Advent Calendars

I have been busy making some advent calendars for the family to enjoy during December.

Both are made using the Advent Calendar Kit from Kaisercraft. I stained the wood using vintage photo distress stain then fitted the pieces together.

For this one, I used a 12x12 sheet that I cut down to fit the back of the box and lined the edges of the box with the same paper. I made a tree using a Nellie Snellen die, fitting 4 trees together and added little gold ornaments and a star. Made little presents to put under the tree. Along the top of the box, I placed three poinsettia flowers that I cut from SVG Cuts file - 3D Wintergreens.

I got a little more adventurous with this one! I cut some little house frontages using the Christmas in the Village set from SCG Cuts. To make them stand up, I made little boxes from acetate and attached the houses to these, then glued them into the box.
The tree is made with the smaller of the tree dies from Nellie Snellen. I cut 8 trees and folded them in half and glued them all together to make the 3D tree. I also cut a couple of sets of houses using the Tim Holtz on the edge die and glued them behind the three houses.

The Santa and his reindeer were cut from the Christmas in the Village set and mounted with foam pads over the moon! Added a Merry Christmas banner to finish it off. 

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge Week 11

The challenge this week over at the Craft Barn is to make a calendar using pale yellow and grey wth bare branches.

I used a pale yellow cardstock tag for this challenge. The bare tree is cut from dark grey card that I embossed the tree on. The embossing folder is one of the Tim Holtz folders. The background for the tag was stamped with Weathered Wood Distress Ink. I used stamps designed by Sue Law for the hills in the background, the tiny flying birds and the grass tufts around the base of the trees. The clouds stamp is from Rubbadubbadoo in NZ.

I finished off the tag with a ribbon made from seam binding that I coloured with Weather Wood Distress stain.

One week to go!

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge Week 10

The theme for this week's calendar challenge at the Craft Barn  is Autumn colours and leaves with the added option to use Tim Holtz tools and products.

The tag is embossed with the woodgrain folder from Tim Holtz Texture Fades range and coloured with frayed burlap and brished corduroy distress inks. The leaves were cut using Marianne Creatables dies as the tattered leaves dies were a little big for this particular project. For the leaves, I first coloured glossy cardstock with Ranger Alcohol Inks in autumnal colours then cut them with the dies. These dies have a great texture built in and the close up photo below shows the detail on the leaves.






I also cut some little acorns from brown card using the same set of dies then covered them with Glossy Accents. I attached these with foam pads to make them stand out from the tag.

I blended wild honey and rusty hinge distress inks on the edges of the calendar to give it a more auntumnal look as well. 

The ribbon is seam binding coloured with Spiced Marmalade distress ink.

Can't wait for the last two weeks challenges because I am eager to see the whole calendar put together on the canvas I plan to buy tomorrow!!

I have just seen on the stats for my blog that this is my 150th post!

Craft Barn Celebration!

The Craft Barn at Lingfield, in Surrey are celebrating 600 followers on their blog with a little giveaway! Actually it is a big giveaway and looks just stunning.

Please check out the Craft Barn - they have such a great selection of goodies for crafting and I just loved my visit there last year. I hope to get back again next year when I am in the UK. They also do a great postal service.

Enjoy! and Congratulations to the Craft Barn!

Craft Barn Challenge Week 9

The Calendar challenge for Week 9 over at the Craft Barn is to 

use old paper and red lines. The paper is a creamy colour with graph gridlines all over it. It is from a DCWV Mod Retro Stack collection which is a set of cardstock with a '50s look to it. I used the cardstock to cover the tag, then cut some more of the flowers from the bottom of the cardstock to create a 3-D layer that I attached to the card, just below the flowers on the tag layer. I edged the tag with Barn Door distress ink then added some cream paper flowers with red bling in the centres. Finished the tag off with a cream ribbon around the bottom and a seam binding ribbon coloured with antique linen distress stain.

Christmas Things

I recently bought the svg files to make these Gingerbread Chalets from SVG Cuts! I just love the things that Mary and Leo come up with and they are so helpful if you have a problem. I cut the files with my Black Cat Cougar and everything cut really well - like a hot knife through butter!

The roof of each chalet comes off and you can put little electric tea lights inside so the light glows through the holes in the walls and the vellum on the doors and windows.
Posted this to Joyful Stamper: Inspire Me Fridays too!

Other stuff

This week it is my daughter-in-law's birthday. They came for dinner last night and we gave her this card to celebrate.

The card is made from brown card. The top layer was stamped with a couple of darkroom Door stamps using sepia ink. Used distress inks in pinks to colour the card then edged with vintage Photo. The underneath layer is pink stamped with a word stamp from the same set in sepia, as is the sentiment, but this was stamped with a Gina K Best Wishes sentiment.

The roses are made from cream paper and spritzed with glimmer mist.

Finished off with the cream ribbon and a bow.

This frame was made for Mum. I had a wooden frame from IKEA that I painted black then did a crackled effect using PVA glue and a creamy coloured paint.

The flowers were made from pale pink paper then spritzed with a pale pink glimmer mist. The leaves were cut with a Cheery Lynn die from pale green paper, then spritzed with green, which also made the curl a little.

The frame was just the right size for the photo of the great grandchildren in Australia!

I saw this idea for a tealight candle holder in a magazine recently and thought I would try it out. I had some memory glass that I stamped with embossing ink using a crackle stamp from Tanda Stamps, then embossed with gold and heat set.

I used copper tape to edge the top of the glass sides then used the tape to fix the sides together in a square. I glued the sides to the bottom, then covered with the copper tape.

It looks very effective with a tealight candle in it! I have entered this in Crafty Hazelnut's C hristcmas Challenge. - Whatever lights your candle!

Calendar Tag Week 8

The Craft Barn Calendar Challenge theme this week is a dark colour and circles.

I chose to use a black spotted backing paper for this one then used red to introduce some colour. I added a frill of red pleated fibre ribbon ( the sort that is used to decorate hats and fascinators) over which I placed a white ribbon with black bling dots.

The flowers and flourishes were cut from red card. The flower die is a Marianne Creations die and it has little circles in the petals! The flourishes are cut with the Tim Holtz Elegant flourishes die.

The ribbon is seam binding coloured with Black Soot Distress Ink.