12x12 Layout

Hello everybody

2011 is nearly over, I hope you all are getting ready to say good bye to 2011 and hello to 2012. I really hope that 2012 will bring only happiness and joy to all of you.

It was probably Halloween when I did few 12x12 layouts and since then I was busy with various things those that include crafting would be cards and mini books (read gifts) and so on.

Few days ago I wanted to do 12x12 page and I did not know were to start. Complete absence of inspiration. Then I remembered Once Upon a Sketch , I like this blog because it does not give you only fab sketch to work with but also journalling criteria gives you extra help with the inspiration.
So there is a sketch:

 
Journalling criteria was to write about Christmas day - what you do on the day. So it was just perfect for the day, and here is my page:

and a close-up of my journalling:

The light was very bad here today and I couldn't do very good photos of the LO. I will try tomorrow again before it is too late to enter this into the challenge. 

Here I used:

1. Papers: Bo Bunny
2. Dies: Spellbinders, Tim Holtz
3. Stamps: Unity, Tim Holtz
4. Inks: Ranger Distress
5. Ribbon; Prima
6. Bling: Imaginisce

And the photo of 2 little darlings from Christmas 2009.

Have a nice day

Svjetlana 

Few more Christmas Cards and Christmas mini books

Hi all,

I hope you all had a nice Christmas and looking froward to a New Year now. I would like to share with you my last Christmas cards I did and few Christmas gifts I made:

 

In these cards like in all others I did this year I am using my Hero Arts musical background stamp, new Tim Holtz seasonal distress inks, Tim Holtz dies and I used Spellbinders label die with matching stamp by Waltzing Mouse Stamps. The flowers are some very old I had in my stash and holly leaves are cut by hand. 

Everybody was getting some big gifts for teachers or some people were even collecting money to buy a gift or something and a card from the class, since my kids used to go to a private school this custody was a bit strange to me but I decided I would just go for something hand made instead of material gifts. So my daughter did a cards (pity I did not take a photos of them) and I made a few Christmas themed minibooks. I hope they liked them, please forgive me bad photos as I finished them at 3 a.m. and only took some snaps with my iPhone.

And some photos of inside of the books:

In these I used Stack the Deck Binding technique presented by Laura from The Paper Trail . It is very easy binding to do and very professionally looking.

Items used here are:

1.  K & Co papers
2. Tim Holtz dies and distress inks
3. Martha Stuart and Fiskars Punches
4. Hero Arts Stamps
5. Spellbinders dies
6. Waltzingmouse Stams

And one more very simple book again done in a last minute for my lovely childminder:

For this book I used same K & Co. papers, A6 envelopes for pages, just covered them with papers and made tags. She is very creative herself I am sure she will have no problems in finishing this book up.

That would be all for now, hope you liked my projects.

Svjetlana xx

   

Christmas Cards - Christmas Greetings

Hello everybody

I always consider myself as a scrapbooker and not really a card maker. But I do odd cards for friends and family mainly when needed and they are always done in a last minute. Then I do Christmas cards again for family and friends. However when I do cards I approach to each card as an individual piece of art and as long as I do that way I really enjoy making them.

Then Christmas time comes, once a year; 15th December or beyond and I still have a long list of cards to do, and every year is the same. At that stage making cards should either turn into production or they won't be done and that is frustrating sometimes, at least for me. What about you?Should I skip my creativity and just produce lots of identical cards?

I found solution this time by buying few packs of charity cards and for my kids, I just showed them my stash and told them that I don't want to know anything about their cards done again in a last minute. And guess what, they did all of their cards by themselves, pity they closed them an I didn't take a single photo, not even a mobile phone snap.

I have few more cards to share with you that I made and managed to snap with my iPhone last second before closing the envelopes (under the moonlight, LOL) :

 

For these I used:

1. Hero Arts Stamps (musical background and Christmas bubbles)
2. Tim Holtz dies
3. my home made flower
4. Tim Holtz distress inks (new winter collection)
5. perfect pearls
6. Clear embossing powder -Ranger
7. Spellbinder die - label 
8. Waltzing Mouse Stamps (background on the label)

And this is all for today and probably last post before Christmas.

I wish all my readers very Merry Christmas and big thank you for all your support.

xx

Svjetlana

Poinsettia Flowers Tutorial from Card

Hello everybody

No matter how hard I want to be better blogger, various things always get on my way and crafting and blogging goes into second plan.


I hope I will make it up to you buy offering one simple tutorial for all those enthusiastic crafters  who enjoy making own embellishments.

I came up with this watching several different tutorial for all sorts of flowers, so it is not exact copy of somebodies work but it is sure inspired by other peoples work. I love making these using tick handmade paper, unfortunately I cannot always find this one so there is a way to achieve the texture using cardstock.

For this project you need:

1. Solid core card (red and green) 
2. some punch with at least one pointy end, I am using very old craft tonic tear drop punch
3. some water mister
4. scissors
5. Liquid glue (look for acid free one if you are making these to use on your scrapbook pages)
6. inks - optional
7. micro-beads/beads/buttons for flower centre
8. one small circle in red, could be punched or hand cut   

• Punch out 10 petals using your chosen pointy punch. Trim off sound side of 5 of them so that are slightly shorter. Then put them all on a craft sheet or some scrap paper and slightly mist them. take care not to overdone.

• Then crunch up each of them making tiny balls, see the photo above.
• Carefully unfold each ball, and you can ink them at this stage if you wish. You might find that pigment or chalk inks are better for this then distress inks.

• In next step apply glue on your circle and start gluing larger petals as shown bellow: 

• Once first layer is done you have something like picture above. Then apply glue in a middle of your flower and glue second layer of the smaller petlas and there your flower nearly done:

• Then apply more clear glue in a middle and add your chosen flower centre. If you using micro beads it is a good idea to wait until the flower and glue is completely dry then continue with this step. This is to prevent your micro beads to be glued on places you don't want them to appear.      

• Once your flower is dry you can punch out some green cards and leafs under your flower bud.

And there are few cards I made with these:

Hope you enjoyed my tutorial. Have a lovely day.

Svjetlana x