Silent Night Card

It has taken a while, but a couple of months ago I managed to find somebody willing to sell her  "Silent Night" set of stamps. It's been retired for some years now.
So I had a little play with it last week.
My first card was stamped on white card using Early Espresso ink then coloured with Copic Markers.
I added glitter  to the roof, trees and snow drifts using a quickie glue pen and  ultra fine white glitter.

Ultra Quick Tags For All Those Christmas Presents.

 As promised here is my tutorial  on  making these ultra quick tags.

To make the Tags I cut strips of heavy white card stock into 2" wide strips. Then cut them  in  to 3 3/4 "  lengths.

 I used a label top punch from S.U to punch the tag tops.

Once all my tags were cut I was ready to decorate them. I had planned on sponging them, but realized I only had about half an hour before hubby got home from  and sponging would be too slow. So some experimentation was called for.

I took a baby wipe, really nice wet one
( If yours are not that wet, spritz them with a little water one or two squirts should be enough.)
I used Stampin' Up s dye based inks, but any  water/dye based ink will do.

I started at the top of the tag and gently stroked down the tag stopping  about 3/4" from the bottom.
 Try not to use more than 3 or 4 strokes  as you will run the risk of furring up your card stock.  If you're not getting good coverage spritz your wet wipe with a little  more water. But don't soak the tag.
Do the same to all your tags.  By the time you have done the last the first will be dry enough to work on the bottom.


Turn the tag sideways and stroke across the bottom of the tag with your second colour.
No more than 4 stroke . It doesn't matter if the effect is streaky as this only adds to the depth and gives the appearance of snow drifts.


Tip, if your card is too porous it will soak up the ink too quickly and give a patchy result. Use a heavy card that the ink takes longer to dry on.

Ink up your tree stamp with dark brown ink and stamp the images where you want them.

I used the trees from the Happy Scenes stamp set from last years S.U  winter catalogue. I have to say I cut this stamp down as I didn't like the extended lines below the trees .

Once I had stamped the images I took a Quicky glue pen the fine line one and drew thin lines of glue and spots of glue wherever I wanted to highlight the snow.

I can tell you, It has taken me considerably longer to type up this tutorial that it took me to make 24 tags.

I hope you will have a go at this technique.

I did get asked if using a baby wipe on your stamp pads ruined the pads. I can honestly say I don't really know.  But I seriously doubt it.  As  I only dabbed my baby wipe on one small corner of the ink pad, My ink pads are refillable so I really don't think think is going to cause a problem. If you are at all worried about ruining your pad. dab the ink pad onto an acrylic block and take the ink from the block. If you use S.U ink pads you should know that,  if you squeeze the lid down while  pad is closed some of the ink will transfer into the lid, so you could use the inside of the lid as your palette.

Jingle Bells.

I have say this is my favourite card tonight.

I used two sets of stamps from this year's Autumn Winter  Catalogue fro S.U.

The  bells are from the "Christmas Magic" set and I hav coloured them with Copic Markers.

The sentiment /ornate border  are from the Father Christmas  set.

The Pine Needles are from a die set by Marianne Designs.

Dove of Peace Card

A very  quick and simple Christmas  card using the Dove of Peace stamp from last year's Autumn Winter catalogue.
The Peace on Earth stamp is  from another retired S.U stamp set. (Sorry the name escapes me right now.)
I stamped the dove and sentiment using Versamark ink and  applied gold embossing powder and heated it until the powder melted. Unfortunately the gold  doesn't photograph very well.
This is a simple but elegant card that can be made in  about 3 minutes.  So it's ideal if you need to make a lot of cards quickly.

Snowman Family card.

 I paid another visit to my old stamp drawers and discovered this snowman stamp. What better time of year to discover it and to play with it.
Again I have used the Cable knit embossing folder for the background.

More Merry Mice

Have I mentioned how much I love the Merry Mice stamp set and the cable knit embossing folder  from Stampin' Up. These are the red version. lol

(The stamp set and embossing folder are available from the 2016 autumn / winter catalogue).

Stampin Up Marker and Ink Refill Storage

 My latest project is a box for storing S.U, markers and refills.


 It consists of two boxes made of chipboard, one sits on top of the other. I added two struts to each end to create a cantilever action. So the top box lifts and swings over while remaining attached to the base box.

I designed the base box big enough to store all four colour families of the S.U re inkers.  (either in or out of their boxes).  There is a little extra space for extra  In Colour re inkers.


The top box will hold about 60 markers.
There is also a small removable compartment that will hold more refill bottles if needed.


After making all the boxes,  I used papers from Tim Holtz French Revolution  stack to cover most of the boxes and some pretty sheets of card left over from another project to give it a more feminine feel.

Inner boxes completed  it was time to make the outer cover.

Drawer  handles from  our local DIY store.
Clasps from a french company on  Ebay.






The cover  is  basically two,  three sided boxes, deep enough to encompass the two storage boxes completely when attached to a base. The outer sections will then fold up and the six clasps will hold everything together.

The two storage boxes  are then glued to the centre section  of the cover... see pic  on left.

Hubby cut another piece of  thin steel and drilled holes for the handles as he did for my ink refill box. ( see post below)

I made some liners to reinforce the edges of the cover and to hide the backs of the brads attaching the clasps and handle reinforcement and screws.

I covered the liners for the edging  in leather effect wallpaper. 

 I also used the leather effect wallpaper to make corner reinforcing pieces for the outside.

 I cut 2 panels and covered the liners with vintage card stock and glued them to the inside of the cover for extra strength and to tidy up the inside after gluing in the side liners .

Tips

Use something strong and tear resistant like Tyvek sheets  to join all the sections together, especially  the joins  that act as  hinges.

Tyvek and chip board are not the cheapest of materials so careful measuring and cutting are essential.

 Longer leg brads are essential for attaching the clasps as the chipboard is quite thick.

Copic Refills Storage.

 I found I was in need of storage for my Copic marker re inkers.

Unable to find something I liked that was suitable I decided to make my own box.

This box is made from chipboard and covered in paper from Tim Holtz " French Revolution" paper stack.

 I love these little clasps,  hubby bought for me for a project I am working on for his mum.  There were a couple left over so I used on on this little box.

They came all the way from France. I love them so much hubby has ordered some more for me.

We purchased a pack of drawer handles from our local  Homebase store. Of course the screws were far to long,  so  hubby cut them down to fit.

To reinforce the card for the handle Hubby cut a piece of thin steel a little larger than the handle and drilled two holes through the steel for the handle screws to go through.
Unfortunately I had already lined the inside of the box before we decided to  add the steel.
I could cover it with another piece of card and decorative  paper to hide it, but to be honest, I am not to worried about this.

The  leather look corner reinforcing pieces are actually leather effect wallpaper.
 I can tell you this stuff really does look and feel like leather, it's pretty tough too.




I cut some dividers to help keep the bottles in position.

I used a scraps of floral wallpaper  to line the inside of the box.

The box is approximately 6 inches square, each section holds 10 refills. the whole box holds 40.

This weekend .....I ordered more refills and hubby had ordered some for me for Christmas.......so,  "I'm gonna need a bigger box". So my next project is designing a much bigger box that will take longer to fill. lol.

Father Christmas Card

Having had a bit of a stressful day, I retreated to the craft room when I got home from work. I needed to de-stress, ... big time and the way I do that is to shut myself away for an hour or so and make something to take my mind off the issues of the day. Today's make  was made using the new "Father Christmas" stamp set from S.U. This is a gorgeous set, if a little difficult to colour , but worth the effort.
stamp in chocolate chip ink and coloured with Copic markers and finished off with a touch a glitter.
I mounted the image onto a rich,  chocolate brown, shimmery card stock.  Then  mounted again on to Cherry Cobbler card stock, which I had embossed using the new cable knit embossing folder.  You may have guessed from the amount of time I have used this folder this week ...that I love this folder.

More Merry Mice.

 

I am  a little bit hooked on these "Merry Mice" stamps From S.U .

I have spent the last couple of evenings sat in front of the TV colouring in the stamped images. 

Today I have been turning the coloured images into cards.

This card is far from the traditional colours of Christmas and I am a little unsure of what I think of it.

I stamped the borders, which are in the" Father Christmas" stamp set from S.U in chocolate chip ink then stamped the mice and greeting and  coloured the images with Copic markers. 

The dark layers are a beautiful shimmery chocolate brown card stock.  

Unfortunately they look black in this photo. 

I finished this card with just a touch of glitter here and there. I love glitter but, to my mind too much glitter cheapens the overall look of the card. So I keep glitter to the minimum.

 Time to rescue the dinner!!

Mandy's 50th Card.

One for Mandy.

This one was made for my sister who will be celebrating her 50th Birthday this week.

She has the card already so it's ok to post this early.

I used two retired Stampin' up sets on this card ...Cheers to you, and the medallion background stamp.

I like the look of gatefold cards when closed, but I don't like the way they look when on display.

So I made this card to look like a  closed gatefold card,  although it's not.

I used clear embossing powder and heat embossed the Medallion image on Real Red card stock.

Christmas Card.

I did say I had gone mad with this new embossing folder, didn't I.

Well he re is another card using that folder.
This time as a background for this cute stamped image.

I can't remember the name of the company that makes this stamp.

This card is going to a male member of my family so I chose bottle green for the background.
The little boy reminds me of him when he was younger.

Santa Card.

This Santa stamp I have owned for about 20 years,  He was one of the first stamps I ever bought. He has lived in a drawer for most of that time, hardly used.
This was because I found him difficult to colour .
Twenty years ago the choice of colouring materials were limited. Colouring pencils, kids felt tip pens or water colours,  the  few markers that were  available were very expensive and didn't offer the results you get from markers today.
My choice of colouring  material in those days were water colours, but I still found, I wasn't getting the results I wanted. So Santa  and the  few stamps I owned at that time were put in a drawer and there they stayed for many years and I never stamped a thing for all those years.... It wasn't until I joined Stampin' Up that I began to stamp again.
This year I decided to revisit that old stamp drawer and try out one or two of those  old stamps and, I am glad I did.
Using Copic markers I finally got the result I wanted 20 years ago.

Merry Mice Christmas Cards.

I have finally got round to using the cable knit embossing folder I bought sometime ago.

I really love the look this embossing folder gives, so I have gone a little mad today, using it as the background for the Merry Mice images.

This stamp set is available from S.U. it features in the new 2016  autumn-winter catalogue .

 I forgot to ground the mouse on the first card and on the second I was a little too heavy handed with the ink.

I used Copic markers to colour the images.

I added a little glitter to some of today's makes, on the others I used Wink of Stella to add a little shimmer, but neither show up in the photographs.

Emelia's Card

A box card to congratulate a couple on the birth of their new daughter.

Lots of Blushing Bride balloons in this one. I also included a few white balloons with the relevant facts on.                                                                                                                                              The lace die is a signature die from Joanna Sheene.                                                                                                                                      I used the balloon punch from Stampin' Up.    I like this punch as it punches two different size balloons at once.                                                                                                                                             I think the alphabet die I used is an X cut  die.                                    

Acrylic Block Stamping.

I have been neglecting my blog of late due to other commitments so I have some catching up to do now.

This little card was made by applying three different colour inks to an acrylic block, then lightly spritzing the inked block with water and  stamping the block onto water colour paper.

Once the ink was dry I over stamped the little tree over the inked patch.

I have to say getting the amount of water right so a little tricky for me. " squirts wasn't quite enough, but three was too much.   
As with most things, it takes a little practice, and thankfully water colour paper is pretty thick, so if you don't like the look you can flip the paper  it over and use the emergency side.

Wine Bottle Covers

So paper crafting isn't just about making cards or scrap booking. There are lots of other things to made from paper and card.
Checkout these wine bottle sleeves. 

I have been meaning to make  a couple of these  wine bottle sleeves for sometime now. 
Today I finally got round to it.

I have no idea who the original creator of these is, but I do know that Linda Parker has made a great video tutorial, which you can find on Youtube  or on her blog.

 Linda makes the most amazing things and her  video tutorials are easy to follow, so if you fancy having a go at these check out Linda's   videos on Youtube.

I made three of these this afternoon, a practice one, then the pink full size wine bottle cover  followed by the Bermuda Bay mini wine bottle cover. Which proves they don't take an awful lot of time to make.

Linda has two videos  on these, one for the full size bottle and the other for the mini bottle,  she provides all the measurements  you need to make the covers  in her videos.
Thanks Linda for your fabulous tutorials.

 Full size bottle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1fIEOiO9jE

Mini Bottle
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5C0kiBaKEA

Wedding Shutter Card.

I have to say this rather elaborate card and it's gift bag took up all my free time for over  a week.

Making all the panels for this card seem to take an age,

An old school friend asked me to make this card for an up and coming family wedding, 

The brief for the card was:  one red rose, shamrock , 4 bees and  cupcakes.

(For a closer look at this photo click on the photo.)

Lots of layering, heat embossing, hot foiling, punching and die cutting in this card.

The 3D elements on this card, meant it required something deeper and more robust than a standard envelope.

So I created this wedding handbag from pearly card for the card to be delivered in. 

I confess,, it took about 3 attempts for me to get this just right.

The closure on this bag is a very strong, rare earth magnets  concealed in the liner of the bag.

1st Birthday Card.

This  little step card was created  for a first birthday.

Using the" I love lace " background stamp from SU I heat embossed the card stock in white for the lacy background.

The bear stamp is from the "Me to You" range of stamps.  

The Text on this card is all hot foiled in pink.

Angel Fish Card

Loving this new stamp set from Stamping up. It's called Seaside Shore,   I used  Copic markers to colour the images and added a touch of Wink of Stella to add some shimmer. 
To get the red  Angel fish to swim the oppose it way, I stamped it upside down ...it does mean the eye of the fish is in the wrong place, but I don't really think it matters too much on this fun card.

Simple Sponged Card

Here's a simple card that was created by tearing an aperture in a piece of scrap paper to create a mask. 
Secure the  mask on to a piece of water colour paper. 
Apply inks over the entire area the area starting on the scrap paper and working towards the centre.
Once the entire area is covered with ink, remove the mask and over stamp with black ink and a stamps of your choice.
I saw this  card somewhere on the internet and rather liked it so thought I would have a go at reproducing it. 

Loving this years autumn - winter catalogue

Just loving  the goodies in this years Autumn -Winter Catalogue. click on the image of the catalogue on the right to view the goodies with in.

Love the Merry Mice stamp set, the Pine cone charms, the  Father Christmas and  the Christmas Magic stamp sets and several items.

30th Wedding Anniversary Card.

 I wanted to make something special for a lovely couple I know, that were very quietly celebrating their 30th anniversary.
But I have been struggling the last few days to come up with an idea for an anniversary card with the wow factor, that didn't require hours of work and  was not too fussy.

My lack of inspiration resulted in me chopping up card and trying different things for a few days  but I  still came up with nothing usable, until last night when I suddenly gained some inspiration.


The inspiration came from the Apple blossom, ornate heart  die I bought at the beginning of the summer and had yet to use.

This is the first card I have made in years that has absolutely nothing from Stampin' Up in it. 

Making this card reminded me of the type of cards I was making in my pre Stampin' up days.  So it was  a bit like stepping back in time while making this one.                                                                          

This card is one of the largest cards I have ever made, measuring in at around   7  3/4  x 9  1/2 inches.                                                                                                            

I  typed up the personalized sentiment for the centre of the heart and printed it off, using a (black only)  laser printer.

  

A laminator and some toner foil were used to turn the black text into gold.                         A simple,  but effective technique.  

The flowers were purchased from my local craft store.

I used a Heartfelt creations die to cut the backing  leaves .

There are an awful lot of pearls on this card that are not immediately obvious.

Thankfully the tiny pearls I used were on a sticky sheet that I cut into strips. This certainly made applying all these pearls much easier and quicker than applying them one at a time.