Project 378: Princess Show Pony card

A colleague asked me to make Claire a Princess Show Pony card. She gave me no context, except to say it was regarding an inside joke. I decided it was far more fun guessing than knowing so I was like 'Sure! I'll go with my imagination!' 

I used a Bugaboo digi for the image and retouched out the unicorn horn so it was a horse. I colored it with ProMarkers and die cut it using a circle die. The background was heat embossed in gold using Stampin' Up dot stamp from the Endless Birthday Wishes set. I then mixed up about 8 Distress Inks on my craft mat and smooshed my paper in it. I used glitter letters to make the sentiment as it had to say just that, didn't it! 

Love the final product and so glad I can blog about it now that Claire has received her card. What a random and lovely commission. 

Project 377: Painted background + sentiment die cards

I bought so many fun things in the Black Friday sales that I couldn't wait to get home and have a play. I bought a fun set of Spellbinders sentiment dies in the sale (not that I needed them...but they looked so nice and not too fiddly) and thought it would be fun to do a patterned background using Distress Inks to make the sentiment pop.

The headline was a scrap from a bigger sheet that I had water colored previously (see this post as an example) and I used a grey scrap for both sentiments. I decided to add a button tied with blue twine because it needed something and I haven't played with buttons in a while.

This one used distress inks applied to a block and then smeared on the page. It's really irregular and thick this way, quite a unique look. I decided to go with the hello die to try something different but liked the little button and twine again.

Really easy and fun, these dies are a dream to work with and look great in the thick card. More play time this week is needed to try all the new stash!

Project 376: Heat embossed painted christmas cards

I found a stash of oval water-colour papers that Claire had given me ages ago. I thought they would be fun to try a mini set of Christmas cards so I had a little play at my desk.

I embossed a few different stamps (reindeer, tree, wreath and a large sentiment) in gold and silver and then painted the background using Distress Ink as watercolours.

I then layered these over patterned paper or washi sheets (really had fun with those!) and decided against a sentiment. I added only a tiny touch of bling to the wreath as it looked naked, otherwise I think they're all much better left with just the pattern of the paper and the heat embossed design. 

I'll confess that the heat embossing got boring pretty quickly but the painting went quickly and because they were already cut to ovals they were really easy to assemble. I'm pretty much done my Christmas cards this year unless I decide to take any orders from colleagues so now it's just about filling them out and sending them! 

Project: Die cut numbers and letters for MAWTT

This week we have a fun challenge for you at Moving Along with the Times: die cut letters, words or numbers. I wanted to challenge myself so this card features a few more techniques that I hope will inspire some projects!

I die cut the HB2Y on a small tag die and layered this over a kraft card tag. The twine keeps it masculine but still a bit playful.

The border was masked off and then blended using a number of Distress Inks. Claire commented that the bottom bit was a bit naked I got out a stencil from Tim Holtz and added some Wild Honey stencil in a line so it overlaps but doesn't compete.

Just as a freebie: I made another tag birthday card as I liked the layout above and made this one really simple. Two stamps from the same Fiskars set, with a fun patterned paper and yellow punched stars.

So another fun little challenge from Moving Along with the Times - get those dies out and play along!

Project 375: Fun cactus thank you

My colleague did the randomest thing the other day: he wanted a cactus (or 2) for his desk and went to a flower shop to get one (or 2). He started bartering and said, what if I get one more? And if I get one more? to lower the cost per cactus. In the end he bought a tray of 17 of them (lowering the cost substantially!) and took the two he wanted, leaving the remaining 15 for all of us on a first come, first served basis. As one of the lucky 15 (wahoo!) I wanted to give him a cacti thank you card for Monday morning.

I went looking at a few of my favourite challenge blogs and found a perfect combo:

Sketch by CAS(E)this Sketch 

Color combo by Color Throwdown 

Paper Players theme of Thankful 

I <3 ProMarkers theme of Distress Edges 

This little stamp is from Claire, I think it may be from Michael's but I'm not positive. I was inspired by the DT at CAS(E) This Sketch and the repeated images a few of them featured. I decided to make my own pattern of cacti, coloring them in with Mandarin, Gold, Oasis, Pear Green and Forest Green ProMarkers.

The bottom half features Broken China and my trusty blending tool, going a bit darker on the edges to meet the I <3 ProMarker challenge, plus some water bleach spots for texture. The Many Thanks sentiment and arrow were also a gift from Claire last year, I honestly can't remember the source.

I had a lot of fun with this one, it's a nice finished piece and still feels masculine for my colleague soi think he'll like it too!

Project 374: 6 takes on Christmas tags

I'm going to a girlfriend's today for lunch and it is a bit of a reunion as 6 of us are going to be seeing each other for tthe first time in a while.

I wanted to take a little hostess gift and though, why not take a little gift for everyone? As we're in November and it is finally acceptable to be publicly talking about Christmas I thought to make little sets of tags. All the tags are pre-made from my stash and I made x5 of each, in all different sizes.

This was a great project, really a playground for fun ideas, simple and more involved. The headline card is a heat embossed reindeer from last year's Creative Stamping magazine freebie set. It embosses BEAUTIFULLY as you can see.

This one used some lovely washi sheets (from Claire) as a background, topped with little Jolee's Boutique gingerbread men stickers. This is probably my favourite for it's cheerfulness.

This one was a 'fun with punches' moment where I used scraps of this warm tartan paper to get the hearts and then topped it with punched bows (also scraps) from a punch Claire gave me that I always struggle to find a use for. It's perfect here.

Next up is a fun Little Claire robin stamp that i colored with promarkers (fairly badly, as you can see) and topped with some red glitter glue. I wasn't feeling the coloring this morning so this is the only one that had it.

This guy features a random mix of small snowflake stamps from an ancient wooden set my husband put in my stocking years and years ago. It still brings me joy as it's so simple.

Finally I diecut some trees and added little glitter glue baubles to make them stand out.

So much fun playing with all these techniques, my original intention was to give a uniform set of each type to a different friend but a) I thought of a 6th concept to play with and b) I couldn't make up my mind to give what to whom. So I just did a mixed set of each for all of them. I hope my friends like them!

Project 373: Custom baby cards

My colleagues have asked me for some interesting baby cards: two for a relative and a third for a colleague who's just about to go on maternity leave.

All of them were super fun to make, let me start with the headline. 

The brief was to make something light and fun for a baby card that wasn't too twee as we don't know her style. I stamped this adorable elephant rubber stamp from Michael's (bargain bucket I think?!) and colored it with ProMarkers, adding touches of Wink of Stella to add some shimmer. I used the stitched circle die as I think it's a bit cuter to have that as an edge. The paper is a scrap from the Neapolitan stack from Recollections and is just so nice, it's a bit precious to me! I added tiny little pink enamel dots just for added charm and I'm really pleased with the result.

Now for the really specialised ones...! This one is a request for my colleague's sister, and the brief was that it must have metallic elements, and she wanted a shaker. So I made a fairly simple layout but added loads of lovely touches, if I do say so myself! The spots are from the Endless Birthday Wishes Stampin' Up set and I heat embossed it using Ranger gold powder. The shaker is full of sequins and these diamond crystals Claire gave me. The sentiment is the same as the above, but I made it a little banner and wrapped it in purple twine. Really festive and fun, she loved it when I gave it to her the next day.

This is for the same family, for the new big sister of the baby above. I kept a similar color scheme as the one above so they'd be related. The brief for this one was 'no pink' so it felt right. She told me that the girl had an owl theme in her bedroom so I went to one of my favourite stamp sets from Get Stamping magazine, which features the same owl in three sizes. SO HANDY. I die cut the letters from a Tim Holtz Sizzix die set as my greeting. I added all the embellishments to make it more fun, with buttons and flowers and things that fit the color scheme and just added little enamel dots for extra texture.

Really happy with all of these and had a lot of fun making them. Just what I needed this week!