09 Mar

Women’s Day Freesias

Hello, everyone! The post today is about celebrating Women’s Day. As a yearly habit I made some cards for Gabi, my beloved husband, to give on this great occasion.
So, I thought about the theme in advance as I wanted to have beautiful spring flowers. The best and most beautiful flower stamps and dies sets I recently acquired (well, here, there is a real debate with Gabi and sometimes with myself on how recent these are :-)) are Fresh Freesia from @Altenewllc. I bought them from Tara and Rick’s great online store. A store that I love and I cannot thank Keren enough for recommending it to me.
Now, back to the cards, I stamped 60 freesias onto thick white card and started colouring them. Once I got by the 2oth, I realised that my idea of having 3 freesias on a front cover would be too much and would take like forever trying to finish them on time. So, I had a bit over 20 freesias ready coloured with my Promarkers and went on die-cutting them using the coordinating die. Oh, my, how I loved seeing them die-cut! Awesomeness overload!

Then, I had an idea already in my mind on how to have them attached to the front cover of the card. But somehow…it looked not right. So…I chose to fold the front side of the card in 2 and then I adhered the freesia. It chose not to adhere it entirely, so I could create a bit of an overlay in order to create dimension. For the sentiment, I Asked Gabi what would he like to say and he chose ‘hope your day is amazing‘.

Well, as the project took around 3 days, I took a lot of pictures. And when I say a lot, you can definitely think over 100. 🙂 I know, a bit obsessed. But, I loved so much what I came up with! Gabi has been really kind to help me choose only 10 pictures. Thank you, love!

Oh, I was almost going to forget to mention that I made all the envelopes using my 1-2-3 Punch Board from We R Memory Keepers. This is an incredible tool! An I’ve made tons of envelopes and mini boxes so far!And I look forward to making more!

Hope you like my cards, many thanks for stopping by and look forward to being back here real soon,
Talida

07 Mar

Daisies

Hello, everyone! March is one of the busiest months of the year, with lots of celebrations, birthdays and lovely projects. One of my latest favourite brands is ClearlyBesotted. I found some digistamps over at Simply Cards & Papercraft and thought they are just the perfect ones for the occasions I had in mind.
Then I chose two of the stamps and edited them so that I had a bunch of daisies and a lovely sentiment. Once I had them arranged as I wanted, I went on and printed the image onto a thick white card.

Now, colouring has become one of my favourites too. I used Promarkers in the following colours: poppy, crimson, pastel pink, dusky rose, pink carnation, tan, pastel beige,pastel yellow and buttercup for the daisies’ petals; gold, buttercup and pastel yellow for the central disks; pastel beige, pastel green and leaf green for the stem and for the leaves. There was a lot of colouring in layers until I got to the desired nuances.

04 Mar

Mărțișoare #March Trinkets

Hello, everyone! Hope you are all happy, healthy and sound, enjoying the first days of spring. The post today is about M?r?i?oare, our famous March trinkets and about celebrating 2 years of having the website operational in this new format. It’s been a lovely journey and I am proud to see how much I’ve grown since!

#March is the month when we celebrate spring and when nature turns back to life and being green. There is an abundance of flowers and colours after all the winter months. And we all love to see that!

Happy #M?r?i?oare was my first post on the renewed look of my website 2 years ago. You can see how it looked like here. There have been many posts since and hopefully I’ll be able to keep up the rhythm in sharing with you my love for art & crafts. You can also have a look at last year’s brooches made with the same theme.

These trinkets were made of felt, die-cut with the XCut mini die flower set. They were created with the idea of being used as brooches with various occasions, not only in March, after removing the red&white twine specific for the celebration. I made a lot of them, but with this post I’ll share the first batch.

Hope you like them as much as I do and hope to be soon back on the blog sharing some more crafts made for the special days of March. The photos were taken by the amazing Cristian Istrate, who succeeds to capture the beauty of art with the camera in his hands. Thank you.

My best wishes and a lovely spring to you all,
Talida

17 Feb

Women and Mother’s Day

Hello, everyone! As Women and Mother’s Day are celebrated at the same time in my home country, I usually make a lot of cards to celebrate them both.

Actually, I kind of make lots of crafts and projects that I sometimes have so little time to share with you all. And by the time I get to them it is either too late, not matching the season and/or the project does not fit any longer with the level of crafting I am at. These cards were made last year, but somehow ended up in being published just now.

I started from one sample/model and adapted each set to make it just a slight different from the others.
The sets kept the same colour choice and pretty much the same fabric types, papers and embellishments. I have used blank cards and envelopes in cream, Docrafts adhesive pearls in white, Docrafts Papermania Capsule Collection adhesive crochet border in French lavender,for the flowers I used a puncher from Tonic Studios Punch & Stamp Set and Dovecraft Back to Basics IV Paperpack. All cards were stamped with an identical sentiment stamp marking the occasion: ‘It’s your special day’.

Many thanks for visiting and wishing you all the best,
Talida

12 Feb

Guest Designer Call – March

Hi everyone! Hope your day went well and that you and your loved ones are doing well too!

I’m on the blog today with a project that I entered in the Guest Designer Call for March over on #GerdaSteinerDesigns page.

This project is a birthday card for one of my nieces, for Maria. She is such an adorable girl! Her birthday is on the 16th, but this year she celebrates it earlier. Happy birthday lovely girl!

For this card I used the #digistamps set called Dancing Penguins, created by talented Gerda. I am definitely in love with her designs! The card base is made of pink textured card. The front background is made of a piece of watercolour card, very lightly touched by a brush using some of the Distress Ink Minis (no. 4) after spraying it with some water. I fussy cut the penguins, the presents after colouring them with Promarkers.

I wanted to add some dimension, so, I added some Wink of Stella touches on the gift boxes, the hats and the scarves, then, a bit of Glossy Accents on the penguins’ beaks and feet. For even extra dimension, I adhered one of the penguins and one set of gift boxes using some double sided foam tape.

And of course, there is some baker’s twine wrapped around the upper side of the front cover, tied in a bow just to give it a bit of a final touch.

I will also enter this call with some of the past projects where I used #GerdaSteinerDesigns:

https://handmade.talidaionita.com/angels-lights/
https://handmade.talidaionita.com/dancing-penguin-shaker/
https://handmade.talidaionita.com/new-handmade-calendar/

Many thanks for stopping by and for your kind comments,
Talida

02 Feb

Put some music on…

Hello, friends and crafters! Wouldn’t you put some music on if you had some headphones nearby?! I know I would. Actually, I love listening to music as much as my brother enjoys creating and singing it. Which is… a lot!

The card I share with you today is the one I made for my brother’s birthday. Of course, it has a musical theme and a nice mixture of materials,textures using different nuances of blue, white, the transparency of printed vellum, baker’s twine and natural colours of kraft and wood.

13 Jan

Country Landscapes

Good morning, dear friends and crafters!
These landscapes die-cuts are so lovely! I made them using the Memory Box die called ‘Country Landscape’. As a lately habit I enjoy die-cutting more than one item using the same die out of different coloured paper, card or textures. The ones I used here are die-cut out of white and dark blue cardstock, glitter card in blue. The best part of all is that I also used the negatives (the remaining paper/card after I die-cut) and combined it with different coloured landscapes. A great idea with an excellent effect! Read more

12 Jan

Make A Wish

Hello everyone,

The cards today are inspired from a card K. Werner made for her Holidays Series. I call this ‘Make a Wish’ set. It works well, I believe, for more than one occasion: either for holidays or for a birthday.

For these wish cards I used different stamp sets and combined them so they could match the design I chose for each one in particular. So, two of them use stars and ‘make a wish’ stamp, the other two have presents and the ‘fun-presents-cake-friends’ stamp. They have all been stamped on black cardstock in either gold or white. The dots were made using Docrafts Artiste gel pens in white and gold. The presents have a bit of Promarker fine touches (colouring) in red (Poppy and Crimson). Each of the cards has either ribbon or twine in gold and/or white. And they are all adhered to a recycled kraft card base.

I enjoyed very much adding those dots with my gel pens and wish to create some more cards using them. I find it very relaxing and it gives an interesting touch to the card.

Have a lovely day,
Talida

08 Jan

Angels & Lights

Hello everyone! Hope your day started with a smile and happy thoughts.

The post today is about two cards I made using these lovely angels. The #digistamp comes from Gerda Steiner Designs. I have discovered her page while following Julia Altermann’s creations and videos. Gerda creates such cute characters and I am so grateful for all of them.

Now, on to the cards, I can say that I adore this angel as it reminds me of my niece Antonia. Just look at this adorable face! Read more

07 Jan

Acts of Kindness Bookmarks

Good morning, everyone!

I’ve been pretty busy these months and today, I have a set of bookmarks to present as part of my acts of kindness. You’ll probably wonder why or not, but the idea behind this is nothing more than being kind, giving without expecting anything back.
Jennifer McGuire has started the Acts of Kindness campaign in the US. There were a lot of #sharehandmadekindness crafts worldwide. And I loved the idea.

This was somehow planned a long time ago, but waited until Christmas to share them with a lovely team. So, in order to know how many bookmarks I needed to make, I trusted my lovely elves to help with an approximate number. I got 25, but made a few extra, you know, just in case something happened.:)
I went with white and red for the card and die-cut the bookmarks in both colours. The bookmarks die I used are from Avery Elle and I got them from Onestopcrafts. Each recipient got a set of 2 bookmarks tied together with some red and white twine. For the sentiments I used Acts of Kindness Hero Arts stamp set created for Jennifer’s campaign. One of them says: ‘A bit of kindness to brighten your day’ and the other ‘throw kindness around like confetti’. Of course I added a heart on each of the white bookmarks for an extra touch.

Then, I packed them all in an envelope created by myself using the 1-2-3 Punch Board from We R Memory Keepers, a tool I got from Craft Mall. This is such a useful tool, especially when you have to create different types and sizes of envelopes. My niece loves the bows you can make using it.

Many thanks for stopping by.
Have a lovely day,
Talida

06 Jan

Dancing Penguin Shaker

Hi everyone!

Today, I have a shaker decoration to show you. I also call it a Dancing Penguin Shaker Ornament.
It looks pretty simple, but I can tell you it takes quite some time to make it ready to be added on your tree as a decoration. Let’s say that I worked an entire morning just to create it. Shakers have an awesome effect especially for children. And this one was a gift I made for my lovely niece Antonia.

To create the shaker I die-cut 3 times the WPlus9 Anastasia Tag out of thick kraft cardstock. I ran two of them through my XCut machine and die-cut the shaker window using the oval frames that come with the tag. I have also die-cut a piece of acetate and a double -sided foam adhesive with the same tag die. I adhered the foam adhesive to one of the tags with a window frame and ran through the die-cut machine to make a window in the foam adhesive pad too. It’s been quite a challenge to make it to the end!

05 Jan

New Year, New Calendars

Hello everyone,
Hope your year started in full speed, with lots of energy and in good health!
The post today is about the new approach I envisioned for my handmade calendars. Read more

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