Ring out the bells for Rudolph Day

For a couple of nights this week our internet has been playing up - hopefully just weather interference - so I took the opportunity to make a quick pair of cards for Rudolph Day.

As you can see, they are both the same except for the  glitter glue that I used to give them a little 'lift'. They were both clear, ice type of glues, Dovecraft 'Crystal' which has very fine green and blue glitter in it, and Stickles 'Icicle' which has a coarser gold glitter in it. On a snowy image the difference is almost unnoticeable, but on this dark background it really shows up.

I spotted the image in the Silhouette store and bought it as a cutting file. I love to hear the bells ring out on Christmas morning, but they are not often featured on Christmas cards these days. I cut the file twice in my Silhouette cameo, using dark blue card. (The frame is attached to the bells and cuts in one piece). 

The backing paper looked as though it was from a magazine but it was a good quality, slightly glossy paper so I am not sure. I found it in my Christmas paper box so it is probably quite old! There was sufficient to back both cuts. It was graduated shades of blue, so they look slightly different. Then I mounted them onto plain white base cards and used a very old Hot off the Press stamp for the sentiment.

I thought they looked a little flat, so I added the glitter glue. There is actually a touch of it on the stars in the background too, but that doesn't show in the photo. A bit of bling was what they needed and I am happy with the results. So I will link them over at Scraps of Life by Scrappy Mo, for the March Rudolph Day Challenge. You have from 25th to 31st to add your Christmas make, so I hope to see you over there.

Butterfly Challenge#50 Buttons and/or Bronze

Another last minute entry from me, but I wasn't able to do the last Butterfly Challenge so I was determined to get a card made for this one. And here it is.

It is not the best photo as I was having trouble with the reflections.

I cut a white base card to the European dimensions 11.5 x 17 cms. I like it because it gives me just a little more space to work in. It also meant that I could use my newest  Creative expressions die - Lattice window by Sue Wilson.

I looked up Bronze on the internet and Wikipedia said it is 'Metallic brown', and it just so happened I had a sheet of metallic brown textured card in my stash, at least fifteen years old, so it is time it was used. I cut my die from it twice, omitting the centre part, and glued them side by side on the base card. I then cut the centres from white card and added them on top.

The butterfly is a Wild Rose Studio die (Butterfly lace), cut from the same bronze card. For the back layer I cut around the outside of the die from white card and painted it with Imagination crafts Starlights paint - Mediterranean Sky - and added red perfect pearl drops to the circle holes. I cut a small banner from some more of the painted card and cut a sentiment with Signature dies in bronze.

To finish it off I raided my boxes and found a mixture of blue and red buttons and brads and glued them randomly on the lattices.

So now I am off to link this at Mrs A's Butterfly Challenge#50: Butterflies with Buttons and Bronze.

Sing us a Song, You're the Piano man

Our youngest son Ben plays the piano and sings, often his own songs, but also covers of other people, and one of his favourites is Billy Joel's "Sing us a Song, You're the Piano Man", so when I saw a lovely 3D piano inside an exploding box, featured in Pixie's Snippets Playground several week ago, I just knew I had to make it for Ben. The original, was made by Alice for her young niece, and you can see it here. This was my inspiration, but I think I managed to put my own stamp on it. I bought the template from Card Carousel. It arrived in PDF format so the first thing I did was to change it into a svg so I could cut it with my Silhouette cameo, giving a much more accurate cut-out to work with.

I assembled the piano and left it over-night to dry completely. Then I added embellishments and filled the empty top with small flowers, some of which I made, but most were purchased ones from my stash. They needed a lot of glue to stay in place, but once it was all dry, it felt quite robust.

Then I turned my attention to the box. It went together well, and I had already got it in my mind how it would be decorated. I cut and assembled it from sturdy blue card and then added a white panel to each inner side, which had been embossed with a music folder and lightly rubbed with Memento Paris Dusk ink.

I have a selection of musical sayings and images in my silhouette library, either saved when I have seen them somewhere on the net, or purchased from the silhouette store, and I used four of these as embellishments on the inside of the box. I cut them from navy vinyl and used transfer tape to place them on the embossed panels. These are the four designs I used. And below is the box when it is open.

For the outside of the box I used panels of printed backing paper and another musical image, the same one on all four sides.

The lid was made with the same paper and image but I used a larger image with a lighter shade of blue vinyl, and added a punched lace trim around the edge. (Marianne punch).

I was only able to make this for Ben because I knew I would be travelling to UK in January and could hand deliver it. I wrapped it in bubble wrap and placed it in a large ice-cream tub in my luggage, and miraculously it arrive undamaged.

It was his birthday on Monday of this week, and he kept it until then to unwrap, and I am happy to say he loved it. So much so that he posted a video on Facebook, of how it opens to reveal the piano, and it has received lots of nice comments, so it was worth all the work.

Sparkling Poinsettia Candles for Rudolph Day

Because I have done very little crafting lately, I seem to have a pile of new stash that hasn't yet seen light of day, so I have chosen a new stamp set for my cards - Sparkling Poinsettia Candles by Heartfelt Creations. And here is my first card.

I stamped the image twice onto white paper and coloured one with copic markers. I chose fairly traditional colours. 

Next I cut  a mount with the largest of the Spellbinders Elegant oval die set. I laid the die over my image and drew around it's centre opening, and cut it out, cutting around a few leaves and petals that extended beyond it. 

I made a mask for the candle and dusted a yellow glow around it.

Then I chose a backing paper from my snippets box - from a magazine giveaway I think, and assembled the card. 

I stamped a sentiment from the same set, with a versafine pad and heat embossed it with gold powder. Sadly it seems I have kept my gold powder for too long, and it is no longer very gold, so I must have a hunt, because I am sure I bought a new one recently.

Finally I added yellow glitter glue to the candle flame and the centres of the flowers, and a little clear frosting to the leaves.

I was pleased with the result and as I had another stamped image, I made a second card using less traditional colours. (I had stamped two images intending to decoupage the flowers, but as postage of dimensional cards is becoming a problem, I decided that one layer was enough). This time my backing paper did not have its own edge so I cut a holly border using a Signature die. The sentiment is a peel-off.

I really want to keep up with my Christmas card making this year as I failed miserably last year and had my usual last minute rush, so last night I made four more toppers, experimenting with different colour combinations. Some worked better than others, but the one I was least sure about (orange candle) ended up as the one I liked best!

I chose a backing card for each one and cut the matching mounts as above. Then I rummaged through my Christmas snippets box and found coordinating backing papers, so now they are ready to assemble and I just have to find/make some embellishments and I will have a set of six to add to my collection.

So now I will link these to the Rudolph Day Challenge at Scraps of Life by Scrappy Mo, and also at Pixie's Snippets Playground.

Happy Rudolph Day everyone.

Blue butterflies for the Butterfly Challenge.

I  feel that I am getting back into the swing of things after my holiday and visitor, and as I sat wondering what I could make last night, I suddenly realised that there are still two days left to enter Mrs A's Butterfly Challenge where the theme is 'S' for Stamping or Sapphire, or both, and of course, a butterfly or two, so here is what I made.

Menu:

Dark blue (Sapphire?) card from my stash for the base card and trellis which are cut with a Memory Box die.

Pale blue paper strips under trellis are snippets from an old magazine giveaway.

The centre panel is a piece from my huge collection of white snippets.

Butterflies are by Crafty Individuals. Each one is two stamps. The bottom layer - the fill in - was stamped with a Brilliance rainbow pad, and the top layer - the detail - was stamped using an Archival dark blue pad.

The butterflies were masked while I stamped the flowers in the background, using the same ink pad, and a new set of Altnew stamps called Persian motifs.

The sentiment is from another Altnew set.

So I will quickly link this up with Mrs A's Butterfly Challenge#48 and see who else has fluttered by,

and with  Pixie's Snippets Playground.

Now to make some Christmas cards for Rudolph Day on Thursday!

Fun in the Snow for Rudolph Day

I am writing this a little early as I will be away on 25th January, but I will schedule it and hopefully it will post on time.

For Rudolph day this month I am using a set of cards I made in December as back-ups, and then didn't need, so they are the start of my collection for 2016.

I used a pair of stamps, bought a while ago, but inked for the first time. They are Woodware clear stamps and I think they are rather fun.

I stamped each one several times and then rifled through my Christmas snippets for some strips of paper. 

For each strip I made a coordinating base card, DL size, and coloured one of the images to match the colours in the paper.

When the inks were dry I cut each image out with a straight side and one side cut with my new Joanna Sheen Signature die - Snowflake border.

I mounted them up and added a matching bow to the top corner.

I made half a dozen of these but  must have used one. Don't they look jolly all together? I still have a some of the stamped images ready to make a few more.

I shall be linking these to the Rudolph Day Challenge at Scraps of Life by Scrappy Mo, and also to Pixie's Snippets Playground. I might build a snowman but I hope there are no snowball fights going on in the playground when I visit.

Butterflies Challenge #45 + X is for Xanthine

Now Mrs A has informed us that Xanthine is the yellow colour matter found in certain plants such as Yellow madder, so for this challenge she is looking for some yellow butterflies and other splashes of yellow.

Yellow is not a colour I use very often in my craft, but diving in at the deep end, I found some yellow card and made a 15cm square base card. I wanted to lighten it a bit so that I could put yellow butterflies on it, so I found an off-cut of deep cream paper to make a mat and embossed it with a We R memory keepers, Next level embossing folder - Woven. These Next Level folders give a really deep multi-faceted texture to paper and card, and are fabulous for large mat layers on cards. (Sorry, I took the photo in artificial light and it is not very clear). I coloured the edge with Picked raspberry DI and glued it to the base card, having first rounded the corners on both the card and the mat with a corner punch.

I used a sheet of deep pink patterned paper to die cut the butterfly border. The die is bright pink so I think it is from Joy Craft. Next I used the same paper to cut a medallion using a sizzix die, ready for the sentiment.

This was another new technique that I have been wanting to try - foiling. There are some expensive machines on the market for this, which I can't justify buying right now, but I had a seen a video of it being done using a laser printer and a laminating machine, both of which I had access to. So I used a sentiment from my digistamps, and resized it to fit in a 4cm circle. I added a few more to the page for future use, and took it down to my husbands office to print on his laser printer. Then I placed hot pink foil on some of them, and dark gold on the others, folded a sheet of copier paper around it as a carrier sheet, and passed it through my laminator. When I peeled away the remains of the foil, and used a soft brush to tidy it up, I was left with some satisfactory gilded sentiments. They were not covered perfectly, but my laminator was very cheap and performs accordingly, and I think it was not really hot enough. But the pink ones (typically this was from a set of very cheap foils that I bought in a bargain bin), worked much better than the gold - a rather expensive foil sold for hot foiling! But it was a pink one I wanted for this card, so I cut it out with a plain circle die, coloured the edges to match the other elements and glued it to the centre of my medallion, and added it to the card front.

I then decorated the rest of the card with thick shiny yellow flower stickers and an assortment of yellow and pink butterfly stickers. The main yellow butterfly was a double layer card one that I found in my stash - origin unknown! It was rather pale so I dusted it with fosilized amber DI and edged it with a purple copic marker. It has a pretty pattern in glitter on it, but this doesn't show in the photo. The tiny stickers are so old it is a wonder they are not all grey by now!

If you are still with me I will show you the inside of my card. On my birthday back in October I was given a pretty floral card with a large pink flower that popped up inside when you opened it. I wanted to have a go at making something similar, so I used an old photo of a crafted butterfly and imported it into my Silhouette software, where I made it into a cutting file, laid it over a rectangular base and welded it it all together. I made a matching butterfly file with cut-outs in its wings, and resized them to fit inside my card. I cut the main piece from the same card as the front, with a 1cm border all round it. I again rounded the corners and coloured the edged with the picked raspberry DI.

I cut the top layer of the butterfly from more of the pink paper, and used a snippet of pink/white irridescent paper behind the wings. I then adhered it to the inner card and made sure it could bend where it needed to. I fixed the insert inside the card along the spine, and when I was sure it was all working right I glued along the two sides. I added some openwork pink butterflies cut with a Memory box die, and trimmed a couple of tiny ones from the off-cuts of the front border. The sentiment is an un-named clear stamp, from back in the days when I didn't appreciate the need to label everything!

Now I will link this up with Mrs A's Butterfly Challenge, and as I used off-cuts of cream paper for the mat and irridescent paper for the wings, I will also fly over with it to Pixie's Snippets Playground.

That is my first proper project since I stopped way before Christmas, and it is good to get back in the swing of things.

Using new border dies for Rudolph Day

I recently ordered of some of Joanna Sheen's new Signature Christmas border dies, but most of my cards were done by the time they arrived, so I thought I would give them a quick try for the final Rudolph day challenge.

I bought three borders, Holly, Snowflakes and Stars, so for my first card I used the holly.

I am not sure whether Lidl's stores carry the same offers at the same time around the world, but if they do, you may have seen that last week they had stacks of their popular card and paper pads, and also some Christmas pads that contained several designs of printed vellum, each with a matching printed card and a plain paper. So of course, I bought one. For this card I have just used some little pieces of the green and red vellum, with the plain green paper. I like these pads because they are B sizes rather than the usual A sizes found in UK, and one sheet cut in half will make two European cards that fit the standard envelopes out here. They are just a bit bigger than an A6 card and give you a little more space to work in. I have used a plain white base card, covered with a large mat of green paper, and then a white mat cut along the lower edge with the holly die. I edged the white top layer with strips cut from the printed vellum, and stamped the centre with my favourite holly stamp by Penny Black. This is one of my oldest stamps and it has been used every year since I bought it. The sentiment was stamped and die cut using a Sizzix/Hero Arts set that I recently won in Pixie's Snippets Playground. To finish off, and give it a little bling, I added tiny red gems for the holly berries in the border, and red liquid pearls for the berries on the stamped image.

 For my second card I used the snowflake border, again cutting a white base card and covering it with some dark turquoise paper.

The top layer was cut from the matching printed card from the Lidl's pad, with the snowflake border along the lower edge. I used the piece from the centre of the blue layer to cut the sentiment with a Creative Expressions die. Then I found a snippet of white paper and stamped the snowman, another very old but much loved and used stamp by Fun Stamps. I added some colour and cut him out to stand beside the sentiment. Then two more snippets of white and irridescent silver were used to die cut a snowflake for the top corner.  There is some stickles glitter glue on the snowman's hat trim and bobble, and along the base of him, and some on the white snowflake and the centres of the flakes in the border. None of that shows in the photo, but it does add a nice bit of sparkle. One blue gem in the centre of the snow flake finished it off.

Having got this far I thought I might as well use the third border so I looked for something 'starry'. 

In the end I again cut a white base card and this time I made a mat using bright yellow card from my snippets folder, embossed with an Embosilicious folder, and cut with the star border die along the lower edge. I then used a Memory Box die to cut a topper from a snippet of starry paper, and stamped, coloured and cut a cute little Christmas star character from another snippet of white card. The stamp is a very ancient Anita's image. I knew I had it but it took a bit of finding! I added some gold-ice stickles to his hat trimmings, and to the smaller stars on the border and the embossed design. I finished it off with a sentiment cut from a little piece of dull gold card with a Signature die (I think). It's not the most usual colour for a Christmas card, but it is nice and cheerful.

So I have managed to make three cards which each use a brand new die and a very old stamp, and I am entering them in the final Rudolph Day Challenge for 2015, at Scraps of Life by Scrappy Mo, and also in Pixie's snippets Playground.