Monday, October 17, 2011

Christmas Cards - Inspired by Therese

This year I have been playing in a monthly Christmas Card Challenge put on by Waltzingmouse Stamps. I have 30 cards done now. However, the month of August stumped me: use three designer papers on your card.

I had the idea that I wanted to do ornaments made by die cutting papers with my Cuttlebug ornament die, yet wasn't really inspired. But then I visited (a fellow Canadian Stamp Talk member) Therese Malak's blog and saw her pink ornaments with the "wave" cut through them (please click on the link and go see them) and knew I had to try that.


I used Tim Holtz' Brackets steel die and cut 6 ornaments apart in one pass through my Cuttlebug, which means I could easily paperpiece (mix and match) tops and bottoms and they would all fit well together, with a bit of space on white cardstock to allow the "wave" (more of a thin scallop on mine) to peek through. The designer papers had glitter on them, so I used my Stardust Clear Glitter Pen to outline my white insets as well.


I added a stamped and embossed ornament to each of these cards from the Waltzingmouse Stamps Vintage Ornaments set, cut out with Spellbinders 2010 Heirloom Ornaments. The "branch" is another Tim Holtz steel die: Flourishes. Bonus: these cards are flat, for easy and cheap mailing in December!

Thanks, Therese, for the inspiration! I am entering this in the Christmas Card Challenge Week 46, too.
  

Monday, October 10, 2011

Celebrate


I really like the colour combination of orange and blue. It's probably my all time fave. This card features a stamp from Stampington & Company called Starfish Document from the Christine Adolph Shore Cliff collection. I stamped it in Black Sta-zon on white glossy cardstock that I had first splashed with some Distress Stains and Inks. I stamped it again and fussy cut the starfish, on which I deepened the orange and applied some Distress Stickles. The Stickles were more for texture than colour.

While I had the white glossy out I made a background panel by brayering Kaleidocolor ink and overstamping in Black Sta-zon with a compass stamp. The Celebrate is a Stampin' Up! stamp. The postal mark is a Michelle Ward Post Cube stamp by Stampington & Company.  Square black brads seemed the right thing to use to mount the layers to the marine blue Italian silk cardstock. The latter seems to glow.

This is a happy card. I just sat down and played without much thought. It ended up being just the card I needed for a travelling man's birthday. Love when that happens! And it fits with the Creative Accents Challenge to use orange this month.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Joyeux Noel Christmas Tags


This is one of the 28 tags I made for the annual Christmas Alphabet Tag Swap that the Canadian Stamp Talk Yahoo Group holds each year. Each one was just a little different as I tend to get bored doing the same thing over and over. This fits well with the sketch this week for Challenge #67 at the Waltzingmouse Sketch Challange.


I made the ornaments using the Burnished Velvet technique. The base is one of the Spellbinders 2010 Heirloom Ornament dies. I covered that with Sookwang double-sided tape, then applied various masks made from the tape's peel off liner. With masks in place, I sprinkled one colour of glitter, then removed some masks, sprinkled a second colour of glitter, and then removed the last masks and sprinkled the third colour. I used my finger to burnish the glitter into the tape and it became smooth as velvet but also incredibly sparkly.  Click on the photos to see the glittery goodness!

I cut the masks with dies, such as Tim Holtz's flourish, and border punches. I used punchinella (sequin waste) on a few as I discovered it lifted cleanly off the tape so could be used as a mask.

I got the Letter X in this swap. I decided to use the Joyeux Noel from Waltzingmouse Stamps Very Vintage Christmas stamp set and highlight the X in the word. The boughs were stamped in various green inks to create a background.


Here are a few more individual shots of various tags:

I made a few little acrylic fragment tags for the swap hostess. I have hosted this swap in the past and know the incredible amount of work involved. I really appreciate the effort, and each Christmas it is so much fun to receive a ring with everyone's tags on them.


It's amazing what people come up with to interpret their assigned letter. I have many years' worth of these small "booklets" now and they fill a basket at Christmas and are fun to leaf through. Even non-stampers enjoy seeing them.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

World Card Making Day - Canada Style

Have you heard of World Card Making Day? October 1 is the day. In order to celebrate, we've got a CANADIAN Blog Hop going on.


If you came here from Annie's blog, you are in the right place. If not, be sure to go back to the beginning of the hop and check out Tara's card and the full list of blog participants. We are all hoping to use at least one Canadian item in our creations. Here's my card:



This card features a lovely floral stamp from Ontario-based The Stamp Barn. I bought this stamp at my local stamp store in Victoria BC, Stampers!  The flowers were coloured with Copic markers and popped up with foam pop-dots. The background BFF stamp and the larger "friend" stamp are hand-calligraphy stamps from the BC-based Quietfire Design stamp company. (The polka dots are not Canadian though - shhh, they are Hero Arts.)

Thanks for stopping by my blog, eh? There are 36 Canadian stampers participating in this hop. I can't wait to go hopping to see all the Canuck goodness out there! Now be sure to go to the next blog on the list: and that would be Nicole.