Paloma, beautiful dove of Peace

Hello friends, I think many of you know who Paloma is and perhaps you have been following her journey across the continents.

In case, this is new to you, this is what her creator, the lovely Lys had to say about her, way back on November 15, - now almost a year ago. It was shortly after the horror of the attack on Paris:

After the shock, the anger, the nausea ... what to say, what to do?I have only weapons made of paper and words ... I can face violence only with my values ​​and beliefs.Freedom and peace are the ones I Wished to give today.So this is Paloma, my little dove single paper.

Since then Paloma has been travelling the globe and carrying with her the message of peace and love between crafters. A few days ago she landed on my doorstep. She had come from Ireland and arrived in a huge parcel full of crafty gifts from Shirley. Thanks so much for all those goodies Shirley!!!

Unfortunately, somehow on her journey between Ireland and Scotland a little blue book that had been travelling with her got lost. This little book contained the names and addresses of all the people that signed up to photograph her along the way. 

When neither I nor Shirley could find this little book, I contacted Lys, but sadly she has no full list of people that had said they wanted to be part of this message of peace.... So what to do?

It is clear to me that Paloma needs to continue her journey of peace, now more so than ever before, so the best I can offer is this:

If you would like to be part of Paloma's journey, - please leave a comment on this post and contact me with your name and address and I will put a new booklet together, to travel along with her. You can reach me by clicking the contact me button in my side bar.

Well to finish this  long post, here is a card, featuring Paloma's journey of peace, it will go to whoever contacts me first. Please spread the word!!

I drew a dove roughly too the same shape of the original Paloma. Created a background with inks, added some texture with the help of transparent texture past and then put my little Paloma in front of the lovely Tim Holtz globe die.

A few die cut embellishments and a poinsettia created with another of Tim's dies, finished off my card.

And here is the card together with the actual Paloma, I very much hope she can soon be on her way again!!

If you want to see where Paloma has been so far already, just click here. And if you were on the original list but have not yet received her, or indeed if you would like to be part of this journey, - PLEASE BE IN TOUCH!!!

Thank you for your visit like alway and may peace reign on earth one day in the future!!!

xxxxx

Vintage mini book and Friday freebies

Hello all and happy Friday. Well, it's time for yet another Christmas project, I hope I am not boring you to tears. But I also have a set of free Christmas papers to share, so hang on for that...

I made this one for a special friend who likes to display them around Christmas time. It's made from one sheet of 12 by 12 Kraft card, and I used some Maja design papers to decorate it.
Sometimes when I make these books I create pockets for tags along the sides, this time I glued the pages together, so they are really sturdy, but then created loads of pockets on the inside.

The poinsettia was cut with the Tim Holtz die out of fabric, all the greenery is by Tim as well.

The book closes with a belly band

Below a quick run through the inside pages, like I said, loads of pockets and tags on each of the 3 inside double pages.

All the elements are cut from the papers, I just added some inking, background stamping and some die cuts for decoration.

And here are the tags that fit inside the pages, there are little messages on the back of the tags.

And here is the cover again, this time without the belly band.

If you want instructions as to how to make a mini book like this, you can find them HERE

Alright, and now at last to the freebies. They are formatted to 6 x 6 and there are some tags and tickets too, so you could use them for both minibooks like this or for cards of course. They were definitely inspired by these maja papers, but as I currently have no colour printer, I am unable to print and use them myself right now, but I hope that some of you will find them useful.

Well, that's it for today. You are welcome to use these papers in whatever way you like, you can sell what you make, just don't sell the papers as they are.

Thank you for your visit like always, have a great weekend and happy crafting! 

A special something for a special person...

Hello everyone, welcome and thanks for dropping by.
I am still in full Christmas card making mode, and today I have a special card with a twist to share.

Now nothing terribly special so far, but inside is a clever surprise (well I think so anyway)...
The other day my friend Helen posted a stunning card with a link to a video tutorial. The moment I saw it, I just knew I had to give it a try. You see, inside is a really clever mechanism, with a pop up: tadah...

Here are some close ups of the fold outs:

A Tim Holtz snowflake, from is new SissixThinlets set.

A vintage santa, from last year's Papermania Victorian Christmas collection.

Another image from the same collection, - nothing like using up some of these old papers....

A little bell diecut with some stamping in the background (sorry for the bad lighting).

A little glimpse of the mechanism inside. When you open the card it just pops up, very clever.

And here a close up of the cover, I just love using leaves at the moment for the fronts of my Christmas cards.

Well, while I am at it, I also have another quick card to share, I didn't think it warranted an extra post.

This one was inspired by something I saw on pinterest. I used the Spellbinders Poinsettia die, but wished now I had used the Tim Holtz tatered poinsettia one, it has so much more movement to it.

The sentiment was cut from copper mirri card, darkened a bit with alcohol ink.

Here a close up still of the poinsettia, the one thing I do like about it is that it is embossable.

Well, that's it for now. Oh and do come back on Friday when I have another special gift project to share and some freebies!

Thanks for your visit and I hope you are having a good week!

xxxxx

12 tags of Christmas Funky Junkie style

Hello all, - and welcome! As many of you know, the wonderful Linda Mcloughlin aka The Funky Junkie, has been hosting her 12 tags of Christmas challenge for a number of years now.

Having been away for Christmas in the last few years I have not been able to take part, but this year I am determined to do so. Instead of making tags though, I am making cards, - here are the first 3:

You can read all about the challenge HERE, so I won't go into too much detail on my blog, but show you the ones I have done one by one:

This one is based on Linda's first one. I was inspired by her colour scheme, the use of stars and the black trees, though I lightened mine up a bit with some  "snow" and sparkle.

I don't have many of the products Linda used, so just created my own version.

My sentiment was created with the help of one of Tim's new stencils. I used  clear texture paste and when dry highlighted with distress crayon in walnut stain and some treasure gold. Linda's original can be found HERE

Here is number two. Again I was mostly inspired by Linda's colour scheme and clever use of stencils, though I don't have the same ones. I also used a slightly darker red (a mix of barn door and aged mahogany)

I used the tree stencil in a different way (adding some snow again) and also chose a different word from the same die set Linda used.

I actually stencilled one of the trees on a separate piece of paper and fussy cut it out (this really because I made a mess of the first stencilled tree, I mostly managed to cover it up I think).
You can see Linda's beautiful original tag number two HERE

And finally here is number three. This one is quite, quite different from Linda's, though again I was inspired by her colour scheme, particularly the black background and the subtle use of patina colour, though I created my patina in a very different way. I also liked the clever idea of adding embossing ink through a stencil and then embossing in gold.

Whereas Linda created her patina just with inks, for my globe I used my Ten Second Studio Verday paint kit, which I have had for ages and ages, but had never used before, so this was the perfect opportunity.

For my liking the black and gold was a bit too stark, so I added some touches of red. Linda's classy black and gold version can be found HERE.

Well that's it for today, 3 more cards for my box..... This for me is the perfect way to get my Christmas card inspiration, I just love this challenge. And if you don't know it, do make sure to check it out! The challenge is of course sponsored by the Funky Junkie Boutique and there are some fabulous prizes to be won!

Thanks you for visiting today and stay crafty!!

Autumnal Splendour for Shimmerz

Hello all, busy days here, but today is just a quick preview...

If you want to see more, I'm afraid you'll have to head over to the Shimmerz Blog. All you need to do is click HERE. Oh and by the way Shimmerz are having a design team call, you can check the details out by clicking HERE

Leaves are not just for Autumn...

Hello all, hope you are happy and healthy!
Today I have another Christmas card to share, - techniques used were very similar to those used in my previous post

Below a quick step by step in case you are interested.

I started with a size 8 manilla tag and coloured it with a mix of Paper Artsy Infusions and Distress Sprays.  As I wanted a much paler background actually I then added a thinish layer of gesso.

When that was dry I added some stamping and then started to work on the leaf that was to form the focal of this card.

I used a die from the new Sara Davies Autumn Morning collection (available from Crafters Companion). I cut it, coloured with the infusions and sprays again and then put it back in the die to emboss it and bring out the veins which were highlighted with Ground Espresso DI.

I added it plus a die-cut word (Tim Holtz) to my tag and then mounted and layered it to make it into a card. Below some details still: Also did some splatters with Antique Bronze Distress Spray.

Some frosted berries (the "frosting" is some Distress Clear Rockcandy glitter).

Another little die cut, I seem to remember this one is from Sheena Douglass, I had it in my box of ready die-cuts....

And here the completed card...

Well, that's it for today, thanks for your visit!

xxx