Christmas Card Club Challenge #20- Gifts, Ribbons & Bows.

 Well another fortnight has flown past, and we are again showing our cards for another Christmas Card Club.

As well as the fortnightly theme, we also have the option of Anything Goes, and this challenge is Zoe's choice, she wanted to see Gifts, Ribbons & Bows on our cards. 

 I had a search, and couldn't find anything in my stash for gifts, although the new stencil I chose to use does feature a nice big bow, so mine are a bit of the challenge, and a bit of Anything Goes.

The Stencil is from Sweet Poppy, and many of you have probably seen a lot of cards made using it on Facebook. It's been so popular, Lucy has really struggled to keep up with demand.

The baubles are done by inking through the stencil, then adding some stamping to the centre. As you see, I did 3, but only have 2 finished cards. The one on the left wasn't going well, the image is actually set within an oblong frame, and I remembered not to ink the frame at the bottom, and completely forgot not to ink the top! Didn't like how that looked, so tried to fix it by inking the remaining part of the bauble with the same ink. That didn't go too well, it was drying out blotchy, so I thought I'd die cut a circle from double sided adhesive sheet, and sprinkle with Glamour Dust, which should even out the background a bit. I should have just tossed it in the beginning! Cut the sheet and stuck it down, grabbed my Glamourdust and sprinkled it- and it wasn't the Crystal Glamourdust that I'd intended to use, but a gold one that completely hid the design. So thats the point when I accepted every attempt to fix it just made it worse, and tossed it. But I will do some more, using that stamp, as it will look good, if I do it properly, lol.

So these are the two I ended up with. On the red bow I added a little Translucent stencil paste, and some crystal glitter. The stamped image is from Inkylicious.

The blue one is stamped with an image from a Card-io set, called Winter Fun. The set contains a few other images, and two sizes of this one, a larger and a small. This is the larger one. I matted them onto some pale blue card, added some silvery snowflake paper from my stash to the card base, then added a peel off greeting. 

When Get Well isn't the right sentiment.

Wasn't easy finding the right title for this post, to be honest. You want to send someone a card to show them some love & support, but Get Well just isn't the right sentiment. Maybe because it's going to be a long road to recovery, maybe they will be coping with something for the rest of their life. You can always use sentiments like 'Thinking of You', or 'Just for You' but I really liked these sort of motivational ones I used from Inkylicious. They're big enough to need little more than matting, and maybe a backing paper, like these.

 The cards are 'notecard' sized- that is,4⅛ x 5⅞,( 10.5x15 cm).
   This is half an A4 sheet, and depending how you cut your cardstock achieves a different orientation of card. If you take a sheet of A4 and cut it across the width, that gives you either a sidefold portrait card, or a landscape top fold card.

 Cutting the length of the cardstock gives you either a topfold portrait card, or a landscape sidefold one.
 These cards are made using the top fold portrait orientation.












Often, a different orientation will suit your card better, or even make the same card look entirely different.

  All backgrounds have been done with Alcohol inks on Yupo, with the addition of some foil pressed onto the 'sticky' areas where the ink spreads out. A good You Tube Video from KWerner on this technique HERE











 All the stamping was done using Versafine Clair Nocturne, which alone will NOT dry on this surface.
You could use Memento,or Archival which will.
 I added clear embossing powder, then heat set it. To do this you need to really let your gun get hot before starting to heat your project, keep the gun moving and stop as soon as it's raised. You may get a little bending of the Yupo, but sticking it down with DST, or Tape Roller cures that.


 The stamp is called Always Remember, by Inkylicious.


 I die cut it with a Stitched Rectangles die with rounded corners, and then die cut the two next sizes up from toning cardstock.





 I matted onto the first layer, then added a layer of fun foam to the back before matting onto the second layer, then added the whole topper to a card base I'd covered with a toning paper from my DP paper mountain!
 Then I rounded the bottom corners to match the panels.
 I finally added a few sparkly gems with a dab of Glossy accents, just adding 3 or 4 to each one.








I then used a different stamp, also from Inkylicious, called Live Life.

WOYWW #319- The After Happy Stampers Edition (and the Almost Birthday Edition.)

Back from our Happy Stampers trip,and meeting up with some fellow WOYWWers as usual. 😀
You'll probably see almost identical pictures on a few other posts today, as we'll all be linking up at Julias Place, The Stamping Ground, to bare our desks to the world!

Sarah, and Chris (pear shaped crafting)

Neet, who happily managed to get there.

Neet and Heather.

And we'll all be meeting up again at Crop10.






So what came home with me?
Well the first pic is one of the two main items I wanted to get...

 Sweet Poppy are mainly known for their stencils, but they have started branching out into dies for some of the stencils, and stamps. This Dragon stamp set was a must have when I saw it on FB back last week.

And these from Lavinia stamps were my second reason. Crows and wolves, just awesome.

  A couple of Christmas stamps from Honey Doo, and some gorgeous stamps from Crafty Individuals.

 Three more Clair inkpads- like I need more inkpads- a tub of clear dew drop gems, and a few stamps from Inkylicious. I have the larger version of the distressed circle stamp, and thought this one would be great for smaller cards.

 Some stamps from Chocolate Baroque- a new line, and there is also a big Tag stamp that the tall images fit into, forgot to photograph that one.

Showing you those, as what's actually happening on my desk this week is ATC's- I finally have an idea, lol.






And that's it from me, which brings us round to.........And Finally.....

UFO's- Part 2

Been a couple of weeks, but around other things, finally managed to complete another few of my UFO's.


The three backgrounds are all from Clarity stencils, as are two of the stamped images.

I made the backgrounds quite a while ago, while I was just playing around with stencils, ink & brushes, and they've sat waiting for inspiration to strike. Which it finally did.

 

This Clarity stencil is called Flare Frame, and is one of their many 7" square ones, which are a perfect fit for their 7"  stencil card, which also comes in other sizes. The design part of the stencil comes out at 5½",so you have matting & layering ability.
It also has the central square 'mask' so you can blank that area off, if you wish.

This first one was done by adding ink through the stencil and letting it dry. I re-taped the stencil in place, then applied Translucent stencil paste (Sweet Poppy) over it, which was sprinkled with glass microbeads, for texture.
 Being a bit messy, I'd got some ink & paste into the central aperture, which I'd masked off, and was partly why it got put to one side, while I figured out what to do with it.

Finally had the idea to mount a small stamped panel over it, and went with that for all three.
 The owl stamp is also by Clarity, and actually has 3 owls on it, but that made it too large for the centre, so I masked off an owl on the right, as that was the easiest one to cover up, inked, removed the tape and stamped.
 Colour was added with Prismacolor pencils,and some Distress Ink in Stormy Sky sponged over the edges, after I'd trimmed it down to a 3" square.

To add all the panels, I die cut a square of white fun foam slightly smaller than the panel,and used that to give the image a little dimension.

These were the images I selected for the panels, the Owl & Lion stamps are both Clarity, the Tree image is from Inkylicious, called Daydreamer. I had to trim off parts of the image for this to get it down to the right size.

I also added some stamped grasses along the bottom of the Lion image, from a set by Indigo Blu called  Nature 1.

This one uses another Clarity stencil, this time called Circles Box. Same size & details as the previous one. This just had ink added through the stencil. The Lion stamp also has three images, so again I masked off one on the right as before.Chose a pale purple cardstock as my mat, and mounted onto a 6" square card base.

Again, ink through the stencil and then I found a closely matching cardstock for the mat.
 The image was stamped in Archival Coffee, which I also blended around the edges.
 This Inkylicious stamp has the person, tree and ground as one stamp, then there's a separate small bird flock, and the word Daydreamer.
 All three are mounted on a 6" square card blank.
 Left them blank at the moment, so I can use them for any reason later.


Entering this in the Crafty Cardmakers Challenge, Add some Texture. 
Crafty Creations Challenge, Anything Goes.

Christmas Card Club #2- Cute

 Second challenge of the year, and this theme has been chosen by Sylvie, who wanted us to make cute cards.

I went for cute snowmen- although I do think the one on the far right may be a tad more sinister than cute!

The first pair use a really old stamp- I know he's called Scribble Snowman, and used to be a wood mount, and made by Funstamps.
 He was stamped and masked, then I stamped a tree from Visible Image Peace Love Hope Christmas Set.The medium tree is also from this set.
 The snowman was coloured with Prismacolor pencils. I sponged some hills, then added a treeline with stamps from Card-io Christmas Scenery 1.The deer is also Card-io, set called Deer Deer.
 The sleigh and star trail are by Inkylicious. The sentiment from a Crafters Companion set, Christmas Sentiments.
 Sky was sponged in using Distress Inks in Tumbled Glass, Stormy Sky and Chipped Sapphire.

These next pair are both Impression Obsession Snowmen- really not sure about the mouth on the taller one- definitely looks a bit creepy to me!
 Both were stamped onto OHP film- I bought a couple of boxes really cheap when our Staples was closing down- then glitter added on the reverse. Must admit, the stamping platform is great for this, as the stamps tend to slip a little normally when hand stamped.
 The treeline is from the Visible Image set mentioned earlier, as is the lone tree. In the one on the left, the Santa& Sleigh are also from that set, the other uses the Inkylicious one again.

Final two, and back to the Scribble Snowman, again stamped on film and glittered.The Visible Image treeline used again, and the Indigo Blu large tree.


I'm also going to enter this into the
Crimbo Crackers Challenge. 
Winter Wonderland Challenge. 
Christmas Cards All Year Round.
Sparkles Christmas Challenge.
Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 
ABC Christmas Challenge 

Christmas Card Club Challenge #25- Cute

Well, here we are at the last Challenge for this year, and it's been chosen by Sylvie, who wants to see Cute. I actually seem to have quite a number of stamps that fall into this category, and I admit they don't get enough use.

 Mainly because most of them need to be coloured, and until I discovered how enjoyable Prismacolor pencils were to work with, I avoided colouring like the plague. So we have 5 Christmas cards, and 4 more gift tags to the collection.

These two penguin images are by Whimsy Stamps. I've added Glossy Accents to the Candy Canes, and also used Inkylicious Fluffy Puffy Stuff for the fur on the hats. I'll share how I found it worked best further on.

This is another Whimsy stamps image, and Beloved Hubby bought me all three last year for Christmas. He couldn't find them in the UK, so got stung for Import Duty ordering from the USA, but when we visited the Papercrafts Show at the Motorcycle Museum recently, we discovered Dies to Die For, a UK company who stock many of the well known US brands of stamps and dies, such as Altenew, Lawn Fawn,Mama Elephant, Pretty Pink Posh, and Whimsy.
 I used the Fluffy Stuff on these too.

This is a Hobby Art stamp, bought at Happy Stampers a couple of months ago. Called Archie & 5 Pals.

Another Hobby Art stamp, Paws for Thought.
 Both of these are Rubber stamps.

These Penguin tags are also using a Hobby Art set, clear stamps this time, called Round Penguins.

 The Polar bear tags use stamps from Inkylicious, on the left, and a very old Woodware set on the right.  Laughing right now, as I just did a Google search to see if it was still available. The only two images that showed up are both from my blog, so I guess not!

So, I said I'd tell you about the Puffy stuff.
 It says on the bottle to apply a line of it, then heat with a heat gun. That works fine, especially if you are trying to line hills or trees for instance, but I found didn't produce the look I wanted for the fur.






So what I did was to add a thickish line of it onto the fur trim, then used a cotton bud to dab it all over.

I bought these cotton buds in Primark recently, you can find them in their make up/beauty section. They are great for crafting, as you have a thin pointy end, and the other end is flat. I used the pointy end to dab the Fluffy stuff over the fur areas, then heat set. You want a fairly even level, not too thick or it will puff up too far, but not too thin either, otherwise it doesn't puff at all. However, it's pretty forgiving- if you haven't got enough on, or have bare patches, you can just add some more and reheat.




If some areas puff up too far, you can flatten it down- the flat end of the cotton buds was perfect for that!

It's a really great little product for adding some dimension and texture to your Christmas creations.











And so we are done for another year, and I'd like to thank everyone for making this such a fun challenge. You've all provided so much inspiration, and often, reminded me of stamps I have that I'd forgotten about!

It's been great for taking the stress out of Christmas Card making, and made it something to enjoy through the year instead. As I wrote out and sent almost 70 cards earlier in the week, then another 30+ for work colleagues, and 20+ for family, I realised why in previous years-when I didn't start till November- I'd got heartily sick of the sight of them long before I was finished. So thank you ladies, and I hope you all have a quiet, peaceful and Happy Christmas, and thank you all for the lovely Christmas cards that have arrived!

Blending Brush Comparison- Clarity and Toolstation Sash Brush set.

Hi folks, and  a You Tube video post today, as I wanted to do a 'live showing' of how these Sash Brushes from Toolstation stack up against the well known and loved Clarity brushes.
 The Clarity ones are a set of four, and the normal retail is £19.99, although right now, the Black Friday weekend, they are  a third off, which is a great time to get them if you want to stock up.



The other set are Decorators Sash Brushes, from the Toolstation, and are £6.99 for a set of three, which is a great price point, assuming they do the job well. I looked at these as I'd seen someone somewhere on FB say that B&Q Sash brushes were a good alternative, and again, much cheaper. I did a Google search for the B&Q ones, as our B&Q has recently downsized a lot, and didn't want a wasted journey. Anyway, the ones that came up first in my search were a set by Toolstation, and the pic shown made them look visually at least as being very similar.




As you see, the Toolstation set does not have an equivalent to the largest Clarity brush . The Code for them is 78094.

They do appear very similar in looks, and as for the feel, I would say the Clarity ones are slightly softer, but only very slightly. Maybe slightly less rigid than the Sash brushes, but it's not a big difference.
 To test them out, I used two types of Clarity card, their 7" square Stencil card, and some A5 sized Theuva card, which has a slightly glossy coating.
 I used 3 Distress Oxide colours for testing, and worked on a blending mat.

This is the result from the Toolstation brushes. In the video you will see the comparison colour by colour, I just forget to take individual photos! Theuva card at the top, Stencil card on the bottom.




















  This is the pair using the Clarity brushes. Again, Theuva card on top, Stencil card on the bottom.

 All four pieces side by side, Clarity Brushes on the Left.
 I then did a small comparison of the Toolstation brushes with an Inkylicios Blending brush.

The Inkylicious ones are much stiffer, they feel more like the old fashioned Shaving brushes, but I think they both compare well.

 My overall opinion? I felt they compared well. I'd really say there was little to choose between them, and if craft spending is an important consideration, I'd say the Toolstation ones are excellent value for money, and perform well. A very affordable way to have a set for each colour family. I only bought one set to test them out, but will definitely get some more.

I've linked the video here if you'd like to see how they perform, it runs for about 12 minutes.

Christmas Card Club #22- Winter Wonderland

Back with the Christmas Cards, for this fortnights Christmas Card Club, and this time the theme has been chosen by Christine, and she wanted to see a Winter Wonderland.
 I created 4 cards on the theme, all using Bauble stencils and Card-io stamps.

 The first one is using a bauble stencil from Inkylicious.
 All the sky inking was done in the same way, using a Clarity brush and Distress Inks. The colours were Tumbled Glass, Faded Jeans and Chipped Sapphire, concentrating the colour at the top of the bauble, and fading it out as I came towards the torn paper mask made for the hillside.
 The torn paper was moved down the shape, and some Tumbled glass added over the edge with a dry baby wipe to create more hills.
 I'd added a moon mask punched from the sticky edge of a Post-it note before adding any ink.
 With all the baubles, when I'd finished inking the sky, I used the ink left on the stencil to gently drag inwards all round the stencil the define the bauble shape- a good tip picked up from Barbara Gray!
 Stamping is done in Versafine Clair Nocturne.
 The backing paper is from a pad I picked up from The Range, some lovely greys & silvers, including some with foil. Was only a couple of quid too. Made use of some more of those snowflakes, and a peel off greeting.
 The next one is done with a stencil I cut myself, with a Spellbinders die, Heirloom Ornaments 2011. I recently bought some stencil material from E-bay to do this sort of thing, so now I have a durable stencil. This is the largest die from the set, and I also cut it from copy paper, so that I could swap it for the stencil,and stamp right up to the edges, as even thin stencil material is a bit too thick, and leaves too much gap. Another piece of backing paper from the same pad, this one has foiled stars on.

These last two are done with another die cut stencil, this time Spellbinders Heirloom Ornaments 2010. The backing paper is from a really old pack by Dovecraft, and I added silver & blue ribbon on the left.

Same stencil, this backing paper is so old I have no idea where it was from!
 Forgot to say, all the hillsides were outlined with a Quickie Glue pen, and Crystal glitter sprinkled on. I dotted some onto the trees, and also added it to the cabin roof.
 Also, the card bases are 8" square.