Tag Friday at A Vintage Journey

Hello friends, - well here we are at the other end of the big day, - hope you survived all the festivities and had a good and hopefully peaceful time!
It's the 5th Friday of the month and that means Tag Friday at A Vintage Journey, when creative guides share tags they have made just for fun and hopefully some inspiration.

I decided to alter one of Tim Holtz's Etc tags, this is the small size, but it is still huge!

I added some texure with Grunge Paste through a couple of stencils and when that was dry gave everything a layer of gesso. While the gesso was still wet I added some strips of old book paper which adhered perfectly without any further medium. I also added some Distress Platinum glitter for some extra wintry sparkle (I'm obviously still in a bit of a Christmassy mood)

Time to add some colour, - I used Golden Paynes Grey (which actually is a wonderful blue tone) and mixed it here and there with some Decoart Media Titanium White.

My next step was to dry brush some further white back in, specially over the snowflakes at the bottom right.

Now for the embellishing, - as I wanted this to be a wintry tag I used the Tim Holtz large snowflake with matching embossing folder and high lighted the raised bits with some Treasure Gold in Pewter.

Time to put it all together

And finally adding some embellishments. After having kept all my Christmas cards flat for posting, I had great fun doing this!

At the top some little pine cones, metal twigs and leaves, given a coat of gesso and lots more glitter.

And at the bottom, die cuts and berries.

And finally finishing it all off with one of Tim's chipboard sentiments, as a little New Year's resolution to myself and anyone who may eventually receive this tag :o)

Well, that's it for now. Wishing you all some very happy last days of 2017 and see you in the new year! Thanks for your visit and all your support!

xxxxx

A Christmas Lantern for A Vintage Journey

Hello friends, - how is life treating you in the run up to the big day?
 I am hanging in there and today am sharing a Destination Inspiration tutorial over on A Vintage Journey.

If you want to see how this little lantern came together, all you need to do is CLICK HERE

Meanwhile, thanks for dropping in here

xxxxx

The final set of cards

Hi all, how is it going? December seems the fly by at top speed, - hope your prep for the big day is going well.

Today I have my final set of cards to share, all pretty much following the same design, and using up bits of  Maja Design papers left over from various other projects. They are small, the finished cards are just 4 x 4".

Here is the full set. Like with most of my Christmas cards this year, they are kept flat and are only embellished with die cuts.

All of the central images were edged with Stampendous Aged Silver embossing powder,  love the effect that gives and if you do a whole batch at the same time it goes quite quickly.

Well, that's it, all done and dusted and in the post to their recipients and I look forward to getting on with some different things. 

I have one more design team project coming up before Christmas and then shall take a blog break until closer to the end of the month.

Hope you are all having a good week and manage to carve out some time for yourself, - I shall be off for some cookie baking....

Thanks for your visit like always!

xxxxx

One Sheet Wonder

Hello friends, thanks for dropping in here at this busy time of year!!
Today I am sharing a little minibook tutorial over on the Mini Album Makers blog. This could be a fun last minute gift for someone.

If you want to find out how this is made, all you need to do is CLICK HERE.

Hope your holiday preparations are going well!

Stay calm and keep crafting and creating!

xxxxx

The end is in sight...

Hello friends, how are your preparations for the big day going? Being retired, I am for once fairly on top of the game, and as far as Christmas cards go, I am nearly there. So here is one of my last sets, using bits and pieces left over from other cards and projects.

 All these were done with Graphics 45 papers and mostly die cuts using Tim Holtz dies.

As you can see, all are done in a very similar design, with just subtle differences on each card.

It very much speeds up the process......

Anyway, that's pretty much it, I think the photos are really self explanatory, so no longwinded descriptions this time.

Hope all your preparations are going well, wishing  you a peaceful time ahead, and thanks for your visit like aways

4 cards Tim style

Hello friends, - today I have some more cards to share. I called them Tim style, as I have used quite a few Tim Holtz products for these, though on 3 of them I used some backgrounds I still had left from an earlier cardmaking session.

The backgrounds were made as explained in an earlier post HERE

I then added collage elements, stamped, fussy cut from some of Tim's papers or using some of his ephemera pieces.

I decided not to purchase Tim's new Christmas paper dolls, as I knew I would never use them all and I have still tons of his other paper dolls, so I just found some old photos on Pinterest, printed and then fussycut them myself, - easy enough 😃....

All of them were simply embellished with some diecuts, in an effort to keep them flat for posting.

This one uses a little snow angel I still had in my stash.

This little guy came on the same photo as the other one, I just cut them out separately.

The globe image was cut from gold metallic Core d'inations Kraftcard and then treated with alcohol ink to give it an aged look.

And here the final one, collaged onto some of Tim's last year's paper stash, with another found photo.

Well that's it for today. Like always thanks so much for your visit and kind comments. They are always much appreciated, specially during this busy time of year!

xxxxx

Bulletjournal November 2017 flip through

Hello friends,
Today I want to share the next instalment of my bullet journal. If you do not know what a bullet journal is, you can check out my first post HERE, or even better read the information on the official bullet journal website HERE

This is my December cover page, hand drawn and designed by me😊

I know this is not what you usually see on my blog, but I love bullet journalling. It keeps me organised, it's the perfect balance between the left and right side of my brain, - helps me do something creative everyday and practise my lettering. Below a quick video of my November pages, I thought that might be better than sharing lots of photos, for if you are not interested, you can just move on.

.

Well that's it for now, - short and sweet, - we are all busy, but I hope you find some time to be creative too.

xxxxx

Wintry scenes simply stamped

Hello friends, thanks for dropping in during this busy time of year. I really appreciate it!

Today I have a selection of simple stamped cards to share, susing Penny Black and Inkilicious stamps. This one was inspired by the work of Jill Foster, who is one of Penny Black's designers and she does fantastic  tutorial videos on youtube under the label PB & J.

The same stamp but using different colours, - I also added a couple of die cuts to this one.

Another Penny Black stamp, again with a few die cuts added to finish it off.

And here the last one, kept mostly in sepia ones again, using an Inkilicious stamp.

Well that's it for now, - hope your holiday preparations are going well. I am determined not to get stressed this year, which is a lot easier to do when you are retired.... :o)

Thanks for dropping by like always!

xxxxx

A steamy Christmas for Mixed Media Monthly #43

Hello lovely visitors, this is my third and final post for today, busy times here on the first of the month.....
This project is for Mixed Media Monthly where the theme this month is "Believe".

I created an 8 x 8 steampunk themed Christmas canvas, meant for a friend who loves steampunk.
Here is the graphic for our challenge this month

Our fantastic sponsor is Boozy Bear, who sells an amazing selcection of stencils and chipboard elements. These are the products I used for my canvas: a stencil called "123" and two steampunk themed chipboard pieces, - "Spin Around the Clock" and "Gear Wings".

Here's a quick step by step of how this came together:

I used two pieces of steampunk style paper from an old collection of DCWV papers I had in my stash, I sanded around the edges to reveal the white core and to distress them a bit.

This is the smaller of the two pieces that I used to stencil over with my stencil and some Distress Ink in Ground Espresso.

Next I selected my chipboard pieces, I broke the Spin Around the Clock one in two, to make it fit onto my canvas with the composition I had in mind. I wanted to give the pieces a metallic look, so rubbed Versamark ink all over them and then embossed them with Stampendous Ancient Silver embossing powder.

I wanted them to look more like corroded metal so pounced Pitchblack alcohol ink over them.

I chose one of Tim Holtz's paper dolls to be the focal point for my piece and then all I had to do was put it all together.

The Merry Christmas piece is a Calico Craftpart and the word believe was computer generated.

I added a little bit of shadow around my steampunk angel using a Stabilo All pencil, fixed a little Tim Holtz star embellishment to his forhead and I was done.

Well that's it for today, I apologize for so many posts all on one day, thank you for your visit(s) and your patience, and if you have a spare minute please hop over the the Mixed Media Challenge blog to see what my teamies have created and I hope you will find the time to play along with us.

xxxxx