Baby Boy Card

Welcome to my last post of 2014. Have you got anything nice planned for New Year's Eve? We thought we'd do something different and have a BBQ.  I have thermals and mulled wine to keep me warm but let's hope it stays dry.

This card is another Lori Whitlock design that I cut on my Cameo but you could easily do something similar without one. I heat embossed the words with Versamark ink and white detail powder on to black card to make it look like chalk on a blackboard. You could do something similar for all sorts of occasions.

Thank you for your support this year. See you all in 2015.

Stamps Used

Word Chain 9

Word Chain 10

Lynne

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Rocking Baby Card

Gosh, it's chilly here this morning! Luckily we don't have snow though. Have you? I'm going to stay in the warm today and get my Clarity samples for next weekend's show finished. Hubby is going to take Maya on a nice long walk.

Thanks to Janet Pring for the idea behind today's card- she was the first person I saw take the crib image from the 'Twas The Night stamp and make a baby card with it. It works so well and it's always great to find extra uses for Christmas stamps.

Given the subject I thought it would be fun to make it rock........

......... so I did.

My card is Lori Whitlock design that I cut on my Cameo but it's really simple and you can easily make it without.

You just need something to cut circles with.

If you read my last post the floral decoration on this card may look familiar. I was trying to think of how to pretty this card up, as it was a bit plain with just the baby and the words, when I spotted the flower and ink pad still on my desk after making the previous card. They were feminine, pretty and pink - perfect!

Stamps and Stencils Used

Word Chain 10

'Twas The Night 3 - Crib

Flower Stem

Lynne

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Thank You Card

Well, it's all over for another year. Did you have nice Christmas? We had a lovely meal yesterday and this morning we ventured out to a local deer park. It was really busy but it was nice to get some fresh air and some much needed exercise. Tonight I'm looking forward to left overs (my favourite bit) and Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death on TV.

Anyway, back to this month's Claritystamp samples.

With all the gift giving yesterday a thank you card seemed an appropriate one to blog today. It uses a technique I've been wanting to try for ages - making your own custom ink pad with Cut-n-Dry foam. If you don't know how to do this Barbara Gray has a fab YouTube video on it here.

This is the ink pad I made using Worn Lipstick, Shabby Shutters and Milled Lavender Distress Ink. I used the circle from the Framer Shapes stencil set with the Milled Lavender ink pad to create the sharding on the central circle and the Spectrum Noir pencil to colour in the Thank You stamp.

Some glitter in the centre of the flowers finish it off.

I hope you enjoy the rest of Boxing Day.

Stamps and Stencils Used

Framer Shapes

Million Thank Yous Set

Flower Stem

Lynne

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Christmas Greetings and my final Christmas card of 2014

I'm just having a coffee break, so I thought I'd write a quick post to wish you all a Merry Christmas and share my final Christmas card of 2014.

It's the card that I made for my in-laws.

It uses the Holly Wreath stencil with Forest Green Sparkle Medium for the holly and Berry Red Cosmic Shimmer PVA for the berries.

Before I go, it wouldn't be Christmas without a picture of Maya suitably dressed.

She was very excited to see herself on Create and Craft this morning - I'm loving all the pets on Dawn's Furry Wall.

I'll be back after Christmas with the rest of my Clarity samples. 

Stamps and Stencils Used

Holly Wreath

Merry Christmas

Lots of love,

Lynne

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My 2014 Christmas Cards

Evening all. I've been a busy girl today and I'm now ready for Christmas. We hit M&S and did the food shop and I even sent out a second batch of my Christmas cards. Apologies to anyone who gets one as they may be a little late but they do have 1st class stamps on them so hopefully they won't be too long. I can now be avoid the shops until Christmas and the first few days of the sales are over. Phew!

This is my main card design for this year.

I got quite a little production line going and this is the first batch of 20.

I thought it would be quite a simple design, with just three stamps involved, but I rather under estimated the work involved in making them! I simplified the colouring of the window stamp as much as I could but they still took quite a while.

I cut the DL blanks out of A4 card and did the stamping on the spare piece. To lessen any mistakes with positioning, I cut sticky notes to the size of the verses and stamped the window in the gap. I then removed them and stamped a verse above and below. I did think about putting them all on one large block but I thought there was a good chance that they might not all stamp evenly.

I masked off the window frame, snow, robin and moon with Eclipse Tape before inking in the sky.

The window frame and robin are coloured in with Spectrum Noir pencils. I also used a grey one to add some shadow to the moon. A clear Sakura Stardust pen was used to create stars and Glamour Dust was added to the snow on the tree. You have to have a bit of sparkle at Christmas!

After all that work it was lovely to save a bit of time with my personalised stamp for the insert. Such a great idea.

Hopefully I will be more organised next year but I think if you read this blog back I probably said that the last couple of years too!

Stamps Used

O Tannenbaum

O Christmas Tree

O Christmas Tree (window)

Lynne

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House Mouse Christmas Card

Hi there. How are your Christmas preparations going? I did eventually get some personal Christmas cards made and this is the first of three that I have to share with you.

When I saw the Clarity Fairy Lights Wreath stencil I immediately thought it would look great with my House Mouse Light Wrap stamp and this is the card I made with them. It's for my Mum and Dad (Mum is also a big House Mouse fan).

I inked through the wire part of the stencil with green ink then stamped the mice inside. The light bulbs and mice were coloured in with ProMarkers. I then used Glossy Accents on all the bulbs to make them look like glass. Inspired by the stamp, I added a coloured glow around the bulbs with chalks. I wish I'd thought of that when I did my Clarity sample!

Don't they look cute, although I'm not sure that I should have given them even more lights to get tangled up in!!!

The Claritystamp "Love & Joy at Christmas" banner finishes it off.

Lynne

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Foxes Christmas Card

Hi there. I thought I'd better get the last of my Christmas cards blogged before the big day. I only made one for this month's show, so I'm blogging that today. After that I have three of my personal cards to share, then I will get back to my Clarity samples. I hope that's OK.

This card was inspired by my decorated MDF Christmas tree that I did recently for the Claritystamp Challenge Blog. I was really pleased with how that turned out so I used the same colours and techniques for the background.

The trees are various green Archival Inks and Weathered Wood Distress Ink, the snow is Frantage Shabby White embossing powder and the sky is brayered with Denim and Black Adirondack ink. The foxes are coloured in with Spectrum Noir pencils.

A frame cut with a Spellbinders Snowflakes View die finishes it off.

By the way, it's a good job that I did make that MDF tree as it's the only decoration I have up this year. Hubby always says that my house "looks like Santa's grotto" (I usually decorate on the 1st December) but with one thing and other it didn't get done. Now it just doesn't seem worth it for such a short time. Never mind. Hopefully Santa will still come.

Stamps Used

Remountable Foxes Set

Repositionable Trees

Personalised Christmas Name Set

Lynne

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Squirrel Flip Thank You Card

Morning all. I'm starting to get things organised for Christmas. Some cards went in the post yesterday and then we went to York and did our Christmas shopping. Today I have some Clarity samples to post, then I can relax for a couple of days.....

Today's sample is a flip card.......

.........it's one of those things that needs to be seen in action...........

............so I made a very short video of it. Thanks to Hubby for his expert flipping.

The card ( a Lori Whitlock design bought from the Silhouette Store) was sized to fit the stamps and then cut on my Cameo. 

I masked off the central panel, so that stayed white, before stencilling the rest of it. I didn't worry about masking the circular flip part as that would be covered with the stamped images. They were done on separate circles of card to give it more rigidity.

The Million Thank Yous set covers so many occasions but for this card I chose "Thank you for the gift" as he's holding an acorn. Cute! I'm sure it did make his day.

Stamps and Stencils Used

Million Thank Yous set

Squirrel

Lynne

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Everything is Awesome

Morning all. Thanks for the get well wishes from my last post. I am feeling so much better now although I'm still disappointed that I had to miss the Christmas Ball on Friday. I had a gorgeous new dress to wear and was really looking forward to it. Hubby very kindly texted me photos throughout the evening to show me what I was missing - he is such a ***!

This is today's "Awesome" card and I thought I'd share what inspired it as people always seem to be intrigued by that.

Hubby and I are a couple of big kids and recently watched The Lego Movie (loved it!). There's a seriously catchy song in there called "Everything is Awesome" which reminded us so much of Maya. She does everything with such vigour and everything in her world is awesome, especially Hubby.

When he's due home from work she occupies her OP (Observation Post) at the front window to watch for him coming up the road. When she sees him she darts to the back door and jumps up, like the fox, until he comes in.

It was perfect that we also had the word "Awesome" in the new Word Chain set and so this card was born.

To make the card I stamped the foxes first, masked them off and created the scene around them. I used embossing powder on "Awesome" to make it stand out more. The foxes are coloured in with Spectrum Noir pencils.

I hope you have an awesome Sunday. I'm spending mine in my craft room (I'm so behind!) and Hubby has been tasked to do some h**sework (I didn't get a lot done last week). It could be an interesting day!

Stamps and Stencils Used

Remountable Foxes

Awesome from Word Chain 12

Letterbox Set

Birds from Remountable Birdhouse Set

Ploughed Field

Lynne and Maya

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You're a Star Card

Hi everyone. I hope you've had a better week than I have - my cold turned into the cold from hell. On Tuesday I couldn't even keep water down and ended up passing out. Still, I'm starting to feel human again now so I thought I'd better get back online and catch up with a few things.

I've chosen this card to blog today as it's a nice simple one to explain and simple is good at the moment!

For the sparkly stars I used the Stars Wreath stencil with some Sweet Dimensions paste that I had added glitter to (I wrote about that in this post here). Since then I've bought myself a metal spreader, that I also wrote about in that post, and it makes spreading the paste so much easier. I actually got one by Dreamweaver as I saw it for sale at a craft show I was at. It's 7" long so it covers the whole width of the stencil in one go.

Once I'd done that I did the stamping in Jet Black Archival ink and coloured in "Thank you" with a black Sakura Stardust pen. It adds a lovely shimmer to it.

There isn't a "You're" in the Word Chain stamps so I made that up from some others.

A black mat, some faux stitching and some ribbon finish it off.

I guess I'd better go and catch up on FB now. I haven't been on there all week either and have loads of notifications to catch up on. I hope you have a good weekend.

Stamps and Stencils Used

Stars Wreath

Million Thank Yous Set

Star from Word Chain 10

Lynne

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December's Claritystamp Samples

Did you see Barbara's show on Create and Craft today? The new stamps are fab, aren't they? It's hard to believe that the next one will be in 2015! It's just as well that I've finally got cracking on my Christmas cards, although I now have a cold and my mojo is flagging again. Typical!

Anyway, here's a quick peek at my cards from today's show. As always I will be blogging them all throughout the month. Hopefully I might have some Christmas cards to share too..........if I ever finish them!

A couple of them move so I took videos of them in action. I might add one of Maya too as she (and the Lego movie) inspired the "Everything is Awesome" one. All will be revealed later as they say............

I guess I'd better get back up to my craft room. I have an hour before I need to start cooking dinner.

See you later,

Lynne

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A Birthday Card and my Tower of London Poppy

Hi there. I've spent a lovely morning with my friend Connie at the Ripley Castle Christmas Fair. So many lovely things for sale - I could have spent a fortune..............if I had one!

This card follows on from the previous post. It uses the same printed background paper, only this time I've added a simple scene to it.

I hope my father-in-law liked it - I always struggle with ideas for men's cards. That reminds me, I need to make one for Hubby's birthday next week.

I also mentioned on my previous post that my poppy was out for delivery.

Well it arrived. It is lovely and I really like the design of the packaging. There's even a bit of mud left on the poppy which I think I'll leave where it is. It came with the original stick (it's lovely and weathered too) so you can plant it like it was in the installation but I think I want to use mine like it is, as an ornament.

This means it needs a middle but luckily I have the perfect solution - an old poppy.

Perfect!

I hope you have a lovely weekend. Don't forget that Barbara Gray from Claritystamp is on Create and Craft TV at 9am on Sunday (7th Dec). As always, there are some fab new stamps. I look forward to seeing what everyone else has made with them. I had an awesome time with mine!

Stamps and Stencils Used

Bird Tree Stencil

No Matter

Horse from the Remountable Farm Set

Lynne

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Poppies Anniversary Card

Hi, it's a lovely frosty morning here today which made for a much more pleasant walk - it's dry and the mud has solidified. I've given myself a couple of days off from my Clarity samples to try and get some personal cards made. I'm being realistic so I've decided to just do 20 and a couple for our parents. I'm afraid the rest will have to be b**ght (I can't quite bring myself to type that word!).

Even making 20 of a "simple" design takes a surprising amount of time. I'm doing DL cards so I've cut and folded the blanks from A4.....then there are 3 stamps on each front.........one has to be coloured in.......and glittered........this has to be mat and layered on to the base card.............inserts have to be made and stamped..........thank goodness for the personalised Clarity Christmas greetings..........and my handmade by stamp added to the back. I guess I'd better get this written and get cracking.

Today's card and the next one I will be blogging are a couple of family ones I made recently. I hadn't left myself very long to make them (can you see a pattern here? lol) so I kept them simple.

The background is a paper design that I bought from the Silhouette Store and printed out in the size I wanted it (to fit the Poppy stencil). It's called "Fleur Frame" and is from the Glitz Design French Kiss" Collection. It's a beautiful vintage newsprint design with a lovely frame. I think it's a great base for a quick card.

I used Grunge Paste for the poppies then sponged the colour (Distress Inks) onto them once they were dry. Happy Anniversary and a thin black mat finishes it off.

Spookily, as I've been typing this I've just had an email to say that my poppy from the Tower of London's "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red" installation is out for delivery today. Exciting!

I'll be back on Friday with my FIL's birthday card that I made with another sheet of the same background paper. I'll share a photo of my poppy too................assuming it gets here safely..........

Stamps and Stencils Used

Poppies

Happy Anniversary from the Remountable Letterbox Sentiments

Lynne

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Live, Laugh, Love

Yay! It's the 1st of December so that can only mean one thing - the start of a new challenge on the Claritystamp Challenge Blog. The theme for this month is "Trees".................

.............and this is my project. I made it to go in my spare room.

It's hard to believe that next month we will have lived here for 6 years. We have previously moved about every two years, sometimes more often. Anyway, because we've been here for so long I've been having a clear-out.

One of the items to go were the bookcases from my spare room (there was one where the chest of drawers with the lamp on it now is and one where the ottoman is). The room looks lot less cluttered but it did leave the walls looking rather bare.

When I saw the Heart Butterfly Ladder Frame in The Range for £6.99 I thought it was perfect for one of them. I do love making cards but it's always nice to make something useful that you can keep.

I picked an ink pad to match the room (Adirondack Raisin) and it's all done with that. I used second generation ink to get the paler stamped colour. The backgrounds are created with my Claritystamp stencil brush and a make-up sponge. Very Clarity!

It was perfect timing that the "Live Laugh Love" stamp arrived when I was making it (it's October's New Design Club stamp). It was designed by the very talented Dee Paramour and I love it.

This was the most fiddly section as I masked off the lettering to keep it white.

The final heart features my favourite Meadow Dance stamp. I think it goes so well with Dee's words.

It was just a cheap frame but I'm really pleased with it and it's brightened up my magnolia wood chip walls (standard decor in any Army quarter!). Now I just need something to go on the wall above the ottoman................maybe that could be a future blog project......

I hope you like it and I look forward to seeing your projects. Trees are a staple item in the Claritystamp collection so there's lots to choose from and I'm sure everyone has at least one in their collection. Don't forget that there's a £50 Claritystamp voucher for the winner. It's chosen at random so it's well worth having a go.

Congratulations to the winner and top 5 of the "Travel" challenge. There were so many clever cards and November's New Design Club stamp "Santa's Car", made several appearances. Naomi and Sam have used it their projects for this month too as there's a tree in the boot. It is a fab stamp. I wonder what this month's will be? It's always so exciting when it pops through the door.

The stamps I've used are all available at Claritystamp.

Lynne
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Adjust The Sails Card

Hi there. I thought I'd better get my last card from November's show blogged before we hit December. I hardly dare mention that word - I haven't made a single Christmas card yet! I know what I want to do and I bought some fab new stamps in the recent Claritystamp sale but I need to find the time to make them (I have samples to make at the moment so they are taking up my time).

The first part I made on this card was the Grunge Paste Rope Knot frame. I used navy card to make it stand out and sponged it with a sea sponge, to give it some texture (like rope), while it was still wet. When it was dry I added a bit of Distress Ink on the edges.

I cut around the knot so that I could stick the scene in behind it. That is mainly coloured with Spectrum Noir pencils but I did use ProMarkers on the boat to make it stand out more. The same red pen is used to colour white card for the mats.

I stamped the compass in second generation ink behind the verse to add some interest. The "rope" is piping cord. I added some Distress Ink to that and the rest of the card to tone down the white to match the Grunge Paste.

It seems appropriate to be blogging this today as Hubby's just got back from two weeks of teaching diving in Cyprus. I wonder if there is anything interesting beneath that boat? Is he sailing over sunken treasure?

I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend. I'll be back on Monday with my project for the next Claritystamp Challenge. Don't forget that you still have until 8pm tomorrow (30th November) to enter if you haven't done so yet. There's a £50 Claritystamp voucher for the winner (chosen at random) so it's well worth having a go.

Stamps and Stencils Used

Compass

Adjust The Sails set

Rope Knot

Lynne

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Joyful Butterflies

Morning all.  It's still so grey and miserable here but at least I've got a nice colourful card.........

...........to brighten up things up.

I used a selection of teardrop Memento ink pads to create it. Being small they make it easy to mix the colours on the stamp. I used two similar shades on each butterfly (one along the centre and another on the edge of the wings).........

........... and quite a few on the tree.

It was looking REALLY bright when I finished (it's actually on bright white card) so I toned it down with some brown Distress Ink - I think I'm in an autumnal mood with my colours at the moment.

Stamps Used

Remountable Butterflies Set

Joy from Word Chain 6

Lynne

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Embossed Butterfly Tree

Hi, I thought I'd write a quick post while I'm drinking my post Maya walking cup of coffee. She is so funny - where I live is surrounded by farmland and the roads we walk along are really muddy at moment.  When we get back we are both covered in it. Now if I took her upstairs and gave her a nice warm shower she would kick off big time but she is more than happy to stand in the garden and let me rinse her off with the hose. It must be freezing!

Anyway, I'm feeling a lot more positive today as yesterday's sample making went much better than the previous day's. I shall be back up there when I've finished this and I'm really looking forward to it.

This card is a really simple one but I was so pleased with how it turned out. Working out where to position everything is what took the time - I wanted the copper butterflies to be on the black tree and across the sun.

Once I had that worked out it was just a case of creating the scene. The black tree is stamped in Archival ink and the copper tree is stamped in Versamark and then heat embossed with Detail Copper powder by Stampendous.

I always think that a sentiment can make a card and "Autumn, the year's last' loveliest smile" seemed perfect...................then I had a major panic! Do you get butterflies in autumn? Luckily for me a quick Google search confirmed that they are still about in the UK in October. Phew! Panic over - I hadn't just ruined all that work after all!

Stamps and Stencils Used

Remountable Butterflies Set

Butterfly Tree Stencil

Autumn Smile stamp from the Maple Leaf Set

Lynne

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Armoire Card

Yay, it's nearly the weekend! I hope you've got something nice planned. I'll be spending mine in my craft room making next month's samples as Hubby is in Cyprus having fun working very hard.

For today's card I made an armoire with my Silhouette Cameo (it's a Lori Whitlock design bought from the Silhouette Store)...................

.............to display my Claritystamp dress.

I sized the armoire to fit the dress then added some pattern with Samantha Walker papers (also bought in the Cameo store). They were used to fill in the armoire pieces, then I used the print and cut feature. 

I also printed out a sheet of one of the papers and used it for the dress. The stamping is done with Coffee Archival and the pieces are edged with Walnut Distress Ink.

I had such fun making this one. I hope you like it. I just wish I could make myself a full-sized version!

Stamps and Stencils Used

Remountable Clarity Style

A5 Clarity Style Stencil

Bar from Remountable Best of the Classroom Set

I must remember the "Giving up is not my style" part of the quote if tomorrow's samples go as well as today's...............

Lynne

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Grunge Paste Brollies

I thought I may as well continue with the brolly theme and blog this card.

It uses a product I bought years ago but have hardly used - Twinkling H2Os. I thought they might give a nice finish to the brollies though, so out they came.

I spread Grunge Paste through the stencil and when it was dry painted it with the H2Os.

The stamping is done with black Archival ink and three brads finish it off.

That was short and sweet - I should be able to catch up on another episode of Scandal before dinner. Love it!

See you later.

Stamps and Stencils Used

Remountable Winds of Change Set

Umbrellas

Lynne

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