Santa Selfie

I'm slowly working my way through a small portion of my NBUS mountain! I had used one of the stamps from this set before, but not this one.

I coloured it with Copics and also the small mat it is sitting on. Originally I was going to use a plain card blank but it just looked too bare. Background paper didn't look right either. Then whilst I was browsing blogs and Pinterest I saw some cards with embossing on and I had a lightbulb moment! It is ages since I used one so it was high time to get them out. I think I might have used it before but not sure! 

 

Challenges:

Let's Squash It- Christmas

NBUS

Santa for Happy Little Stampers

Having had a break with two birthday cards, I'm back in Christmas mode.  This time I have used another NBUS stamp, this cute Santa from Uniko.

I co;oured him with Copics and fussy cut him, then gave him some HOHOHO's to stand on. This from a different Uniko set which has been used before!

 

Challenges:

Happy Little Stampers - Christmas Challenge 

NBUS

Rudolph Day -October

Can you believe that there is just one more Rudolph Day this year? I can't! So if you haven't made a start on your Christmas cards you'd better get a wiggle on!

This was made on my Ipad as a bit of an experiment! I probably won't be making too many like that although it would be quite good for batchmaking. 

 

NBUS challenge - GDT

I am absolutely delighted to have been invited by Darnell to be Guest Designer on her NBUS Challenge this month. It's a challenge I find very easy to play in as I'm sure a lot of you do too! The NBUS stash never seems to reduce, does it?

I have used a stamp that was a freebie with a magazine - maybe last Christmas or maybe even the Christmas before. I coloured with Copics before mounting on a red mat. It looks a bit skew-whiff in the photo but not in real life. I did have to look up the colouring for Turtle Doves, what would we do without Mr Google? 

I'm looking forward to seeing your NBUS makes in the gallery, I might end up with an even bigger stash!

Rudolph Day - September 2022

Well normal service is not yet resumed as still testing positive and feel very lightheaded. However I did manage to make a card yesterday for the Rudolph Day challenge, and really should have chosen to do something less fiddly!

The die was another magazine freebie from quite a while ago. Originally I had intended embedding the holly leaves as well, but by the time I'd done the candles and berries I was beginning to lose enthusiasm, and actually I quite like it as it is. I added the peel off stars and sentiment as it looked a bit bare at the bottom.

Challenges:

Rudolph Day

Snippets Playground

Peace On Earth

This was a bit of an experiment. I found,  tucked away at the back of a drawer, a pack of watercolour cards. I stamped the image, a magazine freebie and NBUS with Ink 3 no colour ink. My idea was that it would just look as if it had been watercoloured.

However it just didn't look right to me. So I very carefully went round the outline with a grey Unipen.The sentiment from the same set of freebies was stamped in grey ink. That looked much better but I'm not sure I like the featureless faces. I really want to add eyes, nose and mouth, but think I'll try that out on a piece of scrap paper!

Challenges:

Happy Little Stampers Watercolour Challenge

NBUS

Time Out Challenge - Festive

Christmas Pines

After my last card I decided to give the same stamp set another airing, this time using more natural colours.

 

I also used up the salvaged back of the card that I threw away the other day . I stamped the trees in Rustic Wilderness and Soft Suede for the trunks, then over stamped with Crushed Olive to get the two tone foliage. The deer was stamped on a scrap of card with Soft Suede and die cut with the matching dies.

 

Challenges:

Addicted to Stamps and More - Christmas

NBUS - the deer and matching die are both NBUS

The Snippets Playground- snippets used , card mat and deer

One Layer Christmas

I'm obviously in a Christmas mood at the moment! 52 CCT are asking for one layer cards so it seemed like a good opportunity to use some more of my NBUS stash.

 This is a Gina K set that I think was a Stamptember set from SSS a couple of years ago. I stamped and embossed the trees and sentiment in silver then silver embossed them. I tried doing some shadow stamping on the first one - but that ended up in the bin!

 

Challenges:

52 CCT

NBUS

Rudolph Day - August

Well it's three weeks since I last blogged! My excuse is that during the very hot days my craft room was unbearable even with a fan. I was also in the middle of a watercolour painting that  had to be put on hold as the paint was drying too quickly, so I still have that to finish off. But I have made a Rudolph card!

I cut the red mat out with a die that looks like s fringed blanket (NBUS), but as it is an American size it was too long for our DL cards, so I just chopped the ends off. The Noel stamp is from Woodware and I thought it was time it had another airing and I fancied doing some paper piecing. The Christmas paper with little penguins on is out of my stash. Added some bling with pale blue rhinestones to tie in with the paper.

Challenges:

Rudolph Day at Scrappy Mo's

Time Out Challenges - Festive

The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge

NBUS Challenge

July Rudolph Day

It's Rudolph Day again- well actually it was yesterday, but we have until 31st to enter! I was recently looking through some old cardmaking magazines and saw an idea for using designer papers which I thought was a great way of using some up.

So I raided my stash of Christmas paper and made one. The black borders were some very old stick on ribbons and the sentiment was cut from black glitter paper.

Then I made another.

The sentiment  used the same die  and the borders were from the same set (ex QVC, I think).

And then I made a third while I was on a bit of a roll.

 

Challenges:

 

Rudolph Day - Scraps of Life by Scrappymo

Christmas Craft Creations

Christmas Rose

I made this card a couple of weeks ago after I received this lovely die from Charlie and Paulchen.  I cut the flowers out of snippets of white card then inked them with some distress inks. I think I used Tattered Rose.

 

It took me a while to work out how to put the cut out bits together ( it would have been useful to have a little guide put in with them). I mounted them onto a snippet of distressed looking red scrapbook paper and wrappedsome gold ribbon round it. Then as I still thought it didn't look very Christmassy added some gold rhinestones. Maybe it also needs a sentiment on the front.

 

Challenges:

 

52 Christmas Card Throwdown - Christmas Florals

Crafty Catz - Christmas in July

The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge - Anything Goes

Snippets Playground- Christmas in July

Allsorts Challenge - Christmas in July

NBUS

Rudolph Day June

Another quick and easy card for Rudolph Day! I have to admit I'm really liking these Masterpieces Made Simple from Penny Black.

 I matted this one onto white and then gold before adding to a premade card blank. The sentiment is a peel off from many, many years ago!

 

Challenges:

Rudolph Day

Snow Globe

This has to be the fiddliest card I've ever made! mainly because some of the pieces were so very tiny. I cut all the pieces out of white card as I really wasn't sure which piece was what or how it all fitted together. When I had worked that out I coloured the pieces with watercolour pens.

Glueing the very tiny pieces like the window frames was very, very fiddly. If you use this Tim Holtz die set you need a lot of patience! Since making it I've discovered that he has got a tutorial on putting the pieces together to make a clock. Will I use the die again? Probably but not very often!

 

Challenges:

Happy Little Stampers Watercolour.

Happy Little Stampers Christmas

Happy Little Stampers Anything Goes with Dies.

NBUS challenge 

Rudolph Day - May 2022

Well here we again- Rudolph Day time! Actually I’m a bit late this month. I had to tidy and clean all the pastel dust up after doing a painting. The dust gets everywhere so there is no way I can do any cardmaking or scrapbooking till I’ve got rid of it all.

My card this month uses a NBUS die from Charlie and Paulchen. I have to blame Chrissie Stokes for introducing me to this company as she has been using quite a lot of their dies recently. I just thought I’d have a quick look at their site and of course one or two of their dies just happened to jump into my basket! I decide a fairly simple design would work well and used some old SU plaid paper for the mat and to cut the trees. 

Challenges : Rudolph Day

                     NBUS challenge

Rudolph Day April 2022

Once again it's time for Rudolph Day. This time I have taken ispiration from a number of posts where a shadow box die has been used. Amongst my stash of NBUS I had this Paper Rose die and thought it could be used in a similar way.

In my other stash I have a pad of Christmas paper with Scandinavian designs that I seem to find difficulty in using. Ithink it's the colours that throw me! So I cut a frame in cream to tone with the papers and then cut strips from two sheets and positioned them in the cut outs.The frame is a perfect fit for a DL card. A fairly simple design but a bit fiddly getting the papers just where I wanted them.

Challenges entered:

Rudolph Day

NBUS

Snippets Playground - the frame was a snippet and I've now got snippets of the papers!

The Holly and the Ivy Christmas Challenge

A Masterpiece for Rudolph!

No not one of mine(lol)! I recently saw a post from Miss Di using the Penny Black Materpieces made Simple toppers which inspired me to get some. The title of them is very apt as they do make simple cards that really are very nice. 

I chose to use a pale blue card with a shimmery gold mat. Very simple. The hardest part was finding a rectangle die that was the same proportions - this was the best out of the many I've got - but is still not quite right. The sentiment was just stamped with gold ink., and I added some Wink of Stella to the snowy bits for a bit of sparkle.

Challenges:

Rudolph Day

NBUS - the topper

Snippets Playground - the mat

Rudolph Day - February 2022

Well it's time for the second Rudolph Day of the year. Rummaging through my drawer of unfinished bits I found some pre-printed stamped toppers from SSS that had come in some of their kits. This was the first one I found and as my watercolour paints were still on my desk from a painting workshop I decided to use them to colour it.

I then simply mounted it onto a red card blank and added some red twine. 

 

 

The second one is also watercoloured but is not my favourite! And the paint looks very blotchy in the photo but not IRL.

I'm Back!

Well it's been quite a while since I posted anything! First of all we went on a cruise over Christmas, which was great even with Covid measures in place. Then after we got back had paperwork to do, dental visits, and setting up a new computer plus reformating the old one for Roy. Then I had to help son with his tax return, Today I have managed to make a card for two challenges - hooray!

It is fairly simple though. I heat embossed the Woodware stamp in gold then mounted it on gold mirri card. 

Challenges:

 Rudolph Day

  52 Christmas Card Throwdown

Christmas Cheque Holder

The challenge at Make My Monday this week is for a gift card holder. Well this is close, it's a cheque holder!

It's always difficult to know what a teenage boy wants and cash seems to be appreciated! I used a very old  sheet of card that has been in my stash since I first started making cards, maybe from QVC! The stamp set is one of my favourite Christmas sets, and I can't remember the make. Old age is creeping up!

Rudolph Day -November 2021

Well this is the last Rudolph Day for this year. How did that happen? Let's hope that next year may be more normal!

I saw the die I have used on the Paper Rose website months ago but for some reason they no longer ship to England. I did contact them but got no reply. So I bought it from Simon Says  Stamp in the USA! Of course having wanted it for so long, once I got it I didn't know what to with it! Eventually I came up with these two cards.

I made the bottom one first but thought it was lacking something but I don't know what. I used some old designer paper on the second card and put a gold mat under the die.

I'm also sharing at:

 Pixies Playground - snippets were used!

The Holly and Ivy Challenge - Anything Goes

NBUS challenge