Double tower card

 This is such an easy quick card to make. I found a video on Youtube video while looking for some new and exciting folds. I am afraid I didn't take a huge amount of notice of who the lady was that made the video. But I do remember her calling this a double tower card.  The reverse has a panel on to write your message on.

Here is an end  on view of the card so you can see that it stands.
Yes it does fold flat so it fits in a 7 x 5 envelope  nicely.

P.S. Forgive the white paint on my hands I've been a little busy the last few weeks painting the house. some of the paints require a lot scrubbing to remove them from the skin and nails.

Shamballa Bracelets.

Last weekend  I paid a visit to the Make it Show  in Farnborough where I came across a stand  selling beads to make these Shamballa bracelets. I kind of liked the idea of making some but didn't think I would be very good at it, so I decided NOT to buy any materials.
When I got home I dug out some string and a few wooden beads and practised making the knots........ All wrong of course.
 But after a few attempts I got it right . I even  impressed myself. 
Hubby was  impressed to when I presented him with a bracelet made of kitchen string. 
 He wasn't too keen on the colour of the string, so I soaked it in very strong tea to tone it down.
The next day my wonderful hubby ordered some leather cord,  polyester cord (in different thickeness's) and beads so I could have a go for real.
These are the bracelets I have made so far. I am still experimenting with different ways of finishing them off and trying to determine which fastenings  look the neatest,  is the securest and which are the easiest for me to work with.

Christmas Nativity Display

Sorry I have no cards to post at the moment.

But I thought I would share with you some of the things that keep me very busy each Christmas, so that you know why I don't have the time to make lots of handmade Christmas cards.

This year I have been very busy working on this Nativity scene. I am certainly not NO artist and painting doesn't come easy to me, but every year I try to create something new to go on a display board in school.

I use lots of different crafting techniques in my displays especially if it means it reduces the amount of painting I have to do.

On this scene I used the the weathered wood technique on the stable, so no painting at all involved there.
I used a Versamark pen and gold embossing powder to do the gold highlights in Joseph's outfit and the straw in the manger.
I stamped and heat embossed the bottom of Mary's dress in gold.

This Christmas tree was created by cutting out several large tree shapes folding them in half and sticking them together in a pile and opening them up when dry.
Then I painted all the sections dark green and stuck on my decorations.
This tree stands approximately 2 1/2 foot tall.

The fireplace was a considerable amount of work but I really enjoyed the self imposed challenge.
You will notice I used the Bliss stamp set here to create the wallpaper effect. I normally use real wallpaper with a small print, but I didn't have any so I improvised.
The brick work, I cut up a piece of fun foam to the size of the bricks I wanted and stuck it to some thick card and used it as a stamp but with paint rather than ink.
The stocking are felt trimmed with white fur and stuck on thick paper to make them a little stiffer.
Santa's glass is rolled up acetate and cellophane which is held together and decorated with silver peel offs.
The mince pies, I made from air dry clay.
I printed off some small pictures and cut out sections of wrapping paper to make the mini Christmas cards on the mantle. This Year I added Merry Christmas in as many different languages as I could find. for a closer look click on any of the photos then click on them again once you have the larger view.

Floral card using Build a Blossom.

Build a Blossom stamp set from SU's new mini catalogue was used here along with the matching punch.

Here we have embossed the white background paper with the perfect polka dots embossing folder, (another new product from the mini catalogue)

Build a blossom card

I was amazed at how many people said they wouldn't have put these colours together...... I guess they weren't around in the seventies or too young to remember that era...... I'm giving my age away here. LOL Well this is a card using the Build a blossom stamp set and matching punch. I hadn't considered buying this set. but I now have a better idea on how versatile this set can be with a little imagination.( which is something I sometime lack,... correction often lack). You will have to excuse my less than perfect positioning of my greeting, as all the cards made yesterday were made in an awful hurry.

Just playing with the I heart hearts stamp set from SU.
Nothing wildly exciting about this one.

Fun and fast notes

Here's a nice and easy one and very quick too.

Using the Fun and fast notes stamp set I stamped the star and coloured it in.

I used a corner rounding punch to round off the layers.

The brads are faux brads using the technique shown in a previous post.

I punched the bottom layer with stampin ups lace edge punch , tied some daffodil delight ribbon around it then mounted it on to the daffodil delight card stock.