Xmas 2015

Copyright

I hope you enjoy reading this blog and find inspiration and ideas from what you have seen here but I would ask you to please respect my copyright and not use my pictures for publishing as your own work, or for entry into challenges.

Monday 29 October 2012

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 78 Shaped card with Reindeers


This week's challenge at Crafty  Cardmakers is hosted By Tracey


She said that as Christmas will be here before we know it, she would like to see a   shaped card featuring a reindeer or two. No square or rectangle cards please.

Now, I have been on a bit of a mission recently, to use up some of that stash that I have bought over the years and just squirrel away.  So when I saw the theme was reindeer, I immediately thought of the very large Kanban collection I bought last year and which I still had the majority of left!  

There was a sheet of very nice reindeer just begging to be chosen, so I used the theatre style card base card in the kit and simply stuck the reindeer onto the front flaps using foam tape.  

Inside the card, I used one of the sentiments from the kit, and two small christmas trees, which I coloured to match the sentiment using an Hazelnut adirondack ink pad.

Even though it isn't a DL shaped card, it fits very nicely into a DL envelope.

This is not a card which really inspired my creative juices, but it really took no time to make (and at this time of the year, with the number of christmas cards I still need to make, that is a BIG plus point) and the extra bonus is that my stash has been very slightly depleted.

This time:

We're sponsored by


 We are kindly sponsored for this challenge by The Stampman (and Lady of course!) who are ofering the winner a £10 voucher for their store, you can spend this online, in the shop or if you're lucky enough to see them at a show!  They have a ton of items in store, enough to tickle any crafty taste bud. 

and


$10 GIFT VOUCHER

I have been drawing since a child and studied graphics at College many years ago, I now work as a Medical photographer part time but my love was always drawing. I started cardmaking about 4yrs ago when I bought my daughter a cardmaking kit which we did together, but I’m afraid I got the bug! My daughter preferred scrapbooking. I then started looking online at other blogs and this then became my passion and I loved sharing my cards with likeminded people.
I love stamping and loved finding images, but sometimes I could not find what I wanted so I started to draw myself.
This then has become my second addiction and I have never looked back, I love thinking of new images, and its just fabulous to see others take them and make them into beautiful works of art. Long may it continue!

Friday 26 October 2012

Someone still loves Robbie...

Everyone wants photos on their cards lately!  This one was made for a friend whose daughter (in her thirties) still loves Robbie Williams...

I simply matted the photograph onto some lavender papermania textured cardstock.   Then, I used my cheery lynn swirl die and a papermania paper flower, coloured using a big and juicy ink pad to add interest.

Final touches were the squared gems, the small tag sentiment and the faux stitching around the edge of the base card.

Thursday 25 October 2012

Spiderman, Spiderman....

It's my friend C's sons birthday this week and she asked me to make her a card for him.  His current love is the Hulk and Spiderman, so I thought I would incorporate both into his card.

The picture of the Avengers was simply matted onto the base card, but Spiderman was cut out and "hinged"  so that he could come out from the main part of the card front.

I was quite pleased with this one...

Tuesday 23 October 2012

Autumn colours

I've been collecting the Making Cards magazine for some time now, and some of the papers inside are just lovely.  Usually, I put them carefully in the magazine holders and just pet the papers, but this time I thought I've got to get over this and actually used some!

My card was a birthday card for an ex colleague and I used a plain heavy white base card (6" x 6").  I used the patterned owl backing paper from the magazine (September 12 edition - cute creatures by Nancy Watt) for the base layer, and distressed the edges using an adirondack (woodlands) ink pad. The green coloured card I used for the topper bases was textured cardstock from paper mania.  The toppers were also from the magazine,

As a finishing touch, I went round the base card and the green backing card with an orange promarker (using a fine tip) to make a faux stitching effect.

 I coloured some clear gems with the same colour pen, and used them on the main topper base. Finally, I went over the owls and the bird on the sentiment with some pinflair glaze to make them "pop" out from the background.

I am entering this card into the following challenges:

Challenge 42 - Use orange over at Use it Tuesday
Week 77 - Autumn Colours at Allsorts Challenge blog

Monday 15 October 2012

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 77 Autumn or Autumn festivals

Our challenge to you today from Crafty Cardmakers is 'Autumn or Autumn Festivals - NOT Hallowe'en' and is hosted by Josephine, who says 'There are always so many Hallowe'en challenges around! So instead of creating a Hallowe'en card I would like to see something that depicts the Season of Autumn, or maybe Harvest Festival, Guy Fawkes, Diwali or some other festival that happens in the Autumn. If your theme is a lesser-known festival, please tell us about it in your post! But remember, this is not a Hallowe'en challenge!'


I like to think of autumn as a time when everything slows down ready to sleep through winter, and I thought this cute image of a sleepy fairy  from this week's sponsors,  Milk coffee Digital Stamps absolutely fitted the bill.

I used a sheet of orange 6 x 6 colourcore cardstock from core'dinations for my base card, and around the edge I paper pricked and went over with a white pen for a faux stitched effect.  I used some hunkydory foiled leaf card for my bottom and side contrast strips.  I used the ironwork accents border strip to make the embellishment for the bottom.  
Because I didn't have the right colour ribbon, I coloured some white organza ribbon with a terracotta promarker, and put a strip across the bottom and made a double bow.

I used labels 5 to cut round the image, and to make the sentiment.  I tinted the background of both with a woodlands Adirondack stamp pad.  

The image was coloured in with promarkers (Lots of colours!) and the final touches were the leaves from another sheet of the coredinations card (in yellow) and two tiny butterflies were punched from the piece of scrap I had after cutting down the backing sheet.


We are sponsored by
Milk coffee Digital StampsCute digis for cute creations 



MilkCoffee Stamps is a digital image shop specializing in cute and girly images. We provide high quality digital images with high resolution so you could resize it at big enough size. We have many different image styles, sophisticated lady, cute girl, whimsical image, cute stuff, fairytale creature, and many various themes so it could fit any crafter with different style.

Monday 1 October 2012

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 76 Indian Summer



Our challenge today at Crafty Cardmakers is called Indian Summer and is hosted by Mynnette.
Mynnette would like to see a created scene using any nature themed stamps you have, digis welcome. Examples of nature themed stamps are leaves, grasses, wildflowers, etc.  Anything nature and autumn! Plus use only oranges, yellows, and reds for colors (black/brown and white/cream are allowed as well).  Perhaps a sentiment of gratitude or autumn would also be appropriate!

For some reason, I struggled a bit with this challenge.  I think it is partly that scenes were my mum's thing - she loved to create her pictures with stamps and at the moment I am out of my comfort zone with doing it. 

Very fortunately, though, my new spellbinder D Lites dies turned up in the nick of time, and I was able to use the Cattails die and the swirl as the basis of my "toppers".  

I used a plain but textured card for the base, and coloured it with aged mahogany and dried marigold distress inks.  To give it a bit of "bling", I used some Persimmon Radiant Rain shimmering mist.  Over the top of the background, I stamped my sentiment randomly.  I mounted a piece of red textured card across the centre of the card and arranged the swirl first, then used a doily coloured with aged mahogany distress in as the base for my topper.  I used the Medallion 5 background die to layer on top of the doily, again, tinted on the edge with the aged mahogany inkpad.  Finally, I put the cattails die in the centre, using pinflair gel.  The die was coloured with the same distress inks previously used.

Around the edge of the card, and the red layer I did faux stitching to make a boundary - the stitching on the card was done with a dark brown pen, and on the red card was a clear glitter gelly roll pen.

I used some self adhesive pearls from my stash to brighten up the swirl and printed out the sentiment onto a yellow diecut.  Lastly, I attached a ribbon down the left side of the card, and made a simple knot bow.


This week we are sponsored by
  
$10 GIFT VOUCHER
I have been drawing since a child and studied graphics at College many years ago, I now work as a Medical photographer part time but my love was always drawing. I started cardmaking about 4yrs ago when I bought my daughter a cardmaking kit which we did together, but I’m afraid I got the bug! My daughter preferred scrapbooking. I then started looking online at other blogs and this then became my passion and I loved sharing my cards with likeminded people. I love stamping and loved finding images, but sometimes I could not find what I wanted so I started to draw myself. This then has become my second addiction and I have never looked back, I love thinking of new images, and its just fabulous to see others take them and make them into beautiful works of art. Long may it continue!