Christmas Card - Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Evening Everyone,

I hope you've all had as good a day as I have. After a couple of hours doing the usual housework, boring!, I spent the afternoon playing with stencils, sprays, glitter paste, inks, etc. Messy but fun. Result is, a desk covered in stuff that will be the basis of a few Christmas cards and I have one completed to share.

It features a splattered background, a few stamped embellishments and a topper that was, I can hardly believe it, stamped some time last year and never used.

Here's how it was made.

• The topper ... Tim Holtz Santa's Letter stamped using a red distress ink - either Festive Berries or Fired Brick, too long ago for me to remember -  was matted on to black card.
• More black card was used to create the greeting. Before stamping I rubbed the black cardstock with a SU Embossing Buddy to prevent static. The stamp ... Santa Clause is Coming to Town, from a Simply Cards & Papercraft, Issue 155, set ... was stamped with VersaMark and embossed with Papermania's Seafoam White powder. The greeting was then die-cut with a die from X-Cut's Tags & Bookplates set. 
• To make the background a scrap of white card was sprayed and splattered with Lava Red Cosmic Shimmer Mist. When this was dry the topper was positioned on the upper left side of the backing piece. Gold jewelry cord was laced through the greeting and this was then wrapped around the backing and taped in place, making sure that the greeting was adhered to just cover the lower right of the topper. All was then adhered to a standard 5" square black card base, oriented to create a tent style card. 
• The little gift boxes, stamps are from the same set as the greeting, were stamped on to white card with Memento Tuxedo Black and then fussy cut before sticking to the left corner using dimensional squares. 
• Finally, two gold enamel dots were added to the top right corner. 

I should add that there's an awful lot of dimensional sticky tape and squares on this card so it is in the 'to be hand delivered' category!

I'd like to submit this card to the following challenges:

CHNC challenge 305: anything goes as long as it's Christmas

CHNC challenge extra for November 2016

That's me for this evening ... it's almost bedtime already ... but I feel like I'm on a Christmas card making roll so hopefully I'll have a few more to share soon. 

Take care and have a fabulous Tuesday.

Serenity - card using up just one snippet of 12 x 12 paper

Hi Everyone

Well, a better day here this afternoon, though it poured down earlier and yesterday was so bad it was a write-off. Hope you are enjoying better weather wherever you are.

I have a quick and easy card to share with you today - the eagle-eyed among you might have spotted it on my desk on Wednesday. It was made from bits and bobs leftover from a scrapping session.

I've used a basic white square-shaped card but rounded the bottom corners just for a change. The leftover piece of  patterned paper had  some distressed edging in an aqua shade so I emphasised the colour by  inking each edge with Peacock Feathers distress ink - love this gorgeous shade :)

The collection includes a page of stickers which has this strip of circle trim on it. A length of it has been used already on a scrap layout and the rest was perfect as a trim on this card.

The topper is also from the collection - cut from a page - and I have absolutely no idea what the characters mean ... I just hope it's something beautiful, and that I have it the right way up :))

Materials used:
Square white card; corner rounder; black cardstock for matting; leftovers from BoBunny Serenity Collection; Tim Holtz DI, Peacock Feathers; Turquoise seam binding from Ribbon Carousel; Craftwork Cards Vintage Berries red candi

I'm submitting this card to the following challenges:

Challenges 4 Everybody #6 - Anything Goes
365 Cards - Day 246 - Say It With Flair
and I can't use snippets and not pop over to Di's Snippet Challenge :)

Time for a cuppa, I think, and then I'll hunker down in the craft space for a bit of scrapping - which means there will be even more leftovers and snippets to put to good use :)

I wish you all a wonderful weekend, take care and happy crafting,

Tim Holtz August 2012 Tag

Good Evening Friends

It's only taken me from Saturday, but I've finally completed my first Tim Holtz tag!

Of course I didn't have most of the materials as listed by TH himself. I just had to exercise the little grey cells and improvise and, guess what, it was fun :) I didn't even have a tag ... I cut this one out a piece of leftover cream cardstock. I substituted a Cuttlebug embossing folder, Beautiful, for the one used by Tim.  Surprise, surprise, I did have the Adirondack dabber, Juniper, and enough of a selection of distress inks to be able to make a passable job of the inking.

The silhouette stamp is a digital one from Floppy Latte, Ribbon Flair, printed out onto smooth white cardstock and inked before adhering to the back of the frame. The frame, Papermania's white chipboard, has three coats of black embossing powder (Stampendous Midnight Black) and to get the 'carved' effect I stamped into the hot embossed surface before it set with a stamp with an all-over tiny flower pattern from Docrafts, V&A Quilt Posy Background.

Needless to say, I didn't have the right dies but I did have a Marianne Creatable Rose and the Sizzix Country Foliage dies and a really lovely leafy flourish die ... another one of the die-cuts in the package Chris Lee sent me - and it was perfect for the job. The rose die I have is the straight edged one, and of course, I really wanted scalloped edges so that my flowers looked more like the ones on Tim's tag. To get the effect I wanted, I trimmed the edge of the spirals with my fancy edged scissors - fiddly and time-consuming, but it did the job. I've used several snippets of coredinations card and after the flowers were sanded, rolled and shaped, the edges were inked with distress inks and then finished off with a little gold ink from a Papermania ink pad.

The words I chose for the tag are the last lines taken from a poem by F.VERR entitled Silhouette. The poet is a contemporary artist who uses 'colors, sounds, words and motion to adorn and inspire feeling on the blank canvas we perceive as space and time'.

 I won't quote the whole work but here's the last verse.

Where is she?
The one for me has not yet crossed my path
And though my mind's eye sees her
The sight is obstructed
She, only
Fills the silhouette

I thought the lines I've chosen worked well with the theme of the tag.

I don't know why I've resisted joining in with Tim's tag making ... well, I do really ... I didn't think I was up to it and, because I hadn't invested in all the TH materials, thought that I couldn't possibly make anything that looked like the TH original.

However, I did enjoy having a go, overcame the lack of materials, and am happy with the end result, so I won't be put off in the future ... in fact, if I can find the time, I might just have a go at his July tag too.

We had a dry spell today ... it didn't last long, but long enough for me to take the opportunity to trot round the garden collecting flowers and leaves for squishing. I also did a fair bit of dead-heading, especially on the EM's petunias which were looking horrible. He loves them, I loathe them ... it's the bright and gaudy colours that appeal to him. He puts them in planters every year and then neglects them terribly!

I'm thinking of having an early night and snuggling down with a good book. The current book, entitled The Ladies of Low Arvie, is about cows! I know, sounds an odd choice, but it's about an English couple who, wanting to live the farming dream, bought a farm in Galloway, Scotland, and decided to concentrate on rearing cows - the ladies of the title. So far, I'm thoroughly enjoying their story and finding it hard to put the book down.

So I'll bid you all goodnight and happy crafting,

Time Will Tell - A Scrap Page Layout

Good Morning Everyone

I hope you are all well and enjoying the start of the weekend. Here in Ayr it's damp from a fall of rain in the night but the sun is struggling to shine through - it may even succeed :) 

When I was considering what photograph(s) to scrap for my DT layout for the Scrap Our Stash August Challenge, Time Will Tell, I kept coming back to this delightful photo taken of my granddaughter, Shari-Ann, sitting on her granddad's knee, listening intently as he was telling her a story - when she was small she absolutely loved story time with granddad and particularly adored hearing his rather tall tales :) 

I chose a Daisy Bucket Designs background paper, Under the Boardwalk, because it is fairly neutral, and the other elements feature colours taken from the bird border - from Cosmo Cricket's Nutmeg Elements. 

Most of the papers used are from the snippet pile and unfortunately I no longer remember all the makers or even the what the sheets were called. However, I do know that the borders, along with the bird border, the Simple Pleasures sentiment and the Remember When journalling spot are from Cosmo Cricket's Nutmeg Elements. I cut the clocks from the fabulous World Map sheet (the clocks are on reverse) from Kaisercraft Timeless Collection. The large clock is only a partial image so I've disguised this by tucking it under the photograph.

I've used Kiwi Lane Designs templates a lot on this layout - the curvy borders are from the Abbie Road set, the bracket shape on the left of the photo is Bracket 1 and the arrow head is from the Tiny Nature set. 

The dotty photo matting was trimmed with a pair of scalloped edge scissors - these are the ones that came free with a craft magazine, the same ones I put them away thinking I'd never use them, and might even pass them on to Shari-Ann for her to play with, but here they are getting another outing! Definitely more useful than I thought :)

The embellishments - the die-cut butterflies, also in the RAK package from my friend, Chris Lee, Tim Holtz Adage Tickets, and adhesive-backed gems were all from my hoard of stash. 

I have still to add the journalling, will do that later when I've thought out what to write.

I'm sure you all have your own plans for how to spend your day, for some it will be shopping, catching up with housework, stoking the washing-machine, doing the ironing ... or any other task from the million and one things you have on your to-do list ... but I'm planning a day of craft related delights. I've been suffering from withdrawal symptoms and nothing else will do! 

To start with I'll be watching Barbara Gray's workshop on C&C TV, then I plan to make a start on Tim Holtz's August tag ... this could take some time as there's a requirement for the handmade roses he made in an earlier post and as this will be my first attempt to make a TH tag, I need to make the roses first! It will be interesting to see how far I get with that today :)

So, whatever you are going to be doing have a happy day and happy crafting,

WOYWW - Week 136 ... grungepaper and spools

Afternoon WOYWWers and All,

Yes, afternoon! I've had a bad night and been a real slow starter this morning. And my PC hasn't helped either, it's been on a go-slow all morning too - I suspect some programme, Windows/Microsoft, has been checking to see if I need any updates.  And now my security programme is doing a check too ... a necessary precaution but, oh, the frustration of it all. Okay, rant over for today, on to the business of the day - the state of my wordesk.

Ready for action with Timmy's grungepaper and Wendy's spools. I saw our Hels demonstrate these on TV a few weeks ago and just had to have them, but what to do now??? I don't actually own any of Wendy's stamps, big drawback ... but as I have taken the vow not to buy any more stash until I used what I already have ... it's going to be down to some improvisation. So I've taken a look at my stash and pulled out a selection of stuff I do have, stamps, dies and inks, that I think my just be acceptable substitutes. Wish me luck folks :))

The ice-cream box at the back - well, it shouldn't be there. It contains images I've stamped out already - just trying the stamps out, that sort of thing - and I was looking through it last night just to remind myself of what is there - and I should have returned it to it's place ... tut, tut, how sloppy of me :)

If you're reading this and wondering what WOYWW is all about, then click the icon on my sidebar and you will be transported to Julia's place, the Stamping Ground, where you will find dozens of links to other bloggers willing to show the state of their desks this morning ... such fun :))

That's it for today - short and sweet! I'm off now to start hopping through your desks - can't wait to see what you've all been up to this week :) I hope you are all well and easing yourself into the new year with plenty of crafting.

Happy Crafting,

Enjoy the Journey - Playing with Alcohol Inks and Plastic

Good Morning Everyone,

I'm still recovering from my big day at the SECC yesterday but thought I would post this card which is a compilation of a couple of the items on my desk on WOYW Wednesday - see here. I took the piece of card I'd dabbed with alcohol inks, gold mixative and blender solution, with which I wasn't all that happy, and stamped it with three of the Tim Holtz stamps. Still not that happy I decided to create an edge with gold embossing powder and decided it didn't look so bad after all : )

I'd also had a bash at the method for re-cycling plastic shown on The Crafty Cuttings of Wiccababe using Promarkers and blender solution. The plastic had to be trimmed before putting it through the Cuttlebug to emboss it. I used the Sun Rays folder from Craft Concept and the problem I found with this, which might just be down to my choice of embossing folder, was that the plastic bevelled alarmingly from the centre of the sun ray : (  However, it's not noticeable in the finished card because I used brads to fix first the small topper to the plastic, then that was attached, again with brads, to a layer of red card which picked up the colours of the Promarkers. As you can see I then matted it on to turquoise blue card and the whole lot went on to a black base card.

The insert was made by stamping the same stamps used on the topper on to white card immediately after the first stamping without inking up - this is the same as the ink, blot, stamp technique that Barbara Gray often demos. The more faded image was then scanned as a JPG image which I was then able to set out, using MS Publisher, on the upper left and bottom right of a page before printing out and trimming down for the insert.

Although I'm still not altogether happy with the end result, the EM really likes it (of course I pass everything to him for a quality control inspection)  and thinks it's a great man's card - so what do I know, huh!! : )

A bit of housekeeping here - a list of materials used:

• Cardstock: Black (C26) for base; Pale Turquoise (C11) & Ruby Red (C21) for matting and layering; all from Papermilldirect.co.uk
• Topper 1: Matt-coated Double-sided A6 Postcard (only half used) from Clarity Stamp; Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks, Red Pepper & Sail Boat Blue; TH Gold Mixative; TH Blending Solution; Archival ink pad, Jet Black, Tim Holtz Visual Artistry Stamp Collection; Versamark, Heat It Up gold embossing powder
• Topper 2: Piece of re-cycled plastic, Promarkers, Indigo Blue & Plum; TH Blending Solution; Craft Concepts Sun Rays embossing folder
• Embellishments: Gold coloured brads

Because of my jaunts out this week I am way behind schedule and my 'to do' list is looking somewhat unloved - so much to do and so little time!! However I'm off to try and catch up with visits to my fellow WOYWWers workspaces and I just have to finish the Christmas card for this week today.

Happy crafting to you all,