Forgotten Friday 40

It is thanks to Miranda that I dug these stamps out to use this week and to my shame although I've had them for ages (we're talking years here) they had never been inked - how bad is that??  Do take a look at her blog to see some of her lovely work.  This card was made for Judith's Forgotten Friday challenge and of course this is another blog which has beautiful work - they are both on the Chocolate Baroque design team and these large flower and leaf stamps are CB (formerly Elusive Images).  First of all I stamped one of the large flowers on a piece of ivory card with Versamark and clear embossed, then applied various Distress inks with cut'n'dry foam and overstamped with a swirl stamp in one of the colours to give a subtle effect.  The leaves were stamped also with Versamark and embossed with Queen's Gold, coloured using Copic pens and cut out before arranging them on the card with a small gold die cut flower (Marianne die).  This weekly challenge is brilliant for making me use items which lie neglected and sometimes even completely forgotten - thanks Judith.

Bah Humbug 45 Again

When I saw this  Bah Humbug challenge earlier I thought it was a shame I couldn't use the lovely gift bag we made at the Extravaganza last weekend so went ahead and made the little gift box.  However I have now made another bag following the  ideas but using different papers and stamps from my own stash.  Card and background papers are bits from my oddments and I used an EK Success punch for the decorative edge.  Stamps and punches used were from Stampin Up apart from the actual words which were stamped inside the label border with a greeting from a Polkadoodles set. I must say I had a problem finding a greeting stamp small enough to fit - I have lots of greeting sentiments but most are too large for any of my fancy punches and I usually resort to printing them on the computer.

Bah Humbug Challenge 45

One way and another I've not managed to get into the craft room much this week so today as I wasn't going out I decided I'd make a start on what I hope is a crafting weekend and make a little gift box for the Bah Humbug challenge.  They were asking for a gift bag or box as a change from cards so I decided to go with an idea which I saw on Jo's Blog so I can't really claim it was my idea but I have made a variation of what she produced.  Do go and take a look at her blog because there are some great tutorials on there for unusual items like this one.
I used the little milk carton Sizzix die from Stampin Up and cut a circular window from one of the sides and adhered a piece of vellum inside before making it up.  The roof on mine was made from a strip of card embossed and corners rounded.  The decoration on the little house was made using Pines and Poinsettias stamp set also from SU.  This particular house has a flashing tea-light inside (battery of course - not the candle type) but  you could of course use the box to hold a small gift. Unfortunately this doesn't show up particularly well on the photo which was taken using flash due to the light being poor this morning.  Jo managed to get much better photographs of hers and I'll propbably try again when the light improves.

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Make My Monday challenge 24

The good people at MMM this week are looking for a CAS (clean and simple) Christmas card with emphasis on the wording and plenty of  'white space'.  Those who know me will be aware that this isn't really my style but I'm always prepared to have a go so I've used two stamps from Chocolate Baroque steampunk Christmas set stamped with Versamark and embossed with Ranger Queens Gold. It was so hard to resist adding a bit more of something in the wide open spaces.  I carefully cleaned the scanner glass (twice) before I got a clean image and now I see there is a tiny mark at the bottom which isn't on the card - honest!!  Do go and take a look at the great cards from the design team.

Bah Humbug Challenge 44

We are on week 44 at Bah Humbug which means I must have at least 44 cards ready for the festive season so that's good news.  This week they are asking for a Baby's First Christmas card which had me thinking a bit for ideas I must say until I remembered this lovely baby stamp from Lili of the Valley.  I coloured him with Coloursoft pencils so that he looks like a mini Santa and I added a bobble on his little hat.  The 'fur' around his hat and the bobble have been covered with textured glitter snow but it doesn't look too glittery on the scan.  The sentiment was produced on the computer.  While I was waiting for the snow to dry I went for a walk and that's when I do a lot of my thinking - I realised it would be a first Christmas for my great nephew so used a Stampin Up pennant punch and X-cut letter dies to add his name.  The image was popped onto a Marianne die cut to which I added some narrow ribbon.  It is thanks to Jenny (Stamping Moments) for that idea as yesterday I went to a brilliant SU Extravaganza day where we made some lovely projects - do take a look at her blog and you will see some of the things we made.