Crafting for the christmas market

Hi Crafters,

Christmas is approaching fast now. Our school will have a booth at the local Christmas market next week-end. And as if I hadn't enough to do, I volunteered to create some cards. So I've been trying to squeeze this in for a few weeks now. Including two very crafty week-ends. You really wouldn't want to see, how the house looks right now!

But now I have finally completed something and I might make some more of the simpler cards over the week - depending on time and energy available.

So, here it comes...

 The first set was inspired by the new die and stamp and stencil set from Simon Says Stamp, which I don't own, so I simply cut out the pieces. It's not too difficult, because these are all simple shapes - except for the bow, which I didn't want to use anyway.

 Finding that both my star punches are too small, I used a star stamp from a Christmas set, stamped it in a light color and cut it out before I coated it in 2 layers of gold embossing powder. Would you believe it, there was NO fitting punch available around here.

The green paper strips and the lining of the envelop I created myself with distress inks, lots of water, some stencils and an airbrush. I also colored some white cardstock with my distress inkpad for the trunks.

For the red baubles I wanted a paper pen, but couldn't get one in red, so I used white window color to create the dots, colored them with an alcohol marker and stuck them on the branches with some liquid glue.

The snowbank is just a torn piece of paper, with the sentiment in golden embossing powder.

I created 24 of these cards and am hoping to sell them in sets of 5. The 4 extra cards are just to test, if they sell better solo. If the do, the ladies at the booth can just rip apart the sets and sell the cards individually.

 Looking back: Why the hell didn't I go for something more simple? Creating these sets cost me so much time, with all the cutting and the makeshift baubles.

As the Paper Players have an evergreen challange this week, and I thought that this card fits, not only for the obvious reason (featuring a christmas tree), but also because my fingers are probably going to stay forever green, after all the inking I did...
I also added it to the Simon Says Stamp "anything goes" challenge, because their stamp and die set inspired me.



My second idea was much more simple, a single layer card with a little masking, stamping and embossing. I could even recruit  my daughters to help me stamping the envelop liners. They loved it, and so did I.  So far I have only created one set of 5 from these, but as I said before, if I find the time, I might make a few more.

Credits fore this  go to Annika from Annikarten who inspired me on this.

So enjoy the rest of your week and, and have a great Christmas time

Ela

Crafty DIY ideas

Hello Crafter,

I have been such a lazy blogger. There has been too much life going on here and Christmas is coming quickly. I promised myself, this year I would be ready for it and not let it catch me unawares.

I have not been an as lazy crafter as I've been a blogger, I did a few things at least. For one, our school is selling handmade items at the local christmas market in 10 days, so I am making a bunch of cards for this. I will show you these soon, but not yet. Right now my workspace is a terrible mess, my fingers are green from ink and I keep miscounting and re-counting how many envelops, card fronts and sentiments are still missing.

What I'd like to share with you today, are a few crafty tips to save some money.

Firstly I was thinking to buy a ranger craft sheet, but I found a cheaper solution now at IKEA. I got myself an SOCKERKAKA baking mat for  9,99 Euro. It is made of silicone and seems to work quite nicely for me. As I've never seen the original in real life, I can't compare the two, but I am happy. And I got it for about half the price I would have payed for a ranger craft sheet.

Afterwards I saw, that there is an even cheaper version (MÖNSTRAD; 4,99 Euro), which is a little smaller and I think I might have liked that even better, but they didn't have it at my local IKEA.

The 2nd item on my shopping list was an embossing powder tool. In itself not that expensive, about 10-12 Euro, but in Germany these supplies are often hard to get. So I decided to try out, if I can create my own, and it worked beautifully.

I used an  old sock of my daughters, filled in a whole package of cheap baby powder (about 1 Euro) and sewed the top shut. Now I store my "powder sock" in an old sweets container, so I don't have the powder everywhere when I don't use it, and it works fabulous.

And no. 3 on my list of things I wanted and worked my way around is a selfmade stamp-a-ma-jig. I just took an old piece of wood from the garage and screwed an ellbow connector to it. Not very pretty, but it works for me. I use it with a piece of an old clear acetate cover.

So this is it from me for today. If you like send me more ideas for do-it-yourself craft items.


Happy crafting
Ela

A Christmas card

Hello Crafters out there,

I've been pretty busy lately and didn't get to craft much, but I DID place a way too large order for card making supplies, including the envelop punch board, three embossing folders and a few stencils. I also got my own basic set of Gelatos. Would you believe it, Faber Castell - a very old traditional German company - don't produce them for the German market! How could they do that to me? It took me a year to decide I wanted them after all, even if they had to be imported from the USA.

I also got a whole bunch of distress inkpads. Would you believe it, until that order arrived last week, I owned exactly one: Peeled Paint.

So to try them out, I did a very quick card today. I'm sad to say, that it was not my own idea, I took my inspiration from Mia's card.

However I turned it into a Christmas card, using christmasy colors and stars, snowflakes and little trees instead of hearts.

I sponged the white card base with red distress ink and the edges with just a little brown ink, because it seemed too bright. Then I splotted some water on, just to try it out. To make the black cardstock look more like chalkboard, I treated it with a little baby powder, then I stamped and heat embossed the sentiment and added faux stiching. To stick on the punched shapes, I used the tiniest bits of foam adhesive, with a tiny gap in the middle, for the string.

 I am pretty happy with my card, so I do hope you'll like it too.

As it fits this week's SSS challenge (use a product from the Simon Says Stamp Store) I'll upload it there. The distress inks can be had at Simon's, and also my favorite gel pen. 


Happy crafting
Ela



Supplies:
Heyda cardstock (black and white)
White embossing powder
Signo Uniball broad white gel pen
Distress ink Festive Berries, Gathered Twigs and Mowed Lawn (envelop)
2 little stars from a Christmas stampset (envelop)
Simple Stories Patterned Paper (handmade holiday 6x6)
Twine
Punches
black fine liner (envelop)

(Sorry, whenever I don't mention the exact details, I don't know them)

Water

Hello Crafters,

I simply loved Kristina's Birthday Fishes card, when I first saw it. The blue and turqoise is a great color combination, and the stampset is so adorable. So I tried to re-create the look for this challenge at Keep it simple:

 However, as I don't own, the stamps or any distress inks or a whole lot of copics, I had to improvise a lot, so my card looks a quite bit different.

 Supplies:
 Stampin' Up Build a Blosson
Heyda "Alles Gute"
Watercolor pencils and crayons
Watercolor paper
Black fine marker
VersaColor Royal Blue
VersaMagic Turqoise Gem
ColorBox Robin's Egg
Top Boss Watermark
Black fine embossing powder
Uniball Signo broad white gel pen
Waterbrush

I used the Build a Blosson solid stamps to create the fish, coloring them with watercolor "crayons" (not sure if this is, they are called Woody 3 in 1, by Stabilo). I traced the outlines and drew in the details with the black marker, freehanded and colored the party hats.

For  the background I tried my best to coax the non-distress inks into distress behaviour, which didn't work to well. Something elso an my Christmas wishlist...
The sentiment stamp has a swirl on it, which I didn't like, so I covered it with washi before inking it up.


Wishing you all a great week-end
Ela

Animal Antics

Hello Crafters out there,


I did get around some stamping last night. Inspired by the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge Animal Antics and this Sketch by Freshly made Sketches, I created a Halloween card.

Supplies:
Paper:
DCWV Textured Card - orange
Heyda black cardstock
white watercolor paper

Colors/Inks:
VersaColor black
ColorBox Frostwhite
Top Boss watermark
Tsukineko Emboss dual pen
Uniball Signo broad white gel pen 
Watercolor pencils

Stamps:
Stampin' Up "Kleine Wünsche"
Unity Stamp Company "SHEart Doodles"
Artemio background stamp (handwriting) <- the set seems to have no name
Free digital bat stamp from the Alley Way

Others:
Clear embossing powder
Black fine embossing powder
Foam dots, Taperunner


What a list, I was never aware I was using so many different things...

Once again, I had to (clear) emboss the printed image, to keep the ink from running, but with the lines rather bold, that works nicely. I also embossed the sentiment and stiching in black.
As usual I used my daughters' watercolor pencils, to color the bat. "My" Inktense pencils are already on my wishlist for Christmas. Like so many other things...

For example black ribbon, of which I seem to own not a single inch. So for the ribbon in the sketch I had to make do with a slim piece of black cardstock and three white gel pen dots. But I have to admit, for this image I like the simplicity better, than I would have liked a ribbon and bow.

 To pop up the wings so much, I used 3 foam dots on each side, one close to the body and two on top of each other towards the outside. This makes the card a bit bulky, but I will probably never send it anyway. Halloween is not greatly celebrated in Germany, and I really don't know anyone to send it to.


Wishing you a very early Happy Halloween
Ela

Autum is coming

Hello to everyone,

the Paper Players are challanging us this week to create fall themed cards:

So as there are a few autumn birthdays coming up in my family, I decided for a fall birthday card.

I used my newest stampset "French Foliage" by Stampin' up and inked each stamp with two earthy colors to achieve a color blending.

I hope you like it.

And something entriely differnet: Katharina is offering a cute bundle of flowers and embellishments as a blog candy this week, on her blog. Have a look, isn't that cute?

Happy fall
Ela

STAMPtember

Hello crafters,

no card today, I wanted to craft a little today, but it took me all evening to read all the blogs from the Simon Says Stamp bloghop. I love how all of you are sooo creative, but if STAMPtember keeps up this  pace, I won't get around to do any stamping myself.


Have a great day
Ela

Investigator wrapping paper

Hello again,

to match the card I showed you on Wednesday, I created matching wrapping paper for the gifts. I created by own little footprint stamp, because I didn't want to do them all with the sponge dauber. Unfortunately my brown ink pad isn't juicy enough any more for my self made stamps, so I stamped them in black. I really need to get some new ink pads. Except for the peeled paint distress ink pad I have only old and rather cheap little ones. Until I got that, I never knew how all of you got such crisp images...

I' also like to show you a card I made recently for Christmas including a matching envelop.

Happy crafting

Ela

Die drei Fragezeichen - The three Investigators

Hello there,

my godson's birthday is coming up this week-end and he's planning a motto party: The three Investigators. In German "Die drei ???".

My daughters received a rather creative invitation, cut like a magnifying glass with the text in code on it, so we had to decode it first.
Therefore it was plain, that our birthday card needed to be special as well, and fitting for the occasion of course.

So I googled for a nice picture of the three investigators to colour in and came up with this card:

Once again I used my daughters' watercolour pencils and one again am not all that happy with my colouring, especially as I have seen all the beautiful things everyone else has done...
My printer's ink has always been bleeding a little, but since I had to replace the ink cartridge is REALLY bad. In my first attempt, I tried to retrace the lines with my embossing pen, but the image was simply to intricate for that. Or else the pen not fine enough. So I printed and coloured it a 2nd time without embossing and without bothering much with any shading. I just concentrated on keeping away from any printed lines as best as I could.

For the footprints, I free handed a little mask from a post-it note and dabbed on VersaColor brown ink with a sponge dauber, both on the card and the matching envelop.

I also tried to distress the edges of the watercolour paper a little with my scissors, as I don't own a Tim Holtz paper distresser.

Simon Says Stamp is calling for "anything goes" this week, so I'll put my link in there. Sorry to the design team, it's not a picture from the greeting farm, but at least I did some colouring.


So despite the blotchy colouring I'm rather content with my card and hope you'll like it too.

Cheers
Ela

3 Cards, 4 Challenges

Hello out there,

this week the Paper Players are challenging us to with the following sketch:

I found it rather difficult, first I didn't find a stamp with the size I wanted, then I decided for a digital stamp by the alley way. When I started colouring, I found that my printer's ink bleeds quite a bit...
The arrows and mat are card stock, covered with Washi Tape, because I wanted to combine the sketch with the current challenge by Less is more, but in the end I was not sure if it would qualify as "clean and simple", with all those layers, so I didn't submit it there...

So, I'm not entirely happy with my card, but anyway, here it is:

 
I also created my first dry embossed card with my brand new big shot for Crazy for CAS, using the embossing folder "Swirls 1" by Hobby Solution and the butterfly from the Sizzix Basic Shapes die that came with the big shot starter kit. The black banner was created with one of the border stamps from the SHEart Doodles set by unity stamp company (same as the borders up in the 1st card).

And for the 3rd card I combined the Sketch of Fusion Card Challenge
 with the challenge of Creative Friday, which includes selfmade design paper. So this is the sketch. As you can see I used only the sketch, not the foto:

For the selfmade design paper I stamped and embossed snowflakes on a piece of cardstock. Unfortunately I don't remember, by whom the snowflake stampset is. The reindeer stamp is by Butterer. I stamped it with Ranger Archival Ink in black and colored it in with my daughters' watercolour pencils. The patterned paper banners are from the "Bissful Blizzard" 6x6 stack by fancy pants.

Did you notice? There definitely is a trend for my current favourite colour...


See ya
Ela

Back to school and Lightning McQueen

Hello out there,

one of the reasons, I finally started my own blog, is that I've always wanted to participate in card making challenges.

So let's start with this back to school card, I created for Simon Says Stamp Challange Blog. It says "School is cool". The words "Schule" is stamped with Heyda alphabet stamps, the rest is either handdrawn or from the stampset Tween Scene by Scrappy cat.

School is cool

And I have another one, which happened to fit perfectly. Paperminutes called for cars this week, and I happend to need a birthday card for a little cars fan, so here is my result. I coloured in Lightning McQueen and the flash with my daughters' watercolour pencils. The greeting I had in mind, just wouldn't fit in, so I decided against it.

Lightning McQueen

Sorry the pictures are so bad, they were taken with my mobile...

See you soon
Ela

Ela est là

Hello World,

here I am - this is my very first blog post ever.

I am Ela, 37, from Germany and on this blog I'd like to show you the results of my newly discovered card making obsession.

My first two cards are a similar pair of thank you cards and matching envelops. The inspiration came from Kris Werner, I simply love her cards. If you don't know her blog, you should definately check it out.

Have a great day
Ela