Tidings Of Comfort & Joy

Hey!

Happy Thursday. I'm back today with a couple more Christmas cards to share with you. Serious panic mode has set in and I need to make as many as I can before the last posting dates. I do this every year and really should be more organised!

I decided to use the recently released WPlus9 Winter Greenery clear stamp set as I'd not got round to inking it up. 

The leaf stamps were what originally caught my eye with this set, along with the beautiful sentiments, so this is what I focused on for my two cards.

For this first card I decided to use traditional Christmas colours and added some sparkle embossing to add a little Christmas magic. 

As usual I used my 'go to' Altenew ink colours as they really do take the thinking out for layering stamps. The leaves in the set are really easy to layer too, with or without a stamping tool.

Lastly I saw a card by Jessica Frost-Ballas HERE and just had to use the non-traditional colour scheme she had used. AND I LOVE the result!

I am a total sucker and love of grey! I love the Winters night feel this card has and added some white gel pen snowflake dots for that little bit of Christmas magic! 

That's all from me today, I hope I have inspired you with your last minute Christmas card ideas!

Crafty Hugs 

Bev

Products Used:-

Altenew Tropical Forest

Altenew Gentlemans Grey

Altenew Red Cosmos 

Hero Arts Unicorn Ink

Hero Arts White Embossing Powder

VersaFine Onyx Black

Rainbow Wreath

Hey & Happy Thursday!

It's Bev here and today I have something a little bit different to share with you. I don't know about you, but I am always finding creative inspiration on Instagram lately. Recently I saw a beautiful rainbow wreath made from die cuts and it's been on my 'to make' list ever since!

I've also been having a 'treat yo'self' week and ordered lots of new crafting supplies, including the Winter Greenery dies from the recent WPlus9 release. These are designed to match the coordinating stamp set Winter Greenery, but I have just used the leaf sprig die seen on the right of the product image below.

I set to choosing a rainbow of coloured card offcuts from my stash and set to die cutting three of each colour and I have 15 colours as I just love colour and couldn't leave any of my favourites out! 

For the base of the wreath to secure the die cuts to, I used the Wreath Base available from the store and seen below. It is a jute wrapped wire ring and is perfect for adhering card, paper, felt and more.

Before I started adhering the die cut leaves, I added some linen thread to be able to hang the wreath once it was finished. I then started by adding one of each of the colours of leaf to the base using liquid adhesive, similar to this Lawn Fawn Glue Tube.

After adhering one of each colour I went back adding another of each colour, until I had used all three leaves of each colour.

I procrastinated for some time as to how to finish off the wreath and finally settled on the 'With Love' sentiment banner from Concord & 9th Mistletoe Messages stamp set. I've adhered this to the wreath using foam adhesive. 

I also added some adhesive crystals randomly around the wreath for a little added sparkle and interest. I think in all this took me about 3 hours to make from start to finish and it was thoroughly enjoyable. 

I am now thinking of trying a stamped & die cut rainbow version! The leaves in the stamp set are 2 step, so you could really play around with colour layering. I will be sure to share if I do get round to making it.

That's all from me today. I hope you have enjoyed seeing my project as much as I enjoyed making it! Until next time, thanks so much for stopping by.

Crafty Hugs

Bev 

Share Handmade Kindness

Hey!

I'm here today to Share Handmade Kindness with you all, hopefully it will inspire you to send out some handmade kindness to someone this week :)

This week Jennifer McGuire is celebrating 3 years of sharing handmade kindness and I thought it would be lovely to honour this anniversary too, using the Hero Arts Acts of Kindness clear stamp set and the Share Handmade Kindness fancy die.

I've a trio of cards to share using a combination of the stamps and dies seen above paired with other awesome products.

The Hero Arts Acts of Kindness clear stamp set is mainly sentiments, apart from the few heart accents. With sets like this, it can often be difficult to know how to use the sentiments in a creative way. One thing I love to do, especially with bolder sentiments is shadow stamping.

This is super easy to achieve using a stamping tool, a coloured ink and black ink. Once I stamped the sentiment I felt it needed a beautiful butterfly to accent it, I chose one from WPlus9 Beautiful Butterflies was the perfect choice.

Next, I wanted to use the 'Throw Kindness Round Like Confetti' sentiment, as I had the perfect choice of stamp set to pair it with...

I think this is the first card I have made with one of Concord & 9th turnabout stamp sets *shocked face*. Obviously the best choice was the Confetti Turnabout clear stamp set.

I used a selection of Altenew inks to stamp the confetti and then over stamped the sentiment in VersaFine Onyx Black ink. I finished the card with a small hear accent filled with glittery dimensional  drops and also added some to a few of the confetti drops.

Lastly for today I had to use the Share Handmade Kindness fancy die...

This is a wonderful sentiment in a beautiful font and I instantly thought to showcase it with the inlaid die technique. I used Hero Hues Azalea card stock and it looks shockingly pink against black. But I love it! 

I finished this card off with a sparkly embossed heart, fussy cut and adhered to the card using foam adhesive.

All the products I've used can be seen below. I hope you find some creative time today and that you are inspired to share some handmade kindness.

Crafty Hugs

Bev

Dreaming Of A White Christmas!

Hey All & Happy Thursday!

With Christmas only 11 weeks away, I thought I had better make a start on my Christmas card stash. Yep, I am usually one of those leave it to the last minute and panic kind of Christmas card makers, but I am doing my best to not let that happen this year ;)

I am also one of those people who constantly dream of a white Christmas and I absolutely LOVE snow and snowflakes! 

So when I saw WPlus 9 Merriest Snowflake clear stamp set, it had to come and live with me and I've used it for a trio of cards to share with you today.

For my first card I kept things really CAS, but with a lot of sparkle! Christmas card making is the perfect time to dig out those sparkly embossing powders & metallic inks we all hoard ;) 

This stamp set contains a lovely large snowflake wreath image, which I stamped in silver metallic ink, heat embossed with some sparkly embossing powder and coloured with blue alcohol markers. I also added some clear dimensional to the centres of the snowflakes which make up the wreath. The sentiment is one of the smaller sentiments, stamped in VersaFine Onyx Black ink and adhered using foam adhesive. 

Next, I wanted to used the large snowflake wreath image as an all over background and I've been itching to give the Hero Hues Paradise premium card stock an outing. 

This is one of my favourite colours and it makes me happy to pair with snowflakes too! Again, I have stamped the image in silver metallic ink, heat embossed with some sparkly embossing powder. 

I then added the 'merriest wishes' sentiment, stamped in VersaFine Onyx Black ink and heat embossed with sparkly embossing powder. Some glossy white dimensional drops were added to the snowflake centres finished my design. 

Lastly I have a really quick CAS design...

I used a combination of the sentiments accented with the small star image, all stamped in VersaFine Onyx Black ink and heat embossed with sparkly embossing powder. 

I added some coordinating colour to the stars to match the Hero Hues Paradise premium card stock I have used as a mat layer. 

That's all from me today, I hope I have inspired you a little with your Christmas card making. Thanks for stopping by & see you again next week :)

Crafty Hugs

Bev 

Products Used...

Merry and Bright

Hello, it's Liz here today. The Christmas box has been moved to the front of the crafty cupboard and I've made a start! My card features two stamp sets both by Wplus9. The sentiment panel and flowers are from the Be Merry set and the reindeers are from the Santa's Reindeer set. I love the mix of modern fonts and the quirky way the reindeers have been drawn.

I have the matching dies for both of these stamp sets (you can find them here - Be Merry and Santa's Reindeer)so this card was super easy to make, just some quick colouring with my markers and job done. I didn't add any finishing touches or embellishments as I wanted to keep the look clean, modern and fresh, I hope I pulled it off!

Thanks for stopping by today, happy crafting!

Dimensional heat embossing over die-cuts.

Hello everyone.

 I'm back with a very fun technique today - dimensional stamping. 

I used Christmas Rose Bouquet and No One Else stamp sets from Wplus9, along with Hero Arts Pebble cardstock. 

My first step was to stamp and colour the main image from the Christmas Rose Bouquet set with alcohol markers. After that, I fussy cut it out using scissors.
I chose to use Hero Arts Hero Hues cardstock in Pebble as my card panel.

After deciding where to position my florals, I used repositionable adhesive to temporarily adhere them in place. It is a very important step, as you got to be able to peel it off later.

 As you can see the sentiment is overlapping with the adhered image and still lines up. To achieve that look, I did make sure that my stamping on the card panel ( grey ) was lining up with stamping on my florals.  I used clear embossing ink to stamp it. I then removed die-cut and restamped it in the same position on the cardstock with the same ink.  I heat embossed it with white embossing powder. 

My next step was to adhere the bouquet to the base. I decided to use liquid glue instead of foam tape because I wanted the focus to be on the overlapping sentiment, but you can definitely use dimensional adhesive here.

 I chose to add a few sequins and sparkle to the florals with a shimmer pen.
My last step was to glue the whole card panel to the slightly larger, white card base with foam tape.
This card is all done! 

 

Thank you for stopping by today! See you soon. Anna 

Sticker Stamping!

Hi! Happy Tuesday again!
Thought I'd revisit a technique I tried years ago. It's great fun and you've probably got some in your craft room already... label sheets.
Any plain ones will do. Round ones look particularly fab.

You only really need label sheets and colouring supplies.

I've used a stamp set from WPlus9- and this one is in stock and would do perfectly

First off- grab a sticker'label sheet

 Next, I stamped and heat embossed

Colour in next. Be warned- the paper for these stickers is super thin so it won't take much water without tearing.

Lastly, just transfer them using something sticky- a transfer sheet. I use Oracol (for use with my Silhouette). Then, pop it onto a card blank and finish the project off

Fancy doing something a little more contemporary? I've used thinner labels and only partly covered the card. I die cut the sentiment

Just add a layer of black cardstock underneath the negative die cut space to help give dimension and then add the word using foam pads

It works for larger sized labels too- I've created this simple unisex card

using the My Favorite Things Undeniable Chemistry set

These label sheets look fantastic brayered over too. Stamp in black or white emboss and then add different brayered colours. Hope this inspires to give it a go!

See you next week!

Keren xx