A vintage Christmas

As a good friend pointed out to me today, it is only 8 weeks till Christmas and while I have my shopping done, I still have a mountain of cards to make!  This year, I am limiting myself to using only 3 stamps but making lots of different card variations (the theory being that the fewer stamps I have, the fewer choices I have to make) using different inks and papers.  I was demonstrating Distress Inks yesterday and picked up 3 new colours which form the basis of today’s card……

    

 

 

Tea Dye               Wild Honey       Rusty Hinge

And I have combined these with my Pickles Penguin stamp, my Great Impressions Snowflake and a random Christmas Sentiment stamp and come up with this……….

I based the design on this weeks Sunday Sketch and Stamp challenge (here) and I’m really quite pleased with how he turned out.

I hope your Sunday was a Crafty one

Happy Crafting

 

 

 

World Cardmaking Day

Well it’s the first of October and as I write this the sun is beating down.  We’ve had record temperatures in the UK over the past couple of days and I’ve frantically had to search out my summer clothes again!  Given the temperature, it seems odd to be thinking about Christmas but I have a very good reason today.  The wonderful team over at Operation Write Home are hosting a blog hop featuring Christmas cards.  Now, I have a confession to make, due to a change in my plans this week, I haven’t been able to make a new card so I am reusing one from a previous post

I think he’s pretty cute and if you’d like a tutorial on how to make him, you can find it here.  The ladies over at Operation Write Home do an amazing job sending handmade cards to troops fighting overseas for them to send to their families.  I have my own reasons for supporting them, my partner is in the RAF and when they’re overseas receiving something from them, especially something as thoughtful as a handmade card, really brings a smile to your face.  We sign up for relationships with members of the Armed F0rces knowing that we’ll be separated for months at a time but it doesn’t make those separations any easier.  Little gestures like these DO make things easier and they are only possible because of the time and dedication of a small group of volunteers.  If you’d like to find out more about this really worthwhile cause visit http://operationwritehome.org/index.html.

Happy Crafting

Oh the weather outside is frightful

At least it was earlier, it seems to have cheered up a bit now.  Given how awful the weather was earlier, it was a great excuse to get started on my Christmas cards.  I’ve been asked to do a guest blog this week for Caz at The Paperlane so it seemed like a great excuse to use one of the new Wild Rose Studio Christmas stamps featuring Pickles the Penguin.  I used Christmas Cuddles which Caz has in stock (along with the rest of the range).

Isn’t it gorgeous??  This stamp is going to form the basis of my Christmas cards this year and the design I have come up with looks like this…..

Using Black Memento Ink, I stamped the image onto the centre on a 5″ x 5″ card blank

I then made a mask by stamping the image onto some cheap white card (no point in using your best card for this, no one is going to see it), cutting it out and blue tacking it onto the card blank.

Now comes the really fun (if messy) part.  It’s time to create the background of the card using Tim Holtz Distress Inks.  Firstly, I took Tumbled Glass and applied it all over the card using circular motions and a foam blender.  Don’t worry about going over the mask, that’s what it’s there for.

Now do the same with Broken China but don’t bring the colour as far into the centre of the card.

Now repeat with Faded Jeans but keep the colour to the edges of the card

Now leave your image to dry for a wee while (it takes about 10 minutes) and then you’re ready to create your snowflake background.  Ink up the stamp of your choice (I used a Great Impressions background stamp) with a white ink pad (I used Brilliance but you could use any you choose, or you could use a VersaMark and some embossing powders).  Leave the mask in place and stamp over the top.

Leave it to dry and then carefully remove your mask.  You can now colour in your image.  I used a combination of ProMarkers, Copics (for the hat) and Stickles (for the fur and the pompom)

Your finished image should look something like this

Really cute and Christmassy.  I’m indebted to Kathy over at The Daily Marker   for teaching me how to use Distress Inks properly.  They really do add a new dimension to your cards.  Now I’m off to go and clean Faded Jeans off my hands, happy crafting.

A change of scenery

Welcome to the new and (hopefully) improved InkBug blog.  Same content and chatter but with a different look.

Tick tock, tick tock

Well Shimelle’s deadline is fast approaching so this will be my last entry for her challenges. This one is for the 3 is a magic number challenge (here). I took inspiration for this page from some beautiful papers I bought today. They are from the My Mind’s Eye collection and they are absolutely stunning. Sadly my camera does not do justice to the gorgeousness that is these papers so I suggest you go and have a look at the website (here) and check these out. I’m just gutted I only purchased one sheet of each :-(. The ribbons were already loitering in my stash and the lace was from the local haberdashery shop (a bargain at 40p for 3m). I inked the chipboard with bronze ink and then embossed it with clear embossing powder to add some dimension. Finally, I took some Prima flowers and layered them with some American Crafts glitter brads.

Now I must dash otherwise this blog will miss the deadline and turn into a pumpkin!

Night night all and happy crafting

The Music Man

I’ve spent today surrounded by stash, watching The Mighty Ducks and fortified by tea and crispy cakes. An ideal Sunday in my book. The results of my hard labours? 1 page, just 1 page. I’ll blame my trip into town for photo paper. I only meant to be out 20 minutes, instead I found myself 2 hours and £50 down. All spent on stash :-), well worth it though as I got some glorious new papers and stamps, lots of inks and plenty of embellishments. I’m a very happy bunny.

So what is this 1 page I have managed to complete? Well it’s another one for the wedding album and another entry for Shimelle’s crafting comp from last week. This one is being entered into the Retro category (here). Quite a simple layout but with lots of depth, well in my opinion anyway. I’d love to know what you think

Happy Crafting

Dearly Beloved

We are gathered here today…..Sorry wedding flashback there. I seem to have spent all day (minus physio appt time – ouch) surrounded by golds, champagnes and silvers as I carry on the epic task that is scrapping Angie’s wedding. Today’s layout is based on another of Shimelle’s challenges (here), the starting point challenge. The idea behind this is to take Shimelle’s initial layout

and transform it into your very own layout. So here is mine

The inspiration behind the colour scheme is the Brides beautiful vintage wedding dress and the vibrant colours of the Church stained glass window in the rear of the picture. The papers were one’s I had in my stash and I was lucky to find a paper that looked similar to stained glass to form the strip down the left hand side.

I’m really quite proud of this particular layout – hope you like it too

Happy Crafting

Another one.

Well this one is another of Shimelle’s challenges and is based on the Half Page Challenge (here). I’ve been sitting on Angela’s wedding photo’s for nearly a year, but I always knew that this would be the first one I scrapped. It cried out for a monochromatic layout and the half page challenge fitted perfectly. I used some paper that I had lying in my stash along with some papermania ribbons and chipboard, accompanied by a bag of Chocolate Brownie popcorn 🙂

Happy Crafting

Apologies

I haven’t blogged (or been crafty) in an absolute age. Major changes in both my personal and professional life have stolen all my time from me, and, if truth be told, my creativity has somewhat disappeared. So the news last week that I’d broken my leg and will be off work for at least 2 weeks was warmly welcomed (eventually). This gave me some craft time, but what about the creativity? Enter the wonderful Shimelle Laine and her weekend Scrapbooking Challenge – just the thing to get the creative juices flowing again.

Over the weekend, Shimelle has posted a number of challenges to win some great prizes, and this, combined with some wonderful new pics to play with, has sent me into a scrapbooking frenzy. My first attempt is for the Grid It Up challenge (here). It’s not my best work, but it’s got me started again. Huge thanks to Shimelle for the kick up the backside that I needed.

Now I really must go and start dinner else “him indoors” will be most upset.

More later

Happy Crafting

I love my Penny Blacks

And at the moment my stamps of choice are from the Micey Day T for Transparent set. The daisy chain made an appearance last week and I have used it again today for the Penny Black Winter White challenge. All you have to do is create a card that uses white as the primary element.
Here it is……

I stamped the image with Memento ink and coloured it with Promarkers (what else lol). The card was then embossed with a stencil that I had lying around (my stencils survived the flood) and mounted him onto Bazzill Cardstock.

Would love to know what you think