christmas specials & basics

I hope you all had avery happy christmas. I had all of my family stay with us so it was a busy couple of days and week before preparing. Well that's my excuse for not having posted for a while.
I'll start by showing you the specials done for my boys. My eldest son has a young boy and the youngest 2 dogs so you can work out which went to each of them

This card uses the Stampendous Pop up die and their dog stamps

Then after doing family specials I had to do some quick cards  for neighbours and customers

The die above was from creative expressions and the stamp below from woodware - stamped in white  as a resist then going over with colour cloud inks and smoothies

Apologies as usual for poor quality of pictures but it's me doing thinks in a rush as usual!
I'm sharing ideas not perfection!!!

I'll try to remember to share the handcrafted cards sent to me when I take them down

wall art

I had been asked to repeat this workshop after we did it in summer but left it until people (including me) had had a chance to do their Christmas cards. This workshop has proved popular with attendees being very pleased with the work they had done and so I am showing you these canvases from last week.

Well done to Jenny Dave Christine Sharon & Marj.

I've not had chance to post much lately since I've been so busy with workshops there hasn't been much time for new cards. I do have a few customer cards to show you (although I can't find them all! will keep looking) using Woodware's trio  of trees stamp and a few specials with pasting embossing folders and dies.

Shaped Specials

I've been working on using different shaped cards for our specials recently. This shows the double diamond shape with the striplets from creative expressions in the centre and then other dies on the diamonds (sorry about fussy tablecloth - as usual done in a rush should have sorted a plain tablecloth!)

The above are variations on the 3 tier card we did with Jane Gill on our retailer workshop and below we have variations of trees and deer while I tried to decide what worked best. I do need to work on some more with flowers but that's for another day

I then tried using the clear scraps acrylic sheets with craftwork card and other papers. I did have problems with light while trying to photograph these since the acrylic showed up lots of refections but hopefully you get the idea

creative stamping 27 - Woodland Christmas

As you can see there are some cards here where I couldn't decide which I liked best so I've put the different options in. I started being unsure what extra technique to specialise in this time but then decided I'd incorporate ways with masks although only a few are shown here.  The lower robin background was a marble effect debossed and filled with sparkle texture paste. I love this effect and I  found the twiggy christmas embossing folder worked well here.

The mica effects with masks at the bottom don't show up as well here as do in life.

Mixed techniques

Having had my initial play with items on their own I then started to mix techniques together so we have backgrounds made with masks using both paste and mica. The church scene I tried to change to a winter scene by adding different powders from stampendous. The vintage blue is always good in the sky and chunky white sprinkled is great for falling snow but this year we have the new sparkle and puff which I like to use for snow on the ground.

I adapted the robin card we  did on our retailer training to use the woodware new robin rather than the stampendous one which has only just come out. I added flock to it on the bolder version set on black.

Once again still a lot more to do but these are just some ideas for you.

stencils and masks

I have started to look at doing different methods with the Dreamweaver stencils and assorted masks we have in store. Some cards are from last year but where I've tried different techniques with the same stencil I thought I'd include all ideas to show the various effects which can be achieved. I love the way you can do so many things with a stencil!

Over the last week I have been having a basic play with some of the new dies which we have in. As usual I have tried to look at different ways of using them and different colour combination. Later on I will try using them with other products and more complex cards. The 4 main dies I have chosen are all from the new Sue Wilson collections from creative expressions and we have these in stock.

 Then I also tried a few more for the Woodware stamps board. ( Admittedly some were adapted from their catalogue and our retailer workshop card). All the tree scenes use different powders from Stampendous to create the effects. My favourite snowman is also from Stampendous

I mentioned the woodware retailer workshop last time. We had Fran from Stampendous, Susan from Clear scraps and Kay from Hougie  as well as Jane and Francoise from Woodware doing the workshops. Judith and her team always give us a wonderful couple of days with lots of food and drink (non- alcoholic of course)
These are the cards we produced (with a few other bits filling the board on the bottom row)

Some of these ideas will be used in our workshops (as you can see by the trio of trees last post)

others will be modified slightly and some will just be examples of the products that are available.

woodware stamps

Well I'm sorry not to have posted for 3 weeks - I thought I had scheduled some for the weeks I was away but must have done something wrong!!! anyway back on track now.
The first weekend of September I went on the woodware retailer workshop - cards from that I will try and schedule for a few days time to check it works, but since by return I have tried out some ideas for my woodware workshop using their new stamps Some ideas worked better than others but I've shown most of them to give an idea on the versatility of the stamps. Other variations are still to be tried. The trees use lots of the powders from Stampendous to give the wintery feel.

the trio of trees can be used upside down as baubles as shown.