December Creative Crew Challenge - DSP Focus

"Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation" (Mason Cooley).

This month's DSP focus is the totally gorgeous Modern Medley papers but as I've used those for a few other crew projects, I chose our other option of using basic black and very vanilla.

We are also to CASE someone we admire. I picked a fellow Australian demo whose projects I have found particularly inspiring lately, Mel Sharp from Melbourne. Mel has a clean, crisp style and makes fantastic use of white space on her work. I chose to CASE a stunningly elegant Christmas card she made recently in navy and white. Here's Mel's card:

And here is my CASE. I changed it to black and vanilla and for a bit of fun, made my window shape a Christmas ornament instead of a circle:

Materials used:

• stamps - Four the Holidays, Christmas Collectibles
• card - basic black, very vanilla
• other - holiday ornaments framelits, pearls, Big Shot, dimensionals, stamp-a-ma-jig, embroidery thread (non SU)

To make the frame I traced around the outside of the ornament shape before cutting it on the Big Shot (the magnetic platform holds it in place) and then cut the larger shape by hand.

Thanks for such great inspiration Mel, I had a lot of fun making this card. 

Pop on over to Splitcoaststampers and check out the other crew members' projects. You can even look at Mel's gallery too!

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kez

Christmas Boxes and Tags

Last week's Christmas class focused on gift boxes and tags and I was busy for days beforehand creating samples to inspire my ladies. Here are the boxes we made in class:

This star box is a template from Lauren Meader and is very simple to put together. I decorated by stamping in crumb cake ink using Bells and Boughs and added a tulle bow and poinsettia with pearls.

Our next treat was a hexagon box made from the mini milk carton die - you've seen plenty of these before. As I used some "bauble" papers (Snow Festival dsp), I added a bauble shaped tag to match.

And lastly a simple fancy favour box, stamped with snowflakes and decorated with tulle, chunky glitter, snowflake (snow flurry die) and sentiment from More Merry Messages.

Other boxes I had for display:

Fancy Favour box again, doubled this time, plus a box made from four scallop envelopes.

SU's kraft gift boxes. The gingerbread paper is non SU but so adorable I couldn't resist!

Some simple candy wrappers.

A petal cone hanging decoration plus elongated candy wrapper.

I had also prepared a smattering of tags to give my ladies some ideas and then I gave them free run with dies, papers, ribbon, stamps, punches and more! It was bedlam there for a while, lol!!!

It has been fun doing Christmas things - homemade items always add that extra special personal touch!

Thanks for calling in.

Cheers
Kez

Ornamental Greens

Just in case you're not feeling Christmassy enough, this week's colours for the Color Me Beautiful challenge are sure to get you in the mood!

I decided to use the emboss resist method again (as on this card) and the medallion stamp for my background pattern and then I added rhinestones for some blingaliciousness (is that a word? lol). Here tis:

If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you'll see the bling better!

Materials used:

• stamps - Lovely as a Tree, Many Merry Messages (retired), Medallion
• card - gloss white, lucky limeade, soft suede, Sahara sand 
• other - Versamark, clear embossing powder, heat tool, sponges, rhinestones, holiday ornaments dies, Big Shot, dimensionals, white embossing powder, lacy brocade embossing folder, non SU silver cord

I am sure loving me those ornament dies! And you may have noticed that on my background piece of soft suede I have shown the debossed side rather than the embossed side - I felt the raised side took a bit of attention away from the ornaments, so I turned it over to "tone it down a bit".

Thanks for calling in. Don't forget to pop over to the CMB challenge blog and see what the other DT members have made to inspire you.

Cheers

Kez