Looking forward...

to the year ahead...

New Dies!

Over the Christmas period I added to my collection of dies and now that things are a little calmer I wanted to try out an idea I saw Paula Pascual show on the Sizzix blog a while ago. She used some intricate dies from a Sizzix envelope set to cut into card blanks. I used a die from Tim Holtz's mixed media set to cut the  distressed diamond shapes and then backed them with some patterned paper. I cut the main word from a Simon Says Stamp die using the same paper and added the stamped sentiment with weathered wood DI. It's a great way to make a very quick card.

UK Stampers ATC Swap - K for Kiss

My final word in this month's ATC swap is Kiss. I found this sweet Crafty Individuals image and decided to use it as a starting point for my ATC. I recently acquired Tim Holtz's mixed media die set (thank you Countryview Crafts for twisting my arm by putting it on offer in your advent sale). I've been wanting it ever since it came out and the offer was too tempting to pass up. I used one of the dies (they cut beautifully) for the background and a small scrap of green printed vellum as well. I die cut the image with an oval nestie and punched the text out of a set of wedding stickers. The flowers were rolled some time ago from scraps and have been on my desk waiting to be used, I added a pearl gem to each centre and some punched leaves.

Craft Barn Weekly Challenge

I've been away and haven't taken part in the Craft Barn weekly challenge for a few weeks. When I saw that the final theme for this year was trees I had to take part. This is a very quick and easy Christmas card made with one of the fab Crafty Individuals' Alice Palace stamps. I stamped it in archival sepia and coloured in parts with coloursoft pencils and a gold pen.

UK Stampers ATC Swap - K for Kimono

My second ATC for the Alpha ATC swap is K for Kimono. I have some old sheets of embossed oriental images and this kimono is on a sheet of vellum. I coloured the image from behind with coloursoft pencils and mounted it on some scrap card. the background is from the same pack of images but was on a white card base which I coloured with Victorian velvet and dusty concord DIs. I used a punch for the gold photo corners and made some indentations with an embossing tool. The kimono was mounted with 3D foam pads and an eyelet was added to each corner (I'm on a mission to use my neglected stuff!).

Memory Box Challenge - December

The Memory Box Challenge this month is Season's Greetings. I only have 1 MB Christmas die which I used in an earlier challenge so I thought I would make a quick and simple card using the MB looped border die. I love both the negative and positive parts of this die (I've used the positive for this card). All the patterned paper is from Cosmo Cricket's Mitten Weather and the stamps used are from Paula Pascual's large Christmas and joyful bubbles sets.

Calendar Challenge - December

We have reached the end of the Craft Barn calendar challenge and I look forward to using my calendar from next month. I stick each month up on the wall by my work desk so I will not bind the calendar until I have finished using it. The final recipe is gold and trees. I heat embossed an old winter trees stamp and added some highlights with glamour dust. I lightly shaded some punched snowmen with weathered wood DI and added them to the scene. This was mounted onto some gold card (which looks quite green in this pic). I added some punched holly leaves.

UK Stampers ATC Swap - K for Keys

This month's letter for the UK Stampers Alphabet ATC swap is K. Not a very easy letter to find suitable words for especially as I am trying to use 3 different words each month. I started with Key as I had a perfectly sized set of stamps by Crafty Secrets. I started with an alcohol inked background ( I have no idea what the colours were because I revived an old felt pad which had some inks on with some blending solution. The main image was stamped and clear embossed and then I added the small words and the title (I know it should say keys) one at a time, embossing as I went along. To finish I added a gold border with a Krylon pen and a spritz of homemade gold shimmer spray.