Merry Christmas!!

Hello all! I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas!! :) Mine was awesome, spent with family and with lots of food. Mmmm. And big news!!! I bought myself a Cricut Expression and have been busy spending time with it. Happy birthday and Merry Christmas to meeeee!!!

Apologies for the lack of blogging over the past month, but I was frantically finishing off Christmas cards and making Christmas presents. I made cards of two sizes this year with the smaller 10cm × 10cm card given to those I don't know as well (such as my colleagues) but still wanted to give cards to. This year's card was inspired by this card (about half-way down the post) created by Nichole Heady who is the awesome co-owner/creator of my fave craft store, Papertrey ink. Seriously, I think I mention PTI in every single post. :) The smaller tree was punched out using a Martha Stewart punch. I dragged out my mother's sewing machine and taught myself to use it (the user manual is great!) and I think sewing on cards can get quite addictive!



And this is what a pile of ~46 odd Old Olive die-cut trees looks like. That's a lot of crankin' through the Big Shot!



I also made calendars for my friends using PTI's calendar page die, which also meant more cranking through the Big Shot. 6 calendars (including one for myself) and one cover for each = 78 calendar pages. I was really, really bored by the time I finished die-cutting them! Here's what they look like, all bound with my Bind-it-all! The one at the end was the prototype, hence the wonky-ness. All subsequent calendars (and the original) were reinforced using re-purposed cereal boxes. :D I love how they turned out. Well worth the time spent stamping and trying to figure out stuff. I haven't made mine, though. Ran out of time. :)







I used the same stamps for each calendar, but mixed up the order so no two calendars are identical. I also embossed half the pages and nearly toasted my fingers in the process! I still haven't started on my own calendar yet as I ran out of time, so hopefully I have it done before 2011 rolls around. :D

I have yet more photos of cards etc., but I'll leave them for the next post. Before I go, I'll share this photo I took of 60 (of the 78) die-cut calendar pages, arranged by month. So pretty!



Thanks for stopping by!!

Sketch challenge #41

Makeesha has designed another awesome sketch, and with Christmas coming soon I decided to try and make a Christmas card.





I wanted to add a touch of colour with copics, but the cheapie acrylic stamp didn't take memento ink well. And I completely forgot to emboss the base with the polka dot folder, even though I had everything out and ready to go. Oops. Anyway, thanks for taking a look! :)

This and that

Apologies for the lack of posts lately. One thing I've ticked off my to-do list is finish making my Christmas cards but I haven't sent them out yet. They've been sitting there waiting to be written in and, in some cases, mailed off and I've finally gotten off my backside and started.




I went with what I thought would be a simple card to make (similar to this one), but just doing 16 was a right pain! Each card takes almost half a metre of ribbon, so I went through 8 metres of red ribbon for this exercise. Thank goodness for the Bow-Easy, which is a fantastic invention that I can use to tie 16 bows in under 5 minutes. The paper on the front of the card is shimmery paper, but you can't see the sheen in the photos. Pretty paper, though. I can't imagine how people mass produce cards, as I don't have the patience. Take Jayne Mercer, for instance, who made over 300 cards! That's an insane number of cards to make! Then again, I've never been a one to give cards for birthdays etc, which I find hilarious seeing that I'm so into card making now. :D

Also, lookee what I bought!


I was given an Eckersley's (art supply store) voucher for my birthday last year and I had to use it before i expired. I normally buy loose patterned paper from there and you had to use the whole $20 at one go. Anyway, the amount bought be exactly 3 Copic Ciao markers so I gave in and bought them, adding in the extra for a colourless blender. I've yet to colour stamped images with them, but they blend together so easily and I love 'em!

As an aside, I was told two weeks ago that the lab wasn't awarded enough grants this year and they can't afford to keep me after my contract expires at the end of January, so I'm hunting high and low for a job. It's a bit difficult in Adelaide, as the market is smaller than cities such as Melbourne or Sydney and about half of the jobs advertised aren't within my area of expertise, so I don't qualify. So, the last two weeks have been a roller coaster and I'm really looking forward to the Christmas/new year break! I can't believe it's nearly the end of 2009!! Even though a lot has happened (like taking up stamping!), it feels like I've blinked and it's whipped by. Oh, another major thing that's happened is that I've finally gotten my learner driver's permit! This is a huge thing, as I'm 10 years over the age at which we can start learning to drive. Go me! :)

Anyway, enough of waffling on. I'd best get the housework done before I run out of weekend. Thanks for stopping by!

Woohoo!!!!

As mentioned in the previous post, I have some new craft toys to play with! I have to thank my wonderfully patient Aunt who aided my obsession by consolidating various parcels and posting them all the way to Adelaide. Thank you, thank you, thank you Auntie Halcyon!!

I arrived home from work on Friday to find a small card from the post office saying there was a parcel for me to collect. The post office closes at 5pm and upon glancing at my watch, I was dismayed to find that it was already 4.55!! ACK! I dropped everything (literally), sprinted out of the house and only just made it before they closed the door. The lady at the counter must have thought I was rather odd, as I couldn't wipe a huge goofy grin off my face. My preciousness had arrived! It was all I could do to not jump around and squeal like a little girl while standing in the post office. That had to wait until I got home and thankfully, there was no one to see my display of apparent lunacy. I couldn't resist taking a photo of my stash.

It's all sooooooo purdy! I've been saving for a while to buy the craft spots from all 4 colour families from Stampin' Up! and I can't stop opening the boxes and gazing dreamily at their loveliness. No more shall I have to ink a stamp with Versamark and then with classic ink in order to emboss with a SU colour! Nay, I can now stamp with the correct ink and clear emboss to achieve that lovely, raised, shiny effect. Be still, my heart!

*cough* I do apologize. I'm still very excited and overjoyed.

I love love LOVE PTI stamps!!!! Especially the Everyday Button Bits set, because it's just so adorable. Lookee at this card I made:

Not the most spectacular of cards, but I just love it. The addition of buttons to the cute little hot air balloon baskets warms the cockles of my heart and makes me smile. Truly, the person who came up with the idea of pairing up buttons with stamps is a genius. Genius, I say! I've also caved in and bought more PTI stuff, but that's still over in the States. Dangerous company, PTI is.

Aside from some SU and PTI items, I also purchased more 12 by 12 papers from SEI's Mimosa collection. No, that obsession hasn't faded, either. In fact, I not only bought more of the papers, but also several (meaning about 7!) ink blocks to match with the colours on the papers! Now all I have to do is find space to put all this new stuff. Good thing I went on a small de-cluttering spree and threw out lots of old papers/receipts etc. I also found an old piece of Whisper White on which I had stamped the leaf image from Fresh Cuts to form a wreath. I saw it when I was blog-hopping but can't for the life of me remember where!


I used some of my brand new red Smooch to colour in the berries, and it has such a nice, pearly shine to it. I decided not to waste the cardstock and made it into a card. Not too shabby for a piece of card that was about to be thrown out.

And now I'm off to get ready for bed. I've been waking up at 6am (for no good reason) and it's making me really sleepy. I'm off to have one last peek at my goodies (for the hundredth time) before I sleep. TTFN!

Simplicity

I was blog hopping the other day when I stumbled across this fantastic blog by Susan Raihala called Simplicity. The woman is a genius and I find her work soooo pretty and inspiring, especially since I have a bit of a fear of empty white space on cards. Make sure you stop by and have a look at her blog and read this absolutely hilarious post, which I'm sure many of us can relate to!

I made a couple of things over the weekend, but the first card I made for Keesh's sketch challenge (which you can see here) was really bugging me. The flourish cut-out was just not right so I ripped it off and replaced it with a smaller square sentiment box. The photo makes it look a wee bit washed out, and the text stamped in pink isn't that light IRL.



I wanted to make a simpler card after seeing Susan's wonderful projects and I picked another paper from SEI's Mimosa collection called Mint Julep, which is also shimmery. It goes really well with Kiwi Kiss, but I find it a challenge to match it up with any other colour aside from white.



I didn't like the first one I made (top), so I tried again and I think it's much better. There is a boo-boo with the first card, but thankfully the paper is forgiving enough that I can get away with it. I tried (again) to capture the shimmer of the paper, and I think you can just about see it in the next photo.



And last of all, I started making my christmas cards. I think it's a bit too much, though. I'll try a simpler (faster) version next time. I entered this card as part of a competition, so I put a lot of glue and glossy accents on that darn bow to make sure it doesn't come apart. That bow is goin' nowhere!



Anyway, have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Challenges galore!

Hi all! I decided to take part on Amy Rysavy's sketch challenge #64 which looks like this

I've been itching to silver emboss the stamps from The Snowflake Spot ever since I first saw them, and Amy's sketch was perfect to try it. I'll probably be disqualified though, as I didn't use any ribbon along the bottom, but I couldn't bear to cover up my snowflakes! I used Night of Navy and Bashful Blue cardstock, along with non-SU! silver paper, silver brads and silver EP. I also used Versamark and Itty Bitty Backgrounds. I love love LOVE the look of silver EP on Night of Navy cardstock! It looks sooooo good in real life, if I do say so myself. Guess what my Xmas cards will be looking like this year. It's rather ironic (the snowflakes), considering it's summer and usually blazing hot over here during Xmas!
And next up is Keesh's latest inspiration challenge!

I thought it was coffee in them mugs at first! But apparently it's soup.

I always think of leaves when I think of autumn, and when I caught sight of the leaves stamp from Itty Bitty Borders, I couldn't wait to try and watercolour it. I stamped the leaves several times on Very Vanilla cardstock to create a wavy border, and watercoloured them using Old Olive, Certainly Celery, Always Artichoke, Summer Sun, More Mustard, Pumpkin Pie, Ruby Red and Chocolate Chip. I had a "Now what???" moment after I finished the border, as all I thought about was the watercolouring! Luckily for me Stem Silhouettes came to the rescue and I inked one of the stamps using More Mustard and Choc Chip. I finished off the card with a strip of Pumpkin Pie DSP, More Mustard cardstock and Old Olive card. I'm happy with how it turned out, considering I hadn't even a rough idea of the finished product when I started.

I was invited to Julia's catalogue launch party over the weekend, and was given free rein to use whatever she had to make a card. I tried out her Good Friend set and stamped the adorable bird using Pacific Point, Choc Chip and Summer Sun. It's a shame my bird ended up slightly blotchy, though. I cut the bird out and stuck it onto Kiwi Kiss cardstock using dimensionals, and added strips of Rose Red, Summer Sun, Pacific Point and Pumkin Pie cardstock. The "Tweet Tweet!" was stamped using Rough Edges Alphabets on Pumpkin Pie cardstock and I used dimensionals to pop them up on the card. Kiwi Kiss is really starting to grow on me, as well as Pacific Point!

I wanted to make a card for a friend's birthday and when asked what her fave colours were, she answered blue and yellow. So Ballet Blue and So Saffron it is! The Ballet Blue looks a lot brighter in the photo due to the crappy lighting. This card came together before I could say 'yea' or 'nay' to anything! I had to try embossing the Reason to Smile set (can you tell I love embossing?) to see how detailed it would be, and it turned out great! I tried it with both clear and white powder, and both looked really good. The white EP would've stood out better on the Ballet Blue cardstock, though. I was too focussed on So Saffron that it didn't cross my mind to swap the colours over. Still, I think it didn't turn out too badly and I hope she liked the card!

Well, it's been a really productive card making week for me! Hopefully inspiration will continue to flow!! Thanks for looking!