Getting there!

Well, I have managed to make a few more Christmas cards!

I'm particularly pleased with this one, because the background is not printed paper, believe it or not, it's stamped! I love tartan and plaid backgrounds, as they are colourful and go with many themes, so when I saw this new stamp set by Concord & 9th, I was delighted! I can now make my own plaid papers in whatever colours I like!

For the topper I've used the Woodware Lino Cut Wren (which I think could also be a robin!) and embellished with poinsettia dies by Marianne Design and pine branch by Britannia Dies. The sentiment is computer generated and cut out with a die by The Works. Stitched circle dies also by The Works.

This card also fits our November challenge at Stamping Sensations, where the theme is "Get Ready For Christmas!" There's still plenty of time to enter. Pop over to the Challenge Blog for all the details.

Now, only another 60 or so Christmas cards to go.............

November Challenge at Stamping Sensations

I've been a bit quiet(er than usual!) in blogland over the past few months, having been very busy with a non-craft project which has taken up a LOT of my time! However, that is finished at last, and the realisation is dawning that Christmas is not far away and I haven't even begun to think about it yet! So it's perhaps as well that our November Challenge at Stamping Sensations has a seasonal theme, as it has ensured I have at least one Christmas card made!

This month our topic is

* * * * * CHRISTMAS GREETINGS * * * * *

We would like to see a Christmas greeting on your projects, as either the main image or an added sentiment. Also, as always, since we are a stamping challenge there must be stamping (rubber/clear or hand coloured digi) as the focal point. And please note: if we do not comment on your entry it will be because it does not follow the theme, qualify under our rules, or because we are asked to sign in or provide additional data to comment. We do not want to be rude but we do want to be fair to those who do follow the rules.

I've used the stunning Merry Christmas stamp by Inkylicious on my card.

 I  cut a circle stencil and sponged around inside the edge with pigment ink to make a frame for the sentiment. Holly corner punch and patterned paper are by Dovecraft. Poinsettia die set by Marianne Design.

Our lovely sponsor this month is Stamp Addicts, who have given us a £35 store voucher for our winner, and with the fantastic variety of products on offer, that lucky person will definitely be spoiled for choice!

Well, it's a nice and easy theme, but if you should need any inspiration, just pop over to the Challenge Blog and have a look at the beautiful creations showcased by our design team. We look forward to seeing lots of entries. Good luck everyone!

It's getting nearer.....

.... and I have made hardly any Christmas cards yet! Still, at least I have made a start, with a card for our November theme at Stamping Sensations, which is

* * * * * FESTIVE FLOWERS AND FOLIAGE * * * * *

Can't really go wrong with this one - Christmas roses, holly and ivy, poinsettias, mistletoe, winter jasmine, even amaryllis, snowdrops and more! You may use any materials you choose, from any company. All we ask is that you use a stamp as the main focus of your design.

We are sponsored this month by be Creative!, who very kindly have donated a fantastic prize: a great selection (around £60 worth!) of their products, including papers, glitter glues, blending tools and refills, glue wand, tags, loads of embellishments and, to top it all, one of their fabulous totes to keep everything in!

Be Creative! are a new company, in fact so new that their website is not scheduled to go live until December, but you can check them out on their Facebook page. However, if you can't wait that long to get your hands on their stuff, you can buy it now from Once Upon A Stamp. Only some of the products are on their website, but they are all available from their shop, if you're local to them, or by telephoning your order to them on 01623 818910.

I am very impressed by the Be Creative paper pads. The paper is such good quality, and it's also double sided. I used a sheet from the "Winterland" pad for my card.

To echo the printed trees on the paper, I stamped and cut out a tree (from Stampin' Up's "Lovely As A Tree" set) and affixed it to the card with foam pads. I diecut the poinsettias (Marianne Design) from one of the "Winterland" papers and punched out the fern leaves (Leone Em) from metallic green paper (from my stash). I used a Be Creative glue wand to assemble the poinsettias and fasten them and the fern leaves in place. As the glue wand has a fine ball tip, it is very easy to apply the glue to small, delicate or fiddly items. It sticks really well too! I dotted the centres of the flowers and the stamped tree with glitter glue (also from Be Creative) and finished the design with a sentiment from Personal Impressions.

If, like me, you are still needing inspiration for your Christmas makes, you'll find plenty over on the Stamping Sensations Challenge Blog. Please do visit my teamies' individual blogs too, they would really appreciate it. I look forward to seeing all your lovely Festive Floral creations!

A Free and Easy end to our Challenge year

Well, it's time for our final challenge of 2013 at Stamping Sensations. If you're like me, you'll be frantically trying to get the Christmas preparations sorted at the same time as keeping up with all the regular stuff. Anyone who has finished making all their Christmas cards by now has my ardent admiration! The rest of you will, I'm sure, be grateful that our December Challenge has the theme of

***** FREE AND EASY *****

so anything goes! If you're still on with the Christmas cards (like me!), you could show us those. If not, we'd love to see what else you've been working on lately.

As usual we've got a fabulous sponsor to help us round off the year, Visible Image, an all-British company with a fantastic range of stamps, no less than 5 sets of which have been very generously donated by them for our prize.

Anyway, on to my card. It's a Christmas one, of course, 40 down, about another 30 still to go!

I treated myself to an early Christmas present of a couple of Memory Box dies which I've had my eye on for quite some time. The one I've used here is called Tessatina Border. I cut it out of both red and green card, and then inserted the green cut-out into the space left in the red card. It was then framed with the X-cut Poinsettia Border punch. That was another new buy! I was delighted recently when The Range opened a new branch not 10 miles away from me, a small oasis in the crafting desert in which I live! Had to go and check it out, of course, and couldn't resist the Poinsettia punch. So pretty, and needn't be confined to Christmas cards!

The card was finished with some flowers cut with the Marianne Design Mini Poinsettia die set, a Spellbinders bauble diecut overstamped with a Waltzing Mouse stamp, and a sentiment also by Waltzing Mouse. The background paper was a freebie from Making Cards Magazine.

My amazing teamies have some stunning samples to inspire you with. Do go and have a look at them on the Challenge Blog. We had a brilliant response to our Christmas theme last month, and I'm sure you'll all do us proud with your entries for December. Can't wait to see them!

Now, back to the Christmas card production line.......

Is it Spring??

Well, it's April, so it must be, but it sure doesn't feel like it up here! Although the last few days have been sunny, it's still very cold, and there is still snow on the ground in places. And looking at the weather forecast for the next few weeks, I won't be putting my thermals away just yet!

Anyway, it really is April, even if the weather doesn't think so, and we have a new challenge at Stamping Sensations. The theme is

** SPECIAL OCCASIONS, OTHER THAN BIRTHDAYS **

Lots of scope with this one. Anniversaries, weddings, new babies, retirement, graduation, new home, get well soon, congratulations (eg. for new job, passing exams, driving test) even sympathy cards. I'm sure you can think of many other Special Occasions. Just remember NO BIRTHDAYS!

Mind you, the winner this month will probably think it's their birthday! Our April sponsors are PDA Card & Craft, and they have given us this most generous prize!

The lucky recipient will be spoilt for choice! I used to live near PDA, and I miss being able to pop into the shop for a good browse! However, their mail order service is brilliant, so at least I can still buy their products. They are probably best known for their fantastic selection of top quality blank card and paper, but they have lots of other craft goodies too, including stamps (from many companies), dies and stencils, a huge range of embellishments, pens, punches, inks (including Distress), embossing powders, adhesives and beautiful printed papers, one of which I have used for my card.  I've been saving it for a long time, it's almost too pretty to use! But I decided it would be perfect for this card, and anyway I've got another sheet to keep!

PDA also stock the Marianne Design frame die, which I used to cut out the butterfly image. The butterfly stamp is one I've had for years, and I've no idea who made it, it doesn't have any ID on it. I coloured the image with Promarkers and inked around the edges of the frame, and along the border. The butterfly punch used to make the border is also anonymous. It's actually a corner punch, but I took out the corner guides so I could do the border instead. I coloured one of the punched out butterflies and stuck it just above the sentiment, which is by Personal Impressions.

My lovely teamies have some superb samples for you to feast your eyes upon, and if they don't brighten up this unspringlike Spring, I don't know what will! Do hop over to the Challenge Blog and have a look at them. I'll look foward to seeing your Special Occasion creations!

Fur and Feathers

We had some wonderful entries for our January theme at Stamping Sensations. Already it's February, though, and time for a new challenge. This month it's

FUR AND FEATHERS

Plenty of scope there, I think. I decided to go for feathers, being unable to resist these adorable owls by Little Claire.

I wanted the owls to be the centre of attention, so, after colouring them with Distress Markers and cutting them out with a Spellbinders die (Labels 10), I kept the rest of the card quite simple. The background papers, which just happened to go perfectly with the image, were a freebie from Making Cards magazine. I computer-generated the sentiment on to a Spellbinders tag, and the diecut flourish is a Marianne Design.

Our sponsor for this month is once again the fabulous Stix2, and just look at what they have generously donated for our lucky winner!

My lovely teamies have excelled themselves with their creations this month, so do go and check them out on the Challenge Blog. I think this is going to be a very popular theme, so I'm looking forward to seeing lots of Fur and Feathers!

Who lives in a house like this?

My grandsons came to visit today and were surprised to find a mysterious little door in the skirting board!

It hadn't been there when they were here last. Where did it lead to? Whose front door could it be?

Who lives in a house like this? Why, a House Mouse of course!

I wanted to make something different from a card for a change. I saw this idea years ago, unfortunately can't remember where now. I've been meaning to make one ever since, and finally got round to it. The boys loved it!

Papers: My Mind's Eye.

Rubber Stamps: mouse - House Mouse, butterflies - Chocolate Baroque.

Digistamps: Chair, lamp, table & picture frame from Grandma's Parlor set by Wink Wink Ink.
Chipboard twig & leaves: Crafty Individuals.
Birch Tree die: Memory Box.
Leaves die: Marianne Designs

Just because

It's quite a long time since I made anything that wasn't for a challenge, DT work, or a particular occasion. Having recently acquired various items of new stash, I thought I'd take a bit of time to have a play with some of them.

I'd been wondering whether to invest in some Distress Stains, and in the end couldn't resist ordering a few to try. I must admit they are very convenient to use, being in a sponge tipped bottle and so it's easy to cover a background quickly with them, and you can also ink up stamps with them, but since they are basically just like watered down distress ink, and you could probably get a similar effect using diluted DI and a sponge, I'm not sure whether I'll buy any more.

Anyway, inspired by Glenda's video on her blog, where she uses the Distress Stains with some of her gorgeous new Chocolate Baroque stamps, I made a card.

The background was made with Spun Sugar Distress Stain, overstamped with Hero Arts Dots & Flowers background & Old French Writing, which I had inked up with the same DS. The result is very subtle. Also stamped the Old French Writing on the base card. The picture is from a Crafty Individuals Miniatures Book (People & Places 2), and I made a frame for it with a Nellie Snellen die, inking around the edge with Versamagic ink. A strip of Tim Holtz Tissue Tape across the bottom, a Marianne Design leaf flourish (also coloured with Versamagic), and a sentiment by Innovative Stamp Creations finished the card.

I'd just like to say a big thank you to all you lovely people who keep commented on my blog. I do appreciate your visits, and hope you'll forgive me for not being able to reciprocate much at the moment. The big clearout in preparation for our move north is ongoing, slowly but surely, and between now and the end of term I will be very busy indeed at work, with several school concerts/events to come. A bittersweet time, as I have been at one of my current schools for the past 28 years and this is my last term here. But, as I said to my head teacher last week, 28 years is half my life, near enough, so I reckon it's about time for a change!

More Wow!

The white-on-white challenge this week at Less is More has really appealed to me, so I've made two more cards! For the first one I've made an arrangement of punched flowers and leaves on a Nestie lace circle, with a punched butterfly and white pearls for the flower centres. Recently I was given a complete set of alphabet punches, so I used those to make the word "Spring".

I was quite pleased with it, but then I wondered whether it might be a bit too fancy for Less is More, so I made another which is much more clean and simple.

This has a Marianne die-cut flourish with a Martha Stewart punched butterfly, and the same punched letters as the previous card. I think I actually prefer this one.

I've really enjoyed making all these white-on-white cards, but I'm feeling the need for a bit of colour now, so that will probably be the last one for the time being!

Another great Blog Girl Day at Sir Stampalot

This was our third get-together, and it was lovely to see some familiar faces again and some new ones too, especially Lisa Jane, who I'd been looking forward to meeting for ages. As usual, Brenda and Chris had designed some beautiful projects for us to make, and not only that but they had each made us little gifts. A wallet filled with flowers from Brenda, and a butterfly bookmark from Chris. Thanks, both of you, they are gorgeous! Here they are.

Our first make of the day was a twisted easel card, by Chris. I'd never made a twisted easel before, so I was really pleased to learn how to do it. Next was a card by Brenda, featuring a Penny Black stamp (which was the first thing into my shopping basket!) and a flower (made with Tim Holtz Tattered Floral dies) dipped in UTEE using a Meltpot. A fabulous effect, but I don't think I'll be buying a Meltpot. Sally & I reckoned that we could do it by melting some UTEE in a tinfoil dish with a heatgun. Haven't tried it yet, but I'll let you know if it works when I get round to it!

Once again, Brenda and Chris co-ordinated a delicious lunch, to which we all contributed, but the highlight of it had to be Chris's amazing raspberry cheesecake, which didn't last very long!

Hunger pangs banished, we went back to work on two more pretty cards (which I've yet to finish off), and finally a delightful little divided box designed by Chris for holding stamped images waiting to be used, or paper snippets, or recipes, or photos, etc etc. Chris had put Molly Bloom on the front of hers, but not being a fan of cute characters I decided to be different and have a butterfly on mine instead. We made the flowers with the Cuttlebug quilling dies, which are good but very expensive! (They didn't make it into my shopping basket!) A Marianne swirl die completed the decoration.

The day flew by, but we managed to save a bit of time for some retail therapy at the end! Huge thanks to Brenda and Chris (and Janice and Andy) for another fantastic Blog Girl Day. Can't wait for the next one!



WOW!!!

What a day! On Friday we decided to have a last day out before I go back to school this week, and as we were heading up the motorway on the way to Robin Hood's Bay I got a text from Sally. It said "You've won the Cuttlebug from the Once Upon A Stamp Design Team Blog!" Well, I had to read it about six times before it sank in. Then I thought, no, it can't be me. Must be a different Lynne K. So I rang Sally, and she said "It's true! No other Lynne K entered the competition. I checked." Woo hoo!!! Now this sort of thing never happens to me, at least it never has until now. I've won the odd raffle prize occasionally, and even 2 sets of  Elusive Images stamps, which was fantastic, but never anything like this. To say I was excited would be like saying the Titanic had a little prang with an iceberg - ie. understatement of the year! How I managed to contain myself for the rest of the day, I'll never know.

We had a lovely time at RHB. The weather was beautiful. We had fish'n'chips, a stroll along the beach, looked in the rock pools, found a few fossils, and enjoyed the fresh sea air.

Then we called on my sister-in-law who lives near Whitby. Home via the North York Moors with all the heather out. It was quite late when we got back, but I had to get the laptop out & see for myself - yes, it was true! I had won the Cuttlebug, along with the new "No More Shims" mat! First thing on Saturday morning I phoned Once Upon A Stamp, as requested, and arranged that, since I'm only half an hour from the shop, I could go up and collect it. Sally came with me.

I'd heard about the No More Shims Embossing Mat, but didn't know all that it can do. It was invented by Gordon himself, and he kindly gave us a demo of its capabilities. I am highly impressed with it. Not only can you emboss through the CB without having to faff about with fiddly extra bits of card (and you get a better result), you can also emboss found objects as long as they are no thicker than a 10p piece. Magic! I tried some real leaves and they came out beautifully. So I made a gift bag to put them on.

The bag is made from an envelope, and it's very quick and easy to do. See the video by Lisa Spangler on the Hero Arts website. The definition on the leaves is amazing. All the veins stand out, even the tiny ones. (Click to get the big picture and see them!) Having embossed them onto plain photocopying paper, as Gordon suggested, I cut them out and then sponged over them with various colours of pigment inks. I thought that doing so might squash them, being on thin paper, but the detail held very well. Then I matted them on to coloured card. The bag is stamped with Hero Arts stamps.

Next I tried embossing some mulberry paper which has a raised embossed pattern on it. Again, it worked really well. I decided to use the one with the flowery pattern and made a card with it, having coloured it with pigment inks to make the detail stand out.

I kept the card simple so as not to hide the background, and just added a Crafty Individuals picture, a flourish (a Marianne Design die) and a Nestabilities label. (Sentiment - Papermania, tiny flower - Rubber Stamp Tapestry).

I've been a big fan of the Cuttlebug for a long time and wouldn't be without it, but have always wondered why they couldn't come up with something better than fiddly bits of card for embossing. Well, Gordon certainly has - and it's brilliant!

I want to say a HUGE thank you to Gordon, Robert and all the team at Once Upon A Stamp for such a wonderfully generous prize. Oh, and it all came in a fab tote bag, also part of the prize. While I was at the shop I bought a Scor-Pal ......... but that's another story!