PJs and Trees

Today is Waltzingmouse PJ party day and I've managed to combine their sketch challenge with this week's LIM challenge which is to feature more than one tree  http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/week-198-theme.html

Here's my take on the sketch which I've included below for reference.

I used the row of trees from Flurries and a bit of inking with a dauber over scraps of torn paper to get some hills to ground them on.  I wanted to tie into the "warm" in the sentiment so decided to add a large low yellow sun rising behind the hills.  I put my die cut panel onto a soft background of snow created using texture paste and a SSS stencil.

I didn't manage to do all the challenges this month but I did have a go at the Scandi Tag too.

I decided to do a sparkly red snowflake - not traditional but I think it works - particularly with this spikey number from the last release.  I added a little scani-ribbon and a simple sentiment along with a dashed border and hey-presto - a quick and easy gift tag.   I really love to wrap with plain coloured papers at Christmas and let my trimmings do the talking so these are going to look great on my red wrapping with lots of natural hemp twine.

It's just the day for a PJ party here - cold, grey and foggy.  What could be better than staying in and getting inky!

Waltzingmouse Friendly Feature Guest Spot

I'm SUPER excited today as I have the honour of guest blogging over at my favourite stamp company as I'm this month's Waltzingmouse Friendly Feature :-D

This is just a little sneaky peak at one of my projects - if you want to see the whole 9 yards then you need to hop-skippity-jump right on over to the Waltzingmouse Blog - can't wait to see what you think!

Stripes

I managed to do some homework for class again - for day 8 - it's my favourite day of class so far even if it got me all inky and icky ;-)

First up some simple masking, a straight line stamp and 5 shades of ink - et voila - a clean and simple one layer card all ready for Christmas.   I embossed the bauble top (waltzingmouse stamps) and the sentiment (imagine that) over the top of the pattern to finish.

Less is More with Red and Green

I've really not had much time to play again this week but I did catch the latest LIM challenge on Saturday and made something which ended up in the bin, then tried again and got a so-so result which I'll share below and then finally I made something properly CAS that I actually like!

This is my so-so - inkylicious Christmas tree swirl glitter embossed in green on kraft and then I used an embossing pen to emboss over the star details so I could emboss them again in red glitter.  Finished with washi tape sentiment.

This is the one I like (well in fact I love it and have made a set of 6 as I still need more Christmas cards this year - I've made tonnes all year but still not enough!).  Very quick, simple and purely CAS.  The door is a die cut (memory box) and the wreath I cut from DCWV sticky backed card on my cameo (very easy to replicate a design in studio to print a lot across your card strip)  The box is from the same shape set cut from paper and then I decorated the wreath with small red gems.  The sentiment is from Waltzingmouse stamped onto a ribbon die (Simon Says Stamps) and then the door is popped up on dimensional foam to allow definition from the white background.

http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/week-96-colour-challenge.html

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.

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 ;-)

Fall Recipe

It's blog party day again over at Waltzingmouse stamps and this months theme is "fall" or "autumn" for folks over here in the UK.  http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/waltzingmouse-stamps-september-blog.html

I decided not to make a card this month - a friend asked for a recipe for a cake I'd made which features apples and pears so I thought a jazzed up recipe card would fit the theme perfectly.  I printed the recipe onto kraft cardstock to give it a base colour with an autumnal theme and then decorated it with leaves from Big Bloom Chrysanthemums, an apple from Teeny Trees and a title from Back in the Saddle.  Much better than a scribbled on a post-it note which is how I usually hand over recipes!

Time to surf around the rest of the party participants - thanks for stopping by.

Birthday Blog Waltz

As it's the 17th of the month (just still here in the UK) then it's time for the monthly Blog Party over at Waltzingmouse Stamps.  http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/let-august-2012-wms-blog-party-begin.html

I'm a little late to the party this month as tonight there was a civic reception for Jessica Ennis to show off  her gold medal from the Heptathlon at this summer's Olympic Games.  We went along but by the time we got there, this was the closest we could get (if you look closely you can see a tiny dot on the stage about a mile away lol!)

We did better than some though as this was the view behind us :-D   Sheffield certainly came out in force to welcome our champion home!  According to the news, there were around 18,000 of us :-)

Anyhow, you came for cards, not crowds, so I'll get back to the blog party now.  The theme this month was simply "birthdays" and I decided to do something a little different for me and go a bit girly with pearls, lace and decorative papers.

I patchworked some strips of paper from the Miss Caroline Dilly Dally stack from My Minds Eye onto a scrap of thin card and then I ran it through my floral vine embossing folder (shows up best on the wooden scraps).  I added some teal lace and then finally we get to the Waltzingmouse elements.  I die cut a fancy frame from more white card and stamped a sentiment using words from the Say it Loud set which is still one of my all time favourites.  I used one of the nestabling shapes that Claire now stocks in the store to decorate the frame, colouring each of the white pearls with peacock liquid pearls (not as difficult as it might sound - the pearls are the right size for the nib of the bottle so just squeeze, dot and move on)

Hope you like it :-)   I'm off to link up and browse around the other party goers.

Thanks for visiting
Tara

Bling and Holes

I needed an Anniversary card this week for some friends and thought that a combination of a couple of challenges would be ideal for it - CASual Friday's "bling" and Annabelle Stamps "paper piercing".

I started with an oval nestie and stamped a cake image onto it in pink, over stamped a swag design in darker pink and added bling to each swag.  Next I drew a swirl design onto grey card and pierced it before rubbing out my pencil lines.  I mounted it onto pink card stock so that it showed through the pierced holes and finished with a sentiment on a tiny lable.

http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/cfc55.html

http://annabellestamps.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/say-it-withpaper-piercing.html

Relax!

In typical procrastinating fashion, I've had a whole month to play along in the Quixotic Paperie sketch challenge and leave it until I have 2 days to go before I actually get around to it!  http://quixoticpaperie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/quixotic-paperie-sketch-challenge-no5.html

I've always been in awe of Mary J's fabulous little circular cards - she packs so much in to them yet still makes them look clean and refreshing and I never seem to have the knack.  However, with one of her sketches to follow, I had to give it a go - so here's my interpretation.

I used the lovely yoga girl from kraftin kimmie and coloured her with copics.  Layered on teal, an embossed white circle with a little DP and lace to finish.  The sentiment goes with the stamp but I only used one word of it rather than the whole sentiment.

While I'm here, I thought I'd share a card I was commissioned to make for a wedding over Easter weekend as I now know it's been opened.

I printed the sentiment and then matched the ink and ribbon and stamped a border top and bottom using Waltzingmouse stamps with a few gems and then stamped a matching frame from the same set around the text, with an embossed lable behind.  Apparently it went down really well.

Neutrally Less is More

I just don't seem to have had the time to get into my craft room this weekend so I'm very late with my entry to this week's LIM challenge, which is a colour challenge being the first week of the month and this time the challenge is to use neutral colours.

I do love neutrals, and in particular kraft cardstock and I particularly like browns (although I don't know why as a 70s kid I grew up in a totally brown house and hated it!!) so chose the two as my colour combo.  I started with a snippet of kraft - actually the back of a previous card I'd ruined, so this will be my entry to Pixie's Sunday Snippets challenge too - the only requirement is to make a card from snippets and not to cut into a fresh sheet so do join in the fun (oh but mind the pogo sticks in the playground!)  I stamped my Waltzingmouse woodgrain stamp in jumbo java ink onto the snippet and mounted it onto some dark brown card (also an offcut from a 12x12 sheet).

The main element is a new die (poppystamps small tilda) which I cut twice - the first at its full size I cut from a sheet of double sided glue, stuck down over the woodgrain stamped image and then covered with my favourite glitter ever - the dark brown sugar coating which I just LOVE.  I then cut another from the remaining kraft card snippet but this time I cut off the outer loops.  I stuck it on top of the glittered one but slightly offset it.  I stamped the sentiment and die cut it with my smallest round nestie and stuck it in the middle.

Will get over and have a look at what everyone else has been doing in this challenge now.

Spingtime Waltz

As today is the 17th, then it's time to party over at Waltzingmouse - there will be a linky thing later I do believe to give everyone around the globe a few hours to join the party.  The theme for this month is SPRING.

To me, Spring is all about the fresh green buds on the trees and the soft blue skies that finally start to appear after the longs months of grey gloom.  So I used that as my colour inspiration and this is what I came up with:

I made the carnation flower from felt - no fancy dies required, just a pair of scissors and a bit of tape.  I die cut the leaves from green felt and added a glittered vein.  I used the ribbon from Eat Cake, stamping it twice, first directly onto the DP, then once again onto white, which I carefully cut out out (except for the dots..) and paper pieced on top for dimension, finishing each swag with a diamante.   I added a sentiment from the same set below and used the same ink colour to stamp part of a doily from Dainty Doilies 2 (small) to echo the shape of the flower with a few green diamante to bring in the leaf colour.  DP is from an old DCWV stack.

Can't wait to waltz around with the other party goers later.

Love and Hugs

I'm taking our St Luke's Charity Card stall to the Crucible Theatre next Saturday to sell at a special matinee they are putting on in aid of the charity, so thought I should rustle up a few Valentines appropriate cards as it's a few days after.  The gorgeous sketch at Waltzingmouse this morning gave me the idea for another.

I started with my largest scalloped edge nestie and put it on a square card deliberately hanging it over at the join slightly so it doesn't come into two pieces.  I then took my colour inspriation for this weeks Daring Card makers challenge which is red and pink, usually a combo I find difficult but I challenged myself and this is what I came up with.

I used the kissing technique with the great woodgrain background stamp from the WM Way out West set to make my Fiskars heart stamps look wooden.  I cut mounted onto red card and cut again.  I stamped a larger frilly heart and added "with love" from part of a sentiment from Christmas Cottage and took "hugs" from another part of a sentiment from Frame it and handwrote the ampusand.  I then used the heart border from Nordic Winter to create my border centre strip and mounted that onto card.  The  floral DP is Papermania Raspberry Champagne, cut with a nestie and I hand coloured the border with a copic pen.  I finished with some teeny-tiny heart shaped buttons that I got yesterday and now wish I ordered loads as they are just adorably cute!

I am entering the following challenges with this card:

http://waltzingmousesketchchallenge.blogspot.com/2012/02/challenge-84february-4-2012.html

http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com/2012/02/februarys-colour-comb-challenge.html

http://divasbydesignchallenge.blogspot.com/2012/02/challenge-20-anything-goes.html

Off to make something warming for DH for dinner as he may well be walking home from work in the snow....

Waltzing with Purple LIM

After a break for Christmas, my favourite weekly challenges have returned and as this week's Less is More is a colour challenge then I can combine it with the Waltzingmouse sketch.

It's a nice and simple sketch to ease us into the New Year and I chose to stick quite literally to it, and use the colour theme of "mostly purple" from Less is More and here it is.

I used a rich lilac and a dark purple as my colour themes and stamped one of the gorgeous Waltzingmouse doily stamps onto lilac card with lilac memento ink and cut it out my hand.  I added a purple flower button, replacing it's green centre with a lilac brad and gemstone.

I mounted it onto a white base card decorated with a strip of dark purple cardstock with a lilac stripe below which I cut with my new spellbinders edgabilities (currently very much on sale on create and craft).  I covered the join with some purple metalic tape.  I finished with a two part sentiment in the same colours from the say it loud set again from Waltzingmouse.

I'm on a bit of a mission to get organised in my craft room this year and have set a deadline of the end of Feb.  I had a good start this week and have completely cleared my desk and the floor.  I'm waiting for some storage delivery for my CDs which hold my clear stamps which hopefully will be here tomorrow and then I'm going to get properly organised.  My resolution is to put stuff away when I've finished with it, and so far so good on that score.  I've bought some stuff twice recently thinking I've lost it, or not realising I have it, so I have a large poster on the craft room door which says - YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE.....      UNTIL YOU CLEAN YOUR ROOM!!!!   This is my mantra for 2012.   Have some other new storage ideas which we'll set up today as we're housebound again due to a Sunday football match which means we'll lose our parking space if we go out before the match finishes. 

Catch you later.

Tara

Birthday wishes!

It's my nieces birthday today so naturally I made her a card ;-)

The main image is Mama's Purse Peeker from SCACD (currently on sale) - I've had her a few months but this is the first time she's seen ink.  She is coloured with copics and then in keeping with our "recycling" challenge over at St Luke's the dotty strip of card is the bottom of a card I received.  The background pattern was created with one of the beautiful doily stamps from Waltzingmouse using Pear Tart Momento ink to match the colours I've used.  The sentiment is from a papertrey ink set that just happened to be on my desk.

I am entering this card into the following "anything goes" challenges:

http://cupcakecraftroom.blogspot.com/2012/01/january-2012-challenge.html

http://thepapershelter.blogspot.com/2012/01/challenge-45-anything-goes.html

Blingy placecards

I have loads of prep to do today for the charity Christmas fair tomorrow - we received over 350 in the last 2 weeks!  So crafting time is limited but when I saw my two favourite challenges could be combined, and could provide some place cards that I will need for my first Chritmas dinner in a couple of weeks, I couldn't resist a quick play.

The Waltzingmouse Sketch challenge is to make 3 place cards - I needed 6 so I doubled up - and this week's Less is More challenge is to bling it up - so there is some subtle bling on them too.    These are for our Book Group Christmas dinner so I started by printing off the 6 names of the guests in red in Scriptina font.  I then stamped the gorgeous WM deer bauble in matching red ink on the same card stock and cut them out with the corresponding nestie.  There are 3 delicate snowflakes on each bauble and I chose to add my bling to the centre of each with a tiny 1mm gold gem to match the gold bauble top which is embossed over the original stamp.

I'll be round to visit the other blogs later in the week after the fair is done and dusted.

For Your Inspiration Guest DT

Today I have a Guest DT spot over at For Your Inspiration, which is a great fortnightly photo inspiration challenge if you haven't come across it before.

The current challenge is to use the following photo to inspire your project

I decided to interpret the colours, shapes and reflective surfaces and create a Christmas card.  Now I know the photo with the invited pool doesn't scream Christmas but the golds and shimmers (and the fact that I've been in Christmas card mode for a while) all lead me down the Christmas theme.

I started with a black pearl 6 x 4 base card and cut a black, cream and gold spotted shape from DP from Papermania using a Spellbinders Label, and then I drew around the outside on some shiny cream card and cut it out by hand to create a thin matt.  This echoed the colour of the building and the spots the lights.  I took a gold oval (again cut with a Spellbinders die) to represent the shape of the building and the reflective quality of the pool and stamped a Christmas sentiment from Waltzingmouse and embossed that with pewter embossing powder.  The reflections made the photography difficult but the sentiment reads "to aid in the attainment of PEACE on earth".

I hope you like the card and are inspired by the photo - can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with!

Tara (aka Craftilicious)
x

CASual Sketch

I've not been feeling well today so I've not really been up to crafting, but as I made the VIP club over at CAS-aul Fridays last week, I wanted to play along again.  :-D

This week they have a sketch which is a lovely clean and simple design open for interpretation.  I decided to make a Christmas card for my stash as I have bought a lot of holiday stamps recently and haven't used many.

I started with a 3 inch red square, added a green striped mat and lovely Christmas ribbon.  The bauble is from the new Waltzingmouse release and is embossed onto silver mirri card with red ep and green for the sentiment from the same set.  They were cut with the matching nestie.  Clean, simple and quick so I may make more when I'm feeling better.

Craftilicious x

Less is More with Dotty Mice

It's Saturday which means my favourite weekly challenge - Less is More and also the weekly sketch challenge from my favourite stamp store - Waltzingmouse

I don't always get to play along with the sketch challenge but this week I think it combines beautifully with this week's Less is More challenge with is to use Polka Dots.

I started with a 12cm square card blank and cut a 10 cm square white panel which I embossed with swiss dots and rounded two opposite corners.  I cut a Christmas ornament using a nestie and put the resulting shape through the same folder - I coloured each dot with a darker shade of red copic and covered each with glossy accents.  I added a small stamp from the new Seasonal Remedies set to the bauble and cut that out and glossed too and attached the bauble with twine and dimensional foam.  I coloured a craftwork cards sentiment with the same copic and again covered it with glossy accents and finished it with 3 holly leaves from the Festive Foliage set.

I have quite a few cards I need to make but am running out of time today as I've been scaring myself silly trying to use a pressure cooker which has now been christened Hissing Henry!   I'm off now to make a pie with the contents and then get ready for Stamp Magic in Doncaster tomorrow.

Craftilicious x

Big Cheese!

I just had to do a quick post this morning because I am thrilled - my Christmas Card from last week has been selected as this weeks' Big Cheese over at my favourite stamp store - Waltzingmouse Stamps

I am a very smiley person this morning because of it :-D

Back later with a new card

Tara x