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
 

Something Stencilled, Sponsored!

This week over at The Daring Cardmakers we have a pre-Christmas treat for one of you - a beautiful crafty gift you could win, thanks to our lovely sponsor,
 Bubbly Funk

who specialise in selling stencils and stencilling paraphenalia

The Challenge is simple:

Something Stencilled
Just use a stencil in some way on your card. It's not a problem if you don't have any ready made stencils - you could use a die cut, or the die itself, a doily, or anything else that you can paint, ink or trace through.

I used one of my favourite stencils to make the main part of this card (Winter Tiny Snowflakes), and just a little section of another gorgeous stencil (Flurries) along the lower edge

I used:

Stencils;  Tiny Snowflakes (Memory Box). 'Flurries' (Echo Park)

Dies; Trees (Sue Wilson), Green parts of Poinsettia (DieNamics),

 Sentiment tag (Creative Dies)

Various star punches

Red Poinsettia petals cut on Silhouette (own template)

Black card blank, red card, green card, white card, glitter card (red, silver)

Diamond and Silver Sparkle Medium (Imagination Crafts) 

Silver cord, Flower stamens (painted yellow), Red Stickles,

 Wired Berries; red, glittery and silver, Red glitter card "twirls"

 Caroline, of Bubbly Funk has put together this special prize pack;

3 stencils, chipboard mini albums, keychains,
 crystal flowers, ink and ribbon

As always with our prizes, everyone who joins in has an equal chance of winning as we use the links list and a random number picker to select the winner.

I used this same stencil on a couple of the cards I added to Bubbly Funk's own blog the other week, so thought I'd show those cards here today too. It makes such a beautiful background for all my Christmassy dies!

Going back to The Daring Cardmakers, though, this week the DT were each sent a stencil of their choice from Bubbly Funk to use on our cards, so please visit the blog to see how we've used those we selected.  We'd love you to join in this week!
Thanks for popping by

 

 

 

Crackers

This week on the Daring Cardmakers, we're  taking a small break from our cardmaking - it's all down to  Dawn's challenge:

   Anything But A Card! 

This could be a gift box, a hanging decoration, scrapbook page,
an altered item etc..In fact, anything you've made this week, except a card

I do love making boxes, books and other non-card projects, but its been a few weeks since I had the time, so Dawn's challenge made me very happy!
It was a brilliant excuse to get the fab DoCrafts cracker die out again, and ake this

After cutting the die, and an extra piece for the central panel, I stencilled some snowflakes in silver glitter paste before making up the cracker shape.  This beautiful stencil has just arrived in my eager mitts and will be added to the Bubbly Funk Shop very soon!

Info:

Red Bazzill card

Silver paper

Glitter card; Red, Silver, Black 

Glitter Paste (Sparkle Medium from Creative Imaginations)

Snowflake stencil available soon from the Bubbly Funk Shop

Silver cord and ribbon. Clear gem

Dies:

Cracker an A4 die from DoCrafts

Large Snowflake; cut in black at the back of the embellishment (Apple Blossom deis)

Silver snowflake in embellishment (Spellbinders)

Baubles (Crafters Companion)

Punches:

Poinsettia border die (DoCrafts) 

Snowflake on baubles (EK Success) 

Smallest snowflake in embellishment (Martha Stewart)

The red "petals" on the embellishment are made from the waste bits after cutting the cracker - it seemed a shame to throw them away so I glued the ends of 8 onto a small circle, made 2 of them and used them in my snowflake cluster embellishment.

Well, we may be called the Daring Cardmakers, but we don't just make cards,  and this week's challenge has give us the opportunity to have some fun abnd share some of the other things we make, I hope you'll head over to the blog and see all the goodies!

Thanks for visiting

Huggable, and Cuddlesome

Nat is our hostess over at The Daring Cardmakers this week and she's asking for a whole load of hugs!

:

"This week I'm challenging you to feature some
~ ~ ~ ~ Cuddly Creatures ~ ~ ~ ~
on your cards and bonus glittery stars if you include hugs in the image or greeting.

There have been some really great stamp releases of late featuring huggable pandas, bunnies and bears, so if you have any of those in your stash waiting to be used, now's your chance!

Your cuddly creatures don't necessarily have to be your regular cute animals, they could be a bit more unusual...

I was a bit stuck (nothing new there then) until  I remembered some lovely templates from Leo's old range of "Crafty Templates" - now morphed into the fab "Quirky Kits", but with the various templates saved safely on my pc and ready to pop up like this cute polar bear and help me out from time to time :)  

I've downloaded some paper sets from Pink Petticoat recently, and one of them features cute polar bear images  - how lucky was that then?

Here's my card

The various layers for the Polar Bear and his hat are cut on the Cameo

Paws and banners are hand-cut

The Holly is from a Holly Sprigs die (Creative Expressions)

All paper designs, plus the sentiment are by Pink Petticoat and printed onto Bazzill white card

Embellishments: Red Stickles glitter glue, tiny black gems

Now I thought I'd add a quick catch up with my makes for Bubbly Funk this week.

I used the fab  Hero Arts 'Circle Trees' stencil and had such a ball playing around with it trying it out with different inks, paints and gels

This is the stencil in used in pretty basic form.  I stencilled first in a dark green. and then with gold 'Sparkle Medium'.  I thought the dark green would give more depth, but in reality it was an unnecessary step - what a speedy, but striking card this makes, you can't get much simpler than this one!

I was a bit peeved when I realised the inks had bled a little under the stencil while I trying to make a pastel version with Versacraft and other inks
(an amateur's ineptitude, I expect). Then I decided that I'd try to work with the mistake and do something with the image anyway. 
 I replaced the stencil to trace the circles with a black gel pen, then glued on a few  sparkly stars to add some bling.

 
As  I tend to use 12x12cm cards at Christmas the stencil is a bit big so I had a bit of an experiment with version 3 and masked off the lower section before stencilling.  I only stencilled whole circles, so had to go back and fill in extras to get the right shape, but this worked ok and I was able to make a batch of similar cards quite quickly



This last one is probably my favourite.

I stencilled directly onto the dark green card blank using acrylic paints (various greens and reds), gold stencil paint, and the glittery gold, red and green 'Sparkle Medium'.  I didn't really wait for things to dry, just built it up and let it all merge together.  I really love the colourful, grungy effect this made.  Might be fun to try with a cooler colour palette too. 
More info HERE

Thanks for Popping by today, I hope you'll check out all the other cards over on The Daring Cardmakers Blog - there are so many hugs to be had over there today!  It would be fab if you'd add your Cuddly Creatures and send some hugs around the world!
 

1-2-3 craft....

Last week I completely forgot to add on here the first of my cards using new November LO on the Sketch File, so I'm doubling up today.

This is the one that is on today's Update post.  There's something not quite right with it to my eye it looks a bit off balance, and I can't work out how to fix it - maybe the gold panel is too wide?

 I like the idea so may persevere with this one - I like the partial snowflakes on the squares, but the background I'm not so sure of

 

 For last week's card I used banner shapes for the two panels and added Mosaic punch baubles on silver cord for the 3 focus pieces

Here are a couple of views of the sketch, you can find more ideas HERE

Thanks for visiting, please leave a message ;)

November Elemental

When I first saw Gez's November Elemental Inspiration Picture I thought "Great, loads of things to choose from, there'll be no trouble picking my minimum of three."
As so often happens though, actually getting something made wasn't as easy as I'd thought. Not really helped by having the desperate urge to incorporate using the Blackboard paint that had recently arrived in a DT box..... Surely it was meant to be....

I started by using some masking tape around the edges of the card then roughly applying the chalkboard paint with an old, dried up baby wipe.  I rather like the way the paint bled out a bit in some places, and how the coverage is rather uneven,  looking a little like something has been rubbed off leaving a bit of chalk dust smooched around.
A piece of scrap card was also painted with the blackboard paint ahead of making the banner (element 2; the circles pattern of the paint box near the red box).  I scribbled with brightly coloured Gelatos on a piece of white card for the lower section of the banner
My third main element is the heart.  I wanted to tie in the colours in the "paintbox" banner so decided to die-cut several small hearts in bright colours to use as a border.  I just inked a few small pieces of card for this, and as there was enough left over I punched some tiny squares to make the short border stripes.  
Drawing the flowers with a white Posca pen echoed the hand drawn elements 

Here is November's Elemental Inspiration picture;

Wouldn't you have loved a room like that when you were small?

Tools and Materials:

White card blank, plus extra of the same card

Blackboard Paint 

White Posca pen

Gelatos

Inks - various

Dies: Contempo Border, HAPPY word set (both Memory Box),  

Small heart is from an old MFT Die'Namics set

Tiny Square punch (Xcut)

Sentiment - self made using decal paper from Crafty Computer Paper

That's it, I hope you'll visit the Daring Cardmakers blog to see how the rest of the team have used this picture - it really is worth seeing how the same picture takes different designers off in different directions.  I never fail to be inspired by the results every time we do one of these challenges. 

Thanks for visiting, have a great weekend

Gone Batty

Some say I did that years ago....

It's Svenja's turn to set the challenge for The Daring Cardmakers this week:

I’d like to see some strictly
non-cute Hallowe’en themed cards.
Make it creepy-crawly-spooky-scary!
Click HERE to take a look a the design team’s creations..... Beware!

Muuuuaaahhaahhhhaaaaaaa

I don't really "do" the whole Hallowe'en thing, especially the "imported" version. I'll say no more on that theme though!

Info:

I had fun playing with inks to make the background for this card - I inked up some card in yellows, oranges and reds to start with so it could dry before die-cutting the spooky-coloured moon.

For the main background I began by inking the whole piece with DI Tumbled Glass, then smooshed some Broken China around the edges and inwards, but leaving a pale area near the centre.  Next I built up the depth of the outer area with "Dusty Concord" and finally added some Colorbox Black ink just around the edges.

The grass at the lower edge is stencilled - I moved the stencil around to fill in areas of the card, and used a couple of colours - Elderberry (Memento Luxe) and Black (Colorbox) to get a variety of depth.

Finally I brushed some Silver Decoart Glitter Paint over some of the grass.

The curly tree is one of two chipboard ones that I've had for years - its good to actually make use of some of this stuff!  I inked it black, then added a coat of the decoart silver glitter paint which really gives a lovely effect over black.  

The bats were cut with the Cameo using my own template

All that inking took a while, but it's good to experiment occasionally and I learned quite a bit about building up colour making this one.

Thanks for looking, please leave a comment if you've a minute :)