Birthday Ribbons

It's my blogging friend Anne's birthday today and I know she has received her card so I'm free to share it here now without spoiling the surprise.  I made her card using this week's sketch from Waltzingmouse as my starting point  http://waltzingmousesketchchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/challenge-125november-24-2012.html

I stamped the Hyacinth from Vintage Garden Flowers onto white cardstock and a cut with a round die after painting with Luminarte shimmer paints.  The background is actually the packaing from some Verve stamps and was just too pretty to end up in the bin.  I embossed a sentiment from Compact Sentiments in purple onto this.  I cut some ribbons from purple card and stamped them with a darker purple ink using the lace border from French Country which is just about visible in the photo if you make it bigger.  I added a darker purple strip across with some light purple gems to finish.

Glitz and Glam and sad news

The name of the game this week at LIM is Glitz and Glam  http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/week-95-recipe-glamour-and-glitz.html  which was an interesting but usefully distracting challenge for me as it's not been the greatest of weeks around here.  Unfortunately, after a lengthy and very difficult battle with bladder cancer my FIL passed away in the early hours of Monday morning.  He suffered so much in these last few weeks that its been really distressing to watch him so there is some relief amongst the sadness but he will be missed dreadfully.  We're expecting a very full church on Thursday........

Anyhow, needed to make a card for Lynne's birthday today and it fits the theme so I'm sharing it here.  (hope you've got it already Lynne and I'm not spoiling the surprise)

I die cut some flowers from DP and mounted onto a kraft base card with a pen drawn border and some double layered ribbon with some gems.  The sentiment is from Hero Arts.  The "glitz and glam" element is the glitter button over the ribbon and flowers.  I made it with melt it powder and glitter embossing powders from wow and a mold.  Here's a close up of it which shows the glitter more.

I had a little free time last night so I had another play to make some more Christmas cards using the glitz and glamour theme.  For the first pair I had a play with my new SU embossing folder and I did one "inny" with some inking and one "outy"just plain white and added some gorgeous snowflake gems I got at the NEC and some extra gems.  Finished with a sentiment from AmyR.

I think I prefer the outy but Rick likes the inny - I might try the inny again but not as a one layer.

I made one final card - well actually I made 7 but all using the same design!  I stamped a Hero Arts bauble stamp 7 times onto plain white cardstock and then I selected 7 tonal shades of green and blue-green card stock and stamped the same image again once onto each colour.  Then I cut out all the baubles and after about 15 attempts finally managed to get the puzzle right so there was one bauble of each shade on each stamped image.  I finished them all with teal gems and peacock and frosted stickles.  I mounted each onto another square of white that I had inked the edges with peacock distress inks. 

Apart from not working out the right way to get the different colours onto each, this was actually a pretty quick way of making a set of cards and they really are very glitzy in real life but the hazards of winter photography and lack of daylight means they really aren't showing up so well.

I'm going to enter these last ones in this months Hero Arts contest too as that's all about bling.

Time for a bath and bed.

Thanks for stopping by
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Hardware

The challenge this week at Less is More is "hardware"  http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/week-94-theme.html with the idea that we use something metal on our cards.

I've had a pretty stressful week - work is busy, family life is still tough and the stress made my hubby scrape all down one side of our brand new car :-(   So today I definitely needed a little stress relief and for me, that means some serious colouring!   So I took out one of my new kraftin kimmie stamps and set to work on my entry:

I coloured the image with my copics on blending paper and then cut it out to mount it directly onto the base card.  I trimmed another piece of white card with candy cane washi tape and die cut a circle from the middle to reveal the Santa coming down the chimney image.  For my hardware I added a Father Christmas brad and stamped the "no peeking!" sentiment above in red to match the washi tape.

Then I had a flash of inspiration for an alternative take on hardware - I always like to have plenty of male cards in stock so this is my second take on hardware:

For this one I stamped some hardware tools (woodware stamps) onto blending card and coloured with copics.  To add to the hardware theme, I stamped the "metal" parts of the tools using stazon onto plumbers aluminium tape (it's dead cool stuff and only a £1 a roll and its sticky backed!)  I finished with some strips of blue card with a birthday message embossed in white and a few stars punched from the aluminium tape.

So, that's my stress free couple of hours taken care of - back to the grind and the chores.

Tearing through my Christmas cards.....

I've made a quick card tonight to add to my Christmas card stash combining the sketch above with this weeks challenge at CASual Fridays which is to use tearing:

http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/cfc78.html

http://casethissketch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/case-this-sketch-challenge-5.html

I tore a piece of silver paper (which is actually a leftover party hat from last year's Christmas crackers which I I kept as I love the texture) and then tore a piece of patterned vellum to lay over it.  (the image below shows the texture and detail better).  I stamped a sentiment from Hero Arts Very Merry Christmas onto the vellum and embossed it with red EP.   The flowers is from the Waltzingmouse Pointsettia set stamped and embossed in white onto colouring cardstock and then speed water colour painted with 3 shades of red luminarte paints (my current favourite technique which is very handy when you need to colour lots of images quickly - like for Christmas cards).  It has lots of great shimmer IRL but I can't get it to show in the photos.  I simply finished it with 3 tiny maroon pearls.

Christmas Rooftops

I didn't get time to play along with Less Is More yesterday but I found a little time today - it's one layer week and the theme is houses.  I decided to use the theme as an opportunity to use one of the stamps I got at the NEC this week to make another Christmas card to add to my stash for this year.  I have to say I was quite disappointed with the NEC this year and don't think I'll bother going again as there weren't really any stalls there that don't go to my local fairs in Sheffield and Doncaster which cost less than half the entrance fee of the NEC and have free parking (not the tenner it now costs at the NEC!)  The last time I went there were lots of big companies (like sir stampalot) so there was a wide variety of stash available - this year - it seemed if you didn't want memory box dies then there was little else to chose from.  (having said that I did still manage to spend a fortune but mostly as I bought a big storage unit from storage4crafts as it was good to see them up close rather than online)

Anyhow, enough complaining, now onto the card....

I used my new town silhouette from inkylicious and stamped it in black into a central frame on my white cardstock.  I stamped a little Santa on his sleigh above the rooftops and then created a mask for the moon and then masked the rooftops also so I could ink in the sky.  I used salty ocean and chipped sapphire distress inks to create the sky and then added a little pearl spritz water on top to create a soft snowfall effect.  Then I removed the masks to reveal the full moon.  Finished with a sentiment embossed in white which is also from an inkylicious stamp set (swirl tree)

Birthday blogging

We've had a lovely day today - a nice steady morning of pressies and brunch, a trip to see the new Bond movie and then finished with a little "pre-nec planning" for my big birthday shopping trip tomorrow (having a birthday when the craft show is on is a bad idea for my wallet - and even worse for my husband!)  What better way than to end my celebration of entering my 40s than with a little light blogging so I have a couple of cards to share tonight........

First I had a play with the sketch from ISpy http://ispysketches.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/issc40-with-julie-h.html  and combining it with this months washi tape challenge at Paper Crafts

http://www.flickr.com/groups/pc_november_2012_gallery_challenge/

I wove a couple of Christmas washi tapes I picked up from paperchase onto some scrap card and then die cut, matted and layered it.  I cut a sentiment on the cameo to stick on the washi tape focal point then used some black and white ribbon over an embossed piece of cardstock and added a red wooden star (John Lewis).  I created a washi tape frame on the card base and mounted the embossed piece on top centrally.

For my second card I got a little time to play with my new release bundle from Waltzingmouse using their sketch this week.  http://waltzingmousesketchchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/challenge-122november-3-2012.html 

As cupcake craft are having a challenge this week using my favourite cardstock - kraft - I used that as my base card http://cupcakecraftchallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/cupcake-217-get-krafty.html  I stamped one of the new big background images from this months release using SU red ink onto a scrap piece of kraft and stamped the adorable sentiment oval onto the same card with the same ink cutting with a nestie label and matted onto deep red card.  I used the same red card to cut the border strips (PTI die) and finished with some red gems on the border and in the sentiment and a little red and white twine bow.

Right time to grab a little sleep so we can get up and get an early start for Birmingham in the morning - need my strength for stash shopping ;-)

The vintage traveller

November is a busy card making month for me, it seems that over half my friends have Birthdays this month (as do I tomorrow so perhaps there's some weird Scorpio synchronicity going on!) so I have a lot of cards to make.  I made a start with this weeks mojo Monday sketch as my inspiration for a friend who loves to travel.   http://mojomonday.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/mojo-monday-266-contest.html

 

I used this just wonderful and oh so appropriate image from Stamping Bella's Uptown Girls range which if you come here often you'll know I just adore.  I tried to keep the colours of the cases very vintage to look like they'd had a lot of use and then paired them with some postcard and map papers with some vintage brown paper for the ribbon and a die cut craft shape.  I added a couple of Hero Arts sentiments to the postcard and the green banner and finished with a couple of die cut flowers with gem centres.

I just got two lovely packages of new stash delivered today so I may be back later with something else if I get time to play......

Retro Christmas

I LOVE this week's sketch at retro skethes http://retrosketches.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/retrosketches-36.html  and couldn't wait to play with it.  It really screamed vintage Christmas to me so this is what I did with it:

I used papers from Lost and Found Christmas by My Minds Eye and die cut them with a large nestie (I used the same large nestie for both strips but cut strips to fit to create a different look on the stripped piece).  I then stamped a Waltzingmouse frame onto kraft cardstock and diecut it with the matching label die and stamped a sentiment from Hero Arts Very Merry Christmas into the centre.  Finished with holly cut on my silhouette cameo, some ribbon and a matching button with a twine bow.  I covered the gems I used for berries with fired brick distress stickles to keep with the vintage look as the gems were a little too "red".  The dotted border was done with my tim holtz ruler with its very handy pin holes!

I think I'll make a few of these to give to my family this year.

Feeling the CASual Force

The challenge this week at CASual Fridays is to create a CAS card for a guy  http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/cfc77.html

 I've gone quite topical this week, what with George Lucas and his deal with Disney and made this card for my husband's friend who is a Star Wars nut and is very excited about the new film already even though it's not out til 2015!

I found the image of a storm trouper online and using silhouette studio I converted the gif into an SVG cut file which was then simply cut from white card and mounted onto a black card base.  The sentiment was white embossed directly to the card base also.

Can you feel the force with this one young Skywaker?  (Sorry, you live with a sci-fi geek for 18 years and it starts to rub off......)

I'm also going to enter this into the following challenges:

http://allsortschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/week-179-for-men-only.html

Pink Pigs

I've combined this weeks Less is More challenge http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/week-92-colour-challenge.html - the colour pink with this week's sketch at http://casethissketch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/case-this-sketch-challenge-4.html

I've used 3 little pigs from the "Oh Crop" set from There She Goes Stamps and coloured with a few shades of pink copics.  The sentiment is from the same set.

A little too much sugar......

Sometimes you have a great idea for a challenge card, you can see it in your head, but then you put it onto paper (well card really) and it just looks, well pants really!   I had just such an idea for this week's CASology cue card which this week is brought you by the word "sugar" http://casology.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/week-17-sugar.html

I had the idea that tiny glass beads look like sugar and that paired with the great sweets from the Waltzingmouse Candy Jar Christmas set would make the perfect CAS card - and then, like a toddler "helping" in the kitchen, I went and added a little too much sugar, well actually, a LOT too much sugar and now you can't see the sweets!

I thought this was too good an idea to pass though, so I had another go, and this time got the sugar just right.  I finished with a washi tape border but I cut the washi into very thin strips by sticking it onto acetate, slicing and then peeling it back off again.  I coloured the sweets with copics, covered with glossy accents and a THIN layer of micro beads and a touch of glitter.

The Final St Luke's Challenge

Due to a number of issues in my personal life, I have had to take the difficult decision to close the challenge I set up to collect cards to sell on behalf of St Luke's Hospice - you can read the full details over on the blog  http://stlukescharitycardschallenge.blogspot.com/

We are going out with a bang however, with a bumper prize package worth over £30 and all you have to do to win it is create a traditional Christmas card.

For my card I used a reflections silhouette stamp and just added a little glitter and a gem - a very simple traditional card.

I'm also going to link this up to Ardyth's One Layer Wednesday challenge this week which is "Song in my Heart" so the song for this card has to "Away in a Manger".....

Thank you to everyone who has played along since the challenge started - you've all made a great difference to the hospice and for that I thank you greatly.

Tara
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