Happy New Year and a calender for the Mini Album Makers challenge blog.

Hello friends, welcome and a Very Happy New Year to you all!!!

It being the first of the month I have two new DT projects going live today, so here is number 1.
Made for the Mini Album Makers Callenge, where our sponsor this month is no other than

LINDY'S STAMPGANG

For this project I set myself the challenge to make something that would be really useful and to only use leftover stash from last year's projects, so I decided to make a desktop calendar in the form of a mini album.

The substrates for the different pages are textured coloured chipboard pieces, 6 x 4 " in size that I picked up years ago in Michaels when visiting the States. I have no idea who makes them and whether they are still available, but they were just perfect for this. I punched holes at the top of each, using a cropodile, and the whole little book is held together with twine, which makes it really easy to turn the pages to the next month.

Here is January. I always adhered a month to both sides of my substrates, so January and February are both attaches to a light blue piece, for a wintry feel. For each of the months I used leftover Maja Design papers in neutral colours, added some inks, stamping and die cuts to make them match the season.

February got a bit of a Valentine's romantic feel, with a little image found on Pinterest and fussycut, but otherwise is still kept in a wintry mood.

March and April both have a light buff coloured background, but the images and elements used now become more Springlike. For this one I did some stencilling in green tones of Distress inks, added scraps of a paper napkin and a St Patricks image fussy cut from Graphics 45 Place in Time collection.

More stencilling, paper napkin scraps and some little diecuts I have had in my stash for years, I think they are from K & Co.

May and June are both on a Sage coloured substrate. For May I used one of Tim Holtz's layering stencils and texture paste, and when that had dried coloured it with Tombow brush markers and finally added some of Tim's botanical ephemera pieces and some tiny Prima flowers.

June, another paper napkin scrap, plus  another little diecut from my stash.

July and August are both on a golden yellow substrate and this July page is enhanced with paper napkin scraps and an image cut from a paper collection I have had for years. So useful to finally use some of these hoarded bits and pieces...

More of the same, the background paper is from the Prima Love Clippings collection. After cutting it to size I made a litte slit along some of the roses so I could tuck the calendar bit underneath before adhearing it to the substrate.

With the next two month we get into Autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere. The substrate is a warm orangy red, like the leaves outside. I used fussy cut elements from the Graphics 45 Seasons collection and some gorgeous chip board corners from Gypsy Soul, one of our wonderful sponsors.

October is a mix of further fussycut elements from the G 45 Seasons collection and some Heartfelt Creations stamps, cut with matching dies and then coloured with Brushmarkers again.

Finally, November and December have a deep red/burgundy substrate. November has a mix of images from the G 45 Place in Time and Seasons collections and is inked in brown tones, again to reflect what is happening in nature outside.

And with December we have pretty much come full circle and I mostly used leftover bits and pieces from my Christmas card making that were still flying around on my desk.

For the cover I ised a postcard size piece from the G45 Seasons collection, edged it with Stampendous Embossing Powder in Ancient Silver and added 2018 with some sticky chipboard letters from my stash.

I think they came originally with a Bo Bunny collection of papers that again I have had in my stash like forever, so glad I found a use for them now.

Well, that's it for now, thank you for your visit and I wish you all the most fantastic New Year with lots of creative happiness within it. 

If you want to get loads of inspiration, do not forget to visit our challenge blog and of course we all hope you will share your own mini album creations with us!! And don't forget, you could win a $25 voucher from Lyndy's !!!

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

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

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Hello everyone and thank you for dropping by. Sorry my post title is a bit of an oxymoron, as what I am sharing today is an advent calendar I made for by grand children.

While I was over in Australia my daughter in law requested one of these, and though I had planned to do it while over in there, I did not have the right crafting tools with me, so in the end I made it here and now will have to send it over, which is why I thought I better make it in very good time....

As you can probably guess, this is one of these Kaisercraft beyond the page calendars kits and I had great fun putting it together.

I used papers from the Graphics 45 12 days of Christmas collection. My challenge was to make something that was Christmassy yet not wintry, for of course in Australia it is summer.....
Both my grandchildren love the song of the 12 days of Christmas, so it seemed perfect.

Below some close ups:

The two little gnomes are supposed to be Santa's helpers, they are made with pipecleaners and bits of felt. The tree was cut with a Tim Holtz die, the two little sacks were made from calico, dyed with Distress spray stains, and the baskets I still had from the days I used to make dollshouse dolls many moons ago.

The roof bit was decorated with some Calico Craftparts that I still had in my stash from the days I was on their design team, all the other bits and pieces are part of the paper collection.

I had great fun decorating all the little drawers with bits and pieces from the papers

Another piece from Calico Craftparts, - it's hard to see from the main picture as it is hiding behind the little banner. I left all of the Craftparts completely unaltered as I like how the dark wood contrasts with the colourful papers.

Well, that's it pretty much. This was quite a bit of work, but I had great fun with it, even though I had to give up on my 10 day tag challenge, but hey ho, so be it.

Just a little word of warning, this kit came without any instructions what so ever and is actually quite tricky to put together. I could also not find any instructions anywhere online. Kaiser have a very brief video of a similar one, but as it is not the same, it was not much use, and without the help of my dear hubby, who is very clever with constructions like this I would have been totally lost!

Anyway, that's it from me for today, - have a good week and see you next time...

Thanks for your visit like always!

xxx

Obsessed with Flowers

Hello everyone and thanks for coming by today! I hope your week is going well.
I seem to be slightly obsessed with making flowers at the moments as you will be able to see from the posts below. So when I needed a special card for someone, guess what the central feature was going to be? Yep, you got it, more flowers. Hope you are not getting sick of them.

These flowers were made with the Heartfelt Creations Ariana Blooms dies and stamps, just like the tag you can see HERE. I love the fact this die can make such different flowers, depending on how you shape and or colour them.

This time I stamped the flowers in Burgundy dye ink and then coloured them with Victorian Velvet Distress ink. The leaves were stamped with Sage coloured pigment ink, clear embossed and then coloured with Iced Spruce, Bundled Sage and a bit of Walnut Stain Distress ink.

The bottle, which I think is a Graphics 45 stamp, was stamped, fussy cut (the label is a separate stamp, which fits perfectly inside an open space in the main bottle stamp), shaped a bit and then I stamped it once more, cut out the pink part at the top and adhered that to the main bottle. It was adhered to the card using foam tape for a bit of dimension.

The clock is a Cheery Lynne die which I over stamped with a Crafty Individuals crackle stamp.

Finally the sentiment is from Stempelglede.

I cut it into a little tag shape and adhered it to the top. The background was created with Tim's Spritz and Flick technique and over stamped with various stamps from a Tim Visual Artistry set.

Thank you for visiting and see you next time!! Stay inky!!

Little journal for the Artistic Stamper

Hi everyone and thanks for dropping by.
Today it's my turn to share a project over at the Artistic Stamper, so just a boring old sneak peek here I'm afraid to say...

Anyway, hope you will take the time to look at the whole project, all you need to do is click HERE

Thanks for dropping in here and stay inky!!