Craft Barn Calendar Challenge 2013

Here is the final pic of the completed Craft Barn calendar. January is ready to be put up on the wall tomorrow and I shall probably bind 2012's pages together as a keepsake. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to comment. I hope you all have a very happy new year.

More Bunnies!

I bought a couple of reduced bookmarks from Tesco a few months ago. They were a simple design of a long strip folded in half with a magnet on each end. You slip it over a page and the magnets connect and hold the bookmark in place. Easy enough to make but at 20p they were worth picking up. I covered this one with some Basic Grey paper and stamped Stamper's Anonymous' diamond mosaic. I highlighted some bits with a white pen, inked the edges with frayed burlap DI and added an Alice Palace bunny to each side.

Alice Palace Bunnies

Sorry this pic is a bit dark, it's brighter IRL. As well as the fab bulldog I also bought the adorable Alice Palace crowned bunnies. This is one of them simply stamped with archival sepia. The base card is embossed with a new embossing folder Craft Concepts stained glass and I tried the large oval embossing diffuser (yes another new purchase). The flowers are punched with a Nellie Snellen floral punch set which I got in a bargain bin for £2. The sentiment is by Paula Pascual.

Just Playing

This is one of the new Crafty Individuals Alice Palace stamps. Don't you just love him? He makes a perfect card for men with very little effort. I decided to stamp him (well he's a him to me) in archival sepia but I might try him out in red or blue as well.
I love this time between Christmas and New Year when the pressure is off and the Christmas stamps put away for another year.  I hope you are all relaxing and playing with new toys as well.

Tim Holtz Tag - December

For the last month of the year on Tim Holtz's blog we have 2 tags to catch up with the tag we missed in January. Both are quite different to the originals in terms of things used but I have tried to keep as close to them as possible.

I made a spritzed DI BG with broken china and splattered some silver Krylon pen over it. I used a snowflake and Katzelkraft BG stamp randomly with Brilliance platinum planet. The musical score is a Katzelkraft stamp and the letters are a CB alpha called hippy chick. I don't have the TH snowman so I used my snowman punch and watercolour pencils to do the shading. The arms are cut from a Memory Box branch die and I drew in the face. I punched out an extra hat and scarf as instructed. The holly on the snowman's hat is punched from shrink plastic, shrunk and coloured in with a green Sharpie. I added red Stickles for the berries and rock candy Stickles on the snowman's body. The snowflake is a wooden embellishment painted with a silver dabber and rubbed with Stickles. I finished with some iridescent blue ribbon.
                                                        

The second tag's BG was done in the same way as above with fired brick DI. I also coloured some scraps of card for the flowers in the same way. The BG was spritzed with a homemade gold spray. The poinsettias were stamped with a Paper Artsy script and then I used a punch and a Marianne die. The flourish was cut with a TH die and painted gold. The text is from a Paula Pascual set stamped in Versafine spanish moss and habanero on a brushed corduroy DI BG. I used a paper distresser to rough up the edges.
I've really enjoyed making these tags all year. Although I've not had all of the items used it's been fun working around the missing items to still produce a similar tag to the original TH version. During the course of the year there are items that have definitely gone onto my wish list that I perhaps wouldn't have considered before. A big thank you to Mr Holtz for inspiring me through 2012 and I look forward to seeing what 2013 brings.
That completes my last challenge for 2012. I've really enjoyed them all and I hope to use some of the new techniques I've learned in my cards in 2013.

Katzelkraft Challenge - the final card S5/C3

You know how sometimes you have to do something, you know you have to but you keep putting it off? Well this card has been my nemesis. I find the colour challenges really hard unless I can immediately think of something to do. This has been preying on my mind for a few weeks but last night I decided I couldn't leave it any longer. I usually try and match up the given colours to ink pads I have but I was stumped with the salmon/coral colour in the centre (see below) and couldn't think how to use all the colours on a card. I decided to use this Papermania stamp from a few years ago, stamping it in Brilliance starlite black and colouring with Colousoft pencils and Sansodor. I still couldn't quite match the salmon colour - the pinky orange bauble (2nd from the left) was the closest I could get to it but I'm pleased that I finally managed to tackle this. So I say 'au revoir' to this year's Katzelkraft challenge, I've enjoyed it even more than last year, it's made me think outside my comfort zone and I've reacquainted myself with some warm and friendly people on the forum.

Katzelkraft S10/C3

This is the last card (of 30) in the Katzelkraft 10 weeks Before Christmas Challenge. However I  have 1 more to show after this as there is a card I've been putting off making. The requirement for this card was the view from your window. My view is of houses and as we have no snow (I'm not complaining) it's a pretty dull view. So I focussed on the trees a bare branch (Memory Box die) and a festive bauble for the decorations I can see from here (Marianne die). A small organza bow adds a touch of colour and is echoed in the red Paula Pascual Christmas stamp. Only 1 more card to go for this year's challenge!