Merry Christmas!

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas! I have been knee deep in getting ready for the big day, so sorry about the silent treatment you have been getting from my blog ;-) Hope you are all having merry days and enjoying yourselves.

Thank you to all of you who drop by my blog to leave wonderful comments, I love hearing your thoughts and your encouragement make my day! I love posting my crafty cards for you, hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I love making them.

Hope this season brings you all you have hoped for!

Just a little Christmas wish from me..

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas:-)

How has Christmas been treating you so far? Well I am being pulled in all directions trying to get all my shopping and decor ready:-) It's not easy being a wife during Christmas, and I can tell you now, I have immense respect for those who are also mothers! Yikes!

Anyways, here are a few cards I made to send to my extended family, had to get them sent through UPS cos, well I took forever to make these since I was buried in work. Sigh.

Anyways, I do have to make a few more cards, possibly around 5 more, these are the ones I will be hand delivering during Christmas lunches and dinners.. So yes. I do tend to let things accumulate when I get busy..

Now on to the cards!

What inspired me to make this set was this pretty Hero Arts Silly scape stamp. I was thinking of ways to incorporate this stamp into a festive card design, and I thought, why not highlight a single house in red and green!!

So I chose this gorgeous paper by SEI ( which I totally picked up by accident while shopping at an awesome sale of scrap goodies in Singapore! , I seem to love stripes for holiday cards..) and I also pulled out some of my punches for this and got cracking.

This first card is my favourite, looks so pretty in person with the glittery stickles snow, and the blue distressing I used to create the sky:-) I also love the bright red sentiment, so cheery dont you think?

This little square card uses this fabulous silver tinsel trim I found at a craft store near my home.. Love this stuff, planning to use it everywhere.. as part of decor, scrapping my Christmas journal and cards of course:-)

Lastly this longer card, I used some powder blue cardstock to create a very soft central panel. And used my tinsel again:-)

Hope you enjoyed today's post, and thank you for dropping by:-)

Have a great week!

Supplies-

Stamps- all by Hero arts

Paper- SEI

Stickles by Ranger

Distress inks by Ranger

Punches- Fiskars

Large scallop die - Die-Namics

December journal share

My first post for December! I am busy, busy, busy all the time! Managed to get my act together and finally start on my first page of my December Journal:-) Super pleased that at least now it's going to be less of a worry, the pressure is high when you are far behind and others have already got all their pages sorted.. (Not that my pages are cut yet:-)) I am planning to take a day to day approach, cut the pattern paper as I go, so that it matches my photographs...

Anyhooo, firstly I have to share with you some crazy exciting news,.. remember the wreath card from my last post? It won one of the Fab 5 awards by Hero Arts!!! It was the best start for December. I was super excited and could not believe my luck!

If you want to see the complete winners list, follow this link-

Hero Arts blog

One more thing before my December Daily post,

I took a quick photograph of the cards I have ready to send out.. tiny little bunch I know, but I do have a few more to get done, till then I am going to send these out first so that they have plenty of time to make it to the recipients before Christmas.

Now on to todays post,

Following Shimelle, my first page was going to be the manifesto for the journal. It's the 4th of December, so high time I got to it!

Here are some of the images I captured :-)

You can click the photographs to see them bigger:-)

I used some Studio Calico letter stickers, Hero arts stamps and my trusty Peppermint collection by Crate paper, which I would be using throughout my journal.

I also added a bit of distressing and white paint to give it a more finished look.

Here I tied some bakers twine in this pretty red, and added a Maya Road star pin, layered on a snowflake die cut made from some powder blue card stock.

I then incorporated a sentiment stamp as part of my journalling to make it extra special.

Hope you liked todays post, a bit lengthy I know, but next time I can promise you there wont be so much stuff to share in a single post:-)

Thanks for dropping by today:-)

Hope you have a wonderful week! And stay tuned for more December Daily shares.

The Magic of Christmas

I wanted to capture a magical and warm feeling on my card, what better way than to create a wreath of snowflakes! There is something so wonderfully magical about snowflakes dont you think?

So I pulled out all the snowflake punches, dies and chipboard I had.

I started out with the chipboard since they would take most of the prep. I sprayed them with Studio Calico white ink and then added a coat of Stickles.. Then I cut out some pink felt snowflakes with my dies. And finally cut out a few random vellum and card stock snowflakes.

For the card base I first masked out a circle and then stamped the base with my Hero Arts magical background stamp with some Versamark ink (yep I wanted it to be magical and I was gonna get magical!!) ha ha:-).

Then I took off the circle mask and used my Calico white spray and randomly spritzed my base to create a snowy feel, just like Lucy Abrams did in this video..

Now it's time for embellishing. I laid down all the elements to see how I could position them and then carefully stuck them down with glossy accents. (This was the only adhesive I rely on when I need something to stay put)

As you can see, I filled in the gaps with buttons and pearls. I love the way it looks now!

Oh, btw.. Those silver glitter stars are made by printing a couple of stars on white card stock, cutting them out and applying a coat of Silver Stickles on them:-)

Then I wrapped a strip of vellum on the base, and then topped with some twill tape( because it goes so perfectly with Kraft) and finally layered the stamped sentiment.

With a final bit of'stitching' and a ribbon bow, my card was done!

Thanks for dropping by today, hope you have a crafty and fun weekend!

Happy Stamping!

Supplies list:

Hero Arts stamps- Joy to all( clear sentiment stamp set) and the Magical Background cling stamp

Snowflake dies by Die-namics

Snowflake punch by Martha Stewart

Chipboard snowflakes by Maya Road

Felt from craft supplies shop on Etsy

Pearls- Hero Arts and Keiser craft

Buttons- Basic Grey

Ink- Studio Calico

Stickles by Ranger

Glossy Accents used as adhesive

White Gel pen

A sweet treat

One more, yes, you guessed it:-) Gingerbread men!!

I just could not resist making this square card with him.. I used a bit of patterned paper and a pink snowflake to change things up a bit:-) Again, using more My Minds Eye paper from last years 'I Believe' paper collection. I love the little Christmas tree and the red polka dot paper, I made a very simple grid background as a setting for my sweet little gingerbread cutie;-)

I'm keeping the post short so that I can go make more cards with my free time this weekend!

Hope you have a good weekend too!

Hugs:-)

Ginger treats and Candy canes

Hi there!

More Christmas cards are being made.. and I am also getting together my 'Journal your Christmas' project goodies ready. Last year I signed up, but never completed. So this year I am going to make an actual effort to get this done! You should do it too.. Hop over to Shimelle's blog to find out the details:-)

So now onto the card...

I love this My Minds Eye paper from last year (I believe) still got loads left over. I used my gingerbread men and this perfect Penny Black sentiment to create this. The stripy patterned paper is my candy cane element:-), kept the design real simple and also added a hand drawn garland to decorate it up.

I just cant seem to get enough of this gingerbread stamp by Hero Arts!

Thanks for looking:-)

Supplies-

Stamps- Hero arts and Penny Black

Ink- Ranger distress ink

Patterned paper- My Minds Eye

Warm Cocoa Moments

How has your November been going so far? The weather seems to be changing over here in the tropics:-) I do declare I get the cool Christmassy breeze, Finally! Yay! It's here!

Here is a card, simple by design.. But truly captures what is important during the holidays.. warm cosy moments. I made this card for my husband because he generally likes very CAS designs:-) I had to photograph this on the sly so he wouldn't see this! he he

I stamped some faint snow flakes in a powder blue to decorate the white space.. I also added some Stickles here and there..

Here is a close up of the little mug of coffee.. I 'wrapped' my candy cane around it and also added Glossy accents to make the chocolate look liquid! It turned out real nice! ( I then added a grey shadow with my Copics under the mug, you cant see it in this pic but if you scroll back up, you will see it quite well in my first photograph)

Hope all your preparations and planning for Christmas is well underway:-) so far I am really enjoying getting my cards ready one by one:-)

Supplies list:

Stamps- Cosy Moments, Decorate You both by Hero arts

Colour medium- Copics

Accents- Stickles Glitter, Glossy Accents both by Ranger

Thanks for looking and have a wonderful day!

Peace.Love.Joy

Hi there, sharing a quick post on another entry for this months HA challenge:-) I used my brand new clear set with this pretty little angel, adorable isn't she? I love an image that can be coloured or paper pieced! How fun!

If you are wondering about the two sets of images,.. it has to do with the fact that the first time I shot this card, colours didn't really come out well and looked a bit faded, so I thought I'd take another shot at properly photographing it:-) Which photograph do you like better? The one with the white background or the one with the teal background?

Here's a close up of the layered snowflake embellishment I created. I used a snowflake die and cut out a blue felt snowflake, layered it with a painted, glittered Maya road snowflake and adhered with some twine:-) I also used a Christmas tree pin to dress it up further..

Supplies:

Stamps- Holiday sayings, Sprinkle your holiday clear acrylic stamps by Hero arts.

Chipboard- Maya Road

Patterned paper- My Minds Eye ( Lush Collection)

Cardstock- Bazzil

Stick pin- Maya Road

Hope you have a wonderful week!

Hugs,

Michelle.

Peek-a-boo tag

Hi again! I have been wanting to add a tag as an entry to this months HA challenge, finally got it done with some leftover little gingerbread men I had made for another card (which I would post soon).

I love manila tags, I have a whole heap I plan to use to recreate this design in bulk, that's why I kept the design a little less fussy:-) And with all the stamping, it's cost effective and easy on the budget, since during Christmas expenses go through the roof!

Let's take a look at this little cheeky tag:-)

I used some red ink to get all the snowflakes stamped added the sentiment and then adhered the little gingerbread men with foam adhesive.

I left one little guy peeking from the side!!!

Here is a closer look...

I also decorated the back.. This is where I plan to write a personal message and the 'to and from'..

Hope you liked this post:-)

It sure was fun creating it!

Supplies-

Stamps- Christmas Trio, Joy to all, Holiday sayings, Get Merry ( all by Hero Arts)

Merry Trio

Happy Saturday everyone!! Are you excited to get crafting today? Here is a little something I created to add to my batch of Christmas cards this year:-)

I used the same basic sketch for all three cards. And used matching patterned paper and ribbon to create a set. Take a look:-)

I used my favourite Lawn Fawn stamp set to get the Polaroid element on my card. I love how it created the backdrop for a perfect little holiday scene!

The first card features the Fluffles stamp by Stampendous. I also used a Hero Arts stocking stamp and a little pine bough to dress this card up. A little stickles was added to the stocking rim as well as the felt on the Santa's hat:-)

Can you see the glitter on the stockings and the hat?

For this card I wanted to use some ornaments, again I used my pine bough from the CL366 set

(Decorate you) and added a branch to house my ornaments.

I stamped and coloured my ornaments and added a clear coat of Glossy Accents to give them an authentic look. I also placed a feline friend from the same set too, and gave him a cosy paper pieced scarf!

I really love how those ornaments look so 'glassy' and dont you adore the cute tiny attacher used to hold the ribbon in place? I love that it gives a home made look!

For my last card I used the pine bough from the same 'Decorate you' stamp set and stamped a whole Christmas tree, inking it in two shades of Chalk ink. I tested it out on a piece of scrap paper just to get a feel of it.

I like how it turned out, all I had to do then was dress it up with some HA pearls and red Stickles. I also added a chubby penguin that I coloured and paper pieced and also a few snowflakes!

Here is a close up:-) Dont forget to click the photographs to see them close up!

Hope you liked them:-) Sorry bout the long post though!

Supplies used:

Stamps- Decorate you, Sprinkle your holidays, Holiday sayings all by Hero Arts

Say Cheese by Lawn Fawn

Copics for Colouring

Patterned paper by Basic Grey , SEI

Ink- Memento black ink, Colorbox Chalk ink

Have a great weekend!

Merry little gingerbread

Hope you have been feeling the Christmas breeze these days, I am yet to experience it:-( Anyways, to get me in the spirit I have been crafting up a storm! This is one of my little creations from last morning.

Tonnes of paper piecing, just the way I like it. A little note though.. You might want to distress the background before you start piecing the image:-) That way you wont get any ink on the buildings.. Luckily I remembered that!

For this card I used some Basic Grey Oliver patterned paper. It's patterns are surprisingly perfect for Christmas! ( The red stripe is by Kaiser Craft)

I curved my sentiment on my stamping block before I stamped it, it was initially straight.. That's the beauty of using clear stamps, so many possibilities:-) The reason behind it was that, my whole card was looking rather linear with the buildings and background paper and I wanted to make it a bit more lighter and fun.

Supplies-

Stamps- Silly Scape, Christmas Trio, Joy to all, Decorate you ( All by Hero Arts)

Patterned paper- Basic Grey, Kaiser Craft

Distress inks- Tumbled Glass, Tea Dye (By Ranger)

White embossing powder- American Crafts

Thanks for looking, hope you have a wonderfully 'Crafty' weekend!

The very first!!!

Yes, I finally did it, got myself to make my very first Christmas card for the season:-) Feeling mighty pleased with myself.. Now that the first step has been taken, I am hoping the others will flow quite easily:-)

I wanted this card to be a texturally heavy, and decided to use some foliage on it.. so I went about embossed the leaves in Silver tinsel embossing powder and cutting them out. I then stamped the doily and highlighted a few areas with a red Copic marker and a silver pen.

I Stamped the sentiment and assembled it all together with a touch of ribbon and a pretty button. I also used some faux stitching to 'lift' the card from the base.

How have your holiday cards been coming along? Have you started yet? If you have, well you should be pretty pleased:-) I know I am..

Have a wonderful weekend!

Supplies used-

Holiday Cheer stamp, Circle design cling stamp and Speckled ornaments stamp set : All by Hero arts.

Copic Markers

Button by Basic Grey

Happiness is right here..

Hi everyone, here to share a really new layout.. I made it last night. Been experimenting with my photography, trying to find my perfect settings, but still far from it.. So please excuse the bad quality:-)

Today's layout features a lot of embellishing and a basically playing with patterns. I used mostly American Crafts on this page, with a tinsy bit of Fancy Pants and Crate paper..

I love having a lot of white on my layouts.. They let the eyes rest on the important bits, without getting all confused. I went for a colourful embellishments to compensate for the lack of colour in my photographs.. I think it balances out the page quite well and stops it from being boring.

My focus points were the chipboard frame and the banner, I really wanted to add a banner cos the photo strip was quite wide and the banner would brake it down a bit. Everything else was pretty much spur of the moment embellishing:-)

I used some Dear Lizzy (buttery yellow) "bee" paper to add a fun whimsical touch. I have had that paper for quite some time, and it was a relief I found the perfect place to use it. The banner was made of Fabric paper, and it adds some nice texture to the layout. I also added a chipboard heart on the banner, just for a shot of cuteness!

And lastly the title was added with some Crate Paper wood grain alphas, some American Crafts Amy Tangerine Thickers and some older Pink Paislee alpha stickers.

Supplies List-

Chipboard- Maya road

Patterned paper- American Crafts Dear Lizzy

Flowers- Prima, Basic Grey

Rubons- Fancy Pants, Lilly Bee and Studio Calico

Vintage buttons- Websters Pages

Stickers- Crate Paper, Pink Paislee

Mist- Tattered Angels

Thank you for dropping by,

Have a wonderful Sunday!

Hugs!

Hello Halloween!!

What do you do when you don't own any Halloween stamp sets? You improvise:-)

I am still using the four sheets of patterned paper from last years Bo Bunny Halloween release.. Lame, but you know, the reason I didn't buy any new supplies this year was because we don't celebrate Halloween in this part of the world. But every year I do make Halloween cards to send to my friends over in the U.S and other places where they do celebrate..

This is just one of the cards I made this year.. Super pleased with the finished card!

So my cheat was, to use mostly Thickers and use other stamp sets that have sweets and monsters etc.. Like the Life of the Party Birthday stamps set or the Monster Fun stamps set by Hero Arts. Their stamps are versatile like that:-)

For this card I paper pieced this really cute candy in orange and green to fit the Halloween theme. And the rest was just faux stitching and patterned paper. Don't you think the row of sweets are just adorable:-) Super excited to sent this card to someone!

Supplies:

Stamps- Life of the party Birthday CL514

Patterned paper- Bo Bunny

Cardstock- Bazzil

Letter Stickers- American Crafts

Chipboard shape- Bella Blvd.

Thanks for looking!

Happy stamping:-)

Ready or not....

Hi all, it's been ages I know, but there are some serious changes happening at home.. Good changes:-) So crafting time has been rather low. I did make a few layouts here and there but they have not been photographed yet, so till then, no sharing:-(

However, here are some very new creations of mine, the layout that I just completed and a card I made a few days ago.

I have been waiting for the perfect card to use this sentiment. Love this set by Hero arts...

A couple of scraps of patterned paper and some pretty butterflies later.... my card was done!

The polka dots and the teal stripe paper is from my current favourite paper pad by Echo Park. The Dots and Stripes 6x6 pad. There are some great Polka dot and stripe patterns in there. I see myself making some Christmas cards with it too!

Next up, my puppy layout!

As usual, I was going to make full use of my scraps. everything on here are scraps leftover from other projects. The grey paper was a leftover bit from the card you just saw. And the little scrap of yellow flowers paper I tucked behind the photograph (by October Afternoon) was also a scrap! yes, I even save those tiny bits!

This blue butterfly is a leftover from an older project, and notice the pink little frame of a butterfly I layered it on? That's me trimming around the negative of a punched butterfly I used for my card:-) Cute huh? I love how it adds a bit of punch to the photograph.

I also used some vellum to layer under the photograph before I added the pink matting.

The main focus of the layout was going to be my punched pink matting. It was a piece that I tested out my new Martha Stewart punch on. I picked it up in Singapore last week. I also added a bit of paint splattering, this is by October Afternoon. I absolutely love Grey. So this was definitely a great addition to my collection of spray inks. And it will take the heat off my White Mr Huey ink for a while! he he

Hope you enjoyed this post!

Hugs!

Supplies:

Echo Park - Dots and Stripes Metropolitan paper pad.

Hero Arts - Thoughtful Messages clear stamps.

Martha Stewart - Butterfly punch and Border punch.

October Afternoon - Paper, Spray paint, Kraft letter stickers.

We are Memory Keepers - Typewriter stamps set

American Craft - Thickers ( light blue and the 'or')

Basic Grey - White chip board letters

A Rockin Birthday

Yesterday I finally managed to get crafting. And the agenda was to create a Birthday card for a very special friend. I started out with a a few die cut pieces of base card stock, Kraft and Purple and I decided to use this fun Hero Arts stamp, It was perfect for a girly card!

I did a bit of Copic colouring and cut this stamped image out. I used some Glossy Accents to add some dimension to the i-pod and ear phones. I then went about stamping my sentiment, I obviously used my go to set of letters by Hero Arts- Cute letters, perfectly sized for this kind of job! It's always more fun adding a custom sentiment:-) To add some extra zing, I went over the stamped letters with a glitter pen.

I finally put the card together using some dimensional adhesive and finished it off with some pink Hero Arts pearls and some faux stitching with a black pen. Viola!

Supplies:

Stamps- You Rock by Hero arts, Cute Letters by Hero arts too.

Cardstock- Bazzil

Pearls- Hero arts

Hello!! Back after ages and a card to share.

Hi everyone! I know I've been missing for a while, but I have been doing a slight bit of travelling, finishing my new collection for the Atelier and just after our second year anniversary.

so I am going to share with you the card I gave my husband for our anniversary. I made it very plain and simple using this wonderful robot trio stamp I received from Hero arts for a monthly challenge win! Hero arts has certainly been so good to me, and they make the best quality stamps:-)

This particular stamp was chosen because of the cute heart it had on it's chest (and the other two robots from this set were ideal for birthdays, which I would be using for baby boy cards).

The paper I used was from the 6x6 paper pad by Echo park called Dots and stripes. This paper pad's filled with all shades of polka dot paper (and stripy paper of course). I love anything with polka dots, so glad I picked this one up! I used a lovely navy polka dot on this card to make it a bit more masculine.

Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed today's post:-) Will be back soon with more layouts I created while I was missing, quite a few to share, need to photograph them as soon as I get the chance:-)

Supplies:

Hero arts stamps- Cl 342( Everyday sayings) LP 197 (Robot Trio)

Echo Park paper pad ( Dots and Stripes)

Bikers!

Hi there, a fabulous Thursday to you all! Today I like to share a layout I created with some photographs from Santorini. It was about our little bike ride around the island by which we explored Santorini, in and out.

For this layout I used mostly patterned paper and a few rubons, stickers and stamps. The banners are by Studio Calico. I love how they added a bit of whimsy on the layout:-)

Using a Die-Namics die, I cut out these little clouds with some pretty Basic Grey paper. I also used some card stock to punch out a postage stamp matting for my photograph and a circle to add the date. The reason I used red as a matting was so that the blue in the photograph would stand out more and I also used some yellows and muted blues to bind it all together and add a bit of colour.

I used a few October Afternoon word stickers to add sub titles around my main title 'Bad ass quad bikers'. The yellow really stands out against the blue Pink Paislee patterned paper.

This tag is home made with some My minds eye paper and a Fancy pants rubons, I nestled it over a cute Crate paper sticker for some added intrest:-)

I completed this layout with a bit of twine and journaling.

Thank you for dropping by today, and have a wonderful weekend:-)