PaperPlay Challenge – Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

This week’s PaperPlay challenge is “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow”. So I’m looking forward to seeing lots of snowy projects this week! Craft Brulee is kindly sponsoring the challenge and the lucky winner will receive a $10 voucher to spend on some wonderful goodies in the store here.

I ended up making a luminaria and a card.


Stamps (Hero Arts) – Starry Night & Stunning Snowflakes

I love soft candlelight (great for hiding the wrinkles lol!) and for a while I’ve wanted to make a luminaria. So I finally got around to making one this week. To start with I scored a piece of white vellum into a box shape and white embossed the sides using the Starry Night and Stunning Snowflakes stamps. After I made up the box I applied diamond stickles to all parts of the trees and to the stars. I added diamond gems to the centres of some of the snowflakes.

With the candle flickering inside the luminaria there is such a lovely twinkling sparkle on the trees and snowflakes – just a pity I couldn’t fully capture it in a photo.


Stamps used (Hero Arts) – Share the Joy & Stunning Snowflakes

A little while ago I was lucky to have won some gorgeous blog candy on Fika’s blog and the cutie snowman stamp was part of the prize - thanks again Fika for the wonderful goodies you sent me!

The card is pretty much made up with scraps I had left over from other projects – pink pieces (white card white embossed with the Stunning Snowflakes, worn lipstick applied and spritzed with water), white pieces embossed with snowflakes in the Cuttlebug and some blue patterned paper which I've had for ages with “let it snow” text on it. I like the thoughts of snuggling up in a quilt when it’s cold and snowy outside so for the background I made an Ohio star quilt block with the scraps and added some machine stitching. I paper pieced the snowman using my scraps, added a little pompom to his hat and silver beads to his jacket.

I can’t wait to see all the entries for this week’s challenge!

I'm submitting these projects to:

Hero Arts Challenge - Gift tags and handmade gifts.

The Crafty Calendar Challenge - Winter Snowflakes

ABC Challenge Blog - H is for Holidays

Scrappy Frogs Challenge Blog - Merry Christmas

Simon Says Stamp! Challenge Blog - Sparkle

Cards from Sally and Anita

I love butterflies and was delighted to receive these two beauties from two very talented ladies - Sally and Anita.

Sally's colouring of the Heart Winged Butterfly is absolutely brilliant and her design and background look amazing. I'm just sorry I wasn't able to capture the fantastic all over shimmer that there is on the card.



To see more of Sally's wonderful cards you can visit her blog here and her Flickr photostream here.

Recently I won some blog candy on Anita's blog and along with the yummy goodies she sent me this fab card with more gorgeous butterflies. I love the beautiful colours and design. As for the stitched sentiment - brilliant!



You can find more of Anita's fantastic cards here on her blog and here on her Flickr photostream.

Thank you so much Sally and Anita - I love them!

Frayed Poinsettia

I’ve been following Jennifer McGuire’s brilliant Thinking Inking series on Two Peas in a Bucket and the challenge this week is to stamp or ink on different surfaces. I picked three fabrics for my different surfaces.


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Holly Flourish, Music Background, Scattered Leaves & Three Holiday Trees.

Firstly I used a cream upholstery sample for the background. I white embossed it with the Holly Flourish and applied some antique linen distressed ink. For the poinsettia I used two pieces of fabric – a scrap of patterned fabric for the bottom layer and a piece of plain red fabric stamped with the Music Background for the top layer. I stamped one of the leaves out of the Scattered Leaves set onto a cream fabric.



To make the flower and leaf I put two pieces of fabric together and machine stitched around the pattern using a very small zigzag stitch. Then I snipped as close as possible to the stitching without actually cutting into it. I wanted a fuzzy look on the flower\leaf so I just frayed the edges a bit with my nail. The dotty ribbon made me think of snowballs so I added that, some lace, gold beads, twine and a red gem to finish.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Distressed Ornaments

This month’s challenge at Hero Arts is to create gift tags or handmade gifts, or to create a card\project incorporating inking techniques.


Stamps (Hero Arts) – Decorative Ornament & Three Christmas Trees.

Since I’m in Christmas card making mode at the moment I decided to pull out my Decorative Ornament stamp which I’ll probably use on lots of my Christmas cards this year. I inked up the stamp with broken china\worn lipstick distress inks and, using a technique that I had seen in one of Jennifer McGuire’s videos, spritzed the stamp with water before stamping.



I love seeing what the image turns out like when it's fully dry. The images never seem to turn out exactly the same but I like the effect.


Stamps (Hero Arts) – Decorative Ornament & Three Christmas Trees.

I stamped the sentiments with the same distress inks and used pink yarn and some white yarn coloured with broken china distress ink. The backgrounds are embossed with the Cuttlebug snowflake folder and I added some gems. To finish I just added some machine stitching.

Post from Patricia

Since I joined the Hero Arts Flickr group I've been the happy recipient of wonderful cards from Flickr friends. I keep all the cards on shelves above my desk where I can see them every day and I think poor hubby is going to have to add more shelves soon! This week I'm going to share some cards which I was delighted to have received recently.



I love taking a virtual hop over to Spain to visit my pal Patricia's (Scrapflower on Flickr) blog. She creates fantastic cards and I am in awe of her colouring skills. Above is the absolutely gorgeous card she sent me recently. I love her design and all the brilliant details plus of course her beautiful colouring. I wish I could have captured the amazing sparkle that there is on the wings in real life.



Patricia's adorable little envelope had me intrigued and I opened it to discover......



....a wonderful ATC tucked inside. I may (lol!) have mentioned that I love all things sewing related, well I just LOVE this ATC! The images are perfect and I love all the stitching and Patricia's fab distressing and shading!

Muchas gracias, Patricia for sending me these beauties and for all the wonderful goodies you included in the package! If you'd like to hop over to sunny Spain after a visit to wet and windy Ireland here is a link to Patricia's blog where you can see lots more of Patricia's gorgeous creations.

Barb's 90 Minute Scramble

There was great fun again over at the Hero Arts Flick group yesterday when Barb hosted her 90 minute card making scramble. Scramble is the perfect word for these challenges as it's a bit manic trying to get a card made, photographed and uploaded to the pool in 90 minutes. But it's so funny at the same time running around like a headless chicken and it's brilliant to see what everyone comes up with in such a short time period. Barb's challenge was to add a flower or flowers not normally associated with Christmas onto a Christmas card or project.


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Holly Flourish, Large Flower & Holiday Dolls.

As soon as I saw the word flower, I knew I had to use my all time favourite stamp, the Large Flower. I white embossed the flower on vellum twice and using an embossing pen added some stardust embossing to parts of the flower. To the centre of the flower, I added a red foil snowflake and a button which I had covered in glossy accents and silver glitter. I had great fun with this as when I had the card upright to take a photo, the glossy accents and glitter started to slide down the button as it wasn't quite dry! Today I'm going to add glitter around the edges of the button - it would have been too messy to do that last night.

The sentiment is also white embossed on vellum and I white embossed around the edges of the tag too. The red card was clear embossed with the Holly Flourish and I just added some silver gems to finish.



A big thanks to Barb for hosting such a fun challenge and also to Hero Arts for the wonderful group which I love being in. There are always great things going on there and it's packed full of amazing inspiration from everyone in the group!

Hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend!

PaperPlay Challenge - Circles

It’s time for a new challenge on PaperPlay. This week Evonne came up with the challenge of using lots of circles on a project. Stitchy Bear Stamps is kindly sponsoring this week's challenge and the prize is 4 Stitchy Bear images.



I wanted to use this cute Stitchy Bear image called Butterscotch Cupcake Fairy as I’m going to give the card and some cupcakes to a friend. Every time I try to photograph anything I’ve made that’s glittery, I say never again. This time I went to town on glittery stuff (silver card, sequins, glitter and stickles) - I really don’t know what I was thinking! So apologies for the terrible photo.

For the background I used a scrap of velvet fabric which has lots of silver sequins on it. I coloured the fairy with ProMarkers, covered her clothes with red glitter, added diamond stickles to the wings (which have been layered and are on foam pads) and liquid pearls for the icing on the cupcake.

I hope you’ll join in on the fun on PaperPlay!

October Card Chain Challenge

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve blogged! Hopefully next month, I’ll be back in full swing again.



Through Deborah’s wonderful Card Chain Challenge, I received this fantastic card from Janet in the U.S. Janet has been having fun with her Silhouette and I love the design and colours she came up with. The layered flower is so beautiful and the all over shimmer on the card is just amazing. Because of the grey skies we’ve been having here recently, I just haven’t been able to catch the shimmer in a photo, but it is absolutely gorgeous! Clicking on the photo twice to enlarge it will give you more of an idea of the shimmer but Janet's photo here captured it much better than I did. Thanks again Janet, I love it!

This is the card I sent to Dwita in Indonesia.


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Fabulous Flourish & Tree, Birds and Messages.

On the background I embossed the Fabulous Flourish in white, applied distress inks (broken china & faded jeans) and spritzed with water. The sentiment was done in the same way. I added a sprinkling of pearls and a gorgeous flower from a set that Kelly had sent me a while ago with a CCC card – thanks again Kelly!