Emery board holder.

Lockdown as given me some time to spend in m  craft room to have a clear out and do some 

reorganizing. I found a handmade nail file  holder  given to me by my crazy friend Sharon.   She  embossed the card and smudged coloured chalks over the embossed area.

Seeing this inspired me to make new ones. They are quick and simple to do and require very little material , time. and tools.

Here is how I made mine.  A piece of white cardstock 7 1/2 inches x 4 1/4   . ( The length will vary depending on the length of your emery boards.) . Score length ways at    1  1/2   and 3 inches. turn card round and score  at 1/2 an inch   on the bottom edge.  

Cut away the side  pieces leaving the a small flap on the middle panel.

  I sponged  some ink randomly over the card before embossing it.  It looks pretty awful at this stage.

Some of that is down to the fact the ink hadn't had time to dry out before I took the photo, partly because the lighting was a little harsh in my craft room and partly because it is pretty awful. 

Once it started to dry out and had been embossed using a Crafters companion embossing folder it started to look a bit better.

I used a 1" punch to punch out a semi circle notch to make removing the emery board is easier.

 Time to glue the side panel to the bottom flap to seal the bottom. Then glue  the back panel down.

Using this  Pebeo  gilding wax and  a my middle finger and a very light touch, I  stroked on the gilding wax.

 The gold wax just finishes this off nicely. Enhancing the beautiful and  intricate patterns on the embossing folders. I found it's best to use a very busy heavily patterned embossing folder when using gilding wax.  It's easier to keep the wax on the raised embossed parts when the pattern is even.

 I got  a little carried away  making these and trying out different colour combo's .
 Another Less opulent way of decorating  these is to stamp and colour images of  your choice before you  score the card and assemble it. But I must say the treatment of inking and embossing the card makes it feel a lot thicker and more robust than just stamping and colouring.

I used pretty card panels on the one below.

Serene snowflake table setting

 This year Christmas dinner was eaten in our son's garage. Yeah, I know it's sounds like a strange thing to do it was  an unconventional thing  for us to do too. But actually it made perfect sense.
In general houses in the uk are small, too small  to have the whole family round for dinner at one time.
My son suggested having dinner in his garage. 










He would build a table big enough for 11 people and carpet the floor,  put in a ceiling and lighting in the apex roof.
 I have to say he did a really good job and when it was all finished it actually felt quite cosy in there.

I would make the oversized table cloth the placemats,  napkin rings and place cards and a tree skirt to hide the stack of wheels in the corner which had the Christmas tree stuck in the middle.

The table cloth was made from a white sheet which I stamped using black and grey stazon ink pads and the serene snowflake stamp set from SU.
The placemats were A3 black card stamped using the serene snowflake stamp set  and heat embossed with silver embossing powder. The napkin rings where made from a strip of black card and a strip of mirri card, which I had embossed with an embossing folder.  The tree skirt matched the table cloth.
The name cards I have already done a post on so I won't go into those again.
With all that done all that was left to do was cook my third of the meal on Christmas day but that's another story......
Everything turned out ok in the end and I think everyone forgot we were in a garage.

Teneale's card.

 

Today I have three cards which I have to say I CASED the first is one  I  am showing you  was I found on the VERY, VERY talented Teneale Williams website. I am a great fan of Teneale s work, she manages to come up with some fantastic and romantic designs and shares them with likes of us plebs, ( sorry  folks I mean, the NOT so talented). Not only are her designs beautiful, they are extremely well  made. To put it  in the words of my husband " the build quality is excellent". he hee. I adore her work as you can probably tell.
The card above is as close as I could get to her design. She used a scalloped edged  heart and a ribbon banner  greeting. Not having these things I had to adapt.  I copied Teneales card after I had made the card below.  An  interesting experiment try is what I did here. I had seen  Teneale's card fallen in love with it, studied it and then went to bed. The next day I tried to make the same card without referring to the original. The card below is the result. As you can see I missed a lot of the detail in the original card. But I still like this. Then I went back and copied the original as best I could.  I recommend that you try this, You'll end up with a card that is your own rather than a copy of somebody elses.

The background was created by inking up the inside of the  SU embossing folders with crumb cake ink place your card in the folder and emboss. The ink transfers to the card while you embossing. It's a great effect and very easy.

My Eureka Moment.

I mentioned yesterday I had discovered something about the SU embossing folders I hadn't realized before.

Perhaps this is because I haven't really used my embossing folders much or perhaps I am just slow on the up take.  If you're like me and haven't  realized then read on.

If you look at the photos of the SU folder and the other brand you'll notice the SU folder has a slightly  narrower bottom plate.

I now know why this is. I only discovered this recently when I wanted to emboss all my Christmas tags. I am,  as I said, quite lazy when I have to do lots of the same thing.

So to save time I decided to try and emboss four tags at the same time using one of the SU folders . 
I wrapped my tags around the sides of the bottom plate and run all four tags through the big shot in one go.

It worked well I had four beautifully embossed tags.
Then I did the same with  another brand of embossing folder.
It was then I discovered why the bottom plate is narrower.
The narrower  plate allows you to emboss right up to the fold of your tags.

Most of the other brands don't allow you to emboss up to the edge in this way.

My final photo shows this. I guess you could add a ribbon along this  flat edge if you wished, but personally, I think I prefer my tags embossed right up to the fold. I have since noticed  that the Tim Holtz embossing folders have the narrower bottom plate too.  

Christmas Tags.

I completed a project for  school last night and there were some scraps of gold card left, so this afternoon I thought I would get started on Making my Christmas  tags instead of leaving it to the last minute.
While making these little tags I discovered something I hadn't noticed or hadn't realized about  about Stampin' up's embossing folders and how they differ from  cuttlebug folders and the other brands.
 I am basically a lazy crafter and this  mini revelation has had me on cloud nine today, I could get all my Christmas tags embossed four times quicker than I thought.
I need to take some photos before I tell you anymore, that way you'll be able to see the difference for yourself.


Back to my Christmas tags ,  I made 24 of these today, Alan says they look posh and I am inclined to agree with him.  I love the  effect of the shiny gold on the matt gold.
I used gold card 12" X 4"  Scored down the whole length of the strip  folded it in half  and cut the folded strip into mini cards about 2  1/2 "  - 3" long .


 I then embossed the front half of each card using  a Stampin' up embossing folder.
I stamped a load of Merry Christmas greetings on Very Vanilla card stock and  punched them out using the word window punch.
 I  punched out some labels in gold,  deep red and black and some stars in gold and black added the greeting to either the label or the star and stuck in position on the front of the tag.
These are very simple and very cheap to make and I think quite stylish.
What I really like is the fact they are so easy and cheap it means  I won't be heartbroken when the person receiving the gift throws the packaging and tag away.

Embossed frame card

This was a quick little card to make Just punching an oval of the paisley petals designer paper and sticking it in the centre of the embossed card.
The embossing was done with  a new mini embossing folder from S.U. there are two different folders in the pack.
The finished card is only 3" X 3" I have made more of this style of  card and i will be posting them a little later. I don't have the time right now, I am just about to go out to dinner. We haven't been out anywhere for so long  I have forgotten how to walk in heels. So I am now off to practise walking  in my heels before we  go out.

Sharon's owl punch card

Here is a  lovely swap, again made by Sharon. I love the colours she has used and this owl is so cute.
Sharon has used the new polka dot embossing folder to emboss the very vanilla background and the scalloped circle big shot die to cut the pink card.
The owl is made using the new owl punch and a the scalloped circle punch for the wings.