Have a Meowy Christmas

Hello Peeps!

I hope everyone is having a fantastic week so far!  I have another vintage Christmas card to share with another image from Nicecrane Designs' Kittens and Puppies on Christmas digital image pack.  These images are simply adorable, and although I do have a soft spot for everything feline, this cute kitty would be hard to resist regardless!  The images are already coloured, so it makes for easy, quick and beautiful cards.

Supplies:

Image - Kittens and Puppies on Christmas from Nicecrane Designs.  I added a little glitter to the berries using a clear atyou Spica pen (Copic).
Paper - white Bazzill and DP is from Close to my Heart.  Edges were distressed and inked with antique linen and pumice stone DI's.
Stamps - flourish from Tim Holtz Urban Chic set stamped with pumice stone
Other - red rhinestones from stash, the beautiful clear faceted button is from Stampin' Up (LOVE these!), the poinsettia was made using the Spellbinders Layered Poinsettia die, holly is a cut file from My Scrap Chick, and branches are a punch from McGill.

I would like to enter this card in these fun challenges:

Fab 'n' Funky - make your own flowers
Card Crafter's Circle - Christmas in July
Simon Says Stamp and Show - no rules
Divas by Design - anything goes
My Mum's Craft Shop - cats and dogs

Thanks for stopping in and for taking the time to leave a comment.  I love reading them and visiting you back!  I still have a bit of catching up to do, but I will promise I will get to all of your blogs shortly:)

Hugs,

Dawn

Christmas in July

Hello everyone!

First, I want to send out a big welcome and thank you to my new followers!  I'm very glad to have you on my crafting journey!  I hope everyone is having a wonderful and creative summer so far!  It has been a while since my last post and I have no idea where the days have gone.  Summer has that effect, doesn't it!?  I have lots of catching up to do and (finally) a card to share.  

This adorable image was a gift from Ignacio at Nicecrane Designs and is part of a beautiful set of vintage images called Kittens and Puppies on Christmas.  Thank you Ignacio; I just love these images to bits!  They are super quick and easy to work with too, since they are already coloured.  Just print them on some card and your good to go!

I created my first ever shaker card, which was surprisingly simple to do.  I made the frame using SCAL2 by welding various shapes together and I love how it turned out.  The acetate was recycled from some packaging - the clear sheets that cling stamps are sandwiched between.  Since I've started putting my clings in binders, I have a lot of these kicking around.  The paper is from Best Creations (Merry Christmas pad).  I used a McGill punch for the branches, the holly is from My Scrap Chick and the corner is a die from Nellie Snellen.  The little jingly bells were died red with Adirondack ink and the frame was filled with some coarse glitter.  A little tule and my first Christmas card of the year is complete!

I would like to enter this card in the following fun challenges:

Sweet Stamps challenge - Victorian (vintage) Christmas
Charisma Cardz Challenge - Recycle (the acetate was from packaging)
Creatalicious Challenge - Christmas in July
Totally Gorjuss - Christmas

Thanks for taking a peek and for taking the time to leave a comment!  Have a wonderful week!

Hugs,

Dawn

Enjoy the Things that Really Matter

Hello everyone!

I want to extend a big welcome and thank you to my latest followers!  I'm so very grateful for each and every one of you!  I hope everyone is having a great week so far...almost the weekend :o).  Hope you get to spend it doing something you love.

Every once in a while, I get asked to make a custom card for someone, and today I have one of these cards to share.  This is a retirement card for a lady that my MIL worked with and all the gals in her office wanted a special card for the occasion.  Here is what I came up with:

Now, I know this isn't a typical retirement card, but this lady has a little grandson and a little dog who are the centre of her universe, so I think it works really well for her.  I used my absolute favourite Edwin - Edwin with airplane from the Magnolia Princes and Princesses collection and masked it together with the log.  Since she has a small dog, I opted to mask the dog from 'Fishing Fun' by Gillian Roberts for Stampavie into the little scene.  If you are not familiar with this image, it is of a little boy fishing and the dog is snuggled up beside him.  Not the easiest of tasks, but thank goodness for my stamp-a-ma-jig!  I am very happy with how it turned out and I think the two styles work nicely together.  The images were stamped with black Stazon on 300g hot pressed watercolour paper and coloured with distress inks (frayed burlap, weathered wood, stormy sky, black soot, antique linen, pumice stone, fired brick, walnut stain, scattered straw, and peeled paint) and watercolour pencil for skin.

I decorated the inside to match the cover, but used a lighter paper for writing on.

The tag is made from Magnolia's vintage tag Doohickey and pulls out to reveal the sentiment, which I made in Word since I didn't have one that was appropriate for the occasion.  It is made using a bunch of text boxes crammed in together :).  If you click on the image, you can see the puppy's tag is very sparkly, courtesy of my clear atyou Spica pen.  I absolutely love this pen!

Other supplies:
The card and papers are all Stampin' Up, except for the striped one which was in my stash and I'm not sure from which manufacturer.   All the edges were distressed and inked with frayed burlap.
White lace and blue ribbon from my stash.  The lace on the tag is from Kaiser - it started out white, but I died it blue.  The Doily is from Little Yellow Bicycle and the flowers were all white flowers from Pretty Petals.  The rose was coloured blue with Tattered Angels glimmer mist in bubbles and then the edges were inked with DI weathered wood.  The other two were inked with weathered wood and frayed burlap.  The leaves are a Magnolia Doohickey.

I would like to enter this card in the following fun challenges:

Crafting Life's Pieces for the beautiful sketch, which I rotated and flipped
TOMIC - anything goes (and it's their first anniversary celebration!  Congratulations!!)
Magnolia Down Under - seeing double (I've doubled up on the lace, the ribbon, the leaf Doohickeys and the little blossoms)
Midweek Magnolias - anything goes

Thanks for stopping by today and thank you for taking the time to leave a comment!  I love reading them and love the chance to visit you too!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hugs,

Dawn

Simply Magnolia GDT

Hello bloggers,

I would like to extend a huge thank you and welcome to my blog's new followers!  I am delighted to have you along on my crafting journey!  I hope everyone is having a great weekend.  I wish I could say mine has been, but my little one has caught a virus and is covered in a rash, so we are quarantined at the moment.  He is handling it all very well, and had I not told him he is sick, he might not have known.  He also very generously passed his little bug on to me, so I spent last night with a fever (but, luckily no rash).

Enough moaning and on to something far more exciting.  A few weeks ago, I won a guest design spot at Simply Magnolia!  The challenge this fortnight is fancy folds with a friendship theme.  Here is my inspiration piece:

When I first dreamed up this idea, I thought it would have a lot more folds than it ended up having.  But then I decided to make everything smooth and rounded instead of square an folded.  However, there are still folds at each junction - top, bottom and where the spout meets the can, so it does still work.

I used Seeding Tilda, which was a wonderful Christmas gift from my in laws.  I wished I looked as cute as her while gardening!  I masked her with Root Cellar Door, minus the root cellar door.  I really liked the stones and flowers on this image, but it just didn't seem to make sense to scatter seeds in front of a door, so I masked it out.  It also doesn't make any sense to wear white boots to work in the dirt; silly Tilda.  The images were stamped on 300g hot pressed watercolour paper and coloured with distress inks (tumbled glass, tattered rose, peacock feathers, walnut stain, antique linen, frayed burlap, pumice stone, scattered straw, victorian velvet, and bundled sage) and a watercolour pencil for skin tone.

I made the friendship sentiment in Word (since I didn't have one) and printed it onto the vintage tag (a Magnolia Doohickey) which tucks in nicely behind the image.  The papers are from MME lime twist and Making Memories je t'adore.  Flowers are Pretty Petals, butterflies are Cheery Lynn's small exotic butterflies dies and the bottom edge punch is from MS.  Lace and rhinestones from my stash.

The flower on the spout was cut with the Forever Young cricut cartridge and the blingy button is a TH Accoutrement.

A huge thank you to the gals at Simply Magnolia for inviting me to guest design!  If you haven't been already, make sure to pop over to the Simply Magnolia challenge blog to see what the very talented DT has come up with.  I hope you will be able to join in the fun!

This project is also for the following challenges:

Just Magnolia - anything goes with optional doily
Midweek Magnolias - bling it on
Tilda's Town - use a magnolia accessory stamp with Tilda or Edwin

Thanks for stopping in and for taking the time to leave me a comment - good, bad or indifferent.  I always love the chance to visit you back!  Have a great week!

Hugs,

Dawn

Summer Lantern

Hello peeps,

I hope everyone had a great weekend!  We used ours to catch up on outdoor projects and the weather was beautiful, so we could not have picked a better weekend.

Well, I have been hard at work creating another project for the challenge over at Stamp with Fun for my second week as guest designer.  I have had a lot of fun as GDT, and want to extend a huge thank you to Andrea and the gals over there for inviting me to play along with them.  On to the challenge - this week we would love to see your creations following this recipe - 3 papers, lace and flowers.  Here is my inspiration piece:

It is not very often that I am completely happy with how a project turned out, but this one I absolutely love to bits!  I used one of my new Tildas from the Summer Memories collection (best one yet!), and paired with these sea foam green papers - it just takes me away to a warm evening overlooking a beach with a cool ocean breeze.

To make the walls, I cut chip board into strips 1/4, 1/2 and 1 inch (yes I am Canadian, but my ruler is not :o)) wide.  I then glued the pieces together for each wall, painted them white, inked the edges with antique linen DI and covered them with the papers.  I then glued the walls together - except for the back one which is attached with hinges and closes with a little latch.

The hinges were painted white with snow cap mixative - just throw them in a small baggy with a few drops and shake it up.  The roof was made with 260g (see, I am Canadian) bristol board which was much easier to cut than the chip board :) and then covered with paper.  Thin wooden crafting sticks hold the two tiers together and lace was wrapped around them.

Here are a couple more angles:

And one with the lights out:

Other supplies:
Papers - roof and base are from MME (one of the lost and founds from last summer) and walls are Fancy Pants Designs from the Lilac House collection
Stamp - Magnolia stamped with black Stazon on 300g hot pressed water colour paper and coloured with DI (pine needles, rusty hinge, antique linen, peacock feathers (my favourite!) tumbled glass, tattered rose, frayed burlap) and watercolour pencil for skin tone
Other - feather from my mother's stash, green lace from my stash, cream lace is from Kaiser, all flowers are white flowers from Pretty Petals and were coloured with DI, decorative base made with Spellbinders Parisian Accents dies and I think that is all!

I would also like to enter this project in these challenges:

Tilda's Town - water fun
Midweek Magnolias - romantic and chic (and they are having a DT call for anyone interested)
Top Tip Tuesday - dig out the old (I've had the papers for a year, the plain chip board for at least two and the Kaiser lace is about a year old too.)  My tip is for quickly colouring metal bits and pieces - my hinges and clasp were originally gold, but I wanted them white to go with a more shabby look.  So, I took a tiny baggy (with a sealing top) and placed them in along with a few drop of Adirondack snow cap mixative and mixed it all up.  Carefully remove from bag and allow to dry.
I'm also linking up to the Make it Monday linky party where it is always anything goes!

Thanks for stopping by!  Please do stop by Stamp with Fun to see the beautiful creations the DT and other GDT have made and we hope you will have time to join in with us!  Thanks for any comments you have time to leave, I love reading them and will be catching up shortly on visiting everyone back.  I love to see what my visitors are up to.

Have a great week!

Hugs,

Dawn