Bah Humbug Beads

This weeks challenge at Bah Humbug Christmas item challenge is to use beads. I went for a black and white look using black card stock and a snowflake background paper. I think I made the background design myself but its been hanging around in my puter for so long I could be wrong.

The vintage image is from an old postcard I picked up at the market. Doesn't she look warm and cosy in that big hat! The hat has some kind of tassel on it so I decided to make it more prominent with silver beads. I finished the card off with a silver ribbon and an insert printed off with the same snowflake design but in draft. 

Here is a detail

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Note Cards

In this age of email and mobile texting, I think one of the nicest things is to receive a handwritten letter from some one. When its in the form of a pretty card its even better!

I have some Kraft cards and envelopes I had intended making into rustic greetings cards using pressed flowers, printed paper scraps and some distressing but that idea has been shelved for the moment. I spent some time playing with them today and decided they would make nice note cards. The C6 size is just right and the rustic colour is different. I thought a black border would work printed directly onto the note card and found just what I needed  in my pressed botanical artwork. I gave them a digi twist sketch effect and got rid of the colour and made a digi stamp of the image. 

My first attempt looked a bit intense so I lightened it and printed out a faded image. The latter just cried out for colour and so I highlighted by hand with Sakura and Marve le Plume pens. So now I had two cards, one with a dark print and one lighter and coloured. I found an image to use as a topper and mounted it onto the cards and added bronze coloured peel off lines around the toppers. 

The problem is I can't choose which one I like the best! I want to make a batch of them but can't decide which to use. I hope someone will decide for me.

Kraft cards and envelopes from Joanna Sheen
Topper image from Crafty Computer Paper

flickr

bookmarks, a photo by florafinity on Flickr.

Ooooo, this is useful!
I am browsing through my flickr account and discovered I can share direct to my blog. I love the bookmarks I created in 2007. I gave several to friends I meet up with on holiday and I'm touched to know they still use them. Simple gifts yet worth so much in friendship.


Via Flickr:
pressed flower arrangements printed

Acetate challenge

I had wanted to make some little boxes for this challenge but as is too often these days, I ran out of time.
I was lucky enough to find some acetate jackets in my stash already folded and printed with white wavy frames. I vaguely remember buying them eons ago ! They are perfect for this project and so I added some glittery gold peel off frames directly onto the acetate and mounted some christmas peel offs onto paper, coloured and cut them out for mounting onto the acetate with tiny sticky foam pads.
I love the intense blue of the foiled card I used (for 3yr olds and upwards). Why should kids have all the fun, LOL, and I stuck a white Christmas greeting in the centre then finished it off with thin white organza ribbon.
Hope you like.

ppp penguin

Its a ppp penguin challenge at Bah! Humbug Hall this week and I so enjoyed making this penguin themed Christmas card.
I designed and then printed the background and text straight onto watercolour card, then added penguin images and a star. I also added some glitter but its not obvious in the photo. The penguin images are just scans that have been given a digital twist. The larger one is mounted on navy pearlised card and the small penguin is a cut out.
Hope you like !

Scarves and Mittens

Only, I lost the mittens. I hope Bah Humbug doesn't mind that I have substituted a wooly hat for the mittens in this weeks challenge.
I must apologise that I have missed out on so many Humbug challenges, me thinks I will need to make at least two a week to catch up on my stash of Christmas cards. I like this card and may even do four of them! It says to me "the dark days of winter" but the little girl's face swathed in wooly hat and scarf brightens the day.
I have used old gold coloured card and an aperture frame cut down to fit around the girl's image. I used bog standard matt photo paper sold at my local computer store to print the girl's image. I think it has a dreamy soft appearance and am quite pleased with it. I distressed the frame a bit with a distressing tool and some green ink then added gold line peel offs. I touched up the white poinsettas with gold ink to tone them down and added a green ribbon which already had the jewelled embellishments attached. Finally I added the greetings sentiment.
The card is from Joanna Sheen
Girls image is from Crafty Computer Papers
Greetings is by Flower Soft
Ribbon and aperture are old stash.

Hope you like it, please comment if you can.

flowers on gingham

At long last I have my craft room back in order so that I can get creative in comfort again. All I need now is a new CD player so that I can listen to my favourite music at the same time. I knew my mojo was in desperate need of nurturing so we had a taster session this weekend and I thoroughly enjoyed my playtime and even the long awaited rain couldn't dampen my spirits.

Digging through my stash of paper crafty things I pulled out some pretty pastel blank cards measuring just 5x5". I matched them up with pretty gingham backing papers and a mix of paper flowers I got from Joanna Sheen some time ago. Digging deeper in my stash I found an assortment of embellishments and peel offs and I was ready to create!

Just basic layering and a few adornments were all it took to make my first card and I was so pleased with it I just couldn't stop there. If a basic design is quick, attractive and successful, why stop at one! At least that is how I think and so I got to grips with my next card.


Wow! I was on a roll. I chose green for my next colour although it isn't a colour I would normally go for so it was a challenge and what a challenge it turned out to be! I just don't 'think' green and I struggled to make my next two cards. I don't do cute either so it was a real surprise for me to find myself working with cute bears but they saved the day and came together nicely with the green background.

The green was looking good but my inspiration was flagging and I should have called it a night there and then but what did I do? Went on to pink!

This one just about had me beat! So I made it simple with less embellishments and I think I managed to pull it off with the butterfly. Just a simple peel off stuck on the same gingham background paper and stuck down so that the wings lifted.









Thats when I called it a day but bright and early the next day my mojo was buzzing and I set to creating another card in pink.

It was so easy to do. It all came together
with hardly any forward planning.
As easy as one, two, three!









The images shown here are scanned and may have looked better as photographs. Hmmm, maybe its time to get a new digi camera.
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