Vintage Blue Winter

Hello!

I know what you're thinking.....is this a Christmas card or isn't it?  Well it can be. I'm calling it a winter card, it has that blue wintery feel and those stamped snowflakes and the sentiment is somewhat non-committal. Soooooo....you could use it for Christmas and it would work perfectly well as a non-traditional card, or you can use it for a winter birthday, or for almost any occasion taking place in winter.

I used the die from the new release called Geometric Snowflake. This is a great die, you can use it all together as a focal point or even as a doily, or you can take it apart and use the snowflakes individually. Also it doesn't hit you in the eye as a snowflake and so I think you can just as easily use this die on non winter cards.

I also used a sentiment from an older clear stamps set called Snowflake Wishes and some of the little snowflake stamps from that set and heat embossed them with white embossing powder.

I added a few flowers leaves and pearls and some seam binding and twine to finish my card, just lightly sponging the edges of the white leaves with some distress ink in Weathered Wood and adding a little lightly brushed gesso here and there and on the flowers and finally brushing the flowers with some clear Wink of Stella.

Youy can buy the die and stamps in the UK from Dies to Die for.

I used the following Ribbon Girl embellishments

Ivory White Magnolia Flowers
Ivory Wild Rose
Blue Wild Rose
20 mm Dusky Blue Open Rose
Limoges Blue Vintage Style Seam Binding
Ivory Self Adhesive Pearls

Ivory Button Twine

That's all from me, see you next time!

Shabby Chic Diamond Wedding

Hello there!

I'm just popping in with a little inspiration for The Ribbon Girl. A while back I got asked by my boss if I would make a card for her parents upcoming anniversay. I had a few delays on it due to recent life occurrences, but I managed to finish it this week so I thought that I would share it with you.

I used a die to cut the leaves from pearlerised card stock which I also used to make the base of the card.
The papers are neutral ones from a couple of Maja Design collections. I added a little stenciling with some modelling paste.

The centre piece is a chipboard piece from Scrapinec which I mounted on some oval shapes cut with MFT dies. I added some little rhinestones to the chipboard to fancy it up a bit and help it match the theme. I cut the numbers with a memory box die.

I added a little chipboard scrap to the corner.
The sentiment is computer generated and printed onto smooth ivory card. I finished the whole thing with a few extra gems for more sparkle!

I've listed the rest of the embellishments used  below which are all available from The Ribbon Girl:

French Veil Ivory
Cream Top Stitch Thread
Ivory White Magnolia Flowers
Ivory 10 mm Open Rose
Beaded Berries Ivory/Cream

15 mm Cream Satin Ribbon
Ivory Cream Lace
Flat Back Rhinstones 5 mm
Flat Back Rhinestones 2mm

I made another card with the same papers at the same time as this one, so I will share that one with you later.

Have a great Friday!

Technique Tuesday #2 - Embossed & Blended Background with Embossing on Vellum

Morning!

It's Tuesday again and I have another of my experiments for you. Well this is a combo of technique experiments really.

Firstly I took a piece of heavy watercolour paper and blended 3 different blue/green distress inks and gave them a good wash of water to fade them out and blend them nicely. After drying I gave a little spritz with a Linday's Starburst Spray in Sea Mint Green and then dabbed it with some kitchen towel to lift the colour. This still leaves behind the shimmer and gives a lovely effect that I couldn't quite manage to show up on camera.

After drying it off again I ran it through my machine inside an old embossing folder that I've had for ages and never really used, but I thought it worked rather nicely for this.

I stamped a sentiment with Versamark ink on a piece of vellum using the Mama Elephant - Jingle Greetings Clear stamp Set, and then embossed with white embossing powder.

I adhered the strip to the embossed panel just on the edges and then covered the edges with a frame cut using the Whimsy Stamps Shaker Builder Die

Finally I mounted it with some foam tape on a little turquoise cardstock then stuck the whole thing to a white card base and added a few clear sequins to embellish.

I really enjoyed making the whole thing and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.  One more Christmas card ticked off of the list!

See you soon!

Tiddly Inks - Molly Shares

Happy Sunday! I hope you're all enjoying a good weekend.

I've been quite industrious and even got a couple of cards made, go me!

We have a new challenge over at The Ribbon Girl today and as usual for the 2nd challenge of the month it's an 

Anything Goes with an Image 

challenge.

I thought I'd have a break from Christmas cards for a bit before I'm sick of the sight of them, although I do have a couple left to share.

This is one of Tiddly Inks 'Mollys', I really do love this range of images from TI.

I coloured her with my distress ink markers, I'm actually going to have to replace a couple of markers soon, because they're running short of ink, but as I've had most of them for around 2 years or more now, I don't think that's too bad! This is in my favoured shabby chic style, with plently of softness from cheesecloth and gesso.

Anyway this little cutie is called Molly Shares. I tried a bit of a different hair colour this time, and used Ground Espresso. I've listed the colours used below.

Distress Colours:
Vintage Photo, Ground Espresso, Shaded Lilac, Pine Needles, Bundled Sage, Dusty Concord.

I've just realised that I forgot to add the shading to the rose on her headband when I did the ones in the pot!

I used the following items from The Ribbon Girl. I actually mostly used 12 x 12 papers, but the 6 x 6 versions would work equally well.

Maja Design Vintage Spring Basics

Cheesecloth

Rose Leaves

Small White Lily

Hip Rose Bud Cream

Wavecrest Vintage seam Binding

Clementine Lace

10 mm Ivory Pearl Flower Trim

11 mm Ivory FB Pearls

8 mm Ivory FB Pearls

6 mm Ivory FB Pearls

I do hope you can join in with our challenge, you have the chance to win one of the following lovely prizes:

First prize:  £10 voucher for Lili of the Valley

Second prize:  £10 voucher for The Ribbon Girl

Third Prize from Marianne Designs

and don't forget to check out all the rest of the gorgeous makes from the rest of my fab teamates over on the blog!

Bye for now,

Whimsy Stamps Nov Release - Owl Post

Hello!

I'm back again with a little card using one of the new stamps from the November release at Whimsy Stamps.

This cute little fellow is called Owl Post, from the Lee Holland Collection.

I watercoloured the image with my distress ink markers, (I am sorry but I didn't write down the colours for this), to match some of the fab Christmas Cheer papers, and fussy cut it to sit on top of my card design.
The sentiment is from the Joyous Holiday stamp set and I finished off with a few red dots from the Christmas Cheer enamel dot set.

You can buy all of the stamps paper and dots from Dies to  Die for in the UK.

That's all from me, I'm going to have a cuppa and a dry out, I'm just in from work and it's wet out there!

Whimsy Stamps November Release - Princess

Hello! It's time for the November release from Whimsy Stamps and I couldn't wait to share this little cutie with you. She's called Princess and drawn by the super talented Sylvia Zet for our Wee Stamps collection and she's totally adorable!

I made one of my shabby chic style cards with her and I used some older papers in my stash from Pion, called My Precious Daughter.

I coloured her with my distress ink markers using Vintage Photo, Antique Linen and Walnut Stain, Spun Sugar, Victorian Velvet, Wilted Violet, Gathered Twigs, Pumice Stone, Shabby Shutters and Frayed Burlap

I used the following embellishments
Cheesecloth
Josephine Ivory Fine Lace
Innocence Rounded Corner Chipboard
Ivory White Magnolia Flower
Rose Leaves
20 mm Pale Pink Open Rose
White Sweetheart Blossom
Cosmos Daisy Medium Pink
9 mm Pale Pink/White Spot Organza Ribbon
Ivory Pearl Hearts
Princess and Rocking Horse Charms

If you're in the UK or Europe you can buy all your Whimsy Stamps from Dies to Die for

That's all from me for today, but don't forget to join in with all the fun, games and prizes going on over in our Facebook group where you can find lots of other makes with the new release from my talented team mates.

By for now!

Technique Tuesdays - Pink Poinsettias

Hello!

Are you intrigued by the title of this post? Well during my 'quiet' time following my Dad passing away, when I wasn't crafting or posting much, I got very interested at looking at various different techniques on Pinterest and YouTube.

I also have to give a bit of a heads up and thanks to Alanna, my fellow Design Team member from Whimsy Stamps, as she kind of kick started me into looking into these with her fab class at the Whimsy Stamps Craft Retreat.

So I thought I would invite you to join me on my crafty Journey and try out a new technique or a different way of using a technique/s each Tuesday. 

Now I don't promise that I'll never miss a Tuesday, because as we all know, life sometimes gets in the way of crafting and blogging, but I will certainly try my best.

Also in the main, these techniques are going to be new to me, so don't expect a perfect finish, but I thought you might enjoy seeing me try some new things.

So the first technique I'm going to be showcasing today is watercolouring with white embossed outlines. This gives a lovely effect as there are no harsh black lines and you can do this with your regular character stamps, but as I'm stepping firmly outside of my comfort zone with these I thought I would use a stamp set to make a background around a stamped and embossed sentiment.

So first I took a piece of watercolour paper and stamped the Peace & Joy sentiment from Whimsy's Joyous Holiday clear set with Versamark Ink and then used some gold embossing power and heated that with my heat gun.

Once I had my central focal point I took the poinsettia and holly leaf stamps from the same set and stamped those fairly randomly around my sentiment, again using Versamark ink, but this time using white embossing powder.

For best results just stamp a couple at a time and emboss before moving on to the next, or you may find you get in a bit of a mess.

Once everything was embossed I took some Picked Raspberry and Lucky Clover distress ink, and painted all the flowers and leaves, adding a little Festive Berries distress ink to the centre of the flowers and to the holly berries. I was very rough an dready with my colouring, I didn't get too fancy or fussy about it i just wanted to add some quick colour.

Once everything was dry I cut my panel down to    and mounted on some bright pink card stock cut a quarter of an inch bigger and then mounted the whole thing on a 4.25 x 5.5 inch card base.

To finish off I added some Wink of Stella to the petals and a few enamel dots.

Materials Used

Water colour paper
Distress Inks in Lucky Clover, Picked Raspberry and Festive Berries.
Plain white card stock.
Bright pink card stock.
Whimsy Stamps Clear Joyous Holiday Set
Versamark Ink
Gold Embossing Powder
White Embossing Powder
Whimsy Summer Breeze Enamel Dots
Wink of Stella Brush Pen in Clear

I entered this card in the In the Pink Challenge #107 Winter

There you have it! Do let me know what you think, I'm quite pleased with the way this turned out and will certainly try this technique again.

Happy crafting!

Whimsy Stamps Digi Release

The long-anticipated Day is here!! Welcome to Whimsy Stamps Digital Shop Grand Re-Opening!

Whimsy has a selection of images, sentiments and papers that are now available to purchase, download and use immediately!

This is my creation using

Jingle Bell Ride

I've coloured it with my usual Distress Ink markers and added glamour dust for sparkle, which is not showing the sparkle real well in this photo but I was out of time so I'll try and get a better photo later.

I used the following products from The Ribbon Girl
15 mm Mint Green Satin Ribbon
20 mm Sylvia Pale Aqua Lace
32 mm Pale Aqua Silk Ribbon
20 mm Pale Pink Open Rose

Digital images are great because you can flip images, use the computer to “mask” and combine images and backgrounds, and re-size everything to suit your personal projects before you print them off. Please read the Terms Of Use with each product purchased for all the details.

Digital images are so easy to use. And they can be printed again and again, as many times as you like for your own personal crafting needs! What a bonus, especially when it comes to patterned paper - no more need to hoard a paper stash - once you have purchased and downloaded Whimsy’s Digital paper packs, you can print off your favourite sheets as many times as you like! What’s more, you can customize the size of the sheet you are printing (there’s less wasted paper that way). How about that, crafters! Surely it doesn’t get much better than that!

Look at what’s being released at Whimsy today! 

Whimsy will be releasing new digital products on the first of every month, so mark your calendars and be sure to join the release party on FB where we will have games and award prizes to randomly drawn players. In fact, get on over to FaceBook where the party has already started. If you play the games, you could win something Whimsy-cal. The more you play, the greater your chances. (Exciting, right!?) But don’t leave just yet!

You have just got to see what the rest of the Whimsy Digi Designer Divas, and our Very Special Guest Zoe from Make It Crafty have created with the digi’s. We are showing off our gorgeous cards for you over two days, November 1st and 2nd. Go visit each blog to see what magic each Diva has cooked up. Your eyes will bug out of your head and your jaw will hit the floor. You’ve been fairly warned. Jus sayin! The rest of Day Two's designers are listed below with links to their blogs.

Iris Weichman
Maria Sabina
Jeanette Comerford
Tracy Wray

Thank you for stopping by! Don’t forget to join the Release Party on Facebook to get in on your chance to win Whimsy-cal prizes!! Bye for now!