A NBUS card for Rudolph Day.

Right, first, for those who are wondering, a NBUS card is one made with what Darnell calls "Never Before Used Schtuff". Every now and then she offers us the challenge to use something we have bought and never used, and let´s face it, we all have some of that! You can read all about it here.

So for my entry I have used a set of 3 dies called Royal Circles, by Spellbinders. I really liked these when I bought them back last Autumn, but ever since they arrived, they have sat on my table waiting for me to be inspired.

As today is the 25th of March it is also Rudolph Day so it seemed a good idea to combine these two challenges, and here is what I made.

It took a while for me to decide the best way to combine the dies in this set, but eventually I cut the largest from a small off-cut of red card, and removed its centre with a plain circle die. Then I cut the inner one and again removed its centre. For the smallest die I used a snippet of white card and stamped a Spanish greeting in its centre. The backing paper was printed from an Elusive Images (now Chocolate Baroque) CD. For the embellishments I tied a bow with a new reel of green ribbon which was an absolute bargain from the todo shop this week, and cut some ivy and holly leaves with Joanna Sheen Signature dies, from tiny oddments of green card.

I then decided to make a second card with this die set, but I used a completely different colour combo. This time I used the same backing paper printed in blue, and I cut the first and second size dies together from a piece of white card rescued from a card I received last Christmas. I again removed its centre and then cut a plain circle from some silver holographic paper just big enough to go behind the inner cut out circle. It looked a bit unfinished so I carefully hand-cut the inner circle of dots that were on the ´waste´from the original cut, and glued it in place. Finally I cut the smallest die in white, and added a single robin die cut from a LOTV printed image.

I decorated this one with a white bow, and two double-layer snow flakes cut with a pair of dies from "All Occasions dies", (also NBUS items) each with a gem in the centre. A small silver sentiment in the lower corner finished it off.

At the end of her post this week, Di suggested we might make our next Snippets card to fit in with Darnell´s NBUS Challenge and the Rudolf Day Challenge at Scrappy Mo´s blog, so I am linking up with both of those as well as Pixie´s Snippets Playground, and Christmas Stamping All Year Long where the Challenge is Dies to Die 4.

Twit-Twoo

This is just a quickie before I go over to my other blog for my usual Friday post, to show a couple more things that I made to sell at my coffee morning.

Firstly here are a few coasters/candle plates. When I went on an outing to Lorca recently, we stopped at the shopping mall before the journey home, and in a little kitchen shop I spotted some mirror tiles. It was during Sale week and they were nearly giving them away, so I bought one set each of the round and the square ones. I could see them being used as coasters but they needed something to raise them up a little so I bought small self-adhesive pads at the todo shop to make them some feet. Then I  decorated them with designs cut from vinyl. Each one is only 10cm across, so it was a good way to use up some of my small pieces of vinyl, and I found enough bits to do each round one in a different colour. Just to make it more interesting, I also used a different design for each one, all taken from the files I have stored in my Silhouette cameo library. For the square ones I bought a set of three frame files from my vinyl designer, and cut two of each in the same colour.

I nearly didn´t show these as it is nigh on impossible to get a good photo, but this was one just about acceptable.

The other thing I made this week was this gorgeous basket. I love owls, and as soon as I saw this pattern on the internet I knew I had to make one. I got the pattern from a site called Crochet Ever After, and you can find it here. It was quite quick to make but a bit hard on my hands as it is crocheted with three strands of chunky wool. That makes him sturdy enough to be self-supporting and I think he is lovely. I am thinking of having another go in a different colour combination.

So I will pop over to Pixie´s Snippets Playground with my coasters, and then fly over to my other blog to do some positive thinking. Do come and join me in an hour or so.

It´s a Stand Off!!

Just a quick post today as I am getting ready for my coffee morning tomorrow. I thought I would just share another of my Easter ´makes´, this time some little ducks and chickens that each hold a Cream Egg.

They look like they are having a bit of a stand-off, ducks v chickens!

The ducks are knitted and the chickens are crocheted, both using some of the many free patterns available on the net. (Search for cream egg cosies). I adapted them for the yarn I had available. The ducks were quicker and less of a fiddle to make and I think I prefer them. For speed I used my hot glue gun to add felt eyes, beaks etc, so I need to go through them and trim off any stray glue strands. I am hopeless at using a glue gun cleanly.

Getting Ready for Easter

With Easter coming up very soon, and the fact that I have committed to having a table at two events - a coffee morning next week followed by the village Gallarte Exhibition over the Easter weekend - I have been on the look out for some quick and easy items to make.

I was browsing the design store for my Silhouette Cameo last week when I saw the cutting files for some cute little boxes, both by Lori Whitlock. I thought they might be just the thing to hold some little chocolate treats so I bought the files and had a go at making them. And I was really pleased with how they turned out.

It took a sheet and a half of A4 card to make each one, but as I have enough card to last my lifetime, I was happy to put some to good use. My snippets boxes furnished me with pieces for the ears, beaks, bows and flowers etc, and I cut up a tatty doily for the lace along the front, and shredded some ancient green tissue paper to line the boxes. 

At our local Lidl store I bought a bag of hollow eggs and some little chocolate bunnies and chicks to go in them. On average they cost me 50c to make, so I should be able to get some profit from them at my sales. There is no guarantee as the tabletop sale will be attended by my retired English friends who do not have many children to buy for out here, and I am still struggling to find what items will sell to my Spanish community at the village expo. But they were fun to make, and will brighten up my table. Plus I have an in-house chocolate eater who will be quite happy if I bring them home again!!

As I used several snippets of card for the finishing touches I will pop over to Pixie´s Snippets Playground with these.

H is for hexagons

H is for Hexagons is the theme over on Mrs A´s Butterfly Challenge blog this week, that´s hexagons and a butterfly of course. I was prompted to enter this challenge when I bought a new digi scrapbook kit  from Kimeric Kreations at Digichick called It´s a Guy Thing . When I buy a kit I like to download it straight away and unzip all the files, so I can look closely at all the items, and arrange them in folders as I like them, ready for when I want to use it. With this kit there was a folder called Graffiti and one of the elements in it was a patch of hexagons. So starting with that, and using other items from the elements folder and the matching alphabet, I built up a design in Photoshop, and then flattened all the layers and saved it as a jpg file. I rather liked the flower made from half of a zip fastener.

Next I used publisher to resize my image to fit twice onto an A4 sheet of paper, and printed it out.

I cut one of the prints to fit onto an A5 card, and the other to fit a 15cm square card. I made the base cards from some more sheets of the mottled turquoise card that I used in an earlier post.

I also had a new butterfly die that I wanted to try out. It is from Wild Rose studio, and I bought a large lacy butterfly from there a while ago that I am really pleased with, so when I saw they had a smaller one too, I decided to order it, and it arrived last week. So using a snippet of card from my box that matched the base card, I cut out the butterfly, and also drew around the outer edge of the die and cut this out. I covered it with wide, double sided sticky tape, and glued the two butterflies together, trimming the back layer to the same size as the fancy one. Then I rubbed a mixture of blue, green and aqua glitters over the lacey spaces to make a sparkly butterfly, which I added to my square card.

Occasionally at my Wednesday craft group, someone donates left over materials and bits and pieces, and recently I was given several packets of part-used embellishments. One of these had three layered flowers in it that exactly matched my colour scheme, so I used these to finish off the larger card, along with a shiny butterfly sticker from my stash.

So now I have two cards which I feel could equally be given to a woman or a man, and what´s more, I´ve actually used one of my digikits!  I am addicted to buying these kits. I just love the pretty papers and all the matching embellishments, but I am not so good about finding time to make the scrapbook pages with them. Perhaps, now I have done some cards, I might move on to a Lay Out.

In the meantime, I´ll link up with Mrs A´s Butterfly Challenge, and Pixie´s Snippets Playground.