Favourite 5 2014

So I've chosen my top 5 Christmas cards, now Debby is hosting the top 5 creations of the year!

Now where do I start to choose just 5 of this years's cards?

It was hard to choose my favourite 5 Christmas cards of 2014 so this was even harder. To make it easier I decided not to  include any Christmas cards in this selection, even though my poinsettia would have made it in I think!

First off the block is this card made for a Muse challenge using my favourite die cut 'Glorious Gardenia' and some free DP from a mag.

My daughter liked it so much she asked me if I could make a retirement card for her first teaching mentor and now friend along the same lines. I love the die and have used it in lots of cards, even cutting it down and adding to it. I think I've had my monies worth from it!

Now this next card was inspired by one of my favourite crafters and  team mate at ATSM the wonderful Loll Thompson. It uses a collection of die cuts, some as they came - the tulips but others cut down - the window and bowl. I love stamping and colouring but equally I love using die cuts!

Now this card I have chosen to represent all those cards I made using LOTV images and coloured using Copics. This is slightly different as it is monochrome but I was really pleased with it despite not getting any recognition, but hey I was more than happy with it.

This next card was inspired by the colours of my bedroom! It was a colour challenge over at Less is More and rather fun. 

It uses die cut foliage, a MB circle burst and a LOTV circular sentiment. I love the colour combo, the whole house has that scheme in one form or another!

Now to my favourite card of the year. 

The start of this card was a photo over at Fusion which came together with a sketch at STAMPlorations. I had only recently discovered their stamps by the lovely Shery, so it was great to use them in this way.  It nearly didn't get finished as I smudged one of the top daisies while embossing it. When I tried to do another panel my heat gun refused to work, so I had to do a bit of judicious trimming and in the end all was well! It's so pleasing to create something that works and ultra special for others to say the same!

I also have another card I would like to mention -

Now I know that this is number six but as Debby included an extra in her Christmas 5 so I've done it here. This card was picked up well after it was posted originally in May but at the time of writing it has been viewed over 1400 times, so some of you think it's one of the best, therefore I've included it here. 

It was originally made for a few challenges including CASual Friday and a CAS on Sunday sketch as well as a Less is More flower challenge.

So that's about it, another year almost over.

It's been a great 2014 so I hope that 2105 is just as good if not better.

Thanks to Debby4000 for the idea.

Thanks for popping around and see you in 2015,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

EDIT - 1/1/15  Mynn is also having an end of year link up so it would be a shame not to join in the fun.
                       and so is Lyndal over on her blog

  5/1/15 Totally forgot that Clear it Out Challenge Blog are having a favourite card of 2014 so I will also enter there.

Family @ Christmas

Good afternoon.

I've just eaten a very full turkey lunch that I started cooking with the help of my daughter at 7:30 this morning!

Usually we are awakened to the patter of Grandson's feet sometime after 6 but it was well after 7 this morning, still the oven got put on while we opened our pressies and cleared away the plate that Santa ate on his way through to deliver our parcels.

Last night at 17:20 GMT we saw Santa cross the sky in his sleigh as we did last year after a couple of false alarms, airplanes which Ben wasn't fooled by! We then had tea and took my 4 year old Grandson for a ride around the town looking at the festive lights. We went past a  particularly well known private display 3 times!

I know this is Christmas Day but while the rest of them are repleat on the sofa watching cartoons, I am taking the opportunity to post a card I made a couple of days ago but with all the prep didn't post.

I made it with a couple of Challenges in mind.

Less is More - Family

TIME OUT - Christmas is love with all the trimmings

CAS on Sunday - Christmas

Creative Inspirations - Christmas/ New Year

I still had my snowman family stamp out when this weeks Less is More challenge came up so it was a no brainer to use it again. While looking for a bit of card to stamp on I found this off cut from another card and the idea of a snow globe came to mind! The family were coloured using Copics and the snow in the globe were dots of white Cosmic Shimmer PVA. The base was cut from a scrap of black, stamped and embossed in white. The whole was lifted up on pads over an embossed background on an A6 white base card.

Well that's about it for this Christmas post. The others seem to have finished watching Mr Bean's Christmas so I suppose I better organise some coffees!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

To all my readers and followers.

xxx

Favourite Christmas cards of 2014

Last year I happened across the wonderful blog of Debby4000 and she encouraged us to choose our top 5 cards and she has done it this year too.

So here goes.

Don't you just love it when an idea comes together and that was the case when I was asked to be a GD at STAMPloratios recently. The sketch I had to use just suggested this design and I wanted to keep a fairly soft w/c effect using a Penny Black poinsettia and a Stampendous Christmas words stamp stamped then heat embossed in white then over inked with DI to complete. An end result I was really satisfied with and plenty of others thought the smae as it won a couple of recognitions.

This next card again used a sketch and came together really quickly. A sure sign of satisfaction!

This time its one I loved but it didn't get much love back except from the gals at Colour Me. I used a previously unused Noel die and my Personal Impressions snowflake set.

This next favourite was made for one of my favourite challenges, LOTV. I love using their images, they are such fun to colour. 

Lili of the Valley was one of the reasons I started to blog and I'm sad that they have closed their challenge blog, but not before I managed to win 3 Top 5's in a row. Whoop whoop. They always have hundreds of entries so it was mind blowing to win the last 3!

The card above was an entry into another of my favourite challenges, Muse using the camouflage die technique. At  Muse, the members get to vote for their favourite take on the weekly Muse and I have been honoured to be voted into the top 3 on more than one occasion.

This last card was made along with a set of 3 for yet another Muse challenge using the same DP.

The owl is from a Lawn Fawn set and made it into the top 5 list ahead of another favourite using the same owl because its linked to the set of 3 which I loved as well.

As you can tell, I found this really difficult to narrow it down to these 5. I think it's 'cos I love all my cards except the one's that don't make it to blog. I wont post a card I'm not happy with and there are quite a few cards in a box that have not seen the light of day! Looking back I can see how my style has changed over the year. Gone are the 'lay the DP on in loads of layers and throw the embellishments on' but I still can't give up the colouring, Copics or watercolours. My style is definitely CAS now, with a smattering of DPs. If it's been this bad to choose Christmas cards from this year it's going to be murder trying to narrow down the whole year to my top 5, stop by on the 30th for that post!

So thanks for stopping by and many thanks to my followers old and new and all the wonderful people who have left such positive and encouraging comments over the last year,

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

to you all. x

EDIT 5/1/15 Clear it Out Challenge Blog are also having a favourite card of 2014, think I will just about make it!

Snow Family

Good morning folks.

The sun is shining and Al says its really mild if a little windy out there this morning.

Don't really want snow before Christmas as the kids will be travelling over for Christmas Day and I would only worry about how they would get here!

I don't mind the snow if I have no where to go and the larder and fridge are full. Two years ago we were snowed in for a week as the snow collected in the drive to a depth of 3 feet and our miserable neighbour refused to help clear it so we drove across the frozen field after 5 days to get some shopping as the roads were clear! A delivery guy tried to deliver a parcel 3 times and had to take a photo to prove to his bosses that he couldn't get down the drive! The pleasures of living in the sticks.

Anyway down to business. I wanted to take part in a couple of challenges and they came together with this effort.

                   

The stamp is one of my favourite LOTV stamps that has had it's first inking this year for this card. I used Copics to colour and added a little Glossy Accents to the coals and Stickles on the bobble hats and foreground snow. I added extra snow on the hats using Cosmic Shimmer white PVA. The background snow was made using my Cuttlebug embossing folder, falling snow. I added some snowdrifts behind the image and fussy cut the family retaining the bottom of the panel as further snow.

Thanks for popping round and I hope you have a great Christmas. x

Last Day for LOTV blog

Good morning fellow crafters.

WARNING - a photo heavy post!

Today is a sad day because it's the final post from the ladies at LOTV ( Lili of the Valley) Their final challenge was last month and I was honoured to be chosen in their top 5. That made it 3 in 3 months!! Whoop whoop.

I shall miss the inspiration and the chance to take part in their monthly challenges. I hope they will be back with a bang in the new year with their new web page.

As a tribute I thought I would share some of my favourite cards using their gorgeous stamps.

This was one of my first cards that I blogged about using LOTV 'Wedding Couple' Sorry about the quality of the photo but this card has long since been sent, so no opportunity for another!

Here are a few more wedding cards

and finally one using just a sentiment verse.

Their range covers all genres and are fabulous to colour.

These are a few of my LOTV Christmas cards.

There are also ones for us girls,

and we mustn't forget the men in our life!

Well that was my tribute to the last day of the LOTV blog, :(

They aren't closing down the business, just refocusing, so I will wait to see what the new year brings!

Thanks for scrolling down to the end and apologies for some of the photography, I think I have got a little better! If you want to find more examples just scroll down to the bottom and click on the labels or search the blog for LOTV.

Congratulations Marina

Hi, just a quick post to go with my extra card for ATSM this week.

Although it is not my week to make an inspiration card, I have made an extra one to celebrate the forthcoming nuptials of one our retiring teamies, Marina.

CONGRATULATIONS!

I hope you and your future hubby will have a long and happy marriage.

Here is my card to celebrate the happy day.

Sorry for the poor quality of the photo but it was very bright when I took the photo and the silver embossing kept reflecting and this was the compromise!

As this weeks challenge is 

ANYTHING GOES, 

you've got free rein!

I used one of my new STAMPlorations boxed blooms and the silver embossed sentiments were from the same stamp club set.

The rose was stamped then embossed in white and w/c with DIs. I do love these flower stamps by Shery, so easy to colour! I cut an aperture in the top layer to allow the rose to show through, using a square of the same size from my Cookie Cutter set. Sentiment words stamped and embossed above and below the aperture in silver.

I shall enter the following challenges:-

Either Stamps and flowers May 2014

or

Stamps and embossing October 2104

STAMPlorations - On going challenge

Penny Black and More - Special Occasion

OK, why not join in and perhaps you could make it a congrats to Marina too!
Pop over to the main blog and check out the rest of the fabulous DT to see what they have made to inspire you.

The big guy

Morning all, 

I hope I find you fine and dandy and not suffering from the sniffles which are around here at the moment.

Tuesday morning brings us to the final challenge of the year over at Cardz4Guyz.

So how appropriate that it should be :-

THE BIG GUY

In other words we would like to see your male oriented projects featuring Santa himself.

My card was inspired by the awe and wonder shown by my Grandson last year when we all wrapped up to see Santa crossing the sky. (shh, it was actually the European space lab).

The look on his face was priceless as was his face when Santa rang to say that he'd heard he'd been a little naughty in the run up to Christmas!

I picked this DoCrafts stamp up in the £1 bucket at The Range a few weeks ago and thought it perfect for this challenge.

After stamping and heat embossing in black I masked off everything except the sky so I could ink it with DI 'Chipped Sapphire'. I added a little colour to the trees with a w/c brush and more DI, then using a Versamark pen, I inked the tree branches and dotted the sky. Next I added some chunky white embossing powder to create the snow. To stop the moon being too stark I brushed on some DI in weathered wood. The Penny Black sentiment was then stamped using a dark blue ink.

That's about it, pop over to the main blog to see what the rest of the team have made for your further inspiration and join in.

I shall enter the following challenges:-

Less is More - OLC Snow

The Male Room - Christmas