A Heavy Metal Birthday

It's been awhile since I got out the Ten Seconds Studio coloured aluminum and play around. Recently I needed to make a birthday card. I ran a couple shades of pink metal sheets through the Cuttlebug with some embossing folders and backed with Sookwang Tape to secure. I covered the join with a piece of pink velvet ribbon, which is a nice soft contrast to the shiny metal.

It is difficult to get a good photo of metal as it is so reflective. I tried a few angles here.

The flower was die cut twice with Tim Holtz's Tattered Florals die and then I punched out a scallop and used a TSS mold to raise the letter "C" for the birthday girl's monogram. I used the ball and cup to add dots around the rim, and lightly sanded away the colour. The flower looks better In Real Life but you'll have to take my word for it!

Wishing you a Very Merry Christmas!

May your days be merry and bright!

How did I use that tag?

Remember this tag?

Here is the card I made with it:

O Christmas Trees!

Here is my last card for the monthly Christmas Card Challenge over in the forum at Waltzingmouse Stamps. For December we were tasked with creating a one layer card. 

While my card is one layer, I tried to make it interesting. I created an oval by selectively embossing the Holly Ribbon embossing folder in my Cuttlebug. To do this, I place a wooden frame with an oval cut out over my embossing folder and fed it through the machine. This created pressure on all areas around the oval cut out, but left the center oval smooth and flat.

Then I stamped and masked the small and large trees from Nutcracker Sweet and chalked a gradient background. I coloured the trees with Copics. I buffed a silver green metallic wax over the embossing to highlight it a bit, then added a red bow to complement the scheme. Even though it is one layer, I think it has a lot of dimension to it. The teal blue green and lime are a little out there for Christmas colours so I am also entering this in the weekly Christmas Card Challenge that asked for non-traditional colours, and the Seriously Creative Challenges for the simple theme of Christmas.

Christmas Tag and Card for a Knitter

Here's a tag I made from Ten Seconds Studio gold coloured aluminum and a Waltingmouse Stamp from the Nutcracker Sweet set. I ran the metal through my Cuttlebug to emboss with D'vine Swirls:

And here is a special card I made for my dear friend (and avid knitter) Mary:

Front of card, Stampington & Company stamps.

Inside of card

Christmas Card Challenge - CAS Style

The Waltzingmouse Stamps Christmas Card Challenge is coming to a close for 2011 and I have really enjoyed the monthly sparks of creativity. That is, until November. That month, our hostess Lynn Mercurio announced that Clean and Simple Style was the theme. I am sure Lynn thought she was doing everyone a favour choosing something simple. However, this is the theme that was my nemesis. I am not comfortable with white space. I don't do simple. And one look at my crafting space dispels any notion of clean.

It took a month and a half but I finally got inspired. I don't actually need any more Christmas cards, but little gift cards will come in handy as I shift into baking and gift-wrapping mode this week.

The rule was they needed to be completed in about 10 minutes, and once I had the idea for these, that's about how long they took, even with the heat-set Swarovski crystal in the center. They run about 3.5 inches square and I cuttlebug embossed the card front before adding the Frame It layer with the Very Vintage Christmas Stamp Set snowflake at its center.

Clean and Simple Style vanquished! I have entered this in the WMS Sketch Challenge, too.

Labels and Tags for a Good Cause

Today was a fun day! My department hosted the December Monthly Celebration (communal coffee break) at work and we held a baking day to prepare for it. We baked so many goodies (10 or 11 recipes) that we had enough excess to make up five Incredible, Edible Gift Baskets to have as door prizes. We collected Twoonies (the Canadian $2 coin) and gave out draw tickets. All the money ($132) will be going to a local food bank.

I used a number of Waltzingmouse Stamps to create labels and tags. I covered a bottle of wine with a sleeve and a Labels 21 die cut from gold mirror card. Very luxe. Then I added a label made from one of my newer Irish purchases, the Seasonal Remedies set. For the items above, I was greatly inspired by a WMS design team member, Laurie Schmidlin, and her sweet gift set pictured here.

Homemade Raspberry Jam

For this wee jam jar, the sentiment (also from Seasonal Remedies) was embossed in silver, as was the holly medallion stamped from the Around Christmastime set.

The jam and homemade "Rainforest Crisps" packaged for a draw.

Santa (also from Around Christmastime) is featured on this large tag made with the 2010 Heirloom Ornaments Spellbinders die. I embossed the fellow in gold. I dusted off my EZ Bowmaker to create the gold wired ribbon bow.

Wine bottle stands upright in this gold star-shaped wire basket with sleeves of cookies in each of the star points.

Closeup of the fun label for the wine.

Below you can see one of two coiled wire baskets we filled with my personal fave. The simple label is created with Majestic Blue Versafine using a stamp from the Rescue Remedies set.

Homemade Almond Roca - the best!

It was a fun day with my staff making the goodies, and then a fun, fast half hour break with our colleagues to enjoy the fruits of our labours. A nice way to usher in the Christmas season, raise money for charity, and play with my stamps!

Squeeeee! I won!

My two humble renditions of Tosha Leyendekker's tag are now being featured on the Waltzingmouse Stamps blog as winner of the CASE (Copy and Share Everything) competition! My original (now winning!) post can be seen here! What did I win? Fame and glory! My tags will be posted on some of the WMS designers' blogs. 

Thanks to the WMS design team for choosing my project. How on earth do they choose? There were so many worthy entrants. What an honour!

WMS Sketch Challenge #72

Christmas will soon be here! I made a triptych card for the current Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenge.

My inspiration for this project comes from a wonderful Valentine's project by Sharon Johnson that you can see here. I didn't follow her instructions because I didn't have them at hand. I just went from memory. The Labels Fourteen frames and plum pudding are WMS stamps. I used Brilliance Ink in Rocket Red to stamp everything. The letters are die cut. So are the Spellbinders Labels Fourteen, the white center circle and the scalloped red one. I am thankful for my Cuttlebug! The rest is coordinating design papers and ribbon. I accented the plum pudding with a paper-pieced bottom to coordinate with the designer paper and three Swarovski crystal "berries." Noel!

WMS SOAP CASE Competition

The Waltzingmouse Design Team has been showing off old and new stamps in an homage to Christmas.  There have been so many lovelies in the SOAP (Stamp of Approval Parade), and we've been invited to CASE (Copy and Share Everything) one of our favourite designs in the challenge on the WMS blog.

 Tosha Leyendekker's fabulous vintage tag is above. I was smitten by this. Details on how she made it are here. I decided to have a go and ended up with two tags.

This first one gave me a chance to play with my new WMS stamps and Spellbinders 2011 ornament dies. The teal glitter snowflake was negative cut from the dp using a Memory Box die called Bianca Snowflake. I used Martha Stewart glitter and layered a small Spellbinders snowflake over top. I centered a teal Swarovski crystal in the small hole. I stitched all around the edge.

What drew me to Tosh's tag was the vintage feel and creamy colours she used. I decided to try again to see if I could hit closer to the mark. I used some champagne Ritz glitter for the burnished velvet snowflake. I didn't have any paper featuring subtle postal marks and scrolls, so I grabbed some stamps and Antique Linen Distress Ink and tried my best to create my own. Cranberry Adirondack Ink was a good match for the striped dp so I stamped some ornaments with that and hung them with red and white baker's twine. I quite like both tags, even though they are quite different. I have not decided if these will be used as tags or if they will become a feature on a card. Plenty of time before I have to choose!

More Birthday Cards

Really, can you ever have too many birthday cards on hand? In fact, I probably should invest a lot more in birthday stamps and cut back on all the Christmas stamp purchases, given that birthdays are year 'round cardmaking occasions compared to Christmas. (I just can't resist a good yuletide stamp, though!)

This may be the first time I have inked up this Gina K houndstooth label stamp (coordinates with Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels Eight), though I think I have had it for a year. I used Tim Holtz's new autumnal colour Seedless Preserves distress ink to stamp the label and the sentiment.  The background is some gorgeous 6X6 Prima Fairy Flora designer paper that I got from Quietfire Design. I die cut the flowers and leaves and distressed them with more of Timmy's inks. 

Hi, Cupcake! I used a Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenge design for this card, but I didn't use any WMS stamps on it so didn't enter it in the weekly challenge. I'm pleased with how it turned out, though. This was a bit of a twofer - I had the materials out and made the first card, and then used the leftovers to make a second card. Gotta strike while the iron's hot!

Birthday Cards Galore

Lest you think all I make are Christmas cards, I thought I would post some of the birthday cards I have been commissioned by my daughter to make of late. She has a number of friends who were born in November and December. These first two feature a resist technique of layering Adirondack dye inks on glossy paper, from the Nancy Curry book "Texture Effects for Rubber Stamping."

For this one (below) I relied on two Cuttlebug embossing folders from the Once Upon a Princess set of four to do the heavy lifting. The card sketch came from a past issue of Stamper's Sampler.

Rhinestones embellish the next card. The flower is a Hero Arts stamp and the Spellbinders fancy tag is highlighted by the crystals in the Nestabling sticker.

I have two more birthday cards to share... that will have to wait until tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by.

Sweet Greetings

The October challenge on the Waltzingmouse Forum was to use food in your cards. I don't have any of Claire's newest stamps featuring large candy canes and the candy jar, but I remembered what I did last year with the Bountiful Baskets Additions stamps featuring these gingerbread men and that got the wheels spinning. Where else could those gingerbread men be found? I decided to place them in the star and heirloom ornaments.

This first one is my favourite; I like the blue against the textured Cuttlebug embossed snowflakes panel.

For these ones, I pieced together "Sweet Greetings" from the sentiments in the Nutcracker Sweet stamp set, also from Waltzingmouse Stamps.

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.

  

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.

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.