Recycled gift bag

As soon as I spotted this sweet little gift bag I know it was going to end up being the basis for a crafty project.

The lettering is on the back and front, so needed to be covered up, so I die cut a stitched rectangle to go on each side.

The back one I creased, to match the fold of the bag when flat, then above the crease added a stamped sentiment (the stamp was a gift so I don't know the brand) and a scattering of stars.

I decorated the front panel by stamping with a fir tree, twice without reinking the stamp in between, and a line of bare trees, then spritzed all over with some gold mica powder added to a spray bottle of water. Then I attached it to the bag and added a die cut reindeer.

I am sharing this with

Fab'n'Funky - Christmas
Jingle Belles - Earth Day (recycled elements)
Watercooler Wednesday - All about Christmas

 

London bookmark

We are a family of avid readers so I like to keep a supply of home made bookmarks and when I noticed Mark using a till receipt to mark his place recently I thought it about time I made some rather less girly ones.

The Cityscape stamps from Tim Holtz are perfectly proportioned for bookmarks, and ideal  for masculine designs too.

I stamped the London  cityscape onto a snippet of pale blue card and added a hint of colour with Promarkers, plus a touch of white gel pen on the clock face. Then I matted it onto a slightly bigger snippet of black card and cut the bus from a snippet of red, using a die from the X-cut Build a Scene London set.

After adding the die cut, I ran the whole bookmark through the Grand Calibur to make the area that lies between the book pages as flat as possible - a bookmark is no place for dimensional elements! Then I shaped the top and cut a slit in it, and folded a length of this lovely ribbon featuring the classic Routemaster bus through the slit, holding it in place with strong adhesive.

I don't know whether you can spot it, but there's a vehicle crossing Tower Bridge and I've coloured that red too to go with all the other buses.

I am sharing this with
Pixie's Snippets Playground - challenge #324 
The Male Room - Anything apart from a card
Little Red Wagon - Riding Along

It's April 25th....

... and that means that eight months today it will be Christmas Day! It also means that today is Rudolph Day at Scrappymo's, of course, so here is this month's Rudolph Day Christmas Card. 

 

 

For this card  I used a Darice folder to emboss the snowy sky and a die from an X-cut Build a Scene set for the village scene.
I stamped the sentiment onto vellum using Stazon ink and cut it out with fancy scissors then attached it by folding it over the die cut panel and sticking at the back. The stamp was a magazine freebie a few years ago and sadly like many of the freebies, it isn't great quality and has developed a split diagonally across the middle which I had to fill in on the stamped image with a permanent marker. I do love the freebies from magazines, they are often right up to the minute, but I suppose at the price they can't always be expected to last very long, it's just a bonus when one does!

I am sharing this with
Scrappymo's - Rudolph Day
52 Christmas Card Throwdown - White 
Use Your Stuff - Vellum  
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge  - use a building
Holly & Ivy - Anything Christmas goes

Scored sympathy

The current challenge at Less is More is "Bring something back"  and I dug out this lovely old Penny Black stamp which I've had for about 10 years. I seldom use it any more because it is wood mounted and I have a rather similar clear stamp which of course is so much easier to position. But it is too lovely to part with, and perfect for sympathy cards.

I stamped it in purple ink and heat embossed with clear powder, then used my Hougie Board to score a double frame around it. The sentiment is stamped with an Anna Griffin stamp and I used a Memory Box die to cut the butterfly.

I am sharing this with

Less is More - Bring something back
Sweet Stampin - Sympathy/Thinking of you
Just us Girls - Purple  

Magical Unicorns

I'm awfully behind with all the challenges I like to take part in - I hope the organisers don't think I've fallen out of love with them! But after spending several weeks travelling, I have been way, way behind with all my DT preparations so naturally those makes have had to come first, and also for the last 10 days or so mark and I have been battling with nasty colds, probably made worse than they might have been by the cold soaking we got in Seville.

Anyway, I'm starting to play catch up now and things are heading back to normal. And my first "real time" make is a card for my granddaughter, whose 6th birthday is next week.

Naturally for a 6 year old, lots of sparkle and bling is the order of the day and unicorns are compulsory! The papers are a mixture of foiled and glittered sheets from a First Edition Pick'nMix pad which has been in my "too nice to cut into" box for far too long.

I am sharing this with
Shopping Our Stash - Mythical and magical
Crafty Creations Challenge - Anything Goes

World Book Day at Cardz 4 Guyz

The new challenge at Cardz 4 Guyz is World Book Day.

I've chosen to depict the book Treasure Island.

My "Long John Silver" is the digi Pirate Pete from Dr Digis, coloured in with Promarkers. I've used a map printed out from The Best of la Pashe 2012 and  distressed it to make it look ancient - and then brought the whole thing into the 21st century because instead pf pieces of eight, ducats or doubloons, for my "treasure" I have added a pile of B!tcoin - I simply copied a picture several times and then cut them out. (I've changed the I in the name to a ! in the hope I won't get loads of spam comments from the bots that trawl blogs looking for That Word!)

  I am sharing  this with Crafty Sentiments - Anything Goes

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers : X is for Xyloid

It's X is for Xyloid at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers today.

And what the heck, you may well ask (I certainly did, even though I'm a former Scrabble player and it would have scored me lots of points) is xyloid? It's just Edna's word for WOOD.

To make my card, I took a  woodgrain background sheet from The Best of La Pashe 2012 into Craft Artist  and added sentiments to two of the planks, then printed it out and cut off  the planks with the sentiments and a couple more, and used the rest as a mat for card lightly stencilled with a woodgrain effect.

I cut up the separate planks with deckle edged scissors to give a roughly chopped look and stuck them randomly over the background with the sentiments as the focal points, then gave the planks some "personality" with tiny googly eyes and hand drawn mouths.

Finally I added screw headed brads to the corners.

Now let's have a look at YOUR Xyloid creations when you hop over to see what the other sistahs have made and then link up your own work - you never know, you may be cworned Queen or Princess of Snark.