Christmas Card Club #6- Wreaths/Garlands

Well, a day late, but finally here. Silly thing is, I looked at the list I have pinned up a few days ago, and thought 'That's OK, I've got a week yet!' So where my lost week went, I have no idea. Lorraine chose our theme this time, which is for Wreaths or Garlands, and fortunately, I have some wreaths amongst my UFO's/Left overs, so catching up was a bit easier than it might have been!

 I managed 5 cards,the top three using a Sweet Poppy stencil and stencil paste, from my UFO's.

I cut them out, added to card fronts with some foam pads, then added a few acrylic gems to each one. The backing papers are all from my off-cuts folder, and the peel off sentiments also helping to stash bust.


These next two use an Imagination Crafts Poinsettia stencil as the background,from my UFO's, and the wreath is a Penny Black stamp, called Adornment, from my left overs. Stamped in silver and heat embossed with glitter EP, then a few small acrylic gems added and a small silver ribbon, which is hard to see in the photo, to finish off.

 I'd made a batch of the Poinsettia backgrounds back last year, some just using plain stencil paste, some with glitter.
 I had a couple of small pots of Glitter stencil paste from amongst some craft stuff I was gifted, but they are really small pots, and for their size, I thought them expensive. For mine I used some Translucent Sweet Poppy stencil paste, and mixed in some glitter. It works really well, and is a much cheaper way of doing this. Once dry, the glitter is totally non shed. You don't have to use translucent paste, you can mix Gold glitter into Gold paste, and so on.

This was the Wreath stencil before I cut them out, it's called Bubble Wreath. The two multi colour ones were done by adding small blobs of two or three colours of paste to one side of the stencil, then just pulling it across with the spreader. You can get the paste in various colours, or you can add reinker to either translucent or white paste. Both pastes will make the colours slightly lighter, so if you do this, pick a slightly darker colour ink to mix in, as you don't want to have to add too much ink and make the paste runny.

WOYWW #459

 Seem to be all behind at the moment- I lost a few days last week, so I was late getting my Christmas Card Club Challenge cards up, they are in the post below. Not as many as I'd planned, but time got away from me. I did get to use some really old, but totally timeless stamps though- I must have had these for at least 10 years, and they are still goodies. Chocolate Baroque, Poinsettia & Christmas Rose Script.
 But anyway, back to this weeks WOYWW, over at The Stamping Ground.
 Just a few odds and ends on my desk, a few purchases- nothing very exciting, just some texture stamps from Aliexpress:£1.58p!









 I also got a couple of sets of banner dies,they were £1.87 and £1.88 each. For the stamps & dies you can judge the sizes by the background mat- the squares are 1cm.

I've also been using the fact the dies needed putting away to catalogue them properly. I had them organised into sections in the box, but into different folders on my PC/One Note app, and some are not catalogued at all, as I have no idea of the brands, they were gifted to me. So I've been scanning them in, and trying to organise my storage to both be the same.  That's ongoing, lol.

 While I was planning on more Christmas cards, I painted some cardstock with Imagination  Starlights paints, and then used some baby wipes and paper towel to clean my brushes between colours.  You can't really see it in the pics, but there is a lot of shimmery sparkle to these, so I put them aside to dry.

Another purchase, and I don't know if I'm just late to the party with this info, or of it helps anyone else. I was watching some craft videos a couple of weeks ago- Gina K Designs at Stamp TV. She uses mainly her own stuff, but does make some gorgeous cards, and I love her ideas. Anyway, one night she had one of these erasers on her desk- A Tombow Mono Sand Eraser. She said- and demonstrated- that they are fantastic for removing stray specks of heat embossed powder- you know, the ones you always miss when dusting off stray specks? They came off really easily, and left no mark, so I ordered one off Amazon. Actually, two, as one had to come from China, but two were available from the UK- how's that for weird? They remind me very much of the old typewriter eraser pencils you could buy- and may well be the same sort of thing, if anyone has any they could try out.

For anyone planning on going to Ally Pally in April, Hubby and I are going for the first time. I know Helen (Stamping by H) is going, if anyone else will be there on Saturday, drop me a message via Facebook PM( link in sidebar), and we'll meet up and say hi!

 I notice in my last couple of posts, in the comments, I have a new commenter called Welsh Dors. Hi there, I'm afraid I cannot connect to you, as when I click on your name, it doesn't link me to you in any way, so I can't come and say hello! If you do have a Blog, would you please leave me a link in the comments, and I'll pop over. As regards the Versafine Clair pads- they are fabulous. I'd actually say even better than the original Versafine Onyx Black, and I never thought I'd be saying that at all!

For my And Finally....... this week- not a Pinterest funny, but the Mothers Day card  I received from my Beloved Eldest Son:


On a side note, feeling much better this week. Managed to see a Pharmacist, and ask if I could take decongestants with all the other things I'd been given, and she said yes, so I'm taking those which definitely is helping to clear my head cold!

Christmas Card Club Challenge #5- Robins

This fortnights challenge is set for us by Valery, and she chose Robin/Robins.
 I've had a lot of fun with this challenge, and to prove it, here is a whole flock of Robins!

 We have a shaker card, 4 cards and 4 tags too.


The main set of stamps used is called Round Robins, and is from Hobby Art.

The Robins were stamped In Versafine Clair Nocturne, then heat embossed using clear powder.


The colouring was done with Promarkers- Tan/Firewood for the browns and Lipstick Red/Crimson for the red.





 I masked them all off, and brushed Broken China and Faded Jeans across the tops, having placed a torn piece of paper to make the hills. A thin line of Stickles in Baby Blue defined the edge.

 I added a few glittery peel off snowflakes- they were actually 'waste' from the backing sheet!

The filler was from a package I picked up the last time I went to the NEC,called Crystal Snow, but I can't recall who I got it from.I think I overdid it a little!

 While I was waiting for the Stickles to dry, I decided I'd make a few tags too, and a smaller card. The robins stamped in Nocturne again, and heat embossed. The greetings, from top left clockwise, are from Phill Martin Scribbled Christmas Petite Sentiments set.Hobby Art Winter Wishes, Phill Martin  Snowflake Sentiment Corners, and the 'odd' one is from the Hobby Art Robins set.
 The 'odd' image is from a set called Winter Birds, by Inkadinkado.

Not sure if he really is a Robin, but sort of looks similar.😊








                   
  That one was heat embossed using Stampendous EP called Holographic, and is really cool, as the longer you heat it, the more the colours change. I just added some DI Broken China/Faded Jeans from the centre out, and used the same blues to dust around the other Robins. Punched a hole & added ribbon.

I was almost done, when I remembered I had an Imagination Crafts stencil called Singing Robins. So, I made them up using stencil paste, then left them to dry so I could foil them.










While they were drying, I went back to the robin with the letter in his beak.

Stamped his hat,then masked the hat to stamp him in place. I also stamped the letter first of all, so I could position his beak over it. Good old TH Stamping Platform!

I filled in the white parts of the hat with an embossing pen, then added Stampendous EP in Sparkle Puff. Don't know if that's available, I've had it for years, but you could get the same effect by mixing a pinch of glitter with any Puff Powder.

Added a few glittery snowflakes again, and stamped the sentiment, from a Crafters Companion set,called Festive Sentiments, in Encore Silver pigment ink. I think, along with a Gold inkpad and a normal black one, these were the very first inkpads I bought. Along with a reinker, which I think I've used once in the 15 ish years I've had it. Still works fine too.

I thought the 'snow' half of the card looked a bit bare, so I added some Embossing ink, then sprinkled on a WOW! EP called Snowfall.

So that's it  for this challenge, and 5 cards and 4 tags added to my Christmas Card collection!

WOYWW #432

It definitely feels like wednesday gets here faster every week, so, over to The Stamping Ground, where our lovely leader, Julia, is waiting with her Linky List for everyone.
 As I've been having a sort out & tidy, my UFO box has now expanded to two boxes, a lot of which are recent techniques I've been trying out, just waiting to be made up. So a start has been made, all the scenics, and the dragonfly images are now matted and some are having ribbon added.

For most, I'll leave them without a sentiment for now, so I can add whatever is needed at the time.

Thanks to BJ last week, who posted some dies she'd bought from The Range, and I loved the Bee ones, so I paid ours a visit in the hope of finding it. And I did, along with some bats, a cat and a hot air balloon.






Imagination crafts had a special over the weekend, with I think it was 15% off, so I bought three.

I think those Christmas trees will look great done with the Hot Foil. And the snowflake one will be good for a background.

Right, now I'm going to tell you about a place I found over the weekend. A number of people over on SCS had mentioned Aliexpress, and cheap dies. Mentioned it to Beloved Hubby, and he said it's basically the Chinese version of E-Bay.

If you like dies- and who doesn't- they have thousands, at ridiculously low prices. And free shipping, from China. All the American ladies who'd used it said they'd had no problems with orders, or cutting quality, so I had a browse.




 Just look at those prices- less than £3 a time.




And not only dies, but Embossing Folders as well. Apparently they also have a huge selection of clear stamps, but I haven't explored that yet, but again, there were favourable reports for them.
 I'll also mention something else, you can see along the top of the first screenshot something called 'Give as you Live'. I came across this a while back, and basically you register, choose a charity you want to benefit, and then when you shop at a few thousand online stores, a percentage of what you spend is donated to your chosen charity. No cost to you at all, you pay the same price as always but the company donates the percentage. Amazon are a part of it, E-Bay, Argos, B&Q, Crafters Companion- there are, I think it said, two thousand online participants. With Firefox, it puts a button on your toolbar, and you can add stores you use to your list from their pages, and it also pops up with the 'Give as you Live' banner when you visit any site affiliated with them. I know it's a tax deductible thing for the stores, but I thought it's a great way of donating, without it actually costing me any more money.
I had my fourth treatment on Monday, and my fifth and final one is today. So far, apart from being a little tired, I've had no serious side effects, so fingers crossed. Plus, my arm seems to FINALLY be getting better, it's still not right, but it's way less painful than it has been.
 And Finally.............this is totally true!

Christmas Card Club Challenge #12- Anything Goes

Sylvie has chosen this fortnights theme, and given us a lovely wide ranging brief- Anything Goes.

 Had a think about it, and decided to re-visit a design I made a few of last year, especially as I had stencil paste out on my desk at the time!


 The stencil itself is from Imagination Crafts, and is called
Poinsettia Multi. Instead of adding glitter on top of the wet paste, I mixed it into the paste itself. Makes the whole process a bit less messy, and as long as you have some small sealable pots, you can store any excess.You get better glitter coverage too, and it doesn't shed either. Plus, it's way cheaper than buying glitter stencil paste, which was what originally set me off with this idea.

The stamp is by Honey Doo Crafts, called Happy Christmas Mini. I used a matching glitter embossing powder from WOW! Embossing powders on both cards. I also added acrylic gems to the centres of the flowers. The stamped sentiment is matted onto the same backing paper I used for the main image.
 The image is set onto a 7" card base- although on measuring, I find it's the envelope that is 7", the card base is 6 3/4".
 But even so, these are quick and easy cards,and could be made smaller just by using a smaller piece of cardstock below the stencil, and then a correspondingly smaller sentiment. In fact, I think I may go and give that a try!

Christmas Card Club, Challenge #6

Right, I'm finally back in the game with this fortnights challenge. I'd like to say a huge thank you to all the ladies in the club, both for their patience while I got better & found my mojo,😃, and for the get well cards & good wishes.
 So, onto this challenge, set by Granmargaret, which was to use two, or more, patterned papers. To be truthful, I could do with following this particular theme a lot more- I have so much patterned Christmas paper, it's embarrassing!
Well, here we are- two patterned papers, plus I also managed to use an image I must have stamped years ago. I spotted it in my ' oddments' folder😯when I opened the box I store all my paper pads in. I have to admit, I have no idea who made that stamp, and I'm not sure I still have it, but this is definitely the first time it's appeared on anything.
It had been stamped in black and heat embossed onto a pale cream paper, so I decide to use some of the Imagination Crafts Starlights paints on it. I did two, as I wasn't sure what colour papers I'd end up using.

Before and after. I did two completely different colourways, and if you haven't seen the Starlights yet, they are gorgeous jewel shades filled with gilding flake dust, which gives them a gorgeous sheen. They spread for a very long way, and mix together easily too- I mixed the green and Pearl white to make the pale green for the one tags background.

Here I'd backed them with some cardstock,  as the paper was curling a little.

 Two shots, hoping you will be able to see how lovely the paints are.

I now had a search through the paper pads, and found this one. I'm not at all sure where I got it, but it was either The Works, Happy Stampers or the NEC!
It does have some nice co-ordinating papers in traditional Christmas colours.






I chose these two, and covered the front of a 5" square card base. Across the join I placed a border peel-off. They are rarely long enough to do a diagonal on a card, but when I have a focal piece to add, I just cut it in half, and have a gap under the focal image.

I picked this tag, as the colours seemed a good fit for the patterned papers.










  You can see I have punched the hole in the tag. I used a tool I bought a while ago, but hadn't actually  tried out till now. Its a Japanese Screw Punch, and this one is by X-Cut. I have to say it's a great little tool- punching holes in stuff has never been so easy! Lovely clean cut hole too. It comes with 3 different sizes of hole punch, which just screw in, and they are stored in the handle when not in use.

Fab clean hole, in one totally effortless operation.
 You just push down the handle, and job done.

 Next a selection of thread to tie through the hole. One is red/gold, one gold, and one red/green/gold.

And that's it. I mounted the tag with foam pads, and added a peel off sentiment to finish.

Mixed Media/Altered Birthday Book- it's done!

Well, for my first attempt at Mixed Media/Altered Book cover, I have to say that I'm surprisingly pleased with it.
 There were a lot of stages- probably more than needed, but it was a learning curve- and did come out pretty much as I was planning it to.








This was the original cover.

I wasn't a fan, but it was the only one I could find at the time, so, as I'd already made some alterations to the pages, it seemed that this was up next.

 The 'envelope' for storing the cards was ridiculous- maybe I could have slid one card in there, if it was flat- so I slit the sides, added a cut down document wallet, and then glued the flap back down.








But, onto the cover. First job was a coat of white gesso, then some crumpled tissue paper over that.











I gave that time to dry, then added some texture to the surface with black stencil paste and a Sweet Poppy stencil.

Just a few patches, front & back.

I had some metal pieces bought from a local craft shop, a whole load of wooden ones, and a bunch of die cuts.

 The die cuts I glued 3 or 4 pieces together to make them more dimensional.
 Everything, including the covers now got a coat of black gesso.



Next I started laying out shapes on the cover.

I had the front pretty much as I wanted it, so time for the back.


I didn't want to make the back too bulky, and remembered I had some sheets of chipboard numbers, by Woodware, bought a few years ago at the NEC.

The cameo was from a pack of four bought at The Works, and sits on top of a chipboard frame.Thats the most dimensional bit on the back cover.

Added the numbers, a few cogs and a dreamcatcher to the back, then everything got another coat of black gesso.

Now to add colour, and I realised my mistake here- the sprays wouldn't show up on black! So, gave it a very rough coating of white gesso, which I forgot to photograph. I still wanted some areas of black to show, so didn't cover everything.

I used some Dylusions sprays in London Blue, After Midnight and Crushed Grape.







 After these dried and went paler, I added some Distress Stains in Faded Jeans, Wilted Violet & Seedless Preserves.

I realised I'd have to paint the hinges & lock again in black, as they were also coloured by the spray, and I wanted them black.



First though, I wanted to put a sweep of micro beads down the dress form, so ran some Glossy Accents down it.



I already knew which beads I wanted to use, but when I was getting them out, I spotted a jar of mixed black, blue & white ones, and decided to use them.

However, I didn't like it when it was on, the colours were wrong, so I scraped them off and went with my original plan.

A bright blue, and that looked much better. I also randomly added some to the flower petals. By the way, these 'microbeads' were dirt cheap, I picked up a couple of packs of assorted coloured ones from Poundstretcher, intended for nail art.

 I've used some black Starlights paint, from Imagination crafts to re-colour the  hinges on the back, then did the same on the front.
 I also decided I'd hidden too much of the black base colour, so dry brushed some  of the black paint into random areas. The paints have crushed Gilding Flakes in them, and have a lovely sheen to them.

I then thought I could enhance the colours a little by dry brushing on some Amethyst and Saxe Blue too.

I'd decided that it was time to stop, it looked pretty much as I wanted it to. And it was only a matter of time before I went too far.😀


So time to put it all back together. Which is when I realised I had missed something important. I hadn't covered the insides of the cover. I'd intended to do that anyway, but now, thanks to inky painty smudges & fingerprints, it was a definite.
Quick troll through various papers and card to find something suitable, that was big enough to do both sides, especially as it is slightly wider than A4.
Came up with this, which is sort of like a very thick tissue paper.
 After giving the edges a coat of black gesso, I stuck the paper down with some Aileenes TIOO glue.

While that was drying, I removed the original wire binder from the book pages. I'd left it in till now, as it kept all the pages in one place!


And on to the final assembly then.





I used four book rings in the end, and you can probably also see I applied some rub on gilding in places, both front and back.

I *might* add some photos into the little frames at a later date,and I was thinking off adding something to that wooden tag, but not sure what yet. Maybe a stamped word.