My Favourite Cards of 2016

Hello everyone!

Before I continue with my post today I would just like to say a huge thank you to all of my followers and visitors who have joined or stayed with me on my crafting journey this year. I do really appreciate so much all of your visits here or on my Facebook page, all of your likes and comments etc. You are the reason I carry on and that I'm here, without you there would be no point in me sharing my creations, so thank you each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart.

As you know this year had had it's ups and downs, one of the biggest ups being my trip to teach at Whimsy's first ever Annual Craft Retreat in Orlando, followed almost immediately by my biggest ever down of my Dad passing away. So my crafting and blogging has been a little erratic sometimes this year and I apologise for that.  I am hoping that 2017 will be a better year for me. 

I'm trying to organise my home and my time a little better to make things a little easier for me and I've discovered the joy of trying different techniques, so I hope to continue to share that with you in 2017. Also I'd like to restart my 'A Year in Crafting' series, (although I will probably rename it something different), as I started that late this year and then never got to finish it due to everything that happened at the end of the year.

I'd like to do more YouTube videos for you all as well, but as I don't have a craft room or anywhere to set up a permanent filming set up, I don't know how often I will manage those, but I would like to continue my watercolour tutorials, and share some technique tutorials with you, not to mention I have a couple of mini albums made that I still haven't shared. One of them is actually filmed, but finding the time to edit and upload just seemed impossible so I will have to get around to that in the new year.

So anyway, enough waffle and onto the post. Picking my favourite cards from all of them that I made in 2016 was not an easy task, my work seems to fall into 3 categories for cards, my usual softly shabby, fully loaded style with a hand coloured image, shabby chic/vintage with no coloured image and CAS (recently often using some kind of technique). So I tried to choose a variety from these 3 where possible.

I hope you like my picks even if you don't agree with which ones are your favourites.

It just remains for me to wish you a very happy New Year, whether that's already arrived or has a few hours to go. I hope it's a good one for you!

Deep Ocean Challenge - Fave Project of 2016

Hello!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas break, I'm back to work now for 3 days before having another little break for the New Year.

So today I'm here with the final challenge for 2016 from Deep Ocean and this is an easy one because you do not have to make a new project. However if you are like me, it may take you a REALLY long time to choose one thing from everything you made in 2016.

I think it would be impossible to pick one single favourite for me, but as we can only pick one I've settled on this make with Sweetie from Whimsy Stamps Wee Stamps Collection.

This is one of my favourite stamps and I really like the card I made with her, I must get around to using her again soon.

I do hope you will join in with us for our last challenge of the year, and don't forget to ogle the rest of the teams' fantastic makes while you're there.

Seasons Greetings

Happy Christmas Eve!

I had a play with my watercolours for this card, using Worn Lipstick, Ripe Pumpkin, Fossilized Amber and  Crushed Olive laid on in loose stripes of colour and then blended with lots of water.

Once dry  I broke out my embossing folder again, to make the panel for this card but before gluing it on I gave it a liberal spray of a gold glimmer mist for a lovely sheen and sparkle (this shows up much better in real life and looks gorgeous).

I heat embossed a greeting in white on a strip of vellum and wrapped that around my panel before adhering the panel to my card base.

Then I popped on the 2 little snowmen from the Mama Elephant Polar Pals set. These were coloured with distress ink markers in Tumbled Glass, Ripe Pumpkin, and Worn Lipstick and then given a good coat of Wink of Stella to make them sparkle.

I finished off with a few enamel dots from Whimsy Stamps Summer Breeze set to echo the colours I used.

That's all from me today, I have a ton of stuff to do to prepare for tomorrow and I'm nurswing another cold, grrr I thought I was safe having already had one, hopefully I'll fight it off before tomorrow.

I hope your Christmas preparations are going well and I will catch up with you all after the big day.

Have fun!