All Wrapped Up

It's the last challenge of 2015 on The Daring Cardmakers this week and the theme is: 

All Wrapped Up

We thought this one offered the chance for last minute Christmas cards, but also New Year or Winter Birthday cards too
So, gift boxes, wrapping paper, ribbons and bows are all fine but maybe you'll choose to use mittens, gloves and scarves for wrapping up on a cold day?  Or a cosy blanker or big fluffy slippers!

As we'll be on our Christmas break for a couple of weeks, the InLinkz gadget on the blog will stay open till our next Daring Date: 8th January 2016.  

I still need a few cards for the neighbours - who always get left to last as they don't need to go far - often it's Christmas Eve when they get delivered (oops!), so I thought I'd make a couple of cards, one with a row of gifts all wrapped up, and the other with a warm pair of mittens.....well, ok, if you're being pedantic, they are made of paper so probably not the warmest...and they'd be a tad small too!

The papers are by MME (I think). and the cute parcels ribbon was in a box of  parcel ribbons from Wilko's - they sort of ended up on the craft desk instead of the  box for parcel wrapping and trimming.

For the mittens card I used more of the lovely 'Colourful Christmas' kit from Bubbly Funk.  There were a couple of pretty snowflake charms in the kit, but I've lost them - they must have fallen out of the bag (and will turn up in a couple of months time, no doubt) so I hunted out a replacement - which is actually a brad with the prongs removed.  Needs must.....

 

From the kit I used papers for the gloves, ribbon, some of the gems and some of the glitter paper.  I also used the beautiful snowflake stencil from the kit and stencilled it onto a small piece of card with a pearlescent finish, so it's quite sparkly if you look closely. 

That's all for this time, thanks for visiting

Not Your Own

Lythan's challenge to the Daring Cardmakers this week was to make a card featuring a language that you don't normally use in your day-to-day life. Although the challenge is called "Joyeux Noel" it doesn't have to be a Christmas card, and I rather enjoyed the opportunity to add some non-Christmas stash to the pile of stuff now balancing rather precariously on my desk.  Even though I only tidied it on Tuesday it's already heading towards that  "only room for a 15x15cm card" state so crucial to us cardmakers.  

I'm pretty sure you will know what I mean.

For quite a few years we've sponsored a boy in Senegal through World Vision, but when his family moved out of the area their project supported we had to switch our sponsorship to another child.  A different country, a different continent and a little girl instead of a boy, our new sponsor-child lives with her family in Honduras, over in South America and is 5 years old
Anyway, when the opportunity comes along to make the right card in advance (and then probably to forget you made it, or lose it... ) you may as well take it so I've made my card for her 6th birthday - which admittedly isn't till next summer, but hey!
Whereas the Senegalese speak French, in Honduras its Spanish, so I hope I've got the sentiment right - at least there's time to correct it if not.  
(note to self, check on this with DCM Sharon)

I cut the elephant using one of my own Silhouette Cameo templates,  cutting each section in patterned paper and also in Bazzill card so that they could be layered up to give plenty of dimension.

The balloons, banner and bunting are hand cut.

The balloons were given a layer of Glossy Accents, and the elephant's eyes are Black Stickles

Materials

15x15cn square smooth card blank

6x6 papers from a couple of different MME pads

Bazzill card for backing laers

Black Stickles, Baker's Twine, White pen, Glossy Accents

Now a quick catch up on other cards this week as I've been rubbish at keeping my own blog up to date

For The Sketch File, using the Dec/Jan LO:

This is the sketch - I twisted it round for my card's LO

December sketch

On Wednesday's Bubbly Funk Blog:
In the Bubbly Funk shop, there is something special for Christmas, a beautiful collection of card, paper, embellishments, card blanks and evbelopes and one of my most favourite stencils so far
Here are a couple of cards I've made with goodies from the kit

....an this is a photo of the contents of the "Colourful Christmas" kit

That's it.  Thank you for making it to the end :) I hope you enjoyed the journey and will find time to visit the links I've given. 
It would be fab if you left a message, it's always lovely to hear what you think


 

Tag

I tried to post this yesterday, but couldn't get the photo to load,  so a bit later than planned!

If there's one crafty/Christmas thing I don't enjoy making its tags.  part of me says I should just buy the things, the other says that's cheating - so I'm always happy when an easy way to make them comes along.

I was lucky enough to be sent a fabulous tag die by the lovely people at DoCrafts and Xcut, so I thought it was time I got it out to play with

I made these using Centura Pearl (Hint of Silver) card for the top layer, and the Black ones with Bazzill Bling card - which goes to explain the lousy photo - sorry about that! The red is just regular Bazzill card.

In the die set you get all the text layer dies,the plain tag shape die, plus a couple of twiddly bits and a to/from die.  I did cheat just a little bit by making a matching plain tag template for my Silhouette, so that I could a batch of the base shapes at once, and cut them very slightly larger so they would layer up nicely.

Then it was just a case of glueing the layers together and adding some bits of ribbon and cord.  I may go back and add some gems if I have time.

A really good die set, and as the sentiment dies fit inside the basic tag die, you can cut the two sections individually to just use the tag shape, or use the sentiments on other projects  

Thanks for visiting

Oh So Trad Christmas Card

http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.co.uk/

As it's the first Friday of the month, it's Elemental Inspiration Week over at The Daring Cardmakers, and this time it's hosted by Dawn.
She's chosen a fabulously festive picture with lots of lovely, traditional, Christmassy elements to choose from, and I made this card
 

You only need to choose 3 elements to use on a card, but I got a bit carried away and used a few more than that;
Colour Palette, Greenery, Ribbon, Berries, Wood (patterned paper) and a large word
Here's the photo Dawn gave us to work from:

Tools and Materials

15cm square card blank

Patterned Paper 6x6 pads: Claus and Co (Simple Stories), 
The Story of Christmas (Echo Park)

Various green card and papers from the scrap box, also glitter and pearlescent card

Red and Gold Pearlescent and glitter card

Wired Berries, Ribbon, Gems and Pearls

Dies and Punches;

Candle Trio, Snowflake Sprig (Memory Box)

Holly Sprigs (Sue Wilson)

Random leafy sprigs from various sets 

The Candle Trio is lovely - but what a faff - it all comes to bits and some of them are really tiny and fiddly!  I only bought this recently and thought it would come all as one piece, with the details partially cut so you could use it whole, or cut several times and trim off the bits you needed to build up a dimensional image if you wanted to - but in fact all those bits cut right through straight away and you have to find them all and stick them together to make a "whole" image - if that makes sense.
It would have been so much better to have this as a set, with a full shape backing piece to build up your design onto as part of the set.  moan, moan....

That's it for this time.  Thanks for visiting

Another Attempt at Catching Up

It's been a fraught day with Blogger and I nearly gave up - was seriously thinking about starting a new blog with a different set up.  All this because OH upgraded my pc and all the chaos that brings with it.  The main irritation was finding no instant login to my Blogger account, which meant spending a good part of the day trying to get my dashboard back. Fellow users will know my pain.....

Anyway, I've only time for a quick post, so it's not all bad, I hear you say....

First up, there's a new sketch over on The Sketch File and here's my first card using it 

The basic sketch is this, but  I rearranged it a bit and used the lovely Sweet Dixie die for the whole of the focus plus scalloped line, if you see what I mean

 Next is my project over on Bubbly Funk's shop blog.  I was experimenting and getting more use out of my stencils - they really are very versatile - I unearthed some shrink plastic and used that with the Circle tree stencil to make a little hanging embellishment - it's very cute!
There's more info, and more pictures HERE and I hope you'll take a minute to pop over and say "Hi!"

 That's it. I said it would be short, didn't I?

Thank you so much for popping by