Twelve Days of Christmas Swap

Hello! In the run-up to Christmas I had a great time taking part in Jo's Twelve Days of Christmas swap from Through the Keyhole. Jo very kindly paired us up with a swap partner and we exchanged twelve gifts, one to be unwrapped on each of the days following on from Christmas.

My partner was the lovely Hazel of World of Joy. I gulped slightly because her blog is very stylish indeed and mine isn't, but we found a shared love of all things feline and crafty and it worked really well.

Like 95% of the country, I think, December was totally absorbed by the longest, most hideous coughing lurgy that totally stopped me in my tracks. Fortunately, I was just about ok for the day itself, but Hazel's beautifully wrapped and very thoughtful gifts were definitely a bright spot during a time of feeling very rubbishy indeed. As you can see from the pictures, it was a gorgeous haul of lovely crafty and pampering goodies. I particularly adore the cute fox socks!! There was a great deal of excited ooh-ing and ahh-ing as the gifts were unwrapped and it was a really enjoyable part of the festive season for me. Thank you so much Hazel!

Hazel's lovely blog even makes my gifts look pretty cool! She has blogged about them here. I am in love with her wonderful capsule wardrobes and they are inspiring me to take a steely look at my own chaotic clothing!

A massive thank you also to Jo for organising the swap. These things take a big effort, I know and they very much rely on everyone doing what they have signed up to do. I was lucky to have a fab swap partner, but I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work out so well for others.

April x

CCT Colour Challenge

Hello! We have a colour challenge for you at Christmas Card Throwdown and I love this particular colour combo!

 

 

Please do check out the inspirational cards from the rest of the design team. We look forward to seeing your cards!

 

I made a version of this card before Christmas and I thought it would work well in a different colourway. Here is my earlier card made with SU's Santa's Sleigh bundle -

 

 

 

 

I swapped a few things around and for my aqua and brown shades I chose Pool Party and Chocolate Chip. The card is actually Very Vanilla in real life, although it looks a bit washed out here! I've also added some Bermuda Bay sequins. I hope you like it! Happy crafting! April x



Owl Card

Hello! I had my beady eye on this lovely set of dies before Christmas and then came across it in a sale, so had to get it. It is Sizzix's Owl Fold-a-Long Thinlets and I think it is pretty cute! It really does use quite a mish-mash of snippets with all the paper pieces having come from a magazine a while back.

The central panel was stamped with a retired SU feather stamp and Gorgeous Grunge and the sentiment is from Tin of Tags. We are a family of owl addicts here, so I think I will be making a few of these cards! I think this one may well be for Too Much Glue Sam's birthday, but please don't tell her!!

My owl is fluttering off to Di and Parsnip at Pixie's Snippets Playground and then to Dies R Us Challenge and Moving Along With The Times - Something in the Air.

Happy crafting! April x

Hey Chick!

It is miserable here today! Foggy, wet, grey...It felt like a good idea to make my first chicken card with SU's Saleabration set 'Hey Chick'. So very cute and now I want to make lots of chicken cards!

This card was inspired by this week's Global Design Project

 

I love this colour combo! I did start off with a coloured chicken, but then I realised I preferred her stamped in Basic Grey. I've combined my chicken with Moroccan Designer Series Paper and Mini Striped Ribbon in Watermelon Wonder. Hope you like it!

Happy crafting! April x

CCT Sketch Challenge

 

Happy New Year to all our CCT players and welcome to our sketch challenge ! As you will see from reading Deborah's post, we have dropped the '52' and are moving to a two week challenge. We also have some new and very talented DT members which is very exciting!

 

Here is our sketch:

 



You can flip the sketch around and you don't have to use a star if you don't want to. We just need to be able to recognise the design in your Christmas card.

I have combined SU's 'Carried Away' Designer Series Paper with Papermania's 'Festive Fauna'. The sentiment stamp is from SU's Tin of Tags stamp set.

I do hope that you will join us as we start on our brand new Christmas card stash!

Watercolour Flowers

I think after making lots of Christmas cards it's nice to think of spring flowers again isn't it? Since I got my SU Watercolour Pencils I have been thinking of stamp sets that would lend themselves to a bit of colouring. I hadn't used Flower Shop in a while, so I coloured some blossoms in Melon Mambo and Rich Razzleberry and one in Calypso Coral and Real Red. Then I plopped some water on top with my Aqua Painter. Very easy!

Snippets of Pear Pizzazz were used to make the leaves, so I would like to send my small bunch of flowers off to Di and Parsnip at Pixie's Snippets Playground.

On Wednesday, Toby and I decided to go to Woodside for a full English breakfast overlooking the Mersey. It was very calm and quiet, particularly as you can't get a train from Hamilton Square to Liverpool for quite a while as they work on the Loop. We had a bracing riverside walk followed by some antique shopping. It was a lovely day. I thought you may like to see some photos.

 

 

 

 

Happy crafting! April x

Design Stampers Submission

Hello! Here is my Design Stampers submission for On Stage Live in Amsterdam. I hope that you will enjoy reading about my projects. I certainly enjoyed making them!

 

Starting off with a couple of cards, I made these samples to introduce my lovely customers to Stampin' Up's new Watercolour Pencils. I wanted to use two pieces of the same Saleabration 'Inside the Lines' Design Series Paper to demonstrate how to create two very different looks just by changing the palette of colours used. For the card on the right I used Calypso Coral, Melon Mambo, Daffodil Delight, Old Olive and Bermuda Bay. For the other card I used a very limited palette of simply Early Expresso and Basic Grey, but I did add some extra sparkle by using Wink of Stella on the stamens of the flower. Hopefully I managed to showcase the versatility of this fabulous new colouring product! 

 

My next project is a Christmas 3D make. I really enjoyed stretching the potential of my Cookie Cutter stamps by making a pair of cute Santa earrings from Shrink Plastic. Of course I also needed a gift box to put them in (and a co-ordinating reindeer gift card!)

Here is a Z-Fold card using the stunning new 'Lift Me Up' stamps and co-ordinating 'Up & Away' Thinlits. It also uses the Carried Away Designer Series Paper from the Saleabration catalogue. This was such an enjoyable card to put together. I particularly love the colour combo of Night of Navy, Smoky Slate and Watermelon Wonder (with some Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer Paper of course!)

Not forgetting the wonderful stamp sets from the annual catalogue, here is a tea-light box with the super cute ladybirds from the Hostess stamp set 'Love You Lots'. A simple and sweet gift for a friend that uses the wonderful Bow Builder punch to create a stylish finishing touch

As it is Twelfth Night, I thought I would share one of my favourite festive cards of the season. I used 'Santa's Sleigh' to make this very elegant reindeer. He looks very proud of his red bow!

Finally, a couple of Project Life layouts. I love making my own PL cards using a variety of stamp sets. The first page uses Tie Dyed, Timeless Textures and Tasty Trucks - I didn't intentionally go for such an alliterative bunch of stamp sets! I did opt for a colour combo of Perfect Plum and Smoky Slate to complement my daughter's top. For the other side, No Bones About It provided the perfect stamps for this dinosaur themed layout. A great way of capturing all those happy memories!

 

I hope you have enjoyed my projects! Happy stamping! April