Deck the halls with stencilled baubles!

Hello, crafting friends!

I'm bringing you another fun challenge from CAS Colours and Sketches today and this time we have a fabulous sketch to inspire you from our host Bhavya. It's worth mentioning that all our previous sketches and colour swatches can be found on the top bar of the challenge site - a wonderful resource. Here's this week's sketch:

I love that repeat sentiment which I decided to make do double duty as a background. For my card, I chose a small and tidy sentiment from Uniko's Background Builders Christmas and stamped it 14 times on a card panel, using a stamping platform to keep the spacing nice and regular. The panel was trimmed with my favourite stitched rectangle die from Heffy Doodle.

The ornament is from Funky Fossil's Ornamental stencil which I inked with a pale neutral ink which enabled me to layer coloured pencils over the top. Once I'd coloured the ornament, I fussy cut it and gave it a lovely shimmer with a Wink of Stella pen. Before attaching it to the panel, I stencilled a chain to hang it from and finished with a coordinating bakers twine bow.

Okay, so now it's over to you! My teamies have come up with all sorts of gorgeous interpretations of this sketch so do hop over to the CAS Colours and Sketches challenge site to admire them :) You'll also find the Linky Tool there so that you can join in with your own creation. Please remember to keep your card nice and clean and simple with plenty of clear space!

CHALLENGES

I hope I'm in time to link this card up with CAS Christmas Card Challenge where the theme is Decorations; also Happy Little Stampers Christmas Challenge where Anything Goes (with optional Winter Wonderland theme); and Jingle Belles, where the challenge is to not use any patterned paper at all on a Christmas card.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

After all this talk of festive baubles, I am glad to say the sun has decided to shine here at last and it seems summer is back on the menu|. This means that swimming is back on the menu for Eva who has taken full advantage. On the way back from the river today, I spotted a couple walking along the path towards us and immediately put Eva on lead as most people prefer to keep some distance between them and a soggy dog. Not this couple! They begged to be allowed to say hello so I let Eva off lead and watched her proudly as she sat nicely to be petted. It was then that she noticed the lady was holding a tissue in her hand and gently relieved her of it! Fortunately the couple were charmed by her naughtiness.

Here she is at home with a tissue. She is a terrible tissue thief and I am constantly finding shredded little piles of tissue around the place!

Sending hugs,

When Christmas is a challenge

Hello, crafting friends!

I have two more cards to share with you before I sink into holiday relaxation mode!

CHRISTMAS ON THE MOVE

A friend of mine moved house this month. Can you even begin to imagine how stressful that must have been at this time?! After many ups and downs, she is finally going to be spending Christmas in her new home and I felt her Christmas card should reflect the move. This is what I came up with:

I adore stamp sets that feature houses, furniture or room sets, and New Home by WPlus9 ticked some of those boxes for me! I used the plank stamp to create a clapperboard background panel which I coloured with alcohol markers. The door was stamped, 'painted' blue, fussy cut and attached to the panel.

Then came the fun bit, adding the little details. There's a wreath for the door, and some pretty topiary which I planted in these nice modern pots. The sentiment is from Uniko's Background Builders Christmas and is so useful when you need something to stretch across a landscape card!

GRIEVING AT CHRISTMAS

I had news the other day that reminded me that not everyone is looking forward to a jolly Christmas and that bright glittery cards are not always appropriate. It prompted me to make this card.

I started by masking off the edges of a thick card base, then masking off the bottom with a torn piece of scrap paper. The area that was left was sponged with grey and pink inks to create a cloudy sky, then stamped with fir trees from Stampin' Up's Waterfront and Inkylicious' Spruce Trees. The torn paper was removed and I sponged in a bit of shading to the 'snow' in the foreground.

This sentiment is from a long ago retired Stampin' Up set called White Christmas which I felt expressed what I wanted to say. I doodled in a few birds to add some movement to the card and used my Posca white paint pen to add some subtle snow over the trees.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Thank you for all your company this year. I have been so grateful for my crafting hobby and for the friendship of my fellow crafters :) Eva and I wish you a very happy Christmas and hope for a brighter new year.

Sending warm Christmas wishes,

Knitting your own Christmas cards

Hello crafting friends!

I am absolutely delighted to have been invited to guest at The Male Room today!

This fortnight, the challenge is to create a Christmas card, for a male of any age, using Ugly Sweaters as inspiration. I actually had no idea that ugly sweaters were a thing but it's okay, it turns out that they're just Christmas jumpers! PHEW! Come and see what I made:

I've recently bought the gorgeous Knitted Background stencil from Funky Fossil so I used that to make a background for my card, using a Stampin' Up Blendability marker in light Soft Sky. I stamped over my knit background with rows of stars, trees and snowflakes from Uniko's Background Builders Christmas.

Christmas jumpers often feature a central image, so I pulled out a snowman image from Stampin' Up's Tags til Christmas (long ago retired). This stamp includes a 'to' and 'from' as it's supposed to be a tag, but I excluded them by masking them off with a sticky note before inking up. I cut my snowman out with a circle punch and added touches of colour before attaching it to my 'knitted' card front.

I liked the idea of a cosy kind of greeting, so I stamped the word Warmest from Uniko's Pure Florals: Poinsettia, then used a black Stampin' Up marker to ink up the words Christmas Wishes from Clearly Besotted's Simply Said. And yes, I messed it up the first time (again!!!) so I stamped it again on a strip and glued it over the top.

I hope you'll be inspired to join in with this challenge - it's a lot faster than actual knitting and a whole lot of fun! There's loads more inspiration from the Design Team over at The Male Room where you can also link up your card :)

AND IN OTHER NEWS
How are your Christmas preparations going? I now have a list of presents to buy and have checked it considerably more than twice! I also have a nice stash of cards to write and have already started to wonder what I did with the Christmas decorations last year...

Thank you for popping by today. Do leave me a comment and I shall return your visit, bringing some very tasty cinnamon biscuits with a hint of orange zest (virtual ones sadly!)

Hugs,