Friday Post Day

Hello lovely friends, followers and visitors, thanks so much for taking the time to visit during this busy part of the year. I have been a terrible blogger, - so I am going to start with a little explanation as to why:

Life is busy for all of us, and the older I get, the more I want to use my time creatively. I love to craft and create art, but I am tired of writing blogposts and spending ages and ages going from blog to blog, to see what others have created. Blogger is such a time consuming platform!! It's not that I don't like seeing what other crafters and artists make, in fact, I love it, and it mostly really inspires me enormously, but blogger is no longer the place for me to do that. I much prefer Instagram and even Pinterest. I don't like Facebook and have pretty much stopped using that. But I also know that I have many followers here, so I have decided to make Friday the day when I will write a blog post and show some of my stuff. If you would like to see my work more often, follow me on Instagram, (link in side bar), where I post usually 3 or 4 times per week. That's also where I love to see and appreciate the work of the people that I follow.

Well enough of the waffle, but I just wanted to be honest.

Today I am sharing some of the Christmas cards I have made this year, they were inspired by Tim Holtz's Holiday Hacks. This is just a small collection.

They all use the same stamp set, Festive Overlay, which are a great size for smaller cards, all of these are 4 x 4". Below some close ups:

For this one I also used the Winter Watercolour set. These actually work a lot better on a slightly larger card size. If you are interested, you can see another card using this set HERE 

Another sample using the same set, but with a different sentiment. The poinsettia was stamped separately on white card and then fussy-cut and adhered. 

The next few cards all use just the Overlay stamps in different combinations and colours.

Because I can never just do clean and simple, die cuts and other little embellishments were added to the cards, and to some of them I also added some white splashes for a wintry feel.

Well, that's it for this Friday. Wishing you all the best and hope you find some time for creativity too! See you next week 

xxxxx

A wonderful invitation

Hello friends, thanks for dropping by.
A few weeks ago I received an invitation from Hunky Dory Crafts, to ask whether I wanted to receive some of their products and do a review of them on my social media. Well, why not? So the other day I received two die sets and a pack of smooth white card, and today I will show you what I have made with the first die set and some of the card.
The die set I used is called Prancing Pixies.
So here goes:

The first projects was three Artist Trading Coins. The little dies in the set are just perfect for these 2.5 inch coins that seem to be all the rage just now. Below first of all a picture of the actual dies:

And here a few close ups of the coins:

This one uses the little toad stool, I just cut it twice, from the card, which by the way is absolutely brilliant, it's strong without being too thick, super smooth so great for stamping and absolutely perfect for die cutting! Even intricate dies cut brilliantly with my old Big Shot in just one pass!

The base for this one was a wooden coin I purchased a while back, I coated it with gesso, a thin layer of crackle paint and then coloured with Oxide Inks and finally put some embossing powder around the edge.

The toadstools were coloured with a mix of different markers from my stash.

This one was done in a similar way, the moon was done with a mask and the fairy was coloured with shimmer paint, and some glitter was added to his wings. The stars were done with one of Tim Holtz's new stencils, just using a baby wipe to lift some of the ink.

For this one, using the delightful prancing deer, I coated the coin with crackle paste and when that had dried and cracked, added some normal stencil paste and sprinkled some Distress Glitter into the wet paste. The stars in the background used Dreamweavers silver embossing paste through the same Tim stencil.

So far for the coins, but of course the dies can also be used for cards, so below two very different cards I made:

This one uses a chipboard snowflake frame from the Polish company Snipart. I painted it with Shimmer paints, cut a circle to fit behind, coloured with Distress Oxide and some Gesso stamping to add more interest, and then used the delightful sledge as focal point:

The sledge was cut from metallic Kraft core in silver and then aged with Mushroom alcohol ink. The detail was added with a Stabilo All pencil and a black pen.

Now I did want to use the little Santa also, so here is the final card I made, which would be suitable for a child perhaps:

Well, I think that's all for now, thank you for dropping by during this busy time of year, happy crafting and I will be back in a few days showing you what I made with the other die set.

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

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

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

Ringing the changes

Hello lovely visitors, - more Christmas card again today I'm afraid to say.... But with nearly 40 cards to make, it's about the only making I do at the moment. Hope I don't bore you too much.

I've called this post ringing the changes, as these card are quite different from the previous ones I have shown. They are all made with a collection of G45 papers my lovely daughter gave me for my birthday.

They are all pretty similar, I have just layered up some papers and then finished them with simple die cuts as embellishment, - all in an effort to keep them flat for easy posting.

I am making and showing all of my cards in sets of about 4 or so, I can never repeat the same things to often, otherwise I get bored myself, and I also like to try out different things. Also, different style cards suit different people I think....

This one is on it's way to friends in Australia, the husband is an expert bird watcher, so I hope they like it.

More variations on a theme

And here finally the last one in a slightly different format.

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

xxxxx

vintage cards take 3

Hello friends, today I want to share the final 2 vintage Christmas cards I made, at least for the time being. If you want to know how I made them, you can find details in a previous post. For now I will just show you a couple of photos and  a little slide show here again.

I know we are all pressed for time at this busy time of year, so I really appreciate you popping by here.

Have a great week with hopefully some creativity in it

xxxxx