Disney Birthday

I can't believe that it's almost December, it's definitely feeling more wintery now, so I hope you're all keeping warm and cosy. It's the perfect excuse to stay inside and craft!

I may have mentioned that my sister and her family are Disney addicts. They even went to Disneyland Paris twice this year and their house has Mickey Mouse logos everywhere. My brother in law is the biggest kid though and so I knew exactly what the theme for his birthday card should be this year. I'd purchased a set of three Disney stamp sets from Create and Craft earlier this year as I knew they'd be perfect for them.

I drew a grid on a piece of card to fit on a 6x6 card base and then stamped the Mickey and Minnie logos in each square in black ink. I then coloured them in using my zig clean colour pens. 

I used the Memory Box Jumbled Birthday die for the sentiment. I played around with the colours, initially trying red and black, but it didn't stand out enough. Eventually, I went with green which is his favourite colour and added a black shadow to it with another die cut. To bring the green into the card I added a green mat along with the black and red ones to pull it altogether. 

Don't forget that I'm running a blog candy Christmas stamp giveaway for my followers. The post is pinned to the top of my blog or you can click here to go directly to the post. Entries close at midnight on 8th December UK time.

 

Sweet Stampin' - Your Favourite Christmas Colour Combination

It's time for our new challenge over at Sweet Stampin' and these week we want you to use your favourite Christmas colour combination.

Whilst I love the traditional Christmas green and red combination, I do love the more contemporary colours too and in particular silver with purple and blue. Purple of course is good anytime of the year!

I made a masterboard again to make this card. I started off by blending Salty Ocean and Wilted Violet Distress Oxides on an A4 piece of white card and flicked water in it then let it dry. I then applied the same inks through a couple of Christmas stencils in various areas.  Once dry again, I stamped snowflakes, a Christmas sentiment and Christmas trees in silver and white inks randomly on the masterboard and then stamped some more snowflakes in black archival ink. Finally I applied some sparkle paste through a couple of stencils onto the masterboard.

To make my card I die cut a tattered lace decorative rectangle out of the masterboard and added a frame with silver mirricard (even if it does look black on the photo!). I glued the, in place on a 5x7 card base and stamped the Clearly Besotted sentiment. I had in my stash some leftover stamped, watercoloured and fussy cut Penny Black Snowy snowmen. I simply added him on foam tape to the card. Of course, I couldn't resist adding a bit of faux stitching and some stickles to his accessories to finish. 

I can't wait to see what you make this week, just remember to include so stamping to be eligible for our top three. 
Don't forget that I'm running a blog candy Christmas stamp giveaway for my followers. The post is pinned to the top of my blog or you can click here to go directly to the post. Entries close at midnight on 8th December UK time. Hope you all have an amazing weekend x

WOYWW or What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday

Blimey, Wednesday again already. This month is flying by. Time to join the lovely Julia to share what is on our workdesks today. Once again I'm sharing what is on my lap as the table of doom is reaching critical mass and may offend those of a tidy disposition.
Hopefully you can see some progress on my Bucilia Advent Calendar, the top section is completed apart from sewing on the two stockings hanging from the mantelpiece. The pockets and bottom are progressing well, just some holly to add at the join and then sew it all together and add the backing. Oh and then to make all the elements to fit in the pockets! I'll have it done by 1st December, just don't ask which year!

I can't wait to see what you have all been up to, have a fun and creative week x

Masterboard ATCs

I mentioned in my last post that my tag was made using some snippets, so as promised this is where they came from. The fabulous Angela makes wonderful projects from masterboards that she has created and so she inspired me to make my very first one.

I started off with an A4 sheet of Hunkydory's Ink Me white card and randomly blended Salty Ocean, Broken China and Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxides. Once dry I spritzed and flicked on some water and then let it sit for a minute to react and my heat tool to speed up the drying (because I'm too impatient to let it dry naturally!). I then repeated this step until I was happy with the result. I then randomly stencilled the pistachio ink through a diamond stencil and the salty ocean ink through a flourish stencil. There are two tree stamps in the Clearly Besotted Let's Prance set and I stamped these rotating the stamp randomly in black archival ink on the masterboard. Finally, I flicked the ink from my Wink of Stella glossy white and clear pens over the card by tapping the pen over my finger. Hopefully you can see some of the sparkle this adds in the photo below.

I chopped up the masterboard to make the ATCs and was left with a few bits that I used to make my tag. I stamped the three reindeers from the Clearly Besotted stamp set on white card and coloured them in with my polychromos pencils before cutting them out with the matching dies. I added glossy accents to the noses. I stamped one of the sentiments from the set in black and then cut them up. This allowed me to position the words more pleasingly. I then drew a frame round the edge of the words with a 0.1 fineliner pen and drew in a border around the edge of the ATC's with a 0.3 fineliner pen, before gluing everything together. I ended up making 8 ATCs in total.

Tag You're It! #77

The incredibly lovely Darnell is guest designing over at Tag You're It! for the current challenge and she inspired me to get started on making some Christmas tags.

As you can see I used the embossed white tag and layout to inspire my tag. I stamped one of the reindeer from the Clearly Besotted Let's Prance set and coloured him in with my polychromos pencils then used the matching dies to cut him out. I cut my tag using a small X-cut die and then embossed it using a star stencil. I die cut the sentiment out of a scrap of leftover inked card and added another layer under it to make it stronger as it would overhang the sides. Before I assembled my tag I couldn't resist adding some faux stitches round the edges. Once I'd glued everything in place I added glossy accents to his nose and to the sentiment to finish.

As I die cut the sentiment out of the leftovers of making some ATCs which I'll share with you tomorrow, I'm taking this tag over to The Snippets Playground. I've not managed to play over there for ages so I'm hoping Parsnip has got some mugs to share my flask of mulled wine! Hope you've all had a great weekend and that this week is good for you x

Happy Birthday

Back in August I made a card for my Dad's birthday using the same stamps and dies and Mum asked if I could make a similar card for my Uncle. If I could be bothered, I'd add a link to it, but it's Friday afternoon, I didn't sleep well last night or the night before and so you'll have to go rummaging for it yourself!

I used a Creative Crafting World DL card blank for this which has the fold on the short side. I die cut the Robert Addams Flying Scotsman die out of silver, gold and black card and assembled it as per the very necessary instructions.

Last time I made the card the very lovely Claire of Hamnmule Designs blog thought that the Clearly Besotted sentiment looked like it was made of steam. I thought that was genius and so this time I stamped it above the train in Memento London Fog to emphasise this. I added two lengths of the track that is included in the die set, we'll just ignore the fact that not all the wheels are resting on the rails!

Hope you all have a great weekend, I think mine shall be spent mostly sleeping! 

The Flower Challenge - CAS Reminder

Halfway through the month and so it's time for our reminder post over at The Flower Challenge and this month our theme is clean and simple.

I went super CAS for my reminder card. On a 6x4 card base I stamped one of the stamps from Sheena Douglass Orchid set. The stamp has a little tendril coming off at the top of the stamp and so I added an extra squiggle at the bottom to fill the space and balance the card more. I coloured the stamp in using my polychromos pencils (still getting the hang of these!). To finish off I stamped the sentiment which was from a freebie set with a magazine.

I'm so looking forward to seeing what you make for the challenge, just remember that flowers need to be the focal point of your card. Have a great time creating x

Indigoblu Acrylic Pouring

You may have seen that Kay from Indigoblu is on Hochanda at the moment as their One Day Special with acrylic pouring. We spent the second day of the retreat playing with this and so I thought I'd share my makes with you. The top photo is an 8x8 canvas board, it's really hard to get a good photo of it to show up the silver, but trust me it looks better in real life!

Kay mentioned on the shows that they dry differently and so I thought I'd show you a photo taken just after the pours and one taken when they were dry. Admittedly, some of the pieces my be the wrong way round in the second picture, but I'm sure you can work it out. The top right panel was done on a black gesso painted base and the rest on white. These were all done using the transparent paints and no metallics.

Now, you may have noticed that the bottom right panel looks very different once dry. That's because we put all our trays on shelves to dry out of the way. I was stood talking to someone by the shelves and turned round quickly. The back of my long hair must have flicked out and caught the panel! Fortunately, it was only that one panel which was mine that it caught! Cue Kay and two other ladies with wet wipes trying to wipe acrylic paint off my back and out of my hair. They got most of it out, but I spent 20 minutes that evening pulling the rest out once dry. It looked like I had a bad case of green dandruff on my top by the end.

The final piece I did was on an A5 canvas board and I mixed the paint in my cup with black rather than white gesso, I really wish I could capture the metallic sheen in the photos.

Sweet Stampin' - Babies

Yep, Saturday again and so it's time for our next challenge over at Sweet Stampin' and this week we want to see "Babies".

I made a super quick and simple card this week using the Lili of the valley sentiment stamped in versafine black on a 6x6 card base. I stamped the babies from a Clearly Bessotted set in memento on alcohol pen friendly card and coloured them in with my trusty copics before fussy cutting them out and arranging them on the card. To finish off I drew in a border. Simples! 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, I'm looking forward to settling on the sofa with hubby to watch Despicable Me 3, but might squeeze in a bit of crafting too.

As ever I can't wait to see what you make with this theme, just remember to include some stamping to be eligible for our top three. Have a great weekend x

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday

Gosh, I've not joined in with WOYWW for ages, where is the time going? In case you're not familiar with it, we all congregate over at the very lovely Julia's blog to share what we are currently making. It  doesn't matter what type of craft we're doing, but we then get to hop around and see what everyone else is up to and share the love.
I've got to confess that I've not been doing much card making at the moment as I've been enjoying hand sewing again using some Bucilla kits.  I'm currently making an advent calendar and you can see above the top part of the calendar that I'm currently working on.

I made some Halloween themed items recently, I made a Bucilia Halloween decoration set which is currently residing on my twig tree.

I also made a haunted house wall hanging, the black dots on it are where you are supposed to add a sequin and then hang one of the little icons at the bottom of the photo from them. I learnt on the Nordic house hanging that this is a nightmare to do and so am just going to sew them in place instead, I'll probably get around to doing that next October!

The Flower Challenge #14 - CAS

November already and so it's time for our new challenge over at The Flower Challenge and this week we want to see your clean and simple projects. We had a fabulous response to our birthday celebrations so make sure you check if you were a winner.

I used the Rare Earth Sweet Pea stamp set for my card. It's designed to give a watercolour effect and has several layers to stamp. I simply coloured the stamps with my distress markers, spritzed them with water and then stamped them on some watercolour card. There were a couple of empty areas in the flowers and so I scribbled my distress marker on my acrylic block and picked it up with a wet paintbrush to infill the gaps. I stamped the name of the flower in black memento. To finish, I trimmed it down to fit on a 6x4 card blank and added a pink mat. Simples! 

I can't wait to see your CAS entries, just remember to use a floral image as the focus of your card.