Christmas Wreath Extraordinaire

Last weekend, while I was trying to come up with a card for today's post, I grabbed all my christmas stamp set and kept staring at them, willing an idea to form in my brain. No one was more surprised than me when it actually happened: I grabbed the small stamps from a few stamp sets and combined them for this merry and happy DIY wreath.

I wanted the card to be CAS, but at the same time to be happy and cheerful and I tried to achieve this by using Pigment Inks. The colors are opaque and more intense than regular dye inks that sink into the paper. The only downside is that the pigment inks need a little longer to dry, so be careful not to accidentally smudge anything. Personally, I was advised by the one and only Tara to try hairspray to set the ink and guess what – works perfectly!

I finished off the card by wrapping some Lawn Fawn twine around the front panel before adhering it to my card base, which I had decorated with a woodgrain pattern stamp  so it wouldn't be too plain. You could totally skip this step if you wanted.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope your christmas card making is lots of fun and you'll discover even more uses for your little stamps.

Skating Penguin

 

Hi there and happy Friday! Only 20 more sleeps until 'Santa Christmas' (as my lil ones call him) arrives :) I still haven't finished all of my Christams cards but I must say I am doing a lot better than last year when a may have snuck a couple of store bought ones into my pile :-O.

Did you see that a new shipment of Mama Elephant came in?!?!? And that those ever so popular and adorably cute penguins are back in the store?!?! I couldn't not use this set today.....

I do love the fact that these Mama Elephant 'Artic Penguins' need little to no colouring so they do make it easy to whip up a card just using those images.... or give you more time to work on the scene ;) I have paired them up with the sentiment set 'Jolly and Merry' that was made to go with these cool critters. For my card layer I have used the smaller stitched frame from the 'Basics Set'.

Well that's it for me today ... but I would love it if you popped over to my blog at 2pm UK time .... there may be a fun hop happening and NND fans will love it ;)

Hugs Lydia xxx

Throwback Thursday

Hello! 

Brrrrrr! It's getting colder-although we haven't seen the snow our American cousins seem to be having ❄️

Today's card may be considered a little bad taste (pardon the pun) but I got the idea from a pin on Pinterest I saw the other day and thought it would make a funny card 😉

Yes,I know I know,but it's kinda funny! 

So,easy peasy to make-Wplus9 Milk and Cookies stamp and die,making a tiny slit for the straw. The scarf is simply the cookies die! How cool is that?! (Yup-more puns! Sorry!) The nose is just a tiny scrap of orange card and the eyes and mouth are the teeny tiny die off cuts. Talk about recycle! (And they say us crafters hoard-ha! Zero waste,more like it 😉 )

I hope you liked today's card and it made you giggle.

In other news,this is my penultimate post. My daughter has been gravely ill for some time,and is not responding well to her medication so I need to step back from the DT and spend all my time looking after her,but I will be popping back from time to time. It's been a sad desicion but family comes first. Tara has an awesome replacement lined up,so you will meet her very soon!

Have a great Thursday! 

Lou x 

 
 

Peace

Hello.

Today i am using my favourite stamp set Winter woodland from Winnie and Walter.

Its such a versatile set i don't think i could run out of ideas for a very long time.

I started by stamping the green twig/branches  i did this free hand 

I was quite pleased how that came out but as you can see i added the tree stump thingy and placed it wrong lol.

I then used a dies cut because i didn't have time to stamp and fussy cut the sentiment from the big the bold the merrry.

The bird is heat embossed in red and fussy cut.

I added some very fine silver wire and sequin and some stickles to finish.

Thanks for looking.

Narwhal Alert!

 Hi! Hope you're ok and wahooo.. it's December.
I recently got this set, 'Critters in the Arctic'

 

Isn't it great? 

I have to admit not knowing what a Narwhal was- even though I've seen Elf. 

I immediately thought of Santa's sleigh- and imagined the Narwhals pulling it over the Arctic. 

Yes, my brain goes strange places.

See the little hat? Thought I'd give them each some warmth and a little personality. By angling the hat and placing it in different directions, you can make them look a little different.

I added a piece of red thread through their bodies (don't worry- I found a fleshy bit that didn't hurt). I gathered them together and attached them to the inside of the front cover. I've created the ocean with some vellum.
The sentiment is using the Milo's font stamp set

I just created the sky using some distress inks and made some little 'sleigh pieces' out of Snow Days paper

I have so many ideas for this set- you might find it popping up on some other Tuesdays.

See you next week,

Keren x

November Challenge Winners

So today is the first of a new month and you're probably all wondering where the new challenge is?   Well, as Christmas is very close, we all have lots to do, as I am sure you do too, so the challenge is taking a break but we'll be back in January with a new challenge for you.

However, we do have to announce who won our November colour challenge - it's been really  hard - so many wonderful cards this month you really split the DT and made it hard for us to agree but we finally have a winner and 3 runners up!

Our winner this month is Francesca of Finally Friday!   Francesca made so many gorgeous little penguin entries but our favourite was this one as the little scene she created was super cute and we loved the sentiment she created with sketchy letters too!

Congratulations Francesca - please email me at the store and I'll get your voucher out to you!

Our runners up this month were - in no particular order:

Kate - again we could have picked a number of her cards but our favourite was this delicate floral creation.

Nadia - we loved the elegant simplicity of this card - wouldn't this be a good one to make lots of for
Christmas.

Finally we really loved this little tag from Anita - what a clever use of the rays from Avery Elle's Bright Days to make elegant trees!

Thanks so much for playing along everyone - we do love looking through all your gorgeous projects.  Store up all your creativity and be ready to unleash it on 1st January!

Don't forget the Sprouts!!!

Hello there :0)

Well, with the end of the school term approaching I thought I should turn my attention to making gifts for James to give to his teachers and friends for Christmas :)  I do like to look around the shops for festive ideas because some sweets are just begging to have homemade packaging.....

Marks and Spencers won me over this year with these foil wrapped chocolates made to look like Brussel Sprouts..... aren't they just brilliant ?? The old cogs started to turn as soon as I saw them, and in fact M&S have done all the harwork with these, as not only does the foil wrapper look good but so does the net bag they are in.
I simply used the Lawn Fawn Goody bag die with red card and cut a circle from one of the pieces. To make a plate I used the same circle die and one a couple of sizes larger to make a white ring around the aperture and the Flatware dies from Paper Smooches in Mirri card.

The bag of sprouts is a snug fit in the goody bag so the aperture in the front helps with that and they also look like they are piled nicely on the plate :)

I cut off the shop tag and replaced it with my own which has been made using the Tag You're It dies.
The candy stripe border has been made using the airmail stripe from You've Got Mail and the word Sprouts is stamped in Lawn Fawns Riley's ABC's ... to make the word stand out I used a solid circle stamp and a couple of shades of green ink to add some sprouts behind it :0)

M&S also have a bag of chocolates made to look like clementines in this style which have a hint of orange flavour in the chocolate....... I'm pleased to report that, according to the label, these Sprouts are just chocolate!! Phew...not sure the world is ready for Sprout flavoured chocolate !!!!

               

Thanks for stopping by
Jenny x