  It's such a pity that the effect isn't easy to capture in a photograph, particularly with the really bad light as it's been very dull and dismal here in Cornwall for days. 

Thanks for visiting and checking out today's project - I love to see how many visitors my posts receive and it's fantastic to read comments.  If you have the time do please leave me a short comment just so I know you've stopped by !