Category: Art and crafting styles

Started week eight with a scene inspired by the Art by Marlene beach hut I stamped … plus it reminded me of the holiday and I needed that!

Went for total pattern for day 51 – the circles were stamped but then went doodle all the way! Really love this! Again I am back to fabric designing! What a fun skirt this would make!

Went back to my collection of Darcy stamps for day 52 – isn’t this a cutie? then kept the doodling simple as really wanted the image to pop – so plenty of white space – unusual!

Next up I used this splodgy circle stamp to stamp randomly to the card and then did a simple background design.

On Thursday I went very simple with the stamped trees and then a doodled border. Just didn’t think it needed much!

Friday I took this postage stamp stamp and made some fun doodles sitting in the frame and then shaded around the stamps and gave it a grey background … I love this one ❤️

Saturday I was busy making the final Christmas in July projects and completely forgot until late to do my card … but got to it just before I headed to bed…

Stamped feathers and a lined background with some subtle green shaded colouring.

Heading into the final few days now … just five more cards to do to complete the 2025 series – very happy with what I made this year and the fact I kept it simple and a total contrast to last years collages with the postage stamps and circles as the themes. This year has been a real change of pace – and simple is exactly what I needed alongside the Christmas in July challenge!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Today I went very inky and had lots of fun with distress oxides to create these four cards for the theme of sparkling snowflakes.

The card designs are actually quite simple because I put all the effort into the background panels.

I started with smooshing the distress oxides and then added stamping, stencilling, splattering and then finally I embossed them.

I then stamped and embossed the sentiment four times. I also created a coordinating colour base for the mat for the sentiment using the oxides.

I raised the sentiment up before I stuck it down – this gave it a little dimension above the textured background.

I then die cut the snowflakes from glitter cardstock and added them.

I did vary the composition for each one – and of course the card bases I made out of two different colours of cardstock.

Quite a bright set of pretty cards!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Last weekend I went to the Warrington crop hosted by Hey Little Magpie and having bought three page kits designed by Sarah I mainly worked on them and then created a couple of pages using the scraps from the kits with two sheets of 12×12 added plus embellishments I took with me! The lovely Gwen is our official photographer on the crop days and I love this one she captured of me showing off my productivity!

Here are the three page kits I made for today’s Scrappin Saturday post!

I started with this one … I changed the title up a little and also added in sequins and some extra embellishments from my stash (pretty sure they were Hey Little Magpie embellishment kits).

Love the dark navy background and the pretty pastels – such a gorgeous page to put together.

Next up was this super bright page and again I added some sequins and some stickers from the stash along with some extra twine to add to the sticker bulldog clip.

Love the background paper on this – so cool! Makes for a fun modern page.

This third one is a really unusual one for me as rarely include more than one or two photos and instead managed 8! Albeit it is the same scene but all different poses/expressions – there were at least another four photos I could have added because we really did take a lot!

I had to slightly amend the sketch as my panel of photos was so wide but love the bright colours of the panel and those lovely modern floral cluster stickers.

I added more twine to this but otherwise kept to the kit I was given a little better!

Will share the two ‘’made from scraps’ pages sometime soon – but have to say a big thank you to Sarah at Hey Little Magpie for designing such gorgeous pages once again – it makes it so easy to be productive with very little effort when I go to crops!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Today’s theme was ‘give the gifts’ and I made a series of tags concentrating on using up scraps and then creating little clusters of presents for the focal element. This actually took a while with all the embossing but loved putting them together!

I created a range of size of tags using scraps to create striped panels and then either embossed or foiled the panels with gold colours (I did use copper for one) to make the striped panels more cohesive.

Then I stamped on scraps of white all the parcels in different colours and then added the decorative elements using gold embossing.

I fussy cut them all out and then added them to the tags.

A fun set of tags and all made using up scraps! Result!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

So today’s Christmas in July I went with traditional colour scheme of red gold green but decided to go for a modern look rather than a traditional look!

I started with the cover plate die from Altenew which isn’t specific for Christmas and cut it from white and then cut it from scraps of the Kingston foiled cardstock to create a mix of green and gold in the background. I didn’t need to cover it all as it turns out as I chose a big panel for the focal element and so could have saved some time and cardstock just doing the outside but I didn’t know it when I was doing that part!

Once that was all done I decided to use the Waffle flower layered stencil that creates the fab words with the coordinating die. After stencilling I die cut it out and then die cut it a few more times to stack them up so they are nice and chunky words.

I decided I needed the base panel of the red to separate it from the background and using the negative die cut I got the spacing correct (although a little wonky on the panel so decided to lay it wonky on purpose on the card to disguise the ooops!)

I added some scrap card behind the red panel to raise it up so that also gave some dimension.

I decided it needed an image so I went with the small poinsettia from spellbinders that I embossed in gold and then used the same colour of inks but water colored them to colour in the image.

I fussy cut the two floral elements and used foam adhesive to stick them in place.

I finished off with tying the twine around the top of the card (I had a moment of channeling Catherine Pooler who used to use twine like this a lot on her cards).

And then with the shiny background, the fun large words and the sweet little flowers I decided it was done!

So a modern take on traditional colours – what do you think? I think it works well!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

I went back to the Kendra’s card challenge and made card 8 for today’s Christmas in July card. It was a case of really enjoying and slowing down whilst making this card – which sometimes we need and it is what the crafting is about!

I used the fab Dimond Press stamp and die set I bought a while ago and hadn’t really used much – such a lovely vintage feel!

I coloured the image with alcohol markers and then added the shimmer ink for the details on the sleigh.

I also splattered the shimmer ink at the end.

The sentiment is from the same set of stamps – I embossed it on the red and then fussy cut it out.

I embossed one of the layers (the brown) with Timeworn Type and then added some additional ink to show the detail.

Love how this came out and how cute it is even with the vintage theme!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

For today’s Christmas in July I created another sketch …

… please feel free to use as you wish … but I would love to see what you do with it if you do so please tag me on Instagram or better yet pop over to the Christmas in July Facebook group and share it there so we can all get inspired!

Here are my makes with the sketch …

I used my last pieces of the Painted Christmas suite (I think I have enough cut off these for a couple of tags if I am lucky) for the large background banners and then stamped the foliage and die cut it. I added the sentiment label/ banner from the same green as the mat for the background.

It’s difficult to see on the photo but I did add a layer of vellum under the foliage cluster and the sentiment banner to add some separation – it’s clearer in real life I think and helps.

I added the script delicate die cut words – I thought they worked well against the bold green die cut.

I added some ribbon bows just to add some more texture and then called it done!

I just loved working with this paper over the years – sad this is the last large pieces left – but maybe that means I am allowed to buy new patterned paper soon as the stash is now severely depleted!

Hmmmm …. We will see!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

This set of cards was a bit of a chore and not entirely sure about the colours but hey sometimes you have to try these things! The theme for today’s Christmas in July was Night Sky. I ended up with these patterned papers from the magazine kit as they had stars on them!

Definitely more of an autumnal colour scheme than traditional Christmas… but with those cute animals I do think that they look cool!

I kept all the coloring of the images as greys – some cool and some warm greys because at night there is less colour saturation with less light – of course the bold paper colours contrast that!

I chose the orange toned foiled cardstock – I’ve decided to describe it as Bronze for the video though as it sounds less odd as a Christmas colour! 🤣

And can we have a round of applause 👏 for this super adorable moose! He is the entire reason I bought the stamp set – I just love him!

So here are my night sky cards. Yes it’s a weird colour scheme but hey I’ve gone with it!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

I decided to challenge myself for today’s Christmas in July with a colour scheme I don’t often think to do for Christmas cards – Navy, Purple and Silver.

I chose to use the Tracey Hay Alpaca Pals stamps and did lots of embossing with silver powder to create the snow globes.

I used my inks to watercolor the images and then added them to the panels of navy checked paper that was in the stash.

I then added a lovely purple sentiment and ribbon.

I used some gems to add the finishing bit of silver sparkle!

Super cute and quick striking cards!

Fun to push out of the comfort zone!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Another week of #indexcardaday and back at home so back to full use of my stamps again.

Started with a Darcy tree stamp – love the whimsical design and decided to create a scene behind them.

The next day I used a couple of triangle stamps to create a pattern and then added the doodle pattern in the gaps and then added the coloring! Fun and funky!

I decided to grab the Indigo Blu stamps for the lightbulb and the sentiment and then built the doodles around them. Used all warm colors then for the added colour.

For this one I stamped the striped panels and then outlined them. After colouring them with the blues and lilacs I decided to contrast the structure of the stamped images with some doodled circles.

I then missed a day so made Fridays on Saturday along with Saturdays! I used the same stamp set for both but totally different effect and techniques.

Loved both of these though! Such fun!

And there you go – another week done!

Happy crafting!

Catherine