A great big happy, sparkly Christmas!

Hello crafting pals!

It's me again. I know, twice in one day! But it's raining, the dogs are asleep and I've done all my chores... and also, I'm here to set things straight. When I linked up at Less is More with an earlier card, a little voice in my head said "That is not a CAS card!" and although I answered boldly "Yes it is! I only make CAS cards!" part of me thought "That green and white stripy space isn't really white space though is it?" You can see the card here and decide what you think. The upshot of my internal debate was another quick card. Come and see:

Out came my Avery Elle Big Birthday set again and I inked up the least bold 'happy' this time, using Poppy Parade ink again. The word Christmas comes from Stampin' Up's Merry Christmas to All and I think it works well with the big 'happy'.

That gorgeous fir branch in the background is from Uniko's brilliant Winter Foliage stamp set. I inked it up in Pear Pizzazz ink, stamped off once on scrap paper and then again on the card panel to make a paler imprint.

The little sparkly bauble is just a circle cut out of gold glimmer paper with a 1" circle punch, and a tiny bit of the punched edge added to make the bauble hanger. I've 'hung' it from the 'C' of Christmas with a line of piercing and mounted the card panel on Pear Pizzazz card stock. There - that's another Christmas card for my stash!

I shall link this card up with both Less is More, as a sparkle and Matte card, and Just Add Ink again where they're asking for cards featuring elements beginning with 'H' - mine is 'happy'

Thanks for joining me for a double helping today! Do let me know what you think if you have a minute - I always love reading your comments :)

Hugs,

Beautiful branches, twinkling for Christmas

Hello crafting pals!

I'm just sharing a moment of complete and utter excitement today! Eva is looking slightly concerned as I have let loose some strange squawking noises! Come and see what I've made:

When I made this Christmas card, I enjoyed the sparkly berries (which I was inspired to add for a challenge) but secretly yearned for something subtler. Here, I stamped the branches and berries with the gorgeous Beautiful Branches by Concorde and 9th, and added details with a fineliner. Then, to give the berries a bit of shine, I heat embossed them with clear embossing powder. Nice and glossy but not quite what I wanted, so I laid the card aside until...

... my Wink of Stella pen arrived! A gentle brush of the berries with the brush - and magic happened: shiny red berries with a delicious slick of subtle gold twinkle! Lots of people have told me I needed one of these little pens and they were quite right. What they didn't tell me though is that now that I have a pen that adds a subtle gold shimmer, I also need one that adds a subtle silver shimmer too! Can anyone advise?!!!

My card was finished with Stampin' Up's brilliant Merry Christmas to All stamp set. This is a sentiment set with added bits and pieces and versatile words that can be mixed and matched, and many of them can be used all year round. Love it!

I shall link this card up with Happy Little Stampers Christmas challenge where the optional theme is Twinkle. I am definitely twinkling today - and so is my card!!!

AND IN OTHER NEWS
Here's someone else who's having a twinkle today :)

I was trying to capture the sparkle on those berries, kneeling in an odd, leaning back position on the floor with a camera clamped to my eye, and found a damp nose in my neck. This is Eva's "What on earth are you up to?!" expression!

Thanks for popping in today. Does your pet find you amusing? Do let me know in the comments below!

Hugs,

Saying Merry Christmas with words

Hello crafting pals!

Sometimes you know exactly what you want to do with a card, don't you - stamp, stamp, trim, embellish and it's done! But sometimes a card idea has to mature slowly, like a cheese ;) Like this card...

... which has been on my mind for a week! It's the current Less is More Typography challenge that's been exercising my mind. I knew I wanted to use Stampin' Up's Merry Christmas to All, with its range of words you can mix and match; it was just a matter of which words, and how to lay them out!

I got there in the end and, in fact, this is a great design for making multiple cards. I set 'wishing you a very' and 'Christmas' on the same large block and stamped it in Garden Green and stamped the 'Merry' separately in Real Red.

I tried to embellish my typography in a way that kept the focus on the words. The beautiful swirl, which is part of the stamp set, was stamped at the bottom in Crushed Curry. I also used some little punches (3/4" circle, Twinkle punch for the star, and a small Christmas tree) to make little embellishments. A thin strip of designer paper at the bottom of the card adds a little bit of extra interest.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
It's raining today. I can't remember the last time Eva and I went walking in the rain. But now that my memory has been jogged, could it just stop please!

Thanks for joining me today. I'll be back soon with more crafting fun!

A fast freeze

Hello crafting friends!

Some days you only get a quick 20 minutes to make a card and today was one of those days! Washi tape is one of my stand-bys for a quick card so I had a rummage through my hoard collection ;) Come and see what I made:

The washi tape I chose is a beautiful icy blue Stampin' Up tape (retired). I made a frame on my card base with it, taking care to make the joins very neat.

These shimmery metallic die-cut snowflakes turned up in my embellishments stash, left over from a kit, and I thought they'd be perfect with that icy-looking washi. I layered them together with a dimensional pad and added a gem coloured with an alcohol marker.

The sentiment is from Stampin' Up's Merry Christmas to All and was stamped in Bermuda Bay and Pool Party inks (but, for the hundredth time, I wished I had an Island Indigo ink pad - can SU please bring back this colour?!!!) I matted the panel onto Island Indigo cardstock, added the snowflake and attached the panel to my washi-taped card base. Job done!

I made this card for the Just Add Ink 'Choose Two' challenge, featuring Metallics, Twine and Washi. I'm afraid you can't join in with this challenge though, and neither can I, because I missed the deadline AGAIN!!! I really do need to find a way of organising all my favourite challenges that isn't a scrap of paper on my desk! Do go and have a look at the inspiration from the DT though - there are some gorgeous creations!

AND IN OTHER NEWS
We have another of Eva's chums to stay this week - an elderly boxer who is partially blind and almost entirely deaf and therefore inclined to be a little snappy. I only take dogs that Eva gets on with, so when the boxer's owner approached me, I was inclined to decline straight away. But we met up for a walk, which is how I usually introduce new dogs, and I was amazed to see the most unlikely friendship spring up between my bouncy (then) three-year-old retriever and this stately old lady, whom I affectionately nick-named The Baroness. They have adored each other ever since and The Baroness sometimes forgets herself and goes racing about with Eva like a puppy :)

Thanks for coming to visit today. Lovely to have you here :)

Three French hens for Christmas!

Hello crafting friends!

Do you remember when I made this card and said:

I'd really like to have put 3 French Hens or 7 Swans a-Swimming inside the wreath but will have to get myself hen and swan stamps first!

Well, I don't say these things lightly and, although I'm still hunting for a good swan set, Hen Pecked from Artistry Inc Ltd was definitely the hen set I was looking for! Come and meet the girls:

Aren't they gorgeous?! (I do love a hen!) The pair of hens at the back are one stamp and the sitting hen at the front another. I coloured them with a mixture of Spectrum Noir markers and Stampin' Up Blendabilities before cutting them out with sharp paper snips.

The background panel was sponged with Balmy Blue and Crumb Cake inks and the ground stamped with the useful speckled texture stamp provided in the stamp set. I added more speckles with a gold Stampin' Dazzle pen and a white gel pen. Time to assemble the card! I glued the hens onto the background in a group and trimmed the panel where they overlapped the edge. The panel was then matted onto Cherry Cobbler card stock and attached to a Crumb Cake card base.

The sentiment is from Stampin' Up's Merry Christmas to All. I stamped the 'Merry' at an angle in Cherry Cobbler ink and then tucked a black 'Christmas' into the shape it made.

This card was made for the Jingles Belles challenge where Stephanie and Lauren were asking for Christmas cards featuring numbers (such as 25!) or things relating to the 12 days of Christmas? This is my second entry as I was dying to join in with the 12 days of Christmas!

AND IN OTHER NEWS
I suppose I should have had a Joyeux Noel sentiment on the card to indicate that the hens are French but I didn't have one. I toyed with the idea of doodling 'Cot cot codet' by the hens (that's what hens say in French!) but it would've ruined the layout. I'll just have to send the card to someone who will wonder what on earth the hens are doing on a Christmas card but who will enjoy the moment the penny drops! If it's you, consider it a compliment!

Thanks for popping in today. I'll see you soon,

Using up the left overs

Hello crafting friends!

It was time for a tidy-up of my desk today and as I was clearing away the failures experiments from the other day, I realised some of it could be used for another card. You can see my inky tribulations here, and here is my salvaged card:

When I had stamped the buildings onto the sponged background here, the windows, which would have looked alight if stamped over the yellowish colour, were badly positioned and the buildings were blotchy. To solve those problems, I cut away the patchily stamped parts of the panel and used my gold Stampin' Dazzle pen to artily colour in the windows, giving a nice metallic look. 

The sentiment, from Stampin' Up's Merry Christmas to All, was heat embossed in gold to increase the metallic theme...

... and then (really running with that gold theme now!) I added a sprinkling of gold dots in the sky to represent stars and drew a gold line to the left of the panel. Scored lines were added either side of the panel to anchor it although it's hard to see in the photo.

I've had Less is More's Metallic challenge going on in my head ever since last weekend, so this is my entry for that. Also, Eva and I will romp over to the playground at Pixie's Crafty Snippets Challenge where we are required by Miss to use up our snippets :)

AND IN OTHER NEWS
My visiting son was supposed to be going to a music event this weekend but the friend who was supposed to be reserving the ticket for him had forgotten to do so. "Oh no!" I said. "You must be really disappointed!" He shrugged. "Oh well, that's life," he said. "If you want something done, you're better off doing it yourself." I have to admit to having a 'who are you and what have you done with my son' moment but, the fact is, he is just growing up!

Thank you for visiting me today. See you soon,

The Stubborn stamper

Hello crafting pals!

Crafting isn't all skipping through the tulips is it? Sometimes, we want to do something that just doesn't seem that possible. But crafters are obstinate folk (or is that just me?!) and when we want to produce the thing in our heads, we will darned well produce the thing in our heads!

Take this card for example:

A perfectly reasonable-looking card you'd say - or at least I hope you would! Well, this innocent-looking card has been responsible for sleepless nights and some very ink-stained fingers! It all started with this gorgeous colour challenge from the As You See It challenge:

Despite all the talk at AYSI about summery colours, I felt this palette was perfect for a 'midnight over the city' Christmas card I'd been planning with my new Cityscape stamps from Clearly Besotted! The problem? I had no Pretty Peacock ink and nothing even vaguely resembling it amongst my new Stampin' Up ink pads. I did have an Island Indigo reinker though! Great for the background - but when it came to inking up the stamp... not so much! So, why didn't I make a temporary ink pad using wet wipes you may ask? Because I don't own any wet wipes (and here is why.) How could I get round this?

My solution (and I promise it isn't really a solution...) was to put plenty of ink onto a plate and sponge it onto the solid stamp, huff on it like a mad train and stamp over my sponged background. I tried three times (new background each time!) and on the third time it was slightly less unacceptable than the previous times! A bit blotchy at the bottom - but that just gave me the opportunity to cover it up with a sentiment strip! I used words from Merry Christmas to All and gold embossed them.

Never mistakes, always opportunities! Now, let's focus on the sky and do a little star gazing! The stars have come out courtesy of a gold Stampin' Dazzle pen that I bought years ago and is still going remarkably strong :)

AND IN OTHER NEWS
September has arrived and we are now reaping the 'rewards' of all those beautiful days with the French doors flung open to invite the outdoors in. Along with the much-appreciated perfume of the roses, and the smell of newly mown grass, come less welcome gate-crashers. My son was the hero that hunted down this invader - and this is not a glass by the way, but a large vase!

PS. No spiders were harmed in the hunt - Stephen Spider was released into the garden (where he's probably rounding up a few of his mates to take revenge for the indignity of that vase!)

Thank you for popping in today. See you again tomorrow :)

Beautiful festive branches!

Hello crafting pals!

There have been a lot of Christmas cards spotted in Blogland lately and while it's a bit of a stretch to say it's made me feel festive, it has made me think about getting ahead! I love a stamp set that can be used for lots of purposes and the Concorde and 9th set, Beautiful Branches, is a perfect example. Come and see what I made with it:

Those branches can be Eucalyptus or blossom and they can be winter branches too! I've stamped them twice and fussy cut them out, adding glittery berries made from red glimmer paper cut out with my cropadile - it's amazing the stash I actually kept!

I am in love with this sentiment! I made it out of words in Merry Christmas To All, a current Stampin' Up set, and another one that's versatile. Stamping on the blue card was going to dull the red, so I chose the very bright Poppy Parade for the word 'Happy' and it matches the glimmer paper well.

Can you see how shiny those berries are? I'm not big on glitter but it's great to have smaller touches on a Christmas card. I drew the frame with a Uni pin fineliner and a ruler, before glueing all the elements onto the card front.

My starting-off point for this card was the CAS Christmas challenge where they're looking for glitter on clean and simple Christmas cards. There's a very pretty gallery already there as well as some glorious DT inspiration - well worth a look!

AND IN OTHER NEWS
Summer has returned to the heart of England so I thought I'd celebrate by wearing my shirt inside out all morning... can you believe the dogs didn't let me know?!

Thanks for popping round today :) I think I might have another little festive moment while the stamps are out! See you soon,

Happy summer holidays

Hello crafting pals!

I've found another fab challenge I remember from when I used to craft before - Just Us Girls! This week, the challenge is to make a card with the word 'summer' as inspiration.

You'd think that living in the UK, rain would be the thing to bring out for this challenge but, as I am ever the optimist, I have used Stampin' Up's Waterfront stamp set to conjure up a beautiful, peaceful, tropical beach scene. Ahhhh! Feel those shoulders relax!

I sponged Balmy Blue, Pool Party and So Saffron ink across card stock, representing sky, sea and sand. The Waterfront set includes lots of stamps you can use to add texture, so I was able to give my sand plenty of interest. 

The two-step palm trees were stamped off the edge of the card stock and detail doodled on with a marker. I added waves to the shoreline with a white Signo ball pen.

That big sentiment has been put together using words, to my amusement, from Merry Christmas to All. I do love a versatile set!

I've realised that I'll be squeaking this card under the wire for this challenge so I won't hang about chattering!

Thanks for popping in today and I'll see you very soon for more crafting fun :)