How lovely are your branches

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Yet again the end of the month has hurtled towards me without a single Christmas card being made for my stash! Out came the inks and stamps and sponges as I made a valiant effort to address the situation (although it is very difficult making a card while two pairs of anxious brown eyes are just mentioning that it's really time for a walk and you must have forgotten and we don't want to push ourselves forward but we know you wouldn't want to abandon your proper duties...!)

 

I came up with this vintage-style card by stamping a card panel with one of the fir tree from an older set, Spruce Trees by Inkylicious. I used a greyish brown ink, stamped off, then sponged over the trees with more of the same ink plus some pale blue ink for a misty feel. To create 'snow', I wet my hands with water and clapped over the panel, blotted it with a paper towel and left it to dry. To complete the background, I added script using a stamp from The Greetery's Pretty Postmarks and sponged dark green ink at the bottom of my panel to ground the trees.

 

The next stage was to stamp a different spruce for the focal tree. I stamped it in dark green ink then cleaned the stamp, moved the panel very slightly in my stamp positioner, and stamped it again using white craft ink. I added a little brown marker to the trunk of the tree and used a white acrylic marker to add more snow. The sentiment from Uniko's Rustic Wreath was stamped in red and I mounted the panel on matching card. Finally, I decorated the tree with glitter glue lights and and a tiny glittery star.

CHALLENGES

I was inspired by the misty tree from the mood board at Peace on Earth as well as the Vintage theme at Jingle Belles; I'm also joining in with Rudolph Days where Anything Christmas goes. I noticed that Retro Rubber has a Great Outdoors theme and since my Spruce Trees set is from 2015, I'm playing along there too :)

AND IN OTHER NEWS

When my children were little and things were getting a bit hectic, I would find myself speaking in what we called my 'Mary Poppins voice'. I was thinking about that this morning as I was flying about trying to shorten my To Do list and wishing that I could snap my fingers as she did in the (original) film to get things tidied away!

 

 Sending hugs,

Berry Christmas

Hello, crafting friends!

 

It was Rudolph Day yesterday (the 25th of the month) and I made a Christmas card... but didn't get it photographed before I lost the light.  Oh the trials of a crafter and blogger! Anyway, it's here today instead:

 

It's a really simple card - a white card panel embossed with Altenew's Berried Cotoneaster embossing folder, coloured with coloured pencils and inked around the edges with pale blue ink. I added a sentiment from a Uniko set and mounted the panel onto some muted red card before attaching to a card base.

 

Coloured pencils are maybe not the ideal medium for colouring embossed panels but it does work. I liked the soft colours here which I thought gave a kind of frosty look.

 

CHALLENGES

I'm linking up with Rudolph Days of course; also ABC Christmas where E is for Embossing, and Can You Handle the Pressure where Anything using Embossing Folders Goes, with an optional theme of Birds. The EF was having its first airing so I'm taking it over to Darnell's NBUS Challenge.

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I went shopping at my local pet food shop yesterday. While I was in the middle of loading bags of frozen meaty chunks and sprats into the boot of my car, a diminutive lady came round the corner with a large chocolate lab. The lab took one look at me and voted me Shopper of the Year. He made a beeline for me, bringing the tiny lady with him - perhaps rather quicker than she would have liked! She and I had a nice chat and the lab allowed me to make a fuss of him, but alas, there were no treats forthcoming and he walked away dejectedly, wondering how he could have been so deceived in a person!

Sending hugs,

A snowy stenciled scene

Hello, crafting friends!

 

It's Thursday and that means there's a whole lot of new inspiration at the Tic Tac Toe Challenge! I came up with this week's board and I hope you'll love using the ideas. 

 

I chose the top row Snow/Stencil/Tree, and made a simple, one-layer Christmas card using The Greetery's Stencilscapes Winter set of layering stencils.

 

I adore the dynamic scene you can build up using these six stencils and it was surprisingly quick and easy too! Once the stencil layers were completed, I added a few details with markers and a sentiment from a Uniko set.

Okay, so now it's your turn! Which row or column has caught your eye this week? Or perhaps you are going for one of the diagonals? Do hop over to the Tic Tac Toe challenge blog and admire the samples Design Team X has made to inspire you. You'll find the Linky Tool at the bottom of the post and you can use it to share your own creation with us. Have fun!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown where the challenge is to use a stencil.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I have been AWOL for a week or two after a series of unfortunate events! It started slowly with me snapping a cutting pad by using the wrong sandwich in my Big Shot; then got a bit more serious when the car needed its clutch replacing and then they discovered a whole host of other things wrong as well; and culminated in a tidy group of three with me developing a nasty flu bug and taking to my bed! Dear Eva has been a charming nursemaid though this and is positively worn out with lying on the end of my bed keeping me company!!

Sending hugs,