One more snowflake card

I know, I know... Yet another snowflake card. Snowflakes and watercolours have most certainly been the theme for this year's Christmas cards. But I can't resist the gorgeous vibrant colours of Tim's amazingly beautiful inks and I certainly can't resist the Lawn Fawn snowflake dies. I particularly love to die cut them in vellum, as they come out absolutely stunning against the watercoloured background. So here is one more for this year. In fact, the current Daring Cardmakers challenge (use another language) reminded me that I haven't made a Christmas card for my grandmother (who doesn't speak a word of English, so I can't use any of the cards I have made so far as they all have english sentiments). So off I went into the craft room to create. 

Have you put up your Christmas decorations yet? We most certainly haven't and to be perfectly honest, let's see if we get around to doing it at all. Maybe next weekend. A confession that may shock many of you.... I'm not very much of a Christmas person. I love to get the time off work, don't get me wrong, and I love crafting Christmas cards. To be honest, all I want to do is lay down on the sofa with a book and a box of chocolates and not move for the duration of the holidays, not spend my free days like a maniac cleaning the house, cooking enough to feed a small country, and putting up lights and decorations which then stay up until next March as I won't have time to take them down. We have already decided to minimise Christmas presents this year, only something very small and only one present per person. Luckily everyone was being very co-operative, sending some ideas of what they would like to receive, as I rather buy something the recipient wants as opposed to some random stuff. 

Today's card is inspired by the gorgeous sketch over at Retro Sketches, as well as the colours over at Color Throwdown. As I mentioned earlier, I was also inspired by the "Use another language" theme over at Daring Cardmakers. Further, I'm linking up with Make My Monday where the theme is White Christmas, The Glory of Christmas where Anything Christmas Goes, The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers where X is for Xmas (sorry no Snark this time...) and Just us Girls where the theme is Sequins. 

Card: 300 gsm watercolour paper, kraft card, Dovecraft 110 gsm premium vellum

Ink: Tim Holtz Distress Ink Salty Ocean, Picked Raspberry, Versamark

Stamps: Fiskars Easy Stamp Press Christmas

Dies: Lawn Fawn Stitched Snowflakes, Mini Snowflakes, Stitched Rectangle dies

Other: Perfect Pearls, Papermania Tinsel Silver embossing powder, silver sequins from my stash

Guest Designing over at The Challenge

As you are reading this I am spending a long weekend with my bestest friend ever. We hardly ever get to see each other after she went back home and I stayed over here in the UK. So right now we are having a girl's weekend in Riga. But I scheduled this post to go live right at this moment as I have a really special card to share today. I was absolutely chuffed to bits when I saw that my macaron card was picked as the winner over at The Challenge a few weeks ago. It's always a thrill to see one of my cards picked as a favourite in one of the challenges, it's just so nice to know someone else enjoyed something you made. The prize you get for winning is the honour of joining the amazingly talented DT as a guest designer. So thank you to The Challenge DT for having me, and for you for popping over to my blog to see my creation. For the next week The Challenge is to create something using the sketch below. So come and join us over at The Challenge to see what the wonderful DT has created to inspire you, and then get creative and don't forget to share your gorgeous creations!

This is such a great sketch as it will really let your imagination run free. I'm not very good with using circles, and I always try to replace them with another shape. I absolutely adore the Lawn Fawn Stitched Snowflake and Mini Snowflake dies, and I used them with vellum to create a beautiful snowflake flower. I have to admit that despite a penchant for stockpiling patterned paper, I don't have very much Christmas themed paper. I do have a Stampin' Up set from last year called All Is Calm, and I love the delicate snowflakes and gorgeous colours on it. So I decided to use that for the strip of patterned paper and create a watercolour background using Distress Inks in similar colours. I die cut a piece of watercolour paper using a Stitched Rectangle die and watercoloured an ombre background using Cracked Pistachio, Peacock Feathers and Mermaid Lagoon, splattering some ink onto the background as I went along. I heat embossed the sentiment from the Winter Penguin stamp set from Lawn Fawn in white powder and added a few adhesive gems and finally a dash of glitter using a Wink of Stella pen.

A closer look at the vellum snowflake embellishment. You 
can just about see a bit of the glitter on it, but it doesn't show
up very well in the photo.

I would like to link up my card with the following challenges:

Unicorn Challenge - Winter Theme

CAS-ual Fridays - Snowflake

Make My Monday - White Christmas

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Let It Snow

Time Out - Snowflakes are Winter's Butterflies

Sparkles Christmas Challenge - Die cut

Our Crafty Corner - Anything Goes/Winter

Card: 300 gsm white card, 300 gsm watercolour paper, Dovecraft 110 gsm premium vellum

Paper: Stampin' Up All Is Calm

Stamps: Lawn Fawn Winter Penguin

Ink: Tsukineko Versamark, Tim Holtz Distress inks in Cracked Pistachio, Mermaid Lagoon and Peacock Feathers

Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangles, Stitched Snowflake and Mini Snowflake dies, Papermania Seafoam White embossing powder, adhesive gems from my stash, Wink of Stella pen

Crafts Galore Encore - November challenge

I know I say this every single time I post one of my monthly challenge projects, but where has the time gone? It was only just summer, and now we are speeding towards Christmas. Have you started your Christmas preparations yet? I have been making Christmas cards all year, which means I have a good stash by now. But now it's time to turn my thought to Christmas presents. I have to admit I am the worst present buyer in the world. For a long time, me and my sister have operated a system where we make a specific wish list. If I can't think of a truly useful present, I prefer to get the recipient something they really want and need. I am the same way myself, although I would always appreciate a gift, whatever it was, sometimes it's really great to get exactly that thing your crafting stash needs. I know it's very  unromantic and pragmatic, but I'm nothing if not a pragmatist. I do admire people who have the talent of buying thoughtful gift, and I do try my best. But I also am not a big fan of clutter and extra stuff you don't use, I do like to clear my house of any unused stuff so I also don't feel like giving gifts just for the sake of it. My rule of thumb is - if in doubt, buy something that can be eaten or experienced (like tickets for a show etc) and that doesn't add to someone's clutter. Are you a good gift buyer? Do you enjoy planning gifts and finding the perfect thing? Could you please share your secret?

Anyhow, onto more crafty things. A new month means a new challenge over at Crafts Galore Encore. This month we are challenging you to use a stamp or digi image somewhere on your card. Our sponsor this month is Art by Miran, who is giving away a prize for the randomly drawn winner. The DT will also pick a favourite each, who proudly gets to display the highly coveted Crafts Galore Encore badge on their blog. The talented DT is sharing inspiration using images from our sponsor, so hop over to have a look. Thank you for everyone who played along with your fabulous spooky designs for the October challenge, don't forget to have a look at the winner's page to see if you are one of them!

Please also note!! We have a DT CALL for a number of places on our DT over at Crafts Galore Encore to begin with the first challenge of 2016 on January 1st!
To join our DT please add DT to your entry for your challenge when you link up over at Crafts Galore Encore. If you have tried before please know that we encourage you to try again, as we now have more places open than usual. Our requirements are:

1. You need to have a blog and also a Facebook account (we run the group from a private FB group)
2. You will be required to produce one project each month. The themes aren't difficult and usually the sponsor will provide you with a digi image to work with (usually you get a choice as to which image you choose!) The project will need to be ready by the 28th of each month.
3. You will need to comment on challenge entries.
4. Every other month you will be asked to pick your choice of a winner and write a sentence or two about why you picked it (please click on the winners tab on the challenge website if you want to see what is needed !)
5. You need to enjoy colouring as we work with digi stamps (we chose to do this so that we could work with people worldwide!)
We are a friendly group and as flexible as we can be (understanding that life gets in the way of craft !)
I can tell you it's a really friendly and wonderful group with lots of support in our FB group. So if you want to get free digis from our sponsors to work with, and you get to keep them and use for your own projects and if you enjoy colouring or want to improve your skills this is a great opportunity! If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below and I'll get back to you, or you can leave a comment on the Crafts Galore Encore page. 

I would like to enter the following challenges:
Art by Miran - Anything Goes
Crafting With Friends - Anything Goes
Creative Fingers Challenge Blog - Anything Goes
Just Add Ink - Just Add W (W is for waving [as in waving your hand/paw, not waves on the ocean], or alternatively if you find this too silly, w is also for winter scene)
The Winter Wonderland Challenge Blog - Anything Goes as long as it's Christmas
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra - Anything Goes
ABC Christmas Challenge - V is for Very Cute
52 Christmas Card Throwdown - Pick any previous challenge  (I picked June 2014 Reindeer/Rudolph)

Card: White 300 gsm card, scraps of dark and light purple card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm Three shades of Blue
DSP: Stampin' Up All is Calm
Stamps: Art by Miran digi Reindeer Friendship
Colouring: Copics
Other: Lawn Fawn Merry Christmas border die, Mini Snowflake dies, Spellbinders Romantic Rectangles, Ranger Ice Stickles

Reindeer tags

Are you guys using your virtual assistants on your phones? I got a new phone very recently, as my age old assistant-less phone was giving up the ghost totally. And I just love the fact that my new phone has an assistant that I can just call out to whenever. It's so convenient in the kitchen to just set a timer without having to clean all the dough off your hands. And I love it that when something pops into my head in the evening right before I fall asleep I can just ask my assistant to make a note for the next day, or add something to my shopping list without even having to turn on the light. I'm a bit slow to catch on, but I'm catching up real quick!

I was completely fed up with the traffic around here, it has been such a nightmare lately. I have been going through audiobooks like no-ones business. At least it gave me the opportunity to plan these tags in my head while sitting still in traffic, going nowhere fast. There was a slight adjustment to the plan when I saw the new sketch over at CAS(E) This Sketch. I'm assuming I'm allowed to use it on a non-card item too? I was also inspired by the great colours over at Color Throwdown (and who can resist those glittery shoes, I had a pair similar to those back in the days...) and the Wrap It theme over at Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge. I'm also linking up over at the STAMPlorations Anything Goes challenge, Crimbo Crackers where the theme is Pink and Christmas Stampin' All Year Long where the theme is Pair of Tags.

I started by die cutting the tag from watercolour paper. Then painted the whole tag with lots of water, and dropped two drops of Picked Raspberry ink directly onto the card, adding more water and just swooshing it around (yes that's a technical term). Then I used a tissue to just dab around and soak up some of the colour. Next, I added some Festive Berries ink using a watercolour brush around the edges, and smudged with paper some more. After drying with a heat tool I sponged a bit more Festive Berries around the edges. I used the gorgeous Christmas Reindeer stencil from STAMPlorations to ink the reindeers in Black Soot, and flicked some water drops to create some splotches. For one card, I dies cut the sentiment from sparkly pink card, and for the other I stamped the sentiment in Versamark and heat embossed in red. Last, I die cut a few Mini Snowflakes from white sparkly paper and added an adhesive gem as a finishing touch along with some twine and ribbon from my stash. Unfortunately we are now into the depressing time of the year when the only option is flash photography, and the cards look a bit more dynamic in real life, the colours came out a bit muted in the picture.

Card: 300 gsm watercolour paper, sparkly pink card, white sparkly card
Ink: Tim Holtz Distress inks Picked Raspberry, Festive Berries, Black Soot, Versamark
Stamps: Stampin' Up Endless Wishes
Dies: Lawn Fawn Tag You're It, Merry Christmas Border and Mini Snowflakes dies
Other: STAMPlorations Christmas Reindeer stencil, adhesive gems, twine and ribbon from my stash, red embossing powder

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

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