forever friends: Chocolate or Cake

The Current Challenge at Forever Friends is Chocolate or Cake.


The design team were sent a gorgeously cute CD-ROM from Joanna Sheen, called Precious Petals, which includes toppers, gorgeous images, backing papers, sentiments and fabulous cake boxes.


I decided to make a chocolate bar wrapper, which I thought would be a nice little gift for the mum of a new baby girl. The backing paper and the gorgeous image are from the CD-ROM.

it's a snowman stitch-up!

I made this for the winter themed 4x4 swap taking place on gingersnap creations, and tied it in with my DT piece for the stitching theme on gingersnap too. It also fits with this week's created by hand challenge: snowmen.


The stamp is Chilly by Jo CapperSandon from Stampotique, available from Happy Daze. I have embossed tracing paper (not vellum, cheap tracing paper) with a snowflake design, and stitched it to the main piece, before sewing up the final edge I popped in some loose white flower soft in to create a shaker effect.

unfortunately it really doesn't photograph well. these are much nicer in real life.

chocolate advent calendar

I love advent calendars. When I was a child one of my favourite things was looking for the date. I like it when it's a little bit of a challenge. I also loved chocolate advent calendars. This is my take on the chocolate advent calendar.


My favourite thing about this is that you have to root around in the basket looking for the right number.

I took 24 small bars of chocolate (these are kinder and I got them from the pound shop) and made wraps from PaperArtsy's Rum and Raisin papers, stamped with various stamps from my rather extensive selection of PaperArtsy Christmas stamps. This is a great excuse to get all your Christmas stamps out and just play before the serious business of the bulk Christmas card making.


I am entering this for The Stampman's anything goes christmas challenge

box for a scroll or rolled voucher, tutorial including custom made scoring board.

Today on the Rogue Redhead blog, I have this tutorial




One of my favourite presents to give at the moment is Amazon vouchers. I love that you can print them straight off, and let's face it, you can buy pretty much anything from Amazon.
But they are not very exciting to give, so that's why I came up with the idea of making a box to put a scroll in, so you can roll the printed voucher up and give as a proper gift.

I have made mine from a sheet of A4 card, it would be easy to adapt this to a similar sized card. I decided that I needed all my scores to be a width of 4cm, however my scoring board doesn't do this width, so I decided I needed to custom make my own scoring board. This was really easy to do, fold a card as shown, so that the channel is just the right width for your embossing tool. mark the width on that you want. As I wanted to be able to score lengthways A4 card, and repeat the scoring, I added little extension pieces to the measurement.



you can see the board in use here. it really does work.



score 4 lines at 4cm intervals lengthways down your card, and 4cm in from each edge.
trim the last flap down to 3cm and shape as shown. cutting away all the shaded areas, and between the side flaps.

fold up and glue side flaps together and place your rolled paper/voucher/certificate/invitation etc, inside.

decorate however you like. I have used a quote and the background from the Relish Reading plate from Rogue Redhead Designs.

girly girl sweet sixteen

The theme at Stampotique this week is "Girly Girl" I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to make a card for my niece's Sweet Sixteen which is coming up soon.
I felt that "girl with heart purse" was suitably girly, but just to be sure I added plenty of pink, flowers, ribbon and gems.

The ribbon is tied using the immovable knot technique from Simplicity. Try it, it's genius!!
The back is embossed using a mask from Clevercut, in my new (ish) bigshot machine. The image is coloured with whispers markers.

The stamp is available from Happy Daze.

monday rogue

Monday is my day at the Rogue Redhead blog (not every monday I hasten to add, but my posts will always be monday)
Today I have posted this really simple card with stamps from the relish reading plate, one of the things I love about this plate is the quotes. You can't actually read them on here, but they make an interesting background. If you are interested in the details of how this card was made the infor is on the rogue redhead blog

crochet heart

I had a little wool left over from the baby girl cardigan, so I decided to make a crochet heart to add to the outside of the present. The pattern is from Fave crafts I changed the bow and added the button though.

Rogue Redhead designs, a brand new stamp company

Announcing Rogue Redhead Designs, a brand-new stamp company!
RRD offers deeply etched unmounted stamps on high quality rubber.
You’ll love the level of detail!

Started by avid stamper, Sharon Briss, this new company
will feature stamps in several different styles
including vintage, eclectic and modern.

Our first full plate release is a tribute to the
literature lovers in our midst.
The “Relish Reading” unmounted plate is
perfect for creating hand-made bookmarks,
adding a personal touch to journals and
creating beautiful note cards.
This 8" x 10" plate includes images and elements to
get you stamping right away
from a full-sized background to focal images to sentiments.

“Relish Reading” is available at the Rogue Redhead Etsy store.  
As part of our initial release, RRD is offering this brand-new plate on sale for
20% off the regular retail price of $22.00 until December 15, 2010.
Get yours now for the introductory price of $17.60!

Want to see some samples with the Relish Reading plate?
Check out our new Rogue Redhead blog to see what the
Rogue Crew has been creating.
We’ll be having new art regularly from our scandalously talented team!
Watch out too for our Rogues at Large as they drop in on us to tempt us with
some of their own amazing art!
Please note: currently RRD does not
ship outside of the USA.  
--------------------

My sample is a bookmark card, the bookmark is attached to the front of the card by photocorners.

Each of the DT have been assigned a day on the blog. My day is monday (but not necessarily every monday). So if you are interested in seeing what else I have made with this wonderful sheet of stamps, check back regularly. It's been great fun working with this sheet as it has everything you need to get going, backgrounds, quotes, words, swirl, embellishments, borders and some wonderful main images, all around the same theme and working perfectly together, and if you are into using old book pages in your artwork what could be better than book themed stamps.

I love to read and I run a fabulous reading group, so this set of stamps couldn't be more perfect for me!

baby girl cardigan

I mentioned in a previous post that I had knitted a cardigan for a friend's baby girl. I'm really pleased how this turned out and I just love the buttons.

pattern is based on Teddy yarns 7177

gingersnap challenge: Haute Couture

This week the challenge at gingersnap creations has the theme Haute Couture. A nice open theme that can be interpreted in many ways. It's lovely to see how the design team have interpreted it in diferent ways.
I chose to use this magenta stamp, coloured with whispers markers (and the dress is paper pieced), which just reminds me of fashion sketches and the wacky outfits of modern Haute Couture. The layout of the card came about completely by accident. You know the usual.. it started as a one layer card, but then I got a smudge....

Forever Friends: Tags or Punches

This week at the forever friends challenge we challenge you to use tags or punches (or both) in your forever friends creation.
I used both on mine. The heart and crosses is a x-cut border punch and the heart is some random punch. The tag is a sissix die.

The bear is simply coloured with coloursoft pencils (no blending). I have made this for a friend that has recently had a baby girl. I've also knitted her a cardigan, which I am just finishing off the ends on. I will blog that soon too.

"bee"-lieve

more "bee" puns!!
Moira from happy daze challenged me to use Jo's bee stamp from stampotique to make a christmas card... how could I resist!
This is what I came up with. The little Santa hat is hand drawn. I have also used Jo's honeycomb stamp and french text on this simple collage card.

This fits perfectly with this month's holiday happenings at Gingersnaps which is "things with wings"

OLW25: "bee"lated birthday

The challenge at one layer wednesday this week is birds and bees and flowers and trees. Which was very handy when I suddenly remembered yesterday that I had forgotten yet another birthday!!! so I made this "bee"lated card using the bee and swirl stalks from Jo Capper Sandon's range at stampotique, available from Happy Daze. The quote is from a SeeDs set and just one of the most useful stamps I own, lol. The background is done from another of the masks from Clevercut

p.s. I did add an insert to this card that I just printed in word that said Happy "Bee"-lated Birthday.

Hanging Hearts

Continuing the pink theme for breast cancer awareness on the frantic stamper blog. I have made this very pink card. The design of this card actually came about by accident. it was originally mounted on a white card blank, but then I went and got ink on the white border, so I trimmed it down to square and then sat and wondered what to do with it...

I decided to make it into a book style card. I think I'll be doing this again.

A pretty good rescue, don't you think.

For details of all the materials and techniques please visit the frantic stamper blog. I'd love it if you'd leave me a comment over there

faux handmade paper tutorial on Gingersnap

On the gingersnap Creations blog today I have a tutorial for making faux handmade paper. I hope that you enjoy it and I would love to see other people's results. I didn't invent this technique, but I have no idea where I learned it, it's one of those techniques that I did when I first started cardmaking, but have just revisited. I have used it to make this card, the stamp is by Paperartsy and I have stamped with versamark and used judikins embossing poweder.
I also used a scrap of it on this card that I have previously blogged.

Daphne and Delilah

You know when you find one of those projects that just puts EVERYTHING else on hold, this is one of those.

I blame the Never Not Knitting Podcast and blog, for creating this desire. The pattern is from the wonderful Rebecca Danger (or as I think of her "the bunny nugget lady"

I have made these for my eight year old son, who just loves this kind of thing. He helped me chose the colours