Wednesday 31 December 2014

A little reminiscing.........

 
 
Good Morning all.....
 
Happy New Years Eve, I do hope that the new year will bring lots of good health, fortune and happiness to you all.
 
I have had such a busy time over Christmas with the family that I have not had time to play with anything new craft wise so I have been doing a little reminiscing and though that it seems such a long time since I have seriously sat down and done some colouring with my copics, I am so out of practise as others things have got in the way and I used to love stamping, masking, embossing and colouring images. I had a little look through my archive of photos and found a few Christmas Cards with simple layouts but images that I coloured and thought that I would post them today for you to see.....
I am by no means a professional at colouring but it was watching Kay Carley at a demo that really got me in to copics and I really enjoyed using them, anyway here they are.....
 
 
I really love Penny Black Stamps and have a huge collection of them. These were two separate stamps and I used to love masking them and creating scenes.....
 
 
Amazing how different it looks in another colour.......
 
 
Penny Black again, three different stamps this time....
 
 
He is such a cute snowman and again one of my Penny Black favourites.....
 
 
This one is an old Pink Gem stamp, lovely image.....
 
 
A different colour again......
 
 
A lovely old Pink Gem Owl image, so cute.......and finally......
 
 
The lovely Pink Gem reindeer........
 
Well it is a quickie for today folks, I do hope you liked my reminiscing. Have a fantastic New Year and please keep yourselves safe tonight and I wish you all a very Happy New Year....
 
Big hugs
Lisa B xxx
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Tuesday 30 December 2014

Poinsettia Sparkle


Good morning, this is another scheduled post, with the final two Christmas cards I made for the December class.........



I used Bright Red Sparkle Medium through the Poinsettia Large Imagination Crafts' stencil on Imagination Crafts' Black Satin card for the card above & Soft Purple Sparkle Medium for the second card..........

 
 
I masked off all of the poinsettia stencil, except for one flower & applied the Soft Purple SM though it onto white card to create a focal image. I found a ribbon & brad in my stash that matched the SM.
 
The Sparkle Medium looks so good on the black satin card that it very little embellishing.
 
Poinsettia Large   Sparkle Medium Bright Red    Sparkle Medium Soft Purple     
 
Thanks for visiting the blog today, I hope you continue to enjoy your Christmas break. There will be another scheduled post from me on Friday.
 
Kirsten

Monday 29 December 2014

Gold Noel

 
Morning crafters, even though Christmas is done I thought I'd bow out with this gold Noel number. :o)  It's my take on the last workshop we had in December, I loved both the Snow and Noel but decided to match mine to go with my Christmas theme of black and gold at home.  (Sorry the gold looks a bit yellowy in this picture)
 

 
So first of all I used white Gesso and gave the Anna Marie Designs MDF Noel Plaque two coats, drying in between with the heat gun, then painted the whole think in black acrylic paint, again letting it dry well.  I then coated it in the Imagination Craft Crackle Medium and setting it aside to dry for a while.
 
In the meantime I prepared all the trimmings by dabbing the pine cones in a little Gesso using my finger tips, a bit messy but fun and it looks great too. 
 
For my Poinsettias I used a couple of dies I have in my stash to create them and cut them out in gold mirri card then matted them onto black card.
 
Once the crackle medium was dry I quickly painted it with white acrylic paint to get that lovely crackle effect, then left that to dry too.
 
Once it was all dry I took the imagination crafts Champaign Gold Sparkle Medium and using a Brayer and a glass mat I rolled the medium until it coated the brayer well before putting onto the word, you can't really see it very well here, but I can assure you it does sparkle :o)  I also dotted the pine cones in a little of the Sparkle medium too.
 
Once that was all dry I put it all together using a glue gun.  Below are photos of my Snow and one of the large MDF Christmas Trees, I made three of those in all and gave one to my daughter, she had silver and black and one to my daughter in law, whose tree was all gold. I forgot to take photos but have asked them to do that for me :o)
 

 
 Well that's all for 2014.......Wishing you all a very Happy New Year and see you again very soon.
 
Love Jan xx
 

Saturday 27 December 2014

Singing out Christmas......

 
 
 
Good Morning all,
 
How was your Christmas, did you get lots of lovely thing?
 
Well it's not that I am obsessed with food lately, it is just that I have not had any time to craft so I thought that I would show you today the other cake that Jo (my sister) and I made when we made the other cake for the hospital raffle HERE ......
This one was a Christmas present for my nieces mother and father in law who love Christmas cake, so here it is.......
 
By now Jo and I were both a bit tired ( she had been up since 3am, works really early mornings ) and we had spent most of the day on the other cake and it was now 6pm when we started decorating this cake........
 
So I set about making the little choir boys whilst Jo was knocking up some snowing icing to coat the cake with.......
 
 
Singing their little hearts out......
 
 
The hair is always the difficult bit......
No comments about big ears!! ......my fingers were getting sore at this point.......
 
 
Jo made a couple of little sparkly trees with stars and then we put it all together.....
 
 
 
We had a great load of fun on the day, such happy times together, I do love my sister very much.....
 
I hope that you are all having some special family time together and gathering those special memories to cherish especially with the little ones as they are not little for long.....
 
Have a lovely weekend and I will be back soon....
 
Big hugs
Lisa B xxx


Friday 26 December 2014

Farewell Father Christmas!



Well, that's it. Christmas is over for another year, I hope yours was wonderful. Did anyone get any exciting craft goodies from Father Christmas?? 
 
We still have a few more Christmas projects to show you here on the blog, so here is another of my cards....

 
The background was made with Imagination Crafts' Inkadinks, just mixing the colours with water on my craft mat & moving a piece of watercolour card through the liquid. I used Lilac Heaven, Mango & Blueberry Ice from the Brights set..........
 
 

 
 
I mixed Silver Satin Silkies with water in a spray bottle & then spritzed the watercolour card............
 
 
 
I used both Silver & Black Stars Sparkle Medium through the Rooftops & Fir Trees stencils & added a doodled border............


 
The finished card again............
 

 
Inkadinks   Sparkle Medium Black Stars   Sparkle Medium Silver 
 
Thanks for visiting the blog. Until next time, happy crafting.
 
Kirsten.

Thursday 25 December 2014

Happy Christmas Everyone.......

 
 
 
Happy Christmas everyone........
 
 
How has your Christmas morning started, did you cook the turkey last night or is it in the oven now?
Paul is not keen on turkey so its rib of beef for us with all the trimmings......
 
 I do hope that Santa has delivered you lots of goodies, that's if you have been good enough of course!!! :)
 
 I have not had a lot of time for crafting lately but yesterday I spent the day cooking, ALL DAY from 7am until about 7.30pm!!!
 
We always have a big get together at Christmas with my family on Boxing Day and it is usually at my Mum's but as Mum will only be there looking down on us this year my sister has taken on the ritual and we will all be getting together at her's and then on to my Aunty Shirley's in the evening to see the whole family.....I do love Christmas......such a great family time and I love giving presents..... the best feeling.....Mum will be there too as I have a lovely photo in a frame that I will be taking with me......
 
Here are a few pictures of my efforts ........
 

Melting moments ( right hand side ).......do you remember them? They took me right back to childhood....
 
Chocolate chip shortbread and then some dipped in chocolate of course!!!
 
There are also my famous (in the family) sausage rolls and millionaire's chocolate orange shortbread in the background too......
 

 
Mini gingerbread men with chocolate chip eyes and mixed toppings Florentines.  Mmnnn......


All nicely packed up in Christmas bags......
 

 
Then there was just mincemeat frangipane, six quiches and a trifle to follow for Christmas Day.......
 
Well, I have a glass of wine in hand while scheduling this post at it is Christmas Eve. I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and happy and healthy New Year and I will be back soon......
 
Big hugs Lisa B xxx 
 
 
 
 


Wednesday 24 December 2014

Its Christmas Eve....Giving a Little Back........


 
Good morning all,
 
Apologies for not being around too much lately, as a lot of you know by now I lost my mum on 18th November to terminal cancer and have been really struggling with everything lately as you can imagine, so not had a lot of time for crafting with trying to get Christmas sorted.....
 
However, the ward that took such good care of mum 'Lord North Ward' at Maidstone hospital, my sister Jo and I decided that we would like to raise some money for them as they do such a great job for so many people with desperate health issues and their love, care and kindness is never ending, they are such special people.......
 
So we took one of their raffle books for their Christmas raffle and sold the whole book at my Christmas party Classes and had to buy a second one to use at Sainsbury's where my sister works and she sold another half a book of raffle tickets there too. With other donations that came in we managed to raise £235.00 for the ward. We also had raffle prizes donations from Sainbury's, some of my ladies and Jo and myself so we also took up to the hospital 12 prizes for their raffle.......
 
One of the prizes included a brilliant cake ( yes, I say so myself! )......
 
My sister Jo makes cakes for Birthdays, Weddings, Anniversarys and all sorts of occasions and said that she would like to make them a cake, so as usual I muscled my way in on the action as I love to help to make all the characters and what a lot of fun we had doing it. So here goes, lets take a look........
 
We found the initial idea on Pinterest and did our own take on the idea. Basically, Santa has helped himself to a large portion of cake and has fallen asleep leaving Rudolf and his friends severely fed up!!!!......



A closer look at the details.......
 
 
Santa fast asleep.......
 
 
Cheesed off reindeer........
 
 
 
 
Santa's burst his pants.......
 
 
Even crumbs in his beard.......
 
 
Tumbling presents from the sleigh......
 
 
 
The finished cake........let me know what you think. If anyone is interested in having cakes made (locally) by Jo, you can contact me at lisabaker1@btinternet.com .
 
The donations are on going for the ward as we still have the donations from Mum's funeral; we did family flowers only and other donations to Lord North Ward, so I will let you know a final total when it all comes in........
 
Well, all that is left to say is have a wonderful Christmas and really enjoy the time you spend with family as it is so precious and I will be back agin to see you on Saturday......not sure with what yet as I am helping move my niece in London on that day as she is due to have her baby VERY soon!!!!!
 
Take care, big hugs......
 
Lisa B xxx