Happy St Patrick's Day

Happy St Patrick's Day from the Emerald Isle! I'm just popping in to post a card I sent to my good friend Linda for St Patrick's Day.

Last year Linda sent me some gorgeous shamrock die cuts so I wanted to use one on my card for her. I applied ink to a cream shamrock, added some lovely shimmery clear Wink of Stella and finished the shamrock off with a green gem.



Then I die cut a couple of flourishes from gold glitter card using a die from the beautiful Celtic Flourish set by Docrafts. The sentiment was stamped using the same ink I'd applied to the shamrock.

Dies - Fancy Shamrock (Impression Obsession) and Celtic Flourish (Docrafts)
Stamp - Celebrate Everyday (Hero Arts)

I'm submitting the card into Simon Says Stamp's Bit O' Green challenge.

Have a look here to see the fabulous St Patrick's Day card I received from Linda. Thanks again, Linda :) :)

St Patrick's Day is a public holiday here so no work or school for us today. We're hoping to spend a fair bit of our long weekend surrounded by green, including visiting one of our favourite places - Glendalough.

Hope you have a fun and relaxing weekend :)

Not a Christmas Image

It's time again to challenge my friend Linda to make a Christmas card and this time I'm going with the theme of making a card on which the main image is not a Christmas related one.

This week I've made a card for a friend who is mad into golf. I think she'd play golf on Christmas Day except for the fact that her club is closed! For my main image I used a fun golf martini stamp from a set Linda gave me recently - thanks again Linda! The image was coloured with Promarkers and I added a sprig of holly for a festive feel.

Stamps: Fore Retirement - Impression Obsession, Woodland Wreaths (sentiment) - WPlus9 & Christmas Characters (holly) - Inkadinkado
Die: Elegant Ovals (Spellbinders)

The top part of the glass and the flag are popped up on foam pads for extra dimension and I added a layer of Glossy Accents to the glass.

For a matching tag I treated the die cut golf ball as if it were a Christmas pudding by topping it with a sprig of holly.

Dies: Golf Ball and Tee - Taylored Expressions & Nesting Gift Tags (Docrafts Xcut)
Stamp: Christmas Characters (holly) - Inkadinkado

Linda has already set me a challenge for this week. You can see it here. Oh I think her challenge is the most difficult type of card for me to make - hope I can come up with something that's even semi okay!!

Oh Christmas Trees

No doubt like lots of you I'm fairly busy in the run up to Christmas but am enjoying all the preparations. Maybe one of these years I'll start my Christmas preparations a bit earlier than usual! Anyway I think I'm nearly there with the cards I want to make this year but took a little break away from card making to join in on Hero Arts' Deck the Halls Challenge.

I love little felt decorations so decided to make some to pop on my tree using dies from Hero Arts Merry Christmas Tree stamp and die set. To start with I die cut felt Christmas trees and then die cut green felt circles (from the same Hero Arts set) and a red heart.

Dies - Merry Christmas Tree (Hero Arts) & Bundle of Stitched Shapes (Simon Says Stamp)

Then I decorated the trees with buttons, stitching, sequins and gems. After the trees were complete I added either ribbon or baker's twine between the tree front and back then stitched the outlines and added wadding before finishing the stitching.

As I had the Christmas tree die out I decided to make another card with a removable decoration.

This time I used up lots of green scraps by putting them in rows of strips, cutting and then cutting again to make a patchy background. After die cutting the tree twice I sandwiched ribbon between the two trees and added buttons to finish. Then I added the tree to the embossed background with glue dots so that the ornament can be removed and used.

I was determined to use up every bit of the scrap background I had left over from making the tree so ended up die cutting shamrocks to put aside for next St Patrick's Day using a sweet die my friend Linda gave me. I've definitely never been this far ahead of myself before for a celebration!

Die - Shamrock (Impression Obsession)

Sparkling Season's Greetings

I haven't posted in a while but now that I've finished making things to donate to Christmas fairs and am back from our holiday in Disneyland Paris, I'm all ready to get into making more cards for Christmas.

Hero Arts has a great Holiday Challenge going on at the moment with a number of different fun categories. I decided to combine two of the categories - - Mad About Metallics and White Out.

Ornament stamp & die set (Hero Arts) & pine branch die (Impression Obsession)

My good friend Linda sent me a gorgeous new set from Hero Arts called Stamp & Cut Ornament - thanks again, Linda. The set has a few pretty ornaments, a lovely mix of sentiments and a die to cut out the ornaments - love this as it will definitely help speed up my Christmas card making!

To start with I made a card base and using foam pads added a panel which I had embossed using the Snowflake Trim embossing folder from Darice. Linda had also sent me pretty pine branch die cuts from Impression Obsession so I took one of these, embossed it with star dust embossing powder and to add even more sparkle applied a layer of star dust stickles.

I embossed the ornaments in silver, die cut them and then added gems, dots of stickles and thread to suspend them from the branch. The sentiment was also embossed in silver and to finish I added a sprinkling of gems to the background and on the branch.

Hope you are enjoying the weekend. We're having stormy weather with lots of rain and I think it's due to continue on that way for the weekend - it's a really good reason to stay inside and get inky!