Fun Fold Friday - Adorable Owls

 For my last card this week using the Adorable Owls stamp set, obviously I have made another of my go to favourite folds. This is made with 1 half piece of A4 card. I folded the card base (14.85cm by 21cm) in half at 10.5cm. I lightly pencilled the centre point on the bottom edge of the card at 14.4cm. The at each side on the front edge, I marked every 3.5cm. I then scored from the centre mark on the bottom edge to the edges on the centre fold creating the first V. I then repeated the actions from the edges at every 3.5cm to the bottom and finished them all. The scored marks were all folded back and forth on each side creating the V shape you see. I placed some tear n tape to the back of some of the folds to keep them crisp.

I used some of the papers from Tea Boutique  6" by 6" papers to match with the lovely Fresh Freesia card base. I stamped the 3 owls and coloured them in using the Stampin' Blends pens and die cut the 'circle' from the Painted Labels set of dies. 

I finished off by adding sentiments once again from the Go To Greetings stamp set 

 

 

Thank you for popping by this week, Cary will as always be back on Monday to share her creations. 

I will be back the week after as always too so until then please

 

TAKE CARE, KEEP WELL, STAY SAFE 

 

and as always, 

 

KEEP ON CRAFTING! 

😍😍 xx Gill xx 😍😍

This and That Thursday - Adorable Owls

Today's cards I went overboard for. I really love the owls and know a few people who will certainly love them. I paired the Adorable Owls with some of the In Colour glimmer paper. I chose the gorgeous green of Parakeet Party and the beautiful blue of Starry Sky to make my cards. I coordinated them both with some of the dies from Pretty Pop-Ups set. I love the way they just pop from the sheet and you get so much dimension from them all. 

The only difference from both cards is the colour. Please let me know which you prefer. 

 

Watercoloour Wednesday - At The Pond

Hello again and thank you for stopping by. Today's watercolour I have cheated a little. We have a new range of Designer Series Papers called Fancy Flora and the sheet I chose reminds me so much of the Monet's bridge. So I have paired it with the At The Pond stamps. The cute little frogs are really gorgeous and I think the paper is perfect for the frogs too.

I did water colour some white paper by soaking it in water and then some watered down ink washed all over. Once it was dry, I stamped the images using the Saddle Brown Stazon Ink Pad. I think the brown looks more realistic against the black ink. I fussy cut all of the images out, yes, I know that I'm crazy but I find it very therapeutic and relaxing. 

Technique Tuesday - Adorable Owls

 Well, we have actually had rather a lot of snow here! YAY! Today I have been using one of the stamp sets from the Saleabration catalogue coming out in January... only a few weeks away! I am using Adorable Owls which are extremely cute. I made a trellis of strips of paper on one side of the card and an embossed mat of red card on the right of the card to cover the edges. A label from the Designer Tags dies and a punched pair of ovals using the ovals duo punch. I stamped the little owls in Smoky Slate, a very light gray and coloured one in with the blends pen and the darker one in with the Stampin' Write Marker pen.

Which owl do you like the best?

 

Make It Simple Monday - Go To Greetings

Welcome back to another very cold week here in the UK. We have had temperatures here of -6 and it has been extremely very cold! I don't like the cold at all! We had our Christmas dinner get together with many Stampin friends on Saturday and spent a lovely few hours eating, laughing and chatting. It was great. Now back to the blog. Today I am using the lovely ascriptive stamp set called Go To Greetings. It has 5 different phrases in 3 different fonts and sizes, it's really very pretty. 

I have made a very simple card using some scraps of printed paper. I cut 4 pieces for each card. (yes, I made 2 cards this time). They are both very simple cards but just each one was made in a different direction. These papers are from the Celebrate Everything Designer Series Papers.

Watercolour Wednesday - Christmas Lights

Christmas Lights and Brightest Glow 

Today's card is a watercolour tree that sort of floats over the card! I start by stamping the Christmas tree from the Christmas Lights stamp set onto watercolour paper and then spritzing the paper with water all over. I used Stazon Ink Pad for the stamping as it's a pigment based ink and not water based as the classic ink pads are. Using my usual form of taking ink to the water colour paper, I stamped a block onto the classic ink pad. I used the gorgeous, rich green of Shaded Spruce and then added some drops of water to the ink on the block. Using a large water painter brush, I added lots of ink in several layers all over the tree and drying it with a piece of kitchen roll in between the layers of ink. Once I had got the strength of colour that I wanted, I left it to dry for a while. I then prepared my card base by adding a piece of the In Colour glimmer card in the beautiful shade of Orchid Oasis. I had prepared it by die-cutting the tree from the centre of the card mat and also die-cutting a silver tree to add to the inside of the aperture. The purple mat was added using Dimensionals and the silver tree straight through the centre of the hole. I had poked a small hole through the star at the top of both trees and added a piece of Dimensional below the top one. Then I placed a small white brad between the 2 trees and secured them both in place. This then enables the green tree to float and wobble above the card. 

Technique Tuesday - Christmas Lights

 Happy Tuesday everyone. Today's card is similar to one that I have made before. This time I used the Christmas Lights, mainly the 2 strings of lights across the card mat in yellow and soft purple then I chopped the panel into 3 and reconstructed it by adding another colour, the gorgeous green of Shaded Spruce behind it. Each of the panels was added to the lower one using Dimensionals to add height. I cut the tree twice, once in the green and the other, just the whole tree in yellow and popped it directly behind it to accentuate the 'lights' on the tree. Looking at it now, I think it needs a yellow gem on the top of the tree to complete it, so I will be adding that very shortly. Once again, I used the Brightest Glow stamps for the sentiments. It is a very simple card to replicate and use for all sorts of occasion.

 

No Watercolour Wednesday Vienna On Stage swaps

 Hello again, today I have another fantastic selection of gorgeous swaps from On Stage in Vienna.     The first ones are for the Autumn or Fall time. I don't make many like these but I really do love them.

 

The one on the left was made by Melanie Ramsey and on the right is from Rolanda Patton. Look how the envelope is decorated too!

 

This cute gnome card was made by Laurence Pasquier. I just love it!

 

This stunning card above was made by Mme. Karine Simon and it contains a Mint tea bag included. 

It smells so delicious, I'm really going to enjoy it. It was made using the Tea Boutique cards and envelopes. Isn't it beautiful?

 The 2 book marks above are perfect. I love to receive a book mark to use in my catalogues so I am very pleased with both of these. The one on the left was made Scrappeuse avec Cindy and the one on the right is a magnetic one and was made by Melanie Ahrweiler.

This is a little 6" or 15cm ruler and Martina Schmitz has made this using the gorgeous black and white papers and one of the stamp sets is It Starts With Art. 

                                          Martina must have known that I needed a new ruler!

 My last 2 swaps for today are both 3D items. 

This gorgeous little blue and white wallet which includes a box on the inside (very clever) and contains a chocolate was made by Edith Skate. YUM!

The box on the right was a team swap this time and it was made by our lovely team-mate Danielle Ehren again (See yesterday's post). Danielle used some of the poppies again that she used for her card on yesterday's blog post called Painted Poppies. It is so very cute and contains a packet of Love Hearts sweets. 

That's it for today, please join me again tomorrow as I have so many more to share with you from these clever and creative demonstrators.

Technique Tuesday - On Stage Vienna

Hello again, firstly I must apologise for no post yesterday. We flew back from Vienna on Sunday evening and got home about 8pm I believe. Once a year we have the opportunity to get together with other Stampin' Up! Demonstrators. This happens in many places over the world and ours was in Vienna, Austria. It was an excellent weekend meeting up with old friends and some lovely new friends too. Many of us swap cards or 3D items using the Stampin' Up! products. It is so amazing to see how others can make something very different with the same products that we each have. 

This week, I will be sharing some of the swaps that I was lucky enough to receive.

 

 

This first card is from one of our team mates, Danielle Ehren of Bluebells at Midnight. 

It is absolutely stunning. Danielle used the gorgeous Painted Poppies stamp set.

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I just love a 3D item and this is no exception. A pencil attached to a stamped piece of card. So simple but such a great gift. This is from Elles de Lang using the Let's Set Sail stamp set.

 

This gorgeous little gift box is stunning. In simple monochromatic colours, it's brilliant. It was made by Barbara Gunia.

 

I am so grateful for all of my swaps from everyone. Whether they took 5 minutes or 5 hours, 

they are all just fabulous.

Fun Fold Friday - Santa's delivery

 Fun Fold Friday is back already! For today's post I have made a much simpler fold card. It's an easy gate-fold card. I used a piece of Shaded Spruce for the card base and some more of the Designer Series Paper called Santa's Express. I really do like the range of papers in this set. I cut a sheet of A4 in half at 14.85cm by 21cm and scored it at 5.25cm from each of the 2 sides. Before I burnish the edges, I make the 2 outer edges meet in the centre and then burnished them on both sides. Doing that,  you don't have any gaps in the middle or any of them overlapping either. I decided that I wanted a little sparkle on the card so added 2 mats measuring 4.9cm by 14.7cm using some of my retired Supple Shimmer papers. It's almost gone now sadly but it's really pretty. 2 more DSP mats on top of that measuring 4.5cm by 14.4cm. I die cut a Shaded Spruce circle from the Layering Circles dies and another in Real Red and matted them together. I die cut 2 wreaths from Shaded Spruce and glued them together then added a few little red spots and the die-cut bow on the centre. I didn't add a sentiment on the front as I liked it as it is. A simple mat on the inside and then the card and I am finished for this week. 

 

That's it from me for another week, Cary will be back on Monday posting her creations from Vienna!

Thank you once again for popping in to see what's going on. 

Until we return from Vienna, 

Take care, 

Stay safe and 

KEEP ON CRAFTING.  

xx Gill xx