Thank you card - another diversion from Christmas themes!

Good morning, I hope the weather is better where you are - the UK is getting to look like a giant water resevoir after all this rain!

Today I am sharing a thank you card that I just made. Someone very kind has already sent me some beautiful home-made gifts in anticipation of the birth of my first baby (a girl, due in January), and I wanted to show my appreciation with a hand-made thank you card!

These are the beginnings of the card:

Materials I used include: Marvy LePlume II markers, various cardstock, the Dear Lizzy Neapolitan Jar stamp set, some 3D foam squares, Brown parcel paper, Clear embossing powder, ultra-adhesive double-sided tape, and some gorgeous Thickers from American Crafts.

I also printed out a couple of Digital Stamp Downloads from www.artsanddesigns.com to choose from. In the end (and after colouring both!) I went for the Magic Toadstool design:

I'd already done a test-run using blu-tack to see which positions I liked for sticking on my little bits of cardstock, then taken a picture so I could remember the layout later:

I also stamped the word "thank" onto some recycled paper, using the Dear Lizzy Neapolitan Jar stamp, and used clear embossing powder to give it a little lift. The stamp set actually had the word "thanks" on it, so missing out the "s" with the ink pad was a wee bit fiddly!

All that remained after that was to assemble my card (on a blank card) using ultra-adhesive double sided tape and 3D foam squares:

Thanks for stopping by at my blog!

Julie x

Birthday Card made using Romantic Rose Digital Stamp

Hello,

Today I'm having a little break from Christmas preparations, and sharing a birthday card that I made using one of the www.artsanddesigns.com Digital Stamps - the Romantic Rose Digital Stamp in Teal/Black.

There is now quite a range of downloadable digital stamps over at www.artsanddesigns.com - ideal if you want a design that you can download, print out, and use immediately. Not to mention the cost advantage: a budget-conscious bargain price of 99p! (Currently around $1.60...)

Anyway, I began the birthday card by gathering a few supplies:

Some Helz Cuppleditch products (which are often quite Christmassy, but I've found that there are such a range of colours etc that you can go ahead and use the products on so many projects!), some lovely ink pads, a blank card/envelope (in white), some super-useful adhesives, some of my trusty DecoArt Glistening Snow Writer, a few odds and ends, like pink cardstock, my current favourite thing: Brown paper! So useful! My Marvy LePlume II pens, and last but not least, the Romantic Rose Digital Stamp in Teal/Black, printed out onto some lovely high-quality paper.

First off, I got to work colouring my Romantic Rose:

Fun and easy to do! Next, I went to the effort of cutting close around my coloured rose, using a tiny pair of scissors. I think it was worth it for the overall effect, as I then went on to roughly blob an outline of the rose on a cut-to-size piece of my brown paper, using just a hot-pink ink pad:

Happily, I remembered to do the ink-pad blobbing before I stuck anything down! I quite like the effect. I wanted to add a little something extra too, so I got to work with my DecoArt Glistening Snow Writer, which I used to blob on some "dew drops" onto the rose petals:

Et voila! I'm starting to think that I should probably make and stock-pile a few occasion cards, since I always seem to be making them with the event looming large. Then again, I have a tendency to do my best work (and actually get things finished!) under pressure, so I might just stick with the current system!

Thanks for checking out my blog, feel free to pop over to www.artsanddesigns.com for a bit of a perusal.

Julie x

Christmas Gift Tags

Hello,

Today I'm sharing a little Christmas gift tag project that I'm working on - they're not quite finished yet, and actually, the home-made Cranberry Infused Vodka they'll be attached to isn't quite ready either!

I decided to test my caligraphy skills and do a spot of fancy writing to start with:

After perfecting my text with pencil (this took a little while!), I just went over it with a black ink fine-liner pen:

At the moment, I find myself really into good old-fashioned brown paper for backing etc:

This paper, along with other Helz Cuppleditch Special Delivery collection items, can be purchased here. This is what I did with mine:

Finally (well, not really finally, since they're not quite finished!) I backed the labels with some good cardstock in green, and added some sparkle in the form of DecoArt Glamour Dust, after stamping with one of the tiny little star stamps from the Dear Lizzy Neapolitan Jar stamp set:

 

Once I've finished the vodka (it needs to rest in the fridge for a week!), I'll finish up the tags and add them to the bottles with this lovely twine:

And there you have it, some home-made Christmas gifts ready to go! Pics to follow :)