Spread A Little Christmas Cheer

Yes, I'm back again with another Christmas card. I've used Holiday home to make this one and it's based on the sketch at CAS Colours & Sketches, designed by our lovely hostess for October, Stef.

As you can see it's another one that just screams out "Christmas" but I looked for something different from trees and spotted what I thought could work well in the Holiday Home stamp set. I chose two houses and stamped them onto coloured card, before carefully cutting them out.

I stuck the one down onto some white card and popped the other one up, overlapping them to follow the sketch. I added a stamped wreath to the door of this house. I took out the centre of the wreath by punching small holes using my hand held punch

I added the greeting from the same set and finally popped the  white card layer onto the card base. Very quick and easy to make, I might make a few more of this design to send out to family and friends.

It is actually my birthday today and I'm celebrating quietly at home, as hubby and offspring are all out and about with things on for work, uni and school. Not complaining, may be I will get to do some crafting and I'm sure they will spoil me when they get together at the weekend.

Falling Autumn Leaves

Lovely to see how the trees are showing their gorgeous Autumn colours in full swing now. I am sure that was the inspiration for  my fellow DT teamie Stef's colour challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches this week

I need birthday cards this month, October is very busy with birthdays, especially with work colleagues and so this is what happened when I sat down to craft with these colours. I chose a leaf image from an old set, French Foliage.

I stamped the image, trying to graduate the colours, and included some that were stamped off first. I didn't want it to look too symmetrical, corner to corner, so it is slightly off set.

I stamped the bold sentiment from Happiest Birthday Wishes by first adding the pumpkin ink, then lightly touching the stamp with first the Tangerine and then the Real Red inks. I then used a matching card stock for the mat

Halloween

Do you like making cards for men? I do and today I have a Halloween card to share with you and other followers of The Male Room Challenge Blog.

 A week or so ago I used one of these backgrounds for a CAS card. When you use this technique of inking and spritz in onto glossy card and then moving the ink around with cling film you are never quite sure how it will look when dry. That's what I love about it! This one looks a bit cobwebby and spooky and so I chose it for this Halloweeen card.

To be honest I don't really send cards for Halloween, or I didn't. Last year I sent a card to my daughter and this one will be for my son, who lives away from home, studying at university. It gives me a good excuse to pop a card in the post, everyone loves receiving happy post after all.

I used the cats from You Little Furball again,  just stamped in black and the layout from the card I posted last week. Fred, my son, is another animal lover so I know he'll like this little guy.

The little sentiment is from Holiday Home.

Christmas is coming!

Oh yes it is! So I thought it was time to turn my thoughts to making sure I have enough cards for family and friends. It was the sketch, over at CAS Colours & Sketches which got me started.

Perfect for a card with  Christmas gift tags, although some of my teamies had other ideas- and jolly good they are too, so do hop on over to the challenge blog and have a look, if you haven't done so already

I've gone with a classy white and silver theme. I stamped the Merry from Seasonally Scattered in Versamark before heat embossing in silver. Then I cut it out in a tag shape. The plain one below didn't look quite right so I embossed it with my Mosaic background folder.

I added a swirl of silver stranded twine and a gorgeous bit of bling in the form of a sparkly brad (always room for a bit of bling on a Christmas card, I say).  You can see the details better in this next photo.

There is also a silver glitter card mat with just the smallest edge showing. 

I'm told there are less than twelve weeks until the big day so I guess you'll be seeing a few more cards on my blog in the coming weeks.

Fun Halloween

Had a great afternoon today, making a few DT cards for up and coming challenges and on the way found a couple of challenges that I wanted to enter, just for fun. Here is the card I made.

These little guys were out on my table for a card I'd just finished (will be showing that one in a week or so) and I thought they would be even more fun stamped in bright colours Don't they look cheeky, peering in through the 'window'? The set is of course You Little Furball. You can see how I've popped 
them up on foam pads in the next picture

As these little cats are being a bit 'silly' peering through the window there I thought I would enter them in the current challenge at Casology

This gorgeous colour palette, perfect for a fun Halloween card is from the team at 

 The ColourQ and Make My Monday want to see cats-big and small, well, I never could resist a cat!
I just love all those funny YouTube clips of cats doing crazy things, badly timed jumps, squeezing themselves into ridiculously small boxes, ambushing unsuspecting dogs, humans and other cats. Yeah, crazy cat lady, that's me!

Watery Background Love & Joy

Good morning. It's been a lovely week here in Herefordshire, we've had lots of warm sunshine but my card this morning for the new challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches uses a cool, crisp colour palette

 
I went to my local craft club this week for some inspiration. Here we created backgrounds on glossy card using water and cling film to move and blend the ink on the card. The result is a surprise, every time you peel off the film. I made a few different ones but this one I used a dark blue ink and a light blue ink.

I stamped the image the next day, when the card was well and truly dry and had been pressed in a heavy book overnight. It is heat embossed in gold. The glittery gold hearts are peel offs 

I layered the background on some dark blue card. It was supposed to be a Christmas card, but I think it has evolved into something else!

I am sure you will see the other backgrounds I made over the next few weeks. It was such a fun technique to try

Autumn Retiform

Back to my roots this morning, with some good old-fashioned stamping.

I first saw this technique when a friend posted a card on FB and mentioned that she used the 'retiform' technique. I googled "retiform technique" and there were some excellent tutorials on YouTube. The theme this week at The Male Room is Autumn or fall, so I used my Autumn Days stamp set, which hasn't seen the light of day for quite a while. I added images from Simply Sketched, French Foliage and Lovely As A Tree.

 

I started by masking off areas of the card using More Mustard ink and in this way formed the 'grid'. Then by masking of the individual panels using post-it notes, I stamped the connected images using Tangelo Twist, Chocolate Chip and More Mustard. I made the sentiment attachment using an oval die and the birthday greeting from Simply Sketched. My biggest problem was keeping the ink in the
right place, stamping cleanly and selecting the images moor each panel. Other than that it was a breeze!
Going to link up with the challenge at Make My Monday, haven't played over there in such a long time and I see that they have an Autumn colours challenge.