Choo Choo

Hello there

Not long now until the Jolly Fella in a red suit pays a visit to all of the good Girls and Boys in the World.  Guess I am getting coal again!  Yippee!!

I am so sorry I have not been around much the last few days.  I have been a little under the weather with a sinus infection and a little problem with my war wound so spent most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday in bed or on the settee in front of the fire!  Before you ask, yes Hubby was with me, but NO as he had flu also!  I also managed to burst a blood vessel in my eye which was a little irritating so was not wishing to look at laptop. 

Anyhoo we are both on the road to recovery helped by Mr Jack Daniels, antibiotics and good old paracetamol and rest!  I am finding that after finishing work I am only fit to collapse and my poor craft room is feeling a little cold and neglected right now.  Not to worry...Hubby's card hasn't been thought of yet alone made so it wont be long until I am back in there.

I thought I would share a few cards I made to send to family and friends...

All roughly the same but different.  Can you believe I bought that Stampenduous stamp in US for ....wait for it....$1.50!!!!!!  I had thought about buying the same one to take to my host Kim but figured she might have it as I knew she had a previous one.  It was in my basket at £13.50!!!  Bargain ey and I love it as it is great for men through the year if you don't colour the holly in!  BTW I used my green wink of stella pen, which I bought as an error....loving it now!  The red is stickles.  The little Santa and Snowman clay charms I have had for ever so are VOS.  I hope they have survived the post.

Right then.  Off to catch up in the antics of the Playground with these.  Hopefully my understudy in the Nativity play has not run away with the idea that she has my part for good. I shall just sneeze on her if she won't give it back!

Let me know if you want to know how or what I did to create these cards.

Thanks for calling by.

Hettie

Friday Funny

Ideas if the weathermen have got it right!

Tee Hee!  I will expect to see some of your snowy sculptures in time!

I am linking this up with my buddy Annie!

Hettie

On the 11th Day of December....4th Tag of Christmas Funkie Junkie Style

Hello there

Is it me or is it getting colder right now?  Brrrr!  

Today I am sharing my latest card in my Funkie Junkie 12 Tags of Christmas...

Here is Linda's inspiration...

For my card I made myself another stencil using my Silhouette.  I am running out of stencil plastic which is not exactly easy to get hold of in this neck of the woods.  So I tried an alternative substance.  You know the dividers that you can get at the stationers that are made of thin plastic?  Well I found some in my drawer in work which the lower numbers had been used.  Well, the inner magpie in me said not to throw them away and an idea was born.   Other than the fact that they are a little thin and need handling carefully, but they do work!!  I sprayed the backgrounds with what was left over from my other spraying I did the other day for Tag 3.

The image does have holly but unfortunately I covered most of them up!  The Artistic Outpost border stamp was already stamped last year but I never got round to using it so I just stamped the other three stamps using Festive Berries and NBUS Evergreen Bough DIs and cut the edge using my pinking shears and then inked with FB DI.

As you may realise my "tag" is a little bigger than a normal tag.  I am making cards instead of tags.  So I added a little MB NBUS Woodland Deer which was cut out of Snippets, inked and embossed with clear embossing powder.

As always this challenge is being sponsored by the Funkie Junkie Boutique.  

As I made a few backgrounds and I had more of the border stamps, I decided to make a few more cards - Yippee!!

I am taking this down the Snippets Playground as there are lots of Snippets used here.  I hear the Nativity Play is going well and there is a Tea afterwards with mince pies and goodies!!  I am guessing there is some pop going down behind the bike shed too with a certain Elf!

Thanks for calling by.  

Hettie

On the Ninth day of December....an Alteration for Bran Tub pressie!

Hello there

Is it me or is December just chomping along at a fast rate of knots?

On a previous post I mentioned that I was at our quilting Hope Lunch and that we traditionally have a Bran Tub.  Well, it has got around that I usually make something and so couldn't let them down this time.  I had bought some ribbon and some needle threader/cutters and now I just needed to "present" them some way...

 Take one tin that has been hanging around in your craft room for several years waiting for a project.

 Take some chipboard that has previously been on the back of a notepad in work.

 Take some VOS K&Company paper and cover said tin, find some Snippets and TH and Paperartsy stamps, half of a dummy torso that you had left over from a previous project, some buttons and flowers... jumble it up a bit and you get this...

 Do you like it?  I know Elaine did.  So glad she got it as she does love owls.

And the side didn't get ignored...

 Nor the base.  I was sent these stamps from a very kind blogging pal and this was their first time out.  Do you like my Handmade stamp too?  Only just received it from Etsy.  Love it!

 And here is inside the lid...

 Inside the box...

 Oh yes...I added some more ribbons.  The cards were also cut from the TH die and inked up with DI ink.  Some bells, buttons and pretty pins too.

Thanks for calling by and please let me know what you think.  Off to share this with the Pirate Cap'n Miss Di and her parrot called Parsnip as there are oodles of Snippets used in this project. ....last seen looking for another tin to make one for Mum for Christmas....

Hettie

On the Seventh Day of December...Third Tag of Christmas Funkie Junkie style.

Hello there

Sorry I missed posting yesterday but we had our last Quilt meeting of 2014 and the last in our current venue, so I was out early in order that I could help pack our cabinet up ready for it to be moved.  A lovely lunch was had and I will share the Bran Tub present I made shortly, now that the recipient has received it.

Now on to today's card which I am sharing.  As you will realise by now, I am following Linda of Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags of Christmas, but with cards instead using Linda's tags as inspiration.  So without further ado here is #3...

And now here is Linda's inspiration tag...

 

Isn't Linda's tag just beautiful?

So I guess you want to know what I did?  First off, I didn't have a stencil with snowflakes on so I resorted to my trusty Silhouette and found a snowflake background which I then cut using quilting stencil plastic.  I do love it when my hobbies collide!  I will say this cutting and picking all the plastic took quite some time, but it was well worth it as I know I will use this stencil A LOT!  Thanks Linda for making me look for this. 

Now next mission was to create a background.  I tried first off with some Pine Needles distress stain but this came out too heavy and darker than I wanted.  Hmmmn.  Next idea!  Ahhh Colourwash!  Now I still have the original set of these and there is a beautiful greeny colour called Bottle in the originals.  I poured some into a mini spray, added some Perfect Pearls and topped it up with water to lessen the density of colour and the pearls gave it a fabulous shimmer.  Once this was sorted I wanted some shimmer around the card so I stamped with my Hampton Arts speckled stamp and Versamark. First I used silver embossing powder and then Wow Sparkling Snow embossing powder.

Background sorted, now I needed to work on the rest of the card.  I wanted to add a little metal on there so found a small Snippet of Ranger foil tape, mounted it on to card and then used some Adirondack alcohol inks on there in Copper, Stream, Clover, Silver and and stream.  Once I was happy with the background I then ran it through the B/S with my TH showflake embossing folder and sanded it before trimming it to size.  

For the Snowflake I decided to use the TH snowflake die and a Snippet of white card to which I inked some Pine Needles DI before punching the last bit of embossed metal for the centre.  

Now just for a sentiment for which I reached for my current favourite TH stamps.  I used TH Archival ink and some clear embossing powder.  Once heated and dried I trimmed the card to size, mounted it onto some silver cardstock before placing this onto a blank white card which I had inked with Pine Needles DI.  

Thanks once again to Linda for the inspiration for this card, which so far is my favourite, but at only #3 this may be subject to change!!  Watch this space!!  And thank YOU for visiting my blog and please do let me know what you think of this card.  I do love to read your comments.  Why not give the challenge a go?  It is sponsored by The Funkie Junkie Boutique and well worth entering just to have a spend in Linda's store.

I am sharing this card with the Snippets Playground too as there are several Snippets used up here.  

Have a great week.

Hettie

Friday Funny

I may not be great at bird identification but I do know that there are four females and one male..

I am linking with my friend Annie for her Friday Smiles!

On the Fourth Day of December...Day Two of 12 Cards Funkie Junkie Style...

Hello there.

Brr it is mighty cold today in Santa's Workshop!  It is much more seasonal than it has been of late and a bit of a shock to the system after the warm Autumn we experienced.

So on to today's post.  Have you noticed I have a bit of a theme this month yet?  Maybe a big Christian celebration that is coming very soon?  Today I am sharing Tag 2 of Linda at the Funkie Junkie, only mine is a card.....

And this is Linda's tag.which I used for inspiration...

Isn't it gorgeous?  I loved the colours and the idea of a stencil background so I used my TH holly stencil and inked it with Pine Needles DI.  I then stamped a Fa La La La stamp from Hobbycraft (bargain at £3 for the set) with Festive Berries DI.  Rather than mask the berries on I added Liquid Pearls to make the berries 3D.

The bottom of the card was masked off from the stencil and I stamped my Wendi Vecchi stamp with FB DI (the only WV stamp set I own!).  I also used the star stamps from the same WV set.and embossed with gold. Then I had a bit of a dis-arster moment  The card was curling a little and so I decided to give it a little press, only had the iron too hot and the embossing powder melted onto the mat a little.  I quickly added more embossing powder only for it to smudge around the stamped image.  I was going to throw it away then had an Aha moment. I set to and die cut some SSS stars with some gold cardstock and scattered them around.  If I wasn't happy with this I was going to bin it but I actually liked this as it gave the card some depth and layers.  Happy Accidents - gotta love them.  Once this was done I then stamped around the edge with my TH snowflake stamp.  I can see this stamp is going to be well used!

 

I then set to  to finish the card off. I die cut a TH Poinsettia and a PB Believe word (I just used the inner leaves of the Poinsettia and two cut of the larger one).  I then inked with FB DI and embossed with clear embossing powder.  I adhered some holly ribbon where the two designs met, attached the Poinsettia and leaves, Believe and all the stars before deciding it needed something on the corners.

A Eureka moment arrived right on queue and I took some Snippets of the gold card and cut corners with my We R Memory Keepers corner chomper to make photo mounts. You can see the snowflakes here.  Love that stamp.

Right then that is all on this little post.  Thanks for calling by.  Remember that if you wish to join in with Linda's 12 Tags of Christmas click HERE for details.  You have until 21st to get them all complete and it is being sponsored by the Funkie Junkie Boutique.  I am sharing this with the Snippets Playground too as there are Snippety Snippets used here!

Hettie