12 Cards of Christmas T!m Holtz Style Card 12

So here I am at card 12. Yay I made it :) I made a huge mistake though and that makes me sad. I just didn't have the time or enough Star Dust Stickles left to fix it. Moving on lol. I used what I had again to create this card, keeping the techniques I liked and going with the flow :) Hope you like it. Wow never had so much creative focused energy in one month lol... This last card was inspired by T!m's 12t tag and as you can see mine is very very different lol.

Card 12


I started by using an old book my eldest daughter gave me to canabalise. I took one page and slathered Multi-Medium Matte all over it. I adhered it to a piece of cardstock and moved and scrunched it about as T!m did with his tissue paper. I was going to stamp some tissue paper my sister had given me but it was Missing in action from all the Christmas bruhaha lol.

I then painted book page with home made glimmer glaze. This mix is iridescent medium, glossy accents and fired brick (I have just started using Multi- Medium Gloss for this and love it!). I waited fro it to dry, which doesn't take long, then dripped more glaze over the light spots to give the splotchy effect.

I used the snowflake images found on SCAL 3 again. I cut these in several sizes with printer paper til I was happy with the size. Especially the one I was going to add a facet to.

I then used my eCraft to cut some plastic packaging (from lifestyle craft dies) into snow flakes. The packaging is a good bit thicker than acetate. I adhered the plastic to a stabiliser with removable tape so it wouldn't slide around. If you don't it slides all over and you end up with a big mess!!! I used pressure setting 7. Cuts  like a dream :)

I grabbed some different colours of alcohol inks and my pearl mixative and did a few testers on some scrap packaging from around the snow flakes. I chose to use Aqua/Pearl Mixative to colour them. I coloured and coloured with my Tim Holtz tool and my inks til I achieved a colour I liked. Some spots were too light so I went over them til I got it right!

I decided they were still too plain so I added some Star Dust Stickles to the snowflakes. I covered the two smaller ones and only did around the outside of the larger one.

I grabbed my Cotton White Stazon and some snow flake stamps. The large one is from Inkadinkado and the small from Stampin' Up. I reinked one end of my stamp pad then used the large stamp on my book page a couple of times. I then took the smaller stamp and filled in some spots.

On some scrap card I stamped my small sentiment. I made sure it was small enough to see through the facet before I stamped it. It's a fiskars stamp. I used black stazon ink.

I then went over this with my fired brick glaze, after it dried I used some glossy accents to adhere my large circle Facet down. I pressed down hard gave it a bit of a swirl then made sure it was positioned just so. I used some paper towel to wipe away the excess glossy. My only issue with this is that even though my glaze was made with glossy accents adding glossy as a glue seemed to leech colour from my glaze :(

I cut around the facet and then used more glossy to stick it to my snow flake.

I grabbed some white and blue cardstocks and palyed around with them to see what combo I liked better. My eldest daughter decided the blue was the matte and the white was the card. I used my Fired Brick Distress pad to add a teeny border around the white card. I used the pad direct to card, no tool.

I used double sided tape to adhere my book page layer to the blue cardstock. I piled everything on top to see how it looked and felt it was missing some magic. I went to clker.com to get an icicle svg and made a template out of plastic and cut it with my eCraft. I then used stickles in star dust to add icicles to my card base. This is where I made my big mistake :( Shhhh I won't tell if you won't lol. I also added a border of sorts. The template was larger than in the pic but i flipped it and cut it to do the last part.

I used foam tape on all off the snow flakes. The larger and smaller have thicker tape and the middle size flower has thinner tape on them to give dimension. I then stuck them to my card and Job done. 12 cards is finito. Cannot believe I got it done in my first year at having a go but there you have it :)

Ta Daaaaaa, All done. Happy dance :). Upload the last card to T!m's Blog and then I can put this baby to bed. Wow I am relieved it's over. For someone who has barely crafted much in the last year that was pretty full on for me. A great way to get back in the swing of things and be inspired to try out a whole heap of my new products!

Thanks for stopping by.
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

12 Cards of Christmas T!m Holtz Style Card 11

Wow another challenging one. When I decided to pack the colour in I didn't realise how hard it would be to still get the Christmas feel across lol. Hopefully I succeeded in making something both different and bright and colourful that still conveys "I'm a Christmas card!"  Please let me know if I succeeded! As ever here is the inspiration behind my 11th card, T!m's tag...

Card 11


Yay last post I need to write up :) I had fun using my new pencils for this technique!

My first step was too grab an A4 sheet of cardstock and randomly colour small areas of colour with my new  Derwent Inktense pencils. The first time I tried to be random in size and colour and it didn't work very well with small stamps. So then I started again and coloured random sized rectangles/squares.

I then used my aqua painter to make the colours more water colour like.

I used various stamps from Inkadinkado and Stampin' up til I found an image I liked. I went with one from Stampin' Up. I used perfect medium on the stamp and stamped the image onto my pretty paper. I covered this with black embossing powder and heat set from the underside of the cs. I then cut around my images.

At this point I have to say I started with the leaves like T!m did but I just wasn't feeling it lol. And I scrapped it and put the leaves aside for another project. The pencils inspired this idea.

I then grabbed a snowflake from the same set and stamped a lot of them in small spaces left from where I had cut things out. Embossed them in black and used Lifestyle Crafts circle and scallop circle dies to cut around them. I used florist masking tape (my 3m tape was Mia after the other card I used it on lol) to keep the dies in position and ran them through my Cuttlebug.

I grabbed  some shrink plastic. I have have both Poly Shrink and Shrinkies and these both work in the eCraft. I used repostional tape on the piece of plastic and stuck it to my stabiliser. I then opened SCAL 3 and used the three free snowflake images that came with the software. I enlarged them to around 4"/10cm and cut with my eCraft.

I then covered the three snowflakes with Perfect Medium and  UTEE and shrank them with my heat tool.

I moved  them to the side of my craft sheet and reheated them. I used tweezers to flatten the sides and try to straighten them up a little and left them to dry.

I  then made my own glimmer glaze. I used a small amount of Reeves Iridescent medium spritzed with water once or twice and mixed. I then added Multi-Medium Gloss and did some more mixing. Finally I added a  couple of drops ofTumbled Glass Distress Reinker. I started at one and built up to 3 or 4 as I made a full pot. This is now my preferred method for making my glaze. It's a nice subtle sheen. Both Glossy Accents and Triple Thick give a more glossy finish. I like them as well but this is my fave :) I made a divine dried Marigold one the other day.

I painted the back of a piece of semi-gloss cs with my glaze because it's nice and sturdy and thanks to my sister I have tonnes! She got from a recycle place (not quite A4, there is a slice missing from the long edge) and we went halvies :) Very hard to get a decent pic so you will see after the next step :)

I took my Evergreen Bough and distressed around the edges. Sorry this is still not a good photo.. It's coming I promise lol. You will get to see the sparkle and shine!

I grabbed my Pearl Mixative alcohol ink and covered the backs of my snowflakes.

I then decided they needed more and added rock candy Stickles... It didn't give the pop I was after so I added some frosted lace over that.

So I have the background done and as I have a lot of elements I laid them all out til I got the kind of look I was after. I do this quite often when I have a lot to put on a page or a card. I then took a photo. I forget where I wanted things when there are many so a pic helps me remember Just where I want all the little things when I start assembling. Especially If I am working in layers. It also allows me to see where I may want to or need to add dimension.

See that sparkle and shine?!!!! Scrummy lol. As you can see I added the words "On Earth" to go with peace in the pic. I used a scrap of my shimmery cs leftover from the background and I used a recollections double alpha for this and embossed in black again. I also added a white cs background to the large stamped image and distressed the edge with evergreen bough.

I decided to pop out the word Earth with dimensional foam squares and also used some small spots to raise the lower edge of the middle snowflake so it was flush with the stamped image.

I used double sided tape on the small snowflakes and multi-medium matte on the snowflakes with lil dots of foam tape under the middle one as well.

And card is done! Yay. So much colour on a christmas card! It's not what I originally set out to make but it is sooo much better. I am not used to seeing such a bright card lol but I love it. All that sparkle and colour just makes it something special to me...

So this is the last blog I needed to play catch up writing. My 12 cards are all done and dusted, all uploaded to T!m's blog.  I think I did pretty well to get all 12 Cards  done in my first attempt lol. Hope you like this card :)
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

12 Cards of Christmas T!m Holtz Style Card 10

So this one ended up being a real challenge. Cannot tell you how many different things I tried with it lol. I kept wrecking my tape or the image on the tape. I can also tell you gold leaf looked horrid on the back :). My 8 year old helped by deciding the placement of the bow and beads. Little artist in the making :). Here is my inspiration from T!m...

Card 10


We first off with this one my packaging tape was MIA lol so my daughter nicely got me some on town. I have at least 2 rolls hiding in the house somewhere all ready... but what can you do? lol.

I was making the tape images one at a time so I actually ended up making about seven images all at once to make sure I could try  different techniques and have standby's in case I wrecked them some more :) lol.

To start off I didn't have any facets (I did get some in the mail from ebay after I completed this card of course!) so I grabbed a couple of round buckle-ups and ties from one heart one mind. The paper pictured is a kaisercraft one but poor santa had gold leaf put behind him and you couldn't see him anymore lol.

I positioned my acrylic piece over a santa so that he was centred and  then cut a larger square around him. For the seven I did later I used a marker and drew a large circle around my image to cut out.

I then added my tape to the image. Make sure you put the tape over the side of the image you want to use. I made the image stick to the craft mat by making the tape larger. I the used my finger to "burnish" the image. Basically that means rubbing my finger or thumb over the tape til it is really well adhered to the image. I then cut the excess  tape off  and threw it in a bowl of warm water. Scary I know!

Make sure paper side is down soaking under the water and then use your fingers to begin rubbing the paper off. Try not to use your nails as this will scratch the image off the tape. As T!m says "rub til it squeaks". Make sure you get all the paper off then take out and dab some of the moisture off carefully.

This is where we say good by too this image as I killed it after the next step by trying gold leaf lol. Hello new image :) Another thing I learnt was definitely to adhere your tape to acrylic before doing anything else!  So use a small amount of glossy accents or a similar glue like diamond glaze etc on your acrylic piece and place over the image. The sticky side should be facing down and shiny side up as this is the side you add the tile to. Set aside for 30 minutes to dry and then flip the chip and image over. Carefully rub your fingers over the image to push any trapped spots of glossy out. Leave to finish drying. I used this technique to also make a smaller acrylic tile.

While that was drying I started on my background. I grabbed my Iced Spruce distress pad and covered a yellow piece of cardstock with it direct from pad to paper.

I then used the water flinging technique to add large droplets of water to my background and dried with my heat tool and then added Evergreen Bough distress stain to the edges with my ink blending tool.

I  repeated again with Festive Berries. Wow just realised I used the complete winter set on this tag :) Go me!

I grabbed a stamp I picked up for $2 at spotlight by fundamentals and my Evergreen Bough distress pad and flipped my image sideways to stamp a series of the image accross.

Off on a picture hunt seem to be missing some eep lo.. Ok sorry :( the pics MIA. So I will describe what I did next. I cut some letters with my cuttlebug using  two different fonts. I cut "Christmas" with the alphabet from the Holly Jolly giftset. I cut "Joy" from the Sizzix Sizzlits  Curls and Swirls alphabet.

I then got back to my ornament. I flipped it over and used a generous amount of Pearl Mixative and my distress tool to cover the back. Make sure to use a generous amount if you try this way or it starts to lift the image off the tape. I found the photo's Yay!

I used Multi-Medium Matte to glue down the the letters and then covered them with glossy accents. I left the "o" out as I had decided to replace it with another ornament.

I grabbed some thin red ribbon from my stash and looped some through my ornaments, leaving the tails nice and long. I made two bows, one small one larger. I adhered the bows with glossy.

I used regular tape to hold these on the back of the background so they could be pulled off and kept as ornaments and uses a small amount of repositional tape to stop then moving about too much. On reflection I would use some multi-medium or something like that  on the back of the ornaments after the alcohol ink to seal them. 

It still looked a bit plain so I grabbed a thin piece of tinsel from the christmas tree... lol. Four jump rings ,some beads and some tulle. I used beading tools and head pins on my three bead, the beads are two glass pearl 8mm beads and 1 Swarovski crystal, I createted loops and added a jump ring to each. With the last jump ring I opened it up wide and placed the tinsel inside and then added the three beads, red, crystal, red and closed it up.

I cut a thin strip of tulle, maybe 1"/2.5cm wide freehand and turned it into a bow. I glued this to the tinsel above the beads with glossy on miss 8's orders lol. And card done :).

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Happy Scrappin'

Purple

12 Cards of Christmas T!m Holtz Style Card 9

So here is card 9... Almost there.. Chugga Chuggin along lol. I had to change this up a bit as I don't have these Tim things lol. I even used my seedless preserves. Yummy! Lots of eCraft cutting going on in this card :) Got to love my purpleberry! So here is T!ms tag and my inspiration...

Card 9


Well I don't have the stamp Tim used or the dies so I decided that I would do a similar design to his using what I have. I think of all my cards this is the one that closest resembles his tag.

I started by using my fiskars stamp, sorry cannot remember the name at the moment lol, I stamped with Seedless Preserves from the autumn set (I had to sneak it in somewhere or my name isn't purple!!!), then covered with Ranger Superfine Embossing Powder.

Next up I grabbed my Evergreen Bough Distress Ink and my Distress Ink tool and covered the whole page. As we have already embossed the purple it acts as a resist. I then dumped more embossing powder over and heated with my heat tool. I love this technique so much I think I want to try it some more!

I then went on a mad hunt through my svg's to find one to use. I found a different lamp post to the one I used on card 7 but some of the lines were so thin they just did not cut properly. So I gave up on that idea and found a candlestick and candle instead. I love SCAL 3 for the fact I can ungroup images and hide some til I want to use them! Unfortunately I did not label svg's as I downloaded them so my free ones I have no idea where they came from :( Thanks to whoever designed the candle and candlestick svg I used. Below is the image I wanted to use :(

I opened the file in SCAL 3 and hid the base to cut the candle out of white cs, I then unhid the base and hid the candle and cut this out of black cs. I had tried a red candle but it just wasn't working.

I grabbed a recollections star and flourish stamp from the merry merry set and stamped my candle with Festive Berries. I embossed this with Ranger superfine and then glued to my base with Glossy Accents.

I grabbed a flower I had made when I was working on card 1. This Poinsettia is red and I have painted over it with Triple Thick to give it that nice shiny effect. I cut more leaves using Fundamentals 1 on my ecraft. The Poinsettia has yellow seed beeds in the middle and is made the same way as in Card 1.

With my pastel Bic Permanent markers i coloured in a piece of scrap shrinkies I cut in the shape of a flame and shrunk it with my heat tool.

I glued the flame down with glossy and the added little drops of glossy to the wreath I had leftover from cards 3 and 5. I then added red seed beads to take away the plainness.

I chose a font in SCAL3 and cut the word Christmas out of black cs. I adhered it to my card and covered in Glossy Accents. After I added the glossy I set this aside to dry in a warm spot for a while.

So once the card dried and I replaced the seed bead that had fallen off.... Card 9 was finished. As I said before this one is the closest to T!m's that I made. I really have tried to make mine somewhat different :)

Hope you are enjoying my 12 cards so far :) the people that are receiving them are loving them at least :) Please leave a message and a link to your blog iff you are enjoying my cards!
Thanks
Happy Scrappin'
Purple