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Hello everyone.  I have been quite productive recently, but unfortunately I have very few things that I can share.  This is for various reasons - I have been making commissioned cards and cards for family which I can't post yet in case they are seen by the recipients, and design team projects that are not yet due to go live.

The photo on the left shows some Christmas tags that I've made.  My original plan was to make all of my tags this year, but I left it a bit too late and these are the only ones I managed to make!  I always find that I am really busy this time of year.  I ended up having to buy some tags yesterday.

Anyway, I will be back again before Christmas as I have couple more things in the pipeline which I will be able to share soon.

I'm off to do some wrapping now.

Sian. xx

Make My Monday: CAS Christmas

Hello everyone!  This week's challenge at Make My Monday is CAS (clean and simple) Christmas.  I have to say, it panicked me slightly when I realised I would have to do a CAS card.  I don't do CAS!

Anyway, I hope you like my card.  I started by stamping the snowflakes in Versamark ink.  This was easier said than done  for a couple reasons.  Firstly, Versamark ink is not very easy to see and we do not have good light at this time  of  year.  Secondly, the only snowflake background stamp I have is quite small, and it's also a wooden stamp, so I could not see where I was stamping.  I got around this by drawing a pencil line and stamping three times, lining my stamp up each time with the pencil line.  I had to guess where the side of the stamp was, but fortunately I managed to get this right. 

Next I embossed the snowflakes using a clear sparkle embossing powder (sadly the sparkle doesn't really show up in the picture).  Then I painted over the snowflakes using Twinkling H2Os in shades of blue and purple.  This is a beautiful, shimmery watercolour paint.  Again, the shimmer doesn't show up too well in the picture.  As you can see, the embossed snowflakes created a really good resist effect, and I just rubbed over them with a tissue once the paint was dry to bring out the shine. 

I then attached a die cut snowflake, which I glittered with Stickles glitter glue, stamped the sentiment underneath the painted panel in black archival ink, and added some blue gems to the centres of the die cut snowflake and the larger background snowflakes.  Given that CAS is not my usual style, I'm quite pleased overall with how this has turned out.

I hope you can join us for this week's Make My Monday challenge!

Sian. xx

Cardz 4 Galz: Contemporary Christmas

The card I am sharing today is my DT card for this week's challenge at Cardz 4 Galz.  This week's theme is Contemporary Christmas.  Normally I make Christmas cards that are kind of contemporary but with a touch of traditional, but I wanted to make sure there was nothing traditional about this one.  I also wanted to make sure it was very feminine, since it is for Cardz 4 Galz, so I opted for soft pastel colours.

I started off with a white background which I embossed using a snowflake embossing folder and layered onto lilac card.  I then die cut the baubles from printed papers (these are Crafter's Companion papers that came with a recent edition of Crafts Beautiful magazine).  The die is by Spellbinders.

I layered the baubles onto turquoise card and attached ribbons to 'hang' them from.  I then attached the baubles to the background using foam pads and looped to ribbons over the top of the lilac card, fastening them on the back.  I stamped the 'Deck the Halls' sentiment using Brilliance ink, layered it onto lilac card and attached it at the corner, and finally I finished my card off with some turquoise chiffon ribbon and a handmade bow.

I look forward to seeing everyone's creations for this week's challenge!

Sian. xx

Christmas Snow

Today I am sharing a Christmas card that I made using this lovely Barkley stamp by Crafter's Companion.  I am not a dog person, but I love these stamps.  I coloured the image using Polychromos Pencils.

The background papers are from the Blissful Blizzard pad by Fancy Pants Designs.  I did something a bit different here by using circles for my background layering, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. 

I embellished my card with various different die cut snowflakes and glittered the snowflakes and parts of the stamped image using Stickles glitter glue.

I would like to enter this card in the following challenges:

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge
Crafty Catz
Crafting from the Heart
Craft Your Passion
Get Creative Challenges

Christmas Post

I know it's still only October, but since most of my cards take around 2 hours to make (especially where colouring is involved), it's important to start early if I want all of my cards to be handmade.

This card was made using a Barkley stamp by Crafter's Companion, which I stamped onto a die cut circle.  I coloured it with Polychromos pencils (I am liking the pencils a lot more than the markers at the moment).  I hand stitched around the edges of the circle and layered it onto different sized snowflakes so that they stick out around the edges (I did this by drawing around the circle initially and sticking the snowflakes so that they partially overlapped the edges of the circle.   I layered this onto red card and patterned papers and added snowflakes, sparkly gems and pearls at the corners to finish it off.

It doesn't show up well in the picture, but I glittered all of the snowflakes, the snow on top of the post box and the falling snow in the stamped image.  I used Stickles glitter glue for this.  I like it much better than loose glitter because it's a lot less messy.  Whenever I use loose glitter I end up finding bits of it everywhere for weeks, including in my hair and stuck to my arms, legs and face! 

A Quick Christmas Card

I have been very busy over the last few days, decorating and doing the wrong kind of painting.  I am feeling my age, as I am aching everywhere, and this did not happen when I did painting and decorating when I was younger!

As you can imagine, this has not left me much time for making things, but I did manage to make this Christmas card.  The image I've used here is a freebie that I downloaded some time ago.  I have it credited to Kasjan's Scrapblogg, but I have no idea whether or not it is still available.  I coloured it using Polychromos pencils.

The background papers I used on this card are from the Jingle All the Way pad by First Edition.  Hopefully I will have more time to create (and more things to share) soon.

Traditional Christmas

I have been creating Christmas cards again (well, it is only just over 2 months to go now).  This time I thought I would try something a bit different, using the stamp and poinsettia scoring boards that came with this month's Papercraft Inspirations magazine.  This is not my usual style at all, but I do enjoy going out of my confort zone from time to time.  I think it's turned out quite classy.

I stamped the sentiment onto a white die cut oval and coloured it with Polychromos pencils, then layered it onto a die cut scalloped oval.  I created the poinsettias using the scoring board, rubberd soem gold gilding wax over them and along the edges and layered them up.  I added some micro beads to the centres.  I then layered everything onto patterned paper, added a large gold bow and added somm glitter glue to the sentiment, finisihing it off with two little gold pearls at the corners.

Blue Christmas

Today I am sharing some more of my Christmas cards.  I have a tendency to use of a lot of traditional christmas colours on my cards (red, green, white), so I have been trying to get out of the rut a bit and use some different colours.  These are some cards I have made using a blue theme.  The top card was made using a digi stamp from Di's Digi Stamps, which I have coloured with Polychromos pencils (my favourite colouring medium at the moment).  I have also used patterned papers.  These are from the Frosty Christmas pad by Lili of the Valley.  I have also added die cut snowflakes.  As it is a Christmas card I have of course also added glitter (I use Stickles glitter glue because it is nice and easy)!

The second card was made using the free snow globe stamp that came with this month's Quick Cards Made Easy magazine.  I decided that I wanted to have a 'working' snow globe, so this is a shaker card.  The deer stamp was also part of the free set that came with the magazine and I coloured it with Polychromos pencils.  I layered the patterned paper onto blue card, then stamped the snow globe onto it.  Then I die cut a circle in the middle of the globe and stuck acetate behind it.  I stamped the background onto a spearate piece of card and coloured it then added double sided sticky foam around the window.  Finally I added some white glitter in the circle created by the foam tape and stuck the background onto it.  I have added some wooden snowflakes to embellish it.  Both the snowflakes and the papers are from Hobbycraft.

By the time Christmas comes around I may actually have managed to make enough cards this year to give everyone handmade ones, which will be nice.