Cards-a-bundle

What a fabulous evening of crafting for our first Crafty Ink Buds Card Workshop on Thursday!  The lovely ladies who joined me loved the products and were happily chatting away whilst making their stack of cards to take away at the end of the session.  Just for all of you that could not make it, here is the selection of cards we had.

The Something for Christmas stamp is great and it is retiring at the end of the catalogue which is only a few days away!  It has 3 sentiments on one stamp, 'Merry Christmas', 'Season's Greetings' and 'Peace on Earth' along with the gorgeous string of baubles.  So you can just ink all of the stamp and all the sayings or just pick one and ink it (with markers).

A Simple clean card which we also scored with the Scorepal for an additional emboss style.  Of course, not forgetting a little sparkle on the middle bauble and the ribbons which were a single band of satin ribbon and then we tied small lengths of the other ribbons and the satin again around the centre in a knot. The satin and grosgrain ribbons are retiring so grab your favourite colours now!

For the next card we were using the 'Just Believe' stamp set and the neutrals colour collection.  A layering of card, colour and designer paper.  We used the small 1/2" circle to punch the corners to make it appear like photos corners and daubers with Crumb Cake ink to give it an aged look.  The second version here was to show how an alternative card layout could change the appearance.  The pearls and ribbon give a more feminine touch whereas the first card could be used for a male recipient I think.

Our beautiful colourful bird of a feather is the new 'Tweet Leaves' stamp from the Autumn/Winter catalogue.  To get the beautiful mix of colours we used marks from the colour collections. A lovely autumnal stamp and suitable for a variety of occasions.  The various leaves could even be coloured to be stamped on their own.

I am loving the In Colours 2011-2012 card with stamped images from the Tiny Tags set.  The decorative strips were the scallop and eyelet border punches. The eyelet punch is retiring so order now before end of September, as this is a must!

 The second picture has the stamped images in circle punched windows instead and the jewellery tags added with rhinestones for an extra special touch or two.

It was the Season of Joy set for the next card - another retiring product.  This set has been a fantastic set for Christmas, with the Christmas tree taking centre stage.  We teamed it up with another retiring punch, the lace ribbon border - snap this one up fast!  The paper on this is one of the lovely Christmas designs from the smaller format Festival of Prints stack - perfect for card fronts or smaller projects.

 

Now, here's another Googly Ghouls card for our last card of the night.  Our little 'Boo's are mounted on a rosette easily made with the Scorepal.

I hope you like all our cards.  Don't forget to get in touch for the next workshop date - 18th October where we will be making even more lovely cards for a variety of occasions.

Why Buy Shop Gift Bags?

I had made a few gift bags quickly myself for a recent Christmas Fair and hadn't got round to posting pictures.  A couple of ladies commented when I took them to last week's hostess party so it has prompted me to post pictures for you all to see how easy it is to produce your own good-looking (well I think so) Christmas gift bags.  Who wants to wrestle with rolls of paper and sticky tape when a simple bag and some tissue can do such a much easier job!

Here's a lovely Rudolph bag made with the Jolly Jingles Stamp Wheel in Cherry Cobbler and a small length of the striped Grosgrain ribbon in matching colour.

To finish it off I added a Rudolph topper made from the 2-step owl builder punch (body of the owl) and either the leaves from the 2-step bird punch if you have it or the Little Leaves Die for the Big Shot to make the antlers.

The  second bag is made from my favourite single stamp for Christmas, 'Dasher'.  Rather dashing, don't you think?  I love the white bag with the Bashful Blue contrast for my favourite Blue/White Christmas colours.

I have used the Season of Joy icicle and the Baroque Motif stamp for the decorative design with this, but you could just stamp a repeat of Dashers for a lovely alternative design too.

The sentiment is stamped from the Delightful Dozen stamp set from this year's catalogue which has multiple greetings for throughout the year so is a must-have staple.  I mounted it on a Top Note (Big Shot Die) and tied some of the gorgeous Whispher White ribbon for a bow.  I think this could even have rhinestones or glitter added for some Christmas sparkle too!

To Place an order, email me at craftyinkbuds@sky.com