Week 9 - Heart of Christmas

Welcome to Week 9 of the Heart o Christmas Blog Hop for 2021. We are at the end of another month

I don't know about you but have you been watching the Paralympics? Aren't they exciting to watch! Well today while I was watching the amazingly fit, I could never do that athletes I did a little bit of fussy cutting and a bit of Christmas DSP putting together for you to give you a bit of an idea of what you can do if you have little bits of extra Designer Series paper left over from a project.

So if you have been following along for a bit you would know that I have been using the Tidings of Christmas DSP. This is where I started my inspiration for my cards today.

I used the colours to start me on my journey into my stack of cards.

So the colours that are used in this particular DSP is Cherry Cobbler, Evening Evergreen, Misty Moonlight, Sahara Sand and Soft Succulent. I started there with my card base and the Sahara Sand side of the DSP for the neutral base then with some off cuts strips I created the card base. Each card having their own colour as a layer of each of the thin strips in the centre of the card. Once I had done this then I went looking for my sentiment.

One of my favourite bundles in the Stampin' Up annual catalogue is the Inspired Thoughts Bundle that comes with this gorgeous sentiment stamp set and the Inspiring Canopy Dies. Well it just happens to have this Christmas stamp in amongst the sentiments and I went perfect for my card today!

Each sentiment is stamped in the corresponding colour. Then I took out my punches. Punches are quick and these cards were quick to make.

For the sentiment itself I first punched out the greeting with the Everyday Label Punch and then shortened each end with the punch to be closer to the words.

The punch under each sentiment is the Label Me Lovely and I have punch that out in each corresponding colour and trimmed back one little edge at the top and bottom of the sentiment. By doing this it made these sentiments so quick and easy to do and layer.

Under each sentiment is the gorgeous Fine Art Ribbon which has that beautiful fine gold thread through it to just give each card a bit of bling. Now to finish off each card comes my little bit of Fussy cutting that you can do with extra little bits of DSP that you have. I chose the Sweet Stocking DSP, It is a little cute don't you think?

I hope this gives you a little bit of an idea of what to do with some left over pieces of designer series paper. The DSP is gorgeous no matter what packet you have, show it off!

 

If you have any questions about today's project please do not hesitate to contact me.

Each week I look forward to seeing what each creative Art With Heart team member brings to our hops and Theresa Gerrard is no exception. Last week Theresa brought us the gorgeous Whimsical Trees in the lovely colours of Soft Succulent, Evening Evergreen and Polished pink with lots of beautiful texture I can't wait to see what she has to share with us this week. Just hit the next button to head there now!

If at any time the next blog buttons don't work just come back here as I have the privilege to host this weeks Heart of Christmas Blog Hop and below is the list of participants. You can click on the names and you continue you blog hop from there.

Kate Morgan
Andrea Sargent
Tina Gillespie
Rachel Woollard
Christine Blain
Sharon Davern  <=You are here
Theresa Gerrard
Michele Taylor
Ros Davidson
Rosa Leyden
Caroline Manwaring
Judy May
Catherine Proctor

Week 13 - Colour Creations Blog Hop - Crumb Cake

 

This week for our Colour Creations Blog Hop we are looking at one of our the neutral colours, Crumb Cake. It is such a favourite of many and I love how you can put this colour with absolutely everything or leave it as the focal point.

Today I have created a card with texture and layers and paired Crumb Cake with my favourite colour just because I could Blackberry Bliss. I got out the Blackberry Beauty Suite from the July-December Mini and added a few little touches from that suite to my Crumb Cake card.

For this card I have also used Early Espresso to make all the Crumb Cake elements pop. This card is full of scrumptious layers of Crumb Cake. The card Base and then the first layer is a piece of Tidings of Christmas DSP. The centre piece is a piece of crumb cake which has been embossed with the leaf pattern from the Greenery Embossing folder pack.

Also on that layer you can see some spatter of crumb cake ink from my Stampin' Write Marker. You can also see the bling here and in the opposite bottom corner they are the gorgeous, love them, you need them, go put them in your shopping cart now, Brushed Metallic Adhesive-Backed Dots that come in brass, gold and copper. These are the gold one!

Over the top of this I have used the stunning Blackberry Beauty DSP and the frame is from the Blackberry Beauty Ephemera pack which I have popped up on mini dimensionals. The gold flowers and foliage is also from the ephemera pack.  I decided not to use the Gold Shimmer ribbon that goes with the suite but to use the Gold Fine Art ribbon as it has more of the Crumb Cake look and gold speckles through it. 

The words and I have stamped from the Beauty of Tomorrow Stamp set in Crumb Cake on Basic White card and fussy cut them out and double layered them onto mini dimensionals and the bird is die cut out using the Beautiful Leaves Dies that comes in a bundle with the stamp set or all together when you buy the suite.

Hope you have enjoyed my layer upon layer of texture and dimension of Crumb Cake and a bit of Blackberry bliss thrown in there as well.

If you have any questions about my card today please do not hesitate to contact me.

Now is the time to head over to the next blog on our journey in Crumb Cake. Please click on the next blog button now to head to Cathy Proctor's blog last week she created a fabulous and floral card for our Coastal Cabana blog hop and I just loved it.

If for any reason the next blog button doesn't work and let's face it we all have technical gremlins sometimes, please head over to our lovely host Cathy Proctor for the Colour Creations Blog Hop and there you will find the complete list of those participating in today's hop: Cathy's Blog

Thank you for spending some crafty time with me today, take care,

Week 8 - Heart of Christmas

 

Welcome to Week 8 of the Heart of Christmas for 2021. I have a decided not to do a fancy fold today purely as I wanted to make sure I had a card for you as I spent the weekend in bed with a migraine and I wanted to start to show you some quick cards now that we are getting to the end of the year (SSSHH! don't tell me that!) I know we don't want to hear that we are nearing the end of the year so I wanted to start to show you some quick Christmas cards so that you can start to build up your stash.

I have shown you some cards with the Peaceful Deer and the Angels of Peace, (I must have been on a theme of peace) so I thought I had better get out the Wise Men in the Great Tidings Bundle as I had not had a play with them yet.

I first cut out the City of David in Basic Black and  used the negative as a guide to kind of give me hills to blend some night sky in the distance for the Wise Men. I placed the then negative with a little extra cutting to fit the whole piece across the Basic White card and got out Misty Moonlight and Night of Navy and started to blend away. I went the way of the City of David first and then turn the mask over to have the hill go the other way for the Wise Men. For some reason I just think they need to be travelling over hill and dale to get there as it was a very long journey for them. I left it quite pale around the city so that it was a highlight. I cut out an extra city in Gold Shimmer Vellum as a light shadow. In the sky  you can also see some extra twinkling stars I have used the White Stampin' Chalk Marker

On the inside of the card I have  heat embossed the 3 gifts of the Wise Men and coloured them with the Stampin' blends like I have with the 3 Wise men on the front of the card.

The 3 Wise Men have been heat embossed on gold and coloured with the Stampin' Blends I couldn't help but used my favourite Blackberry Bliss for one. What colours would you use to colour these kings? For the hill that the Wise Men are standing on I am using the Tidings of Christmas DSP and after heat embossing the sentiment I trimmed it down with the paper trimmer and then using the Lovely Labels Pick a Punch I made the ends look like they were fit for a king! LOL!

Well if you would like to know anymore about how I created the background before I added it to a layer of Gold Shimmer Vellum and then to a base of Night of Navy to finish off my card please don't hesitate to contact me.

Please head over to the always extremely creative Andrea Sargent's blog. I love her creations each week and she always puts such thought and care into each card. I can't wait to discover all the extra wow she manages to pack into a card. Last time Andrea created gorgeous Pillow Box treats for us so hit the next blog button to go there now.

If at any time the next blog buttons don't work while you are going around that blog hop just head on over to our host of this weeks Heart of Christmas Tina Gillespie and there you will find a list of those participating and you will be able to continue the hop from there.

Thank you for spending some crafty time with me today, take care, 

Week 12 - Colour Creations Blog Hop - Coastal Cabana

 

Coastal Cabana, I love this colour. 

That was a bold statement. I know it is not Blackberry Bliss which is my absolute favourite colour but I do love this colour and I am so glad that it is one of Stampin' Up! regular colours. It used to be my daughter's favourite colour. Now as she has gotten older she has decided that she likes more maroony purple colours! Now Blackberry bliss or Rich Razzleberry would go really well with Coastal Cabana I went for a very simple palette. Mind you that song kept coming to mind EVERY TIME I say this colour! You know the one! Come on sing it will me Copa, Copacabana! You are welcome! You will have that stuck in your head for the rest of the hop now!

I know you are ready for my card but you can dance and sing to Barry Manilow while you look at my card. I have used one of my favourite bundles from the Annual Catalogue and just had to have flowers. 

For my card I wanted to create a lot of texture so I took out a piece of Basic White card and stamped the broken word stamp down the page. I used the Stamparatus and started at the top then moved it down one hinge and the card down 1 little square on the small grid paper that fits in the Stamparatus. A full movement down with the hinge was just a bit too much of a gap between each stamping for me. I stamped this in Early Espresso in to correspond with my card base. Then the fun begins. I used a New embossing folder from the New Mini catalogue called Timeworn Type 3DEF. Oh I love it. As you can see it doesn't look white. I first swiped my crumb cake ink over the intended side of the embossing folder so that the raised letters and worn out parts would come out white still. Almost like I had stained the paper with a tea bag.

I did the same thing to the sentiment which I stamped first in Early Espresso, cut out with the die from the Meadow Dies and then ran it through the Timeworn Type embossing folder with crumb cake ink.

Under the flowers onto the card I have stamped the flowers over the embossing in crumb cake to give a little more texture looking and then I have started to layer my flower arrangement. The leaves are cut from Soft Sea Foam card which I thought was quite fitting as we are using Coastal Cabana! The Crumb Cake stalks are but from the Christmas DSP Tidings of Christmas as they have the lovely print of plants on that side so just adding that little bit extra element. The gold is from the Blackberry Beauty Ephemera Pack. (Ok almost had Blackberry bliss in there hehe!) and I have some linen thread behind my flowers as well.

As on the front of my card I have on the inside coloured my flowers with the blender pen as we don't have Stampin' Blends in Coastal Cabana. The centre of the flower is however dark So Saffron Stampin' Blends. On the front you may be wondering what I have used in the centre of the flowers? Well I am glad you asked. They are the new gorgeous brushed metallic dots from the New July-Dec Mini that come in Gold, Brass and Copper. They look so good you will want a pack of these.

Well my internet keeps dropping in and out so I had better stop and let you go so that you actually have a post to read and that it actually goes live when it is supposed to. If you have any questions about my card do not hesitate to contact me.

Now is the time to head to the next blog and this week you will be heading to the lovely Theresa Gerrard's blog. Last week Theresa's Cinnamon Cider card with the Nature's Harvest Bundle was gorgeous. I can't wait to see what she has for us this week with Coastal Cabana. Just hit the next blog button to go to her blog now....

Our weekly coordinator of the Colour Creations blog hop is the always inspiring Cathy Proctor and if for any reason one of the next blog buttons don't work just head to Cathy's blog and you will find a list of all those participating: Cathy's Blog.

Thank you for spending some crafty time with me today, take care,

Week 7 - Heart of Christmas

 

Week 7 of The Heart of Christmas and I hope you are enjoying the inspiration of the team at Art with Heart each week as they bring you different ideas to get your Christmas cards ready for this year. 

You may have arrived at my blog from the lovely Caroline Manwaring's blog but if not welcome and I have found another fancy fold for you this week.. After this week I will have to start making batches of cards so that we will have lots ready for Christmas but for now as we are still in August I thought you would have time to do one more fancy fun folds for that special someone.

So the fold that I found for you is called a Balcony fold! I hadn't come across this one before this week so just had to try it as you know me I am always up for trying different fold!

When I saw that it was a balcony card the first thing I thought of was a theatre and that made me think of Angels singing so I had to have the Angels of Peace singing to us from the Balcony! You know me by now and you know my brain just goes there! LOL!

I followed a tutorial by a lady called Iced Images on YouTube to get the exact dimensions of the card and how to put it together.

So the first thing I did was put the base of the card together.

The card base itself is in Evening Evergreen card and I started with a 6x6 inch piece so that led me to the gorgeous 6x6 pack of DSP in the Annual Catalogue Tiding of Christmas. I then cut layers of Cherry Cobbler card and the DSP along with the 2 balcony pieces.

Once I had put them all together which was really easy 3 pieces of card, some scoring and then some matting. Now for the Angels

AS I have thought we needed a choir of angels on the balcony I needed more than 2 this week so I stamped the large one and the 3 little angels the normal way but as you can see one of the little ones is facing the other direction.

I stamped the angel on to a silicon mat and then place the Basic White card over it to pick up the ink so that the image was reversed. I then went over the lines with my Stampin' write marker just a little more defined as they can be a little blurry doing the image this way but it is great to get the angel looking the other direction. All the Angels are coloured with the Stampin' Blends.

For the sentiments I have used a Tasteful Label dies to cut them out. I used a full one for Hark the Herald from the For Unto Us stamp set and I cut out the other sentiment from the Angels of Peace stamp set and then shortened it.

Behind each sentiment I have used a crumb cake piece of the Tidings of Christmas DSP and with the Merry Melody Embossing Folder I have embossed it. I also just highlighted the notes on the DSP with the Light Crumb Cake Stampin' Blends. Angles need to have music if they are going to sing.

I have decorated the back of the card on one side and left the other side for writing your greetings but you could just decorate or do both for greetings.

It does fold flat and would need an envelope to fit a 6x6 inch card so I would need to make one but I haven't done that as yet. I might challenge myself to make it just that bit smaller next time to see if I can get it to fit into one of our envelopes.

I hope you have enjoyed my fancy fold card today and if you have any questions or would like the measurements do not hesitated to contact me.

Now is the time to head to the next person on our hop for this weeks Heart of Christmas and this week you will head over to Ros Davidson. I love seeing what Ros creates each week as her creation are always fun and bold. Last week she made Gingerbread and Peppermint cookies so I can't wait to see what she has for us this week.

I have the privilege of hosting our blog hop this week so if for any reason one of the next blog buttons does not work just come back here and you will be able to continue on with your hop by clicking on the names below.

Kate Morgan:
Tina Gillespie: 
Claire Daly:  
Catherine Proctor:  
Michele Taylor:
Christine Blain:
Caroline Manwaring:
Sharon Davern:  <= YOU ARE HERE
Ros Davidson:
Theresa Gerrard:
Rosa Leyden:
Rachel Woollard:
Judy May:

Thank you for spending some crafty time with me today, take care,

Week 11 - Colour Creations Blog Hop - Cinnamon Cider

Well here we are again my friends I am not sure what to say really. I had to make sympathy cards in January for dear friends at the passing of their Uncle and Brother-in-law Lionel who was such a sweet man and whom I have known for the last few years and was such a friend to me and encouraged my singing. He was a fantastic singer. Well this week his lovely wife Joan passed. I am struggling I must admit to make yet another sympathy card. We never like to do them do we but like all things in life this too is something that we all go through, the passing of a dear loved one.
 

So for this week I looked for a bit of inspiration and I  came across a card from Gail Ellis which is a bit of a coincidence as Joan's sister married and Ellis so I thought it was appropriate to make a card inspired by Gail for Joan's sister Heather Ellis.

Gail did this technique with the leaves from the Very Versailles leaves called a shadow technique. She used Memento Black and then heat embossed white slightly off from the leaves. I have created the same but I used Early Espresso ink to give just a little softer look. I have stamped on Basic White card.

Once you have stamped the darker leaves and then heat embossed in white I then took the blending brushes and the Cinnamon Cider ink and blended over the top. When I had applied enough ink I buffed off the ink from the white embossed leaves so they pop! Then I got my Cinnamon Cider Stampin' Write marker and put a few splatters over the card. Now that gorgeous Gold Shimmer ribbon is in that location for a reason. 1 it looks good and 2 because I accidentally hit that spot with my marker when I was putting the splatters. LOL! Oh well, never mind cover with gorgeous ribbon!

The sentiment comes from the Prized Peony stamp set and works so well for this card. I have stamped it in Cinnamon Cider. Behind this front panel I have a layer of Gold Shimmer Vellum and then a layer of Cinnamon Cider which I have embossed with the Tasteful Textiles 3D embossing folder.

On the inside of the card I have used the residual ink on my blending brush to just add a bit of colour to the Basic White card and a little bit of splatter to match it to the front of the card.

I hope this gives you an idea for a sympathy card when you need one. 

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Now is the time to head to the next blog and this week you will be going to the lovely Theresa Gerrard. I love seeing what Theresa has for us each week. Last week she had beautiful Japanese inspired cherry blossoms. So just hit the next blog button below and you will be able to see her gorgeous creation this week.

If at any time the next blog button doesn't work and let's face it, we have all had technical difficulties at times, just head to the host of our weekly colour creations blog hop Catherine Proctor and there she will have for us the list of those participating this week: Cathy's Blog

Thank you for spending some crafty time with me today, take care,

Week 6 - Heart of Christmas

 

Well today I have hunted hi and low for another fancy fold for you and I have been working on it all day. You will have to forgive that people in lockdown think that they actually need to be fed. I mean don't they know I have fancy fold cards to make! So today the card is more the adventure than the decorations I might put more on later but I am happy with where I am at now but it is quite the grand card and needs a few more decorations on other parts I think.

I found this fold by Jo Blackman a lady in the UK and I thought I just needed to give it a try. She called it a Hexagonal layered card. There are 10 pieces of card stock and 60 pieces of DSP before I started to decorate so stick with me and here we go!

So the very fist thing I did was cut all the base of the hexagonal card. I did this in Garden Green card as I was using the Peaceful Prints DSP which is a Sale-A-Bration item that you can earn for free when you purchase $90 work of product and if you have been looking in the New July-Dec Mini Catalogue I don't think that will be hard . Add a couple of things to bundle of Peaceful Deer and  Deer builder Punch.

  So we start with the tall centre hexagon and build our way around that firstly with the 3 full size  hexagons then with the 3 that we have cut a little bit out of as a place to decorate. Now we have the card base and we can start to put all those pieces of Peaceful Prints DSP on each section.

Before attaching the centre strip I attached the loop so that I could use it for the decorations.

 

As you can see both inside and out of each section is there is the lovely DSP.

I used an off cut from my card stock to measure exactly where I wanted the loop for the decorations.

Each section of decoration I  have used the Peaceful Dear Stamp set and used the garden green in and Soft Succulent Ink for the trees and put them through the Cut & Emboss Machine with the Evergreen Forest 3D embossing folder. I used the Label Me Fancy Punch for this sentiment and just made it a little shorter to fit into the spot.

This section I stamped the Deer in Early Espresso ink and then coloured him in with Crumb Cake Light and Dark  Stampin Blends. I love the Stampin' Blends

For this section I used the Deer Builder punch once again and punched out the red deer from the Peaceful Prints Paper.

Of course all of this can fold flat if you want it too.

And if you like you can even put a tea light candle in the bottom as well.

I hope you enjoyed my card tonight I certainly enjoyed putting it together. If you have any questions about this card please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please head over to the next blog which is Vick Boucher, I love all the layers and gorgeous textures Vicki has on her projects so I am looking forward to seeing what she has for us this week.

If for any reason the next blog button doesn't work and it does sometimes happen in technology land please head over to the host of this weeks Heart of Christmas blog hop Tina Gillespie and there you will find the list of participants this week and you can continue your blog hop there! Tina's Blog!