Beach Holidays

 

My Roar No More card made me a Princess at Freshly Made Sketches this week :)  And in true Princess style, I have done nothing since!  So I thought I’d post another of my Dirty Dozen cards.

The theme for this month was the song Summertime. 

Summertime in Australia of course means long school holidays, the beach and Christmas.

 

Most Christmas stamps are very "snowy" so I decided to try to make a Christmas beach card instead.

I brayered my circle with pool party and turquoise at the top and river rock at the bottom. I also added some dots of white pen at the waters edge for the foam. I used copics to colour the thongs and also added a little shadow on the sand.

I didn’t exactly use traditional xmas colours either, but I was trying for a tropical Christmas look.

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : Sunny Fun, Four the holidays

Card : espresso, white, pool party, calypso coral, everyday enchantment dsp

Ink : pool party, turquoise, river rock, memento black

Other : white pen, brayer, square scallop, big shot, , square punch, copics

 

Kathy

Peaceful Pine

A friend asked me if I would do a Christmas stamp a stack for her and we had a great time yesterday creating together!

One of the cards we made was this one which I based on this week’s wonderful sketch challenge at Mojo Monday. 









Ingredients :
Stamps : Watercolour Winter, Four the Holidays
Card : river rock, vanilla, espresso, dsp stack neutral
Ink : espresso, suede, olive and crumb cake markers
Other : tasteful trim die, big shot, lacy brocade ef, river rock ribbon (ret.)


Not long till Christmas now and still so many cards to be made!


Kathy

Violin Mojo

 

There is a wonderful sketch at Mojo Monday this week, which is great for me because I needed to get cracking on my Christmas card making.

My daughter has been in the Hobart Youth Orchestra this year.  She has had some wonderful teachers and made some great friends too.  She is even in a string quartet now!  They range from 8 to 11 yrs old and have just starting practicing Christmas Carols and are going to give busking a try.

So I thought it would be great to make some violin Christmas cards to give to all the musical people in her life.

 

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : Violin Girl (MFT), Four the Holidays

Card : Cherry, vanilla, lucky limeade, festival of prints dsp, be of good cheer dsp

Ink : memento black, stazon, crumb cake

Other : copics, square punch, vintage faceted button, retired ribbon, big shot, polka dot ef

 

Kathy

Little Trumpet

There is another great sketch for Merry Monday this week.



And I got this stamp this week and couldn’t wait to play with her.  It was a perfect match!  It has been a really wet, dark, cold and dreary day in Hobart today but I had a lovely time in my craft room colouring her and making this Christmas card  :)



Ingredients :
Stamps : Little Trumpet (Lili of the valley), Four the holidays
Card : baja, white, xpress-it
Ink : baja, stazon, memento black
Other : copics, spica, white pen, nesties

Kathy

Peaceful Tidings

 

Well last week’s Merry Monday came and went and I didn’t get around to making a card for it :(   But the week before that LeAnne chose me as her top pick :) Thanks LeAnne.

Here is this weeks Merry Monday sketch.

 

I used the Tidings of Joy stamp set again for this week’s sketch but in a way that makes it look totally different.  I hope you’ll leave me a comment and let me know which one you like best.

 

 

I had seen some beautiful copic cards just using greys and I really wanted to give it a try with this stamp.  These are warm greys and they actually matched better with soft suede and espresso than they did with grey.  Kind of a sepia look I guess.

The ribbon is crumb cake seam binding and it looks much better IRL as it just kind of blends in with the dsp behind it while still noticing the nice sheen it has. In the photo it looks completely different and much more dominating than it really is unfortunately. You’ll have to trust me ;).

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : Tidings of Joy, Four the holidays

Card : espresso, suede, x-press it, mocha morning dsp

Ink : memento black, versamark, espresso

Other : clear embossing powder, crumb cake seam binding, copics

 

I was really happy with how this card turned out and I finally found a use for that dsp too.  (I love the look of it but I just haven’t been able to use it much?)  I think it will make beautiful Christmas cards :)

 

Kathy

Trim Tree

 

The challenge at JAI this week is to Just Add Sparkle.

I decided to make one last Christmas card for this challenge.

 

The card is much more sparkly in real life.  The snow was made using heat and stick powder and dazzling diamonds.  I white embossed the snow flakes onto shimmery white and then put a dab of glue and dazzling diamonds in the centre of the larger ones.  I sponged pip, pool party and marina mist over the top of the embossing for the sky.

The tree was made using the scallop from the tasteful trim die.  I layered these on top of each other and cut the tree out by hand because it ended up being too thick to cut with my paper cutter.

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : Four the holidays, confetti, woodgrain

Card : choc chip, pink pirouette, shimmery white, white, celery, wasabi, garden green, crumb cake

Ink : choc chip, versamark, pip, pool party, marina mist

Other : Big shot, tasteful trim, white ep, heat and stick, dazzling diamonds, rhinestone, hodgepodge hardware, clear ep

 

Please take a look at the other sparkly creations the design team have made this week and play along with our challenge.

As this will be my last Christmas card for the year, I would like to take this chance to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and I hope you get some time over the holidays to relax and create.

 

Kathy

Christmas Violins

At JAI this week the challenge is to make a Christmas card using a non-traditional Christmas set.  The design team have come up with a lot of wonderful ideas so please take a look and why not try this challenge yourself.



I wanted to make a unique Christmas card for my daughters’ violin teacher.  Unfortunately Stampin Up don’t have a violin stamp so I went looking and found this one.  It looks a lot like both of my girls, who have long hair and freckles so I just had to use it. Unfortunately though, because I turned the small one to face her big sister it has made her left handed (which she isn’t) but the card just worked better that way.

Ingredients :
Stamps : Four the holidays, (The Greeting Farm digi) Chibi Violin
Card : real red, shimmery white, vellum cardstock
Ink : stazon
Other : blender pen, aquapainter, watercolour crayons, square punch, mini library clip, dazzling diamonds

I Googled the sheet music for ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’ and printed it on to vellum card.  This is on top of a piece of shimmery white. 
The girls are on shimmery white too and I used a variety of watercolour wonder crayons and ink pads with an aquapainter and blender pen to colour them.  I dressed them in red and green to try to make the card look more “Christmassy”. They are cut out and attached with dimensionals to give the card some depth.
I love the shimmery white card stock, it is so great to colour on and looks beautiful too.
I wanted this card to be special.  It’s for an amazing lady who is a wonderful and caring teacher for my girls.
I hope she likes it :)

Kathy

They’re baaaack

At Just Add Ink this week we have a wonderful sketch from Bronwyn to inspire us.

 

                               

 

I decided to make another Christmas card.  I don’t enjoy making the same card over and over again so I love using these challenges as a way to build up my supply of Christmas cards. 

 

 

“They’re baaaack”!

The gorgeous ribbon flower that is.  I decided to see whether I could use a flower that wasn’t a poinsettia on a card and make it look “Christmassy” and of course I had to choose this sort of flower :)

I used a leaf from French Foliage with it and I think they worked really well together.  I used old olive ink on river rock card and clear embossed them.  They look great in real life.

I stamped and embossed clear the Merry Christmas with cherry cobbler.  The cherry background has also been embossed with the stripe embossing folder and it really added a lot to the card but unfortunately you can’t see it much in the photo.

With the addition of my favourite ribbon, cherry seam binding, I think my Christmas ribbon flower experiment was a success.

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : four the holidays, french foliage

Card : vanilla, river rock, cherry, naturals ivory

Ink : versamark, cherry cobbler, old olive, crumb cake

Other : big shot, stripe ef, vanilla satin ribbon, cherry seam binding, antique brad

 

The rest of the design team have created some gorgeous cards using this weeks sketch.  Please take a look and use our sketch as inspiration too.

 

Kathy

Post stack

 

I held a Christmas stamp-a-stack on Saturday and it was another successful, fun day stamping with friends  :)

This is one of the cards we made.  There was no clear favourite for “Best Card of the Day”, but this one did get lots of votes.

I wasn’t entirely sure whether a subtle, vintagey, Christmas card would be appreciated or not.  But I did have lots of other bright ones for the ladies to make so I thought I would give it a try.  Luckily they actually really liked this one a lot!

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : Winter post, four the holidays, vintage vogue

Card : crumb cake, vanilla

Ink : suede, crumb cake

Other : big shot, framed tulips ef, square punch, pearls

 

I have only just bought the Four the Holidays stamp set.  It’s lovely, but funnily enough the “Season’s Greetings” sentiment was the one I wasn’t fussed about, yet it’s the one I reached for immediately for this card.  It just worked perfectly.

 

Kathy