My Favourite Five Christmas Cards of 2014

Hi there.  Debby over at A Scrapjourney has her challenge on at the moment to choose our five favourite Christmas cards.
                                                      

Now, this year I have not posted as many Christmas cards as I did last year because I started so late and I ran out of time to blog them.  I have given myself a stern talking too and must start earlier this coming year!  Anyway, here is my selection.

                                                      MonochromaticWinter Wonderland

                                                                 Snowy Winter Houses

                                                                       Framed Noel

                                                           Glittery Snowflakes Christmas

                                                                    Happy Christmas

I am linking up with this challenge right away as I am not sure when the challenge closes.  Thank you for coming to take a look today.

Pat x          
         
                                                                               

                                                       

Happy Christmas

Hi there everybody.   Here is a card I made after seeing something similar over at Heather Telford's bits & pieces.  I only found her blog relatively recently and on looking through some of her posts you can see what wonderful work she produces.  I looked at the video tutorial she made and couldn't wait to have a go.  I used the tree from a freebie set from Penny Black which I got recently with a magazine, and although more of an indoor tree I thought it would probably work OK.

 Now it is no way as good as hers and it is similar as there isn't a lot of different ways to do snow and trees, but I hope she wouldn't consider this too much of a copy.  I cut a piece of copy paper with the shape for the snow, and the moon I cut using a circle die, cut the inside of the die to make it a bit smaller, pencilling the shape on to a 'post it' note and cutting out.  I used watercolour paper this time as I wanted to make it wetter and this does allow you to wet with a spray where ordinary card disintegrates much more easily.  I used  a brush and some water with my Distress Inks in  Tumbled Glass and Faded Jeans to build up the sky.  The trees were stamped with Adirondack - Bottle.  I actually spritzed the stamp with a bit of water before stamping so it blurred a bit and then went over again when dry with the same colour without the added water and on one or two I used a bit of Black Soot over the top instead of Bottle.   I did have a bit of a problem with the copy paper getting too wet and transferring the green  in several places.  I did try lifting the colour out with lots of water on the brush and a tissue which worked a little, but I just had to incorporate these in to the design as best I could.  If the tree looked a bit too thin I used a little extra Bottle ink with a brush and water to make the foliage more dense.  I used some more of the blues round the trees to give the appearance of the trees sitting in snow hollows and blurred lines of blue to give the snow depth.  I think this worked a bit but Heather's is fantastic.

I finished by stamping the sentiment and added some Perfect Pearls for the falling snow.  I think my blobs are a bit too regular.  Her brush and masking fluid gives a much more random effect.  Overall I was pleased with the way it turned out, but please if you don't know Heather and have never seen her work do go and take a look as you will be blown away by it.

After photographing it I decided that as it was what I considered to be my best and most creative card, artistically speaking, of the season,  I put a new sentiment tag over the top making it more personal and sent it to our son.  I didn't bother to take another photo though so this is it prior to the sentiment change.  

I would like to say a big thank you to all my lovely followers and fellow bloggers who I have come to know in the last fifteen months and hope that you all have a lovely Christmas, and for those that don't celebrate, an enjoyable break, and that 2015 will be happy, healthy and fulfilling. 

Pat x 

Glittery Snowflakes Christmas

Hi everyone.  I made this Christmas card using a Creative Expressions die which is called Vintage Baubles, and one of a number of co-ordinating stamps which you can use with the smaller of the two dies, and I have the Snowflake Bauble.  I also used a large background stamp from Chocolate Baroque called Snowflake Shadow.

I stamped and heat embossed the background using a snippet of white card and Ranger's Perfect Medium Ink and WOW Glittery Gold Embossing Powder.  The base card is a white card approximately 6" x 6" and the stamp is the same size, but I decided to cut the background down a bit to allow room for the sentiment on the side.  I finished the background by mounting this on to a snippet of Gold Mirri card.

The set comes with two different sized baubles consisting of an outer and an inner die, so you can make a solid bauble, or by adding the inner piece, a cut out bauble.  I used just the large outer die and made a solid bauble using a snippet of Gold Mirri Card, and then I used the co-ordinating stamp and the Perfect Medium heat embossed with the WOW Glittery Gold EP, and cut it out with the smaller outer die and assembled the bauble using these two layers.

I finished by stamping the sentiment, using the same products and technique, straight on to the base card.

With everything that has been going on recently I think I may have omitted to welcome one of my recent followers, so just in case, she is Jennifer and you can find her blog here.  Please do go and see her wonderful work. 

I hope everybody's preparations for Christmas are going to plan.  Mine have been rather haphazard but I am getting there.  Will hopefully be posting one or two more cards before Christmas.

Pat x

I am entering this card in the following challenge:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 155.  We have to use up snippets that we have accumulated and I have used quite a few here, so huffing and puffing I have arrived with a day to spare.
Simon Says Monday Challenge - Anything Goes.

Heart Window Anniversary

Hello there.  I have two anniversaries to make cards for this month and this is the first.  I used the following dies:     Nellie Snellen Multi Frame Heart,  Xcut Nesting Circles and  Creative Expressions Classic Rose and Petite Vinery.   I also used a Craft Concepts Embossing Folder -Woodgrain.

I used my usual square white base card and a snippet of white pearlescent card and cut to size, and placed it on the card and fixed temporarily with removable tape.  I fixed the circle die to the front of the card with some more removable tape and ran it through my machine to cut through both layers at once.  I then embossed the pearlescent layer with the woodgrain embossing folder.   I did have to extend the embossing a bit to cover the card and luckily this worked well.  I then coloured using Distress Ink in Peacock Feathers using blending foam.  Using another snippet of the white pearlescent card I cut two of the smaller of the two Nellie Snellen scallop edge hearts that there are in this set so that they could be set back to back,  and then finished by inking the edge of the front facing heart with the Peacock Feather DI.

I used another snippet of pearlescent white card and cut two of the filigree flowers in the Classic Rose set of flowers using the two different sizes of die.  I removed one of the petals from the smaller one and then glued together and coloured this with the Peacock Feathers DI, then I cut the very smallest solid flower in the set with another snippet of the pearlescent white card and mounted up the flower.  I cut the two dies in the Petite Vinery set using a further snippet of the same card.

The heart was hung from the aperture using a piece of thin silver cord which I doubled and twisted to make a thicker and stronger piece and sandwich between the two hearts as explained above.  I stuck it to the inside front of the card using a small snippet of card to cover it and make it tidy.   I then made a bow with another piece and stuck this at the top of the heart.

When mounting the card up I realised that the heart was inclined to twist rather a lot so I made sure that one of the leafy swirls was stuck in just the right place to be an anchor, and stuck the leaf to the centre of the heart to hold it in place.

Thank you for looking at my blog today, and I have one new follower to introduce to you today, and she is Kristie Goulet and you will find her blog here, so please do go and visit her and see her lovely cards.

Pat x

I am entering the following challenge:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop -Week 154.
 
                                                                                                                            

Christmas Robin

Hi all.   I really do need to get a move on with my Christmas cards.  Well here is another to swell the ranks a bit!  I thought I would try and enter some challenges to focus my mind a bit and I need to get a move on as this is for Merry Monday where the challenge is Feathered Friends.  Well I have quite a few Christmas stamps and dies now but don't have a suitable bird amongst them so thought I would attempt to make my own.  I do love robins so did my best to make him look reasonably the right shape and size.   I think he looks as though he has been eating too many worms but hey ho I did the best job I could. 

My first attempt was a snowy woodland behind the robin, but I fiddled too much and ruined it, so cut out the robin and the snowy foreground and attempted a different background with a few hills behind which I felt ended up a bit better.  I used a snippet of Watercolour Paper and my Distress inks, mixed with a little water and applied with a brush, in Tumbled Glass and Faded Jeans and a little Shaded Lilac and then I added a bit of white acrylic paint over the hills, sun/moon (to be honest I think this could be day or night),  and also the foreground snow and the post the robin is sitting on.  There is also a bit of Walnut Stain on the post.  I finished this layer by mounting it on to a snippet of dark blue card.

The background uses one of  the stamp from a set by Indigoblu called Here Comes Santa.  I stamped the sentiment all over a piece of  white card using Faded Jeans DI, and to add a bit more dimension I then embossed it using a freebie snowflake border three times and then cover the whole thing with the Faded Jeans which then highlighted the snowflakes as well, but this is a little difficult to see as the next layer covers quite a bit of it.  The words on the stamp came out rather blurred in some places but I decided that as it is only a background this would be fine.

On the next layer I used a snippet of white card and the same freebie snowflake border on it three times to fill and then used some Tumbled Glass DI to highlight the snowflakes.  I decided to leave the sentiment for now.

Thank you for dropping by today.

Pat x

I am also entering the following challenge:

Simon Says Monday Challenge - Holiday Cards.

Wedding Day Wishes

We received an invite to a wedding for which I made this card,  and the day went well.  As the weather this time of year can be a bit unpredictable it was just as well it was at a wedding venue so mainly indoors.  The weather was at least dry if overcast and chill but not freezing so they did manage some photos in the rather lovely grounds.  We luckily only had to brave the elements for about ten minutes which was quite enough as my outfit wasn't terribly suited to the autumnal conditions, especially as the wind had started to blow a bit!

I haven't made many wedding cards in the past and was lacking a little inspiration so did my usual trick of looking on Pinterest to see if anything fired my imagination.  I decided to go with a silhouette bride and groom and found an image which I adapted  a little as I thought the totally black silhouette was a bit heavy looking.  I fussy cut one image out then on the second I cut the skirt and train out and cut part of the upper body and shaped it into a strapless top.  I used these two bits as templates and then after pencillling round the shapes on to a snippet of heavy-ish white paper I cut them out and glued them in place to give the bride her white dress.  I then decided perhaps she would look nicer with an embossed train so cut the original template down and embossed with a Cuttlebug EF called Textile Texture which I thought had the look of lace.

 I then thought I would use the same EF in the background so cut a snippet of white card to fit the white square base card and ran it through the folder.  I die cut some corners from a set of NBUS dies (Never-Before-Used-Schtuff as coined by Darnell of djkardkreations)  from Sue Wilson at Creative Expressions called Vintage Bauble  using silver Mirri card and glued them to the embossed background.

I then made some flowers from another Sue Wilson NBUS die called Classic Rose.  Using a snippet of white card I made two flowers using all the dies except the largest of the plain dies but added an extra layer of the second smallest die to fill it out a bit.  I snipped away one petal out of each one and shaped and glued them, then layered them up to form the flower and set a pearl in the centre of each.  I then cut another set of plain flower die cuts using another snippet of white card, but this time I also cut a large patterned flower die cut and glued it on top of  the largest plain flower die cut and then  layered the rest on top without cutting away any of the petals except I cut an extra small one for the top layer on which I removed a petal and also attached a pearl.

The last step was to make the sentiment  which I did on the computer and then cut out with my S/B  Captivating Squares, the second size die. 

I hope you haven't found my post too long winded but this was a little more complicated than a lot of cards I make, but as this was for a wedding we were actually attending I wanted it to be extra specially nice.

Thank you for visiting my blog today.

Pat  x

I am entering the following challenge:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 153.  Where we use up our snippets of paper and card, and as I used quite a few snippets on this card I am going to visit my friends over there.

P.S.  Thank you to Di, who has subsequently highlighted my card over at Pixie's Playground, for her lovely comments.  I have only just realised that she thinks the little flowers in the bouquet were added by me.  The only white pieces I added were the bodice and skirt with the embossed train added over the top.  I apologise for not explaining it clearly enough and for not reading Di's original comment properly otherwise I would have put her right.  I didn't want anyone who might come across the original silhouette to think I was claiming for work I didn't do.  Thank you so much for all the lovely comments that have been left which I really appreciate.