Specials

Here are just a few of the specials I have done this year. Doing a little bit more with the dies used earlier.

more to follow... only just realised not photographed all of them!!

Gifts

I was looking at what we can do for gifts. There are various things we have done before - washable glitter paints through stencils on fabrics, photo frames with clay flowers, Crackers, but I also thought that some of the foam flower bunches would look good in jars decorated with special effect paints.. There are also the lanterns and tissue boxes etc shown last time. The pencil pots were something we did in our craft group with ideas someone had taken from the internet.

Lanterns

I have been playing with ways of producing lanterns. For the small ones I used the JOHN NEXT DOOR lantern die for the large ones I used his "Sam's Star". The star was used as a single cut, mounted on acetate with lots of little lights the larger used the box die in a similar way to how we made the tissue box and I therefore created depth by putting the trees and deer on the back piece.
This has a tea light inside. I also just wrapped tea lights with the strip dies which was easy and effective.

I shall be doing workshops on these in December

creative stamping 78

The cards I have done with the latest creative stamping have been set in the new dies that we have been using throughout the year. They fall into two categories the winter animals and the scenic cards.

sorry light doesn't seem too good on many of these but I'm sure you get the idea!

More Dies and Embossing Folders

I know you have seen some of these before but I have added lots more to the board since.
I think the Christmas rose works better with flower foam than card. Deep embossing folders from creative expressions work well with the new opal polishes.
This workshop is on  Tuesday 5th November

The latest dies and stamps.

 These are dies and stamps that I have had in the shop and used after doing the other boards, so a mixture of things. The products are Sam's Star and the       polar animals from JND and the stamp is the river deer used with various die settings
The workshops are on Weds 30th Oct and Tues 26th November.

A little bit of all sorts

Theses cards use a mixture of stamping, stencilling and die cutting. I have used stencils and masks with different pastes and other method.
This workshop is on tomorrow Tuesday and is repeated next month on Weds 13th November

creative Stamping 77 - Silhouette Scenes

I used these silhouettes with different die settings. It went against the grain a bit to use black for snowmen and snowballs but when I tried white they didn't stand out very well ( I even tried colouring the white embossed children but not sure about it... ) anyway I have left them so you can see what not to do and you can see the contrast with the black embossed images.

Cards using items in the "John Next Door " Box set

This was a very popular box set from Practical publishing. Since there were papers in the kit I used some papers (whereas we are usually producing our own backgrounds) BUT not the papers in the kit since I had to borrow the stamps, die and embossing folders from a customer having sold all the others!

Remembering the true meaning of Christmas

Here are a few cards using the Nativity dies from John Next Door. A few may reappear where I have taken pictures of different combination as I have been working on them.

Creative stamping 76 - "Festive Florals"

 I only had a few orders for this issue and so haven't done as many cards as usual. There were fewer main images but lots of extra foliage with this set of stamps. So here are the few cards I have done with these before I moved onto the John Next Door box set coming next.....

Christmas stamping - scenes

 I tried a few ideas with some of the new stamps in. The black bauble was adapted from an idea I saw John Lockwood do, but I tried it with two different white inkpads and as a quickie card or a more special card.

You'll note I have also tried setting them in various doe cut frames as well as using the cut and emboss folders.

Woodware stamping

I have only just started these so there will be more to follow but here are a few ideas on using these stamps.

Christmas papercuts

I have been working on lots of different workshops at the same time recently in preparation for the Christmas season so what you see now will have more additions in the weeks ahead.

Papercuts have been popular this year and each time we do them we concentrate on different background methods. A lot of these have been done with the IZink pigment reinkers but there are also examples with alcohol inks - a sparkly addition to last times, sprays overstamped and spray not working - so using the spray stick to create patterns so I don't waste them, plus some of the new  deep embossing folders.

and a reminder of some of the others we still have for sale.
I thought the fairy on the moon with the stars could also be used for Christmas

more snowglobes and baubles

As I said last time we have non Christmas versions and Christmas ones using these two dies.
These are the Christmassy ones.

The nativity scene had holographic mirri card as a background. Look at the difference with the light on the first picture and the last. It is the same card!

More on these to follow...….

Snowglobes and baubles for any occasion

Having purchased the snowglobes and bauble dies from "John Next Door" range I set about trying to see how we can use them all the year round. We do get snowglobes in tourist shops for places visited etc. so I have done a few on places but also used flowers with them. What I like about this die is that it can be used on its own as a card or as a card topper.
The bauble I really liked when used with the fairy papercuts.
Note you can use these as shaker cards or not. As usual I tried to use them in many ways and more can be seen next time as we look at more Christmassy ideas.
We start with these on the September workshops.

Baby Cards

I was busy a couple of weeks ago  making baby cards since I had a new grandchild expected. I had a number of boys cards but not so many girls in stock so I needed to do more.
I also wanted to do a hanger - I had to produce two colour versions of the bottom box since they didn't want to know the sex beforehand.
We now have a new grandson whom we saw last week so I can now show what I have been doing.

Making Faces

 Having done a workshop session with Jane Davenport I thought I ought to try  a few more faces using the products in her making faces range and on the faces she produces.
These are a few of my starters - you obviously can go to town as much as you want with these but I was restricted by the range of colours I had
Anyway it was just something different to try...

creative stamping - Autumn Harvest

I have used these magazine stamps with some of our current favourite dies

Extra Papercuts

 Finding I needed some cards to send I did some more papercuts. This time I used alcohol inks on acetate for background and same colours on card for frame. I also used the presscut set of frames with inverted corners which is a new favourite
Other cards use pixie powders and acetate for the backgrounds.

what can we do with a die?

As you know I always look for many ways of using any die or stamp we get in but John Lockwood recently bought out a set of lattice corner dies that can be used in many ways.
I initially set about seeing what combinations I could get and some of these are in first picture. This process could go on for ages with all of the combinations that could be done and I'll do more as I get time.
I then set about using these on cards. I deliberately made these fairly simple so that the way the background die was used can be seen. I also tried to use "flatter" flowers than on my last lot of flower cards making them easier for posting.

Fairy Papercuts

 You have seen a couple of these on my last post alongside the floral papercuts. This time I looked at muti backgrounds with the reinkers from Izink, pixie powders, brayered etc. I just want to keep going with all of the backgrounds I could try out with these dies.

Floral Papercuts

I love using the papercuts as you can play about with so many backgrounds. Here I looked at using alcohol  inks , glitter as well as mixed methods with inkpad colouring, pixie powders and gilding polishes.

the two cards above were done today as cards I needed to send but again using alcohol inks (backgrounds on acetate and frames  on shiny card). Love this new presscut die  with the corners cut off that I've used on first frame

Wildlife

This idea sprang from the new Macaw  and peacock stamps from woodware. I did however then sell my peacock stamps so substituted some others I have in my stash until they come in again.
I next looked on the shelf to see what other wildlife items I had to sell and found there were a number of stencils - elephants, fish, butterflies, dragonflies etc and so tried a few techniques with these which could be used on any of them.  Dragonfly dies are a carry over from earlier but still for sale so included.

 this is still a work in progress as with my previous FRIENDS post.

Time with Friends

I started with this idea when deciding to use the teacup woodware stamp. I then thought I also had for sale the dreamweaver teacups both as stencil and die so decided to use those. In wondering what else to include in those workshop I went through my stamps from creative stamping and picked out those with reference to friends. This is where a
I am at so far....

creative stamping 72 - Seaside

In deciding what to do different this time I thought about scene setting using the box die from "John Next Door". Then I thought I ought to try to do some with the new cosmic shimmer polishes and finally a few ordinary ones. In addition to the normal A4 set of stamps there was also an A6 set of bird stamps which made options a bit different to what we'd had before.
(I still have some magazines and stamps to sell if anyone is interested and of course workshops on these coming up - see website)

Cards made with new flowers

Last time I showed you some of the flowers I had made with the new dies in store. This time I have some cards to show using these flowers and other dies to set them off.

More will follow when I get time but after over 3 weeks on these I feel I must do other workshop prep and card orders

Flowers made with John Next Door dies

After having 2 weeks with not playing due  a weeks holiday and  week trying to sort my workroom around the workshops booked I spent all my spare moments this week seeing what I could do with some new dies I had in from "John Next Door". Next week I shall look at using them on cards.
The top row used flower foam and the others were thick paper / lightweight card.

CS70 "Ladies & Gentlemen"

Whilst using the latest creative stamping magazine stamps I also explored lots of ways with a new Sue Wilson die which a customer had purchased but asked me to try out. I also used some of he new cosmic shimmer opal & lustre polishes plus some sprays through stencils for backgrounds.

 A bit of repetition on the pictures since the ladies on their own didn't show up so well.