Favourite 5 of 2015

Well it's that time of year again. As we approach the start of a brand new year and look back on the one we've finished, and every year at this time Debby posts her Favourite 5 of the Year. Many of us join in with her, I've done it the last couple of years and I'm joining in again this year.

It's always hard to pick just 5 cards when you make a lot, so for this reason alone, I'm not posting any Christmas cards in this pick and I'll make a separate post for those.

Honestly even taking out all the Christmas cards it was hard, there were so many I wanted to chose, but there was only room for 5, so here goes...

This card was made almost right at the beginning of the year and it won me a Guest Spot on the Saturated Canary design team.

This card is just one of my most favourite, love the way this one turned out, from the colours to the glitter, I don't think I could have been happier with this card.

It's not often I make cards for commissions, and this one had very particular requests so I was quite worried before I started making it, as it turns out it came together into a very sophisticated and stylish card, love the contrasts in this one, and it was a rare outing for my poor neglected Copics,

I loved colouring in the image on this one, but really I chose this as my top 5 for the card design, love the way it turned out, even the inside.

 Now I'm sure you've noticed that 3 of my 5 so far have been Saturated Canary images, I do love them and they are such fun to colour that I probably use them more than any others on my cards (you may find my Christmas card picks feature a different artist quite strongly though), but I fell in love with this image from Digistamp Atelier and even went rather CAS compared to my normal style.

So that's my final top 5 for the year. I hope you like them and if you want to join in the fun just follow the link.

Debby's Favourite 5 of 2015

Be careful out there :) xx

Elisabeth Bell - Christmas Bells

Merry Christmas everyone!  

Firstly I would like to wish all my followers new and old, a very merry Christmas and I hope you have had a wonderful day!

I'm spending a quiet Christmas day with my partner, but seeing family tomorrow, so I'll be having the big Christmas meal then.

Well it may be Christmas, but it's business as usual over on the Digi Bells Challenge Blog and the theme this time is 'Winter Wonderland'.  Well I must admit that when I made this card I had 'Christmas' firmly in my head rather then 'Winter', and made my card with alternative Christmas colours that are actually quite 'hot' and not overly wintery lol. But lucyly I added plenty of frantage to create a snowy effect and I think that just about saves it hehe.

Anyway this is the card I made.

I used the gorgeous Christmas Bells , this is available from Elisabeth's website by clicking on the link. I coloured her with my distress inks and chose some lovely bright colours to match my chosen papers. I used the following markers:

Vintage Photo, Hickory Smoke, Black Soot, Picked Raspberry, Twisted Citron, Victorian Velvet, Brushed Corduroy, Antique Linen

I paired her with some Whimsy Papers that I've had in my stash for a while now, I've lost the front of the pack so I can't actually remember what this pack was called.  I also used some bright pink cardstock and embossed it with a Winter embossing folder I had.....and then of course being me I promptly hid most of the embossing with embellishments .....sigh.

I added flowers from my stash and charms and ribbon from The Ribbon Girl.

I also added one of Kay Fatula's beautiful butterflies because the colours matched perfectly.

I do hope you can join in with our challenge.

That's all from me today, I'm off to enjoy the rest of my Christmas Day!

Christmas Hugs :) xx

Merry Christmas & Candy Winner!

Merry Christmas everyone! 

Just dropping by to wish you a very happy day, hope you get time to spend with your loved ones. 

Also it's time to announce the winner of my Candy and that name is........

Vinita Jain

Congratulations Vinita!

Please contact me at linda.levoir@gmail.com to claim your prize and let me know your mailing address. 

If the prize isn't claimed by the 5th of January, I'll re-draw to give someone else the chance to win.

That's all from me, I'm off to the kitchen now, but I will be back later with a little post.

Have fun! 

Candy!

*This post will remain sticky until 24th December so please scroll down for more recent posts*

Well it's very late but finally I'm here with my promised Candy. Honestly I had so much trouble taking pics of this, meant to do it in the day but forgetting and since that's only the weekend that I can do it I had to make do with artificial lighting and it kept reflecting off the packets lol.

Anyway, so the pic is not perfect but shows what I'm giving away.

The candy contains the following 8 rubber stamps:

1Candibean - Friendship is the Sweetest

 Candibean - Wild Thing

Magnolia - Tilda with Big Icecream

La-La Land Crafts - Masquerade Marci

Candibean - Pamper Time

Saturated Canary - Multi-Tasking Mama

Dollhouse - Wings

Lisbeth - Winter Cuppa

So how do you enter? It's easy.

1. Be a follower

2. Share this with others. You can do this by adding a button to your blog (if you don't know how to then check out this short tutorial here), or by mentioning it on your blog and linking back to this post.

3. Leave me a comment below so I can add you to the draw.

I'll draw a winner on Christmas Eve, so you have until then to enter. New followers can enter as well as existing ones, but please, no candy only blogs.

This candy is just for my blog followers, but I will be adding some Facebook only Candy and some YouTube candy later in the month.

That's all from me today, good luck! :) xx

Wee Stamps - Jenny

Hi everyone! Are you feeling festive yet?!  I'm really starting to get in the Christmas spirit now as the days count down, and not so much to do to finish.

I have another Christmas/Winter card to share with you all today, but before I do I would just like to say a huge thank you to all of my followers for visiting my blog this year. I would especially like to thank those of you that leave me wonderful comments. I know I am not as good as I should be at commenting back (although I do always pop in on your lovely creations), time is not always my friend, and much as I would love to leave comments on everyone's blog all the time, my full time job means that it's hard to balance all the things I do with my limited spare time. Aside from the normal day to day necessities and chores, I try and divide my time between  friends and family, crafting, blogging and Facebook, and there just isn't enough time to go around! It's for that reason that I often offer candy on my blog (there's some still available till Christmas Eve if you haven't already entered), by way of a thank you.

Now onto my inspiration for today, I have made another Christmas/Winter themed card using one of the gorgeous new digis from Wee Stamps. I just love Sylvia Zet's sweet style.
You can find her and others here.

I coloured her with my distress ink markers to match these Maja Design papers.
Colours used:
Vintage Photo, Antique Linen, Walnut Stain, Frayed Burlap, Hickory Smoke, Stormy Sky.
I kept the style of the card fairly simple (well for me!).
I cut her out with a Die-namics postage stamp die and added some snowflakes cut with La-La Land Crafts Small Snowflakes dies and La-La Land Heart Snowflake dies. The paper and dies are available from Dies to Die for

I added some Frantage in Aged Teal around the image to give it a snowy look that matched my colour scheme. I also added lashings of Glamour Dust to all the 'furry' parts of her outfit for some sparkle.

I added some embellishments from The Ribbon Girl (linked below) and my stash.

I decorated the inside fairly simply, with more Maja Design paper and a place to write a message.

Products from The Ribbon Girl

25 mm Sky Blue Satin Ribbon

32 mm Victoria Antique White Fine Cluny Lace

10 mm Mocha Open Rose

20 mm Dusky Blue Open Rose

Pastel Mixed Pretty Blooms

3 - 6 mm Ivory Pearl S/A Pearls

I'm entering this card into the following challenge:

The Shabby Tea Room - Winter Wonderland

* (Update from 5th Jan 2016)


That's all from me today, this is a scheduled post because I'm still at work today and tomorrow (boo!), but then I'm off for 4 days (yay!).

Have fun! :) xx

Wee Stamps - Little Helper

Hi everyone! Are you nearly ready for Christmas? I'm almost there now, but there still seems a lot to be done yet and I'm still at work next week until Christmas eve.

I'm still catching up on posting all my Christmas cards here, so you may be a little bored of the theme before Christmas is over lol!

This one could also be used for a winter birthday or a thank you card though, as the image is wintry rather than Christmas specific.

The image is called Little Helper, and is a digi drawn by the lovely and talented Sylvia Zet, isn't the little fairy just the sweetest thing? Love her little mouse friend too. You can buy her here.

I used more papers from the Kaisercraft Silver Bells paper pad, I LOVE this collection! Soooo pretty.

The colouring is done with my beloved distress ink markers, on Canson Montval watercolour paper.
I used, Vintage Photo, Antique Linen, Walnut Stain, Tumbled Glass, Victorian Velvet, Hickory Smoke.

I used my Clear Star...pen to accent and lashings of Glamour Dust superfine glitter on her wings and the snowballs, for plenty of sparkle!

I used the following Ribbon Girl embellishments on my card:

Cheesecloth
9 mm Colonial Rose Velvet Ribbon
38 mm Vintage Pink Fluted Edge Sheer Ribbon
Ivory White Magnolia Flower
Tulip Flower Baby Pink
Chrysanth White Kort and Godt
65 mm Louise White Guipure Lace
20 mm Pink Open Rose
10 mm Double Row Ivory Pearl FB Trim

All the rest are from my stash.

Many thanks for visiting and don't forget to sign up for my Candy before you go, there's just 5 more days to go until it's drawn!

Bye for now :) xx

Saturated Canary - Night Fairy

Hello everyone I hope you are having a lovely week so far. It's time for a new theme over at 

Deep Ocean Challenge Blog 

and this time it's Anything Goes. Super easy right?  So no excuse not to enter, because whatever you are working on....it will fit! ;)

I have to admit I always seem to colour the newest digis up a bit later than everyone else, so that by the time I do they're no longer new, and the image I used for this is no different.

A while back I joined in a small way with a lovely project that was on Kickstarter, called
'A Very Fairy Door'

As a reward for my small contribution I received 2 digis, but with Christmas looming and everything else I had planned, it's only recently that I got the chance to colour either of them.

This one is called Night Fairy, so I thought I would go with a deep blues and silver for the stars and make her seem like she was in the night sky with the glow of moonlight surrounding her.

I really rather like the way this turned out.

I decided to echo the stars by cutting some stars out of the dp and some pearlescent card. I used a the Die-namics Pierced Star STAX to cut them. The card shape is made using a Go Kreate XXL set.

I used some old papers from my stash to make the card.

I used some diamante gems to accent my card, lots of glamour dust on the wings and on the star. On the dress and the halo I used my Sakura Gelly Roll pen in Clear Star. This give a lovely sheen and a subtle sparkle, but sadly it's a bit too subtle to show up on camera.

I coloured her with my distress ink markers using:

Vintage Photo, Chipped Sapphire, Blueprint Sketch, Hickory Smoke and some Antique Linen for the 'glow'.

I decorated the inside to echo the front.

I used the following embellishments from The Ribbon Girl:

Ivory White Magnolia

Lily Flowers Small White

20 mm Ivory Open Rose

Pretty Blossom Blue

25 mm Navy Blue Satin Ribbon

15 mm White Diamond Guipure Lace

Star Charm

2 mm s/a Clear Gems

5 mm s/a Clear Gems

I'm entering this card into the following challenges:

Live and Love Crafts - Sparkle
BunnyZoeCrafts - Sparkle

That's all from me today but I do hope you can join in with our challenge, and don't foget to swing by and check out the rest of the DTs beautiful makes.

That's all from me, have fun! :) xx

Magnolia - Snowy Tilda

Hello everyone!  Are you nearly ready for Christmas? I'm not...but I'm getting there. I'm about 70% done on presents, have got a lot of the non perishable foodstuffs and finally am getting on top of my Christmas cards....yes I know...but better late than never right?  Although work is still busy, it's starting to get to the stage where I can see the top of the hill now, I think by next week I may just be skiing down the other side ...wheeeeee!!

Anyway...... so I made another Christmas card. This one is using an older Magnolia stamp called Snowy Tilda...and ...don't fall over but, I re-visited my Copics. I may have to do this more often because I almost forgot how to use them lol.

I did paper piece her dress because I wanted the lovely texture in the paper that made her dress look knitted, but it doesn't show up too well in the photos.

The lovely papers are from Lili of the Valley, the the Large Snowflake die is Die-namics from Dies to Die for as are the gold glittery twirly things. I took out the yellow stamens from some of the flowers and added these red beaded ones from my stash.

The large red rose is from Kaisercraft and has been in my stash for quite a while.

The rest of the embellishments are from The Ribbon Girl and I've linked them below.

25 mm Veronica Ivory Flat Lace

25 mm Grape Satin Ribbon

Ivory White Magnolia Flowers

20 mm Burgundy Open Rose

Christmas Snowflake No 4 Charm

Ivory Button Twine

That's all from me today, but I'll be back at the weekend with more Christmas cheer to share :) xx

Elisabeth Bell - Apple Bake

Happy Sunday everyone! Today it's my turn to post again on the Digi Bells Blog, and this time I chose to make an oval card with the delicious Apple Bake. 

Now I know that the name suggests that she's carrying an apple pie there, but I had some of this fab paper from Maja Design from the Fika Collection, with blackberries on it, and these scrummy blackberry embellies that have been loitering in my stash for a while, so I thought it could be an apple and blackberry pie!

I added some lovely flowers and some fab ribbon and lace from the Ribbon Girl.

To finish I decorated the inside with some more of that lush Maja Design paper.

I do hope you like my make for today, I have some Christmas cards that I've been working on (yeah I know, I should have had these all made months ago), so I will be sharing those with you over the next couple of weeks.

Ribbon Girl Products
Cheesecloth
15 mm Plum Microdot Satin Ribbon
9 mm Plum Velvet Ribbon
Clementine Ivory Tulle Lace
10 mm Square Ivory Pearl FB Trim
Cherry Blossom White 
15 mm Pearl & Diamante Embellishment
Holly Leaves
Minature Rolling Pin

Take care and happy crafting! :) xx

Wee Stamps - Lullaby

Hi everyone, sorry I've been absent for a few days, it's all been very hectic in my life lately, work has just been super busy and I'm been shattered on returning home at the end of the day. Luckily that should ease up a little as we get to the end of next week and I'll have time to catch my breath.

I've had this card made for a little while, I just haven't had a chance to blog it, so I'm sharing it with you today as my Ribbon Girl post.

This is a digital stamp from Sylvia Zet of Wee stamps, you can purchase Sylvia's digital art here. Or if you prefer stamping by hand Whimsy produces this stamp in rubber and you can buy it here.

Isn't she divine?  I decided to use these gorgeous papers from Kaisercraft . They're from a 6.5 x 6.5 pad called  Silver Bells.

I coloured her with my distress ink markers and wanted to keep the colours very light and delicate, in keeping with the image and papers.

I used lashings of Glamour Dust on her wings for sparkle and for the snow I used liquid applique and dusted it with Twinklets Glitter before heating to puff up.

This fabulous glittery ribbon made the perfect accent, tied in a double bow.

The little Snowflakes are cut with a set of dies from Le-La Land Crafts and I accented each one with a pink gem.

I finished off with some pretty flowers and decorated the inside simply with more paper from the same pad.

Ribbon Girl Products Used

38 mm White/Silver Glitter Organza Ribbon

55 mm Monique White Guipure Lace

Ivory White Magnolia Flower

Chrysanth White Kurt & Godt

30 mm Ivory Wild Rose

10 mm Ivory Open Rose
Hip Rose Bud Pink Two Tone

3-5 mm Mixed Gems Fuschia

That's all from me today, I have a few cards that I need to share, so hopefully I will get some time to share those in the coming days. Before you go don't forget to check out the Blog Candy I'm giving away here if you haven't already!

Big hugs :) xx