Working with Watercolours

As you may have seen from my previous post, I have just discovered the fun of using watercolours with my stamping and WPlus9 has a great step-by-step guide on one of the ways to do this, playing along, I decided to use the lovely Merry and Bright stamp set and dies.

Card - Bazzill. Watercolour Paper - Winsor and Newton. Ink - Memento.

Simply stamp your stamp on to your ink pad, you can then either take a mini mister or a wet paintbrush and spray/brush across the surface then stamp! Easy! I need to work some more on this card to balance it out a little better. It's a fun technique and so easy to do, so much so that I have decided to experiment some more. I have a couple more cards that are currently drying that I will post later!

Ang

52 Christmas Crackers 2014 - Week 1

I managed to send a grand total of 5 Christmas cards in 2013, a shameful turnout for a card maker! This year I have decided to join in with 52 Christmas Crackers hosted by Nat over at her blog Kool Kitty Musings, it's a challenge to make a Christmas card a week following the prompts and by the time December comes around you will have a fantastic array to choose from.

This week's prompt is to use something new and it was the perfect excuse to break out my new Wplus9 Merry and Bright stamps and dies.

Card stock-Bazzill, Merry and Bright stamps and dies-Wplus9, ink-Memento,

vellum-Making Memories, herringbone embossing folder-Provocraft, glitter 

card-Home Bargains, embossing powder-Stewart Superior.

I'm in love with purple at the moment, especially rich dark purples like the Bazzill cardshoppe card stock I used on this card. I had fun die cutting 2 pieces of acetate and sandwiching them together to make the hurricane lantern, originally I had sprinkled a ton of stickles and glitter at the bottom of the jar to look like snow but it looked like a lump of frog spawn, ick! I cleaned them off and cut a snow drift from white glitter card and it looks much nicer.

                                     Card stock-Bazzill, Merry and Bright stamps and dies-Wplus9, ink-Memento, 

                             vellum-Making Memories, glitter card- DCWV, embossing powder-Stewart Superior.

I went with a more traditional colour scheme on this one, i really felt like it was lacking something so i added some washi tape to help balance it out, looking at it now i think i will also a couple of wraps of bakers twine at the bottom of the washi too.

It feels good to have 2 Christmas cards made already! Fortuitously, they both fit in with the current challenge over at Daring Cardmakers - This Little Light of Mine, double bonus!

Hope you have had a wonderful start to 2014.

Ang

Christmas Wrapping

I will confess that I made these last minute last Christmas and they helped get me out of a pickle! I had been asked to make some small boxes for some ornaments and these came together so quickly using my silhouette, this cut file and Waltzingmouse Stamps Nordic Winter.

I also had a gift card that I wanted to dress up. I used this cut file for the envelope.

 and this cut file for the cute snowman.

I used my promarkers to add some detail to make the snowman pop a little more, a doily, some Doodlebug alphabet stickers and some bits and pieces left over from making holiday notebooks.

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy 2014!

Ang x

October 2013 Papertrey Blog Hop - Tag It Challenge

Edited 28th October.
I have replaced the old photos with marginally better quality ones, winter time light is my kryptonite!
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I apologise for the truly horrendous quality photo's, it's 1am and I have only just finished my tags for the Papertrey Ink October Blog Hop. I will take better quality pictures in the morning. In the meantime, here is what I came up with.

This one is my favourite, I just love candy canes, I would love to buy more stamps sets of that theme as I really don't own that many Christmas stamp sets.

I liked how the holiday words look when stamped in this way, I am going to try this in a traditional colour scheme and then make another in pink, aqua and purple. Who doesn't love jingle bells?

I punched these leaves with my Martha Stewart punch ages ago from all my scraps and have been waiting for just the right project. I need to use seed beads on projects more often as I have thousands of them.

I really like the Snowflake Flurries stamp set and dies, they aren't too 'christmassy' and can even be used on birthday cards.

Mr Snowman didn't quite come out how I wanted, there is too much white space for my liking.

At least it means I have 5 pretty tags to use when wrapping gifts and they will add that extra special touch.

Thanks for looking,
Ang.

The First of the Year

I have been putting off the dreaded 'c' word for some time, but I have finally decided to take the plunge and make my first Christmas card of 2013. I have been admiring the new Wplus9 Merry and Bright stamp set, a Christmas companion to Fresh Cut Florals, and decided that I would try and recreate my own festive card using Fresh Cut Florals and here is the result.

The card base is Papertrey Ink ripe avocado, I die cut and embossed a panel of white card and sewed it to the base, stamped some die cut berries and leaves using pure poppy, ripe avocado and simply chartreuse and adhered them in a circle using foam pads. The small doily is by My Favourite Things and the sentiment is from PTI Tag It's #8. I had fun making the wreath hanger and bow from washi tape. I was slow to pick up on the washi tape craze but find myself using it more and more, I'm worried that I will amass a large collection as I have almost 20 rolls already (That's nothing, have you seen this?)

Well, I'm going back to making some holiday tags for the PTI blog hop :)
Ang x

Post Holiday Round Up

I hope that this year finds you all happy, healthy and you had a wonderful festive period? I managed a few projects over christmas and I thought I would share a few.

Here is this year's christmas card to our immediate family, this is the final version.

Tim Holtz Reindeer Die cut from silver glitter card stock, Bo Bunny Double Dot cardstock, some simple stamping and frosty coarse cut glitter makes for a snowy scene, you can't forget the red noses! Here is the first one I made..

I like the final one better! The background on the second took quite a bit longer, I used Tim Holtz Stormy Sky distress ink and Ranger Perfect Pearls Turquoise Spray but it just didn't feel quite right.

I dressed up a gift card envelope for gift giving

The envelope and snowman were cut using my silhouette and I just 'gussied' it up a bit! This is the outer envelope, in the next picture you can see the actual gift card holder. I hope the recipient liked it!

I did spend quite a bit of time making 7 magnetic fridge notepads using the lovely Crate Paper Farmhouse papers but plum forgot to take a picture, I am going to try and snaffle a pic of one when I visit my mum next.

That's all for today, see you soon :)

Bits and Pieces

I'm busy beavering away making christmas gifts and various other bits and pieces. Using an idea I saw in an issue of CK I decided to create a chart for my distress inks so I can see at a glance what colours I have because looking at the ink pad itself isn't a good indicator!

It's pretty and functional!

I was fortunate enough that Mr Paper agreed to take me to the NEC last week. I was a little disappointed as it wasn't as large as I thought it would be and it was definately more crowded so I didn't come home with as many bits and pieces as I would like but I made up for it by ordering a few things on line. This is what I came away with..

I was pleased to add some more distress inks to my collection and grabbed some lovely little 4x4 cards for my christmas cards along with the reindeer flight die, but more on that later. These are the other goodies I bought on line..

I have been itching to get some of these for ages and was pleased to find them for £2.50 a pack from here.

Some bargain basic grey pads and embellishments from here.

Some cute fabric cones from Ikea and little christmas wood shapes from Tesco which are destined to be used as card toppers or on scrapbook pages.

And I finally succumbed and bought the Tattered Florals die!

At the NEC I declared to Mr Paper that I was going to make my own christmas cards. He reminded me that the last time I did this I said to him to tell me that I was not to do it again and I was crazy if I considered it. 'Ha' was my response, 'it will be better this time, this time I have a plan' to which he rolled his eyes and said 'just don't expect any sympathy when you get frustrated with it', I was confident that this time would be different.

Take some silver glitter paper, one reindeer die and....

Argh, WTH was I thinking, this is how many reindeers I managed before I wanted to sit rocking in a corner quietly weeping. Mr Paper was sympathetic and compromised that I would make snazzy christmas cards for the family and I would buy a box of generic cards to send to everyone else, thank goodness!

If I say next year that I will make my own cards, tie my hands together, lock my craft room and remind me to re-read this post. I am in awe of you if you make all your own christmas cards!

Christmas is a-coming!

I used to be very bah humbug when it came to christmas but last year felt a resurgance of christmas spirit and threw myself into decorating and baking and loved it (could have also been because I didn't work over the christmas period for the first time in 7 years!)

I've noticed some changes around me recently, mince pies, stollen and family tins of sweets in the supermarkets, plans at work for the all important 4th quarter and finally the christmasalicious September Crafty Templates kit that arrived the other week! What's a girl to do but try to embrace the season so I popped on a christmassy movie and here is what I came up with.

I loved the little stockings, especially coupled with the sweet little bells, made me think of elves which in turn prompted me to watch Elf while making these!

The house template was so cute, I liked the idea of opening the windows like you would with an advent calendar.

I cut the jumper template from felt and embroidered. It's perfect to send to my friend in Canada where it's so very cold.

This is not a template card, but I liked how it turned out. I love using my cuttlebug embossing folders and this one is a firm favourite, it adds just the right wintery touch.

Hope this week has been kind to you all, have fun :)