Hello lovely peeps, I hope you all had a good Christmas.
So it turns out that I haven't shown you all my Christmas cards - I posted this one without taking a photo of the finished card, so I had to wait until I visited my Mum :D
For today's card I've built a wreath with the Berry Branches stamps from Inkylicious.
I wanted a slightly softer look so I spritzed the stamp after inking for a watercolour effect and used first and second generation stamping. After mucking up a couple of attempts doing it freehand I got out my stamping platform so I could overstamp if the image wasn't clear enough. The 'Merry Christmas' is also from Inkylicious.
Some of the bits for this project have been sitting in a cello bag for the last 4 years, lol. The background is one of Leonie Pujol's stamps (Flights of Fancy), clear embossed on white card and then inked over with distress inks.
I also clear embossed one of the leaves that I die-cut from snippets of green patterned paper.
The little orange butterflies were cut from a tiny scrap of textured card using Impression Obsession dies - it shifted slightly as it went through my machine so the corner of one butterfly was missing but as I didn't have enough card to do another one I tucked it underneath one of the leaves to disguise it.
Other ingredients:
American Crafts ribbon
sentiment stamp from Personal Impressions.
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I've had a bit of fun with the Merry Moose dies by Tim Holtz for this Christmas card by adding a customised sentiment with Hobby Art Alphabet stamps (I do love a pun).
He's cut from brown core-dinations card which I then sanded to reveal the white core.
The trees were cut from dark green card with a Marianne die and then I stippled white paint onto them to make them look snowy.
The card base is a z-fold that I made from dark green card and some decorative paper (the 'Frozen Snowflakes' paper at the bottom is from Lili of the Valley and the main paper is a positively ancient 12x12" design from my stash (papermania?)
For extra dimension I attached a strip of acetate inside the centre of the card with red sticky tape so that one of the tress appears to 'float'.
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Just popping in to show you the card I made for my Mum's birthday.
I covered an A5 landscape card blank with a paper from the Rose Garden paper pack (First Edition) and then cut lots of foliage from Falling Leaves papers (again, First Edition).
After a bit of judicious snipping I arranged the various sprigs to spell Mum and attached them to a strip of vellum with dabs of Cosmic Shimmer glue. This was then attached to the card by only adding glue where it was hidden by the lettering.
For finishing touches I added some knotted organza ribbon, a computer sentiment and tiny flowers made with Tim Holtz tattered florals thinlits and little gems.
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Whilst I was looking for a teenage image to do my Goddaughter's 18th birthday card I came across this set of digital image freebies courtesy of Making Cards & Papercraft magazine.
I chose the top left image so that I could colour most of it in myself. On printing it out I discovered that what I'd thought was a phone in her hand was actually a coffee cup. Since I'd already done a coffee theme card for her 16th I decided to digitally erase a couple of lines and print it out again. It needed a little touching up with a fineliner pen to give the 'phone' a solid outline and I also drew in a camera lens.
After die-cutting the image into a circle and then marking with a pencil roughly where it would go on my card, I stamped on some flowers in Brilliance/Versamagic inks to match the ones in her hair.
I coloured the rest of the image with Copic markers and then added a computer generated sentiment and die-cut the '18' from black card. The red organza ribbon adds a touch of luxury.
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As You Like It Challenge Favourite his or hers - I definitely prefer making female cards, so much easier than men's cards as you can add pretty much anything :D
So I've made a start on my Christmas cards at last :D
After being inspired by the wonderful watercolour backgrounds created by Tracey Hey at Alpaca Pals I wanted to have a go myself. My Gansai Tambi paints are out on loan so I treated myself to a watercolour travel set.
There is a nice range of colours but with hindsight I should have gone for larger paint pans because you can't use a large paintbrush without picking up neighbouring colours, which is a bit of a pain if you want large areas of colour.
My first attempt looked really blocky because I painted onto dry watercolour paper. For my second go I wet the paper first, so the colours blend together much better.
Ingredients:-
Snow Buddies rubber stamp (Lili of the Valley)
Black Versafine ink
Large Christmas Greetings (Lili of the Valley)
Wishes die (Impression Obsession)
Stitched Landscapes die (Memory Box)
Iced Spruce Distress Ink
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My craft room has been in a right mess for the last year and I keep trying to tidy it up - but then get distracted by finding something I'd forgotten I had, lol. This time it was some spellbinder flower dies that I'd never used, so I thought I'd have a little play.
After cutting one out of watercolour card I painted it with distress ink dabbed onto my craft mat.
I used the swirly end of the thank you die as 'ribbon' to give the impression of tying the stems together.
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I only have 2 Lawn Fawn stamp sets (😢) so it's not often that I'm able to follow the theme of their challenge. This time it is a sketch though - yippee! - so I've had a go.
The sentiment in the 'Otterly Great' stamp set is over two lines, so to get it to match the sketch I had to do a bit of masking to get it all along one line - I ended up using my stamping platform after a couple of failed attempts to do it freehand.
I delved into my bag of paper scraps for today's card, to do a bit of paper piecing.
My youngest nephew has passed his driving test and I thought the 'Exploration' stamp set designed by Stacey Barras (Crafter's Companion) was ideal for his 'well done' card. The signpost is only half the height you see on my card - I stamped it straight onto the bottom half of a 5x7" card and then masked off the top of the stamped image before stamping the signpost again in the top half.
After that I stamped the signpost onto several matching scraps of paper - it doesn't matter if it's only a tiny scrap as long as it's bigger than one of the signs.
Using my stamping platform to line things up I stamped sentiments from various stamp sets onto the signs before cutting the signs out and glueing them onto the main image.
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I've got an 18th birthday card to share with you today, using 'Posh has a Present' by Stamping Bella. The papers are from a digital paper pack called 'Doodle Deux' by Prima which I got at Snap Click Supply. As they are digital papers I was able to add a personalised sentiment on my computer before printing.
A quick card today using a gorgeous Hunkydory topper. The white base layer was done with the 'Cherry Blossom' Punch Around The Page punches by Martha Stewart.
I would like to enter this in the following challenges:- Creations in pink #27 Anything Goes mainly pink
We did book folding at one of our craft club sessions a couple of years ago but I never got around to decorating the hedgehog I made (it took the whole 2 hour session just to do the folding). Since I've had lots more spare time this year I decided to get him/her out of hiding and give it a go.
I kept it simple because I wanted something next door's kids could have a go at if they were bored. The lovely black button and googly eyes came out of my stash and I made the rest from card/paper. The hat is two circles and a strip of paper, the flowers are circles cut into spirals and wound around a quilling tool, and the feet were done with black card and a flower die.
I would like to enter this in the following challenges:- As You Like It Challenge Favourite non card project and why - I love to upcycle things and this was a lot of fun to decorate.
For today's card I've stamped Gnome Pile by Stamping Bella directly onto an A6 card blank made from thick watercolour card and coloured in with Distress markers.
For the sign I used the smallest happy birthday stamp I could find in my stash and drew the sign around it with a black fineliner.
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As You Like It Challenge Favourite bright or pastel - as well as being cheerful I love the way brights really pop with a white background.
I love this time of year - leaves falling, beautiful colours, and hopefully still a bit of sunshine - so I didn't have to look far for the inspiration for my card today.
I'm taking a break from stamping at the moment so dragged some of my dies out instead. The leaves are by Craftascope and the sentiment is from a Crafters Companion advent calendar. To get the coloured card I smooshed distress inks onto my craft mat and dragged white card through before drying.
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Just popping in to show you a spinner card I made with 'Line Up' from Stampotique, coloured with Copic markers. I used IO cloud dies for the sentiment aperture and to hide the brad that allows you to spin the sentiment wheel around.
The sentiments are a mix of brands - I picked the words that fit best for size and with my theme.
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