Holly Jolly - Teddy Bears

Have you started thinking about Christmas presents yet? This year we are staying in the UK for Christmas, so I have to sort out the Christmas presents for back home so I have them in time to have them shipped over. Christmas is one of those times when I am reminded how far away I am from my family and friends. 

While contemplating presents, I'm also starting to stock up on tags to use for my Christmas presents. And our new challenge over at Holly Jolly was a great opportunity to make another tag for the stash. Our challenge this week is Teddy Bears, and it can be any type of crafting as long as it's Christmas and includes Teddy Bears in one form or another. Our sponsors who are kindly giving away prizes for our winners are QKR Stampede, Sentimental Susan and Oddball Art.

I got to play with an adorable digi from QKR Stampede called Santa Bear. I thought he would be perfect for a gift tag, so I die cut a tag using the Lawn Fawn Tag You're It die. I used my trusty Tim Holtz spritzing tool and distress markers on my snowflake stencil for the background. I coloured the teddy using Copics and fussy cut him. For a finishing touch, I die cut the sentiment in turquoise glitter paper and added a matching ring to the die and threaded some twine through it. 

I would like to link up with the following challenges:

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra - Anything Goes

Just Us Girls - Stencils 

Suzy Bee's Bloomin' Challenge Blog - Something beginning with S (snowflakes, spritzing, sparkling paper, Santa bear)

Crafting With Friends - Anything Goes

Creative Fingers Challenge - Anything Goes

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Clean and Simple Christmas

Card: 300 gsm white card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card, turquoise glitter card

Stamps: QKR Stampede digi Santa Bear

Ink and colouring: Tim Holtz distress markers, Copics

Other: Lawn Fawn Tag You're It and Merry Christmas border die, Imagination Crafts Snowflake Frenzy Stencil, twine from my stash 

Clean and Simple Christmas in two ways

What an exciting Great British Bakeoff final! I was so excited to see every one of the finalists succeed so perfectly with their showstoppers. But I'm sad that it will again be another full year before we can enjoy another season of perfect cakes. Oh well, I will just have to stick with my own bakes until then. I have to say I have been fortunate to enjoy some good bakes at work as well, a colleague spoiled us all with not just a huge chocolate and raspberry cake but with some delicious cheese scones too!

Before sitting down to enjoy the BakeOff, I did enjoy making a bit of a mess in the craft room. The new challenge over at Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge is CAS Christmas, so I thought I would try to come up with a design I could mass produce. So I created some masks using Lawn Fawn Mini Snowflakes and Cole's ABCs die cuts. First, I got out my spritzing tool (oh no, don't give me that look, and stop rolling your eyes. I will get tired of it... eventually...). However, after making my card, I had a cramp in my hand so I realised mass production of this design will give me tenosynovitis. So I did try another approach with watercolours, and I really really really love the look of this approach, it's messy, unpredictable and almost has an "artsy" feel about it. However, after attaching and detaching all the masks twice, I decided this won't be my mass-produced design. It turned out to be a bit tedious. 

The layout of my card was inspired by the sketch over at CAS(E) This Sketch. I'm also linking up with the new challenge over at Lawnscaping, where the theme is to focus on the sentiment. Along the same lines, I'm linking up with AAA Cards, where the theme is word play. I will also have to apologise for the horrible quality of the photos, using flash on a mostly white card is beyond my skills. 

Card: 300 gsm white card hammered card, 300gsm watercolour paper, Vanguard coloured card Deep Blue and Navy Blue

Stamps: Stampin' Up Endless wishes

Ink: Tim Holtz Distress inks Broken China, Tumbled Glass, Mermaid Lagoon, Iced Spruce, Hickory Smoke, Blueprint Sketch, Chipped Sapphire, Salty Ocean, Black Soot, Faded Jeans

Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle, Mini Snowflakes and Cole's ABCs dies, adhesive mini gems from my stash (no brand, bought on eBay)

Color Throwdown Guest DT card

I'm absolutely over the moon to share this card with you, as it's my Guest DT creation for this week's Color Throwdown which launches today. It is one of my "go to" places for inspiration, the DT is bursting with talent and the colour combos are amazing. I like to play along as often as I can. And today I have the great honour to join Tammy and her team of incredibly talented ladies to hopefully inspire you to play along with the rich colours you can see below. When I saw the colour swatch I immediately thought of an autumn theme, but as I had just created a few autumn watercolour scenes, my brain quickly moved on to Christmas instead because of the red and green. And the orange - what else could it be than a crazy beak? Can you see I still have Crazy Birds on my brain? So my little Crazy Santa was born. He wasn't born without considerable labour pains though, as this card is version three in the creative process. You can see version two below, and you won't see version one unless you have a good old dig around in my bin. But as most mother's would say, you forget the pain when you publish a blog post about your newly born card. Now it's your turn to link up over at Color Throwdown to inspire us with your gorgeous creations!

I created the background using my new favourite toy, the Tim Holtz Spritzer tool. I used the Lawn Fawn Mini Snowflake die cuts as masks, and spritzed several hues of brown distress markers to create the background. I absolutely adore that spritzed look. I stamped Santa birdie and his hat and candy cane onto watercolour paper and watercoloured using distress markers. Version two is coloured with Copics, and although I like the vibrant colours, I still like the muted earth tones of bird number three more. To finish, I die cut a frame using Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies, added some Ice Stickles to the hat and some Glossy Accents to the candy cane. The sentiment is from the Lawn Fawn Joy to the Woods stamp set.

I would like to link up with the following challenges:
The Friday Mashup - Use a die cut to create a frame 
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra - Anything Goes
The Artistic Stamper - Things With Wings
Aud Sentiments Challenge Blog - Christmas
Clear It Out - Theme: Things with wings, stash:glitter (there is some stickles on the Santa's hat although it doesn't show very well in the image)
Papertake Weekly - Take your pick (autumn colours) 

Card: 300 gsm hammered white card, 240 gsm coloured card Chocolate Brown, Daler&Rowney 300 gsm Aquafine watercolour paper
Stamps: Tim Holtz Stamper's Anonymous Bird Crazy and Matching Dies, Crazy Things, Lawn Fawn Joy to the Woods
Ink: Staz-on Jet Black, Tim Holtz Distress Markers Ground Espresso, Gathered Twigs, Vintage Photo, Tea Dye, Antique Linen, Festive Berries, Barn Door, Fired Brick, Mowed Lawn, Frayed Burlap, Spiced Marmalade, Abandoned Coral
Colouring: Copics (on the smaller card) BG 10, R24, R46, R89, YG11, YG13, YG15, YR04
Other: Lawn Fawn Mini Snowflake Dies, Stitched Rectangle Dies, Merry Christmas border die (on the smaller card), Stampin' Up Glossy Accents, Ranger Ice Stickles

Another feather for your cap

Good morning and happy Saturday! I hang my head in shame and admit I had yet another play with my spritzer tool. Please bear with me as I get through this phase in my crafting life. I promise it won't last forever. But it's just so much fun! And I absolutely loooove the look it creates. It has given me a new appreciation of my stencils, which have been underused for most of my crafty career. 

When I first saw the current sketch over at My Favourite Things I immediately dismissed it. However, it clearly stayed in my subconsciousness. This card just popped into my head as I was laying in bed this morning reading blogs. Actually, it did change it's shape a bit during the creative process, most cards do, but I realised that a Dylusions stencil I bought ages ago would be perfect to create the background for my card. So out came the spritzer tool. I was also inspired by the colour challenge over at Colour Me...! as well as the inspiration picture over at Fusion (any bird themed challenge to me is a reason to pull out those Crazy Birds!!). I'm also linking up over at Addicted to Stamps where the theme is Make Your Mark (my second entry), Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge where the theme is Die Crazy and Alphabet Challenge where the theme is P is for Pelican, Peacock or any other bird. 

I created the background with the spritzer tool and Distress markers in Blueprint Sketch, Mowed Lawn and Peacock Feathers using two stencils, the Dylusions Shattered and a circular one I cut using a die onto linen textured cardstock (I currently have a huge crush on the look of this pretty textured card). I painted the bird with a watercolour brush using the same markers. I have tried to get my hands on the Tim Holtz stamp set which has accessories for the birds, but although ordering it months ago, I still haven't got it, it seems like there are none left in the world. So instead to give my birdie a graduation cap, I used the Lawn Fawn Hats off stamps set. For the sentiment, I used the Stampin' Up Alphabet Rotary stamp which has proven to be a really useful tool indeed. The sentiments looked a bit anaemic on their own, so I matted them onto coloured cardstock to make them pop a bit from the background. Last, I added some Glossy Accents to the graduation cap. I took my spritzing frenzy one step further and created a custom stencil using the Lawn Fawn Scripty Congrats die and spritzed through it for the inside of the card. I love how making your own stencils really extends the use of your dies, so much bang for your buck!

Card: Linen textured 300 gsm white card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card, Scraps of card in Navy and Stampin' Up Bermuda Bay and Old Olive
Stamps: Tim Holtz Bird Crazy and matching die, Lawn Fawn Hats off, Stampin' Up Alphabet Rotary stamp
Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz Distress markers Blueprint Sketch, Mowed Lawn, Peacock Feathers, Black Soot
Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Circle and Scripty Congrats die, Ranger Dylusions stencil Shattered, Stampin' Up Glossy Accents, Tim Holtz Distress Marker Spritzer tool

Spritzed rainbow tag

It's funny how you never know which one of all those weird and wonderful projects you have in your head will work when they are transferred to the real world. Today I made one project that just wouldn't work, no matter how I tried to force it. And then there was this one, which didn't take me long at all to create, but somehow it just turned out better than it did in my head. 

If you have been reading a few of my latest posts, you will not have been able to miss the big news that I finally managed to make my Tim Holtz spritzer tool work (after it's been sitting in the back of the craft room cupboard for over a year due to it's users inability to work this highly complex piece of crafting equipment...). I promise I will get over my spritzing frenzy soon... For another card, I had been slightly playing with the idea of creating a tag shaped stencil and spraying through it to create a background, but it didn't work for that one. Browsing for inspiration, I came across the STAMPlorations CASE Playground, where the September CASE was the cutest ever tag from Gail from The Crafty Nomad. By the way, this tag made me realise to my shock and horror that I don't have a single pig stamp. This great injustice has to be remedied immediately. 

Anyhow, back to today's card. Inspired by the whole tag idea, in another inspiration post I also came across the beautiful rainbow coloured flower card from Maria, and the amalgamation of the two resulted in my rainbow coloured spritzed background. As I was planning to make a one layer card, I used a linen textured cardstock to add some interest, and a stitched die to cut the front panel of the card. All that was needed after that was just one of the gorgeous flower stamps from STAMPlorations Bloom Sketches and a combination of sentiments from Bloom Sketches and Floral Bliss. First, I was going to stamp the flower onto a separate piece of cardstock and colour it with watercolours and fussy cut it, but I just didn't want to cover up those gorgeous colours. I've said it before and I will probably say it again and again and again... rainbow is my favourite colour!

I'm linking up with the following challenges:
STAMPlorations CASEplorations - September
STAMPlorations - Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge - Love This Technique (stencilling, spritzing - my new fav! and one layer design)
Addicted to Stamps - Make your mark (spritzing done with distress markers)
Mod Squad Challenge Blog - Flower as focal point

Card: Linen textured 300 gsm white card, black 300 gsm card 
Stamps: STAMPlorations Bloom Sketches, Floral Bliss
Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz distress markers Squeezed Lemonade, Ripe Persimmon, Abandoned Coral, Picked Raspberry, Festive Berries, Seedless Preserves, Mermaid Lagoon, Shaded Lilac, Mowed Lawn, Twisted Citron, Fossilized Amber
Other: Lawn Fawn Tag Your It, Stitched Rectangle dies

Texure - my (subtle) interpretation and how I finally mastered the spritzing tool

You know that feeling when you have so many ideas, and whatever you try just ends up being a total disaster and you find yourself with a craft room full of discarded bits, die cuts, dies strewn all over the floor and endless stamps spread all over the desk? If not, congratulations. If you do, let me know, I need to know I'm not the only one. Thanks. Anyhow, I proceeded from this state to eating my bodyweight in stuff I shouldn't be eating, and had a huge mug of coffee (only the second time in over three weeks that I broke my caffeine fast). Now my hands are shaking. 

Anyhow, I finally managed to produce a card which I'm not completely embarrassed about. However, I have to admit the inspiration for this card is not completely from my own head. I have borrowed it from this amazing card from Nichol Magouirk. In fact, this is a long story, but bear with me (if not, thanks for visiting, and do come back on another day when I'm not suffering from verbal diahorrea). Anyhow, I saw Nichol's gorgeous card way back last year when she first published it, and I was just blown away by it's amazingness. In fact, it inspired me so much that I went and bought myself the Tim Holtz spritzer tool as I wanted to create the beautiful backgrounds Nichol was showcasing. Long story short, I just couldn't make the spritzer work, at best I could get a few silly dots of colour come out of it, and that was it. So it just got forgotten. Today I dug it out again, as I thought I do have a PhD after all, and what else is a PhD than the ability to go back over and over to things that failed and eventually get them to work. I also thought that a spritzed background would be perfect for the Texture challenge over at Lawnscaping. Long story short, I ended up with the same problem, I couldn't get any colour onto paper. Then in my frustration I managed to somehow move the pen a bit in the spritzer which inadvertently made it pop into that tiny little groove in the nozzle bit that I hadn't noticed before. And then, all of a sudden there was colour aplenty coming out. I had finally mastered the spritzer tool!! I felt this to be almost as big of an achievement as my PhD...

So happily I spritzed the background in all blues, turquoises and greys I could find in my Tim Holtz distress marker arsenal. Great fun! Then I added some water and blue Perfect Pearls into a mini mister and gave it all a bit of a mist for that watery look and a subtle spark. These were my first two attempts at texture in this card, it's the visual texture of the splotchy background combined with the hammered texture of the cardstock. Then adding a bit more texture by cutting the background with a stitched rectangle die. Then for more texture, I double embossed the sentiment with black and glittery silver embossing powder. The die cut snowflakes also have lots of texture, first of all the sparkly and highly textured feel of the glitter cardstock, and I also built the snowflakes in two layers, the bottom being blue card for added texture in the form of height. Last, I created the multi-layered snowflake, and matted everything onto teal card using 3D foam tape. I hope you think this is far enough from Nichol's original card not to be considered plagiarism. And of course imitation is the greatest form of flattery is all I can say in my defence.

Anyhow, that's more than enough from me for now, thank you for reading all the way through to the end. I would like to link up with the following challenges:
Lawnscaping - Texture
House of Cards - Stitch it up
The Friday Mashup - Glitter 
Jingle Belles and Shopping Our Stash - Use something at least a year old (large snowflake dies, spritzing tool)
NBUS - Anything NBUS goes (the dark grey, blue and silver glitter paper, the deep blue cardstock, and that damned spritzing tool. Well, technically I've *tried* to use it before, but as this is the first time I've ever produced anything with it, I would say it counts as NBUS?)

Card: Coloured 240 gsm card in teal, Coloured 240 gsm card Vanguard Deep Blue, hammered 300 gsm white card, multiple colours of glitter card
Stamps: Lawn Fawn Joy to the Woods
Ink: Tim Holtz distress markers Blueprint Sketch, Mermaid Lagoon, Chipped Sapphire, Faded Jeans, Peacock Feathers, Iced Spruce, Hickory Smoke, Cracked Pistachio, Tsukineko Versamark
Other: Black embossing powder from my stash, Papermania Tinsel Silver embossing powder, Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies, Stitched Snowflake dies, Mini Snowflake dies

Valentine's Flowers

It seems like I haven't been crafting in ages. I made the cards I posted this week last weekend, so I really haven't crafted much at all this week. I think I'm suffering from a bit of the winter blues, I just don't have the energy for anything right now. I just want to bury myself under the duvet with a ton of chocolate and not surface until April.

But admittedly I'm not having as hard a time as my poor Grandma. She turned 90 years last week! But she had to move out of the flat she has lived in for probably the last 50 years or so, and into a small rental studio while there is some major work being done in her own place. She is so unhappy about it, so I thought I would make her a bright and colourful Valentine's day card to cheer her up.

This card is inspired by my latest new toy, the Tim Holtz Distress Marker Spritzer. It's really fun to play with and creates cool air brushed effects. I used it on the Stampin' Up Irresistibly Yours DSP to create the cool background. I stamped the flowers from I Like You and coloured with Blendabilities and cut out using dies. I printed the sentiment (that says Happy Valentine's day in Finnish, although the literal translation is "Happy Friends Day" as Valentine's is called Friend's Day back home, which I like much more) and used the spritzer tool a bit over the sentiment banner. 

The layout for the card was inspired by My Favourite Things sketch challenge and the colours are from this week's Color Throwdown. I'm also linking up at Shopping Our Stash where the theme is "Not your normal paper" (I used the cool paper from Stampin' Up which comes with resist patterns and you can colour it yourself to match your project), at A Creative Need where the theme is "Something New" (my "new" is of course my new Spritzer tool and getting to use it on this card) and at STAMPlorations where the January challenge is stamps and inks.

Card: Leonardo Stationery 300 gsm white card, Coloured 240 gsm kraft card teal and baby pink, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card

Stamps: Stampin' Up I Love You

Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz distress markers Spun Sugar, Picked Raspberry, Peacock Feathers, Stampin' Up Blendabilities Old Olive, Melon Mambo and Coastal Cabana

Paper: Stampin' Up Irresistibly Yours

Other: Tim Holtz Distress Marker Spritz tool, heart border punch, Stampin' Up Labels Collection Framelits