Snowflakes

I love to follow a good simple sketch and there is one such at CAS Colours and Sketches this week. Here is it!.

I couldn't decide whether I liked it better with or without the sentiment.

I began by embossing a Kaisercraft background stamp onto black card and embossing in white EP. Then I cut around the edge of the design at the bottom and die cut the top to fit my card panel. Next was to inlay the lower snowflake into the embossed card. There is a plain snowflake on the top,  a more elaborate snowflake which is stacked and then embellished with a few pearls.

 

May Your Christmas Dreams Come True

Here we are in my final week as Guest Designer at Just Us Girls. It has been such fun, with terrific challenges each week. Those who know me of old, know that my style is extremely Clean and Simple and this week's is no exception. The theme is to use PLAID, and as usual I have used just a very little of it, I think this came from a free pull-out of papers from a craft magazine.

I chose lots of star embossing dies for the background from Creative-Depot.de and added the scrap of plaid to a hanging star, with more stars and a touch of ivy... something that is used to decorate homes at Christmas time in the UK... so with the the (wishing) stars and the Christmas foliage, I chose the sentiment to combine the two, from Simon Says Stamp.

 

Warm Fuzzies

 My month as Guest designer at Just Us Girls is going by quickly and here is the fourth of my cards. The challenge this time is to take inspiration from this picture.

 

Recently I discovered a company called Create a Smile, based in Germany. They produce stamps and dies in both German and English and shipping to the UK is quick and efficient. The stamps I used here are from a set called Cool Buddies. I did have to do a little jiggery pokery to get them facing each other as both snowmen were originally facing in the same direction. I wanted them to be facing one another, so I appropriately used the KISS technique to get one image reversed, however the only material I could find to stamp onto was some fun foam. The impression wasn't as crisp as I had hoped so I did just go over the lines with a fine liner pen. 

Once I had made the aperture and placed the snow embossing and hillside within it, I felt as though  there was something missing. I tried a few die cut snowflakes but wasn't happy with those, so on doing another search through my stash I came across this Memory Box circle snowflake die, which by a complete fluke was exactly the right dimensions to fit the aperture. I stacked it twice as the snowflakes are floating and they seemed a little flimsy with just one layer. The sentiment is also from the same set as the snowmen.

Noel

 I just received another package of goodies from Simply Graphic and this little chap was in the mix! I think he's really rather splendid! I cut one in kraft card and one in white and coloured his hat and his nose with Copics. I began with the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches and went on from there.

I cut the square window and  added some dry embossed snow from a retired Sheena Douglass folder as a backdrop, and added a stand of die cut trees, popped the gnome in front as used a sentiment from Clearly Besotted. I love the mix of these colours!

Get Well Soon

This card was a quick make, but those are often the ones which work well, when they haven't been overthought! I simply cut the apertures for the butterflies (Poppy Stamps) and then inked a background with Distress Oxide inks. I decided to add a little interest  by over-stamping with a Kaisercraft grunge background stamp and embossing in silver. The sentiment is a fairly new acquisition, also from Poppy Stamps. The filigree top die cuts were then added over the apertures.

Krafty Chicks

Clean and Simple

Happy Little Stampers 

Anything goes with dies

A short time ago I discovered a German craft company called Charlie and Paulchen and ordered a few things from them. Yesterday I received this email from them which I popped into a translator as I'm not a German speaker.

I thought this was just the BEST! I can't wait for my package to arrive with all that love wrapped up in it!

 

Thank you

It's now week 3 of my January Guest Designer Spot for Just Us Girls. The theme this time is to use the colours Light Blue, Silver and White.

For my card I chose flower die-cuts by Alexandra Renke, which I coloured by smooshing them into some SU Bashful Blue Ink which I had spritzed with water on my glass mat. When dry, I dabbed some silver Gilding Wax around some of the edges. I did the same treatment for the Memory Box Sentiment, which I stacked a few times to add some dimension! The embossing behind the aperture is from a Cuttlebug embossing folder.

FRIEND

I made this card to send to a fellow crafter whom I "met" on Facebook. I guess it just about sums up what I feel about the many, many people with whom I have had interaction over the internet. Questions are answered, techniques are shared and I guess this is the friendship of the 21st century! Some of these lovely people I have had the good fortune to actually meet in person... at craft shows, retreats and the like and I feel truly blessed to have all these associations.

As to the card... I began by embossing a background stamp by WOW with gold and silver embossing powder on a black base card.  The word friend is from a new alphabet die set by Memory Box called Twiggy Alphabet, which consists of the letters and their backgrounds. The flourishes are from MFT. I quite like the opulent look of this one!

The colours are from this challenge at Color Throwdown

 

Happy Birthday

This is my second card for the challenges at Just Us Girls this month, where I have been invited to be Guest Designer once more. 

The challenge this time is to have an inked or sprayed background. Whilst sitting pondering what I might make, I found myself looking at a piece of kit that I haven't used for a very long time. I'm not sure where I got it but I think it may have been Stampin' Up, as I used one of their watercolour markers in it. It's called a Spritzer, but it works like a diffuser, which basically puffs a gust of air across the tip of a marker, (by squeezing the bulb,) which leaves a kind of splatter of ink on the page.

I cut it to make a background panel for the pansy die-cut by Alexandra Renke. I used a cutting die to emboss the horizontal band and added a couple of die-cut charms to some baker's twine.

Card making gives me an inordinate amount of pleasure, which is only increased by the fact that it is shared with so many like minded crafters all around the world, whom I am delighted to call my friends! Let's hope lots of them join in with this challenge!

 

Christmas WISHES

I was having a little fun with embossing powders for this card. It's a background stamp by Kaisercraft, which I embossed with a mix of Gold and Silver embossing powders. The WISHES is part of an extremely old die whose origin has long since escaped me, the rest of the dies are by Alexandra Renke. I stacked the words three times, but on looking at it I think that I should have used black instead of white card for the lower layers.

I made it with the challenge at CAS Christmas in mind as it requests Silver and Gold!

 

 

Thanks

If there's one thing that I have always loved about  the CAS Mix Up Challenge, it's the fact that there are always lots of different techniques to try. This time it's Loose Watercolouring.

If you are unsure of what to do, here are some terrific video tutorials.

Video Tutorials:

Watercolouring Stamped Images by Sanketi (5:58)

Photo tutorial on Loose Watercolouring by Verity Biddlecombe

Photo tutorial on Watercolouring by Jennifer McGuire

Watercolouring Outside the Lines by Yana Smakula (5:40)

Photo tutorial on Watercolouring by Tattered Nest

Loose Watercoloured Poppies by Joanne Boon Thomas (11:11)

Our Guest Designer this time is Karen (Random Reflections) 

For  my card, I began by spritzing the surface of the card with water before stamping the grid stamp by SU, then over-stamping with the Penny Black Butterfly and spritzing a little more to allow the colour of the Distress Oxide ink to move around. I stamped a little more card for the sentiment  and die cut the (Pink Fresh) Thanks.

Happy New Year Everyone!

 

Wine

Some time ago I was fortunate enough to win a challenge at Just US Girls and was subsequently invited to be their Guest Designer for January!

The first of the challenges is entitled Beverage

Here is the first of my submissions. 

Sadly for everyone, Bugaboo Stamps, a digital image company, ceased trading. I have many of their images, which are such fun... they appeal to my sense of humour enormously. Although the sentiment is from the company I made it in a different font ( Amolina Boutique) adding it to the frame for the image. It's simply coloured with Copic Markers.

The start of a New Year  always brings hope, and this year I think that we need it... I hope that we will soon be able to think of Covid as a thing of the past. Stay safe and well everyone, and Happy New Year!