Hanging Ornament

Here's a little something I've been working on in the evenings. My favourite Christmas colours are Gold Purple and Cream, Not very traditional I know but I just love that combination. I followed THIS tutorial on YouTube for the basic technique and changed it up a bit for what I wanted. All the bauble stamps were from the Ornaments Keepsakes stamp set and were cut out using the co-ordinating framelits. The Ink is Elegant Eggplant, I wanted a deep rich purple and this fit the bill perfectly. It did look VERY dark when I first stamped it - black almost but became much lighter as it dried (phew!) For the centres I cut out two large snowflakes and four medium snowflakes from the Snow Flurry Bigz Die, from Champagne Glimmer Paper. Those were topped with buttons from the New Vintage Buttons selection and then finished off with a few Basics Peals in various sizes. I linked the decorations using Bakers Twine and of course as almost everything needs ribbon and or a bow, I cracked open a Crumb Cake double whammy using both the Seam Binding Ribbon and Scalloped Tulle Ribbon. And Voile! A beautiful hand made decoration to hang on your wall. I made a few more of the middle decoration to hang on their own on the tree:) What's your favourite Christmas Colour Combination?

Christmas is Coming!

Sorry about the picture...it's very dark outside! 

Last year, I very smugly, had all of my Christmas cards made by October, but this year life has been up dancing in my face distracting me and BAMB! December has appeared out of nowhere and I am completely unprepared for the season of goodwill! Last night my Dear One was out, I had 'Strictly' on Catch Up, and a faint glimmer of energy, so I grabbed the opportunity and and set a full scale production line in order to get my cards finished at last. I had an idea of how I wanted them to look so I made up a rough version and decided to just go for it. I'm determined to have them all handed out/ posted out by Sunday, as i hate having things hanging over me for too long.

 I adore the First Christmas Stamp set from the Christmas Catalogue, I wanted to keep the card simple to high light the beauty of the stamps, so I embossed the images in Gold Embossing Powder on an Elegant Eggplant Card-stock Base. I used the Finishing Touches Edgelit to decorate the base of the card and tied some Crumb Cake Seam Binding Ribbon to add a layer. The top looked a bit bare so I added some Basics Pearls and decided that it was done. Hurrah to have 1 thing ticked off my list of 1001 To-Do's before the 24th! 

New years resolution....Buy a better camera! Or I could just stop being lazy and taking pics on my phone :)

Pumpkin Treat

We don't really celebrate Halloween enough in our house, for me to justify getting a stamp set solely dedicated to the holiday, since the arrival of Little Miss however, I have felt the urge to celebrate it in some way. On our family night we take time to remember members of our family who have gone on ahead. Daddy did some pumpkin carving yesterday and whipped up some pumpkin pies. I roasted the pumpkin seeds in a little olive oil and sea salt for us to enjoy over the weekend, and made these Pumpkin Lollipop Holders for Little Miss to give any Trick or Treaters who might happen past the house on Wednesday.

     The holder was made using the scalloped tag on the Two Tags Bigz Die. The pumpkin is so simple to make, I just punched three Extra Large Ovals out of Pumpkin Pie Card stock (of course!) inked around the edges with some Soft Suede Ink, then stuck two of the ovals to the back of the other. The leaves are from the Bird Builder Punch. On the first pumpkin I traced and cut out a face from some Early Espresso Card stock but the thought of doing that for all of them quickly had me reaching for a pen! I finished it off with a small amount of Old Olive Taffeta Ribbon knotted around the bottom of the lollipop stick.

  I'm hoping to get a tutorial made up for the lollipop holder before December as I'm using the same design to make my advent calender this year, so keep tuned!

Little by Little.

I had seen divided page protectors for sale in a craft shop and had fancied trying them, so when I saw them make an appearance in the new Stampin' Up! Catalogue I had to order a set and give them a go. What appeals to me is that sometimes a whole 12" x 12" page can seem overwhelming, and a lot of space to fill all at once, with these you can work on a little section at a time, the whole page can link up or each section can have it's own little theme, trying out a new stamp set in one, some punch art in another, maybe a section dedicated to journaling and telling the story. While I don't think this page flows very fluently, I had a lot of fun making it, playing with each little rectangle. I can't wait to try my hands at the different combinations that are in the pack. 

 

You may also have noticed that the albums are now Ring Albums instead of Post Albums. This was a change that I was delighted about, while there seems to be more variety here in the UK when it comes to Post Albums, I prefer the Ring style because it makes accessing your pages so much easier. You just turn to the page you want and pop the rings open. The amount of time I have wasted trying to reorganise my pages or add one in, unscrewing the posts, pages slipping everywhere! If you haven't tried Ring Albums before, give these a try you will not be disappointed, they are excellent quality, really sturdy, and come in two sophisticated neutrals. I went for the Crumb Cake 12"x12" but am sure that an Early Espresso 8"x8" Album will be sneaking into my collection fairly soon.

Look At You GROW!

Since Little Miss was born I have taken literally thousands of pictures. The pile to be scrapped grows by the day and yet my free time is virtually non existent . Here I have tried to keep the layout really simple and it came together in around an hour. I love my new alphabet dies as they are going to save me a fortune in alphabet stickers as you can cut out only the letters you need and don't end up with loads of useless V's and Z's!