Heartfelt Creations Alumni November Blog Hop

Today we've got a short Heartfelt Creations Alumni blog for you to join along in, with some inspiring creations, and a prize too!  I hope you'll join us and hop along :-)  If you started at the beginning then you would have come here from Sarah's blog.

I have a cute winter themed card for you, I really enjoyed pulling out my Copics and Stickles for this one :-)

The sweet bear is from Bear-y Winter PreCut Set HCPC3358 from Heartfelt Creations.  I've coloured and glittered it up, and then simply overlaid the tree frame cut using a die by Memory Box.  The dark blue frame is airbrushed in using the Copic airbrush system.

Here is the order of the blog hop - follow along and leave comments along the way.

Sarah http://plainandfancypapercrafts.blogspot.com/

Kristina ---->You are here!

Dina http://mamadinis.blogspot.com

Emilia http://few-favourite-things.blogspot.nl

Erika http://lillgumman.blogspot.com

Linda http://paynehollercards.blogspot.ca/

The hop will close Friday November 30th at midnight EST, so hop along and leave comments with each of the ladies between now and then for your chance to win a $25 gift certificate to shop at Heartfelt Creations.  The winner will be announced on Saturday December 1st.

I hope you find some inspiration and ideas along the way :-)

Got my Silhouette!

Finally, after weeks of waiting, the postman delivered my Silhouette...Yay!!!   I was very excited to pull it out of it's box, and immediately had to find something to do with it LOL!

Lucky enough, I had a chance to play with a new set of vintage Christmas Ephemera from Quirky Twerp at the Digichick shop, that I was able to quickly and easily set up a cut file for in the Silhouette, so I could show off to hubby the neat print and cut features of the machine.

To make the background, I used a digi paper/shape from the  Valentine Retrospect scrapbooking set, also by Quirky Twerp (am I not creative??!  who else would be using Valentine papers for a Christmas card LOL!)

After printing and cutting the base and the puppy, I simply embellished with some ribbon, dew drop, and the punched holly is from a Martha Stewart punch.

Best news--it only took about 15m to put it together!  I love colouring, but sometimes I also love not having to colour :-)

I'm entering this in the following challenges:

Creative Cutting Challenge - Christmas card (using digital files)

Forever Friends Challenge - use ribbon

The Paper Girls Challenge - Christmas or Winter

Designing with the Hybrid Chick

Today I have a couple of cards to share with you featuring digital goodies from the Digichick.  I am excited to share with the news that I am now part of their Hybrid Chick design team!  Yay!  Here are the first couple of cards I made experimenting with the digital images and papers:

The first one, above, uses the doodle border, Dear Santa letter and the stars from the Wish List Letter to Santa Bundle.  I laid the items out on my page in the computer using the MDS software, and then sent to print.  I added some red sparkly stickles over the stars, added the holly leaves (Martha Stewart punch) and made the envelope, then layered all together.

This second one was actually very easy and fun, and something quite different than I have done before.  I used the digital kit called Sugar Sands Christmas Beach Bundle.  There are a ton of cool digital papers there, but the thing is, I haven't used digital papers, so I wasn't sure if my printer would do an adequate job, or if this was really going to work for me, but I have to say, apart from the brown base layer in the card, the rest of the card was all made using one sheet of card stock (I used Aquabee marker paper).  And everything coordinates!  The flower, the leaves, the sentiment, the vintage image, and the background paper all came from that kit.  So nice to not have to dig through my craft room to find that perfect sheet of paper or that perfect prima!  For the leaves and flower, I printed them, cut out (by hand) and then shaped on a mat and layered on the card, adding a button and some ribbon to dress it up.

Anyway, I know that many of you, my crafty friends, haven't tried using digital images yet, and I am planning a little tutorial on how to use the digital images using different software.  I tend to use MDS now, but all of what I did could have been done in Word, which most folks already have on their computers, so let me know what types of things you'd like a tutorial on with some step by step photos and I will put something together for you :-)

And also, a huge shout out thank you to Laurie at Doodle Pantry for helping me out with getting my watermark edited to integrate with the Hybrid Chick one.  If you ever need a custom watermark, Laurie is the go to person!

I am entering the following challenges with these cards:
Robyn's fetish - make it vintage
Just keep on creating - Christmas
Simon Says stamp and show - stamp without ink
The Pink elephant - punches and dies
Speedy Fox/Marks Finest - pop up (hard to see in the photos, but several pop up dots used on both cards.

Progressive challenge with Flourishes

This weekend Flourishes hosted a progressive challenge.  I played along with it and had a lot of fun, and wound up creating something fresh and interesting and different than my normal style, too, which I enjoyed.  Here you go:

At Christmas I often bake cookies, then package them up all pretty and give them as gifts to colleagues or neighbours.  I'm not sure if I'll do that this year, as I'm cutting back on baking with an eye to losing some weight (sigh!) but figure eventually I'll break down and bake, and when I do I'll have this pretty card to go with the treats.

I've used a newly released set by Flourishes called Fresh Baked.  The picture was stamped in Tim Holz black distress ink, and coloured with Copics, and then I added sparkly stickles in two different blue colours.  The sentiment was stamped in Onyx Black Versafine, with some colour carefully added with Copics, and decorated with some rhinestones.  

The other day I was at a stamping class and noticed that at least half the people there (including me couldn't make bows easily.  For myself, I knew it was because my beloved Bow Easy was at home, LOL!  I sure do depend on it!  I used it here for the lovely double bow added on the top.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:
Flourishes Progressive Challenge
Crafty Card Makers - more than one punch/die cut
Forever Friends - Use ribbon or twine
The Pink Elephant Challenge - punches and dies
Come and get it challenges - flourishes and swirls

Some of our favorite things

For us here in my part of the world, this was the last day off of the last long weekend (ie. 3 days due to a stat holiday) before Christmas...eek!!  I went by Micheals this morning at about 10 am and it was hopping, crafty Christmas decorations were flying off the shelves and there was a huge line up to check out.  I expect a lot of beautiful things were not only purchased but also created today!

For my part, I have a festive card to share with you, what else would you expect LOL!

My challenge here was to make a card using only Gina K stamps, using DP from her online store, an embossing folder, a die cut, and hand cut stitching...and I did it, amazingly enough!

The sentiment and flower are both from GinaK (rubber) and the pin stripe paper in the back is digi paper from her store.  For the flower, I stamped it 3 times, hand cut it out, and then shaped and layered it up, and added a pearl centre.  I added some pearl paint on top of the embossed tree, and used the Copic Airbrush system to add colour to the sentiment.

Good luck to all of you as you get ready for Christmas!

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:
GinaK - Free for all Friday - a few of our favourite things (embossing folder, die cuts, hand cut, DP (GKD digi paper Basic Wardrobe Digital Paper Pack)
ABC Christmas Challenge - Vibrant colours
Clear it out challenge - Red (using old red DP that I've been hoarding for several years)
CCEE Stampers - use a portion of an embossing folder
Southern Girl Challenges - Christmas
Christmas Stamping all year long - anything goes

Country cottage

The weekend is here again, Yay!  And it is a 3 day weekend.  I am off to a good crafty start.  Today I have a card to share with you using one of my favorite Thomas Kinkaid images. 

Usually when I use these images, since there is so much detail, I tend to do them in black and white with no colouring.  However, for this one, I did colour using Copics, and I'm really happy with the results.

The technique I used was to stamp the image using Versafine on to Velum.  Then I let it dry for a while, then coloured the reverse side (the back of the sheet) with Copics--that way there was no smearing.  Putting a white piece of paper underneath the paper when I was colouring made the stamped image pop up and easy to colour.


This may seem intimidating, however it was axtually not too long to colour, as the image is naturally shaded, so for example on the grassy area, I only used one green marker, and the different colours and "light" that shows through is due to the stamped image being shaded in some areas.

To finish it off, I stuck in in a frame, added some pearls, popped it up with dimensionals and mounted on the base.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Cornish Heritage Farms - Thomas Kinkaid images
The Squirrel and the fox - flowers, hats or horses (we've got flowers and horses here)
MarkerPop Blog - Colour with markers, NOT on white paper  (I coloured on velum)
Addicted to stamps - flowers
Little Red Wagon - Colouring

Inspiring cards

Today I have some happy inspiring cards to share with you.  On World Card Making Day I was lucky enough to win a fun card kit from Simon Says.  Since it arrived I have pulled each piece out and touched it, and held it up against the others, showing them all to hubby one by one (boy, is he thrilled LOL!), but just couldn't bring myself to use them.  I am such a hoarder!  Finally, I opened the stamp set and dug out the washi tape and buttons, then found items in my craft room that kind of went with the theme, so that I could save the lovely one of a kind pieces from the kit for a future day {roll eyes here}.

So here are the first three cards:

The colour scheme is based on what they had in the May 2012 card kit  which Simon Says sent me, but slightly substituted.  The main colours are Pool Party, Real Red, and Chocolate.  I've used a Stampin Up digi set in MDS to create the balloons.  The sentiment has been stamped in Versafine in a brown colour called Vintage Sepia.

In the MDS software, you can choose to recolour all or part of an image, so I coloured the baskets chocolate brown, and the other parts the Real Red and Pool Party, so that they would completely coordinate with my paper.

You may notice some shine on the balloons, I printed them on Best settings on photo paper, which came out really well, and then hand cut them.

This last one came out completely crooked, but I figure I'll give it to someone forgiving.  Despite the crookedness, it's still my favourite of the bunch.

So a huge thank you to the folks at Simon Says for all the inspiration they gave me with this stamp kit, even though I'm only using a couple of items directly from it, I have gotten a lot of enjoyment from that card kit.

And on to other news, yesterday I finally ordered a Silhouette cutting machine, after wanting one for over 3 years, I'm so excited!!!  If you have any tips or suggestions for getting started, please share those with me.  I've been madly searching online for tips and tricks (and of course, free cutting files LOL!), and have loaded the software up and experimented a bit.  Now I'm waiting for the post now to bring it to me, sigh!  I'll be thrilled with any suggestions you all have to share with me on what has worked or not worked for you, or sites you'd recommend I'd check out online :-)


I'm entering these cards in the following challenges:

Card Crafters Circle - Patterned Paper
Sentimental Sundays - Dimensions
Hybrid Chicks - National Chocolate Day  (chocolate coloured sentiment and accents)
Pink Gem Challenge Blog - Polka dots
Totally Gorgjuss - Anything with a button
Sweet Pea Stampers - Support

Spring themed Tissue box holder

I've been cleaning up my computer files and deleting old photos to make room on my hard drive and came across these pictures for a fabulous project I made quite a while back, which seems to yet another one that missed my blog.  Since I loved this project, I thought you might like it too so I thought I'd share the photos with you.

This tissue box cover was made using a tutorial from Splitcoast Stampers that you can find here:  http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/tissueboxcover/  It is actually very easy to create the box itself, and then it is up to you to decorate the way you want.

On the top, you see that I used pop up foam dots to put a pretty frame over the opening.  The frame is made with the decorative oval window die from Heartfelt Creations.  

All the flowers and butterflies, hummingbird and lady bugs are also from Heartfelt Creations.  What made this feasible and not too labour intensive was that there were coordinating dies to accompany many of the stamped images, so I didn't have to spend too much time doing hand cutting.

The lace on the edges was from our local fabric store, and I used some distress ink on the edges for depth.

I hope this inspires you to try out this tutorial, it was fun and relatively easy.  I think now I'll have to do a Christmas themed one!