Brighter Days are On Their Way (or, The Power of Positive Thinking)

 

  Hello,

  Well, we've almost made it to the end of January, it's been a tough month in so many ways, hasn't it?

 I really hope you and your loved ones are coping ok with all the Covid stuff -  it was always going to come back and bite us hard, especially when winter came around, if only more people had been more pessimistic (sometimes pessimism helps, you know!) and kept up their guard!
 It's not easy though, is it?

 

 This week's Daring Cardmakers challenge has been set by our lovely Queen of Mixed Media, Svenja:

This week especially the weather has been very varied in my area here in western Germany. We literally had it all: snow, sunshine, rain... no hail, though. So I guess the theme I thought up for you fit's just fine:

No Matter the Weather :-)

Get out your wellies and umbrellas, snowflakes, rainbows and parasols and make a weather-themed card!

Click here to see this week's design team inspiration  

One of the gifts in my Christmas stocking was a really cute little die set from Sizzix featuring lots of garden and gardening items. Among the dies was a welly boot and this challenge gave me the ideal opportunity to use it

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Card blank is a smooth white 'fat' rectangle with a top fold. To start with I inked up a few pieces of the same snoot card with various shades of ink.  I like the wau the inks work on the card, the finish is less 'flat' than if I'd used coloured cardstock, plus ot has a bit of a sheen.

I die cut 2 boots for each colour and glued the pairs together adding a small strip f card between the layers to give a little dimension. After arranging them on mu card I glued them down, again adding a scrap of card, to the reverse - this gave me enough of a gap to add the sentiment strip under the boots on the top row.

The sentiment was created in Paint Shop Pro and sized to fit the space. I cut narrow strips from spare inked card to make the banners and glued them to the reverse of the sentiment before gluing down.

For the flowers I found the smallest flower dies from various sets and cut them out from more inked scraps. 

To finish and add a bit of glamour for a rainy day when you need your wellies. I added gems for the flower centres on the boots.

 At this point I will tell you a secret: I don't own a pair of wellies 🤯😲😮

 Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when people take the time to leave a message!

Happy Crafting, and please Stay Safe

Squaring Up

 

 Hello,

 

Hope you and your loved ones are keeping safe and well and managing to find some happy things amid all the bad stuff we are dealing with. 

 It's not easy though, is it?

My own piece of Positivity is that at last I'm starting to feel more creative! Whoop Whoop!

So I'm getting straight to this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge as I actually enjoyed making it.  Though the flower did cause me a bit of a 'moment'!

This week our lovely Shabneez is in the chair with this challenge.

You're So Square!

Use squares on your cards - the more the better!  You could use a square card base, apertures, stamps or stencils.  Show me how you can use squares creatively!

Click here to see this week's design team inspiration  

I resisted the urge to go straight to the fab Scribbled Squares die set, which was Very brave of me!  Instead, I thought I'd have a bit of fun with Nuvo Embellishment Mousse and a Crafter's Workshop stencil

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I went off the 'square' by cutting a narrow strip off the side of white square card blank/  Maybe I should have left it square to keep in the spirit of the challenge, but I can be a rebel sometimes 😲😮
I used lots of different colours of lovely Nuvo Embellishment mousse with the TCW squares stencil.  I love the multi coloured mosaic effect that I ended up with - the problem was what to do next!

I thought a simple HAPPY BIRTHDAY greeting would work ok so cut a couple of black layers of each letter then a layer in a soft sheen gold card.  The plan was to stop there but it did look a bit unfinished.

I remembered making a flower from punched squares and I thought that would be a fun way to play with the theme.  They are a bit fiddly, but a bit of fun - with hindsight I'd have just used the flower and some basic leaves rather than the leafy swirl, but never mind, you can't have it all and I'm happy that just something worked!

 

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when people take the time to leave a message!

Happy Crafting, and please Stay Safe

Circles

 

Hello,

 

Hope you are keeping safe and well and coping with the Lockdown.  It'll be worth it in the end...

I'm getting straight to this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge as I'm so late in posting.  Mainly because my first idea was a disaster!  In the end I went back to a simple layout I used for quite a few of my Christmas cards

It's Nat here bringing you this week's challenge.

Apparently it's National Bagel Day in the US of A today, so I'm challenging you to celebrate that round food favourite by featuring a circle / circle frame / circle aperture as the main focal point of your card.

But should you happen to have a bagel or even a doughnut in your stash, it's definitely a good excuse to include that on your card!

Click here to see this week's design team inspiration 

Info

square white card blank
Circles background stencilled with Nuvo Embellishment mousse

Scribbled Circles dies (Tonic Studios) cut in Turquoise Glitter card.

The sentiment is by Spellbinders, I cut a second time in the glitter card and trimmed down to the 'you' section, which was then adhered over the black layer

The butterfly (Hunkydory) was cut in a pale pearl turquoise card for the lower layer and black for the upper layer

To continue with the circles theme I added a few blur gems and stones to complete the card 

 

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when people take the time to leave a message!

Happy Crafting, and please Stay Safe

A Whole New Year....

Hello, Happy New Year!

Hope all is well with you, and you are coping ok with this latest Covid-19 situation.  Hopefully all the vaccination programmes will start having an effect - though its going to take a very long time fora lot of us to get even as far as seeing the queue, let alone the front of it!

Getting back into crafting after the Christmas break is always tough for me. Even though I'm very happy to put the Christmas stuff away and eager to get on with other projects, when I sit at my desk nothing happens! Hey ho!

 

I can's say I'm completely happy with my card for the first Daring Cardmakers challenge of the year, but you have to start somewhere
don't you?

January Elemental Inspiration Challenge

 Just pick a minimum of 3 elements from Dawn's Wintry mood-board
 to use when making your card.
Using the Colour palette counts as 1 element..
We're looking forward to seeing what you make

 

Click here to see this week's design team inspiration

I chose to use the squares, the cup and a pop of bright orange as my elements for this card.

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Slim white card blank
I inked a piece of scrap white card with a couple of pale blue shades of ink, then added some Nuvo Embellishment Mousse in Powder Blue and  a tiny amount of Cornflower Blue over the top to give a little shimmer.

From this I cut the three square, which I matted onto Kraft card squares that I'd embossed with a wood-grain effect embossing folder

For the flowers and cup I started by inking more card scraps then used a Spellbinders die set for the cup and the flowers are from a Memory Box Snowflake wreath die. 

The sentiment is also by Spellbinders

I added a few blur gems to complete the card

 

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when people take the time to leave a message!

Happy Crafting, and please Stay Safe

Tagged! (Countdown to Christmas 7)

 

hello!

This time next week it'll be Christmas Day - you really wanted to hear that, didn't you?  In all honesty, Christmas Day won't be much different for us as we usually spend it, just the two of us on our own at home.  But we do see various members of our family 'around' the time - not this year though,  there'll be doorstep present deliveries where we can, and the rest have been despatched to various corners of the country.by courier or post. 

However much we'd like to see them now, we'd rather see them get safely through this pandemic and then we'll have so much more to celebrate when we do get together again.  So we'll all stick to phone calls and internet 'meets' and show how much we care by staying away from each other.

If only everyone would behave the same way.

After that bit of ranty waffle its time for the last
Daring Cardmakers challenge of the year.

Countdown to Christmas Week 7 is

 Tags, Toppers and Labels

Here's your chance to share the tags or other kind of gift labels you've made to adorn your presents.  Whether simple and stylish or intricate and detailed we would really love to see them.

You cans see what the DT made, and share your own creations with us Here.

We're off now for our annual break, but we'll be back on January 9th 2021.  This challenge and the InLinkz gadget will stay open till then

We wish you all a Very Happy and Peaceful Christmastime

Tags are definitely NOT my favourite thing to make!But they are rather necessary at Christmas or it would be a free-foe-all when it came to knowing which gift was for whom!  So, over the last few years I've developed  a 'bung things on' attitude to tags and adding the recipients name as part of the 'assemblage'
 I also find writing messages on them really tedious, so my own way around is to make something that combines a name tag and decoration, then assume everyone will realise the gift is from us because no-one else does them that way 😆😆

Here are a couple of the tag-toppers I've made this year. 

The base card is a lovely pearlised copper, I've used some papers from a digital download and lots of die cuts with various card types.  For the tiny tags I started by adding the names in a list in Paint Shop Pro, choosing a font and size and printing them out with enough gaps between to them cut into tags.printing the names. To complete, I added some thread for the tags and a few little gold gems

 

  Apologies for the next two photos - the presents are a bit big to fit in my photo  light-box so had to do without.

 Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when people take the time to leave a message!

Happy Crafting, Happy Christmas, and please Stay Safe

  

Oh Deer!

hello!

I hope your week has gone well and you're feeling on top of this Christmas malarky.  If only, eh?

No time for waffling, you'll be happy to hear - straight on to my
Daring Cardmakers project for this week

Countdown to Christmas Week 6 is

 Animal Antics at Christmas

Make anything you'd like as long as it features
a creature or two!
Reindeer, penguins, polar bears, festive robins, puppies or kittens
Show them on your crafty projects this week and then share
them all with us by leaving your link Here

My original idea to have a whole row of reindeer with their names just wouldn't fit on the card size I wanted to use, so I simplified my design and ended up making three cards instead of one,  Well, I'd spent ages cutting all those little reindeer 'bits' already

 

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The first two cards have 3 reindeer each, two with black noses and Rudolf has a glittery red nose of course.

The dies are ancient QuicKutz ones that tend to make an appearance each Christmas because they are so cute and easy to use.  I have several other deer dies, but for some reason I struggle to use them.

I made some new Black and White sentiments on the pc and added some red and white baker's twine for some extra detail

Now I only had one reindeer left, and I was too lazy to cut more so I delved into my little box of unused die cuts and found a few that would work together to make an 'assemblage' 

There's a simple black tree (old Cuttlebug die). some red and gold snowflakes and stars and a few red gems all arranged on a gold glitter card Scribble Circle (Tonic Studios)/ I added rhw same kind of sentiment and twine elements to make it part of the set of three.

That's it for this time, I hope you like them it would be great to hear from you.  I'd be really interested to know how you get on with deer dies - I keep buying them but never feel really happy with what I make with them.  Yes, I know that's bonkers! 

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when people take the time to leave a message!

Happy Crafting, and please Stay Safe

  

December Inspiration (Countdown to Christmas 5)

 

Hi there

I'm late with my post this week.   

We had a few days away at our flat in Southwold, we let it thorough a Holiday Cottage company, but if there's no bookings its lovely to get away, have a change of scene, do a few upkeep jobs, deliver supplies for our housekeeper etc.  This year has been challenging!

Anyway.... I did manage to get my DCM project completed and photographed ahead of Friday, I just didn't get rounf to blogging it so here it is now.

Countdown to Christmas Week 5 for the Daring Cardmakers is also the first Friday of the month, so its

  December's Elemental Inspiration Challenge

This week is the first Friday of December - Christmas is definitely on the way!
We're making cards again this time

Remember, you just need to pick a minimum 3 elements from the picture to use when making your card - there are masses of choices on this one! 

The colour palette counts as one element, and other ideas you could use are Squares, Layout, Advent, Grid, Numbers, all the little pictorials...

We are looking forward to seeing your creations, but do check out the blog for some from the team to get you in the mood!

I've used some of the colours, the squares and some of the little pictures to make this card, and I quite like how its turned out (for once!)

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I started by using Washi tape to create the 3-squares grid and then added some inky colours from the picture.  I didn't measure the squares, just went by eye, so they a little random.

I cut the scribble squares and other shapes in various types of silver card and added some red glitter card 'berries' for another colour-pop

The sentiment is pc generated and adhered over some lengths of silver thread.

A few tiny silver stars were added to give a bit of 'out of the frame' interest

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when people take the time to leave a message!

Happy Crafting, and please Stay Safe

 

Gone Crackers

 

 I hope you've had a good week.  
I'm afraid that once again its been one of those weeks of many projects started but very few getting completed.  I really need to pull my finger out and get on with my crafty to-do list,  At least the Christmas shopping is well on its way - when the crafty muse fails to show up, there's always retail therapy - even if is for things for other people!

Anyway.... I did manage to get my DCM project completed and photographed ahead of Friday morning for a change so that was good.  The fact that its now Saturday and I've just started writing my blog post, we won't mention, eh?!

Countdown to Christmas Week 4 for the Daring Cardmakers has us moving right away from cards for our projects

This time we're not making cards at all!

Boxes and Bags

A handmade box or bag can make even the
smallest gift special and they are fun to make.
We'd love to see what you can make
to present a gift in

 

I made a cracker, using an old DoCrafts Xcut die which I've had for years and really love. Sometimes, if I want to put something inside which is too long for the central portion of the cracker, I cut the whole thing in half and add an extra length of card between the cut ends - its easy to disguise the alteration, or just use a toning or contrasting strip and it looks like a design element!

This one doesn't have any alteration though

 

Info  

The paper design is from a digi set called Cute Christmas II by MaishopDigitalArt 

The die does all the hard work, so all you have to do is roll the card a little to give it some shape, pop the tabs into the slits and squish the ends in at the cleverly cut 'hinges' (sorry, I'm sure there's a proper word but I can't think what it is!)

To decorate I tied the gold and turquoise ribbons to rubber bands, which I added to those 'hingey' places to keep it all in shape. 

Next I printed off a couple of A5 pieces of 2 more of the paper set designs. From the striped one I made a band to go around the middle of the cracker and used an EK Success border punch along each edge, then added a narrow strip of the dotty paper on top.  Once this was secured, I made the rosette (Spellbinders) from more of the dotty paper and added a couple of glittery die-cut snowflakes on top.

To finish I glued a gold gem to the centre of the snowflake

The rubber band means they are easy enough to fill, and the cracker is big enough for a couple of chocolates or a mini shower gel type bottle. They would make great place settings for your table.  To give a small sized gift in, you might want to add that extra strip to the centre. I'd say the tube is about 4-5cms in diameter

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when people take the time to leave a message!

Happy Crafting, and please Stay Safe

 

All Dressed Up (Countdown to Christmas 3)

 

 I hope you've had a good week.  
Its been a week of many crafty 'starts', but few projects reaching the 

finishing line for me!

Countdown to Christmas Week 3 for the Daring Cardmakers is a Card Challenge:

This week please share your cards on a theme of
All Dressed Up
We'd like to see your Christmas Jumpers, or Mittens, boots, hat or scarf.... or if you'll be somewhere warm this Christmastime maybe you'll be thinking Christmas T-shirts, flip-flops and beachwear instead - its up to you

 

 
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I used a stencil and a few shades of blue embellishing Mousse, plus silver (Tonic Studios) to make the off-the-edge circle, then a Memory Box Snowy skies stencil and Stamperia Silver Glitter paste over the top

The snow family are made using 3 x punches and white glitter card/

The scarves and the top hat are cut using a very very old QuicKutz die. the other hats are hand cut.  

The various sizes of circles are holly or mistletoe berry dies and the moustache is made using waste from a scallop edging punch!

I added some shiny red thread, a pc generated sentiment and some punched red glitter stars to finish

   

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when people take the time to leave a message!

Happy Crafting, and please Stay Safe