Christmas Card Club Challenge #22- Snowman/Snowmen

Hello ladies, I'm finally here with Margarets choice for this challenge, Snowman/Snowmen. I wanted to keep these simple, just the snowman and a sentiment. I had to be quite firm with myself, as I have a tendency to start adding scenery behind, lol. The first snowman is from a company called Two Jays.All I did was add a little colour to his scarf and carrot nose, as well as the holly on his hat.

 I also added a little patch of blue to ground him.

 The sentiment is from Phill Martin, a set called Stately Christmas Sentiments.

The second set of four is using a really, really old stamp called Scribble Snowman,from a company called Funstamps. I've had him more years than I can recall, and he used to be a wood mount, and I do think he's fab. Again, just added a small amount of colour to his hat & scarf, and some grounding. For the fur on his hat I used some Inkylicious Puffy Stuff. It's a thick liquid in a bottle with a nozzle, and when heated it puffs up. 

You do have to be careful not to overheat it, and with my first one I did just that, and scorched the puffy stuff, and the cardstock! But it was a simple fix to cut him out then stick onto a fresh piece of cardstock. And that's why I'm not confident enough to work directly on my card base, lol.

 

Christmas Card Club #12- Snowflakes.

Hi ladies, back with another Christmas Card Challenge, this weeks theme has been chosen by Gwen, who wanted to see Snowflakes.
 I was really pleased to see this theme, as I'd watched a Jennifer McGuire video a few weeks back, called Distress Oxide Resist, and had put it on my list of things to try. I even bought some Oxide sprays for doing it, lol. I've linked to her videos You Tube page.


The beauty- and what really grabbed me about Oxides- is that the colour shows even on dark or black cardstock- these are sprayed onto a navy blue cardstock. 





These are the colours I used, the Wilted Violet only in very small amounts.

The base cards are 'notecard' size-which is roughly 10½ x 14½cm, or 5¾ x 4⅛", so I cut 4 pieces of navy cardstock to fit.



To do this, you will also need a Versamark, or Embossing inkpad, Clear Detail Embossing Powder, and some Snowflake stamps.

  Mine are the Tim Holtz ones, which come in two sets, one with large snowflakes, and the second with the same snowflakes in medium and small. 

I stamped 2 large snowflakes on one, and 2 medium, then switched to 2 large and 1 medium. Heat embossed them with the Clear EP. 






Now comes the somewhat messy bit, but you can help keep the mess under control by having a box to work in. Mines got some newspaper and heavy duty paper towel in the bottom too.

 Starting with the lightest colour, Tumbled Glass, I sprayed from the bottom up, concentrating the colour at the bottom. Then dried it before the next colour, as if you do it with the first colour wet, they'll just mix together.

 Next came Broken China, dry, then Mermaid Lagoon, dry, then a little of either Chipped Sapphire or Wilted Violet.

I also flicked a few droplets by undoing the top and just flicking colour from the end of the spray tube.

Dried that, then followed by flicking a few drops of water to give a bit more background texture. I also had a bottle of Cosmic Shimmer Pearl White mist, which I used right at the end, but more about that later.

Tilted them to the light in the hope the Pearl Shimmer shows up!







Next comes the fun bit- ironing off the heat embossing.

 Any iron will do- just hottest setting and no steam.

 You need some copy paper to place over your stamped piece, and run the iron over it a couple of times to melt the EP and soak it into the paper.

And you end up with the snowflakes revealing the colour of the cardstock underneath, any ink that was on the snowflakes comes off with the ironing, so they look nice and crisp.
 The Cosmic Shimmer spray had me a bit worried- handling these pieces my fingers were covered in the mica from it! I gave them a buff over with a cloth, and that seems to have fixed it, but I will be checking them a few times before I use it again!

 


















All four ironed off, and then I decided I was going to stamp a sentiment on them, so used Phill Martins Stately Christmas sentiments, love this set as it has  lots of really great sentiments, in a gorgeous font.





 Stamped it in Versafine- I used the Happy Christmas in the bottom right-and heat embossed with Silver Detail EP.

 Added them to the card bases with DST, and I'm done.
Two things I must mention- first, I'm sorry but I only realised yesterday I've missed one weeks Challenge!
 And second, I have no idea if my font is a bit too small- please let me know if it is, or if it's OK. This new Blogger update is playing games!

Christmas cards with Cardio stamps

So, on a Fb group I'm part of, a lady had posted pics of some simple Christmas cards she'd made.  I asked if she'd mind me CASE-ing them, as the idea was great, and she very kindly said I could.
 I mixed it up a little, and created a Deckle edged oval, using my Silhouette Portait 2 to cut it out of  125 micron mylar. This is perfectly thick enough for inking through, but I'd suggest a thicker one if you wanted to use pastes/paints through.
 You can also die cut mylar, so you can create stencils that way too. I just didn't have a deckle edge oval die. I also cut deckle edged stencils in rectangles, circle & square for later use.


These were the cards created by Andrea Turner that inspired me.



Having taped my stencil down with Purple tape, I used a couple of the makeup style brushes to add colour.  In every case, I used 3 shades of Distress ink, a light over almost all the oval, a medium about an inch in all round,both using the larger brush, and finally the darkest shade just around the outer edge, using the small brush.

 All together, I made 15 backgrounds.
These are sized to fit 'notecard' size, made by folding an A5 piece of cardstock.

These are some of the Cardio/Majestix  stamps I used, and I ordered another couple with stockings and ornaments in, called Great Expectations (Stockings)  and Christmas Hang-ups.
 I did the stamping using various Memento inks, in the Dew Drop pad range. I also used my stamping platform for this, wisely as it turned out, as most needed to be double stamped. I left the drawing in of the strings till I'd finished them all, and used a fine micron pen for that.
 For a few I decided to stamp a swag across the panel, and I used a Lavinia £1 holly stamp for that.
For the holly I used Versafine Clair in Shady Lane, and sprinkled on a little sparkly EP and heat set.I'd added a small patch of yellow for the lantern light using a small round make up brush, then added Liquid Pearls for the holly berries.


 Next up, I stamped the greeting in Gold Encore Pigment ink, and heat set with Detail Gold Embossing powder. The sentiment comes from a Phill Martin set called Stately Christmas Sentiments.


All the images were matted onto a toning cardstock, leaving a narrow border.
 The final step was to add Glossy Accents to all of the ornaments, lanterns and stockings.

The Cardio/Majestix sets used were:
(Baubles) Zendangles,Bells & Baubles,Elegant Baubles, and one older Rubber Stamp Tapestry set called Embellished Holiday Wreath.

Then Christmas Hang ups, Great Expectations ( Stockings), Vintage Lights, and the smallest lantern from Christmas Scenery 3. There are two others in this pack, each slightly larger.

New Home cards with Chocolate Baroque stamps

Been a while since I did a blog post with makes, and these have finally been finished. I picked cardstock to matt them with that matched the colours used in the houses.It's from a Papermania cardstock pack called Assorted Colossal Colours, Textured Cardstock, comes in A5, A4 and 12x12" packs.
 
All the colour to the houses was done with the pencil set I bought recently from Amazon,  a set by Zenacolor, 160 pencils for £27.97. I found they blended fine, and produced good colour.
 






 The stamps I used are from two different Chocolate Baroque sets, Townhouses, and  English Cottages.


  I used some masking to allow me to stamp trees and bushes, either behind or in front of the houses.













For this I used Eclipse masking paper roll, again from Amazon. It's a great product, the whole of the sheet has a tacky glue like Post its on the back, and you can reuse each mask many times. It.s also 10 metres long, so will last for ages. I've stuck the masks onto some plastic from packaging, and dropped that into a page protector and stored with the stamps.

Once I'd finished colouring the houses, I wanted to just lightly add some grass & sky to them.

  For this I used two shades of green and blue Distress ink, and the Professional Make Up brushes. They are great for a very light application of colour, although you can easily deepen it by adding more ink if that's the look you want.

Again, I replaced the masks so I kept the colour around the images. I also added some paths to the door on some them, one or two with a Cobblestone path by Lavinia stamps, others just with a black fineliner. The Lavinia stamp is available in two sizes, large & small,I have the large, but I think the small would work better for this.

The sentiment was also cut from a shade of the matting layer.
 The right hand sentiment was bought from The Range,in  their £1 boxes, and the one on the left comes from a Phill Martin set of dies, called Scribbled Collection, that includes this one, plus the words Job,Baby Boy & Baby Girl.

 A really useful die set, the 'A New' part is a separate die, so can be combined with any of the other words. I particularly liked the inclusion of Job, as it's rare to see a die with that.

Christmas Card Club Challenge #24- All Wrapped up!

Sorry ladies, completely lost track of what week it was.  This fortnights challenge is set by Carol, and she chose the theme 'All Wrapped Up'. I've taken a bit of  a liberty with the interpretation here, as I think I'm overflowing with Christmas cards this year, so I've made a bunch of gift tags!

  I ended up making 7 designs, in a pretty random number for each. The tags are more or less 3" square. I used a lot of off cuts to make these, so there is a little variation.

 This one uses a Holly stamp from Lavinia Stamps, stamped in Versafine Clair Rainforest, then I added  Stampendous Crystal Embossing Powder over them and heat set. Then Liquid Pearls in Garnet for the berries.
 The sentiment comes from a Hobby Art set, Winter Wishes. That was stamped in the same green ink, but not heat embossed.

The Bells come from a Card-io set called Merrily on High.
 I stamped the first bell in Gold Encore Pigment ink, masked it, then stamped the second. Heat embossed both then with the same Crystal EP.

The sentiment is from a Crafters Companion set.

Afterwards I added the holly sprigs using an old Rubber Stamp Tapestry set.
 I used the Garnet Liquid Pearls for the berries again too.












 Quite a lot of Card-io stamps used for the tags, this one is called Christmas Greenery. Stamped in Versafine Spanish Moss, heat embossed with the Crystal EP, and then the sentiment stamped in Versafine Majestic Green. I added  White Opal Liquid Pearls to the Mistletoe Berries.

 Another Mistletoe design, this time using a Lavinia Stamps Mistletoe Branch. I stamped this one in Olympia Green, added the Crystal EP, then stamped the greeting in the same colour. The same Opal White Liquid Pearls used for the berries too.

 Christmas Trees next, and these are from a Visible Image set, and I used the medium one once, then the small one was stamped in both first & second generation images, using Versafine Olympia Green.
 For these I used a Stampendous EP called Rainbow Sparkle, and although it doesn't show in the photo's, it makes it look like the trees are covered in lights.
 I added a tiny acrylic star to the top of each tree. The sentiment here is from a Phill Martin set,Scribbled Christmas Petite.

This was the biggest batch I made. All Card-io/Majestix stamps, the branch is a partial stamping of a tree from the Christmas Breeze Collection. I stamped in Clair Rainforest, first and second generation images.  I added a mix of baubles from the two sets,Zendangles and Bells & Baubles, using Versafine Majestic Blue and Deep Lagoon. The strings were drawn in with a very fine Micron pen.Sentiment again from the Crafters Companion set.The branch and baubles were heat set with the Crystal EP.

Last set used two Card-io/Majestix snowflake sets, Winters Kiss and Winter Flurry.Stamped in Encore Metallic Blue, and heat set with WOW! EP in Glacier. Sentiment again from the Hobby Art set, and stamped in Versafine Majestic Blue.