A Few of My Favourite Things

Hello and with today’s card I am well and truly back in my comfort zone, dress stamp, lavender and cream tones, mulberry flowers and decorative hatpins – all my favourite things!

Card Recipe:
Stamp: Kanban
Colouring Mediums: Memento Ink Pads, Promarker Pens, Tattered Angels Glimmer Spritz
Paper & Card: Kanban Lavender Rose Collection, Conqueror Wove
Tools: Spellbinders, Grand Calibur, Couture Creations Embossing Folders, Blending Mat
Embellishments: Lace, hand-made beaded Hat Pins, crystals, mulberry gardernia flower

My main image is a Kanban Cavendish Ladies Stamp, coloured with Promarkers, with the edges distressed with my blending mat and the corners accented with 3mm rhinestone crystals. I mounted this onto a mat cut from Spellbinders Romantic Rectangles.

The background is Kanban Lavender Rose collection cardstock embossed with Couture Creations Hedged Maze and spritzed with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist for a subtle shimmer. The tag is also cut from the Kanban Lavender Rose Collection. I also cut accent pieces from Sue Wilson’s lovely Vintage Lace Spellbinders dies. I added a mulberry gardenia flower, which I had lighly dabbed with an ink pad, rosebuds, rhinestone crystals and a lace trim. Finally I tucked in 2 hand-made decorative Hatpins, if you would like to see how to make hatpins I have two tutorials on Creating Hatpins and More Decorative Hatpins, do take a look!



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Upscale your Christmas Crackers & add a bit of Luxury

Christmas Crackers Straight from the Box



Upscaled Luxury Christmas Crackers





This is a fun, Christmas project. If, like me, you want your Christmas Dinner Table to look opulently festive but don’t like the price the Luxury Christmas Crackers (which, after all, end up in the bin within hours of use), perhaps you’ll follow my project to Upscale your Christmas Crackers.

For this project you will need:

• Inexpensive Christmas Crackers (mine cost £6.80 for a dozen)
• Coordinating 25mm Double Satin Ribbon
• Gold Mirri Card
• Gold Pearlescent Paper
• White Paper
• Sheet of Double Sided Adhesive
• Glitter
• Rhinestones
• Spellbinders Create-A-Flake Die Set (or similar)
• Glue

Adhere one side of the double-sided adhesive sheet to the sheet of white paper, then cut and emboss a set of three Snowflakes (largest flake in gold mirri, medium flake in adhesive paper and smallest flake in gold pearlescent paper). Repeat sets for as many crackers as you have. 

Peel away the adhesive layer and cover the medium size flake in glitter. Layer up the three flakes, applying a small dot of wet glue between each layer.

Cut 2 x 65cm lengths of Double Satin Ribbon. Remove any existing ties from the crackers and then tie your own ribbon around the crackers and trim the ribbon ends.

Glue the snowflake topper to the centre of the cracker, top off with a rhinestone crystal and use more crystals to decorate each end of the cracker.

 If you really want to go uber-luxury, finish off the Snowflake topper with a Rhinestone Button (but as these button cost over £1 a piece, they push up the price per cracker quite a bit).

I hope you've enjoyed this fun festive Christmas, do let me know what you think and wishing all my blog readers a very Merry Christmas.





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LOTV Dropping the Shopping & Spellbinders Christmas Tree

I’ve tried some new (to me) techniques in this card, including using glass micro beads and creating a snowflake wreath, but the one I like the most is an idea that I had for my Spellbinders Christmas tree die.

Card Recipe:
Stamp: LOTV Dropping the Shopping
Colouring Mediums: Memento London Fog Ink Pad, Promarker Pens
Paper & Card: Christine Adolph
Tools: Spellbinders, Grand Calibur
Embellishments: Maya Arts ribbon, rhinesrtones, sparkle button

To make the snowflake wreath, using my Grand Calibur, I cut lots of snowflakes using my spellbinder dies. For some of the snowflakes, I adhered double-sided adhesive sheets to the paper before running them through the die, then I embellished the snowflakes with a mixture of glass microbeads and glitter, and sparkly rhinestones.

For the Christmas tree, I die cut and embossed a cut-out on patterned paper using the Christmas Tree Die. Then I took an offcut of card and sandwiched this over the die followed by a piece of silver vellum. I then ran this through the Grand Calibur using the embossing plate and mat, so that the vellum was embossed but not cut by the Christmas tree die. I cut around the outer edge of the embossed image. I was then able to carefully lay the die-cut layer into the embossed layer. I decorated with sparkling rhinestones.

The pretty stamped image is by LOTV, coloured with Promarkers and I added the tiny pom-poms to the ends of the scarf for a fun, festive touch.

I am entering this card into the following challenges:
Bunny Zoe's Challenge - Celebrate
Joanna Sheen Challenge - With Love at Christmas
Natalie & Amy - Winter Wishes
Pretty Little Ribbon Challenge - It's Christmas
Top Tip Tuesday - Anything Christmas
                                 (My Tip is how to inlay the die-cut tree into an embossed negative described in my post)

Hope you like this; do leave a comment if this has pleased you.

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