Crafty Hazel’s Christmas Extra Challenge

Hello All – Yes, it’s November, can’t quite believe that myself, yet here we are!  Time for a new challenge at Crafty Hazel’s Christmas Extra.  As always we are sponsored by

And the DT get to use some of the fun stamps on our projects, this month I chose “Sign It North Pole”

I used some DP from DCWV and added extra sparkle to the image with Yellow and Waterfall Stickles.

You can enter any project as long as it’s Christmas themed and also enter as many times as you’d like too.  After all, Christmas is right around the corner!

Sparkles Challenge ~ Lace And/Or Pearls

Middle of the month, time for a new challenge at Sparkles.  My teamie Maryvonne has chosen the lovely theme of Lace and/or Pearls so there should be plenty of scope for you there.

As always we have two fantastic sponsors for you again, a $15 voucher from:

And 3 digis from:

 

For my card I had an 80th birthday card to make for my Mother-in-Law and decided to use both lace and pearls, and to go for a girly, flowery, shabby chic kind of theme. This is what I came up with:

The two larger papers are Raspberry Road, from a book that was free with a UK card magazine a couple of years ago.  The smaller piece has a text background and was a digital off-cut.  I downloaded the free image of Violets from The Graphics Fairy, resized it in Word and changed to opacity to about 60% to make it look a bit faded out and printed it on to the text digi paper.

The edges of the papers were torn or folded and everything was edged with Distress Ink in Vintage Photo, I even stitched around the main piece too!  I added a strip of lace down the centre and added some pearl clusters from Michaels.

The focus of the card is the sentiment and the flowers and I’m really happy how they came out.

The sentiment if from Inkadinkado and it was embossed in black on to more of the Raspberry Road paper, it didn’t emboss as cleanly as I would have liked though.  I cut it out with a Marvy Uchida oval punch and then cut out two more ovals from thin card. These were stuck together and then the stamped oval was stuck to it to provide a bit of stability for the really thin paper Finally it was inked with the Distress Ink again and popped up on foam dots.  The bow is seam binding and the roses and Calla Lily are from Wild Orchid Crafts and they’re sitting on Martha Stewart punched leaves.  The stick pin in from Little Yellow Bicycle and I stuck it down with some Glossy Accents but when I arranged the flowers it moved and I didn’t notice!  It should have been down and to the right a bit, but I can’t do anything with it now!!  I’ll just have to call that a design feature!

So that’s what I did this month, I hope you can find time to join in the fun, we love to see your beautiful creations.  Please pop over to the main Sparkles blog, there’s a lot of pretty inspirations from my team mates.

Crafty Hazel’s Christmas Extra Challenge ~ Mid Month Reminder

It’s the middle of October and here’s my card for the mid month reminder at Crafty Hazel’s Christmas Extra Challenge.

As always we have the wonderful Bugaboo as a sponsor and I used their image “Stocking Mouse’ for my card.

I also used a Memory Box die, a Martha Stewart snowflake punch, a Lily of the Valley sentiment and some gems from my stash.

Sparkles Christmas Challenge ~ Distress It

I’m running a bit late here due to a very busy September at work.  We have a new Sparkles Christmas Challenge for you for the month of October and our lovely team mate Debs, wants to see all your distressed looking cards and projects.  I know a lot of you like the Vintage/Distressed look so we expect a good number of entries.

We have two wonderful sponsors this month

A gift voucher from Fantastic Ribbons

And a lovely Christmas themed stamp and die from Marianne

For my card I used a tried and true method to make things look a bit distressed and that involves my Tim Holtz paper distressing tool, embossing powder and Distress Ink!

I started with a 5″ x 6.5″ card blank and added the brown card to it.  The sheet of vintage looking DP is from a Michaels own brand pack and I used the Distress Tool around all the edges and then edged with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.  I randomly dropped some Frantage Aged Gold EP and heated form below. I edged with Versamark Embossing Ink, making sure some went over the card face, and then put some Michael’s Opaque Sparkle EP onto a piece of scrap paper and dipped the inked card into it and then heat embossed that!

The music is from a free download I found on Flikr and I distressed it with the TH tool, tore it, curled it up, crumpled it all up and then inked with Vintage Photo DI, I think it looks suitably aged now!  The image is from Inkadinkado, called Holiday Words and it’s embossed in Burgundy, edged with Vintage Photo, cut out and mounted on to brown card.

I added some green ribbon and some Wild Orchid roses in cream and red.  The roses are pretty small so the card is still mostly flat for posting.

I hope you can join us this month, as it’s now October (how did that happen??) there really aren’t that many days left until Christmas!  And that’s a scary thought indeed!

*************************************

Challenges:

Papertake Weekly ~ Take Your Pick (Distress Inks)

Crafty Hazel’s Christmas Extra ~ Anything Goes

Simon Says Stamp ~ Anything Goes

Fab ‘n’ Funky ~ Anything Christmas