Bah! Humbug! Day... Rudolf and Reindeer...

Friday has come round again.  I just can't believe how fast the weeks seem to fly by and Christmas is looming every nearer.  Thank goodness I have been making cards each week for the Bah! Humbug! Challenge since the beginning of the year.  I still can't believe that this year there will no last minute rush to get things finished.  So smug I could almost smack myself!!

This week our theme is Reindeer either the famous red nosed variety or maybe an elegant deer such as mine.  When I first started to think about this challenge I was going to make some Reindeer Poop bags similar to the ones I did last year as I need to do some for the Christmas Fair at Laura's Nursing Home, but this year I'm adding raisins instead of marshmallows and I haven't really had chance to get them yet.

Oh okay confession time - I ate the raisins, but I am gonna buy some more - honest!

Anyway the less said about my chocolate addiction the better!  

On to more important things.  My reindeer contribution to this week's challenge was just such a quick and easy creation I felt like I had cheated big time.  

The gold metallic reindeer is a die cut from a Create and Craft set that I won in a recent competition.  The white embossed and glittered background was one of the cards from the same set.  I'm afraid I cut the 'pretty' part of the card off and used it as you would use designer paper matting and layering onto silver mirri card and then on to a base of gold swirl embossed card.  To finish the card off I added a gold sentiment peel off and three gold 'mock' brad peel offs in the top left corner.  

In the words of the famous meerkat 'Simples', but while it may not be one of my favourite cards I do quite like it and much as I love making cards you just can't spend a whole morning or day on every card.

In addition to Bah! Humbug! my card is also for the following challenges...

• Crafts and Me - Glitter
• ABC Christmas Challenge - Winter Wonderland

Have an amazing weekend everyone and do pop over to Bah! Humbug! to see the work of my team mates and our brilliant guest designer Pat.

Oh Baby...

Yeah, this week I'm one of the Guest Designers at the Raise the Bar Challenge and the theme is the fun title 'oh baby'.  New Baby, Christening or maybe baby's first Christmas were all ideas that came to mind, but as I had bought the full sheet of LOTV stamps that features this cute baby at the NEC last week I decided to do a new baby card for a boy.  Already got a couple of baby girl cards in my box so now I'm covered for all eventualities - well maybe not twins!

As I was putting the card together I was thinking about how fab the Cuttlebug embossing folders that feature words are and how it's such a shame that so many of the words get covered up when we add our images and other papers and embellishments.  This line of thought got me thinking about cutting the image out and mounting it on the embossing, but that wasn't quite the look I wanted.  After quite a bit of head scratching it dawned on me that if I mounted the image on acetate and then framed the acetate in the blue card the embossed writing would still be visible and the frame would mean that there was still an eye catching focal point.

As you can see in the close up picture although the frame covers some of the words you can still see enough of the writing to get a sense of the meaning.  I think I'm going to give this a try out with some of my other word folders as I really like the effect.  The frame was made using a Spellbinder die.

My baby card is also for the challenges at...

• One Stop Craft Challenge - embossing (think I may have entered this already, but this card features embossing more so I'm entering it - hope I don't get 'done'!
• Anything Goes Challenge - embossing
• Cute Card Thursday - anything goes
• Lili of the Valley - anything goes

Have a fab Friday everyone and do pop back later as it's Bah! Humbug! day too so I'll be adding my latest Christmas card.

Ann xxx

Hot Pink! ...

This just has to be for Laura.  It's the same colour scheme as her bedroom and I must admit I do love the combination of hot pink and black.  My designer paper was one of the freebies in a card magazine some time back and it led me into using this combination of colours on my card.  

The stamp is by LOTV of course and oh my, are there any uncute LOTV stamps cause if there are I haven't seen them?  The sentiment is from the same sheet of stamps and is a very useful one especially to use with this image.  All the colouring was done using Promarkers and as you can see I've embossed the border using a Cuttlebug snowflake folder.

I used the sketch from this week's challenge at Sketch Saturday.  I always love their sketches as they are very easy to work with.

When creating this card I also had the following challenges in mind...

• Crafty Ann's Challenge - A Christmas Card using non traditional colours
• Lil of the Valley - One for the Girls
• One Stop Craft Challenge - Embossing
• Crazy 4 Challenges - Square Cards

Thanks for looking and the super kind comments everyone leaves me - they do mean a lot.  Have a great day everyone.  Hope it's not as wet, wild and windy where you are as it is here.  I seriously need to hibernate.

Ann xxx

Snow Globes...

I love snow globes.  My daughter bought a beautiful musical one with two skaters inside while we were away in Birmingham. Just so pretty and I would have treat myself I think had I not been trying to save my pennies for the NEC.  Anyway since arriving home I remembered that I had a spare 'photo globe' in my stash which led me to making a Penny Black Christmas Snow Globe.  Ahhh poor hedgies getting shaken up like this.

This is other side of the globe with hedgie resting against his stocking.  Both Penny Black stamps I've used are from one of the Christmas clear stamp sets which I've had quite a few years now but it seems to reappear every Christmas.

As you slot the pictures up from the bottom of the globe there is a piece of polystyrene also slotted in to hold the pictures in place which means that the side view is not very appealing.  To hide the polystyrene and edges of the pictures I attached ribbon decorated with punched snowflakes and gems all around the dividing part of the snow globe.  I think it looks a far neater finish.

My snow globe is intended for the following challenges...

• Penny Black at Allsorts - It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
• The Crafty Calendar Challenge - Winter and snowflakes
• Penny Black - Let it Snow
• The Stamp Man - Anything Goes for Christmas

Hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend.

Love and hugs.

Ann xxx