Time to Celebrate.

No I don´t mean celebrate the New Year. We are celebrating because our new great grandson has finally arrived. Ten days after his due date, little Alfie John weighed in last night at a bonny 9lbs 7ozs. As you can see, his big brother Isaac is delighted with him.

So, of course I made a card for the family today. Knowing the baby was a boy meant that I could have made this in advance, but I can´t bring myself to do this until the baby has safely arrived! I had planned it in my head so it didn´t take too long to put together, and tomorrow it can start on its journey to UK.

I found a sheet of turquoise card to cut the base card from, and covered it with white paper that I embossed with a Beatrix Potter folder from Crafters Companion, and lightly dusted with tumbled glass Distress Ink.

The main image is a pre-coloured one which is unusual for me, but I loved this little face from a digi set I bought a couple of years ago, from Pink Gem studio. I printed it several times and added three layers to give it some shape. I then cut it out with a Nellie Snellen die, and used another die from the same set to cut the frame from a snippet of dark blue textured card.

There was just enough card left to cut the baby banner which was a cutting file I bought from the Silhouette store.

From the tiny corners of pale blue paper that the die had cut from the main image, I managed to just cut out the words Baby Boy, and the remaining one went behind the heart cut out on the body suit.

I wanted to add some sort of sentiment so I added a silver peel-off ´Congratulations´ to a sliver of the dark blue card, and roughly cut around it. It just fitted above the banner.

I used up several snippets for this card so I will take it over to Pixie´s Snippets Playgrouind.

No more Christmas

Yes, I have put Christmas crafting behind me now, at least until the first Rudolph Day!

I am still playing the waiting game for our new little Great-grandson who was due on 19th December, but at least mum got to enjoy watching her other little boy open his presents. (He is a bit disappointed because he had been promised that Father Christmas would be bring his new baby brother!!).

In the meantime I have a grandson who will turn 11 next week, so I needed to get his card made and posted before the New Year celebrations get underway.

I thought there was a good chance he would have snow on his birthday - he lives in the midlands - so I felt I could use some snowy images without it being too Christmassy. I chose a snowman and winter tree digi stamps from The Paper Shelter, and for the main image I used a free digi from Inger Harding.

Once I had printed the two lower images on it, the upper section of my white card was embossed with the Sheena Douglas Snowfall folder. The images were coloured with copic markers.

The main image was printed on another piece of white card, coloured in the same way and cut out with a spellbinders circle die. I printed it twice and decoupaged the arms and hands, though this doesn´t show on the photo. I found a piece of mottled turquoise card for the base layer, and rummaged through my snippets box for some matching pieces to cut the circle frame (Nellie Snellen die) the birthday sentiment (Joanna Sheen Signature die) and some snowflakes (Marrianne die).

I assembled the card and added some silver ice stickles to the sentiment and frame, and some Imaginations Diamond Sparkle Medium, to add dimension to the snow under the boy, the snowman and the tree, and for the fur on the boy´s hat. 

Now I shall get it written, ready to post in the morning, but first I shall link it to Pixie´s Snippets Playground. I hope she hasn´t shut the gates because of the snow!

If you pop over to Debby´s blog, A Scrap Journey,  you will see she is again running her challenge for you to show your five favourite Christmas cards, made by you during the past year.

So here are my five.

Starting with my Journey to Bethlehem card, which I was pleased with because it shows a part of the true Christmas story, and uses the Kings in a way that I haven´t used them before. It was a card that took a while to design, but I was then able to run off a set of 21, which really helped out my total needed. You can read more about it here.

My second card was made after I had watched a Sue Wilson video, and is a CASE of her card, an all white greetings card. I added colour and embellishments to use it for Christmas. See the details here.

Card number three uses a MoManning drawing. Her´s is one of my favourite sites for digistamps. A small run of these cards let me indulge my love of colouring, and despite using the same image, I still made a set of cards that were all different. See them all here.

My fourth card was a small victory for me because I put to good use some of the ´scraps´that I had rescued from my cards last Christmas. I always do this, but I rarely use them. Read more about my recycled images here.

And for my fifth and final card, I chose this one, because I really do like to see a Nativity scene on a Christmas card and this one covers it all. I used the same die to make a dozen cards, but like many of my friends who commented, I actually preferred the two where I cut the die into three elements and used them all on one card. See what I mean by clicking here.

Well that´s my choice of five, so now, why not follow me over to Debby´s blog and see what other folk have chosen, and maybe add your own favourites too.

More Silhouette fun

I am doing two posts in quick succession, because I am still having internet problems. I have no idea why it is happening, but from around 7.00 each night I can open and update e-mails, Facebook and twitter, but nothing else. At mid-night it suddenly all starts working again. Any ideas anyone???

So I wrote one post earlier this evening, and then had to wait until mid-night to link it up and publish it. Now I am doing a second quick post before I go to bed.

For my last few cards I  tried something a little more ambitious with my silhouette cameo, using files I bought as svg files a while ago, from svgHut. But first I made a more straightforward one that I just thought was quite fun, and suitable to send to a teenage grandson.

I used some snowy backing paper from my stash, matted onto holographic silver paper and mounted onto a white base card.

The snowmen were cut from white pearl paper, and the features from tiny snippets of vinyl. These funny snowmen looked really odd until I added the tiny white vinyl dots to their eyes. then they suddenly came to life. 

The sentiment was cut from the same white pearl paper, and the snowflakes from snippets of silver vinyl.

Then it was time to try my special cards. This the front of the first one, all cut from vinyl and transferred onto cream leather-look paper, and then to brown card.

The more observant of you will realise this is the same image I used on my lightbox in my previous post. I actually made this one first and used it as a trial run to see how my file would look before cutting the larger one for the frame. But for this card it is the inside that is more important, so here it is.

As you can see this was a very intricate cutting file and I was nearly tearing my hair out by the time I had managed to cut all the layers well enough to use. The top picture shows the completed scene, and the lower one was taken looking down on it more to show how it is fitted together. The four strips are cut from light grey and three different shades of brown pearl paper. I used this as I know it cuts better than more fibrous paper or card. I then cut the small items, kings, stable and palm trees, again in dark brown and glued them over the base layer to make them stand out more, and to strengthen them. I was pleased with this as a first attempt, although I made one major error. The layers are slotted into diagonal slits in a base sheet, and I needed to fix this firmly to the main card to keep them in place. Unfortunately I half closed the card to press the tape down and then found it was not quite into the centre of the card, so when I opened it out flat to make the scene pop-up, it split down part of the centre line. I decided it had been too much work to waste, so I split it the rest of the way down and used it anyway. I was making it for my sister Dorothy who once told me she always loved pop-up cards as a child. She is soon to hit eighty now, but hopefully she will still like them, and I know she will not mind my mistake!

I had another of these files and decided to have another go, so here is the front of my second card which I made with my favourite Santa cutting file. (The empty white space below the Happy Christmas actually has my two grandsons names on aka Big bear and Little bear. Visit my other blog if you want to know what I am talking about).

I made a better job of this one, and glued the inside onto a flat base, so no split this time. Otherwise the process was the same.

I loved the way this turned out, and I am sure the boys will too.

I used some tiny snippets to cut the second layer of the deer and the sleigh, so I am also linking this to Pixie´s Snippets Playground. It is not often I get to play there twice in one day.

Craft a scene are also asking for a winter scene, and although this usually includes some stamping I think this meets the criteria. so I am linking with them as well. 

Another craft fair

This weekend it was the Gallarte Exposition. For those who don´t follow my other blog, Gallarte is a small group of artists and crafters from my village, Los Gallardos, and the surrounding area. We have two expos a year, one at Easter and the other at Christmas time. I try to have a small table selling mainly mince-pies and jams and pickles at this time of year, with a few bits of craft as well. I sold quite a bit at my friend´s coffee morning for the church, back in November, so I needed to do a few more quick makes for this weekend.

I knew the visitors to the sale would mostly be the Spanish folk from the village, and they don´t do Christmas decorations like we do, but they do like candles. So when I was walking around the ´Todo´shop looking for items to decorate, I picked up a green candle plate, and also another small clear one. In Lidls recently I bought a set of star shaped candles with tiny glitter stars all over them, so for my plate I designed a layout using stars and some greetings in both Spanish and English. I cut them from some gold metallic vinyl, using my silhouette cameo, and arranged three of the candles on it.

There was a fourth very short candle that I put on the smaller plate, which I had already decorated in the same way as I did last time.

My other purchase from the todo shop was a lovely big glass jar with a screw top lid. I spent ages deciding how to decorate it, but in the end I settled on two ornate frames, one for each side, with an English greeting in one, and a Spanish greeting in the other. Then I collected up lots of small Christmas cutting files from my Silhouette library, and cut them is several colours of vinyl, which made good use of some my tiny snippets. I never throw any vinyl away; it is far too precious because I have to import it and it is heavy, so expensive to post; so I keep every tiny bit and use them for these little cuts.  To finish off my jar I cut a four layer poinsettia to cover the lid, and tied a big bow around it, using my hot gun to hold it in place. For the photos I put a roll of white copy paper inside the jar, but it has still picked up some odd reflections. But for the sale I filled it with the traditional marzipan sweets, and ground nut biscuits that are the traditional Christmas fare out here.

My other new make, was something I have wanted to try for a long time. When I was on holiday in UK, back in the spring, my sister took me to The Range, a shop I could spend hours browsing round! One thing I bought there was a shadow frame, the sort that have a deep back for arranging dried flowers etc in. I fitted a sheet of vellum with a very pale pattern on it, behind the glass, and arranged a string of ten LED lights in the recess behind this. (Battery operated, and a great find in Lidls a few weeks ago). Then I used vinyl to cut a nativity scene in black, two white angels, and a sentiment in red. The sentiment file was all joined into one piece, so I had to separate it and rearrange it to make two pieces - you know how I like everything to be balanced! Then I grouped it all together and resized it to fit on the front of the glass. I was pleased with this and I would have been happy to display it at home if it didn´t sell, but it did, and that is what I made it for. I now know that I can buy these frames at IKEA but that is nearly two hours drive from here, so I am not likely to get there again before Christmas. But maybe by next year, I will have made another one for me. I forgot to photograph this when it was finished so this one was cropped from my photo of my stall. Here is what my whole table looked like.

On the wall beside my table, I also displayed the photographs I prepared for the photo club exhibition last month, and I sold two of them! I didn´t expect that! It was a good sale for me. I took around 100€ which is double what I usually make. I keep my prices as low as I can, because I know there is very little money around, and the local folk are looking for inexpensive gifts for family and friends, so I aim to cover my costs, and just ´fund my hobby´, so I am well satisfied with this weekend.

All of these used up little pieces of vinyl, especially the sweet jar, so I shall link up with Pixie´s Snippets Playground.

Happy Birthday to an dear sister.

It is well past midnight now, but seeing as that is when my internet starts working normally, I am going to get one more post done before I go to bed. Just to make a change from all the Christmas stuff, I am showing a birthday card I made for my sister who was 84 this week (I think!). I was running out of time and nearly sent her a card from my stash, but I remembered that months ago I bought a digi stamp specially to use on a card for her, so I printed it off and got colouring. This is the card I made.

Many of you will recognise the image as it is the one on the ´front page´as it were, of Aurora Wings digi stamp site. My sister has always loved pansies, and for as far back as I can remember, if anyone mentions pansies in the family, they automatically think of our Brenda, so this was the perfect stamp for her.

I printed it out several times so I could layer the butterfly and the largest flowers. I coloured her with copic markers and cut her out using one of my more recent dies from the Heartfelt Vintage labels eight set. The base card is purple pearlescent and fortunately I had a snippet that matched it, big enough to cut the mat for the image, and the Happy Birthday (Britannia Die). The background is from a Papermania pad and it is really a very pretty mint green, though it looks more like grey in my photo. I used another oddment of green card to cut the butterfly border, (a memory box die I think), which was too long for the card, so from the piece left over, I cut some single butterflies to use as embellishments.

I seem to do everything in a rush these days, but for a rushed card I was quite pleased with the end result, and another rush to the post office during my choir practice coffee break, means it might just have reached her in time for her birthday tomorrow, (or today seeing as it is past midnight!).

Right, fingers crossed I´ll be able to link this up with Pixie´s Snippets Playground before I close, and if I can get any sense out of this computer in the coming days, I will try to visit one or two of my lovely blog-land friends.