Ornaments!

I got a little quiet on the blog, but that doesn't mean I've stopped working on my Christmas crafts!

I still have cards to post, but I've also been working on lots of ornaments that I have been hand-painting with stained glass paint. I love Pebeo Vitrea160. It is made to be used on glasses or plates, etc, and after baking can be put through the dishwasher. This way I only need one set of paints for decorating anything I want, as long as I can bake it.

I am still working on technique. I have issues getting colours to come out smoothly without brush strokes, especially on some of the ornaments I have painted this year. I tried a foam sponge, but it takes much more practice to get that to work properly I think. So this year, I went with the patchy, streaky look on purpose.


I blended in amber and purple on this one, having seen ornaments like that in stores that I really liked. Not to mention that my mother and I both love amber and amethyst! I used gold outliner to help distract from the spots where the two paints meet. It turned out looking pretty artistic and I'm very happy with it! Not to mention it can be hung up any time of the year, not just Christmas.






This cute little angel is for my friend's daughter. It is quite small. Excuse the blurry photo. Still getting used to the new camera! But you get the gist. The heart is raised up on the ornament, painted red, and then outlined with gold outliner which I ended up using a bit more like paint.


Another ornament with Amber paint. I streaked this one with yellow, red and black to give it a bit more depth. Gold outliner (also painted on flat) to add some interest. My friend loves browns so this seemed like a good choice! Again, one that could be hung up any time of the year, as long as it is out of reach of the crazy pets!

I am not the steadiest of hands, but I actually liked that the outliner wobbled a bit as I was drawing with it. As a whole, I think it works and hopefully doesn't just look like I can't keep from wobbling or was not as careful as I should have been.


And, to finish, a little Christmas tree. The front is painted with green, the back is painted with pearl. It gives more depth to it and adds interest I think. The star is part of the ornament, raised up, so I painted it yellow to help it stand out. I love the effect it has like this giving it shadows!

Fluffles is so cute!

I just had to make another Fluffles card. As with the previous one, I layered a stamped Fluffles on top of the image to add depth. I also put Glossy Accents on the ornaments, the star, and the pot.

The naughty or nice sentiment is from a set of holiday rub-ons that I've been using like crazy.

This card is for some friends whose cat tackled their Christmas tree the first year they had it up. It seemed to appropriate!

I've been busy working on Christmas ornaments for friends and family and have 4 done, and one nearly so. Another one I have finished, but I am thinking I am not happy with it and want to redo it. One reason I love the Vitrea stained glass paint by Pebeo: if I don't like it I can wash it off as long as I haven't baked it! Unlike regular stained glass paint, this is made for using on surfaces like glasses, plates, etc, and needs to be baked. It can result in some flaws, like burst bubbles, but it also will stay on in a dishwasher once it is baked! Plus it means I only need one set of paints to do any decorating I want to do. Love it!

Holly Jolly

I was looking at the sheets of MM Fa La La sparkly letters and was thinking how good they would be spelling out "holly jolly." Then I realized that I wasn't sure there were 4 "L"s there. And even if there were, at least some of them would be upper case and I wanted lower case ones. Then I remembered the paper holly leaves and berry brads from the same line! The lightbulb lit up like crazy!

I looked through my paper and I found this wonderful sheet. It is all one sheet, done to look like bits of a bunch of kinds of paper with lots of sparkle. Yum! I love how it turned out. Hopefully the "pictograph" is clear enough. hehe.

I've been having a great weekend, slowly poking away at all the other crafts I have left to work on. Very excited about a canvas tote I'm painting up for a friend. I know she's going to love it!

In Love with Sakura Glaze Pens

I've had my Sakura Glaze pens for a while. I thought they were neat and bought a set of 10 a while back. So much fun to play with! I kept seeing some ideas in Scrapbook Centrale, using peel-offs, but I never got around to it. Then the last time I was in there I saw a sheet of ornament stickers and they were just too lovely to leave behind, especially thinking of what I could do with them! This set I stuck on white velum and then coloured. The white within the gold I coloured with the white pen so even that is glazed. It is like stained glass on paper! Yum! I'm addicted to stained glass painting, so this is yet another way to do it! I cut out windows and stuck the velum between the layers of paper so you can get a full stained glass effect. I jazzed up the paper a bit by adding pearls on top of the white dots. I just wish I had a better corner punch (I'm using scallop scissors).



The other card I made using these I used plain white cardstock, coloured in, then layered them up. The blue cardstock has raised dots which reminded me of the swiss dots embossing folder which I desperately want. The little brads are MM Fa La La ones and are all sparkly. So cute!

I'll try to remember to come back later and add in the materials. I just put away all my papers and stuff to give myself room to work on painting glass ornaments. I just couldn't wait any longer!

Tea Anyone?

My mom requested a knit tea cozy for Christmas after I got into knitting again. I wasn't sure I was going to get around to it, but I hunted around online and found a free pattern from Bernat that looked simple enough that I could do it. As it is done in two pieces, I decided to do it in two colours of yarn. When I looked at the yarn in Walmart (I knew they had Bernat yarn which would make it easy to get the right gauge), the two colours I liked best were these two variegated ones. Or at least they were the ones that looked best together.

Getting the pattern going took me a bit, but the second side was significantly easier. I stitched the sides together and looked at it. It needed something on top. The original pattern just had a crocheted loop, but that looked boring. So I decided to make some corkscrews from I pattern I had seen here. I finished up the yarn I had left and sewed them on.

All in all, a nice, cheery cozy to brighten my mom's mornings. I will probably end up lining it after Christmas, but I figure it will be easy enough to do and some parts may be simpler with potential access to a sewing machine (like at my mother's). hehe.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful time! More cards to come, and now it is time to work on ornaments, a bag, some teacups.... You get the point! ;)

New Look and a Scarf and Pin!

As you might notice, I gave my blog a makeover today. I am feeling a bit frustrated at not being able to completely do what I want due to a lack of knowledge of the code, but such is life. Can't have everything exactly the way I want it without putting in the time to learn. I'll stick to easy for the moment!

So I thought I'd share a scarf I knit that I am giving to my mother for Christmas. I hadn't knit since I was maybe 12 or 13 but during my vacation my mom and I found some fabulous yarn and a scarf pattern and I decided I want to try to do it myself. That meant, however, doing a practice run. This scarf is the practice run. It is just a plain knit, no purle or anything. We made two slits in the scarf so you can interlace the ends as shown. It is quite short, but still cute. Just plain blue yarn


As you can see, I wanted to put something on the overlap to decorate it. I had been planning on making a pin of some kind, initially hoping to find some glass or plastic that I could use stained glass paints on. Then I saw a new tutorial on SCS for making paper pins and I thought it was a fabulous idea! I pulled out my new Stampin' Bella "Group Hug" stamp. I just love the little snowmen! I stamped the image 3 times, coloured each version with watercolour pencil crayons, then cut the layers and covered them with Glossy Accents. I'm not sure of all the differences between that and Uttee or Crystal Effects, but it is not quite as hard as I would have liked. Hopefully with top and bottom of each layer covered in it it will stay stable enough. Dimensionals between layers, a pin stuck on the back with more Glossy Accents, and done. I'm quite happy with how it turned out!

Hope everyone is having a good week! More Christmas cards coming!

Ornaments Galore!

I have a couple more cards to share that I am very happy with. The first one uses some lovely ornament paper by Anna Griffin. I was feeling inspired by Dawn McVey and her style so that is how I started out the basic layout.

I love ornaments in this style, probably because my mother loves them also. Our family is very ornament-obsessed. Mom and I now give each other a new ornament every Christmas, so I will have a whole bunch on that day, someday, when I have a tree of my own, and Mom's tree won't look barren without all the ones that belong to me.

The sentiment is a peel-and-stick one that drove me a little crazy positioning it. I had to redo it a couple times because I started with the wrong word and, as they are not all connected, I discovered it was wrong after I had it almost all on!

The little gold ornament is one I cut out after embossing with the new CB holiday ornament folder. I love this thing!

Recipe:
Paper: white cardstock, gold textured foil paper, holiday ornaments by Anna Griffin
Accessories: Magenta peel offs (Christmas sentiments), CB holiday ornaments folder, ribbon from Michael's


This card is one of the simplest I've made in ages, but I still really like it. I simply grabbed my gold foil textured paper and embossed it with the CB holiday ornaments folder. And as it was so pretty, and reminded me of really expensive wrapping paper, I wanted to pretty much leave it alone. I just needed some ribbon. I had a piece of white satin ribbon that had come on something or other and was, thus, free. Unfortunately it took me some work to find a long enough span that my cat had not destroyed. With a couple other people in my apartment lately it had gotten classified as a cat toy, unfortunately, and most of the ribbon is unusable. But I found enough. Unfortunately I discovered that Tombow glue is a bad idea with ribbon that is not all that thick and does become a bit sheer. Oops! But the tab I made helps. Again, more Peel Offs letters.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day! Happy Hump Day!

A Whole Bunch of Cards

Well, I have been a busy girl, at least over the weekend, and I got quite a few cards done. So much fun playing with all the Christmas supplies I've been hoarding!

This card is the simplest I've made in a long time, but I absolutely love it. Some sparkly paper, some glittery letters by MM, and a couple holly leaves with berry brads, and voila!

Recipe:
Paper: Imaginisce Candy Cane Lane/Polar Pinstripes
Accessories: Fa La La red shimmer stickers and hollyberries by MM.


This card is a bit of a deviation from my usual Christmas fare in that the colours are very obviously not ones associated with more traditional Christmas stuff. In fact, the papers and ribbon are not Christmas ones, but I thought the presents were appropriate. I used one of my favourite stamps for this. The image is the three cats in a line and the sentiment underneath but I masked and stamped each cat individually and broke up the sentiment. I purposefully did not center the cats in the circles as cats are not known for holding still and being perfectly framed, especially when they are feeling proud of their present deliveries. I accented the crowns with a quickie glue pen and some gold EP, and added some sparkle to the "presents" with a Sakura Stardust pen.

Recipe:
Stamps:Wise Siamese by Stampendous
Inks: Brilliance Graphite Black
Paper: shimmery blue Bazzil cardstock, white cardstock, American Tradition Designs "Celebrate Gifts"
Accessories: Sakura glaze pens, ribbon from Michael's, quickie glue pen, sparkly gold EP, crystal accents, Sakura Stardust pen.


I saw this peppermint candy wreath by Stampin' Bella and fell in love. So darn cute! I used a red Sakura Glaze pen to trace the swirls in the candies, then coloured over the white areas with a white glaze pen to make them look more like candies. The image is popped up on dimensionals. The blue cardstock is embossed with swirls that echo the swirls of the candy.

Peppermint stripe paper and candycane stripe ribbon seemed the perfect compliment. The sentiment is popped up on dimensionals and "sweet" is written in red sakura glaze and got an extra burst with a stardust pen. Little red crystals worked just right. The little sugar brads just seemed too good.

Recipe:
Stamps: Minty Wreath by Stampin' Bella
Ink: Brilliance Graphite Black
Papers: white cardstock, Swirl Blue cardstock, Anna Griffin red and white stripe
Accessories: candycane striped ribbon, red crystals by me & my big ideas, Doodlebug sugared brads, sakura glaze pens, sakura stardust pens, dimensionals

More cards to come! Hope everyone is having a wonderful Tuesday!

White Christmas

Last year for Christmas I got a lovely stamp from a friend and her hubby so I knew this year it was getting used on the card for them.

I was thinking about it and what I could do with it and suddenly thought of gold and white. So I grabbed some vellum and my new CB embossing folder. I left the bottom of the velllum un-embossed for contrast and layered it over a plain white card. I used a shimmery ribbon to layer over the divide of embossed and not, and stuck the stamped cardstock up on dimensionals. I added some little crystal star stickers for some added glitter.

Recipe:
Stamps: Merry Christmas Circle by Hampton Art
Ink: black by ColorBox
Paper: white cardstock and vellum
Accessories: gold glitter EP by Top Boss, white ribbon from DeSerres, holiday CB folder, crystal stickers by Mark Richards, dimensionals

Why I Love Fluffles...

Fluffles is my hero. I adore Fluffles and would own most of the Fluffles stamps if I did not have to work on a budget. This is my only Fluffles holiday stamp and I love it. Being a cat owner, I was terrified the first Christmas that I took Book home and she saw a Christmas tree. Luckily she had no interest in it or in playing with ornaments that were not hanging right at kitty nose level.

I found this layout in the Beautiful Cards... to make and send with love magazine from 2007 (issue 18, p. 42) and I had to use it. The original is by Katina Killey. I replaced the original cat image with Fluffles and chose to cut out an extra fluffles and star to give it a little more dimension. I coloured the image with my Staedler fineliner markers, then went over the ornaments and star with my Stardust pen. The red ornaments got covered over with a red glaze pen also for a bit more dimension.

I finished things off with MM ornament brads, a black pen, and some ribbon. And voila!

The card forms an A shape when it is standing, the back part wider than the front and just in plain white.

More cards to come soon!
Enjoy the weekend!