Love is all you need

It's my day over on the Make the Day Special Stamp Store blog again today and my card was inspired by the current 2 week challenge at Less is More http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/week-151-merry-christmas-everyone.html which is to select any of their previous challenges to have another go at.

I decided to have another go at metallics and one other colour from a few weeks ago (Challenge 149) although my card would also fit challenge 24 - circles.

I wanted to use one my holiday sets to show that there is versatility beyond Christmas in some sets if you look for it so I decided to play with Strictly Sentiments 3 from WPlus9 and pair it with a matching styled sentiment from Mama Elephant's Smitten set.

Now whilst this set looks aimed squarely at Christmas with it's big sentiments - I was actually more interested in the striped circles that come with it and used those in 5 shades of pink to create a bubbly border down my card.  I then ignored the two Christmassy words and just focused on  LOVE and found another "LOVE" in Smitten which had the same style and another sentiment which paired with love perfectly.  I carefully cut the sentiment apart so I could rearrange the words in the famous song and just embossed all the words in silver for my metallic element of the challenge.

Waltzingmouse and Flamingos

After our little Christmas break, it's time for another challenge over at Waltzingmouse Fanatics and we have a colour challenge based on a flamingo.

Although it's a bright and sunny image, the weather here in the UK has had me digging out my Christmas jumpers so I decided to use that for inspiration for my card.  I selected the flamingo pink, white and black from the colours for the stripes on my jumper inspired background and put it on kraft base to use 4 of the 6 colours in the scheme.

The background stamps are all from Nordic Winter and I just masked off the edges of my card before stamping them across and filling the background.  Once I removed the masks I added some faux stitching with a thin marker and then stamped a sentiment from Say it Loud Winter Holiday over the top.

We have a prize up for grabs for this challenge too - so I do hope you'll hop over to blog and play along with us - you have until 9th January - http://waltzingmousefanaticschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/

Last minute gift making

Morning all, if your house is anything like mine at the moment then I'm sure that crafting is pretty low on the agenda of things that must get done.......

However, however much chaos is around me, I usually have a few last minute homemade gifts to make so need a few inexpensive and easy to make ideas up my sleeve and thought I'd share one with you today that you can make in under 5 minutes and costs just pennies which has to be a good thing right?

I bought these paper blocks for 99p from Waitrose a while ago and one block will actually make two of these little Christmas notelet sets.  I simply clamped them tight (an extra pair of hands is helpful here!) and then stamped the twigs and berries from Woodland Wreaths by Wplus9 and then added one of the greetings to the centre.  A little cellophane and a bit of ribbon and hey presto a perfect little gift for around 60p but looking like it cost a lot more!

I actually bought a lot of note holders in the John Lewis January sales that have been waiting to be turned into Christmas gifts so I added my stamped notes to them (and yes I really could have made them MONTHS ago instead of my usual last minute panic - will I ever learn????)

The wreath is from Make the Day Special and is currently out of stock but will be back in store soon, and if you don't have it, you could use just about any stamp set you have from a simple sentiment to some flowers or even fruit and vegetables - just clamp the edges of your paper tight as you stamp on them.

House of Cards Term One Blog Hop

THIS IS A STICKY POST - so if you've come for Waltzingmouse Fanatics or Make the Day Special - please scroll down - thanks :-D

Welcome to the House of Cards Term One Blog Hop!

If you've come from Sue T's blog then you are in the right place!   If you have just stumbled here and would like to participate then hop over to the House of Cards Challenge blog to get started.  We've got some fabulous sponsors that are providing prizes, so make sure to leave comments at each stop for a chance to win!

For the hop, our challenge was to use one of our sponsors images and to be inspired by the photo below.

I was lucky to get a a fabulous image from Dilly Beans - #516 Framed Snowmen http://sillydillybeans.blogspot.co.uk/  and I used the cool colours and lots of sparkle from the photo to come up with this.

I coloured the snowmen entirely in grey copics and added a hint of blue in the background.  For the sparkle I used silver stickles and some blue and silver beadazzles.  I added a ring to frame the snowmen as a nod to the plates and to contain my greeting which I stamped inside.  The card base looks grey in the photo but it's actually a silver pearl.

Here's a close up on the snowmen so you can see the glitter detail better - I love the tiny blue beads in the beadazzle.

Unfortunately, this will be last post as part of the House of Cards DT as I have a massive new project coming this way in January which unfortunately means I've had to step down.  Thanks to Mynnette and Ruth for having me - it's been great fun ladies and I wish you all the best for the new term :-D

Thanks for stopping by!  Please join in the fun of our hop and make your way over to Vicki's blog!
 

Candlelight

It's my day to bring you inspiration over on the Make the Day Special blog again and I'm playing with one of the only remaining WPlus9 sets still in the store since everyone had a rush on them last week - Merry and Bright

I do love the multi-layer stamps that WPlus9 produce as they are such fun to play with and watch the images grow as you stamp them.  If you've never used them, I thought I'd show you how they work - for example the pine branches I've used on my card come in 3 parts so I've stamped them to show you how to layer them up.

For the rest of my card I used a mixture of the stamps and the matching dies, stamping the lantern twice, first on the card base and then again on vellum.  The pine branches went over the base image and then I used the die cut pine cones and holly leaves to cover up where they showed under the vellum - this allowed me to have the candle higher in the lantern but not have it floating in mid-air as you can't see the bottom of it.  I framed the scene in a die cut circle and stamped the sentiment onto a banner die cut with white embossing and layered it across the circle.

We're off to a food and drink fair at Donnington Park today for a little festive shopping so I expect to see lots of candle and pine arrangements just like this one!

Triangular Circles

I picked up a new delivery from Simon Says Stamps this morning and I have about a million things to do today, so naturally, I'm not doing any of them and am playing with my stamps instead!   And it being Saturday, the first place I always go looking for a challenge is Less is More where today the challenge is a colour based one - a metallic element plus a colour of our choice http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/week-149-colour.html

I'm hoping that using lots of shades of green is permitted as I really wanted to play with my new "lots of circles" stamps so I stamped 3 different sized solid circles in 5 shades of memento inks into a triangle I'd masked onto my card base to form a Christmas tree.  I then used 2 of the outline circles to add some gold embossing onto the tree.   The die is also from SSS and is called sparkling tree lights and I die cut it, and the tiny star on top, from some gold card, adding extra sparkle to the lights themselves with gold stickles.   I finished with a gold embossed sentiment underneath (Christmas Quotes from Kaiserkraft) with the "I" looking like the tree trunk (well hopefully!)  I'm really pleased with how this turned out.

Right - I really must go and get a stew in the oven or we'll be eating at 10pm!

Catch you later.

 

Sparkle!

It's Lucky Dip week at LIM and one of my favourite card designers is GDT and the challenge is inspired by her name - Made With Sparkle!  http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/week-148-lucky-dip.html

I decided to play with my cameo as I had it out making Christmas reindeer mobiles tonight and this is what I came up with.

I cut BRIGHT from a 3x4 piece of white card and stuck some red glitter paper behind the negative of it.  The Merry and & were cut from more white card but this time stuck on top of the card - the merry was coloured with a green copic and the & edged with a fineliner.

Sorry it's short and sweet but I'm currently very busy with an exciting new crafting venture that I'll bring you news of soon.

Merry Scraps

Sunday is here again so it's Make the Day Special Day again - is it just me or does it come around quicker the closer we get to Christmas???

I'm definitely in full on Christmas card mode at the moment, which means I've used a set that's come in and gone out of stock again - Peace, Joy, Love from Lawn Fawn - so I'm sorry if you haven't got it but I hope this is a bit of inspiration if you did manage to snag a set.

I decided to raid my scraps box as it's so full the drawer won't close again!   So I pulled out a selection of scraps in blues, greens and grey and trimmed them to different thicknesses to create my own striped paper.  Once happy with the arrangement they were glued down and the edges trimmed flush.  I then used 4 elements from the set - a single tree stamped in white at the bottom overlapping to create a border, the Be Merry border and fairy lights border were stamped and embossed and then the snowflake border stamped twice at the top.  All that was needed then was a little stickles in lights and hey presto - a card from scraps.