Stockings

Were stockings ready for Santa?

Merry Christmas, everyone! If the stockings you hung weren’t filled with presents last night, hope they have been topped up this morning. You know – Santa’s been pretty busy!
I am one of the lucky ones, so Santa stopped by and left me some goodies. What can I say? I am beyond grateful!

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These cards showcase a die-cut from Stix 2 Anything and I bought a pack of these a while ago from Craftmall. I still love to use them on Christmas crafts. First thing I did was to decorate the stockings. I used my white gelly roll Uniball pen for this and when ready, I went on to create the backgrounds.

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imgn0555One of the cards has got a panel created with a Heidi Swapp chevron stencil using some distress inks in green. The front card has a first layer with a cream recycled card which has a sentiment stamped at the top. I adhered the stencilled panel, then the stocking and finally I added a red ribbon bow on it.

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imgn0551The second card has a background created with a sentiment stamp from one of the Create Christmas sets. I stamped it using an Artiste dye ink (Red) all over the front card base. A velum panel holds the stocking, some white sequins create interest and a cream string bow gives the necessary extra dimension.

Many thanks for stopping by my blog and Happy Christmas wishes to you all with the hope you enjoy these holidays together with family and dear ones!
Talida

Christmas Wishes

Hello, dear friends and crafters! I’m sending my best Christmas wishes to you all today!

imgn0089It’s the 24th of December and we’re all getting ready for the celebrations. While my favourite biscuits are baking in the oven, I’m trying to catch up with the posts on my blog.
This year I made a lot of seasons’ cards and I would love to share them with you.

imgn0086This card features another mini Xcut die from Docrafts – the stocking one. They came with a lot of new products this year and I love the mini dies, especially the filigree ones. I chose to combine two of the sentiments sets ‘Happy Christmas’ and ‘Best Wishes’ and use only two of the words.
The card front is embossed. I used the ‘tartan’ embossing folder and it (the card) has just a few elements on it in order to keep the CAS (clean and simple) look.

Christmas Whishes

Christmas Wishes

When I adhered the stocking, I chose to use the bits and pieces from 2 different die-cuts (red and white). My wink of stella clear brush came in hand and gave a bit of shimmer to the sentiment. Both, the stocking and the sentiment have some white gel pen dots for a nice finish.
Thanks a lot for stopping by.

Happy Christmas Wishes to you all,
Talida

Bells are ringing

Hello again, dear friends and crafters! Can you hear the bells are ringing? They are just letting us know that soon we’re all gathering in our homes and by our Christmas trees.

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imgn0071The cards today feature a mini Xcut die with some filigree bells.
I used kraft recycled card in different colours and also some metallic/shimmery and glittery ones. The twine ties the bells and it is either simple in white, red, purple or in assorted Christmas colours. The inks match the colour combination of the die-cuts and the twine. And for these cards I chose two sentiment stamps from Docrafts Create Christmas series sets: Merry Christmas and Seasons’ Greetings.

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imgn0064These cards match the challenge of making at least 5 cards with the same stamp or die. They also go in the CAS (clean and simple) category of cards. The die-cuts are pretty intricate but I love them.

imgn0070Many thanks for stopping by and wishing you all the best,
Talida

Snowflakes, Snowflakes

Hello,there! Just a few days left until Christmas and I would love seeing some snowflakes falling! It would be great!

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imgn0168Now, till we have some real ones, please, let me show you some stamped ones.
For this card, I used the snowflakes from Docrafts’ Create Christmas stamp set. It is one that I received as a gift with my Creativity Magazine last year (I think).
I stamped them using Dew Drop fast drying pigment ink in Moonlight White.
The details on the snowflakes are metallic accents using some Sakura gelly roll pens, Papermania watercolour pencil in red and/or my Uniball- Angelic Colour in white.
I chose the sentiment from the Krafty Christmas stamp set from Trimcraft. I’ve recently used the reindeer stamp from the same set.

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imgn0174Each of the cards has either twine or ribbon tied on the front cover in order to add dimension and interest. I used Fancy Twine and some twine and ribbon (bought from a local haberdashery store owned by my neighbour).
I love that they are CAS (clean and simple) – not too much, not too many.

Hope you like them too and thank you for visiting my blog.
Talida

Christmas Presents on Blue Kraft

Good morning, everyone! What about some early Christmas presents? Wouldn’t this be awesome?

imgn1108Today, I have a card with lots of them. They are stamped with a fast drying ink in Galaxy Gold onto blue recycled card. I enjoy crafting with recycled Kraft card a lot these days. It is of good quality and it gives you room for trying a lot of techniques. Read more

Reindeer Greetings

Hey, there! Reindeer greetings to you all! Santa is gathering all the last minute letters and I am sharing with you my latest cards. For these, I used the same stamps and created 5 different ones. Actually, that was my challenge for this Christmas: make more cards using the same stamp set. And well, I succeeded to make even more! Then, I mixed the sets, as in this case, and pushed creativity further. 😉

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I made the top-folded card bases from recycled card. This type of card became my favourite. I stamped with Docrafts Artiste dye ink (Chocolate, Red, Metallic Jean Blue) and fast drying pigment ink from Tsukineko (Gold Galaxy). The stamp sets I used are Docrafts Create Christmas (came with a Creativity magazine), Tall Urban Stamp – Craft Christmas and Krafty Christmas by Dovecraft.

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The snowflakes have dots added with a white gel pen. I think this gives a lot of interest. And I put some glossy accents from Ranger on the reindeer’s noses. This gives dimension and a lovely shine.
The reindeer are coloured with Docrafts Papermania watercolour pencils.

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Thank you for reading this blog post and look forward to having you back here, soon,
Talida

Peace and Joy

imgn0262Hello, everyone! ‘Peace and Joy’ is one of the many cards that are to be shown on my page during the following days until Christmas.
It is a clean and simple card (CAS). And I really like the way it turned out.

The card base is made of 280 g kraft recycled card. I have discovered there’s a Romanian craft shop where you can find it at a very good price and high quality. And I highly recommend it.
Onto the card base I stamped – using Docrafts Artiste dye ink pad in ‘Chocolate’ – one of the stamps from last year’s Docrafts stamp sets ‘Folk Christmas’. Once it was dry, I added colour using some Papermania watercolour pencils. When finished colouring, I wrote the sentiment ‘peace and joy’ using an Artiste gel pen in white. With the same pen, I added a few dots on the robin’s tail’s feathers to create interest.
In order to increase the focus on the area where the stamped image is, I tied some white twine in a bow, glued it with some glossy accents and I trimmed a thin piece of burgundy card and glued it as to look like a frame.

Hope you enjoyed reading this new post and look forward to having you back on my page.

All the best,
Talida

Flowery Notes

Hello, dear friends and crafty people! The post today is about my first notebook. It is a flowery notes sewn notebook. And I hope you like it.
A while ago I saw a #docrafts tutorial on how to do bookbinding and got the idea to create a handmade notebook. I thought, at first, it’s complicated. But then, I said, hey, why not try it and see if that’s really the case?!Though I had in mind that it might take a while to do all the sewing and cutting, it turned out to be less time spent on these as initially expected. And it worked wonderful and I love what I created!
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Recycled Kraft Bookmarks

IMG8505xi IMG8506xiHi, everyone!
Today, I have the second part of the recent bookmarks series. The ones today are using a mix of stamps, brands and a bit of handwriting too.
I have used the bookmarks dies from Avery Elle to die cut out of recycled kraft card in white and brown/natural. Lately, I’ve become a huge fan of this type of card not only for its quality but also for keeping it green.

To embellish them I used some of Avery Elle’s Ellie stamp set – the heart balloon, the tiny flower, the grass and the sentiment ‘smile’. For one of these bookmarks I chose a Gorjuss girl from the mini collectible stamp series – ‘I gave you my heart’, to whom I added a mouth and a nose with a Stabilo fineliner in black. Docrafts Papermania poppy rubber stamp made a perfect fit for another one of the bookmarks. And for the last one in this second part, I went on with stamping the heart balloon and just added some handwritten sentiments.
Colouring was done using Promarkers and for the handwriting I used my Stabilo fineliners. I have also added red twine and some natural hemp twine.
The bookmarks turned out really great and I love it!

Photo credits go to Cristian Istrate.

Wishing you all the best,
Talida

 

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.

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Jill’s Crafty Challenge

A week ago, on November 25th, I entered Jill’s Crafty Challenge posted on Docrafts.

It was my first attempt to make something starting from a sketch, though I have had the wish to do that for quite a while.

Here’s the sketch:

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There were many ideas flooding my imagination and had to stop at one.

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I used Docrafts’ Create Christmas clear stamps.

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Could not resist to leave the card without the personal touch: a bow.

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There were lovely cards enrolled and I had a great feeling of who the winner would be. She made a gorgeous scrapbook page. 🙂

Now off I go to finish the details for the 1st Year Anniversary Prize of my Facebook page.