Oh dear...

For the first time ever I am late with my Bah! Humbug! post.  Mind you one of the Bah! Humbuggers has been worse than me and hasn't finished her card yet.  Ooooooooooooh she's gonna get dun!!! LOL!

Our theme this week is 'Across the Miles' chosen by Max - did I mention that she hasn't finished her card yet?  Tee hee think I might have!

I originally had all sorts of thoughts in my head about what I wanted to create.  I was thinking along the lines of wherever we are in the world we need to remember the true meaning of Christmas.  These thoughts led to the 'Merry  Christmas' words in many languages panels and of course the image of Bethlehem (by Art Impressions) to represent the true meaning of Christmas.

I'm not sure whether I like the finished result or not.  Maybe it needed to be more colourful - I'm not sure!  It's not really totally what I had in mind, but to be truthful since winning the House Mouse challenge (which was amazing) things have gone rapidly down hill and I feel like I'm featuring in that advert where for every good thing there is the opposite reaction.

Anyway less moaning and on to the inside of the card...

As I have used one of the brilliant gatefold cards from the QVC square card pack I bought recently the inside of the card provided the perfect place to add an appropriate verse.  This one came from my Hallmark Card Studio CD which I only use for verses.

'Keeping in touch with the people we care about helps keep the spirit of Christmas alive in our hearts all year long'.

I typed the verse out and then mat and layered on to a Nellie Snellen die cut the same way as the image on the front of the card.

My card is also for the following challenges...

• Winter Wonderland - a male Christmas Card (think this would be okay for either really)
• Pollycraft - No designer paper
• Charisma Cardz - Christmas Crafting
• Creative Inspirations - Christmas in September

Will be back tomorrow with my last Crafter's Companion Guest Designer card and a Health Risk alert about a certain kind of stamp set.

Have a great day.

Ann xxx

Wedded Bliss...

Another large 8" x 8" card stamped with Lofty and his bride from the Joanna Sheen Lofty Celebrations stamp set.

I had a great time combining loads of different stamps and elements to make up this card. My daughter thinks it would be perfect for a couple getting married on a tropical beach or even better a beach in Kenya so if you know anyone that is this could be the card for you!

Materials used:

• Just Married Lofty stamp set - this set includes the wedding couple and the two different heart motives.
• Planter is from Art Impressions
• Trellising was trellis border die by Cuttlebug and then built up to form an archway
• leaves are punched and tiny paper flowers are from stash
• purple card, silver mirri, white organza ribbon and peel offs are also from stash

Challenges:

• Die Cut Dreams - Wedded Bliss
• Passion for Promarkers - any colours but include an animal

Have a great weekend everyone and thank you for all the fantastic comments that you have left this week.

A favourite embellishment...

The challenge at Stamp Something this week is to use your favourite embellishment on a card. Hmmmmmmmmm, I would be lost without organza ribbon and gem stones so I decided to show this 8" x 8" Christmas card made with the new Messy Rabbit Christmas stamps by Joanna Sheen.

I wanted the Messy Rabbit scene to be the focal part of the card, but to add interest and lead the eye in I added an embossed border with organza ribbon round it to the lower part of the card. I tied a couple of extra lengths of ribbon around the first knot in the ribbon to give it more oomph and then added a die cut snowflake (another of my favourite embellishments - I have quite a few) and a diamond gemstone.

The card is really glitzy (and hard to take photos of) as I used silver mirri card embossed with Merry Christmas in cerise and matching plain cerise mirri board for the matting and layering.


The central image of Messy with a snowman was coloured with Promarkers and then cut out and matted onto the black card. The tree is a stamp by Art Impressions and was done in the same way. The fence is a Magnolia stamp, which means that this card also qualifies for this week's Magnolia challenge - embossing.

Check out the happy accident - when reaching for my glue pen to use to adhere the glitter I picked up a white Sakura Glaze pen by accident - oooooooooh the snow was far snowier using that!! Will be using it again in the future.

Thanks in advance for any comments (preferably nice ones!).

Ann xxx

Cold Winter Winds...

After all those Spring colours it seems a shame to go back to that cold winter feeling, but just like the weather forecast that is exactly what is happening at the Stamp Something Challenge where we were asked to 'create a sample that reminds you of the cold, winter winds that will soon be leaving us!!'

I sincerely hope they will soon be leaving us as the few days of sunshine we have had recently just make everyone feel so much better.

Anyway for my card I decided to use my trees stamp by Art Impressions stamped in black versefine and then embellished with snow and frost (Sakura White Glaze pen with added fine glitter).

The 'Winter' embossing was created using a Sizzix Simple Impressions folder. Everything is matted on to silver to give a 'cold' feel to the card. The white organza ribbon is also layed over silver ribbon to echo this effect.

Only one challenge covered by this card!!! ~That's blown my week off!!!

Windows...

I'm still not feeling too good. The ordinary cold I had turned into something far more nasty and led to me spending most of the weekend in bed. Even now I don't feel great so please don't come too close as I don't want anyone catching anything!

I've been working on this card for about 4 days. Everytime I've felt a little bit better I've done something to it - usually something that has meant starting again! Isn't funny how when you are not well the craft knife slips - the painting water spills - the ... well you know what I mean we've all been there.


I made the card using two stamps from Art Impressions. One is a window which I have used for the front of the card and the other is a view of a garden with the most wonderful sentiment written around it.

'Treasured friends like you bloom in the garden of my heart'

If I remember rightly Art Impressions do a whole series of scenes that you can add to your collection but I only have this one.






I particularly wanted to use acetate for this card to emphasise the window aspect, but it did bring some problems. I usually cover any DST by attaching card to both sides of the acetate, but of course if I had done that the window would not have been 'see through'.

The only way I could think to get round this fairly neatly was to cut a square out around the window area, which I did. The remaining space left me enough room to write a message to the friend I am sending my card to.




My card is just in time for the challenge at http://rainbowladyschallengeblog.blogspot.com/ where this week (surprise - surprise) Cynthia has set a theme of windows.

Spooky...

Another Halloween card - this time for my mum so it's a gentler image. Infact I used 6 stamps to create this picture and as one of them is a Penny Black it fits the criteria for the challenge at http://pennybfriendssaturdaychallenge.blogspot.com/.

The balloon is handrawn and had to be that big to go round the sentiment.

Materials used:

• white base card
• orange plain and patterned paper (Papermania?)
• Penny Black hedgehog in flower pot stamp
• grass, pumpkin and clump of grass Art Impressions stamps
• bats stamp unknown ebay purchase (but poor quality cause fell off wooden mount)
• sentiments magnetic stamps by Making Memories