November Card Club - silver wreath, blue backgrounds and embossed greetings

 It was fun to make up card kits for this Christmas card class!!  Always so many options!!  I decided to use a few tools I have had for a while and not used.  I started with this wreath die and embossing folder set which I acquired from my sister, Sylvia.  I tried it in traditional colours but the time it took to get all the pieces finished and the berries dried was longer than we have at Card Club so I went with a quicker version.  I cut these from silver foiled cardstock and then embossed them - done!! The white layer (3") was embossed - I provided a variety of embossing folders.  I used the distress tool on mine.  I added the wreath to the white square using double sided tape being as I was adhering an embossed layer to an embossed layer and sometimes the surfaces are always aligned.  I provided strips of white cardstock and greeting embossing folder and they could chose which one they wanted for their card.  I used two different ones for my cards.  I adhered my backgrounds to my white cards then arranged my elements before adding them to my card.  I used 3D foam tape for the wreath element to give it a bit of dimension.  We all added a few rhinestones to our greetings to finish them off!!  Always the best to spend time being creative with friends!!!  Therese

Wine bottle bag

I worked on a design for a wine bottle bag which was two layers of fabric but not an outer and a lining.  Instead I stitched both layers together and then created the bag.  I made a finished seam on both sides and across the bottom.  I added the handles and the top inside strip afterwards which was interesting keeping the handles in their proper place while using my free arm.  It was a bit easier doing the top stitch because everything was secure.  I hemmed the inside strip by hand to avoid making another row of stitching in the blue outside strip.  I had decided on using the Japanese Knot for the handles but in the end it was not as effective as I had originally imagined and did not any ease of use so I will just do two identical handles next time.  This one is quite spacious at a diameter of 14.5 inches.  More generous than is necessary for a wine bottle but does accommodate almost any other liquor bottle which tend to be a little bigger in there body size.  I boxed the bottom which worked out really well and I will consider adding a cardboard square on the bottom for a neater look but it stands very well on its own as is.  I will reduce the size of the body next time to better accommodate a wine bottle.  It might serve very well as a knitting project bag though only for a single project.  Therese
 

Christmas cards featuring embellished snowflakes and decorative paper backgrounds

Inspired by the last set of cards I made with snowflakes I decided to make a few cards for my Christmas cards stash which has not been fed too many times this year!!  I will be in a time crunch very soon!!!

I started with both pieces of the snowflake die cut - the full quarter sheet as a background and the snowflake die cut.  I found some envelopes in my stash that were just a bit bigger than A2 which worked really well for these cards.  I chose some Christmas decorative papers and then cut cards that coordinated and fit in the envelopes.  I trimmed the decorative paper to size and then added the back of die cut which I paper pierced with several lines using my pattern tracing wheel.  I glued this piece to my background.  I coloured the snowflakes to contrast with both backgrounds.  I added tiny snowflake embellishments with a brad and then the large snow flake and added this large element to my backgrounds.  These were glued to my card fronts to finish off my cards!!  Really like how they worked out!!!  Fun to be inspired by previous projects!!  So I am adding 8 to the stash!!  Therese

 

Birthday card with a large fun greeting with a layered star embellishment and some ribbon flags

 This card is for another one of my grandsons who has a birthday in November!!  I started with a warm blue card to coordinate with splash in my colour printed graphic from Freepik and layered on a yellow zig zag background (SU) to which I added a strip of black cardstock.  I used a black marker on the edge of the greeting to define the edge and added paper piercing.  I used double sided tape to secure my fabric flags and then added a layered star embellishment to the lower left corner using a brad.  I added this large element using 3D foam tape.  Therese

Christmas cards featuring snowflakes and brads

My sister was in need of a few Christmas cards for her staff as well so I made up a few of these fun snowflake cards.  I used the large snowflake die (SX) to cut them from a quarter sheet of cardstock.  I used the piece with the opening instead of the snowflake.  I chose some snowflake paper from her stash for the backgrounds - three different blue purple pink and one red and green.  I created cards to fit envelopes from her stash.  Trimmed backgrounds from the decorative papers  and then layered on the snowflake openings.  I ran the tracing wheel around their edges to create four paper pierced lines - one on each side.  I adhered the snowflake layer to the decorative paper and then added a snowflake embellishment which I created with a variety of snowflake die cuts from my stash.  I secured them with a large brad to the decorative paper and then added this large element to my coordinating card fronts.  Totally fun!!!  Therese
 

Christmas Card Kits featuring triangle trees and gold stars

 I have made up 40 kits of this Christmas card design for my sister to use with the kids at her daycare.  I trimmed cardstock and decorative paper into a variety of different sizes and then glued them onto

coordinating card fronts which fit in a set of gold envelopes from her stash.  They will be relatively easy to put together.  I embellished mine with dots of glitter glue but they could use paint with a qtip to make white dots or a little snowflake stamp or small snowflake punchies to decorate the background and/or the trees.  Kids have no trouble making things their own so I expect the final results will be very unique to each child.   Therese

All occasion card featuring a collage background with a cute red truck!!!

 I started this card with a dark green card and then found a piece of hand decorated paper I could use as a base for my collage background.  Added brown a strip of orange coloured tissue paper just above the half way mark, then some torn trees and then bits at the bottom.  After gluing my background to my card I added the fussy cut and watercoloured red truck using 3D foam tape.  You can see a bit of blue - that is release paper from my 3D foam tape this is hitching a ride which I did not notice before taking the photo.  It has been sent packing!!!  Had fun making my background and colouring my truck.  This a stamped image - I do not own the stamp so I must have borrowed it a while back.  

I took a photo of my collage background.  Never know when it might come in handy!!

Therese

Slow Stitching - finished up the cute folk art bird from Chloe Redfern

 I have finally finished my little folk art bird stitching project.  I started it in September and it has travelled around with me on several outings and I have worked on it at home as well.  I downloaded the PDF from Chloe Redfern.  I chose to stitch it with the colours she recommended and love how it turned out though I found it quite busy because I reduced the pattern in size to suit my project.  Next, time I will reduce the amount of details I transfer to my fabric and will consider doing it in variegated floss which will mean much less starting and ending which would be less distracting as a slow stitching project.  You can see that the transferred lines have all disappeared after having washed it by hand with which was what I was expecting.  I used the gray marker from the small Ultra Clean Crayola marker set I bought in early September. I am very happy to have a washable marker for my stitching projects!!  The price cannot be beat and you can use the marker closest to the colour of your stitching if you like.  I will now have to find the other squares I cut out at the beginning of this project and the markers which have been misplaced before I can move on with a few more of these cute little birds!!  

I am linking to Kathy's Quilts blog for Slow Sunday Stitching.  Check out the other

interesting projects that this creative group is working on.  

Therese

All occasion card featuring a fun background, a watercoloured truck scene and a key brad

 I am working on cards for my family's special occasions!!  I started with a red card and added this funky background that coordinated well.  The truck is stamped though I do not own the stamp so it was borrowed from someone!! I painted the background starting with the ground and moved up.  I painted the truck yellow and added clear glitter gel pen to the hub caps, lights, bumpers and door handle which would have been chromed.  Added white gel pen to neaten up the white walls on the tires.  I added paper piercing on all four sides before adhering it to a black layer.  I added the layered key brad embellishment to it then mounted over my background using 3D foam tape.  Happy with how it worked out!!  Therese

Birthday card featuring a large watercoloured birthday greeting, god sequin star and colourful borders

 A card for one of my grandsons who is celebrating his birthday in a few days!!  The greeting is from Craft Starters and I watercoloured it to coordinating with my decorative borders (SU).  I layered the borders behind a gold layer, added the star embellishment with the cording and finally tucked the greeting under the star after paper piercing the edges with my pattern tracing tool. I adhered this large element to black card which I created to fit in a luxurious gold envelope I found in my stash!!  Therese 

Happy Hallowe'en

 Have a great day of fun!!  Therese

Fire starters made of twisted strips of kraft tissue paper, wax and cording to finish them off

 With the last bit of wax left in my double boiler I decided to try to replicate the fire starters my sister and I played at earlier this fall.  I would have preferred to apply the wax in a less messy way but I did not really know how to go about it so I just crumpled the strips (3" x 36") and dunked them in the wax and then let them drip of a little bit before twisting them.  I formed a round shape with the twisted end and then twisted and wrapped the remainder in and out of the round.  I ended up with both ends at about the same place and held them together for a bit until the wax started solidifying.  Would have been neater to use wax crayons like I have used for these fire starters but that would have required cooling the wax to solid and taking out the griddle.  In the end, they will start a fire very nicely and that was the goal!!  After they were cooled I tied the ends together with kraft utility cording to which I added a little red cording bow.  I made a dozen and have packaged them into a cute little gift box with red tissue paper on the bottom.  Everything can be burned so it leaves nothing to dispose of later.  Therese

Fire starters - wax and pine cones with cotton wicks

I had an evening last week with a bit of time on my hands so I dug out the wax I melted a while ago and the pine cones I collected before it snowed and made up a few fire starters.  We have been enjoying Girl Guide cookies - chocolate mint!!  They have been repackaged this year and come in these nice clear trays which I have been saving knowing they would come in handy for something!!  They work perfectly for these fire starters!!  I put a cupcake liner on the top of the opening in preparation for the pinecones to be ready to put inside.  I melted the wax in a double boiler and then turned down the heat.  The wax was not cooling very quickly so I removed the top of the double boiler and placed it on a cast iron frying pan which worked really well for lowering the temperature.  The lower temperature of wax makes coating the pine cone thickly very easy.  Once it temperature was right I got started.  I managed to get about 5-6 done and then had to put the double boiler back into the hot water bath to bring the temperature up a bit to get it a bit more liquid again.  It was an ongoing process - in the bath, out of the bath but it worked well.  I had added cotton cording to the pinecones by slipping it under the bottom arms and wrapping it around til it was at the top.  I tied a single knot there encasing the few arms at the top.  Not sure it was necessary to have it wrapped around the bottom part.  I think you could just tie it to the top few arms tight enough to secure the cord to the pinecone so you can dip it without burning your fingers.  It worked really well to have the cord to dip them.  With the wax at the right temperature it coats the pinecone thickly in a couple of dips.  Once my pinecone was well coated I placed in on the cupcake liner I had placed over the opening in the tray and simply pushed it down into the cavity.  Once the wax solidifies you can lift them out very nicely.  So if you choose to package these a different way for giving you would really only need a couple of GG cookie trays to make a production line.  I started with yellow wax and then added teal to the yellow which made green.  I managed to get 4 packages ( 6 each) of yellow ones and 2 green ones.  I did find a few pinecones that were too big for the cavity so it would be good to test your pinecones before you start to make sure they are the right size.   

After they were all done I found some heavyweight paper in my stash that was long enough to make some wrappers for the trays.  I just measured, scored, folded and then glued the flaps to each other.  Worked really well.  I will add some information and instructions to them before gifting them away!! The fire starters can be used up and the sleeve can also be burned.  The plastic tray is recyclable so it can be put in the bin for pick up.  No garbage to dispose of!!!     Therese

Sewing - a zippered bag with fun bright colours

There has been mention of bags for women in need in our larger community and I decided to see if I could make one that I was happy with.  For this one, I reused a bag that was already while.  I did take it apart to add the decoration and the zipper piece.  I reused the handles (30") they way they were and boxed the bottom for it to be shorter and more functional.  It measures 4" across the bottom, 15.5" tall and 12.5" wide.  I made french seams inside so it is finished neatly inside.  I added tabs to the end of the zipper to make it easier to open and close.  I added three strips of the fun turquoise fabric just to decorate the front a bit.  I stitched them on using a decorative stitch on my machine which also will help to keep the raveling to a minimum.  I have a desire to create panels using my scraps and quilting techniques which I can then use to make bags.  I will need them to be between 32" and 34" and I would make them wider - 16" to 18" wide so they finish up a little larger than this one.   Therese

 

Christmas card kits - Peace on Earth gold embossed on brown, a layer of red vellum and beautiful flourished metallic paper for the background

This is my last set of 6 card kits for my friend.  I started by embossing this elegant image of a dove and a Peace on Earth greeting (Stampendous) onto small pieces of brown cardstock.  I trimmed them to size and then used my distress tool to roughen up the edges.  I added clear glitter gel pen to the leaves and the earth below.  I trimmed pieces of red vellum to size and then ran my pattern tracing wheel to the four sides to create four rows of paper piercing.  I paired these two elements with beautiful metallic paper with  wonderful flourishes.  I cut green cards for all of them.  I glued the decorative paper to my green card.  I adhered the dove image to my vellum piece with double sided tape and then adhered this larger element to my card front using double sided tape.  Love how it turned out!!!  Therese
 

Christmas card kits - cute little tree tags over hand decorated backgrounds

While I was in my stash of Christmas supplies I also found this set of tags which I printed off a while back.  They are also from Homemade Gifts made Easy.   I trimmed them from the sheet using my paper trimmer, added a large gold brad in the hole at the top and a gold confetti star to the tops of the trees using glue dots.  Next, I embellished the pots with gold gel pen and gold shimmer water colour.  Added a tiny bit of brown watercolour to the stems as well.  I auditioned them with several different backgrounds and eventually selected two different hand decorated ones from my stash. They are paste paper from a session I did a while back with my sister.  We had a lot of fun that day!!!  I trimmed them to size and ran my pattern tracing wheel on all four edges.  I trimmed dark green card fronts for all of them.  The tags still needed something to I added two short lengths of gold ribbon which I secured with double sided tape.  That was much better!!  So I adhered my background to my card front, added 3D foam tape to the back of my tag and secured it over my background.  Green and gold - great Christmas colours.  Therese
 

Christmas card kits - black and white tags with colourful seam binding

For this set of card kits I used tags I found in my stash.  They are printed from a printable PDF that I downloaded from Handmade Gifts made Easy.  I printed them in black and white probably in error a while back and when I dug them out I thought they would work well with a neutral colour scheme and bright seam binding.  I cut black cardstock and gray backgrounds for all of them.  The tags were trimmed from the letter sized sheet of paper with my paper trimmer.  I punched the hole at the top with a hole punch.  I chose six different colours of seam binding and cut two pieces - one long one and then a shorter one.  I tied the shorter one to the longer one with a single knot and then inserted the bottom end of the long piece into the hole sliding the tied piece to allow enough on each end of the longer one to be folded over the top and bottom of the decorative paper.  I added two strips of 3D foam tape to the back of the tag on each side of the ribbon and two pieces of double sided tape on the top and bottom of the back of the decorative paper.  I adhered the tag to my decorative paper and then folded the ribbon ends over the top and bottom securing them to the tape.  I trimmed off the ends if they were too long.  I added glue to the center area and adhered it to my black card.  I trimmed the ends of the shorter piece to be reasonably even.  These all have different greetings on them so they will all be different though they all have the same card and decorative paper.  Again, I added extra little pieces of release paper between the tape and backer to facilitate their removal.  Therese
 

Christmas card kits - a cute little gingerbread man and a snowflake

I got an order for some Christmas card kits from a good friend of mine.  She has limited vision so I made an effort to make the card kits user friendly for her.  I assembled the focal elements and added little piece of release paper between the pieces of double sided tape & 3D foam tape so they could be easily be identified and removed.  She really loves making cards so I know she will be enjoying the process of making these up in preparation for the holidays.  

For this card I started with the little gingerbread man (SZ).  I die cut it from brown cardstock and then recut the little hearts from scraps of red cardstock and replaced them in his belly securing them in place on the back with regular tape.  I added small white rick rack to his arms and legs securing the ends on the back using double sided tape.  I added a small scrap of black behind his eyes and secured that with regular tape.  He still needed a bit of something so I tied white cording around his neck - that was better!!!  I found the red strips in my scraps and cut them to fit either landscape or portrait with a bit of trimming.  I added a snowflake punchie to it using a brown brad.  It allows the strip to be used horizontally or vertically with the snowflake on either end.  I added double sided tape to the back of the snowflake strip and to the back of the decorative paper as well as a strip of 3D foam tape to the back of the gingerbread.  I used all different backgrounds and cardstock colours.  I made one up for a sample and she had five kits to put together.    Therese
 

Floral fabric cards featuring little embellishments of flowers layered and stitched

I have finally finished the whole set of these wonderful little floral elements which came to me from my Mom.  I would guess they were part of a panel.  The images are beautiful!!!  I have trimmed them from their original strip, layered them onto coordinating fabrics and then stitched the layers.  Some with hand stitching and other with machine stitching.  I have made the one on the right a Christmas cards to celebrate the poinsettia on the front.  You can see the other four here on my blog. They are going into my stash.  Therese

 

Crocheted washcloth

I found a bag of yarn on our  tour of Trash to Treasure last week. It had some cotton yarn in this soft brown to peach colour combo and I thought I would try to crochet a wash cloth with it.  I did a bit of online research because I have not crocheted much of anything lately.  I found a place that recommended a #6 hook for this yarn and found one in my bin!  Easy single crochets - 31 with one extra on the end to turn the corner.  It makes a very decent pattern with enough substance but not too tight!!  It took me about 4 hours to make but it is very quiet handwork which is beneficial in so many ways!!  It was fun!!  Therese