Merry Christmas

 

Hello! I hope you are keeping well. This is my festive snippets card for Pixie's Snippets Playground. I made it using stamps and dies from the Gina K Winter Whimsy kit. The flower stamp in the kit is fabulous, as it can obviously be used as a poinsettia, or as with this card, more of a 'winter bloom'.

Here are the snippets! The glittery silver card is actually an deconstructed cracker. Other old crackers have been turned into tags for presents. This glittery old cracker is really lovely and my photos don't do it justice at all!

Festive card-making has had to take a bit of a back seat unfortunately, but hopefully there will be some time over Christmas to get to my super messy craft table!

Merry Christmas and Happy Crafting!

April xxx

Seashells

 Hello! I'm writing this blog post from my non-Covid sick bed. Normal service has resumed and my traditional October horrible cold/cough virus is back. It has meant that today I spent a long time searching for some very cute stamps I had seen on a Dutch blog. I simply couldn't understand why I couldn't find them. I sent a message to my lovely Dutch friend and it turned out the reason why is because they are from the Netherlands equivalent of the pound shop! She will very kindly look for them for me.

My snippets card was made with snippets left over from the creation of another card -

I had made an inky background with Distress Inks and the remainder became the shells and stars, along with all the rest being from random snippets too. It was made with die-cuts from a Hot off the Press set. I am sending it to Di, the Snippet Queen at Pixie's Snippets Playground!

Happy crafting!

April xxx

Lucky Mushroom

 Hello again! When I saw the theme at Challenge Up Your Life was Good Luck/Mushrooms I just had to enter this last minute card! The leaf shape was made by inking round a leaf from my garden and the mushrooms are from a stamp set called Shroom Forest from That's Crafty. I hope you like it - I love the idea of a lucky mushroom and I hope these bring you good fortune!

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

Washi Deer

 Hello! I was inspired to make this card by the challenge over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown where you are asked to use at least two different designs of washi tape in your Christmas card.

I have a lot of washi tape, but I can be ambivalent about using it. Sometimes I add a bit to a card and then I think oh that looks rubbish, so I take it off again. I must say I prefer this very easy technique where you just apply strips of washi to a base of card and then die cut shapes from it. These deer dies I have used are from Sizzix. I love that the deer look as though they are wearing legwarmers and I deliberately went for clashy colours of washi. The fawn looks quite shocked by what he has ended up wearing, I think!

I'm also entering my deer into the challenge at My Time to Craft Christmas where the theme is Christmas Critters and the Allsorts Challenge where the theme is 'Anything Goes with Option of Nature'.

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

Polar Bear in a Jar

 Hello! This week's challenge over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown is...

I have decided to jam a polar bear in my jar. He is very cute and from a retired SU set called White Christmas. The die cuts are from Beautiful Boughs and I have used them to stencil the edge of the card with Distress Inks.

I'm sending this bear in a jar to Di, Dudley and Parsnip at Pixie's Snippets Playground because the card is super snippety. It's made using a beautiful natural card that SU sold years ago. I really loved it - it had a great texture and I saved two pieces for ages that I eventually used. However, whilst 'tidying' Snippet Mountain, I came across a pile of off-cuts I had hoarded and forgotten about. They were left over from a box making workshop that I think I did in 2014... So I used some for this card, along with another snippet from an old embossed piece of card for the jar lid and yet another snippet of patterned paper that was hanging around in a drawer.

The same off-cuts were perfect for a Facebook Bookmark challenge. I always read books on my Kindle, but I am reading the huge tome that is 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell', so this foxy bookmark made with Lavinia stamps is now residing in its pages...

Our daughter went off to university last week, so I made her a gift box with this cute label...

Finally a Hallowe'en card! Quite apt, as the nights are certainly starting to draw in!

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

Snowflakes

 Hello! This card was inspired by some challenges. 

The first is the As You See It Challenge where the theme is 'In the Air'. I have gone with snowflakes.

The next challenge is Happy Little Stampers 

The dies I have used are from SU's Snowfall Thinlits,

Then there is the challenge from Beyond the Blue where the theme is 'Let it Shimmer'.

Last but not least, over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown there is a colour challenge

My small Christmas card pile is gradually growing! How about yours?

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

Ruby's Memory Card

Hello! Here is my card for the challenge dedicated to the memory of the beautiful Ruby over at Pixie's Snippets Playground,

It didn't start off quite like this...

As you can see, I managed to drop the pen that I was drawing the holly berries on with! A couple of tastefully positioned snippets of Funky Fossil patterned paper came to the rescue. The stamps are the very cute small Pippin from Lavinia, along with Fir Cone Branch and Fir Tree 1. The holly leaves are a Cardio stamp - the Holly and the Ivy. The holly berries are my own...artistic creation. Actually I like it better with the strange improvised snippet corners, so it was all good in the end!

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

 

Christmas Sketch Challenge

 

My Christmas card making is moving on! This latest card is inspired by the sketch challenge at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown 

Stamps: SU Peaceful Boughs, Bohemian Borders

Dies: SU Tasteful Labels, Beautiful Boughs

Inks: Twisted Citron and Ground Espresso Distress Inks, Tea Dye Distress Oxide, Memento New Sprout, Bamboo Leaves, Desert Sand and Rhubarb Stalk. Tarnished Brass Distress Stain spray.

A Clarity sentiment sticker and some Glimmer Paper stars to finish up with.

It was a great sketch for using some older stamps and messing around with inks! Another card to add to the pile.

Happy crafting!

April xxx

Christmas Stencilling

 

Hello! Another long lapse between posting!

First of all, the star in the corner is meant to be a handy 'decorative' item to usefully hold down the edge of a bendy card. In real life it is an attractive sparkly wooden star from some Christmas pot-pourri (so it smells nice too). On my phone, this is what it looks like. Blown up on my laptop it looks like a mouldy old sponge extracted from the sink... so apologies for that!

The card was made using Funky Fossil's Nordic Noel stamp set and a holly leaf stencil that was also from Funky Fossil.

All the pieces of card are snippets and there is a tiny snippet of cork paper that was a snippety gift from a crafty friend. The stencilled background was made with distress inks and I decided to keep the lovely reindeer very simple with just a touch of Copic colouring.

I am sending my card to Di, Dudley and Parsnip at Pixie's Snippets Playground - I have been away for so long and have very much missed 'playgrounding'.

I am also taking part in the current challenge over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

First Christmas Cards

 

Poor neglected blog. I haven't posted this year - where does the time go?? I can't even blame the soap making, as I haven't been able to face re-doing all the paper work to put my soaps on the new UK portal. A herniated disc earlier in the year did make all soap-making and papercrafting out of the question. Since then I haven't really managed to get back into it at all.

I have felt strangely Christmassy the last day or so. I think it is because we had an amazing thunder storm yesterday with very dark skies and heavy downpours of hail. There was another roll of thunder earlier, but it hasn't come to anything.

The card above is snippety as it uses left-over pieces of Whisper White card for the mat and the fussy-cut stocking. It is kind of snippety in spirit as well because I tend to buy stamping magazines and then never use the stamps that come with them... I do like this Christmas stocking though. It is from an old issue of 'Creative Stamping'. I stamped it with a mixture of Distress Inks - Blueprint and Wilted Violet. The branch was stamped in Rustic Wilderness and the little spots are Tumbled Glass. It's a simple card and one I'd like to repeat in different colours.

I am sending it along to Di and Dudley (for a virtual stocking chew) at Pixie's Snippets Playground I very much like the idea of Dudley in his bathtime burrito.

I made two more cards using various bits of old SU kits. This brings my Christmas card total to three!

Happy crafting!

April xxx