Hi everybody, its been crazy busy around here (mainly for me) and I can't believe there is only just over a week till Christmas. I still haven't finished my shopping and I have to work every day this coming week, so thank goodness for late night shopping times!!
I realised the other day that I was short around 20 cards to go with all my baking gifts. Every year I bake around 20 dozen of my world famous 'Christmas Cowpat Cookies'. They are triple chocolate/macadamia and so good I only make them once a year on purpose!!
I wanted to take some to friends and gardening clients, so I needed a card I could repeat easily but still look pretty:
I knew my new Neat and Tangled 'Holiday Baking' stamp set would be perfect for these cards. Its such a sweet set and I love all the little images included. Can imagine I will be using this a lot for all sorts of cards during the year!!
I grabbed my MISTI and set up the stamps around the middle sentiment stamp. I removed the middle stamp and stamped all the cards using black ink. Once the ink was dry I went back and heat embossed the sentiment with Ranger 'Queens Gold' embossing powder. Over the last few days, whenever I had a few spare moments, I've been colouring them all with my pencils, not the whole image but just enough to make it colourful. I decided not to add any sequins and just keep them simple.
I'm going to link this to the Uniko Challenge # 44 where their theme is 'Christmas'.
I better get back to my cookies. I'm making my fourth batch this week and each batch makes 4 dozen so maybe one more batch to go. Dave and Phoebe went to Auckland on Thursday so its just me and Max at home. Its extremely quiet and Max is exhausted from his last week at school, so he's chilling and I'm baking, making cards and gardening in the sun, with the odd moment every now and then of double-bounching Max on the trampoline. Its a wonderful day!!
Hi there everyone!! I'm just popping in with a quick reminder about our current TIME OUT challenge:
We have this inspiration photo for you which should be a great help for ideas with those last-minute Christmas cards. You might do a green/red/white card or maybe something with woodgrain....its totally up to you!!
Our Sponsor for this challenge is Uniko and they will be giving a gift voucher to the challenge winner!!
My eyes were immediately drawn to the wood with white silhouettes, so I thought I could use that for the base of my card with red and green highlights:
Instead of doing a white image on wood I flipped that idea and used some woodgrain paper (from Echo Park 'Everyday Eclectic') with a wreath die from Couture Creations. This was simply glued to the card front.
I have so many friends to send cards to that are on the otherside of the world, so I think this stamp (from Mama Elephant 'Puffy Holiday Greetings') will be used alot!! I stamped it 3x using my MISTI to get good coverage, fussy cut it out and popped on foam tape. I then glued on some green and red sequins from Neat and Tangled for a bit more bling. Nice and simple!!
You have until Wednesday 20th December to link your projects to the TIME OUT challenge. And if your struggling with ideas, pop over to the blog to see what the rest of the Design Team and our fabulous Guest Designer Sarah of Funky Fossil Designs have created to inspire you. Look forward to seeing you in the Gallery!!
Hello there!! Can you believe there are only 11 days till Christmas?? Its just crazy, I haven't even had a chance yet to do my Christmas shopping so I'm starting to panic a little. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one!!
We are celebrating 'Hanukkah' on the CAS-ual Fridays Stamps Blog this week and each of the Girl Friday's will be showing you some inspiration for Hanukkah themed projects.
For my card I really wanted to include lots of celebratory colour and gold:
I started off by cutting a panel of watercolour CS the same size as my card front. Using the Star of David stamp set, I stamped and heat embossed the star images with Ranger 'Queens Gold' embossing powder, stamping them randomly across the panel. Once I was happy with the placement I used different Distress Ink colours and some mini-blending tool pads (I don't have any daubers....) scrunched up to colour only over each star.
Once I had finished colouring, the panel was adhered to the card front. I die-cut a circle (using the Ornament Tag Fri-Dies) from some watercolour CS and heat embossed the sentiment (from the same 'Star of David' stamp set) with the same embossing powder. To help the die-cut fit in with the coloured background, I used the mini-blending tool to put Distress Ink 'Picked Raspberry' around the edge. It was then put on some foam tape, and I also glued on some sequins from Neat and Tangled.
All of the 'Hanukkah' products are on sale this week and if you use my 'Girl Friday' code you can save yourself another 15%!!!
Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope I've given you some ideas for your Hanukkah projects. Don't forget to visit the CAS-ual Fridays Stamps Blog again this week to see even more Hanukkah ideas!
Hi everyone and Merry Christmas from New Zealand!! We are extremely lucky to be the very first country in the world to see in a new day, so that means we get to have Christmas first too!! So I can imagine in a few hours there will be wrapping paper everywhere and hopefully very happy children!!!
I'm up on the CAS-ual Fridays Stamps Blog today with a last minute Christmas card idea. It came to me while I was making another card and I had a whole lot of left-over die pieces, which I thought would make a great Christmas tree!!
This of course was super simple to make (which is good for a last-minute design...) and I thought the tree looked so pretty against the blue background!!
I started off by using my mini-blending tool and Distress Ink 'Mermaid Lagoon' to create the background colour. To add some sparkle and some interest I sprayed the card front with some Imagine Crafts 'Sheer Shimmer Sparkle Spritz', doing it close up to form lots of droplets. I let it sit for a few seconds and then dabbed the droplets with tissues.
After working out where the tree would sit, I glued on the snowflakes. They were die-cut using the Funky Flake Fri-Dies set. To finish off I stamped the sentiment from Snowy Sayings and added some blue and clear sequins from Neat and Tangled.
If your wanting to stock up on these products to use on next years Christmas cards, don't forget to use my special 'Girl Friday' code to save yourself 15%!!
Thanks so much for stopping by, as I'm sure if your on the otherside of the world your still rushing around getting everything ready for the big day. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and happy, healthy and crafty 2018!!!
Hi everybody and welcome to the last Little Tangles challenge for 2017 and we have a very handy theme for this time of year:
With lots of gifts to be wrapped and tagged this month, its a great way to use your Neat and Tangled products to decorate them. So show us your 'gift wrapping' ways!!
For my gifts I used some stamps to decorate boxes for cookies that I baked:
I purchased these kraft gift boxes from Rosies Studio a while ago. They are completely blank and I was going to use some patterned paper to dress them up a bit. However, I realised that I could do that with some stamps instead!!
I measured two sides of the boxes (front and back) and cut out cardstock pieces to fit. I arranged the present stamps on my MISTI and stamped away making two panels for each box (I actually have six boxes so the MISTI was brilliant for this!). I used present stamps from Fa La Llama, Merry Little Christmas and Santas Ride.
I wanted to keep the colours simple and love light blue/red and white for a combo. I coloured the box ribbons red with pencils and then stamped the stars from 'Fa La Llama' in light blue ink. These were adhered to the box sides with double-sided tape.
I don't own any Neat and Tangled tag dies, so I simply cut rectangles from white CS and snipped the corners off to shape them. I also used a hole punch at the top. I stamped the dog and snowman from Get Yeti and coloured them with pencils. I suddenly realised I had coloured the wrong piece of the snowman's hat red but oh well, that's the joy of handmade!! I stamped the stars again in the same blue ink and attached to the gift boxes with silver twine.
I'm so happy with how these turned out. It took longer than using patterned paper but looks better I think because the pattern is exactly what I like and its more personal. I'm sure my gardening clients will love them!!
You have until Thursday 28th December to link your projects to the Little Tangles challenge and don't forget to take a peek at the blog to see what the rest of the Design Team have created to inspire you. I can't wait to see your gift giving ideas, I need as many as I can get for this Christmas!!
Hi everybody and welcome to our last challenge at The Flower Challenge for 2017!!! And we have a doozy for you this month:
That's right, you can create anything you like with a floral design but it can't be a card!! This one stumped me for a bit but I suddenly realised it was a good chance to create some Christmas tags:
I wanted to have a design that wouldn't take too long to replicate but still looked pretty. So of course I turned to heat embossing!!
I die-cut tags from pink, blue, red and watercolour CS using a tag from CAS-ual Fridays Stamps 'Tag Buddies Fri-Dies'. I then stamped and heat embossed a poinsettia image from Rosies Studio 'Nature's Noel' using Ranger Embossing Powder in Queens Gold. I then used my Wink of Stella to add shimmer to the open petals for a bit of bling.
The sentiment was also heat embossed with the same Queens Gold powder, using a stamp from Neat and Tangled 'Santa's Ride'. Most of these were put on strips of white CS with one being on red because of the tag colour. I put these on foam tape, along with some co-ordinating sequins also from Neat and Tangled. Lastly I added some gold thread from Value Craft and they were done!!
You have until Monday 25th December (Christmas Day) to link your projects to The Flower Challenge and if your trying to find ideas, pop over to the blog to see what the rest of the Design Team have created for you. And we will be back for a quick reminder on the 15th of this month!
You don't have to create a Christmas project but if your still struggling with enough cards for everyone, this is the perfect opportunity to create some more!! And you also have the chance to win a $15 gift certificate to the Happy Little Stampers Shop so that's even better!!
I've been trying to make some quick and easy Christmas cards of late so haven't been watercolouring very much (I paint very slowly.....) so this was a great chance to concentrate on one design for a while and enjoy the process:
I found this cool wreath die for $10 (from Couture Creations) at The Warehouse and loved all the bauble details. I thought this would look fantastic in rainbow colours.
I die-cut the wreath from some water colour CS and then coloured each bauble using Kuretake Gansai Tambi Pearl Colors and Starry Colors, not being fussed about whether the colours mixed at the edges. After one layer I dried it off and painted another to make the shimmer and colour stand out, couldn't be more happier with the result!!
It was going to be hard to put this on foam tape so I die-cut the wreath three more times from black CS and glued them all together for dimension. I then glued it to the card front. I kept the sentiment simple, heat embossing this one from Neat and Tangled 'Santas Ride' in gold and putting it on foam tape. And of course I had to add some Neat and Tangled sequins for a bit more bling!!
You have the whole month of December to link your projects to the Happy Little Stampers - Watercolour Challenge and don't forget to pop over to the blog to see what the rest of the talented Design Team have created to inspire you.
This will also be my last post as part of the Watercolour DT, its been a wonderful year and I appreciate Kylie allowing me to be a part of her HLS family for the past two years. Thank you Kylie!!!!xxx
