It's Coming On Christmas

'It's coming on Christmas, they're cutting down trees, putting up reindeer, singing songs of joy and peace.'

Good golly Miss Molly, it's only 44 days until Christmas! I hope you've started your organising - I've got my menu planned, table decorations sorted and presents underway. Phew! With some of the family overseas for the big day this year, we'll be a smaller group than usual but we'll still try to keep up with a few of our family traditions.

And also coming up soon - very soon in fact - is my last card class for 2019. Over the past few years the theme for this has been special, one-off Christmas cards - those which take a bit more fiddling and effort and are too intricate or time-consuming to make in our usual stamp-a-stack classes. We'll be doing that, but I've also snuck in another theme to add to it - cos I'm tricky that way, lol. No, you see what happened was I had to cancel my previous class in which we were going to make three fancy fold cards so I thought, hey, why not re-make those same fancy folds but in line with the festive season? Once my muse struck with ideas, I got busy crafting!

Here's the first one. I took this double z-fold using petal promenade papers:

Changed the papers, chose some stamps and got busy sponging...and ended up with this:

Materials used:

• stamps - Wonderland, Dashing Deer
• card - coastal cabana, real red, whisper white, Let It Snow DSP
• other - white embossing powder, heat tool, sponge, Stamparatus, hills & borders stencil, costal cabana marker, embossing buddy 

I love it! Hopefully my ladies will too. I'll be back over the next few days with the other fancy fold adaptations.

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kez

Watercolour Wonderland

Hey ho! Another Christmas card today and for this one I got a bit arty and had fun with some water and ink!

I began with spritzing my heavy watercolour paper then laid down a layer of diluted balmy blue for my sky, fading it as I went down the paper. After drying that off, I inked my tree stamp with old olive and spritzed it with water too before stamping the distant trees. The foreground trees got the same treatment with mossy meadow ink and I sponged along the bottom to 'ground' them. Once everything was dry I ran it through my Big Shot with the subtle embossing folder to give it even more texture - up close it seriously looks like a watercolour painting. Stamped my sentiment on vellum and as there are tiny specks of gold in the ivory powder, I added three small gold sequins.

Simple but gorgeous, in my humble opinion (lol)! And perfect for the summer Christmas here in Aus. Hope you like too.

Materials used:

• stamps - Wonderland
• card - heavy watercolour, vellum, thick very vanilla
• other - aged ivory embossing powder (Stampendous), heat tool, metallic sequins, mounting tape, subtle embossing folder, Big Shot, Tombow glue, tweezers, paint brush, water spritzer

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kez

Double Front Dashing Deer

While I've been studiously avoiding a winter theme on purpose for my Christmas cards this year (the festive season falls smack-dab in the hottest months here in Australia), a snowy card was hard to pass up when I saw the inspiration challenge for this week over at Just Add Ink.

So here's what I came up with, a double front style card (design idea gleaned from Lisa Curcio).

Front 1:

Front 2:

Inside:

Navy and white always look so elegant together, I love them, and here with soft suede they're perfect.

Materials used:

• stamps - Wonderland, Gorgeous Grunge, Dashing Deer
• card - night of navy, whisper white, soft suede
• inks - night of navy, soft suede, Versamark
• other - Detailed Deer thinlits, Big Shot, white embossing powder, embossing buddy, heat tool, Sahara sand marker, stitched rectangle dies (Poppystamps), stitched hills dies (Poppystamps), Stamparatus

I'm toying with the idea of doing a video on how I made this card, so if that's something you'd like to see please leave a comment to that effect and if there's enough interest I'll do it.

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kez

Edited to add: Thrilled to have been picked for the challenge! Video made and uploaded at THIS LINK.

At the Crack of Dawn

Thursdays mean an early start for DD20; it takes about 2 hours for her to make the train and bus commute to uni in Sydney from the mountains, so this morning we were both up before the winter sun. As I was driving home again, I was treated to a stunningly gorgeous orange and yellow sunrise which made my fingers itch to get out my distress oxides.

My card is certainly no match for the beautiful vista that was laid before me, but I love it nonetheless.

Materials used:

• stamps - Wonderland
• card - whisper white, basic black, so saffron
• distress oxide inks - antique linen, squeezed lemonade, spiced marmalade, fired brick, black soot
• other - post it note, 32mm (1 1/4") circle punch, blending tool, mounting tape

I've kept it simple because, really, Mother Nature often needs no adornment. I hope the sunrise was as beautiful where you are. Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers

Kez

The Sponges Have It

I was in Sponging Heaven yesterday making some Christmas cards for my ladies to do in class. Rather than our usual stamp-a-stack making ten cards, these are one-off cards for those special folks  who deserve that extra time and attention - you know who I mean.

For the first two cards I borrowed from the creative genius of others but did give the cards a little tweak of my own. The third card is my own design.

Here's the first, CASEd from the genius that is Michelle Zindorf - surprisingly, not a brayered card!

I began with a piece of very vanilla and stamped the world stamp using early espresso ink. Then I stamped the swirl from Everything Eleanor using Versamark ink and embossed with a non SU embossing powder called Aged Ivory (it has little flecks of gold in it, just gorgeous). Next I sponged using crumb cake and then early espresso inks, rubbing the excess ink off the embossing with a tissue; that was then mounted on to a mat of crumb cake. Santa was stamped using Timber Brown StazOn ink onto watercolour paper and coloured, cut and adhered using snail, then everything attached to the cherry cobbler base using Dimensionals. Simple but effective! For the inside I stamped the world map with crumb cake ink and placed my card over it, pressing only in a few spots to get the partial image effect, then stamped the sentiment with cherry cobbler ink.

Materials used:

• stamps - Santa's List, Everything Eleanor, World Map, 
• card - cherry cobbler, crumb cake, very vanilla, watercolour
• inks - early espresso, crumb cake, cherry cobbler
• other - heat tool, aged ivory (non SU) embossing powder, sponges, aqua painter, Dimensionals, markers

Next is a gorgeous sparkly card CASEd from Cynthia Millan (she has a video tutorial HERE) that is incredibly easy to make; the pine is stamped on very vanilla, sponged and covered entirely with iridescent ice embossing powder. I mounted mine on another piece of vanilla, then on to the mossy meadow card base. The pine and sponging are followed through to the inside.

Materials used:

• stamps - Ornamental Pine
• card - mossy meadow, very vanilla
• inks - mossy meadow, early espresso, Versamark
• other - irridescent ice embossing powder, heat tool, sponges, Dimensionals

And lastly my new favourite trees (I don't know about you, but I am sooooooo over Lovely as a Tree after all these years!). I stamped them with Versamark on to a piece of whisper white and embossed again using irdescent ice, then sponged using marina mist and night of navy inks. The die cut sentiment was cut from silver glitter card and a few rhinestones added to look like stars. The sentiment on the inside echoes that on the front.

Materials used:

• stamps - Wonderland
• card - night of navy, whisper white, silver glimmer
• inks - marina mist, night of navy
• other - Christmas Sayings dies, Big Shot, iridescent ice embossing powder, heat tool, sponges, rhinestones, Dimensionals

We're also making some Christmas tags, so I'll come back with those another time.

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kez

Traditional? Bah Humbug!

It's been an absolute AGE since I took part in any challenges and this month on our SU team's FB page there's a colour challenge which really appealed to me. The colours are Blushing Bride, Watermelon Wonder and Gold, with a neutral as an option.

The first idea I had was a Christmas card but the colours are certainly non-traditional for that theme, aren't they? Doesn't matter; I went ahead and did it anyway and I have to say I LOVE IT!

Here's my card:

I stamped the trees on whisper white using black StazOn ink and some second-stage stamping (ie not re-inking first). Then I stamped the snowflakes using Versamark ink and clear embossed them. Next I brayered using blush blossom and watermelon wonder and once my ink was dry, rubbed over the snowflakes with a tissue to remove the excess ink and make them whiter. I added my touches of gold with some glitter card and gold embossing the sentiment on to black and the final touch was the rhinestone for a smidge more sparkle.

What do you think? Do you like non-traditional Christmas colours or do you usually like to stick with red and green?

Materials used:

• stamps - Wonderland, Petite Pairs
• card - watermelon wonder, whisper white, basic black, gold glitter
• other - clear embossing powder, gold embossing powder, heat tool, brayer, banner punch, rhinestone, Dimensionals, embossing buddy

You do realise it's only 72 days until Christmas don't you? Haha! Did that freak you out? lol

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kez

New Christmas Goodies

Last month's cards for our Christmas stamp-a-stack (yes, I'm a little late taking photos and posting this!) featured goodies from the new Holiday mini catalogue.

The first card used the Sleigh Ride edgelits to create a winter's night scene; I paired them with some lovely paper from Kaiser.

Materials used:

• stamps - Good Greetings
• card - basic black, basic grey, smoky slate, Kaiser touch of gold collection, non SU white
• other - gold embossing powder, heat tool, Sleigh Ride edgelits, Dimensionals, Big Shot

Our second card is a mash up of two I liked from Pinterest. I used brayering for the background of the focal panel but some of my ladies used sponging instead. 

Materials used:

• stamps - Ornamental Pine, Wonderland
• card - elegant eggplant, very vanilla, naturals ivory
• inks - wisteria wonder, perfect plum, elegant eggplant
• other - brayer, Dimensionals, softly falling embossing folder, Big Shot

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kez