Clean and Simple Christmas

A clean and simple Christmas card for you today using Darcy's stag from PaperArtsy (EDY16).

This is a 5" by 5" card, the background kraft card is embossed with snowflakes and Christmas words from one of Tim Holtz 2017 stamp sets are around the border. It wasn't that quick to make as I had to fussy cut the stag after I had coloured him with Copics but there is no inky, painty business going on so nothing to clean up afterwards.

This will probably be my last post before Christmas so wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and best wishes for the festive season.

New JOFY Stamps!

Four new sets of JOFY stamps were launched at the Craft Barn demo day yesterday where I spent a lot of time deliberating over which should come home with me. I chose a Christmas set as I am determined this year as always to start making my cards early. August is pretty early don't you think.
Here is the card I made this afternoon.

The baubles are big. I like the sketchy images so left them black and white and just stamped the word JOY on some Studio Light paper, cut it out and added the letters to one of the baubles. Merry Christmas is stamped on the same paper and cut into a banner, doodles (oops, shaky hand today) around the edge and mounted on matching paper.
This set is JOFY 28. Should I invest in one of the other new sets? One of the flower sets? Probably!
For those of you who like Jo's design's and could not make it to the Craft Barn yesterday, I took a photo of the samples at the demo. That lovely turquoise flower is made using a flower stencil and the second limited edition set of JOFY paints, the colours are delicious, I think I need those paints on my shopping list.

Countdown : 116 days

There are only 116 days until Christmas, a scary thought in August when the sun is still shining!
There is a new challenge on the Fun with ATCs blog where the theme is black, white and red and I ended up with this ATC, it wasn't intentional, it just happened. Earlier in the week I found a die cut bauble and started doodling zentangle patterns on it. When I saw the black, white and red theme for this challenge I thought I'd enter just for fun.

Recipe :
Die cut bauble, zentangled.
"deck the halls" sentiment from JOFY06 stamp plate by Paperartsy
Red pearl embellishment
Additional doodling around the edges of the ATC to finish it off by me.

Christmas Decorations

Christmas is over and we have the new year to look forward to so just to finish off December's Christmas themes, here are a couple of things I made for my Mum for Christmas. Both were inspired by trips to the Craft Barn demo days and both used Tando Creative products.

For this winter scene I used acrylic paint for the layers and some sparkle Mod Podge on the mountains. The windows and doors are drawn with a black micron pen and the title stamped and covered with glossy accents. The background is Tim Holtz tissue paper.

These Tando Creative stockings were fun to make, a made a few for friends and relations and kept one for myself. This one is painted with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish chalk acrylic paint in rose. This paint is opaque and so easy to work with, I think I might need to build up a collection of these paints, they are so versatile and the colours are fab. 

The swirl stamped image is from Personal Impressions and stamped using colorbox ink and embossed with fine clear embossing powder. The stocking is then triple embossed and some Perfect Pearls powder added with a small paintbrush before embossing to make an irridescent shimmer on the stocking. The same technique is used for the top of the stocking which I painted in black adding blue mica powder.

I hope you all had a happy Christmas and wish you all the best for the New Year.  

Julia x

Less is More : Houses

This weeks' challenge at Less is More is a one layer card with the theme being Houses. Here is my Christmas card showing the London skyline including the Houses of Parliament. The stamp is from Crafty Individuals and I have stamped it in black archival ink directly onto the white card added the black Happy Christmas sentiment and red gems to brighten it up.
This is an easy card to make and I love that London image, should be OK to send through the post as well so maybe I'll send this one overseas.