A Flock of Patchwork Doves for Christmas

Afternoon All,

And it's a pretty horrible afternoon here in Ayrshire too ... more gales and rainstorms, with yet more to come. Hope you are having better weather wherever you are.

Anyway, all that horribleness does make it a perfect day for staying in and crafting.

I only intended making the one card, for someone special, but after stamping the Patchwork Dove on several different sheets of patterned paper to cut up for paper-piecing I just had to use up all the leftover bits to make 6 cards in all. They are all similar but different.

Here's the card that started it all.

This super stamp was found online after winning a Woodware voucher way back in October from Crafty Cardmakers - my thanks go out to Dorothy at Woodware, Lin at Crafty Cardmakers and, in particular, Janice at Sir Stampalot for helping me with my order.

Materials used:

• white fancy edge card or plain square edge card bases
• Docrafts Papermania Festive Frolics paper pack - love the pretty pastel colours
• cardstock - for the stamping, smooth white Neenah Solar, and pink for matting from Papermill Direct
• stamps used - Woodware Patchwork Dove, not seen but inside a greeting from Lawn Fawn's Winter Fox, warm winter wishes 
• from the snippet box - a variety of ribbons 
• embellishments - gems are from Anita's, Crystal Stickles, used to edge two of the toppers

I've been absent for a time, with a sick note, but using all the snippets in these cards merits a trip to Pixie's Snippet Playground - Week 103. What with all the preparation for Christmas, I'm thinking it could be quiet around the duck pond about now.

And over at Hazel's this week the CHNC 155 challenge is for whatever is urgent - these cards definitely come under that category :)

I'm also offering them up for Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra where, as always, the remit is 'Anything goes'.

Right, I'm off to make some snowman's soup, print off a set of family photos for my aunt in Australia - too late for Christmas but in time for New Year - and a dozen other outstanding items on my to-do list, sigh! That list never seems to get any shorter somehow :(

Hope you all have a very good evening - it's Friday, reason to celebrate :)

Thanks for looking in and happy crafting, 

Flying High ATC

Hi Everyone,

Hope you are all having a lovely Sunday.

My cold has peaked today so no crafting has been done ... hopefully tomorrow will see it off :)

So, at the risk of boring you all rigid with the ATCs I've been making here's the third ... and the last for a little while!

The background on this ATC is a mix of Squeezed Lemonade and Peacock Feathers distress inks.

The Flying High stamp set with the balloons was free with Craft Stamper some time ago, and the foliage is from Kanban's Spring Meadow set. 

The stamps were inked with a variety of shades of Papermania cubes. A few of the foliage sprigs were inked with Versafine Olympia Green. 

A scrap of striped design paper was stamped and pieces for the larger of the hot air balloons.  I won't submit this to Di's playground ... I hardly think that scrap warrants being called a snippet :))

Embellishments are some tiny gems in shades of gold and green.

I think ATCs have finally won me over ... I could get addicted :) However, I've some pressing cards to make as there's a few birthdays looming so I'll be putting the ATCs aside and concentrating on the cards for now.

The cold remedy tablets I'm taking are making me sleep a lot ... not a bad thing when you have a cold but it does mean that I'm doing very little of anything. 

I am hoping to stay awake long enough this evening to watch Wallender on my brand new TV ... yes, the EM has treated me to a new flat-screen, DVD playing telly for the craft space. He has his reasons ... he hates Wallender!!!

Oh, and it is our wedding anniversary on Friday ... another reason for the pressie :) Sixteen years ... who would have believed it ... the years seem to have just flown by!

Right, time for another cuppa, I think. 

Happy crafting to you all,

Christmas Alphabet - F for Fairies

Hi Everyone,

Another cold and windy day to start this weekend. Fortunately, I don't have to go anywhere today so staying safe and cosy in the craft space. Trying to get as much done as possible today because we are off out to visit friends in Kirkcudbrightshire tomorrow.

And today's card is all about the Christmas fairy ... well there are two of them here. As this card is clearly only suitable for a very girly girl I thought it would be nice to put a charm on it that could be kept ... even if the card does get tossed after Christmas :)

It doesn't show up well in the photograph but perhaps you can just about see that I've been paper piecing again ... this time I made the fairy's dress from DP from the same paper pack as used on the card. She's also blinged and sparkled as surely befits a Christmas fairy.

There's three different papers gone into the making of the background, two character ones trimmed to create the borders, top and bottom, and the dotty one as the base.

I had fun with the ribbon, pleating it down onto the very tacky red tape and finishing it off with two bows, a pink tipped hellebore and turquoise cherry blossom ... OTT girliness!

Inside

Back

The inside and back are decorated with some of the leftover trimmings ... can't let them go to waste :)

 

Materials used:

• Cardstock: Ready-made 5.5" square cream card base; scraps of Docrafts Papermania textured card in deep pink and light turquoise for matting; smooth white card, 3"x2.25", for stamped image
• DP: Docrafts Papermania Festive Frolics 6x6 paper pad
• Stamped Image: Christmas Fairy from set free with Let's Get Crafting, Issue 26; Memento Tuxedo Black ink pad; Promarkers - Blush, Ivory, Vanilla, Sandstone, Tea Green, Blender; Crystal & Yellow Stickles; White Opal Liquid Pearls; corner punch
• Embellishments: The Ribbon Girl Fairy charm; Wild Orchid Crafts flowers; Dovecraft printed Christmas ribbon (pink); Charlotte Ribbon by Anna Griffin (turquoise)

I'm not really much into pink but, as some of the papers had pink in them, I just went with the flow ... it's a bit too sugar almonds perhaps, and definitely not traditional Christmas colours ... but, much to my surprise, I think this colour combo works quite well. 

 

Right, off to tackle the next letter in the alphabet ... hope to be back soon :)

 

WOYWW - Week 123 - trying out a bit of paper piecing

I'm either up late or up early ... depending on how you look at ... The Boss clearly thinks it's late, and that I should be in bed by now, and she's being very vocal about it too. By this time most nights she's usually snuggled down at the bottom of the bed! But I have an am date with a physiotherapist so I thought I'd reveal what's on my desk now and be one of the early signing in for a change. And if you are thinking early for what, then pop along to the Stamping Ground where Julia, Queen of the Desks, very kindly hosts this weekly reveal ... yes, a tidy few of us put our workdesks/dining tables/kitchen wortops/trays/floors - wherever we craft in fact - up for inspection ... and you're very welcome to join in the fun :)

So here's what's on my desk tonight ... looking quite busy for a change. I've been wanting to have a bash at paper piecing for some time now, but never quite got round to it. So what you see it my first tiny attempt at this technique with this little flower. Most of what's lying there are the materials to make the card.

Hiding at the back are the two projects I made at class on Monday ... still haven't photographed them to blog about yet. There's a couple of jars of buttons still out after me looking for suitable ones to go in the centre of the two flowers that I've stamped and cut out for the card. There's some embossed co-ordination waiting to be sanded before adding to the card. Inks, papers, adhesives, scissors, bakers twine, etc., all out because I've been using them and somehow I've resisted the temptation to put them away until I'm sure I've done with them. The little blue dish right at the back has some Christmas die-cuts I did recently, not found a real home for them so they will stay there until I do, and next to that is my bucket where I keep scissors, pliars, snips handy.

Right, that's it for now ... I'm off to bed to get some beauty sleep and let Bonnie get settled down for the night too. If there are any typos/spelling/grammar mistakes put it down to the silly hour, please :)

See you all some time tomorrow and in the meantime I hope you all have a wonderful WOYWW day.

Happy crafting,

Pampered Pet - A Craft for Life Card

Good Evening Fellow Crafters

A quick post tonight. This card was made strictly to instructions laid down for Docrafts Creativity's support for Cancer Research and these are 1. the card is to be A6 in size; 2. any theme using products of choice; 3. the inside of the card is left blank - difficult for me but I did it.

The design is based on an idea from Kristina Werner, Garden Girl at Two Peas In A Bucket and you can see the demo on YouTube here. Kristina's design consists of making a pattern by drawing 'sunrays' radiating from the left bottom corner on copy paper, then cutting the pieces out to lay on the DP and tracing round the outline of the pattern piece before cutting.

If you are thinking of following Kristina's instructions for cutting the 'sunrays' my advice would be to number the sections as well as labelling them with the paper pattern to be used - makes it so much easier to piece together the sections. Also, it's a good idea to erase any pencil marks - sounds elementary - but I forgot and once I'd run the glue tape round each piece the pencil was nearly impossible to remove without making the most awful mess :-( Fortunately, not all was lost as the addition of the ribbon detail covered it up nicely!)

Materials used:

• White card cut to A6 size;
• Docrafts Creativity Magazine free cover gift pack - Pampered Pets;
• Narrow pink saddle-stitched Anna Griffin ribbon from the Hannah Collection;
• Polka dotted card candy in blue and pink

The weather has been so very good here that the EM and I have been out and about both yesterday and today down at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum and on the Burns trail. We took lots of great snaps so I will post a few when I've sorted them out and tell you a bit more about the experience.

In the meantime I wish you all happy crafting,