Watercolor Winter woolliness

It's no good, it's freezing! There's only one thing to do this weather... make Christmas cards! Here's one I made using some of my new goodies from the autumn/winter catalogue:

If you like a bit of designer paper on your cards but don't want to invest in whole packs of 12 x 12", then the festival of Prints stack at only £6.25 might be just the thing for you. It contains 48 double-sided sheets of a much smaller size that's perfect for card making (11.4 x 16.5cm) and the designs include a trendy chevron, a gorgeous rustic check and some fabulous Christmassy damasks. I chose this subtle blue print with its suggestion of snow for my card.

I've wanted a stamp set with holly and other winter foliage for ages and the Watercolor Winter set is just right! It's a two step stamping set but this time I chose to stamp only the holly outline and coloured it in with markers for a different look. I used a marker to doodle some wool over one of my branches too...

... and attached these gorgeous mittens to it! They're from the Make a Mitten set which coordinates with the wonderful Nicely Knit wheel I used yesterday. I stamped them in Gumball Green over Marina Mist card stock, which makes a rather stylish mitten - wouldn't mind a pair of these myself! The sentiment is from For My Family - the perfect set for personalising cards to the family.

I'm a day late for Rudolph Day over at Sandra's blog but (panting) I ran all the way Miss!

Here's what you'll need to make today's card
Stamps: Watercolor Winter, Make a Mitten, For My Family
Ink: Gumball Green, Real Red, Early Espresso
Card stock: Whisper White, Marina Mist
Other: Simply Scored, stamp-a-majig, paper snips, markers

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and have them delivered straight to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593. Click here to view my regularly updated lists of retiring stamps and accessories, some at up to 40% discount - Sunday 30th is the last day to order from Retirement Lists. 

My youngest son likes to wrap himself up in a blanket to watch TV whatever the weather. "Blankets are the best thing ever invented," he said the other day, tucking himself up with one. "Apart from the internet." He paused for a moment before adding: "And toilets!"

It's Three Minute Thursday tomorrow so I'll be back here with a fast card. See you then,

Mixed Bunch medallion card

There's a sketch challenge at Less is More this week and it is just the sort of sketch I love - very clean and minimalist with just a circle or square and a sentiment in a huge white space.

I have lots of exciting new stamp sets sitting on my desk from the new mini catalogue which has just been released. It was a question of which one to use... and it ended up being the gorgeous Mixed Bunch!

The set contains a variety of flower images and the large ones coordinate with a punch to make cutting them out easy peasy, but the moment I saw the set I wanted to do some emboss/resist with one of the small flowers.

I've got a thing about making chipboard-style embellishments at the moment and this circle was ideal for the treatment! It's easy to do - I just punched out five or six Early Espresso circles and glued them together in a stack.

Before sticking the stamped image on the top I clear embossed the surface to give it an enamelled look. I rather like the effect - you could make jewellery using this technique!

Here's what you'll need to make today's card:

Stamps: Mixed Bunch, 

Ink: Rose Red, Cherry Cobbler, Early Espresso, Wild Wasabi

Card stock: Whisper White, Early Espresso

Other: Versamark, clear embossing powder, heat tool, stamp-a-majig

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and can have them delivered to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

My daughter has just seen a Christmas card I made for the Rudolph Day challenge over at Sandra's blog. "What? Are you making Christmas cards already?" she said. "It's for Rudolph Day," said my youngest son who likes to keep up with my activities in Blogland. "Rudolph doesn't need a day every month!" said my daughter scathingly. "It's not as if he's a Nobel Prize winner or anything is it?" She's a bit touchy because she's doing her exams at the moment so we'll let her off but honestly, does guiding Santa's sleigh mean NOTHING to her?!

I'll be back tomorrow for Three Minute Thursday with another card made with Mixed Bunch - a fast one this time. Do come and have a look if you have a minute.

Hugs,

Simply Soft Christmas?!

Regular readers of my blog will know how much I love the ColourQ challenges - there's something about those colour swatches and inspiration pictures that fires me up! I must admit it took a while to figure something out for this week's though...

... but I wouldn't be beaten! Here's my interpretation:

I went for an emboss/resist background using the wonderful script image from the French Foliage stamp set. Once it was embossed I sponged Coral Calypso and Bravo Burgundy inks over it. The plants are from the wonderful Simply Soft hostess set. (Hostess sets are exclusive sets, available to buy with orders of £150 or more, but members of my Stampers 6 group can also order them during their hostess month - there's only one place left for my group starting in May, so do let me know as soon as possible if you'd like to join.)

Do you like the sentiment? I was rather pleased with it! I cut a half circle out of my main panel with a 1 1/4" circle punch then, using a 1" punch and a spare scrap of card stock, cut another circle to nest inside the space. This one was given the emboss/resist treatment. The 'thanks' sentiment has been cut out with my sharp paper snips and popped up with dimensionals.

Simply Soft is a two step stamping set - you can stamp the plant image and then add the colour to the flowers by lining up a second image and stamping over the top of the first. It gives a lovely soft look but I wanted a more defined look for this image so I just coloured the flowers in with a Pumpkin Pie marker. I liked the bubbles in the inspiration picture, so I added the surprise pop of Pool Party using the splodge image from French Foliage.

While I had everything out, it occurred to me that this design would work for a Christmas card too! Come and have a look:

I used markers for this one: Bravo Burgundy to colour the just plant stems before stamping and adding Pumpkin Pie berries. The Pool Party splodges have been swapped for Pool Party snowflakes some of which have been decorated with rhinestones for a bit of festive bling.

The sentiment has been done in the same way as before but this time I've chosen an easy-to-cut-out image from Contempo Christmas. This card is for the 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown challenge, where the challenge is to use snowflakes on a card, and also Rudolph Day, the lovely Sandra's Christmas challenge.

I would normally add a supply list here so that you can see what you'd need to recreate these cards but this has been a long post and I don't want to completely bore you (apologies if I already have!) So if you have any queries about what I've used, do let me know won't you and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. And if you'd like to place an order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593. TODAY'S THE LAST DAY  for adding a free pack of designer paper if your order is £45 or more (offer limited to one pack per qualifying order - click here for details).

I'm off to one of Stampin' Up's fabulous regional training sessions tomorrow to learn heaps of new things and meet up with lots of other lovely demonstrators. I'll be back on Monday with a sneak peek of something brand new and gorgeous so don't miss that!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Everyday Enchantment 21st birthday

By now, I'm hoping that everyone who wants Sale-a-bration freebies has placed their orders but if you haven't, do hurry as the promotion will finish at the end of the week! I adore the Sale-a-bration designer papers, Everyday Enchantment, and have used all of mine except for a few snippets. I couldn't bear those to go to waste so I came up with a design which I thought would work well for the Make My Monday theme of New Life and Beginnings. I subsequently realised that although the card is about beginning life as an adult, it doesn't really tie in with the Spring theme at Make My Monday so I can't link it up. (Note to self: must read challenges more fully!) Anyway, come and see:

I ran my card base through the big shot with one of the Designer Frames embossing folders and then cut an aperture in it with the coordinating Extra Large Oval Punch. I suspended the key charm from a piece of embroidery floss, sandwiched it between the card front and a scrap of designer paper and sealed those in with a piece of Very Vanilla card stock to match the front.

Here's a close up of that beautifully detailed key charm. It's just one of a variety of charms available in the spring mini catalogue - have a look on pages 7 and 8, they're gorgeous! Items from this catalogue are only available until the end of April so if you love them, don't miss them!

I used the same design to come up with a card for some Christmas challenges as well: Rudolph Day over at my pal Sandra's blog (I'm afraid I'm rather late!) and 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown where the challenge is to use designer paper for embellishments.

I'm used the Sale-a-bration papers for this too - which just goes to show just how versatile they are! I thought the green paper looked like fairy lights on a Christmas tree and I stamped the ornament onto a scrap of one of the red floral papers from the set, cut it out and glued it on.

Here's what you'll need to make today's cards:

Stamps: Tree Trimmings, various sentiment stamps

Ink: Cherry Cobbler (for the ornament)

Card stock: Very Vanilla

Other: Everyday Enchantment DP (sale-a-bration freebie), Designer Frames embossing folders, Seam binding, markers, Trinket keys, corner rounder, stamp-a-majig

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and can have them delivered to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

As part of the Sale-a-bration promotion, here until 31st March, you can choose a free stamp set or set of papers with EVERY £45 you spend. Click here to see all the fabulous Sale-a-bration freebies.

Today is not the first time I've misread something. I remember once being on holiday in the south of France and being rather badly bitten by mosquitos; after a cursory glance at the French/English dictionary I sailed into a chemist and explained in French to an astonished pharmacist that I had been attacked by musketeers!

I shall be back tomorrow with a fast card for Three Minute Thursday - do pop back if you have a minute.

Hugs,

Using up the scraps!

My first stop when I'm making cards is my card stock scrap box so it's no trouble to me to follow this week's Less is More challenge where Chrissie and Mandi are inviting us to use scraps on our cards. Here's the card I made this morning:

The background strip is made by layering two pieces of designer paper together, popping them into the Square Lattice embossing folder and running them through my Big Shot. I had been demonstrating this technique to one of my customers who is a keen patchworker, as I thought she'd be fascinated by the quilted effect, and I'm pleased to give the resulting piece a proper home today!

This little cluster is made with items from my embellishment scraps box. This is where I toss all the things I make to decorate cards before realising they don't quite work! You can see the box on the left in the photo below with all sorts of interesting things in it:

The little jar on the right is full of die-cut letters and numbers which I use to spell out words, checking for size and position. When I have what I'm looking for, I look for the right colour in my card stock scraps box and cut the letters out - occasionally I'm even lucky enough to find the right colour in the jar! You can see I changed my mind about the orientation of this card - I am ALWAYS changing my mind about things!

Here's my card stock scraps box - looking remarkably similar to Chrissie's! The box is transparent so that I can see what's going on in there (!) and I keep the colours in rough order as Chrissie does, so that it's quick and easy to find the colour I'm after. It works really well.


I thought I'd show you another scraps card I made today using the left-overs from a retired Simply Scrappin' kit. As well as being great for scrapbooking pages, these kits are brilliant for incredibly quick cards - the hanging baubles on my card are stickers and so is the sentiment/border strip. Come and see:

All I did to complete the card was add piercing using my mat pack template, doodle in some bows with a marker and finish off with pearls. I'm entering this Christmas card into Sandra's Rudolph Day challenge and the 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown Challenge where Jacqueline wants to see Christmas cards using stickers and/or rub-ons. Thanks for those challenges ladies - it certainly is good to feel that I'm gradually making a nice little stash of festive cards for 2012!

Supplies needed for the top card:

Stamps: Notably Ornate

Ink: Not Quite Navy

Card stock: Naturals Ivory, Very Vanilla, Pear Pizzazz, Basic Grey, Marina Mist, Bravo Burgundy

Other: Paisley Petals designer paper, Large Oval, Boho Blossoms, and 2-step Bird punches, Timeless Type junior alphabet dies, Square Lattice embossing folder, Circle Ice rhinestone brad

I'd be delighted to order any of these supplies for you and can have them delivered to your address in the UK. I am committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to help and advise. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

Click here to see all the free Sale-a-bration sets and don't forget to let me know which free Sale-a-bration set or sets you'd like - remember, one item for EVERY £45 spent!

My husband's just come in with a Gervase Phinn book he bought on the market this morning. He told me that he'd heard Phinn, a school inspector, talking on the radio and had been much amused by a snippet from one of his books: "Hello young lady," he said, greeting a little girl at one of the schools. "What's your name?" When she answered him, he exclaimed: "What a pretty name! Were you named after Portia from the Shakespeare play?" The child shook her head. "No," she replied. "It's Porsche after the car!"

Thanks for visiting me today. I'll be back on Monday with a masculine birthday card so do pop back then if you have a minute. Enjoy the rest of your weekend,