Feminine Reindeer Christmas Tag

Hi everyone, Taheerah here wishing you a happy Thursday!

Most of us are probably in full Christmas decorating mode right about now, busily dressing our trees in preparation for the gifts that will nestle beneath their branches. But as we dress up our houses, why not dress up our gifts too? Wrapping paper is a obvious way to do that, but I like to keep the wrapping quite plain and simple, so it doesn't clash with everything else.

How else could we take our gift packaging from simple to spectacular then? With tags, of course!

I absolutely *love* creating gift tags, especially for Christmas. They're the perfect finishing touch and really dress up our gifts and turn them into something truly special. Whether you go for matching or coordinating/complimentary designs, tags can really bring a cohesive look to your gift giving too!

I wanted to create a feminine style of tag that would really jazz up a gift, but not necessarily use something that would be traditionally feminine like flowers. Instead, I opted for the Newton's Nook Designs Reindeer Roll Call stamp set and settled down to play:

Stunning, right?! I love how this turned out!

I love creating 'double tags' - a pair of tags either glued or tied together - it's the perfect way to incorporate additional colours of elements without crowding the design. Here my bottom tag is able to show off a beautiful design with the snow and reindeer without overpowering the look!

I heat embossed the designs on the top and bottom tags with rose gold embossing powder, with the addition of white snowflakes for the bottom tag.

The bottom tag then has rose gold and pink inks blended over it for a gorgeous ombre effect.

A little flick of some iridescent gold glimmer mist and some ribbons and twines and this baby is ready to make my gifts shine!

I'd love to hear what you think of this tag. Is there someone you know who'd love to receive it? Thanks for stopping by!

Krafty CAS Christmas Cards

Hello, Tallie here!

Last week saw one last effort to create some clean and simple (CAS), quick but stunning homemade Christmas cards. I love the classic kraft look with traditional festive colours so all of these cards follow the same simple design. I managed to create twenty cards following this same basic design. This one featuring the 'Oh What Fun' stamp set from Lawn Fawn is my favourite!

I started out by stamping some of the main images from the Lawn Fawn Oh What Fun, Neat & Tangled Bunny Slopes, Mama Elephant Santa Sleigh and Avery Elle Christmas Magic sets. I used some MFT Extreme Black ink and coloured the images in with my Copic markers, sticking to festive reds, greens and greys. I used my Scan N Cut to cut out the images, though there are coordinating dies available for each of the sets.

I used a snow stencil and some Lawn Fawn Yeti ink to add some snow to the background of some A6 kraft cardstock panels. I then adhered the panels to white card bases.

I die cut a bunch of banners using the Lawn Fawn Everyday Sentiment Banners set and stamped the 'Merry Christmas' sentiment from the Lawn Fawn Holiday Helpers set in some Lobster ink. I foam mounted the banners under the main elements.

This is a great way to get some use of those sets sitting in the Christmas stash. All that's left is to send them!

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

     

Floral Embossing

After months of making Christmas cards, I’m back making birthday cards again. Today I have a floral card to share, with a touch of embossing.

On a white card panel, I first stamped my greeting from the Avery Elle Loads of Wishes stamp set.

Above the sentiment, I stamped a cluster of flowers from the Altenew Wildflower Garden stamp set, using MFT cube inks in the colours Persimmon, Sunshine, and Cornflower.

I gave the panel a quick blast with my heat tool, to make sure the ink was dry. I then stamped some leaves around the flowers, using an embossing ink, before heat embossing with silver embossing powder.

I adhered the panel to a white card base, then finished with some sparkling clear jewels around the flowers.

Have a lovely day,
Gemma

Altenew Wildflower Garden

Avery Elle Loads of Wishes

Pretty Hellebores

Hello there, Jenny back again to start your week off and today I have a floral card.

Hellebore's are one of my favourites in the garden, you have to have a lot of respect and 

love for a plant that flowers this time of year! The Hellebore Builder is a great stamp set

 for winter Birthdays as well as Christmas crafting..

Hellebore's come in a few different colours but I have to say the whites and greens 

are my favourite. For my card I went with pink, purple and white and the white was 

the easiest to choose colours for and stamp!!

To make the white hellebore, I first used the die to cut the flower shape from card which is 

a top tip Dawn passed on in a video using the set. I then stamped onto the die-cut using 

Hero Arts Unicorn White for the base layer, then Avery Elle's Silver Fox

 and finally last layer is Mama Elephants Moonlight.

The flowers are clustered on the corner of a frame which is made using two of the 

Fine Frames Rectangles dies from Altenew ( this die will be back as soon as possible)

 and the sentiment is from the lovely Birdie Brown Greetings Galore set

                                 

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Baubles and Snowflakes

I've been making a Christmas banner for our dining room this weekend using a couple of dies from Concord and 9th which although released a year apart are perfectly sized to pair together for a fun bauble and snowflake banner.

I used their Ornamental and Snow Flurry dies combined with AlteNew's Caps Bold Alphabet dies which fit perfectly on the die cut shapes.

I started with the baubles and die cut 3 "spacers" from mermaid card stock using the die cut patterns that come with the Ornamental die. 

 
I then cut another 6 outline baubles as I wanted to stamp and emboss a pattern on those before adding the letters.  I used Hero Art's Holiday Floral Bold Prints background stamp and simply embossed it in copper.  (any colour combo would work - our dining room is teal, grey and copper so I just picked a scheme to match our decor.)

The easiest way to emboss the pattern is to turn your stamp upside down place the die cut shape on top and cover with a scrap of paper and rub all over.  Both sets of baubles were topped with copper die cut bauble toppers which come in the ornamental die set.

The snowflakes were simply just cut from the Pixie Dust card for a bit of sparkle and then the copper die cut letters added (I used copper mirri but you could die cut and heat emboss your elements too)

To turn it into a banner, I planned on just hanging them from ribbon with some tiny copper pegs which I KNOW I have in the house somewhere.........   However, when they failed to come out of hiding, I just used a glue dot to secure each in place instead.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out - it's a quick make for big impact.

 
NEWS FROM THE STORE

We will have the new MFT release this week.

We will have the new release from Lawn Fawn on the 13th

We are also expecting Altenew and Hero Arts but have no eta as yet.


That's all for today - catch you later

Tara

Snow Bunny

Hey stampers, Anni here!

Reverse Confetti's Snow Bunnies are just so super cute! I made a Christmas card featuring the bunny on the sleigh but it is definetly a winter set you can use all through the season.

I started by stamping, colouring with alcohol markers and fussy cutting the bunny.

Then I created my DIY glitter paper. I ink blended Distress Oxides in Peacock Feathers and Cracked Pistacchio onto a piece of white cardstock. When it was dry I added a layer of Stick It! adhesive. On this adhesive I sprinkled some white glitter - finished was my customized glitter paper.

For the background I die cut one of My Favorite Things' Stitched Mini Scallop Rectangle STAX. To add more interest to the rectangle I used Lawn Fawn's Stitched Trails. These dies are an easy way to give structure to your project - not only for trails.

To create the snowy hills I used a die by My Favorite Things. It is actually called Scenic Safari but I think it makes snow hill for the bunny to toboggan on as well. I die cut it from white cardstock and from my DIY glitter paper, too.

Then I arranged the little scene and added also a sentiment from Lawn Fawn's Reveal Wheel Holiday Sentiments.

Thanks for stopping by and gave a crafty weekend.
Anni

            

Mess Free Christmas Crafting with Kids

We had my great-nieces visit last weekend and they were very excited to play in Auntie Ra-Ra's craftroom.  The problem with that is which is actually the office too at the minute and there isn't room for 3 kids and 2 grown ups, so I decided we'd be better in our newly carpeted dinning room.....   So here is how I put my mess free krafting plan into action with a little forward planning to make up some "sticker style" card kits that were easy for all to make (from 2  years upwards)

I used a couple of Mama Elephant dies that were designed to go with their favor bag die but they work brilliantly on cards as well - one die gives two different characters too so lots of fun for your money.   I used Santa/Elf and Snow/Deer and just picked one of each design to make (you can tweak the elements and make 3 different snowmen, deer, Santa's etc depending on how you place the elements)

To make them mess free (ie no glue!) I simply covered my card with stick-it sheet glue before die cutting all the elements and thereby creating "stickers" for the kids to just peel off and stick onto their cards.

We added rosy cheeks with the aid of a blending tool and replaced die cut eyes with googly eyes for some of the characters.

I used hints of glitter paper for some of the elements to add some mess free sparkle and added more fun kid-friendly embellishments like a sparkly pompom nose and a pipe-cleaner collar complete with added jingle bell.  

To give all the characters a body I just die cut semi-circles using a circle die.   As the snowman card was lacking colour we added a stamped sentiment to him using a wooden Season's Greetings stamp by Hero Arts - wooden stamps are easier for kids to handle as they are thicker and easier to hold than an acrylic block.

We crafted for a couple of hours and each kid made all four cards and we also finished with a wreath for each of their bedroom doors.

This was made using a foam wreath (I bought a pack from the Range but you could just use a green die cut card circle instead cut using two dies so you get a hole in the middle) and LOTS of die cut holly leaves.   Now you may think of my that's too many leaves to cut, but there is a little trick - I cut them all in just a few passes by using crepe and tissue paper folded over so you cut a lot in one pass.  I used Reverse Confetti's Holly Die as you get two different sized leaves but but are a good size for wreath making.  I did a few in copy paper weight too to be the base layer but again folded the paper to but a few in one pass.   The thing to note is that cutting many layers of thin paper at once works fine, but your papers become compressed within the die - so you'll need to spend a little time "peeling" the layers apart after (took me an episode of Corrie to peel about 20 different die cuts but that gave me enough to make 6 wreaths at least)

We (as in the adults in the room) simply randomly added dots of wet glue (Lawn Fawn of Ranger Multi Medium would be perfect) all over the wreaths and let the kids stick the holly on.  More glue for the next layer and repeat until the whole wreath is covered in multi-coloured layers of green.  Finished with red tinsel pompoms and a big gold bow with a tinsel pipe cleaner centre - the bow is die cut from gold pearl paper using Lil' Inker Designs Large Bow Die (a fold in the base layer provides the dangly tails rather than a straight across line)

15 kids projects made and the only thing that ended up on the new carpet was a lunchtime yoghurt ;-)

Hope this inspires you to get crafting with the kids if you don't already.

Catch you on Sunday with some more Christmas crafting.

Tara