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
x

Christmas snowflakes

The theme for this week's 52 Christmas Card Throwdown is snowflakes http://52cct.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/theme-challenge-4.html and Moving Along with the Times http://movingalongwiththetimes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/merry-christmas-from-mawtt.html also want to see Christmas cards this week so I'm entering my card into both challenges.

I started with the DP and went for non-standard Christmas colours of pinks, purples, blacks and greys.  The papers are from a papermania 8x8 stack and to finish I simply embossed a die cut shape with black glitter embossing powder and then embossed a wooden snowflake with, appropriately enough, snowflake twinkle embossing powder.  An AB gem adds extra sparkle to the centre.  The sentiment was embossed over the DP strip with fine detail white powder.

Friendly snowflakes

This weeks challenge at 52CCT is a gorgeous sketch which I found really inspiring so made a card straight away without too much thinking for a change.  http://52cct.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/sketch-challenge-4.html

I started with a blue base card and decided to go for a total snowflake fest.  I cut a blue snowflake (MS punch) and stuck it onto a nestie circle adding a button and twine bow to the centre.  You're probably all fed up of it already but I couldn't resist returning to my new favourite paper inlay technique this time using my memory box snowflake die.  I stamped a sentiment from Amy R in pearl blue ink (hard to see on the photo but is says The chill of winter is warmed by friendship) and then ran the white card through a snowflake embossing folder.  I might make more of this design as it was quite quick (even with the inlaid border)

A Couple of Casuals Plus Colour Q

I really annoyed myself this week - I missed the deadline for CAS-ual Friday - stupid really as we'd had 2 weeks to play and I made the card in time, just didn't get my bum in gear to post it prior to the deadline. Being in the UK, I don't even have Thanksgiving as an excuse!   I've never missed a week of this challenge since it started, so I'm posting my entry Challenge 29 along with the new one for Challenge 30 just to prove I did it :-(

I used the the fantastic colours from this week's Colour Q http://colourq.blogspot.com/2011/11/colourq-challenge-113.html  as my starting point along with the CASual Friday sketch

This is what I came up with just using one stamp set from There She Goes and a few blue gemstones and some old DCWV DP.  

I stamped the snowflakes in the 3 ink colours on white card and added gems to the centres of the larger ones, stamped the sentiment in the corner and then edged the card with Sahara Sand for definition.  I added some snowflake DP and finished with some more gems and a second sentiment (actually this one is from Waltzingmouse not There She Goes).  This one will be going to my best friend who I've been out with all day today getting the Christmas shopping done and we'll be celebrating in our traditional way (in the pub!) on Christmas Eve so she definately DOES make the season!

So, that's last week's sorted - onto this week - which is a tic-tac-toe challenge  http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.com/2011/12/cfc30.html

I've opted to take the diagonal line from Scallops to Aqua and this is my creation.

A plain kraft base with a simple scalloped border strip cut using a die from aqua glitter paper.  I stamped a papermania sentiment which has a snowflake pattern but it isn't showing on the photo as I used chalk ink and it's not as crisp as I'd like.  I then decorated the rest of the card with die cut snowflakes using the same aqua glitter card and a few in white for contrast.

Right - better get all the Christmas shopping put away!

Bye for now.
Craftilicious x

Partially embossed snowflakes

I've been out a Stamp Magic all day so not much time for blogging but I wanted to do a quick post tonight to beat the deadline on the There She Goes challenge which is to make a card only using partial images.

I used some stamps from their snowflake set and stamped and embossed them onto some small white squares deliberately letting them fall over the edges so on the majority I used only the partial image.  I inked them once embossed with distress inks and spritz them with perfect pearls shimmer.  I rounded the outer corner on each and mounted them onto white snippet dry embossed with snowflakes.  I mounted onto a blue snippet, on a black square card and finished with one of the sentiments from the set.

I am entering the following challenges with this card:

Partial images - http://tsgclearstamps.blogspot.com/2011/10/there-she-goes-again-tsg126-partial.html

Holiday embossing - http://crazy4challenges.blogspot.com/2011/10/crazy-4-challenges-c4c109.html

Unused holiday stash - http://abcchristmaschallenge.blogspot.com/2011/10/u-is-for-unused-stash.html  - neither the folder nor the stamps have been used before.

Winter theme with sentiment http://audsentimentschallengeblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/challenge-39-and-winner-of-38.html

Night all - thanks for stopping by
Craftilicious x