Stocking filler...

Hello!

Yet again, right at the last minute, I'm posting an entry to The Craft Barn's challenge.  This time the topic is 'books', and I have decorated a little note book for my step-daughter Amy as a little stocking filler for Christmas!  

It's a tiny notebook - about 4 inches square - and I found an offcut of some pretty paper with a sort of a paisley pattern.  I then went mad with my glitter glues - purple, turquoise, dark blue, clear and green.  The main challenge was to get it from my little craft room in the garage into the house and photographed without smudging the glues.  I think I made it - just!

I'll put glitter on the spine and the back tomorrow! LOL!

I love Christmas, and I love making cards and decorations - it's never too early to start!  (Oh nooooo! I can hear some of you saying!)  I just can't help it!

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Best wishes,  Anne x 

'X' is for Xerox!

The Craft Barn's alpha dictionary challenge this month is the letter 'X'.  Well it had to come round at some point, I suppose!  I'd initially thought I'd do Xmas, but I never ever write Xmas on cards, as I really don't like the contraction, so I thought I'd try a little harder and up popped Xerox!

I found a small stamp of a jam jar of brushes - I think it was a free gift on the front of a magazine - and stamped it a number of times.  One of them was deliberately stamped off the page and crinkled - in recognition of the problems I always come across with printers and copier!

I hope you like my tag!

Have fun!

Anne

O for Olympics

Hello!

I'm writing this post from my holiday terrace in a small mountain village of Mallorca!  I just remembered to do my tag in time, photographed it and then didn't do my blog until I was reminded by the Craft Barn's blog this morning! Phew!  I don't want to miss it!

I'm entering this tag in the Alpha dictionary challenge, for the letter 'O'.  Spurred on by our recent successes in Rio, I thought that 'Olympics' would be reasonably topical and, more importantly, fairly easy for me to do when I was running out of time....

I don't tend to look to see what everyone else does before I've posted my entry.  I'd thought that lots of folk would have chosen 'heart' for the previous challenge, but I was the only one.  I bet I'm not  the only one to choose Olympics this time!  LOL!

I used up a few scraps to make this card, my usual Spellbinders font and a circle die!  

Thanks for reading my blog!

Anne

 

H is for 'heart'

Hello!

The alpha dictionary challenge this time is to illustrate the letter 'H'.  Once again I'm an hour or so before the deadline and still without my word.  Then out of nowhere my word came to me - heart! I then found an offcut from a lovely piece of Heartfelt Creations paper in a beautiful deep red with a dainty pattern. And, of course, out came my heart dies and I was off! 

My tag features a die from Heartfelt Creations (Timeless Amour) and a Spellbinders heart as well.

Best wishes,

Anne

Some cool blues for this hot summer!

Hello!

The Craft Barn challenge for this week is 'blue' - I rather think that the intention was blue skies, blue sea in tune with the beautiful summer weather we're currently enjoying.

However, I've just treated myself to some Heartfelt Creations dies and stamps from their new collection called Snow Kissed.  It's absolutely beautiful, with a stunning snowflake, a tag die (I love my tags...), snowmen and pine trees.  For my card, I chose some icy blue colours and cut up one of the 12" x 12" papers to form the background.  I stamped the pretty tag pattern onto dark paper using white chalk ink.  It's not as clear as I expected, but I quite like the mottled tones.  This stamp is gorgeous on a solid colour.  There are snow flake stamps and dies to cut them out and these are what I used to decorate my card.  Finally, I had to add some glitter - dark blue in the centres of the snowflakes and diamond over the flakes and around the edge. 

The sentiment is from Sue Wilson.   This is such a clever die - you get two sentiments each time you use it.  I've kept the 'waste' for my tag, and the words that have fallen out of it are waiting to go on the next card! (Well, assuming I don't lose them of course!)

It's quite unusual for me to start Christmas cards this early, but with so many lovely things coming out, I've made some headway.

Oh dear - it doesn't look as blue as it really is!  Will it still count?

Have a good bank holiday weekend.

Best wishes,  Anne x

Z for zebra

This week's alpha dictionary challenge from the Craft Barn was the letter Z with a pearl.  So, I needed to choose something beginning with Z and add a pearl to my tag.

I left it a bit late in the fortnight and because of some family celebrations that would take up most of the weekend, I realised that I needed to make my mind up soon!  One of my earlier tags featured zentangle, and I thought that the technique would help me depict a zebra print on my tag.  Once again, I made a stencil to produce the wording.

I'm surprised how much I enjoy making up these patterns and filling in the spaces.  It's quite therapeutic.

Hope you've had a good weekend.

Best wishes,  Anne x

On camera

Hello everyone

Today's blog is for my entry to The Craft Barn's alpha dictionary competition.  This time its the letter 'C'.  The choice for me was easy - Camera.  I remembered that I had some Kaisercraft paper featuring cameras and photography and I thought they would be perfect to illustrate my word.

Trouble was, where did I put them?  Some hours later and the tidiest of tidy craft rooms, I had found them.  I'd used the papers at one of the mini-album classes I go to, and all that was left were a few tiny scraps!  As they were in sepia, I decided to make the whole of my tag sepia, reflecting the golden age of photography with negatives and slides.

As well as my Kaisercraft paper (sorry, I can't remember the name!), I used:

• Font 1 from Spellbinders
• A sizzix die for the slide mounts 
• Tim Holz distress inks - vintage photo (what else!)

Thank you for visiting my blog,

Anne x