Good morning to you all it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and I also have my mid month card for Penny Black and More, fortunately I had schedules my Allsorts post but didn't quite get round to doing my Penny Black one for yesterday By way of explanation of missing that post and also my lapse in visiting your blogs this week, I am knee deep in Tattered Lace samples for CHA in Anaheim early next month and my time seems to be evaporating. Scarily Christmas is just days away and then health permitting I will need to get myself organised to take off to the show as I am very lucky to be able to attend this year. I am the host at Allsorts this week and would like to see 'Anything but Christmas'....................sorry if that's a bit Bah Humbug but I thought as we have all been making Christmas cards for what seems like forever, we were perhaps ready to move on to something different. This challenge will run for two weeks to allow everyone to have a bit of a break and for those that celebrate Christmas to enjoy the festive season. As it's a two week challenge we have four lovely sponsors to help us celebrate.........Stamp Addicts, Deedee's Digis, Whimsy Stamps and DigiStamp Boutique. So I have a canvas to share which is one I made recently for Stamp Addicts for one of their Hochanda TV shows. I started by giving the canvas a coat of gesso, although it was already primed I like to give them a bit more for the pains to bite into. I made a mask from Tattered Lace Byzantine Lattice die, fixed it to the right hand side of the canvas and spread pearl texture paste through the mask. Once dry I did some stamping using Stamp Addicts Grunge Flowers using acrylic paint instead of ink and also some small harlequins using another mask and gold texture paste. While it all dried I stamped and embossed with gold detail powder Stamp Addicts Roman Clock and cut out the centre and outer edges. I then cut Tattered Lace Charisma Ivy several times and covered with gold acrylic pain, pouncing the top to give a textured finish. Finally I assembled the whole piece, added some flowers and two dragonflies and rubbed gold gilding wax round the edges of the canvas. And above my Penny Black and More creation using Penny Black Awakening, inked with distress markers and stamped onto an inky background on which I used a variety of stamps and second and third generation stamping to achieve a faded effect. Happy weekend all and I really hope you can find time to join in our challenge this time round and promise I will be round visiting as soon as my last box of samples is on it's way to TL Towers.