Only 6 months to go...Rudolph Day June

Hello There

Yep!  You read it right.  Only 6 months, 26 weeks, or 182 days or 5 pay days until the day when we will hopefully have been visited by the man in the Red Suit!!

So in preparation for this I join in every month with my Mate's Rudolph Day Challenge.  

Last night I had a rummage through my Christmas basket and came across my last piece of paper which measured about 7.5" square and wanted to practice a bit of thiftiness and get as many cards as I could without cutting the paper into small pieces.  So I cut it on the lines in the pattern on the paper horizontally, and trimmed to fit on a 7x5 card and chomped the corners with MS snowflake punch.  Now what next?  I found a strip of pale turquoise cardstock left over from a layout which matched as well as some white strips of TH "lace".  An idea was born.  On my desk, left over from a recent project was some dark turquoise card.  I cut three pieces of the pale turquoise to fit below the PP, I cut some more "lace" from Snippets of white, pale turquoise and dark turquoise card. I remembered I had some fine silver thread so threaded some through the top layer of lace.

Next I put it all together, having first cut some small squares of turquoise and placed behind the top corners.  I cut some snowflakes using Spellbinders dies and punched some tiny snowflakes which I adhered and then added Stickles in there.

Now to prove I made more than one..

I have two of something else I can share with you today too.  Two newbies to the Snippets Playground who were bought for me by Mr Hettie for my birthday...

Meet Hinge and Bracket.  Some of my older readers will know who they are.  Younger ones please feel free to Google them!

That's enough posing for you, time to find some food!

Right, off to call by at the Snippets Playground to check on my new Girlies and take my cards as they are made entirely from Snippets with only a few small bits left over.  Don't worry, I will use them too.  

Why not make a few Christmas cards and join in to the Rudolph Day challenge?  You have until the end of the month and there is a prize to be drawn.

Thanks for calling by.

Hettie

Rudolph Day July - Painting

Happy Rudolph Day Everyone!!

Yep!  It is 25th July today and that means Rudolph Day with my friend Sandra at Stamping for Pleasure.  Why not get a head start with your Christmas (woops - I used the C word) cards and make one, post it on your blog and link it HERE.  It will be round the corner before you know it.  

Here is mine this month....

(Sorry about the wonky photographing but it was tricky to photograph to get the colours right so Hubby put it on his car bonnet!)

I cut some shapes out with cardstock using Spellbinders dies, inked the background with Distress Inks, stamped a background and then used my Sheena Douglass Christmas Rose stamps and the Paint Fusion technique with Pebeo paints to create the individual pieces.   Once it was all dry I stamped and embossed a swirl stamp using bronze embossing powder.

I then took some Snippets (the brown was left over from Tuesday's scrapbook layout) and then stamped and embossed, using Darkroom Door stamps and the bronze embossing powder again on the top and bottom pieces.  The middle piece I cut out on white and stamped in green DI. I then used ribbon to go through the middle of the panels and adhered using glue.  Once these were adhered I then added the back pieces on to make a hanging.  

I will then write my message on the middle piece, pop it in an envelope and it all folds flat for posting.  This also includes some NBUS (Never Before Used Schtuff!) - yeay!  The stamps were desperate to be abused with ink!!

I am also going to pop this into the Playground as there are a few Snippets here, and also because I won the Sheena Douglass stamps at the Playground.

Thanks for calling by.  You have a week to join in so off you go and make a card.  There is also a lovely stamp which you can be in with a chance to win.

Hugs

Hettie

Scrapbook Tuesday.......And it is finished!

Hello Friends

Welcome to this week's edition of Scrapbook Tuesday.  I hope you are well and have a cuppa as this post is a little photo heavy (but not as photo heavy as it could be!).  I thought that as it is now heading towards the middle of the year it was high time I shared my Christmas Album with you.  It has been finished a while but I just have not got round to photographing or sharing it with you.  So sit back and take a peek at the finished album and I will try not to butt in too often while you browse..

The album was taken from a pattern which I bought and downloaded from Laura Denison of Following the Paper Trail. I covered the outside covers with hessian and then adhered Papermania papers, which I have used throughout, and decorated with embellishments including the Poinsettia die cuts which my friend Helen let me cut at The Crop I.  Thanks Helen.  (In fact I am not sure she had even used it when she let me borrow it!)

Inside cover with a piccie of Mr Hettie putting our second tree up in the Dining Room for me.  He actually ended up decorating it too!!  

Inside pages showing all the pockets, journal cards on which I stamped, buttoned, ribboned, punched, strung, die cut and doodled on.  

Stamps used included Darkroom Door, Crafty Individuals, Tim Holtz, Wendy Vecchi, Penny Black and Craft Stamper freebies to name a few.  

Papers used were from Papermania and cardstock was Bazzill.  

Buttons from Hobbycraft and Brads from MME.  The domed stickers were from err!  Forgotten.  I will try and remember.

Punches used were Stampin Up, EK Success and Martha Stewart.  Dies used from Tim Holtz.

The small pockets were cut using the Silhouette.

Ribbons came from a number of sources including Snippets.  In fact there are lots of Snippets in this project!

Inside back cover.  One of our latest decorations bought in our trip to Bath for the Christmas Market.

The decoration on the spine was made using alcohol inks resist technique and a Memory Frame from Ranger.  Stamps were Tim Holtz.

And here you see a taster of what the pockets contain.  Three photographs which were dated and which signified aspects of a particular day.  They were not in strict order, it sort of depended on the photograph.  The tags were photographs of tags that I made for the Funkie Junkie 12 Tags of 2012 which I shall definitely be joining in on this year.at the start as opposed to Tag 9!!

The end cards contain journalling as do the insides of the flaps to comment on the photographs.  I bought the white Sharpie pen from HERE and it is the best pen I have ever used for writing in white!  

As the Papermania paper pack I used for this was 6x6 I can enter this into the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge this week - yippee!    Serendipity strikes again!

Crazy Hazelnut is looking for stars this week.  I know there are plenty hidden in this album so I am going to pop this project into that challenge too.

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed making this album.  The paper engineering was alot of fun, even if it did create alot of mess and "Punch Poo" at the Crop.  Incidentally, if any of you who are going to The Crop II on 1 June would like to see this at close quarters, I am willing to bring it.  Just leave me a comment to that effect.  

Right.  Off to beddie byes now as I am feeling very tired and very sniffley and this Rum Toddy is starting to take effect on me!  

Hugs and TTFN

Hettie

Twinchies - Anything Goes...

Hello Friends

The Peeps over at Twinchie Twinchie have started on the first challenge of the year with "Anything Goes".  I have not joined in on the Twinchie challenge for some time but hope to get back to them now that Christmas is over.  As soon as my Craft Stamper arrived I knew I wanted to use the stamp so here it is....

I inked the stamp with Ranger Archival black ink and embossed with clear embossing powder.  Using my Victoria Velvet Distress Pen I first coloured the larger wings directly with the pen and then scribbling the pen on a block, I used a watercolour pen to colour the smaller wings.  I just love how you can get different effects with the Distress pens.  I cut the paper to size and then inked the edges with some Victorian Velvet Distress Ink and hey presto Twinchie complete.  

Thanks for calling by and hope you like my Twinchie.

Hugs

Hettie

Oops! Forgot to share these...

Hello Friends

Whilst popping my photos onto my external hard drive, (I usually try to save my photos onto an external hard drive since having a computer crash on me once in the past!), I found some photographs of projects which I had not shared with you, so I hope you don't mind if I share them now with you.....

I wanted to place family presents into individual bags for Christmas and had these large brown bags which I ordered by mistake.  So I stamped them using various stamps and Distress Inks and then punched the edges of the bags and inked.  Using my EK Success punch I made punched ribbon and adhered to the edge of the bags.  Folding over the edge of the bags I punched holes using my cropadile to make holes for the ribbon to thread through to tie bows to close the bags.

Here are two more I made, though I forgot to photograph the others I made.  There were six in total, using different colours and patterns on the front, most made using recycled Christmas cards and all using Snippets.

I think I shall make more for next Christmas 2013, but maybe a little earlier this time so I am not rushing them.

Thanks for calling by.

TTFN

Hettie

Funkie Junkie 12 Tags - No 7

Hello Friends

I am still beavering away working on my 12 Tags of Christmas with The Funkie Junkie, which is sponsored by The Funkie Junkie Boutique, and here I am going to show you No 7 (my eighth tag).  I have until midnight on Monday to finish the last four!!  Yikes!!

As usual I will show you Linda's tag first....

When I looked at this tag, and after I had said "Wow", I looked carefully at the elements Linda had used.  The cottage reminded me of my own home (except mine is not wooden and at the moment is not, sadly, covered in snow) and the word "Holidays" reminded me of somewhere that Hubby and I have spent holidays at Christmas where it does snow from now until the end of February.  Any regulars to my blog will know that this is Prague.

So here is my take on Linda's tag.....

I have used the kraft glassine with Ranger Ink Refresher technique, then swooshed with Bundled Sage DS and some Bronze DS and then inked with Vintage Photo DI.  I left it all to dry whilst I ate my tea and came back and finished drying it with my heat tool.  

The Charles Bridge scene is a Darkroom Door stamp as is Praha and the clock.  I stamped the scene and the Praha onto Snippets of SU Vanilla CS using Coffee Archival ink, heated them with the heat tool and on the Bridge scene, using an embossing pen I went over in places and added some schparkly embossing powder to give the feeling of crisp snow.  (I notice the lamppost on the Image looks squiffed but I assure you it isn't.  It may be the angle of the card underneath as it is only on the top edge??)  Then I edged both images with VP DI. 

Then I moved onto the background of the tag and stamped the clock image from DD, using firstly Bronze DS then secondly Black Archival ink.  I found another coffee cup protector and swooshed some Bronze DS over it, tore it to fit the image and then edged with VP DI and mounted the Bridge image on it.  

I then cut a TH Lamppost twice out of glitter cardstock, once with gold (to get the effect of light) and again in black for the post itself.  I cut the Holly out of K&Co cardstock, adhered the holly onto the lamppost and adhered some red beads onto the holly.  

The Christmas Memories embellishment is a K&Co one and the final touches were the TH Snow Tissue Tape and the ribbon, which incidentally I bought in Prague when we were there in February.

So that ends Tag 7.  Only 4 more to go, one of which I will post later (hopefully).  I am off out to a Christmas Party tonight with Scottish Dancing friends, so need to go and get showered and dressed up to go. 

Thanks for calling by. 

Hettie

Gipsy Album for Hubbie

Hello Friends

A bit of a long post tonight, so why don't you make yourself a cuppa and take a gander at your leisure.  

It was recently mine and Mr Hettie's wedding anniversary and a few months ago I found some old photos of Gipsy vehicles which he went to see at a meeting before we were an "item". I know Brenda commented on them one WOYWW week as they were on my desk.  

Well, this is what I did with them.....

I used a Kaiserkraft album that I bought eons ago from QVC which opens all the way out, I could not get a very good shot of the album in it's full length.  Papers by Cosmo Cricket, Bo Bunny, Bazzill.  Dies by Tim Holtz, Silhouette, Cricut, Nesties.  Stamps by Tim Holtz, Paperartsy, Making Memories, Darkroom Door.  Inks by Ranger, Stampin Up.  Punches by Stampin Up.  Embellishments by Tim Holtz, Reebok (yes really - Union Jack top right front cover!), Papermania, general stock. Glossy Accents by Ranger. Snippets.  Lots of Snippets!

Thanks for looking.  I can tell you Hubby loved it, and had not seen the photos for years!  He had quite forgotten about them!  I aim to please!

TTFN

Hettie

Holiday in Rome

Hello Peeps

My blogging friend Victoria mentioned a Scrapbooking Challenge on Addicted to Stamps blog on a recent post so I just had to pop along to see what it is all about.  This is a monthly challenge and this month the theme is "Holiday".  

This particular photograph has been waiting desperately to be scrapbooked and it is one of my favourite photos of our trip to Rome last year.  Let's see what you think....

It is one of the most complete buildings left at the Forum and is the Basilica of Antoninus and Faustina and was built about 141 (presume AD but I couldn't find out precisely.  What is 282 years when it is that old!)

An olive branch across the bottom of the page.  We actually saw some olive trees growing on the hill at the Forum, as well as orange trees fruiting!  The Life sentiment is from my Darkroom Door Prague 2 set, cut with Labels 4 Nestie and stamped with SU flourish in Faded Jeans DI.

Some Tim Holtz tissue tape over the top of a stamping of a tile stamp, also by Tim Holtz, which stamping was sprinkled with some Pewter Perfect Pearls. as were all tile stamping.  The scalloped circle is from my latest Nesties set and the small label is cut with a Quickutz die. Rome was stamped with stamps, but I cannot remember what make as I have had them that long!  The camera stamp was sent by my lovely friend Karen in Canada.  Thanks again! I knew it would be used soon!

The stripey paper is Pink Paislee and was already edged like this.  The background paper is Wild Asparagus which I stamped with my favourite flourish stamp and Walnut Stain.  I gutted the centre of the brown background paper in order to make the mount of the photo.  The large label is Tim Holtz die, Tim Holtz Postcard stamp, date stamp from Ryman and the same stamps used for Perfect as Rome.  

Ribbon is by East of India bought only on Saturday!  Both the globe and the vine were made with my Silhouette cutter.  The globe was printed then cut while the vine was cut, sprayed with a mixture of Colourwash and reinker with perfect pearls.  The Olives were coloured with a mix of Aged Mahogany and Black Soot DI.  The heart was cut with Sizzix die and stamped with SU flourish.

Thanks for staying with me.  I hadn't realised how much "stuff" I had used on this layout!  It is no wonder my desk ends up in soo much of a mess when I am creating a layout!! No chance of me ever being able to scrapbook at any of my super tidy friends' desks is there?

Why not join in the Challenge.  Link your layout HERE.  You have until 19 August to join in.  And Big Thanks to Victoria for introducing me to this Challenge!  Even if you do not like scrapbooking there are other challenges on the site which you may like to join in with!

Please don't forget to sign in to the Visitor's Book so I know you have been.

Hugs

Hettie