Season of Joy

Phew, what a busy week!. 2 workshops for Out Of The Blue & non stop Christmas deliveries & sorting to do in the shop. 

The weather seems to be changing & customers are buying with Christmas gifts & crafting in mind.

This first card is the project my half of our group made on Thursday at our Out Of The Blue card making workshop.

 It was quite a busy 2 hours with lots of heat embossing & stencilling with texture paste.

The card was made with the Season Of Joy Dreamweaver stencil & silver embossing paste.

After applying the paste onto purple card the paste was heated with a heat tool until it bubbled & added texture.

Here is a closer view of the texture achieved by this technique.

The background was made by embossing white card with an embossalicious embossing folder through my grand calibur.

Before running it through, I applied perfect medium to the debossed side of the folder. The clear ink was then transferred to my piece of card as it went through & the pattern was embossed into it at the same time.

Once removed from the folder, I applied silver embossing powder all over the piece of card & heat embossed it.

I then inked the embossed stars with dusty concord distress ink.

Areas of the scenery were enhanced with the same ink to create shadowing & depth &  I also applied treasure gold silver.

Final touches were silver & lilac ribbon tied with a double bow & some die cut & embossed Snowflakes edged with silver.

I also made the same card to show it in another colour way.

Finally, here's the card we made at the workshop on Tuesday. An additional workshop to our normal schedule.

We were asked to do this workshop as part of the Discover South Gloucestershire festival 2014.

This card was designed by Carole, my co workshop teacher & everyone really enjoyed making it, including me.

Its made using the Dasher & Tree stamps by Sam Poole from Creative Expressions. 

 If you don't already follow Carole's blog please pop over & check it out at 

Carole's Crafty Creations

She makes some beautiful cards & other great crafty projects.

Right, that's it from me for tonight. Its way past my bed time & I have another busy day tomorrow in the shop.

Thanks for joining me & please pop back again soon.

Amy x 

Festive Tree

Well, I can't believe we are on the verge of October already & that its been so long since my last blog post!.

I must apologise for my absence & lack of commenting on your projects but its been quite a busy time.

Covering staff holidays, our own holiday, Hubby's 40th & our little Daisy starting school has meant not a lot of time for blogging I'm afraid,  plus we are now on the build up to Christmas in the shop with lots of ordering & deliveries to sort.

Anyway, I have managed to fit in a bit of crafting time recently, mainly playing around with ideas for our Out Of The Blue workshops. So hopefully I can get back into the swing of things & post a bit more regularly.

My card today was the result of playing around with some  Dreamweaver stencils ready for our October workshops.

We did one of our 1st Christmas workshops a couple of years ago using this Dreamweaver  tree stencil with embossing paste & mica powders so I thought I'd use it in a different way for this card.

I started by creating my background with alcohol inks on glossy white card stock. The technique I used was one I saw on  a youtube tutorial, there are quite a few videos on there showing this technique. 

I randomly dripped 2 different colours of alcohol inks ( in this case red & green ) all over a sheet of acetate. I then dripped blending solution randomly over the top to dilute the colours & allow them to spread out a bit more.

Next I put my glossy card face down on top of the colours & placed another sheet of acetate over the top to create a sandwich. I then pressed down & rubbed my hand over the acetate to spread the inks around & allow the glossy card to pick up the colours.

This creates a completely random, quick drying effect 

I cut down my background & used a snowflake background stencil, also from Dreamweaver & inked through it with festive berries & evergreen bough distress inks.

I off centred the tree to the right & spread black glossy embossing paste through it. I then left this to dry.

I stamped the Phill Martin Christmas sentiment on the offcut of my background, cut it out & backed it onto red card.

I die cut & layered my snowflake in red & green ( Spellbinder Snowfkake Wonder ) & added a black pearl to the centre.

I tied some red ribbon & added it to the left of the tree & attached the sentiment & snowflake near the top. 

To finish, I mat & layered onto red & green card & added red, green & gold stickles to the baubles & star at the top of the tree.

Well, thank you for taking a look, I hope you'll pop by again soon. 

I'm going to make a big effort over the next few days to stop by & catch up with what you've all been up to.

See you soon

Amy x 

Second Zentangle inspired workshop

Hi bloggers, well this week just seems to have absolutely flown by.

 We've been to the Spring Fair at the NEC ordering lots of lovely new gifty things for the shop which is completely exhausting as it involves miles of walking with so much to look at & allow your brain to process with lots of decision making involved. I feel like I need a holiday! But, having said that I do enjoy catching up with reps & meeting the owners of the companies we deal with. Its also a great way to see what new trends will be emerging.

Anyway, as promised here are the pictures I took of some of the cards created by my group at our last workshop using Dreamweaver stencils & Zentangle.
Our second set of crafters really enjoyed this workshop & several have been back into the shop to buy more stencils, pens & other bits & pieces to create more cards at home.

This card was made using a black peel off sticker which was cut around & mat & layered. A lacey die cut edge was added along with stripy ribbon & an introduction of red with the stencilled 'valentine' & hearts.
We always say all materials needed are provided but if anyone wants to bring anything along they are more than welcome. Well, the lady who made this card brought along a box full of fabulous dies, I was very jealous! They were all beautifully stored too, something I definitely need to work on.

I also had a few new ladies in my group who had never attended one of our workshops before & had not really done much card making.  I think they did a fine job & I'm pleased to say they have booked onto future workshops.

A couple of ladies decided to make Valentine's cards with a bit of red & white on black zentangle too. 

Well, that's going to be it on the Zentangle subject for a while! We are working on our project for this Thursdays workshop using MDF shapes rather than card making. 

Hope you all have a lovely crafty weekend, I think I need to catch up on some sleep!

Amy x 

Mr Zentangle Owl

Morning everyone. Hope you've all had a good week & have lots of crafty plans for the weekend?. I'm hoping to have a day of crafting tomorrow & I've gathered a nice stash of crafty goodies from the shop to try & come up with some new projects for future workshops.

My card today is another Zentangle card as we have another workshop this Thursday using the Dreamweaver stencils for Zentangle.

This particular owl stencil proved to be very popular with our group last week, not surprised really, as owls still continue to be a very popular theme in both our craft & gift sections of the shop.

 

 

This was actually my first attempt at Zentangle & I quite liked the result.

Once I'd finished the owl I simply mat & layered him onto black & white card stock & patterned paper. I die cut some flowers & layered them up, punched a strip of white card with a Martha Stewart border punch, stamped the sentiment from Indigoblu & edged the black card with white pearl cosmic shimmer pva. I also added some faux stitching .

 

One of my New Year's resolutions was to enter more blog challenges, so I'm going to enter this card in 2 today.

 The first is Country View Challenges where the theme is Monochromatic

& the second is Crafty Cardmakers and more where the theme is Black & White & you can win goodies from Woodware.

Pop over & take a look, there's some fab projects on both.

 

That's it from me today, I'm off to work in the shop.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

See you soon

 

Amy x

 

Celtic Knot

Morning everyone, just a quick post today as I have a busy day ahead.

 After a lovely relaxed day off yesterday spent wandering around Bath with my friend Julie & our two little girls, my day today in contrast will mainly involve appointments with reps in the shop ordering new lines & then this evening we are off to a 'show' to order our Christmas cards for this year!

I probably won't get in much before 9 this evening so as I'm back in blog mode at the moment I wanted to write this post before I head off to the shop for the day.

 

My card today is a black & white simple card that I made as a sample for our Zentangle workshop last Thursday (see previous post). It was very quick to make using a Celtic knot metal stencil from |Dreamweaver.

 

 

Once the stencil had been outlined with a fine liner, it was very quick to fill in as the spaces between each part of the knot as they were only small.

The sentiment is a Woodware stamp & the black card was punched with a Tonic Celtic border punch

I also doodled around another piece of white card to mat the main design onto & added some faux black stitching & some black gems.

 

Hope you like it?

Thanks for visiting

 

Amy x

Out Of The Blue Zentangle Workshop 16th January 2014

Well, it's been quite a while since my last post!

 Things all went a bit mad as they usually do in the run up to Christmas.

 It's our busiest time of the year in the shop & there is non stop display rearranging, ordering, unpacking & pricing to be done.

 Mix that with Christmas shopping evenings, Christmas craft workshops to teach, celebrating special birthdays & trying to get my own Christmas shopping done & I was definitely ready for a nice few days over Christmas to sit down & put my feet up!.

 I had several Christmas creations photographed & ready to write posts for but just never got the chance, but never mind, they will just have to keep for this Christmas!.

That all now seems like yonks ago & we are already now mid way into January!. It really is a month that drags, but for me it normally chugs along quite nicely as we attend trade fairs for the shop & begin ordering lots of new goodies.

 Plus it marks the start of our 2014 workshops for Out Of the Blue, the first of which was last night.

We decided to ease into the New Year with a zentangle project for our ladies. It's really quite addictive once you start & I managed to get quite a few images prepared while I sat watching tv which was a great way to get my non Christmas mojo back. I'll save those for future posts.

 

Some of our ladies were a bit worried about where to begin but we used dreamweaver stencils & woodware peel off stickers as a starting point & once they got started they were well away!.

 I don't think our craft room has ever been so quiet!, everyone was zoned out & concentrating on their tangles!.

 

 Here's a few pics of their creations

 

 

 

We concentrated on monochrome & added touches of colour with ribbons & gems & everyone loved it.

 

 

 

 

 I think our ladies will be looking at their stash of dies, stencils, punches, masks & stamps differently now to see how they can zentangle with them.

 

 

 

 

 

Well, sorry for such a lengthy post, but I did have a bit of catching up to do.

I'd just like to end by welcoming my newest follower Viera, thanks for choosing to follow my creations it's nice to have you & very exciting to add you to my small list of followers!

 

See you soon

 

Amy x

 

P.S  I'll be stopping by your blogs & commenting again soon!

Sparkle & Shine

In my last post I promised to show you the glass Christmas decorations we will be making at a local craft group in November.

 As a result of our card making workshops I have had a few local groups contact me to ask if I would go & hold a workshop for them.

 This particular group asked me to do a glass painting project that would be completed in the 2 hour time slot & be able to be carried home.

 If you have used solvent based glass paints ( my preferred type of glass paints) you will probably know that they take quite a while to dry & if any dust particles should happen to land in the design you've just spent ages painting you'll have to start again or it just won't look very nice.

 Plus it can be quite messy, & fumy.

 

So, with all this in mind, I came up with these using a different technique

 

 

The pieces of glass are pre cut & drilled with a small hole at the top.

 I used dreamweaver stencils & embossing paste & applied various glitters whilst still wet.

Once dry I added sequins, diamantes, die cut elements & glitter glues to highlight certain areas & around the outer edges of the glass.

I then finished them with some ribbon tied through the holes for hanging.

 

When they catch the light the glitters really glisten.

 I think they'll look great hung on any Christmas tree with twinkly lights shining through.

 

Hopefully the craft group ladies will enjoy making these on the night, hope you like them too.

 

See you again soon

 

Amy x