Saturday 25 December 2010

Merry Christmas!!

Hi all, just a quick note to wish you all the best of everything for the holidays!! As this is my first Christmas in this house, friends asked me to take some photos, so I've included one here, I hope you like it! :)

Have a wonderful time everyone, whether you're spending the holiday on your own or surrounded by family and friends, and I'll see you back here in the new year, restored and reinvigorated! :)

Dan x

Thursday 23 December 2010

It's a One-Pad Wonder!

Well, perhaps not a wonder, but I'd set myself a little challenge, and it's true that all that was used to produce this card was 1 inkpad and a white paint dabber! The inkpad in question was Weathered Wood Distress Ink and all stamps were by Tim Holtz @ Stampers Anonymous. Would you like to know how it was done? You would? Then if you're sitting comfortably, I'll begin! :)

The dabber was rubbed along the bottom edge of a rectangle of white card and dried with a heat gun. Using an ink blending tool, a light background of weathered wood was applied to the rest of the card. Tim Holtz's "sun ray" kinda stamp was inked with WW and stamped, then quickly rubbed with a moist wipe to knock back the colour a little. The painted area was also wiped to return it to white and remove any of the stamped image that was on it.

Santa was stamped separately with WW and his face was gently rubbed with the corner of the ink blending tool used earlier, which gave his face the appearance of shaded colouring. He was cut out and stuck into place on the card. The Season's Greetings stamp was inked with WW and stamped on the card, then a mat was cut and edged with WW direct from the pad, to give a darker effect. Finally everything was stuck onto the background card blank. There you go, it was easier than you thought :) I hope you like it! As ever, click the image for a better view :)

Wednesday 22 December 2010

Snow, Pine & Mahogany...

... is the theme over on the Gingersnap Creations blog this week. I used white acrylic paint and aged mahogany & pine needles distress inks to get me in the right colour zone on this tag.

I had just gotten these new stamps from Stampotique a day or so earlier and was keen to try them out! Add to that a bit of experimentation with a range of white pens to see which I liked best (not tried the Sakura Souffle yet, so the jury is still out!) and lots of doodling, scratching, scuffing and messing about, and this is what you get! :)

I discovered during the course of making this tag that if you use a heat gun to speed up the drying of a Sakura white glaze pen you only have a second or so to turn off the heat before the glaze turns transparent! I used that effect to write a lot of text on this tag which I then made transparent, so it can only be read by moving the tag around until that the clear glaze catches the light. (Interesting for those who actually have the tag in their hands, but perhaps not so much for you, dear reader!)

Pop over to the GC blog to see how the other DT members have interpreted the challenge - go on, you know you want to! :)

Monday 20 December 2010

The Tattoos are Alive!!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamps and Show Challenge blog this week is "something from yesteryear". I recently got these Calais stamps from 7gypsies, and they really remind me of vintage tattoo designs, particularly the rose and the swallow, so I thought they'd be perfect for this challenge!

I combined them with some of Tim Holtz's classic images to create this shadow box. I kinda think it looks a little like the tattoos have come to life and gone out to play! lol Then again, maybe I've just been at the sherry a bit too much, lol Click on the pic for a larger view!

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try?


Tuesday 14 December 2010

Don't Panic!!!!

According to my home-made advent card (on which I have been dutifully stamping the passing days with a TH snowflake stamp) there are only TWELVE days left 'til Christmas. TWELVE!

TWELVE!!!

There are still trees to decorate, pies to make, cakes to bake, new freezer to arrive, new bookcases to arrive, art to go on walls, mirrors to go in those places where folks might think "Wouldn't it be really useful if there was a mirror right there?", gifts to wrap, gifts to BUY, wreaths to hang, wreaths to MAKE, and nowhere near enough time to fit it all in.

Can I borrow an igloo and hide away 'til it's all over? :) Not really, I LOVE IT! :)

Look, I can even dress up for the holidays! :)

Monday 13 December 2010

Christmas Tree Houses

Well, as you can see, I decided in the end not to put my Christmas village under my tree, but to hang them on a different tree!

Over on the Simon Says Stamp & Show Challenge blog today the new theme is "A Tim Holtz Technique". I decided to use the embossed resist technique. I cut the houses from white cardstock and coloured them with Barn Door and Pine Needles distress ink pads, after first stamping and embossing with clear embossing powder. All stamps were by Tim Holtz @ Stampers Anonymous. Even more amazing, I've actually taken a decent photo of the finished item! :) Click on the pic for a larger view!

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try?


Saturday 11 December 2010

Starry starry day

I guess it was inevitable that day would follow night, huh? :)

Plus I still had a lot of star die cuts left from last night, and it would be a shame to have let them go to waste!

Enjoy :) click on the image for a larger view - comments appreciated!

Friday 10 December 2010

Starry starry night

Stars kept cropping up in my world today! First I was admiring some starry tags on Dina Wakely's blog, which got me in a starry mood. I sat down at the computer to make some starry die cuts for the cricut and had a bit of a surf around only to find that my friend Linda had posted a starry card that she'd been making yesterday. Clearly I was MEANT to make a starry thing - it was written in the stars! :)

I had a play around with distress ink pads, getting some saturated splotches of colour on my tag, before stamping and ink blending. I had a bit of a doodle too, with both black and white pens. Not too much else to say about it really, it is what it presents itself as :) Comments encouraged and appreciated! Click on the image to see a larger view.

Tuesday 7 December 2010

Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas 2010, #5

Yes, yes, I know I've missed out #2, 3 and 4! What can I say? There aren't any Timtag police looking over my shoulder so I figure I'm pretty much free to suit myself :)

Quite a few differences with this one again - I didn't like the technique where white paint was dabbed over the stamped image of Santa, so I stamped mine separately, to keep the beard white and then stuck it in place, after colouring it with Promarkers. I didn't have the green label die thingy, or the metal flowers or the metal 25, so I cut substitutes for them all on the Cricut.

Oh, and at the last minute I realised I'd forgotten the strip of music paper, so there's just a bit of that. I know, I should have looked at the original more often during the process, but the microwave dinged and I had to get my chilli out. (Did you know that the Welsh for microwave is something like "pingety ping"? They said so on tv last week. Isn't that great? I'd love to speak a language that let me say pingety ping from time to time :) Oh, and I can't find my stickles. None of them. Hence the bling-free holly. Anyway, stop picking holes in it, I did my best. Tim doesn't want me to follow him slavishly you know, he wants me to be inspired and go my own way, whatever that is.

In case you hadn't noticed, the centre of the flower is identical to the outer, except smaller. That's me, playing with ideas of scale. And you thought there was no thought behind this stuff :) As ever, click on the image for a better view! :)

Monday 6 December 2010

Poinsettia Garland Card

Over on the Simon Says Stamp & Show Challenge blog today the new theme is "Holiday Greeting". On this card I've taken a foliage spray that isn't part of a Christmas stamp set and used a colouring technique to turn it into a folk art poinsettia garland.

This technique borrows from the screen-printing process, which starts when the final image is broken down into it's separate colours. Each colour is then printed separately, one on top of the next, until the image is complete. I have done the same thing here by stamping different parts of the image one on top of the next, in different colours. You may never get the images to line up 100% perfectly each time, but that's part of the charm with this technique!

The garland was first stamped with Barn Door distress ink. The stamp was then re-inked, this time with Pine Needles distress ink and I used a moist baby wipe to remove the ink from the parts of the stamp that I wanted to stay red. I then stamped in the same position, giving the 2-colour effect shown here. The ticket used the same technique, but with a 3rd colour, black.

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize for each week in December! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try?


Friday 3 December 2010

Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas 2010, #1

It's December again, so it must be time for Tim Holtz to delight us with his daily "12 Tags of Christmas"!

There were quite a few "bits" that I didn't have to complete this tag as demonstrated by Tim in his instructions, as follows:

House - I don't have his wonky house die and my Cuttlebug is packed away in a box somewhere, so I could neither cut it out or emboss it with his notepaper folder. Instead, I used my own wonky house design, cut on the Cricut. I used my Scor-it board to create the horizontal lines, which remained white when the house was inked. I had no mica for the windows so I used vellum with a dot pattern on it. All snow on the tag is Ranger's White Enamel Accents (first time I'd used it, and I LOVE IT).

Tree - I didn't have a bendy Prima branch thingy, so cut my own winter tree on the Cricut, inked it dark brown and snowed it with enamel accents.

Holly wreath - I didn't have any mini holly garland, so I cut a wreath and bow shape on the Cricut and coloured with Promarkers.

Fence - my own design, again cut on the Cricut.

Ticket - I had no Cut'n'Dry felt to make a custom ink pad (and to be honest, if I did, I don't think I'd do it anyway!). I inked the stamp in black and used a baby wipe to remove ink from the parts I didn't want to show as black and stamped it. I did the same again with green ink, then with red. I think it turned out pretty well! :)

I'm a day behind, so I'd better get a move on with day 2! :)

Wednesday 1 December 2010

There's no people like Snow People!

"Snow People" is the theme over on the Gingersnap Creations blog this week. Does anyone else remember those old animated shows from the 60s of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman? I have them on DVD and plan on having a viewing session as the holidays get closer, to get me in the mood! :)

Die-cut elements were my own designs cut on the Cricut and colour was courtesy of Distress Ink pads and Promarkers. The snowman is a Tim Holtz stamp. There is Rock Candy stickles on the snowflakes, but as ever, it doesn't really show up in the photo!

Pop over to the GC blog to see how the other DT members have interpreted the challenge - go on, you know you want to! :)
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