CAS Christmas at Cardz 4 Guyz

If you still have Christmas cards left to make, you'll be wanting some quick and simple ideas, and I'm sure you'll pick up a few over at Cardz 4 Guyz where this week's challenge is CAS Christmas. Do please pop over and see what the rest of the DT have made, and of course share your own ideas with us!

I think the colours black, silver and red look very masculine together, and very stylish when used in a CAS way. For this card, I've used a strip of the odd-textured ribbon that I bought thinking it was washi tape, a simple stamped greeting from a Studio G mini set and lots of carefully positioned black and silver Candi.

Die Cuts at Sparkles Christmas

It's December 1st and Christmas is almost here - have you made all your cards yet? This month at Sparkles Christmas Challenge, we are looking for cards that use die cuts.

We have two prizes this month

 

a $10 voucher from Di's Digis

 

 

this lovely stamp from Crafty Individuals

I've used die cuts to make a festive wreath. To make the basic wreath, I taped two Spellbinders circles to my gold card before cutting, to make sure neither of them slipped. The bow at the top is cut with a Cuttlebug Christmas Baubles die, the pine branches and cones with a Spellbinders die, the poinsettia with a die that was the cover gift on the November issue of Papercraft Essentials and the ivy trails with a Marianne die. I'm afraid I don't store dies in their original packaging so I don't have any record of their names.

To give the card a bit of dimension and movement, I attached the ivy trails and pine boughs just at the ends with 3-d glue, adding a tiny touch further along only in places where  I thought the card might suffer damage in the post if the ends were left too loose.

I am sharing this with

Use die cuts and/or punches at The Crafters Café
Christmas at Dies R Us

Iris folding revisited

NOTE - This is probably the last "real time" post you will see from me for a couple of weeks as I am going on holiday. I have quite a few posts scheduled to appear while I'm away (if Blogger behaves itself) but I'll probably not have much chance to visit or comment on any blogs while I'm away, it rather depends on how good the hotel's wifi is. I'm just hoping I'll be well enough to make the journey - I've spent the last couple of days having a sorting-out blitz and seem to have put my back out, and today I can hardly move.

Many years ago I had a little dabble in Iris Folding. And by a little dabble, I mean I spent a small fortune on card blanks and pre-cut paper strips and then made two cards..... While looking for something else the other day, I stumbled across all the Stuff and decided to give it a second chance, and this snow globe blank seemed to be a good place to start since, just in case you hadn't noticed, Christmas Day is exactly one month away!

The reason I'd  lost interest after my first couple of cards when I'd tried it before was that the area around the edge of the aperture always seemed, well, rather dull. The folding and colours inside meant there was too much going on for it to be a CAS card, and yet it somehow always ended up looking unfinished. So I decided to add a bit of inking to add interest. First I gently inked with yellow around the globe part, to make it look as if it was sort of illuminated, and then (and this is the part I regret now) I added a horizontal line to represent a table surface and a little grey ink around and below the base to represent a table for the globe to stand on.

It looked fine at the time - I didn't realise then that once the card was finished, it would just look rather grubby, as if I'd been trying to erase a too-heavy pencil mark with a cheap rubber!
I used strips of very sparkly glitter paper for the folding. The instructions only give a border for the globe, suggesting the centre should be filled with a photo, but I filled the centre with pearlised paper and then added a die cut Christmas tree. I think next time I use one of these blanks I will try continuing the iris folding right to the centre, although I'm worried it might make the card too bulky.

The gold borders and greeting are there to try to distract you from that grey ink!

I'm sharing this with

Rudolph Day at Scrappymo's
Make my Monday - Oh Christmas Tree
Christmas Card Challenges - Anything Goes
Clear It Out Challenge - Holiday/Glitter   

A stamp-free snow scene

As you've probably gathered, I can't resist a nice covermounted gift on a craft magazine! I realise that they aren't REALLY free, because if the mags didn't always have gifts, their regular price would be lower, but it's often cheaper to buy the magazine and gift than it would be to buy the gift alone, and sometimes they are exclusive designs that aren't available to buy. And of course you have the magazine for ideas and inspiration (not to mention temptation) as well.

I don't subscribe to any magazines because I only buy an issue when the gift is something I know I will use - this way, I tend to buy a different magazine every month so I see a variety of ideas. I've made this card using two covermounts and very little else - the embossing folder came with Quick Cards Made Easy a couple of months ago and I've already lost count of the number of times I've used it, while the die is the first outing of the gift with the latest issue of Die Cutting Essentials.

I used the Grand Calibur for the die cutting and embossing. However I know from previous use that this embossing folder gives a really deep and crisp (like Good King Wenceslas's snow) finish, and I wanted it to be less pronounced so that the die cut would be very obviously the main focal point. So instead of the usual C plate/folder/Grand Raspberry sandwich, I tried A plate/folder/Grand Raspberry. I thought it might need a shim to emboss at all, but no, it gave me exactly the softer, gentler finish I was looking for with a single pass. A useful tip to remember if you have one of those folders that is so sharply indented it can break the fibres of the material you are embossing!

OK, I've got lots of challenges to share this with, funny how so many are asking us for Christmas cards now, isn't it? Plus as I won't be around for a couple of weeks I'm trying to join in as many of my regular ones as I can this week, then they won't think I've deserted them!

AAA Cards - Anything Goes CAS

Uniko Studios - Christmas & optional CAS

Cuttlebug Mania - Embossing

Oooh La La Creations - Let it Snow

Merry Monday - Blue, White with texture
   

Shopping Our Stash - no stamping

Fun in the Snow at Cardz 4 Guyz

Christmas is getting nearer - a month today it will be Christmas Eve!- so we have a wintery theme at Cardz 4 Guyz this week - Fun in the Snow.

I've used this fun Snowboarding Santa image from the CD "The Best of La Pashe 2014 " and combined him with all kinds of snippets from my Christmas bits box. The diagonal Dufex stripe and the diagonally striped paper reflect the mountainside feel of the image. I've used corners cut with an old Cuttlebug die and added the waste from the die cuts to the sides of the image.

The sentiment is a Craftworks cards one that says "A note from Santa" but I took the photo on a gloomy day and had to use flash - and the wording is so reflective that it didn't like being flashed at!

I've used up lots and lots of bits and pieces in this card so I'm sharing it with:

Pixie's Snippets Playground week 204
Use Your Stuff - Lots of Layers
Jingle Belles - Holiday Leftovers
Crafty Gals Corner - Use Scraps
Alphabet Challenge - Tis the Season    

Inspired by Pinterest

A few days ago, I spotted this pin  over on Pinterest and thought what a brilliant idea for using up snippets! I have so many scraps of patterned paper in the "too big to throw away but too small to use" size bracket, and this is perfect for them - and would look different every time it was made, depending on the scraps you choose. (Incidentally, didn't Pinterest used to have an "embed this pin" option where you could get the HTML code of a pin to insert in your blog? And how is it that when you repin something, the top comment on it becomes attributed to YOU rather than the original commenter?)

Anyway, I picked out a whole heap of blue snippets and cut them into 1.5 cm wide strips, then stuck them sort-of-log-cabin style onto card, trimmed and inked the edges, stamped a greeting using an old HOTP stamp that was the perfect size for the job and put the finished piece onto an A5 card blank.

I'm sharing this with Pixie's Snippets Playground - week 204 and with Crafty Gals Corner - use scraps

Music at Twofers

Today we have a new challenge at Twofers, and this time I have chosen the theme which is Music. We'd like to see your card - or any other craft project - with a musical theme, bearing in mind that it MUST include some stamping somewhere and MUST NOT use any digital images.

I'm afraid I can't remember the name of this wonderful stamp set, which includes both the main image and the quotation. The embossed layer uses a Darice embossing folder - I accidentally tore part of it while distressing the edges, and liked the "ancient manuscript" look that it gave so much that I went on to make several random deliberate tears in it. The other layer is a DCWV textured paper, torn and then very lightly inked with distress ink so that only the raised area picked up the ink.

 

We'd love it if you would head over to Twofers and take a look at what the other DT members, Zoe and Christi, have made - and of course share your own work with us for the chance of a prize!

 

I'm sharing this with Just add ink - Just add music.

 

I'm  also sharing this at The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers where the theme is Yodeleyhiyoooo  Yoddelllayiheee Music.  I know, I know, there's no snark on the card, the snark is in the history behind the image. Beethoven was notoriously a foul tempered man who would fly into a rage for little or no reason - he once threw a plate of food at a waiter because he didn't like the service, and his strops with audiences were worthy of Justin Bieber. I suppose anybody would feel snarky if their passion was music and they went totally deaf! He also had incredibly high expectations of  other people - as I know from personal experience. No, I never met him, I'm not that old, but I did once perform the choral movement of the 9th symphony in a big choir, and  some of the things he expected the human voice to tackle were incredibly tough. Altos sing top A? OK, you've managed that..... now lets see just how many bars you can hold it for......