Thursday 13 August 2015

Something old... something new....


Evening you lovely bunch of crafters out there...

How are things with you? Things here have been lovely today - nice and relaxing, doing normal house things like cleaning, cooking, shopping. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

As you know, we had a slightly different type of show on Create and Craft the other day, and here are the samples that I made for the show. As you can guess, the show was aimed around the Rococo christmas dies, see below, and also for the NEW papers, cardstock, and PENS!!

I had started writing this little post for you the other day, but was falling asleep so thought I would come back to it the night after... needless to say it's been a few days, so apologies for that! However, I'm here now, and let's get back to it.

Firstly the beautiful candle and poinsettia...


I love this design as a diecut, and even more so as a stamp. You may have seen me cut this from Funky Foam then stamp with it. It makes an awesome way to use your dies in a completely different way to be honest... and gives fantastic results each time. The best thing is you can use your pens to colour in your stamp, and then use that to stamp with! Perfect!!


Awwww my cute little gingerbread men. How sweet do these look? These were die cut, layered then coloured. I added some glitter to the 'iced' parts of the little fella's to give it some sparkle... I think they look sweet coloured in.

This next card is a small base card with the centre made from the smaller wreath die....


The berries were coloured in using the two lightest reds, then I added some glaze to the tops to give them some shine. Simple but quite stylish.

Now, this one below was a little different. I coloured in the snowflakes on the background papers to match in with the colours of the card - amazing what you can do when you have a pen to match eh?!


The papers and the sentiment are from the same pack, then the presents I cut from cardstock, coloured in and popped onto some cream Tonic cardstock and coloured it with a little grey to give some shadow.

The paper on the next one is also Tonic papers... they are so beautiful too - great designs for your cards and great colours across the two packs.


This little puddin' has to be my favourite... I loved colouring it. It came together so simply, and I just let the matting and layering do the job for me. A very easy card for anyone to try.



These last two were really all about the shading - shading from light to darks on the snowflake, and shading the same on the sleigh to enhance the pattern on the outside. I used browns, reds, the gold metallic and also the gold Nuvo Drops too.

I hope you liked the inspiration - sorry we rushed through the cards on the show and couldn't show them in great detail, but here they are to give you some ideas. If you use them for inspiration, don't forget to show me what you make. It'd be lovely to see it.

Until next time...
Happy Crafting!
Jo xxx

Thursday 6 August 2015

Ladies Day.....

Good evening everyone.... Phew, what a busy couple of weeks I've had!

I can finally catch my breath for a minute to share a quick blog post with you to show what I've been upto! Tonic have bought out some fantastic stamps and pens, and they are really something... they are perfect in every way - but I feel a need for a trillion other colours in the range!!! 

As you will see from the samples below (not brilliant photos I'm afraid, as they were taken at night hence the flash!) they blend wonderfully within the other colour sets in the range.... let me talk you around them. 

This is the first stamp in the Ladies Day set. There are two in the Ladies Day, two in the Elegance and three in the Accesories. 


The card above I started off with the browns for the skin tones, and the greys for the hair. I did try to keep saying yesterday - always start with the hair and skin - if you do, the dress will always look right, and if you make a mistake, you haven't wasted so much time.

I then moved onto the dress, where I used the three shades of yellow, and mixed it with one of the oranges and one of the reds. You can see they work beautifully together. I also chose my papers before I decided on the colours for the layers, decorations or indeed my colouring. It makes life easier!

Now the card below is the second stamp in the Ladies Day collection.


Isn't the movement on this stamp just wonderful. Fantastic artistic illustration work on all the stamps within the range, hand drawn by our illustrator Lucy, who works down at the Office. What a little gem she is...

I must admit, this is my favourite set.. I know I shouldn't have favourites. So. The papers came first, as usual, then the skin tones and hair coloured first before choosing the colours for the dress.

For the skin, I chose the fair skin tones, but added some darker shading with the lightest brown, 461, to the outer edges, then blended it all together. The hair was the three shades of brown, with a little dark grey, 491, for shadows.

I chose to stamp the image again onto some patterned paper to match the background, then fussy cut around the edges to paper piece on the image. I still added some shading around the dress with the medium and dark greys, 487 and 489.

The last card was finished off with some Nuvo drops too, and you can see they blend perfectly with the colours of the pens and also my cardstock.

Well, that's it for tonight I'm afraid... I hope to be back sometime the next couple of days or so to show you a little more inspiration.

Until then, Happy Crafting all. xxx
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