Christmas card for my Son using freebies!

I received a wonderful gift when I subscribed to 'Simply Cards and Papercrafts' last month; a set if Indigo Blue Flitter and some beautiful stamps and on top of that the magazine had a great embossing strip folder. So that's what I used to make both my Son and Daughters Christmas cards.
Here's the one for my boy:

I layered textured gold card on a plain 8x8inch white card. Stamped the Indigo Blue image and embossed with silver embossing powder onto black card. Sprinkled a frame around the image with Frantage Aged Gold Opaque embossing enamel and heated it from underneath. I then ran some brown paper through the Bigshot inside the freebie embossing folder and went over it with the lush Pebeo Silver Gilding Wax, stuck on a couple of gold stars, the die cut letters out of a velvet wallpaper sample (!) from the Time Holtz Vintage Market strip and voila!
It had to be a quick card as my son really isn't into cards at all - I've put him off for life with all my crafting!

First post for Artistic Inspirations Challenge Blog

What a frantically busy month it's been. My house has been in chaos as we've been changing rooms around to accommodate my lovely new craft room, which is ALMOST finished and ready to show off and so much happening that my poor little brain is spinning!
Firstly I'm very excited to say I've been invited to join the DT for Artistic Inspirations who run a fab Challenge Blog which gives prizes of digital images generously provided by some amazing sponsors.

Here's my first card for the team, and bearing in mind the limited access to my craft provisions, and that I had a very busy Christmas Card & Paper Craft workshop to prepare for and run on Saturday, it's amazing I submitted it in time!

The digital image is from Stitchy Bear (details on Artistic Inspirations Challenge Blog) and I chose this one because it had something very appealing about it and immediately I thought of a little elf hiding in a Christmas Tree (my mind boggles even me sometimes!).
The backgrounds are stamped with some freebie bauble stamps I got from a magazine, using Versamark ink, heat embossed with Stamp 'n' Bond powder then covered with gilding flakes.
The green background was pre stamped with a tree to look like pine branches as I didn't have a pine branch stamp, but it worked pretty well. The main image is coloured using Promarkers & Spectrum Noir alcohol markers, cut out leaving a white border so it 'pops', then added onto the green background and I made a small slit along the bauble where her hand rests, slid her hand into it so it looks like she's holding onto the bauble (to me anyway!).
I put it all together layering it onto a punched piece of cream card. Then I added double sided tape to both sides, covered with glitter and edged with some vintage lace.
Hope you like it - I had a lot of fun doing this and it was the perfect excuse to take a break from decorating!
Suz
xxx

New Craft Room - work in progress!

Hello creative people.
I've not posted for a few days, but have been frantically busy preparing for a charity fundraising event in aid of the Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital Charity tomorrow, where I'll be running 4 workshops and in between trying to renovate a room which will be my new Craft Room!
As you'd imagine we'd hoped it would be finished by this weekend (rofl) and instead we've had problems capping gas pipes, complications with the electrics and plaster falling off of chimney breasts and holes to fill in flooring where we took away the fire surround & hearth! Here is a pic of it as it stands. I'm still very excited with the progress but I still can't sugar soap the walls & paintwork because there's more messy remedial work to (shame!!).

In then meantime my daughter may have come down with food poisoning or a 24hour bug and I'm just praying whatever the poor girl has got that I don't flipping catch it - especially with all the work I've done for tomorrow- eeeeek!

Wish me luck.
Suz

Journal Cover

And here is the cover of the journal, inspired by Andy Skinner, which I taught at the workshop last week. So many layers of paper, glue, inks and paint it took ages!

And here is one of the inside pages, just playing with different mediums and techniques.

I thought both of these could be entered into the Country View Crafts challenge which is 'letters' as I used die cut letters for both these pages.

Finished art journal page

I had fun preparing for my Introduction to Art Journaling workshop last week. Gave me a perfect excuse to play. I spritzed water onto my journal page, spritzed two strong colours of Luminarc sprays, then blew them around with a straw and once dry I splatted Picket Fence distress stain over and stomped it down with some force (very therapeutic)! Then today I finished the page off by cutting out images from magazines to make the mismatched character and went around the image with black ink, stamped a fab phrase from a set by Dyan Reavely and heat embossed it with white Wow powder. Finally I quilled a bright flower for her hair to be a bit contrary! This page could be perfectly innocent, or have a naughty side with those dark background colours, depends on your imagination!

Think I'll enter this into a few challenges just for fun!:

All Crafts Challenge Theme is anything goes but not cards!
 Anonymous Stamp Challenge Theme is anything/ no theme
Artistic Inspirations Challenges - theme is anything goes/ friendship
Di's Digi Designs - Girly
Musically Challenged - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (perfect theme I think!)
Punk You Girl - Angels and Demons - and I think this girl is both, if she opened her mouth wider she'd probably have fangs!
Challenges for Everybody - Anything goes
That Craft Place Ltd - Sentiment (lovely to see the fab Jools on the DT of on this site!
Craft Stamper Magazine challenge - splatter (did a fair bit of that!)

Quick JoFY Christmas card

Here is a quick Christmas card using a paper piecing technique with the lovely JoFY stamps, and )ov course) some Stickles; great for the boys (still managed to add that glitter though!).

Will enter this into the following challenges:

Sweet stamping challenge - Christmas is coming

and also their Christmas at Sweet Stamping Challenge which has a male theme

Hel's Sunday Stamper - Red

 Stamping Sensations - Christmas

2 Sisters Challenge Blog - Christmas Sparkle 

Crafty Calendar Challenge Blog - All things Chrismas

Back from hols & have finished samples for next weeks workshop

After a lovely week away I'm back and raring to go! Here are the samples of the second project we will make at the workshop on Saturday. Quick and easy but great fun and lovely results. Hope you like them. I'm happy for anyone to copy the design (thanks to those who've already asked because I know how hard it is to always come up with practical workshop ideas, just as long as I do get credit. And the nice thing is they are suitable for the boys, but you can add more bling and glitz to make them more girlie!
Suz
xxx

I'll enter these into the following challenges:

Penny Black and More - anything goes (not digi images though)

My Creative Moments Wordplay challenge - this month it's Seasons & this week anything goes.

CAS-ual Fridays (clean and simple) - theme is tag/ gift, and you can't get a simpler tag which is a gift than this one! 

Crafts-Too challenge you - Christmas scene and what Christmas means to you (for me cosy and glittery sum it up!)

And the brand new Crafty Hands Challenge Blog - Anything goes

 

And my first ever blog hop - if it works!!!