I used Concord & 9th cardstock for the red and green leaves on the poinsettia, curled or bent the leaves a little for added dimension, before sticking them together.
The stitched backdrop is from Lawn Fawn, with some gold and Kraft striped paper at the top and bottom edges.
The die cut sentiment is from Altenew, layered a few times.
That’s it – fairly straight-forward – and it came together quite easily, I must say.
I hope you can come and join us with your Christmas creations – they can be anything Christmas, and not just cards. I look forward to seeing you there. xx
Hello. It’s been a few days since my last post, but work and loss of upstairs heating – where my craft room is – has interfered a little. The heating was fixed yesterday, so I was able to go and craft to create this little Panda snow scene:
I can tell Royal Mail is struggling with deliveries again, as I usually receive items from Seven Hills Crafts within 2 days of ordering – but it has taken almost a week……….now I have them, the heating was fixed – so off I went.
I stamped the Panda images with Gina K Amalgam ink, and coloured with Copics to match the colours from the current Color Throwdown Challenges.
The background hillsides are from Lawn Fawn – stamped, coloured, then die cut to create a couple of snowy hillsides.
The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted, and the cream card for the top area is a textured cream card, so I didn’t feel the need to add anything to that area.
I added some glitter to the hills and trees, and some stickles to the pom-poms on the hats. You can blame Jenn Shurkus for that! I did the virtual craft retreat last weekend – two full days of craftiness. So even though my kit hadn’t arrived to participate – I still watched all weekend and did some other crafty stuff – but the take-away message from that weekend?
Glitter!
Use glitter – everywhere (and it certainly gets everywhere) so until I manage to watch the replay and go through the kit now it’s arrived – I’m glittering, and using glittery stuff……..
Hi there. Another challenge has started at Cardz 4 Galz and it’s my time to host. I chose the theme of ‘Cute Christmas’. Here is my card:
I chose a couple of stamp sets from Clearly Besotted and a little masking of the dog to get him curled up in front of the fire. The mantlepiece snow-globe and snowman were also added from the scene stamp set.
Once stamped, coloured with Copics, and using a stitched rectangle to cut the panel out.
I think the two background papers are also from Clearly Besotted, usually as part of their release bundle – and they matched the colours I used to colour – not planned at all!
There are some really cute Christmas cards from the Design Team, and I hope you will check them out – and come and join us. I look forward to seeing what your Cute Christmas creations will be. xx
I received this stamp and die set from Simon Says Stamp, and had a little play this morning:
To say this card looks very CAS – it took me ages – again!
The first hurdle was when I stamped the beard – I managed to get ink in the middle of the beard from using a large ink pad on the large stamp – so I stamped again with an ink cube – much better. Otherwise, I would probably have gone and cut out the middle of this stamp – which I hate doing.
Then I coloured the beard in aqua Copics – didn’t look right – though I have saved it just in case……..so I stamped the beard again – the third time now – and decided it looked good with no colouring.
The hat was stamped and coloured with Copics – two red tones only – it’s quite a large area to cover, and I decided just two shades would work alright.
I then stamped and heat embossed the glasses in silver – again – it didn’t look right. So I stamped and heat embossed with black – blinking heck it still didn’t look right.
Finally – stamped in black – that’s it – plain black ink. Now I liked it…….
I tried the aqua background – Concord & 9th Oceanside card stock – actually liked the look of that. I toyed with stencilling some stars, dry embossing it – but decided it looked just fine as it was……one thing went right straight away, anyway!
The word ‘Ho’ stamped three times at an angle to inject more frivolity – and heat embossed with silver. Then I went hunting for some silver sequins, and also found some aqua sequins – so I added both colours as you see.
As this card base is 5 x 7 inches – one of my favourites when not doing slimline cards – I spread out my Santa a little to cover……now he looks like an egg-head……..but I’m calling the whole card fun. I might even make some more………….now I know what I like!
So – trials and tribulations of a morning crafting. I shall be entering the following challenges:
Hello once again. There is a new challenge at The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge, and as I’ve got quite a Christmas card stash going on from creating all year, I turned my thoughts to tags. As the challenge is anything goes Christmas – I created these penguin tags:
I was inspired to make these penguin tags after watching a YouTube video from Jamie Magrich and seeing what she did with the Stampin Up ‘Menagerie Mix-up‘ stamp and die set. I had a lot of fun making these little penguins.
I wanted to create a little scene behind them, so I stamped and die cut the Lawn Fawn ‘Over The Mountain’ scene – not colouring them in as I wanted the penguins to stand out.
I don’t make many tags, and struggle with such tiny projects – but I am having a go this year – seeing as how we can’t go out and do anything – I have more crafty time to experiment.
I added a variety of shabby ribbons from my stash – I have a lot of different colours of these shabby ribbons – loving the creases and colours in them, and some patterned paper from Clearly Besotted to mimic snow……I know it’s red – but artistic license at play here!
I hope you can come and join us with your ‘anything goes Christmas’ makes. I look forward to seeing you in our gallery.
Hello. I have a CAS card to share today, veering away from the Christmas card making for a short while:
Having received a delivery from Simon Says Stamp, I wanted to use the die sets quite quickly – but time over took me. So today, I had time to play.
The Etched Laurel Leaves were die cut from Concord & 9th card stock – loving the detail on these leaves – using colours which matched the current challenge at Color Hues.
The sentiment is from a Uniko stamp set – heat embossed using a Brutus Monroe white embossing powder – and die cut using MFT stitched rectangle dies.
Even though CAS – it took me a while to decide on placement on each element – as per usual – and gluing only part of the leaves down, not all of them, to create some flow and movement.
Hello. I have been playing with my new stamps from Clearly Besotted – their November release. I just don’t know how they come up with such cute images/stamps time and time again. I can never resist…..here is my card:
Once I had stamped the images I wanted to use, and as Clearly Besotted don’t have matching dies for their stamps, I used my Scan’n’cut. I don’t use this machine often enough, and to cut out images I have already coloured is something I am scared of……..
I watched quite a few YouTube videos to get some hints and tips, and the most informative and helpful was from ‘Papered Chef’ – she has loads and loads of videos which certainly helped me sort out how to do this, add a little outline to each image – and a pencil to ‘close-in’ the images, and draw around some of the tiny pieces – like the balloon strings.
I am so pleased it all worked out – but I did cut them first and colour them afterwards- just in case…………..which ended up being quite fiddly – but I coped! :)
I even cut the two matted layers with it too – getting the sizes one slightly smaller than the other to make the size I wanted – and even rounded corners!
This has certainly given me the confidence to use this machine more for images without matching dies – and may even save me a small fortune!
I was going to doodle in the balloon string to attach all the little animals, but I embossed the top piece of card first so I searched for the red glittery twine I knew I had somewhere – and trailed it around each of the animals as you see.
Some glitter pen to the balloons, some white gel pen to the images – then stamped the ‘Ho Ho Ho’.
Hello everyone. The Alphabet Challenge is celebrating 10 years of challenges – 10 years!!!!! I’m a veritable new-comer to this challenge – only being around on the DT since August 2019 – but I’m certainly in the mood for celebrating.
As we have reached the letter ‘P’, we want to see your ‘Party’ themed creations. Here is my card:
I seem to be stuck in the slim line, die-cutting, Copic colouring, scene creating genre – but I do like creating these types of cards. There is so much room to play with.
Using MFT ‘It’s A Mice Time’ stamps and matching dies, coloured in Copics – I knew I wanted to use ALL the images from this set – I then turned to creating the scene. I used a lot of die-sets from Mama Elephant and Lawn Fawn – and it took me quite a while to figure things out – but here we have it.
I am quite pleased with the end product – a joyful celebration to be had.
Hopefully, at some time in the near future we can all celebrate together – fingers crossed!
Come along and celebrate with us – there’s a lot of party themed creations from the Design team – I look forward to seeing what you create in our gallery. xx
Hello. A new challenge is starting at Cardz 4 Galz, and this time we want to see your girlie makes using silver and/or gold. Here is my card:
I knew I wanted to use both gold and silver and was trying to decide how to do that. Until I did, I stamped and die-cut the roses and leaves from Altenew ‘Antique Roses‘. The roses using four blue layers, but for the leaves, I stamped the base layer in a brown, then I heat embossed the second layer using gold embossing powder. I didn’t do the third layer on the leaves.
I went hunting for some different leaves, and used some from Altenew ‘Budding Thanks‘ – again using a brown base layer and heat embossing the second layer.
I still didn’t know how I was going to incorporate silver – until me eyes fell into my ‘newbi’ basket, (bought not used or catalogued yet) and I saw the Pink Fresh Studio ‘Slim Diagonal Stripes die’. Although it is sized for the slimline card – I cut it down to create the middle section you see here – and used a matt silver instead of a shiny silver card stock.
I went searching though my Color My Life app for the word ‘gorgeous’ as I wanted a striking sentiment to match the quite dramatic card, and decided to use this sentiment from Catherine Pooler – in my stash – and thankfully catalogued into the app – so heat embossed in the same gold as the leaves.
I hope you can come and join us for this challenge – I foresee a lot of shiny Christmas cards in the making – I hope to see you there. xx
Hello there. I am hosting the new challenge at ABC Christmas Challenge for the letters ‘W’ and ‘X’. The theme chosen for these letters are ‘Winter Wonderland’ and ‘Xtra Special’.
I have a prize on offer for the winner – chosen by a random generator – so every entry has a chance to win:
Thirsty Brush and Co – stamp and die set – Home For Christmas
You can enter as many times as you like – as long as you follow the winter/Christmas holidays or festivals – and you have followed the theme for the current letters.
Here are my cards:
Winter WonderlandXtra Special
Both of these cards are a combination of ink-blending, die-cutting and adding glittery stuff, with the second card also including some Copic colouring.
The Winter Wonderland card is utilising the new die set from Tim Holtz – Colorize Holiday Village – but changing the colour of my village to two shades of red instead of brown – I wanted a brighter look to the card. I did have to watch YouTube to figure out what to glue where – and in what order!
I added some mountains behind the village and an ink blended sky – which actually came about quite by mistake……. I did the ink blending, then used a Lawn Fawn stencil and some glitter paste to try and create some stars – but when I took the stencil up it moved and scraped along the sky. I tried to take the glitter paste up with a spatula – but it just swept the glitter across the sky………my idea of a happy accident. A very glittery sky now, with the distress inks showing some of the stars anyway. Oh yeah!
The Xtra Special card was also ink blending, but with Distress Oxides – two red colours and Wilted Violet along the edges to darken them. I liked the look of the violet so much, I used that as the main colour for my characters. Purple penguin and bird anyone!
I decided to add some white acrylic splatter to the background, and then also added some white gel pen into the areas which I thought looked a little open.
There is some glitter and sparkle on this card too – once I have the stuff out then I’m gonna use ’em! Nuvo drops on all the itsy bitsy tiny tree lights, sparkle pen on the other baubles and the snow on the lodge – oh, and the pompoms on the hats too.
I hope you can come and join us – it’s getting closer to the time when we have to think about what Christmas cards we have and also think about sending them cards out…….I look forward to seeing you in our gallery. xx
loopyloocards 