Project: A Bugaboo moose Christmas card

I love Bugaboo stamps - Claire introduced me to them years and years ago and they quickly became a digi favourite. So whenever we have them as a Sketch Saturday sponsor I do a little happy dance.

This image is A Kid's View Moose and I haven't used it for Christmas cards before - I don't know why! I colored a bunch of these and then die cut them in a rectangle and then paired them with lovely tartan papers from a Nordic Christmas stash I have. I embossed a brown card and then added a plain banner. The little tag is in a pop of jolly red to make it pop and stand out.

I love how it came together, I decided to make a few more so I had a little collection of them to add to my Christmas card stash which is always a great thing.

Project: Christmas animals at MAWTT

Hello and happy almost December to you all!

This week at Moving Along with the Times we are celebrating our seasonality by asking for a challenge with festive animals. Hope that will inspire some fun projects for you. 

For mine, I decided to do something different. I have loads of Christmas stamps, loads of images and I thought, why go down the easy route when we could make this harder? :-P So I decided to shop my stash and take a non-Christmas image and turn it into one. I started with a Bugaboo Squirrel image and colored him using Spectrum Noir pencils. I die cut him and added another scallop die behind him. The background paper is an old one that I have had for a while and is particularly hard to work with. I love the colors but I can never find the right image - I decided that now was the time. 

To make it more festive, I added a die cut sentiment from a Tim Holtz set, and then added a little Jolee Boutique candy cane sticker - I think this one might have come from Claire as she knows I love her stickers. I'm actually really pleased with this, it looks really cozy and that's what we want from the holidays, isn't it? 

Project 448: One bulldog stamp 3 ways

Last year Claire gave me this great little French bulldog stamp and as I had just using him for Christmas I used him for wintery thank you cards. This year I decided to have a session playing with him exclusively and had fun making 3 relatively simple makes, keeping the color of the dog the same for all of them.

The headline were the simplest but probably also my favourites. I embossed a red card using a houndstooth folder (see what I did there?) and then die cut the dog in a circle. I used a Tim Holtz sentiment die set to frame the image and it's so simple but I really like how it came out. I added pearl accents to the scarf pompoms and left it at that.

This next one features a Nordic paper set from the stash and I chose one of the busier patterns simply because I've struggled to use them elsewhere but love the colors. I die cut the dog using the matching dies and popped him up on foam tape. I even used my ancient Happy Christmas peel-offs in one of the plain stripes as I couldn't get a sentiment to work otherwise.

I thought I would show this one even though it's my least favourite. I used adhesive fabric (I bought a set at Tiger to see if I liked it - I don't think I do) and a scrap of spotted paper already on my desk. I die cut the dog in a circle again. I think it's the colors, maybe that's why I don't love it. Or maybe I just really prefer the other two. Who knows! Still fun to try the same image a few different ways.

Project: A girly patterned Sketch

I have really enjoyed working with the images from our sponsor Paper Nest Dolls this week at Sketch Saturday, the images are so modern and fun to color. I decided to use Love Strung Ellie and colored her using Spectrum Noir colored pencils. 

I die cut it out and layered it against a spotted paper that I have had in my stash for a long time. I decided to go for pattern overload and make the ribbons patterned as well! I adore ribbon and have dozens and dozens of them. I went for girly patterned ones using some of the colors in the image. The label is ancient and from my stash from Claire. 

Hope the sketch inspires some fun crafting this week! 

Project 447: Some modern colored Christmas cards

I had a playdate with Claire this weekend and we were trying a few new techniques we found on Pinterest. We both had a few learning curves that I thought were pretty funny!

The first was not he headline card, where you mask off stripes and then blend in between. I decided to do a but and purple striped card and then heat embossed a reindeer to go over top in a matte gold color. The sentiment is from the same set as the reindeer, I think I've had him for about 3 years. I think the white stripes are a bit too wide so I need to try to get the balance right. I tried doing it with skinnier stripes but unfortunately that to extreme difficulty trying to blend in a smaller space so there are still some trial/error adjustments to be made!

This little guy was another little play, using a big snowflake stencil and then using Distress Oxides instead of inks on top. They are so chalky and a dream to work with. I don't love the blending work here but I think that is something I could get better at.

All in all a few fun techniques for a short playdate!