December 31, 2014

Let It Snow Card

Wishing you all the best this New Year, and may 2015 be full of laughter and joy.

For this card I used a new tool, a Crayola marker airbrush.  It's a bit less spotty than the hand pump ones you can buy and a LOT less expensive than an actual airbrush system.  This was my first experiment with it, making snow drifts.  I then stamped some snowflakes and the sentiment.

For the snowman I die cut three circles, punched two branch arms (and trimmed them down), then added a paper nose and rhinestone eyes and tiny nail art jewels for the mouth.  I used pop dots to affix the snowman to the card and glue tape to put the white glossy card on the blue cardstock base.


December 25, 2014

Festive Christmas Bear Card

Wishing you all a Very Merry Christmas.

This is an easel card I made, using a circular die for the base.  For the front panel, I used the same outer die, but added an enhancing die to make it fancier.  I used a branch punch to make the Christmas tree, then decorated it with punched ornaments and a star.  I used nail art tape for the tinsel.

The bear was stamped on white cardstock and coloured with copic & spectrum noir markers.  I used stamps to decorate the base and a flower bead and two cut leaves to hold the card open.


December 24, 2014

Jingle Bells Card

I started this card by printing out some Christmas sheet music on resume paper.  I die cut a sleigh out of shimmery brown cardstock, some poinsettias out of red cardstock and greenery out of dark green cardstock.  The poinsettias have 3 dots of gold embossing liquid in the center.  I layered everything on a cream cardstock base.  I probably should have had another layer, possibly behind the sheet music, but ah well.


December 23, 2014

The First Noel Card

I started with a small sheet music piece printed on cream resume paper.  I took two silhouette cut candles and lightly inked the edges, then used a black marker to add in the wick and a orange marker on the yellow flame to show more fire.  I glued the flames and melting wax on and then glued the candles together.  I glued foliage around the base of the two candles before attaching them to the cream cardstock base. 


December 22, 2014

Mittens Card

Here's another simple card to make.  I cut the mittens out of dark red cardstock on my Silhouette (it's a pattern I bought from their store), glued a piece of cord to them, then glued them on the white card base.  I hand wrote the sentiment with a glitter gel pen.


December 19, 2014

Button Bauble Card

The idea for this card came from this one from Beccy's Place.

I used some red nail polish to cover three brownish buttons and set them aside to dry while I stamped the circle pattern and my sentiment.  I used a ruler and marker to draw the strings, but should have drawn the bows at this time too (I did them after gluing the buttons down, which is why they're a bit wonky).  When the buttons were dry I used a hot glue gun to glue them down along with a gold button and a pearlescent button.  Pretty easy!


December 18, 2014

Easy Paper Christmas Tree Ornament

This was a pretty easy ornament to make.  I started by using the EK lily pad 2-in-1 edge punch and punching 8 cardstock panels, four in red and four in a shimmery white.  I attached the ends using two snowflake brads, closing the brads on the inside of the ornament.  On the top I wrapped a pipe cleaner under the brad to hang it with, and on the bottom I made a quick tassel by wrapping and hot glue gunning down a piece of ribbon around some ribbon strips.  I then used red glitter glue and pearl embossing liquid to add dots in the centers of the middle flowers on the panels.


December 17, 2014

Christmas Ornament Card

This was a quick card I whipped up.  Just some simple stamping and a marker ribbon and bow.


December 16, 2014

Quick Bauble Card

This was a very quick card to make.  I ran cardstock through my bigshot with a bauble embossing folder, then die cut 3 foil baubles and embossed those too.  To finish off (since it looked too plain) I added some black marker to the string and green glitter glue to the flourish.


December 12, 2014

Stocking Stuffer Treat Bags

Last year I saw some great stocking stuffer ideas and whipped up a few really quickly.  This year I wandered around Bulk Barn with a few ideas and looking out for new ones.  Here's what I came up with:


Returning from last year are the reindeer noses, front left.  Last year I used hard chocolates but I didn't like them that much, so this year I carefully picked through the peanut m&ms at the store (hence the benefits of buying bulk) to find all the brown ones.  The bag looked a bit empty with only 9 candies (8 brown and 1 red) so I added a few more brown ones.  I made a little reindeer to top that bag.

Next to the noses are dirty snowballs.  I used yogurt covered raisins.  I did this one mainly because I like yogurt covered raisins. :D  The tag sports a small pile of snowballs.

The back row starts with yule logs, chocolate covered biscuits.  For the tag I took a piece of brown paper, added some wood grain lines and then 2 leaves and 3 glitter glue berries.

Santa's beard is my favourite.  I was looking for something clever and stumbled on a clear plastic container with a big outline of Santa's face.  Inside, white cotton candy.  Yup, thin strands of spun sugar.  I filled those bags to the brim and still had some left over. :)  These tags took the longest.  I used a punch for Santa's face, hat topper, and beard (a cloud), and hand cut the hats.

Finally, I found these cute white chocolate mints that look like hershey's kisses with their bottoms dipped in coloured sparkles.  Elf hats.  I hand cut the hats for the tag and added a flower sequin for the pompom.

I can't wait to see how these are received.

December 11, 2014

Forest Scene Card

I don't normally keep aside Christmas cards for myself, but this year I've made an exception.  Today's card was a strange lesson in how doing everything wrong can sometimes be right.

Let's start with the stencil.  I made it out of green acetate on my Silhouette SD.  I'd intended the silhouette to allow me to make white birch trees on a dark background.  So, first mistake: I made a stencil of the birch trees rather than a stencil of the spaces between the trees.

I managed to mostly get the delicate stencil off the sticky backing it's cut on.  I believe there was only one minor tear.

Despite getting the stencil wrong I still wanted to try it out, so I went on to step two, spraying the stencil with a repositional adhesive, so I could lay it on my paper and not worry about it moving around while I inked around it.  I was a little too impatient with this step and didn't let it sit long enough to become tacky rather than sticky and just slapped it down onto the die cut oval of glossy paper I was using (taped to my scrap paper on my craft mat so it wouldn't move either).

I started the stencilling by running a black marker over the indents in the trunks, so it would have the birch bark look.  I then took black, blue and metallic blue gelatos and preceded to smear them into the spaces between the trees, forming a night scene.  It took a fair amount of time to get this dark enough and blended enough, but I was happy with how it looked.

Then I pulled up the stencil.  Because it was more gluey than tacky it stuck to the scrap paper, ripping  the paper and the stencil.  The panel didn't tear, but the glue came off the stencil, making the front of the panel sticky.  I also noticed that the black marker ran, making the indent bits less defined than I'd intended.

Here's a photo of the stencil after removing it from the panel.


I decided the panel was probably a waste, but thought it might be worth trying the old eraser trick on it.  I was hoping the eraser would pick up the glue, allowing me to still use the panel.  Well, the eraser had two effects, the first was to smear the gelatos onto the white trees, the second was to form a grey mess with the glue.  Now, had I continued erasing I would have gotten rid of the glue in time, but the trees would have been ruined due to the smearing colour.  But I realized that the darkness where the eraser hit the glue - and the texture that formed from it - looked surprisingly like actual tree bark.

So I stopped erasing and flicked some white paint pen flecks at the panel.  I also ran a marker around the edge, so it would have a black frame.


To finish the card I used some silhouette cut holly flourishes, deer and poinsettia (the larger poinsettia was done with a die and accented with a marker).  I also took some white plastic wire and glued beads to the ends to add to the flourish.  Finally I added some gold embossing liquid to the centers of the flowers and stamped the greeting.


December 5, 2014

Santa's Down the Chimney Card

A few days ago I mentioned how I'd bought light modelling paste.  Well, I also used my silhouette SD to cut a few stencils.  I did a sunburst, a brick pattern, a forest silhouette and a diagonal striped page.  I decided to use coloured acetate for the stencils, as they'd be easier to see than clear ones.

I wasn't sure how well acetate would work for stencils, being thinner than the stencils you buy at the store, nor did I know how well modelling paste would work.  So I mixed some red dye into the paste and tested out the brick stencil.

I'd meant to leave a border around all of the stencils so I'd be able to tape them down, but forgot to factor that in when I made the brick pattern, so I ended up with a stencil just barely larger than my paper.

I was able to secure it, then used a plastic palette knife ti smear the paste onto the stencil.  I mixed the paste and colour on a Spellbinders die package.  The lip around the packaging helped keep the paste from making a mess and it was easy to clean up.  You can see the panel in the photo below, with the stencils.


I let the panel dry over night, then cut a rectangle out of it for my card.  I'd tried to be smooth with the paste, but found the rougher areas have nicer texture and a more realistic old brick look.  The paste once dry is a little spongy but very flexible and light.

I cut a chimney top out of white cardstock, some red legs, cloud punched white boot toppers and black boots.  I assembled the vanishing Santa, then stamped my sentiment in black ink and added a piece of glitter ribbon as a roof before attaching the chimney to the white cardstock base.








December 2, 2014

Noel Snowflake Card

This was a quick and fairly simple card to make.  I started out by embossing the snowflake swirl embossing pattern onto white cardstock.  I die cut two snowflakes, one from vellum and one from white paper.  I glued them on the card and added a pearl to the center.  Finally, I stamped Noel in black ink.

I'm submitting this card to Simon Says Stamp's anything goes challenge.