More wobbly snow angels

Hello Crafters, 

today I have another set of clean and simple Christmas cards with lots of white space for you. 

I love this stamp set, the snow angels are adorable. I missed buying them last year and was lucky enough to find them second hand in February, including the dies. I tend not to invest in the matching dies generally, but these cards screamed "action wobbles"... So here we are...

All images were coloured with my ZIG markers and adhered on action wobbles. All received a bit of pale blue ink blending and stencilling behind them. And of course the heat embossed snow angels outlines.

I kept two card bases white, one received some dark blue ink blending and the last (the bunny) two strips of washi tape. 

The sentiments are all the same and ready Merry Christmas in German. 

I love how they turned out, I could create snow angels cards forever. 

Lots of Love

Ela

Succulent Birthday

Hello out there, 

this is another card, I made a long time ago. 

I coloured the image as part of the colouring challenge, but then wasn't quite sure what to do with the finished image. So I kept it very simple and just added a black card base with some faux stitching, some washi tape and a very simple Birthday sentiment. After all, you can never have enough Birthday cards...

Hope you'll have a lovely day

Ela

Using wall paper for cardmaking

Hi Crafters, 

at our new place, we have a wall with a faux wood planking wall paper. I like that a lot, I like the colours and the structure and that it's not just a plain wall. I would like it as a backdrop for my card photos, but it's in the inside hall so there is little natural light. 

I do have half a roll left over, so I decided to use a tiny bit of that, to make a card. 

Í coloured the image with my ZIG markers and cut out the right side and top of the flowers, leaving the bottom left corner as it was.  Then I adhered the wall paper to a card base, added the image with foam tape and heat embossed a very simple sentiment (we congratulate) and some matching washi tape. 

Have a lovely day
Ela

Update and a Birthday card

Hello Crafters, 

how are you all doing?  Again it's been a really long time since you heard from me. 
Life has been busy, throwing things at me, good and bad. 

Just a very quick life update, from where I left off:
My sick cat passed just before Christmas 2017, which was really hard for us. We still miss her a lot, though we adopted two young cats rather quickly, to keep our little devil Nala company.

Meet Benny (red) and Cleo (mostly white) in their typical pose. The adorable couple were about 6 months old when they moved in in winter 2018. They aren't siblings but grew up at the same shelter, and they are simply inseparable. They conquered us humans in a heartbeat and though Nala often pretends to dislike them, she has been caught letting herself be groomed by Benny and letting Cleo sink her paws into Nala's fur.

Here are all three of them together, in a rare moment of unity:

At first I had an allergic reaction to Benny and feared I would have to return them, but luckily the girls and I decided to keep him out of my bedroom (that proved entirely impossible),  to vacuum clean a lot and have the girls brush him often  and see if any of that helps. We also went ahead and had him neutered a bit quicker than planned.
And I actually have grown accustomed to his fur and have no reaction at all anymore. Lucky me, having to return them would have been a tragedy, even after only an hour. I could write about my cats forever and post a million videos, but unfortunately I have more news to tell you, and rather sad ones.

I have repeatedly written about health issues in the family in the past, both our Grannies weren't well. Sadly my mother-in-law passed late last year, which hit the whole family hard, as you can imagine. 
I 'll not write more on this topic, since I don't think the rest of my family would appreciate that, but I felt I did at least have to mention it. 

It happened just after I had found a new place to live for the girls and me. We had been looking for years without success, but after taking more options (aka a new area) into account, we finally found the perfect flat. It's large, 4 bedrooms, so finally my girls have separate rooms and we have a craft space/office on top. It is about 40 minutes from our old place, so the decision wasn't popular with the family and the girls had to change school. However, they were with me in that decision and we are very happy here now. It's a more rural place, with a huge garden, which luckily I don't have to tend to, since it belongs to my landlady who lives on the ground floor. Our balcony suits me much more, no snails and slugs... But we do love to look out on the wonderful garden and hills. This is a shot in early spring from my bedroom window. Isn't it lovely? And that's not even when the garden is at it's best. Now that it's summer I can barely see the hills in the back, for all the trees.

Our new landlady is a lovely, caring person, we have already become good friends. I am so happy to have found our new home. And I am sure to get rid of the last 3 boxes from the move at some point. In a month maybe. Or a year. Or...

Enough with the updates. Though I didn't manage to tend to my blog despite the fact that I even had several blogposts prepared, I did make a few cards in the last year or so. Since I already wrote so much in this post, I'll just show a very quick card, done with an embossing folder, some Washi tape and a die cut and embossed sentiment combo. Isn't the flamingo adorable? I wish it was clearer on the photo, but think you can see it well enough on the second image.

I hope you have a good start into the next week. 

Hugs
Ela



Challenges:
Creative Friday: #237 We want to see an animal
Seize the Birthday: Anything goes Birthday 
The Paper Players: #455 Any cards for Kids (the card is for one of my girls friends)
Addicted to stamps and more: #354 CAS

  

Washi feathers

Hi Crafters,

for the last card I created on Monday, I also used my feather dies, but combined them with Washi tape and sequins:

I cut the feathers from a piece of cardstock covered with Washi and also created a mat with the same Washi tape. The sentiment says congrats and is popped up on foam dots and tied with some twine.


See you
Ela

Challenges: Stempelküche: Pailetten / Sequins

Matchbox Mania

Hey Crafters,

did you know, that matchbox cars were invented by a father who's daughter's school only allowed children to bring toys that could fit inside a matchbox? I like this story, sounds like a pretty cool Dad.

Why am I talking about matchboxes today? It's because I received my order for 50 crafting matchboxes and dived right in. I ordered these, to create a storage system for my Euro store sequins. 4 sets of each 8 different colors in the same color family. That should pretty much cover all I'll ever need.

But they came in a flimsy plastic packaging, so I wanted a proper storage solution. First I thought about a screw storage box from the hardware store. But those are usually rather larger than I would want them for sequins, so I went for matchboxes as a cheap solution.

So I happily spend an hours or so decoration matchboxes with Washi tape and glueing them together. Then I spent half the afternoon way less happily glueing one sequin to each little drawer and sorting the darn things in their new matchboxes. I may well have developed a deep and lasting dislike for sequins today
.

But even though I might never use them again, at least now I have them sorted. And I used Washi tape! And best of all: I'm done with it!

 
Wishing you a crafty day with something less tedious
Ela

Stenciled - Take 4

Hi again,

Next I tried heat embossing the butterfly and coloring the background with my Gelatos. Today I blended them dry. I matted the panel on some black and white washi tape and kept it without a sentiment.

I did some more heat embossing afterwards, but that panel had to dry, so I forgot about it and now it's still just a panel no card. Hopefully I'll do something with it tonight. Truth be told, I doubt it, because I'll have all the new videos to watch...


See you in a bit, when I will post the last card for this morning.
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