Sunday 29 May 2016

Christmas Card Club - Christmas Carol


I am finally back to spending a bit of time in my craft room. I've just been posting cards I had on hand but made this card today, especially for the Christmas Card Club theme of Christmas Carol.
My Carol is Oh Little Town of Bethlehem but it could also be We Three Kings! I will leave the choice up to you.

My card was made from snippets so I created my design with my snippets in mind. I already had this oval stamped image so decided to pop it behind some hilly dunes. I cut two American Crafts Heidi Swapp, Marquee Love gold glitter paper hills, simply because my newish Lawn Fawn stitched hills die is fun to use, and I enjoyed cutting it twice!
I then cut two more hills out of kraft card, inked the hilly edges and slid them behind the glittered hills to give the idea of a shadow.


I did not have any musical scores of Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem, so I used a snippet of the musical note Peace Love Joy Kaisercraft Christmas Carol DP that I had on hand. The inky looking sky background is not inked at all but a snippet of Reminisce Frosted Glitter Frost DP 12x12 DP, left over from a scrapbook page.

I added some Stardust stickles to the stamped stars, but I am not very happy with myself... I mucked up the stickled stars a wee bit, as my hand was not steady. Oh well, I keep telling myself that some stars shine brighter than others. I will spare you a close up of the stars as you will shudder! I wish I had used gold pearlescent paint and placed it carefully on each star with a pointy tool. Sigh...

Recipe
Card Base - 5x5 card made by me
Envelope - from my stash
DP - starry sky DP is Reminisce Frosted Glitter Frost; Musical note DP is Kaisercraft Peace Love Joy
Cardstock - snippets of kraft card
Dies - Lawn Fawn stitched borders; Spellbinders Ovals
Stamps - image is Stampendous, Travelling Far and  Sentiment is Hobby Arts, Wise Men
Bling - small rhinestone in center of the North Star and Stardust stickles on the other stars

I am entering this card in the following challenges
1. Christmas Card Club - Christmas Carol
2. Pixies Crafty Workshop - must use snippets
3. Word Art Wednesday - Anything Goes

Wednesday 25 May 2016

May Rudolph Days Challenge

Once again it is time for the Rudolph Days Challenge. You have until midnight May 31th PST to enter your Christmas card or Christmas project.

Here are the rules for your perusal

1. The Rudolph Days Challenge will start each month on the 25th, and will close at midnight PST, on the last day of that month.
2. The theme is always Anything Goes, as long as it is Christmas.
3. One entry per person and you just need to enter one Christmas card or Christmas project.
4. You may combine your entry with other challenges (maximum of 10 in total).
5. Your card (or Christmas project) should not have been previously posted to your blog. It should be posted to your blog during the current months Rudolph Days Challenge, (between the 25th and last day of the current month)
6. Please link back to or at least mention, the Rudolph Days Challenge.
7.  Prizes will be shipped anywhere in the world.
8. The winner will be selected by random draw and announced on the first day of the following month.


Our design team have made some beautiful Christmas cards for your inspiration. If you have a spare moment, pop by their blogs for a visit. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Kathy Kirby at Purple Princess Diaries has made this gorgeous sparkling card.



Berina at Moxie Craftie Blog has combined stunning gilded embossing with beautiful stamped holly leaves.



Sam @ Whispers Cards had made this delightful swing card with adorable Penny Black hedgies.



Jane at Onions and Paper Blog has made this non traditional coloured card with a lovely Christmas greeting on the banner.


For my card this month, I have made another card  frommy Wellington Bear card kit. This image is not a decoupage...just a stand alone image of this cutie patootie bear!



Here is a peek at the inside of this card...


The script border is part of the image and so I simply used a snippet of red card to make a mat for it and mounted it an a background made up of three snippets of DP from that same Wellington kit package. I mounted the three DP onto a snippet of fairly thin white card  and then embossed that finished background mat with a Diamond design EF, using my Big Shot. That diamond pattern gives a sort of quilted look to my card background. Best of all, that embossing qualifies me to enter the Cuttlebug Mania Challenge were the theme is embossing.

I placed all those layers onto another larger snippet of red card which I then placed onto a scalloped 6 inch square card. 6 inch cards are hard to get locally, so this is from a precious package I brought home from England a few years ago.

I finished off with snippets of a silvery glittered Memory Box Snowflake border die.  A few gems in various sizes and this card was finished! Using up those snippets qualifies me to enter Di's challenge at  Pixies Crafty Workshop  where the theme is use snippets!

Good luck in the prize draw. The Rudolph Days Challenge  prize this month is a choice between this Evergreen Holiday Inkadinkadoo stamp


 or this Memory Box Twilight Snowflakes die.



Monday 23 May 2016

Another Baby Card

A bit similar to my last baby card post, but here is the second Baby Card we made at  Langley Stampers Club. The hostess kindly supplied everyone with the papers and die to make both a pink themed card as well as a blue themed card. What luck!!!

As I did with the blue baby card from that meeting,  I chose to turn my card into a topper. Here is the result...
 The card we made was a 4 x 5 1/2 inch bright pink card. I cut that card down into a topper and saved the back piece I had cut off (to be used for the tag).

The pink Tattered Lace buggy was mounted on a Spellbinders pearlescent white scalloped oval mat. That mat was then placed on a rectangle of pink card that had been embossed with a  Swiss Dot EF .
A bit of darker pink mat was added and then off centered onto a  5 /12 inch square card that I had covered with a DP  that reads "Oh Happy Day" printed over and over.

I am considering the cast off back of the original card as a snippet. and used it to punch the  wee tag out of. The word cherish is a Tattered Lace Wedding Words die. It is a handy die set to own as the words are very tiny and come in handy for teensy spaces! I used a snippet of the while pearlescent card for the word Cherish, so with having used two snippets, I am well enroute to entering this card over at Di's Challenge. I looped a bit of fine silver cord around the card and tied the tag on when I made the bow.

I am entering this card in the following challenge
1. Pixies Crafty Workshop http://pixiescraftyworkshop.blogspot.ca/orkshop - must use snippets


PS

Just a quick reminder that the Rudolph Days Challenge is fast approaching. It will run from May 25th through till midnight on May 31st.  Once again, the winner will have a choice between a Memory Box die or a stamp...prize details to be released on May 25th!

Sunday 15 May 2016

Lemony shades of BirthdayWishes

Sorry to have been such a bad blogger lately. Family commitments and health issues are still keeping me a wee bit swamped.

Here is a card I made a couple of months ago at The Langley Stampers Club.

The base of the card is a dark grey textured  cardstock. We embossed a snippet of that grey card with a dotted Swiss EF and used it for an accent mat.The image is some branches that we double stamped onto white card. We matted the image with lemony yellow card and then die cut a scalloped circle mat and 3 sizes of hydrangea petals from the inside of that yellow mat. When we were finished we basically had only a frame left to slide behind the image! Hopefully this gutting of the mat to create a snippet, and the creative use of punching up said snippet to create the flowers,  gets me extra points at Pixies Crafty Workshop...hmmmm...


We then curved the petals with an embossing round tool and assembled the flowers. I was careful to randomly scatter the blossoms. Some are 2 layers deep and others just a single inner petal.

We then stamped the Happy Birthday greeting on a snippet of the white card, and then die that with a smaller scalloped circle. Once the yellow matted image was adhesived to the embossed grey accent mat, then we mounted the sentiment.  All that was placed on the background DP and 4 pearls were placed in the corners.

Some lemony yellow organza was wrapped around the DP and toppers. We then made a bow from some ribbon snippets and glued it to the wrapped ribbon with a Glue Dot. I liked this method of placing the bow as the wrapped ribbon remains flat against the card giving it a nice look.

This was a very fun card to make and I am happy to share it today. I think it has the look of Spring!

I am entering this card in the following challenges:
1. Pixies Crafty Workshop - must use snippets
2. Catch the Bug - Flowers galore

Here are a couple of photos of Spring in my new, teensy garden.  Many of you may remember that we moved last year and the back garden had never been put in. It was just a mass of dirt and some stray ugly gravel...




Here is a view of the other side of that bed. I will place some stepping stones up through the center path and end it with a bird bath at the start of the top bed


We will add some black garden mulch to hide the auto drip watering system. I just want to plant a few more things before I do that final mulching step.  I also need to sketch the garden out onto graph paper so that I do not plant anything perennials over the bulbs! For now, I have shoved a chopstick into the ground close to where the bulbs are...close, but not quite on top of them to damage the underground growth!

Here is a view of the patio DH just finished...we are finally able to use the back garden now. The flower bed I showed you is just to the left of the patio. There are even a couple of more really teensy ones too! Our guest parking driveway and our garage, are just to the right of the patio...just beyond the fence.