Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas everyone - hope you are enjoying the festive season with you and yours.

Those of you who follow my blog know that I have to move my crafting indoors in the winter because my shed is too chilly. Well my house clearly isn't much better in this very cold weather because this was the scene that greeted me in my temporary craft room this morning!

I am pleased to say it melted very quickly, but it was really pretty while it lasted!!

I cannot take much credit for the card design above. It is almost an exact copy of a card I saw demo'ed at the Excel Centre show way back in February. If I remember correctly it was on the J & C Crafts stand. Thanks for the inspiration anyway which made me buy this set of two wood mounted stamps - an extravagance I rarely get drawn into these days! Not sure of the brand as I have put my Christmas stamps back in my freezing shed! (EDIT The main tree is a Penny Black stamp - Before the Snow and the other is the Creative Expressions Dotty Tree stamp). The tree and snow effect tree work perfectly together. The card was shaded in ink with a mixture of Distress Ink - Tumbled Glass - one of my current favourite colours and Adirondack dye inks in Pool, Stream and a tiny touch of Denim around a moon mask. The trees were inked in Lagoon Versafine and embossed in a Kaleidoscope EP. Branches of the tree stamp were used to frame the design. The sentiment is from the Waltzing Mouse Vintage Christmas set. The snow tree stamp was then added slightly offset over the previously stamped trees and embossed in white EP. Finally I added some little dots of stickles and added some extra Glamour Dust glitter.

Enjoy the rest of your holiday and keep cosy!!

Elaine x

Special Christmas Cards

I needed to make some special cards for friends and fellow crafters. Here are a couple I was quite pleased with. It hasn't been easy to take good pictures in these dull weather we have been having.

First of all the card I made for my crafty friend Jo.

This card uses the beautiful Websters Pages papers and I must acknowledge the inspiration I got from Paula Whittaker's Cardcraft Creations blog (see the link to the right) to use the papers in this way. I cut out the corner designs from the Snowflakes and Feathers paper, using a scalpel - I am a nervous user of craft knives, but I did OK! I backed these corners onto the lovely warm peachy snowflake design on the reverse of the paper. I added embellishments of some distressed sheet music, a little wooden fretwork Christmas tree decoration, some articificial ivy and holly and some Prima hydrangeas with pearl centres.I finally added a stamped sentiment from a Waltzing Mouse Stamps Christmas set on another piece of the Websters sheet, cut out with a nestie.  

The next card was made for a swap between Graphicus Guild members, where those who want to take part are randomly allocated a person to swap with. This is the card I made to send.

I used a fabulous Bo Bunny snowflake paper, that was sent to me instead of another BB paper I had ordered - I couldn't complain, this paper is luscious!

I used a butterfly stamp from the new gorgeous Elusive Images Patchwork Butterfly plate, embossed in Moonglow Teal Obsidian powder onto parchment. I then added some fine transparent glitter and some little silver gems. After cutting out the butterfly I made some wire antennae, tipped with pearl beads. 

I matted the whole design onto dark blue and then silver mirri board. The sentiment is from another company whose name I have forgotten! Before stamping the sentiment, I stamped a very pale blue background with an Eluisive Image snowflake stamp, although that doesn't really show in the picture. This was cut out with a nestie, a few tiny transparent stars added and then matted onto another nestie shape cut out of teal stardust card.

I finally added some chipboard snowflakes decorated with glass glitter and teal organza ribbon. As the card was so heavy I decided to decorate a little easel to match.

I loved making these cards knowing they were going to other creative people who would appreciate the effort that had gone into them!