Christmas Card Prototype

Helen (and anyone else on my Christmas card list) look away now or you'll spoil the surprise!! :lol:

So... I finally got around to having a play last night with my chosen stamps for making my Christmas cards this year. I wanted to go with something fairly bold and simple and that doesn't take a huuuuuge amount of work to make (I may not have a lot of cards to make this year but I do kind of have a lot going on atm!!) and I wanted to use these pretty bauble stamps...

So this is what I have come up with:

Laid flat

Stood up

Soo... whaddaya think?

Bear in mind it's only a prototype at this stage (hence why I wasn't too fussed about the ink smudge on the greeting!) and still subject to tweaking. The smaller baubles are stamped onto ice white shimmer card which is layered onto black card with a narrow strip of black card laid across at the bottom. The larger bauble and the greeting are stamped onto more ice white shimmer card and heat embossed with black embossing powder then cut out and attached with foam pads for a bit of dimension.

As I said, I wanted to go with a fairly bold and simple design and I felt like anything too fussy would detract from the pretty detail of these baubles stamps. But is plain black and white a bit "too" bold and stark for a Christmas Card? Any thoughts/feedback gratefully received...

Hee! New stamp...

I happened to come across this stamp whilst browsing in Hobbycraft today and I just HAD to have it!

This is SO getting used for a birthday card for my mum in January (it's so totally her sense of humour!).... :D :D :D

I love the vintage picture and style of it... combined with the humorous tagline. :D

Bling bling!!

One of my online crafty friends (*waves to Lilli*) is a bit of a recycling fiend and often posts tips and ideas about how to turn recycle everyday bits and bobs into stash... her favourite tip is to snip out and save the ribbon hanger loops from any new tops you buy but another of her great ideas is to keep an eye out in the sales/clearance sections for cheap jewellery that can be disassembled and used as embellishments.

I had this idea in the back of my mind as I meandered around the clothing section of Asda this afternoon and just look what I came away with!!

For a grand total of £8 I have:

A gorgeous big metal and gemstone butterfly embellishment...

A cute little cameo, a filigree metal heart charm, a filigree metal butterfly charm. a metal flower embellishment and a selection of crystal/pealised beads....

And 7 pretty pearlised plastic and bead flower embellishments plus matching beads!

And that's without using the chains... :)

This is the second time recently that I've bought discounted jewellery with the intent of using it in my crafting and I recently made a scrapbook page using some lovely decorative hoop earrings as miniature frames (lighting not the best in these photos - sorry!):

I think I am now hooked on this thrifty crafting tip and I find myself viewing jewellery in a totally different light... that of how it would look disassembled and used on a scrapbook page! :lol:

WOYWW

Well, I thought I'd join in the fun of What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday over at Julia's Stamping Ground blog. :)

So here's what's on my workdesk today:

A combination of the detritus from making a personalised birthday card for a friend of my mum's last night, a belated goody that arrived in the post today, and the card and stamps I'm intending to use to create a prototype for my christmas cards for this year...

My craft room!

When we were looking at moving house last year, one of my requirements for the new house was that it have enough bedrooms or reception rooms that I could turn one into a craft room. I'd been crafting for 5+ years, initially using the dining table in the lounge/dining room (with all my stash in boxes etc and having to pack it away when I had finished), and then having a "craft/computer" area in the spare bedroom, where I at least had some cupboard space in which to store stash. But I really really wanted to have a proper room where I could store my stash and do my crafting.

When we moved house in February, what was going to be my craft room was initially used for storage as we slowly got unpacked and sorted and bit by bit began to buy more furniture etc (we had moved from a 2 bedroom, 1 reception room house to a 4 bedroom, 3-4 reception room house!) and, room by room, get the house the way we wanted it. The first step in getting my craft room sorted was a trip to Ikea to get some desks and a comfy chair - once they were installed, hubby set up my computer for me in there... but my stash was still all in boxes and there was still a lot of "junk" taking up space in the room and what I desperately wanted and needed was proper storage space so I could get my stash unpacked and organised.

First on my "must-have" list was a triple stacker unit from Storage4Crafts - a lush dedicated craft unit with a selection of 12x12 paper shelves and 12x12 drawers! Next up was the obligatory Ikea Expedit unit! :) I got the 4x4 cube unit and also a 2x2 cube wall unit. I also got myself a fabulous dedicated inkpad shelf unit from Inkylicious (which I painted white to match the colour scheme of the room).

With all this in place, I was finally able to start unpacking and organising my stash and now my craft room looks like this:

Desk area

Comfy chair!!

The corner filing cabinet is my one concession to my craft room's alleged "dual function" as an office! :)



Triple stacker unit and inkpad shelf unit

Inkpad shelf unit

Expedit unit!

Expedit wall unit (and yes, the plastic tubs are yet more stash awaiting unpacking!)

It is still a work in progress.... I've still got some stash to unpack (see above!) and I am still in the process of finalising exactly how best to organise everything... and what storage boxes etc I need for the Expedit cubes. I've also got plans for more wall storage.

Having my own space in which to craft - and being able to have my stash properly unpacked and organised within convenient reach (rather than stacked up in pizza boxes and plastic tubs!) - has been a huge part of my recent remotivation, and increased experimentation, in the world of crafting! :)

Uhoh... this could be a problem...

...BasicGrey now sell digital versions of some of their collections!

Umm. Did I mention that I am a bit of a BasicGrey fan? Oookay, less of a fan, more of an addict! :lol: Of the 29 12x12 paper shelves on my lovely craft storage unit in my craft room, 16 shelves hold BasicGrey papers! Ooops! :D I looooove their combination of fab patterns with aged/distressed look.

So I had to have a look at their digital selection and, even more awesome, they have available as digital files collections that have been discontinued - so I kind of had to buy the digital Motifica collection (the first ever BG collection I bought and still one of my all-time favourites).

I did actually have a good reason to get Motifica as my UKS team have started a Book of Me project and I found an old, unused, 6x6 album that I am planning to use for my BOM... it's from the BasicGrey range by K&Co and the album is covered in Motifica designs - so I thought it'd be fab to do my BOM pages using Motifica as well... but the Motifica sheets I still have are all 12x12 so not ideal for use on 6x6 pages... but with the digital Motifica kit, I can print the papers/pages out in 6x6! Perfect! I've already had a play and designed my first BOM page in Scrapbook Factory Deluxe, using the BG elements. :)

Now however I have to fight the temptation to a) go crazy buying digital BG elements (instant BG gratification - no waiting for delivery!! :D) and b) spend all my time on the computer digi-scrapping with BG instead of working on my other projects!

Ooops!

If you don't hear from me for a few days, please send in the search parties... I'll be in my craft room, staring in hypnotised delerium at all the pretties on my computer screen! ;)

Goodies!

Is there any better way to start the day than with a delivery of stash? :D

It's grey and miserable and wet out there but I don't care cos I've got a cup of tea, a mince pie (breakfast of champions! :D) and a big set of stamps (with a CD-ROM of coordinating backing papers), courtesy of QVC! :)

Hmmm. What to play with first...? *ponders* ;)