A Mo's Christmas Candle

I've always loved the look of images popped onto a candle and a couple of weekends ago I got a chance to remind myself how much fun it was to do when I had some girls over for a Girl's Night In for cancer research and our sponsor Bronlyn from Shopbron brought some candles to play with. I'd never tried colouring with copics for candles as I was worried they'd bleed - but Bron gave us the right advice and showed us the right paper to use. It's a bit thicker than regular tissue paper and is used as a packing material - I'm not sure where to get it from as Bron left me enough for another 100 candles!! It has a shiny side and a matt side - stamp/print on the shiny side and colour on the matt side. Now watch this space for more candles to come - LOL. 

I wanted to try using my digis rather than a rubber stamp and used Lydia's amazing tutorial on how to do this HERE. I did get some ink smudges on the paper but they were away from the image and I just cut them away. I used Mo Manning's adorable Urchin with Bird to play with and I'm quite happy with the result. The paper doesn't allow your copics to blend as well as blending paper but it's not too bad. 

I hope this inspires you to give this a go too - it's a lot of fun and easier than worrying about fancy card layouts - LOL.

Copics used - E20, E11, E00, E000, E44, E43, E42, E41, B00, B000, G28, G24, G21, R89, R46, R35, R24, Y35, YR31, YR30, YR23

xXx

Tickled Pink Stamps Preview - Wilfred Wombat

Meet Wilfred the Wombat - he'll be available for purchase from tomorrow over at Tickled Pink Stamps. And how exciting for us to have an Aussie Animal from our favourite Aussie store!

I decided to make something a little different - a lumiere. If you'd like to know HOW I made this you'll have to wait until Wednesday when my tutorial will be published on the Tickled Pink Stamps blog - it's really NOT hard and I'd LOVE to know if anyone else makes one! I wanted to keep the Aussie flavour going so I borrowed a gum blossom stamp from a friend of mine for the top corner - this stamp is from Fern Gully Stamps. My one regret is that I should have trimmed the white out between Wilfred and the tree - but I realised that too late! Ah well - live and learn!

And here he is all lit up....

Now don't forget to pop over to the TPS blog and see what some of the other DT gals have done with Wilfred - and I know there will be a chance to win this cutie too!

xXx

The Wizard of Oz - Mo Style

Edit - thanx for the advice guys - I've decided I WILL paint the frame white - I'll show you how it comes up when it's done!

I've been working on this for a few days - and I think I'm finally done! I wanted to create a scene using the four friends from The Wizard of Oz - it started as a card but got waaaayy too big - so I ended up using a shadow box frame. I'm just trying to decide whether to paint the frame or not - I'm SUCH a messy painter - but I think it would look nice in a crisp white?!?!?!?! ALL of the fabulous images are from Mo Manning and have been "popped" up at different levels to give it a 3D effect.

Apologies for the pictures - I couldn't stop the glare from the glass!

I made this for my 9yo niece who's having trouble with bullying at school - it's got soo bad she's had to change schools and is upset at leaving some of her friends behind. So I figured this little scene about friends coming in all shapes and sizes, and with all sorts of weaknesses to overcome - might just pop a smile on her face!

Just as I was about to post it I saw the current challenge over at Mad for Markers is "Anything But A Card" - I think this fits the bill and all my images were coloured in Copics, so I'm going to enter it there!!

All of these images are available in Mo's store, just click on their names for a direct link - Kansas (Dorothy and Toto), Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, Tin Man

xXx

Farewell Mini Album

A few months ago good friends of ours told us they would be moving to Dubai - we have spent time together nearly every week freezing our tooshies off at the ice rink while our daughters have figure skated together as solo artists and synchronised skating team mates. We have all become really close friends during this time and I now see a trip to Dubai appearing sometime in our future - although we may let our friends find a suitably large house for all their guests first - LOL!

It was not long after I heard they were leaving that I went to the SU Regionals in Melbourne with my new SU friend Ramona Michaluk. Ramona is a very talented stamper and had brought some beautiful things for "show & tell". One of these was a gorgeous Waterfall Card and Mini Album. She graciously helped me out so I could make this one for my friends - it was just THE perfect going away card as I could incorporate memories of all the fun we had together.

I also enjoy writing silly limericks and came up with one for each of them - but then I had to decide where to put them! I opted for a sleeve on the inside cover and made an opening with my Word Window punch and added a tab using my Round Tab punch.

Making this album really made me appreciate how SU products work so well together - I used several punches and stamp sets and was really happy with the result. In case you were wondering - the album HAD to be purple as this is the girls' team colours.

I was sooooo pleased to see how touched my friends were when I gave it to them - it's amazing how some card, stamps and photos can really bring out emotion - this is why I love to do it!

And now for something a little different

As I mentioned in a previous post my son's primary school is having a fete next month and I thought I'd show you these - I know they're not made of paper or stamped - but their claim to fame is that they have taken up the time when I should have been playing with all of my gorgeous new stamp sets and inks! I still have to thread all of the candy canes onto the rest - a great job while relaxing in front of the telly and having a nice glass of red!

These little characters are machine embroidered in felt - and they look very sweet hanging on the tree! If you are lucky enough to have an embroidery machine, I got the pattern for these online at http://www.emblibrary.com/ - they have some wonderful things on this site and offer video tutorials too. One of the great things about embroidering them yourself is that you can adapt the colours to suit your needs - the joy of making things yourself! Last year I made several of the polar bears and gave them purple scarves - these were presents for my daughter's synchronised skating team as their team colour is purple - the kids loved them!

I was thinking of trying to adapt the idea to paper - maybe hanging stamped tags with candy canes??? I'll try and give the idea a go soon - and will post the results if they are any good - LOL.

Guest Book

Hi Guys - Well here is something a little different to show you. I have my nephew's wedding in a couple of weeks and asked if they would like me to put a Guest Book together for them, and they said Yes! They are both avid photographers so I added a few pages of their favourite photos at the start - in a scrapbook/gallery theme. Their colours are red, black and white. I used the Always stamp set on several of the pages, especially the sentiments - it is such a classic stamp set and sooo right for a wedding!

I also must credit doing the book as the incentive for me finding out about Stampin' Up. I was at my local Srapbooking shop (a recent addition to my list of crafts!), and one of the ladies was showing us an album she had done and she had used these wonderful tabs - I just had to ask her where she got them as I knew they would be great for the book!! They were made using the Stampin' Up Round Tab Punch!! After this I looked into having a workshop so I could get one, had the lovely and very talented Yvonne Campbell come and do my workshop - and ended up joining her team!!!

It was sooo much fun to work on the book and I know both Adam and Naomi appreciated which makes me feel great. My next job for them is their wedding cake - my house will be smelling of chocolate mud cake very soon - YUM!!! I really need to give up my day job and concentrate on CRAFT!!!