Black and Red

With the Spellbinders Pick of the Week on Create and Craft renewing my vigour, I decided to make a card that I had seen on Sue Wilson's blog.  I used different colours, ribbon and sentiment to her.  I decided that I would make it in black and red as I had found some black/red reversible ribbon when I was in Jersey CI in the summer. 

I wove the ribbon using a technique that I had learnt from Sue at one of her workshops.  The main panel was embossed using the Budding Vine embossing folder and the sides were created with the Spellbinder Parisian Accents die. I then put pearls down the side by using Cosmic Shimmer Black PVA Glue.

The black die cut was made by cutting two Parisian Accents motifs and joining them together. 

I used a Parisian Accents motif for the corner and the sentiment was stamped onto a Spellbinders Label 20. I edge the label with Black Soot Distress ink.  I added Creative Expressions organza roses at each end of the ribbon and used  roses  from http://www.wildorchidcrafts.com/ to finish this card.

A Card for Christmas

I thought I would post the first of my Christmas cards for the year.  The receipient of this one will have received this by now so I can put it on the blog.

This is not the one everyone will be getting, that one won't go up until a few days after I have sent them all out.  This one was made using the Spellbinders label 4, Praising stamp plate from The Adorables Christmas Collection, greeting stamp Xmas Medallions Set 2 from and background paper from The Adorables Christmas Collection CD.  The ribbon is blue crinkly edge ribbon from Creative Expression and the pearls on the ribbon was added using Cosmic Shimmer Pearl PVA Glue.

The stained glass window was coloured using different distress inks and the choir boy was coloured in using Copic Pens.  The layering colour was obtained by using the same ivory card but colouring the card with Distress inks so that each lay is a different colour.

The corners were finished off with a corner punch - both on the main card and background car - and also on the insert which again was printed from the Adorables Christmas Collection CD.

A "Bit of a Do"

Yesterday I spent a lovely day in Rugby with the wonderful Jayne Nestorenko at her Christmas "Bit of a do".  This was a Christmas social rather than a workshop although as it was Jayne, we did have a craft project to do.  The morning started off later than usual and instead of settling down to crafting was to settle down to toasted tea cakes and coffee.

The project Jayne set was making Christmas crackers - but not just any crackers.  These crackers were sold at a well known high end store in Knightsbridge. They were made with cardboard, crepe paper and wrapping paper and certainly is not your normal run-of-the-mill cracker. I have not yet decided what embellishment to put on the top of cracker to finally finish this cracker off.

Although I have the black one here, we also were given papers to make a red one as well.  We could either finish on the day or take home to do so I have decided that I will make this later.

We also had a lovely 3 course meals and the afternoon was then spent finishing off the crackers and guessing the babies and wedding photos!

It was a really relaxed day and everyone seemed to enjoy the day and hopefully we will have another "bit of a do" next year.

Crafting with Jayne

I attended Jayne Nestorenko's last workshop of the year in mid October and yet once again, Jayne gave us some lovely project to complete.  As it was the last workshop of the year, it obviously had Christmas as its theme.  It was a great day as usual and had a really relaxed pace about it. The first project we made was this Christmas card.  The letter 'O' could either  used as a bauble or as a globe.  I decided to go for the bauble.  Gold leaf was used for the bow and the top of the bauble and the bauble was glittered on the reverse.  The tops of the letters were scattered with  Polar White Flowersoft and also underneath the letters.  This is quite a large card as it is an A4 card folded lengthways.  The letters and background papers were from Cute Companions Winter Tales CD and the stamp was from Cute Companions Christmas Magic stamp plate.

The next project was an exploding box with a Christmas Bauble inside.  This was a lovely box and I liked the fact that it can with a bauble.  The Bethlehem design that was on the box was also put onto the bauble.  Although I used silver on silver, it was still good but some put silver on black or white on black but any colour could be used.  The box was already cut out as we would not have time to do it all and Jayne had decided that there was no measuring going to be done on this day.  The Bethlehem stamp that was used was from the U Mount Stamp Sheet Xmas Medallion Set 2 as was the image on top of the box.  The images on the box sides were stamped with Versamark and then Black Sparkle Embossing powder was used.  The top of the box was sgtamped with Versamark and then embossed with True White Embossing Powder and then red glitter was added to the middle. 

The last project was a lovely gift envelope.  We first made a template of the gift envelope and once we were comfortable with that, we then folded a piece of blue card to make our gift envelope.  The image on the front is from a wooden stamp that I am not sure that you can buy anymore.  It was coloured in with cosmic shimmer/H20 watercolour paints although we only had a limited colour choice for once as it was at the end of the afternoon.  The snow effect at each end of the choir was achieved by cutting out the choir to a certain point and then tearing the paper to achieve that look.  The gift tags inside the envelope were cut with Spellbinders Holiday Tags dies.  The snow was added to envelope by using an Inkessentials white pen and just doting randomly over the dark blue card.  If you are giving someone money  or gift vouchers then this is an ideal wallet to put give them in.