Happy Wreaths

I'm sure some of you know already, but I've never officially announced it here on my lil old blog, but 2014 is the start of a whole new adventure for me as I bought my very own stamp shop as I am the new owner of Make the Day Special Stamp Store!

We specialise in importing all the top stamp and craft brands from the USA that can often be hard to get hold of over here so if you're a fan of Avery Elle, CASual Fridays, Lawn Fawn, Mama Elephant, Newton's Nook, Papersmooches and WPlus9 then do check us out :-D

OK, advert over, time for some crafting and I've been playing with a couple of new WPlus9 sets.  Firstly I have an entry for the lovely sketch at this week's Less is More Challenge http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/week-156-sketch.html

I used a couple of markers to ink up the wreath in the Valentine's Wishes set and stamped it onto white card cut with the matching die.  I have to admit, I found this stamp a bit annoying as I have symmetry OCD so I didn't like the gap on the right where you are supposed to stamp a flower but it's easy to solve as I just hand drew a couple of leaves to join it all together ;-)   The sentiment is from the same set and I added it to the centre with a couple of extra flowers to decorate it and I added glitter to all the flowers too.  I stamped the extra sentiment which pairs with the main one onto a strip of card in the same colour as the flowers.  This is meant to go in one of the ribbons in the set but I quite liked it stand alone.

Whilst I was in the mood for wreaths, I had a play with Fresh Cut Wreaths, also from WPlus9 - these are cool as the flowers and leaves are separate but it's just a 2 stage stamp so quick and easy.  There are lots of little flowers you can add too so you can get different looks and it all matches my favourite Fresh Cut Florals set so the permutations are endless!  I stamped them onto watercolour card and did some distressing on the edges - same on the mottled DP and finished with some pretty sheer pink ribbon.

Happy Sunday!

Rustling feathers

It's time for another Waltzingmouse Fanatics challenge and this time around we have another sketch for you - pop on over to the challenge to see it http://waltzingmousefanaticschallenge.blogspot.com/2014/01/challenge-10-sketch.html

My take on it is very loose but I think you still get the idea of the shape of it.

I created a simple one layer card by stamping 3 feathers from Fine Feathers in shades of green into the shape on the sketch.  The sentiment is from Funky Feathers and simply stamped in a darker shade of greeny-blue.

I do hope you'll join us - we'd love to see how you interpret the sketch.

I'm also linking it up to STAMPlorations challenge which is all about feathers http://craftilicious-yorkshire.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/rustling-feathers.html

Colour blocking

I've been quite busy over the last few weeks with getting my shop back online but I was determined to do a little stamping this week.  One of the cards I'm short on is sympathy cards as I've unfortunately had to use a lot of them recently.  I thought the current colour blocking challenge at CASual Fridays would make a good base for a sympathy card so I had a go http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/cfc126.html

I used some scraps of purple card in 4 shades to cover my card front and create my colour blocks and then stamped and embossed the flower and vase from Clearly Besotted in white.  I coloured the flowers with my Polychromos pencils and added a little lemon pearl to the stamens.  I finished with a suitable sentiment and a white dashed line border.

At Lizy's suggestion, I'm linking this up to the sketch at CAS colours and sketches too http://cascoloursandsketches.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/challenge-58-sketch.html

Stellar Birthday

Sunday again which means only one thing - I'm bringing you inspiration on the Make the Day Special Stamp Store blog again today.

I decided to play with the lovely romantic inspiration photo over on the Mama Elephant January challenge but my screwed up brain saw romance and went for girly stars instead!

I stamped and embossed sentiments from Good Times and Say What first in silver and then with "vodka sparkle" embossing powders from WOW onto some pink cardstock.  Then I went to town with my die cutter and a couple of star shaped dies (MFT I think).   I used silver card, pink glitter and plain pink.  To get some very sparkly stars I embossed a couple of the silver ones with "bling bling" again from WOW.    Now I'm normally a CAS girl but clearly I didn't know when to stop with the stars and went for more is more this time!  I think it would be a suitable card for a tweenager though - they all love pink and bling right????

 http://www.mamaelephantblog.com/2014/01/me-challenge-january-2014.html

Funky Floral Canvas

We have a new challenge for all you Waltzingmouse fans today on the Waltzingmouse Fanatics blog and the challenge is to use FABRIC - incorporating it into a card or scrapbook page or taking it a different approach like I did and and stamping onto the fabric itself.

This is a natural coloured canvas bag which are very inexpensive to buy and very easy to work with.  I used memento luxe inks in angel pink, pear tart and elderberry and used the branch from two step spring (the veined version - I didn't think the two step would show so well on fabric) and 3 of the flowers from funky flowers and then I just went to town stamping up a flowing vine of flowers and leaves.   You do need to pop a piece of card inside the bag to make sure ink doesn't go through to the back but other than that, no special tools required.

Once dry (give it a good few hours or you can make a mess) then you can heat set the ink with a hot dry iron (no steam) and then the bag is washable at 30 degrees.   You can do the same thing with tea towels, hankies and even jeans ;-) 

I hope you're all inspired to get stamping on fabric - we can't wait to see what you come up with!

http://waltzingmousefanaticschallenge.blogspot.com/2014/01/challenge-9-fabric.html

First Date

Today is the 19th Anniversary of my first date with my hubby - we used to celebrate it before we got married and have continued the tradition so now have two anniversaries a year (well this one will always be 12 years longer than our married one!)

As my new stamps arrived this week from Clearly Besotted and they fit their new challenge theme of love, I decided to use them to make card - actually I made a couple - one romantic and one which may look VERY odd - but this pumpkin man reminds me of Jack Skellington from the Nightmare Before Christmas and that was our first date ;-)

So "Jack" is from Kraftin Kimmie and is coloured with distress markers and fussy cut and mounted on a grungy background on black card.  I used Happy Anniversary from "Happy Everything" as my sentiment.

For the card for the challenge I went a little more traditional and romantic.......

I used the you & me from the gorgeous new "say it in style" sentiment sent in black and then used a selection of hearts from "Many Thanks" to create a scattering of love and colour in the background.

http://stampingsharing.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/clearly-besotted-challenge-7-love.html

The thinking of you blues

It's Sunday, which can mean only one thing - it's my day to provide some inspiration with all the lovely stock that will soon be available again when we re-open the doors at Make the Day Special Stamp Store.  Whilst the store is closed we're still running an active blog so do follow us to get your daily dose of inspiration.

For my project today I've been inspired by a couple of challenge - winter blues colour theme at Less is More and Die Cuts at Addicted to CAS and for some reason this led me to a sympathy card.

I used my favourite floral set from WPlus9 - Fresh Cut Florals - the add on set to which is currently winging its way across the Atlantic ready to be stocked in the store :-D   I can't wait to get my hands on some more flowers!  I stamped the flowers in blues and the leaves in that blue-green colour of the lambs ear plant (not sure of the real name but I used to love rubbing the white furry stuff off it as a kid!) and then die cut them all out using the matching die set.  I then played florist and arranged them all in a die cut floral urn (Joanna Sheen), using the florists trick of 1, 3 and 5.  I mounted the whole thing on a woodgrain embossed background (sizzix) and then added a sentiment from the same stamp set on a blue-green banner.

I'm not sure such blue flowers really exist but I'm using my artistic licence!

I'll drink to that!

I managed to squeeze a few minutes in my craft room today amidst the organisational chaos that is going on in my house currently - I needed to escape for a little me time and I decided to play along with the current cue word at CASology which is "party" http://casology.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/week-76-party.html    Here's my take:

I used A la Modes Polished to Perfection from My Favourite Things and coloured the image in distress markers - I just love that's she's drinking a cocktail whilst sitting in one - that certainly says party to me!!!   After cutting her out I added glossy accents to the glasses (carefully as it can make the ink run).  I mounted her on a pink circle and added a scrap of black to match the one I stamped the sentiment on (using my new Unicorn ink from HA which I got for Christmas and LOVE as it really does work brilliantly unlike most white inks I've tried)   I finished with some dotted lines in black and white.

Retro Fairy

It feels like ages since I made a card for a challenge, so I'm starting the new year as I hope to go on - being crafty and creative!   So here's a card I made for the current sketch at retro sketches.

The main image is from the Stamping Bella Uptown Girls range and she is stamped onto watercolour paper and coloured with distress markers and a waterbrush.  The sentiments are from Hero Arts It's Your Day and the DP from papermania.  I didn't manage to get my sentiment around the fairy as in the sketch so I used fairy dust instead - hope that's OK.

I'm also going to enter this into the current "anything goes" challenges at KIS http://kis-challenge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/kis-30-anything-goes.html and http://thepinkelephantchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-pink-elephant-challenge-tpe231.html

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.

Golden Bauble

It's time for another Waltzingmouse Fanatics challenge today and after our tough theme we thought we'd better have a nice easy sketch and this is what I came up with for it.

I embossed the lovely ornament from Ornate Ornaments in gold onto kraft cardstock and added the bauble centre from Vintage Ornaments in the centre before cutting it out.  I mounted it onto a panel of candy cane striped paper from crate paper which is featuring heavily on my holiday cards this year as I think its very festive and cheerful!  The sentiment from Alpine Christmas was then simply stamped in black onto a strip of red paper and glued across the whole card.

I do hope you'll join us - it's an easy sketch to play with - you just need one Waltzingmouse product to play and there are freebies if you don't have their stamps.  http://waltzingmousefanaticschallenge.blogspot.com/2013/11/challenge-7-sketch.html

Bedtime Story

I'm much later getting around to the bedtime sketch for this month's Waltzingmouse PJ Party http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/welcome-to-november-pajama-party.html but I finally managed to get it finished tonight.

I decided to twist up Christmas a little with a cake from the Your Lovely set which I stamped in white but kissed stamped against the vintage Christmas Background stamp with green to give it a subtle pattern the likes of which I could never do in icing myself!  I decorated it with some holly from Festive Foliage stamped and shrunk on shrink plastic.  I added a sentiment from Compliments of the Season pulled into a curve.  I replaced the circles in the sketch with more holly leaves and added some red ribbon and a red pen line to finish.

Christmas Birds

That's the theme this week at LIM http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/week-147.html and I decided to have another play with my distress markers for it - have I said how much I love them????

The image is from Stampendous and the sentiment is Kaiserkraft.  Coloured with distress markers and a paintbrush and water for blending.  I continued last weeks's CAS DP theme into the card too and added a couple of strips to draw the eye in.  Quick and CAS - perfect for Christmas.