Sponging and Sketching

It is recipe week at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown and we have a genius recipe for you. Guess you like one pot cooking ( quick, easy, less washing up and delicious), so do you like one layer cards (quick, challenging, no where to hide your mistakes and beautiful)? That's it for this week, one layer cards

I wanted to add the impression of layers so I opted for a sponging and masking technique. I have used the Simply Sketched stamp set, these branches do remind me of mistletoe. I stamped in black ink over the sponged blended colours and touched up the berries with a white gel pen.

The sentiment is from Season of Joy (again, it never goes out of fashion I think). I added a few droplets of water to bleed out the colour, like wet snow or a bokeh light effect and a swathe of rhinestones to echo the sweep of the silver heat embossed lanterns. These could be ornaments, another use of the Celebration set.

I enjoyed creating this card and am overall pleased with it, although for me the edges of the masked area could be a little crisper. I used post- it notes. Does anyone have a better idea? I always find masking tape rips the surface of the card.

Cut Out Trees

It's colour challenge week at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown and I set myself the challenge to use all 5 colours, although you only actually need to use at least three. They are very non-traditional too, so I've come up with quite a contemporary card.

The tree is from an old set called Season of Joy, love this happy little tree image,  the sentiment from Contempo Christmas. Of course, this card depended very heavily on my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig, wouldn't be without it now.

The blue glitter is actually washi tape and I added a few gemstones to the stars.

This is how it looks flat..these really are lovely colours, hope you have a go at making your Christmas card with them, only 11 weeks to go now!

Christmas In July Bloghop

Welcome to the 52 {Christmas} Card Christmas in July Blog Hop!  If you've arrived here from Gill, of Lily-By-Gilly you are on the right track!  If you haven't and want to participate for a chance to win honors and/or prizes, please go back to the original hop post and follow along with us!  Come and take a peek at the creation I made using our prompts for the month!

There are four prompts and I have chosen the sketch......

    ....as mine. Here is my card for July

I found a pack of Christmas 12x12 papers in the bargain bucket at my local craft shop and couldn't resist, love this polka dot paper and I now have it in several colours. Today I chose traditional Christmas colours. The tree and sentiment images are from an old retired SU set, I think it is called Season Of Joy, embossed in white and I reversed the mat layers. Finally I added three colour matching buttons. Quite CAS and a traditional/contempo mashup of a card. Hope you like it!

Thank you for coming by to leave a comment!  Don't forget--hop along with us starting at the original 52CCT post for multiple chances to win honors and prizes!  Your next stop will bePatricia of ThinkingofInking Merry hopping!

Christmas 2014 is up and running!

Hey! I'm back! Admittedly it's a little late, but I've been enjoying some quality family time, and my daughter only returned to Uni last night, so until then I put away my crafting stuff. It's all out again now and the first thing I had to do was make a few Christmas cards (!!) for the challenge at the whole-new-look 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown. Here's the challenge- a sketch which lets your sentiment take centre stage

and here's what I did with it, this time keeping quite close to the original idea, with the faux stitching around the edge

My top band is a ribbon, the wider one a strip of DP. The sentiment stamp is an old Stampin' Up one from Season Of Joy, I think and I found the perfect coordinating button in my stash- love how it adds dimension to the card. Traditional red and green colour combo, as I'm experimenting with more unusual colours for cards for challenges later this month (no more spoilers!)
Do have a look at the blog to see the fab work from my fellow DT friends. I hope 2014 is a very crafty year for all of you!

Christmas Chalkboard

Back from my jolly hols just in time for a brand new challenge at Technique Time Tuesday and this one is bang on trend with the chalkboard technique.  Over at the blog you will find a step by step tutorial to help you if you've never tried this before, and it really is so simple and so effective.  You can do it two ways, one using a heat embossing technique and the other stamping white on black.  It depends which one you like best -bold and bright, or subtle and shabby.
Guess which one I've used here....

I chose a Christmas theme (again!) and used a variety of stamps to make up my board. I stamped in white and then smudged it up with sponged white ink- I used Adirondack Snow Cap. I've used some SU paper, with a gem in each corner and a couple of bows. I'm very plaesed with this card and, as I said already, it's very simple to make.

A Little Twine Tree

For our last challenge of the month we have an embellishment challenge and I was so thrilled when I saw this one because you will know that I am a big fan of TWINE!

However, I usually tie it around my card, or make small bows (and there's nothing wrong with that!) but I wanted to go all out on this one and so, cruising around I came upon a technique where you make a twine panel and stick it behind an aperture. I knew I could adapt this for the 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown challenge, even if I didn't have a Christmas tree die cut. Here's my little twine tree....

and here's my card

I stamped the tree from Season Of Joy three times and cut out the central one with my craft knife. I stuck the green twine onto double sided tape before adding a dark green mat. I added a little more twine around the panel (you can surely never have enough twine on a Christmas card) and made a pop up banner in the same dark green, with a fussy cut sentiment from Sassy Salutations.  A few gems to add some sparkle and I'm pretty pleased with myself! I'm going to pop it into the challenge at Winter Wonderland where the challenge is 'All Tied Up'.

Season Of Joy in red and gold

I haven't entered the Christmas card challenge at Merry Monday for a few weeks and so this morning when I was cruisin' the blogs with a few spare hours to craft and I came across this sketch

I knew straight away that I wanted to play.

I used a couple of matching papers, added some glitter, a bow and some red gems.  I stamped and embossed the sentiment stamp from Season Of Joy and cut it out using one of my nestabilities die cuts.  I cut the same size in gold mirri card and twisted it behind the panel.  The main paper is also layered onto gold mirri card.  All in all a luxurious Christmas card ready to send out in December, and I really had fun making it..everyone wins!

Triple Time Stamping

Final challenge for January (where did that month go to!!) at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown and we have a technique challenge for you. This time it's a simple but very effective technique called triple time stamping. I tried a variation, where I used different shape and size layers, not decreasing layers, but over on the blog you can see examples of the more usual layout.  We don't mind how you do it as long as you use the basic technique

I used Naturals Ivory, a slightly creamy CS and Indigo Island and Pool Party inks, not your typical Christmas colours. The stamp set is Season of Joy and I've added a small silver bow with a jingle bell and tiny silver gem centres to the flowers. I've used silver mirri board for the matting and layering.  I did attempt to triple time stamp a sentiment but, to be honest, it wasn't that successful and so I have not used it on my card.

Colour Challenge Rudolph

So, I'm back from my travels and trying to get the creative juices running again! My mission - to create a colour challenge card for the DT at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown . 

These colours were whispering 'robins', 'cakes' 'snowmen' whilst I was away so what did I come up with when I got home.....

a reindeer, Rudolph to be precise! I used a pearlescent red card blank and overstamped it with the sentiment block stamp from SUs Season Of Joy set. I used Chocolate chip ink for all the stamping on this card, the main image is also from SU - they call him Dasher but he's become Rudoloph with the addition of a red gem nose and a tiny black pearl eye. I must admit I 'gutted' the Chocolate Chip scalloped edge ribbon to save on my stock before matting the image and the flower is from the same stamp set as the sentiment, I stamped it three times and layered them up to add some dimension to what was otherwise quite a flat card.
Do have a look at the cards from the rest of the girls at 52 CCT, it really is time to get cracking with those Christmas cards, if you haven't already!

Oh Christmas Tree

This is my first DT project for the 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown challenge as I join the team in July.  It's a brilliant challenge based on this sketch ; 

My card was inspired by the paper with the words to the internationally renowned song 'Oh Christmas Tree'. I followed the colours in the paper, making three panels matted onto green cardstock. I stamped three trees from the Season Of Joy stamp set from SU, glittering up some of the detail, and adding the sentiment and flourish. I layered them on some Whisper White card stock with a piece of washi tape across the bottom to follow through with the music theme. Pop over to the challenge and see the other cards from the DT for more ideas and inspiration

Blue, Blue Christmas

Today I have had time to look at a few challenges and the first one to catch my eye was at 52 {Christmas} card Throwdown where they asked for Christmas cards with embossing, dry or heat. I embossed Whisper White card with snowflakes and made the scalloped edges with my new Stampin Up edgelits die. Do you like the snowman ribbon?  He's cute isn't he? I made the medallion with  the snowflake from SU's  Season of Joy set, stamped in Adirondack Snow Cap and heat embossed with Snowflake powder -can you see the glittery detail.

 The sentiment was also from this set, stamped on Whisper White in Bashful Blue. I have decorated the envelope with a matching snowflake medallion. The colour scheme fits in with the Dynamic Duos challenge too. I love the cool, wintery feel of this card, especially after the weather we've been enjoying and it gt an Honorable Mention too!