Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Just a short post to wish you all a very merry Christmas and health, wealth and happiness for the New Year.  Here is a little festive video from The King!

Hope you all have a great time over the festive season and that all your wishes come true in 2012.

Take care
Rachel x

Have a Fab'n'Funky Christmas!

As you know I participated in my first Fab'n'Funky Challenge as a DT member last week.  Well, the winners are now up on the Fab'n'Funky Challenge Blog.  What a response - you are all so talented.  It was far too hard to choose just three winners so you can view a selection of our favourites.  We are also giving five lucky crafters the chance to win some fab candy. 

As we are starting our Christmas holidays early there will be no challenges until next year.  The first one for the New Year will start on 4 January 2012.

Hope to see you all there.

Happy crafting.

Rachel x

Gran's Christmas Cards

Hope you are all well.  There is certainly a chill in the air now and a layer of snow on the cars when I left work tonight.  Brrrr!

Tonight's post shows the collection of cards that I made for my Gran to send out this Christmas.  Mam had the great idea that I could use photos of Gran's garden from last November when we visited for her 90th birthday.  It was quite a mission with all that snow!

I used the My Craft Studio program to design the layouts.  Normally I would have printed out the layers separately and mounted them with foam pads etc for dimension but I thought it would be best to keep them flat so that Gran doesn't need to worry about postage. 

This photo was taken on the path that runs past the bottom of Gran's garden.  I love how it has a natural blue tinge to it with the snow and cold in the air.  It's my favourite snowflakes again - Spellbinders Create-A-Flake Three!  The background paper is actually from the Fab Glam Fifties CD-ROM.  The colour was such a good match that I didn't need to keep looking.  I input the sentiment using the Text feature and then turned the brightness slider up to 100 so that the lettering became white.

The tree in this photo is in my Gran's garden and I used a black and white version (using the saturation slider) against the green background to make it stand out.  The greeting is from the Winter Whimseys CD-ROM.  I added the three red gems once it was printed and they really stand out.

I think this is my favourite of the bunch.  I love that photo.  It was taken by my Dad on Boxing Day last year.  We were on our way to see my Granny for her 80th birthday and just couldn't resist stopping to capture this beautiful view.  I used a digital punch for the lace on the left  hand side.  I couldn't believe my luck when I came across the peachy-coloured paper on the Fab Glam Fifties CD-ROM as it compliments the image so beautifully.

This is a seeing double selection!  I actually changed the red version to green first as this is how the background paper is stored in the program but I liked it too much not to make the red one too!  This picture is looking back into the garden and towards Gran's house.  I hope she likes them.

Happy crafting. x

Exciting News!

I can finally tell you all my exciting news!  I applied to join the Design Team at Fab 'n' Funky Challenges back in October and I got in!  I could not believe my eyes when the email came through!  Delighted and honoured to be picked.  I hope I can live up to the challenge. 

The current challenge on the Fab 'n' Funky Challenge blog is "Anything Goes", sponsored by the The Stamping Boutique.  I chose this cute image of a carousel horse and instantly knew I wanted to use bright colours with it.  It reminds me of a My Little Pony that I had as a child.  I made the gatefold card blank using my Ultimate Pro (not sure how I managed before without one!) and used purple Core'dinations and orange pearlescent card to match my image colourings. 

The photo doesn't show it up very well but I added My Craft Studio glitter around the horse and onto the saddle.  The image was cut using one of the X-Cut dies that I won back in July through the DoCrafts Creativity Club Prize Draw.  The dies are good quality but the scalloped and straight edged squares don't nest like the Spellbinders.  I am chuffed with the cutting and embossing results though.

I'm having my kitchen redone so my toaster and kettle are sitting on my glass cutting matt at the moment!  Not the best way to craft but I'm sure it won't stop me!  Hoping that I'll have my sitting room back in a couple of weeks and a new kitchen to boot.
Happy crafting. x

I'm fairly cracking out the Christmas cards now!  Just a pity I ddin't get going about two months ago.  This one was started in the Digital Designer software from DoCrafts Papermania, using the Christmas Past CD-ROM.  I picked the Naughty and Nice collection, mainly because I love pink.  The snowflake was cut using the Spellbinders Create-a-Flake Three.  It's becoming a firm favourite this year. 

Happy Crafting!

Tweety Pie on Ice

A completely different Christmas card tonight.  Tweety Pie was always a favourite of mine and this image is super cute.  I teamed it with a blue background paper from the Looney Tunes CD-ROM, silver textured paper and a green paper from the SWALK Winter Cheer CD-ROM.  I love the skates paper and used the colouriser to match Tweety Pie's earmuffs.  I mounted the image onto a Spellbinders Labels Sixteen die-cut using foam pads.  The snowflakes were cut using Spellbinders Create-A-Flake Three.  I'm rediscovering my love of Spellbinders (not that I was ever out of love with them!) since buying my Grand Calibur.  Oh the possibilities!  The rick-rack ribbon was from the DoCrafts online shop. 

Happy Crafting!

Celebrate the Season...

Hope this post finds you all well and feeling that festive spirit.  Not long now!  For today's card, I embossed the holly Mica Mask using my new Grand Calibur and I'm really impressed with the results it has given me so far.  I dabbed all over with green ink using a make-up sponge. The baubles are from the Spellbinders 2011 Heirloom Ornaments set and the holly flourishes are from Spellbinders Holly Accents collection. These were also cut and embossed with the Grand Calibur. 

The image is a digi from Pink Petticoat and I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it.  There are several handbag and shoe designs and just right up my street.  I daren't think how many of each I own!  Well they do say, if the shoe fits, buy one in every colour!  I used a Promarker in Forest Green and an Aquamarker in Raspberry to colour the holly and berries.  I mounted the baubles with mounting foam to give dimension and attached the flourishes with Cosmic Shimmer Glue. 

The insert gives the finishing touch.

Happy Crafting!



Christmas Greetings

It's that time of year again and with only six weeks until the big day, it was time to start Christmas card making!  I had my old pals Jim and Elvis blasting out with their Christmas tunes to get the creative juices flowing and this is the result! 

This is a new embossing folder (well, new to me anyway!) that I saw on eBay and just had to have.  I used it with silver mirri-paper and ran it through my Cuttlebug.  I stamped the greeting with a black dye-based inkpad and die cut that using Spellbinders Labels Four.  The stamp is from Claritystamp.  I just love their designs and Barbara is so kind and inspiring.  I bought the ribbon a while ago from the DoCrafts online shop for 68p for 5 different metres.  Bargain!  I got one is just about every colour! 

Another picture from a slightly different angle which shows up the colours a little better.

Happy Crafting!

Fab 'n' Funky Challenge #96 - Hubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

When I was catching up on blog posts last week I came across the chance to be considered to join the Fab 'n' Funky Challenges DT and couldn't resist.  This is my offering for Challenge #96 Hubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble and also to be considered for the DT position. 

My inspiration started with the Twilight Queen CD-ROM from Debbi Moore.  I was looking through the designs and came across the spiders web background paper and my brain went into overdrive with ideas for the card!  I used a rubber stamp from the Tickled Pink range of Pinkettes and coloured her using Promarkers.  The skull card was made by welding two skull images on my Gypsy and cutting them out using my Cricut Expression 2.  The original image came from the Rock Princess cartridge.  I used some cotton wool for added effect on the front.  The lettering came from Tim Holtz's Upon a Time alphabet die, run through my Cuttlebug. 

Thank you for taking the time to look at my blog.

Special Thanks

I just want to say a big hello and thank you to all my new followers.  Special thanks to those who have taken the time to comment on my posts.  It is gratefully appreciated and keeps me going when the inspiration is severly lacking! 

This is one of my favourite photos, taken outside my Granny's house earlier this year.  Hope you all have a great week and happy crafting! x