Christmas Trees...

Hi everyone, the 20th, not long to go now and I'm more organised than usual (no everything is not done...but this year I might get the presents wrapped before midnight on am Christmas Eve!). I'm back again with a few more cards to share.
You may have noticed in my Christmas posts that I have a fondness for simple shapes or motifs and often use snowflakes, stars and trees...lots of trees. I usually cut a simple triangle shape or make a triangle shape with strips of paper, buttons etc.
I love Anneke De Clerck's style of cards and in particular these Christmas Tree card ideas here and here . If you hop across to her blog 'Some fiddling on the kitchen table' she has a section on the right of Christmas card ideas, well worth a look.

So I finally got to dabble with my Distress Oxide reinkers. I used some drops on a piece of cut and dry foam to ink up a stamp, spritzed and stamped...instant background, more spritzing as I dried them.

The stamp was a bargain stamp from at least 15 years ago, grey rubber unmounted not sure who made it but it looks a bit like the texture tread ones as there is a positive and negative to it. Not a Christmas theme but I thought it worked so well and got carried away with all the lovely distress colours.

I recently bought a Stamp-a-ma-jig and got the hang of it and now find I'm using it constantly for stamping perfectly positioned sentiments. Vellum scraps and enameled card bits were used up too...another plus!

Subtle second stamped backgrounds could support bright trees. 

Strips of white dots were brayered with different coloured fresco paints. I originally thought I'd be able to peel the dots off to use them but found they all had an edge of paint so ended up leaving them on the backing sheet which because it was non stick gave a lovely web effect. Love this purple one!

A little teal at Christmas.

More CAS style use of dots.

I found some metallic dots in Hobbycraft but intermixed them with some of the fresco painted dots and added glitter stickles...I have to add glitter, sparkle and metallics at Christmas...it just blings it all to life! 

On that note I'll sign off...enjoy the festivities! 

A few more cards

Hi everyone, just thought I'd share a few more Christmas cards in case anyone is looking for some last minute inspiration.

I thought I'd carry on with the red, white and Kraft theme, all very simple; the snow flakes are die cut from white card that was run through a bubble embossing folder, wiped with versamark and then some white and gold glittery embossing powder was added.

I never thought I'd find a use for this washi tape...until now, it's perfect for the card.

Now we're going back to the forgotten stash post and a few more cards made from dark card covered with chalk ink pads and I've used my first hand carved stamp....just dabbling.

Not Christmas cards but shows the stamp.

A Gelli print background

Last card for today and a return to snowflakes for my final pic.

I'll be back with some more Christmas tree themed cards soon. Happy Christmas Crafting and Christmas prepping wherever you are. R x

Festive at Stamps and Stencils...

Hi everyone, time for our last challenge of the year over at Stamps and Stencils and of course we are getting festive. Sue has chosen the theme this month and wants us to use both Stamps AND Stencils in our festive mixed media style pieces.

'Festive Stamps AND Stencils - Now normally to join in with us we ask you use either stamps or stencils, but for this challenge I want to see both and lots of them with a Festive theme ! So dig out all your stamps, maybe some long forgotten that need some love and all of your stencils and let them take centre stage ! '

I decided to make a box full of gift tags to use this year in my present wrapping.

I started by altering a box...

..and then made a few tags!

For a few years now I have been making my own Christmas wrapping paper inspired by a gorgoeus post Alison Bomber of Words and Pictures did for PaperArtsy here. I love 'brown paper parcels tied up with string' and Scandanavian crisp clean motifs so here's what I came up with this year.

I started off with a teabag box that I'd saved and flattened out for painting.

I still have some Irish Cream fresco paint so used that but didn't add any embellishments as I wanted the box to be practical.

I used cherry red stazon to stamp the images and had some matching card which would be perfect to make the tags from. These were my ingredients. The stamps on the right are a Waltzing Mouse set which unfortunately you can't get now BUT I am sure there are lots of alternatives out there that could be used.

As we are a mixed media blog I had to embellish the tags a little and used crackle paint, teabag paper, tissue, stitching, foiling and embossing enamel in the process. I don't think the tags need step outs but it's rather photo heavy now so you can see them in more detail.

I loved making each little one of them (2 1/4 x 2 3/4 inch) and will have plenty to use next year as well now.

I hope you're inspired to dig out some of your well loved or forgotten stash and create something festive for our challenge and don't forget to hop across and see what the rest of our talented team have created to inspire you. I hope to be back before Christmas but in the meantime enjoy your Christmas crafting! R x

Leaf print

Hi everyone, I can't remember the last time I sat down to make something that wasn't for a deadline of some sort, but I have snatched a little time this afternoon to enter the PaperArsty 'Shades of White' challenge...although this is a last minute entry into the challenge!
Life has been pretty hectic and although I've doodled and dabbled and been exploring eco printing of leaves on paper during the summer I've not yet made or finished anything until today.

Here's a little canvas I made this afternoon with a tiny leaf print.

I loved the topic intro (my kind of style) and all the posts have been inspirational but when I saw the Florence Adam post here, I knew I wanted to create a finished project.

Just a few step outs and apologies for photo quality this was tricky to photograph in the fading winter light.

I love using up scraps and there are so many shades of white in my scraps! I have used some gesso to soften some of the creamier tones.

It was fairly quick to assemble and there is some stamping on the vellum under the leaf print and I added a 'W' for white.

I think I went a bit overboard with the art stones though.

A rather quick blog post and here's a final pic.

In case you're wondering it's a eucalyptus leaf and I hope to do a blog post soon about my experiments with leaf printing, so watch this space.

As always thanks so much for stopping by and wherever you are I hope you're creating art!  R x

Inspiration post at Stamps and Stencils

Hi everyone, I have an Inspiration post over at Stamps and Stencils today and I've been using up long forgotten items and made a few Christmas cards along the way. Hope you'll hop across and be inspired. R x

Pastel...at Stamps and Stencils

Hi everyone, we have a new 'Pastel' challenge over at Stamps and Stencils hosted by the lovely Cec and here's what she has to say about it...

We have been treated to a riot of bright, warm colour since the spring bulbs made their appearance and continuing throughout summer and fall so let's go in the opposite direction and make a project with soft, pastel colours. Don't forget to include some stamping or stenciling or both in your creation.

I've chosen to get a little Christmassy and created a trio of snow capped houses. I quite often use pastel pink and blue on my Christmas cards, usually snowflakes or trees combined with glitter and bling so this seemed like the next step.

They will stand up and would be a fun project for children to be involved in as they are quick to decorate...maybe you could try creating a whole advent village.

They started off as several die cuts of corrugated card using Tim's Artful dwellings die and sandwiching together with PVA glue and washi tape around the edge. Lightweight but a great substrate for decorating.

I've used Fresco paints in Mermaid. Blush and Sage and stamping in Archival using some favourite  non Christmas plates by Lin Brown. It's always fun to find other ways to use stamps.

Kraft brown is a lovely complement to what I call ice cream colours, so I've used Cheery Lynn doily dies to add detail.

The inside of a doily created the little snowflake.

Clear crackle and shabby white frantage (no apology for using this again) for the snow.

The words are from the Alison Bomber winter plate and just fitted perfectly, a little gilding and ink around the edges and they're complete.

Hope you'll hop across to see more wonderful inspiration from the DT and join in our challenge. Rx