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Happy November everyone! Good bye Halloween, and HELLO HOLIDAY SEASON!
At least that is what it felt like when I went for a walk in town today- I even counted three Christmas trees! :-O

I don’t normally make a lot of Christmas cards, but sometimes inspirations strikes – and that is exactly what happened with this card. I recently got the Dotted Detail die set from Mama Elephant, and I had the idea to create a double slider card. Many moons ago, I did share a tutorial on how to create a double slider card, but I thought it was time to create another one.

If you haven’t seen one of these before, they are a fun, interactive card where you can pull out a panel from the right hand side of the card. As you slide this panel out, a second panel emerges from the left! It can be quite a surprise, and always FUN! Take a look!

I have used lots of the Dotted Detail dies for this as well as lots of Lawn Fawn stamps – mostly from the Toboggan Together set, but also I added some extra images from the Stinkin’ Cute and Holiday Party Animal set.

The video is a little longer than normal, as it not only shows the design process, but also explains how I have made the slider mechanism. Be sure to watch right up to the end- as we have an exciting new end screen to share! YAY!

There were two things that I wanted for this card – firstly, I wanted the colours to be soft and fresh – so there is actually very little copic colouring on this card. Every colour was blended out with the colourless blender to result in an almost pastel look. Secondly, I wanted the open card to have a continuous landscape. Can you see how the rolling hillsides continue from the front panel right the way across the left and right to give the finished card a cohesive look!?

Let me leave you with the video, and please do leave a like, or a comment – they mean the world to me!
Happy Crafting!!

x
Lesley

 

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Happy Hallowe’en, Crafty friends!
And although I don’t have any scary spooktacular cards to share today, I AM working with an autumnal theme in today’s card, which features the Beautiful life and Country Wreath stamp sets, and the Autumn Sunset sequin collection.
Autumn is by far my favourite time of year, and after a walk in the woods this week, I was inspired to bring some of the colours of the forest to my card!

So I reached for my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolour palette and a piece of Tim Holtz watercolour cardstock, which I stuck to my craft mat with washi tape on all four edges. To get the soft, muted colours I went for a wet-on-wet look. With a wide paintbrush, I wet the whole piece of cardstock, and then dropped in dabs of watercolour. After applying the colour, I used a clean wet paintbrush to soften the edge of each paint blob, and to blend the colours into one another.

Once I had applied some colour, I used my heat gun to dry the paint, and then repeated the process. I probably did about 5 layers, and made sure that I diluted my paint for the lower section of the card so the colours would blend out into white.

Next I stamped the greeting using stamps from the Beautiful Life stamp set. I used my MISTI tool to stamp the images twice, as the watercolour cardstock is quite bumpy and I wanted to ensure a nice even impression.
Once my greeting was in place, I took some of the awesome leaf stamps from the Country Wreath set, and randomly stamped these in black ink, to create the impression of falling leaves. I coloured these using my Spectrum Noir colouring pencils, making sure to blend autumnal colours together on each leave to give a rich result. Over the top of each leaf, I added a little Twinkling h20 paint, which gives a gorgeous golden pearlescent sheen to each leaf. However, this ended up making the leaves less vibrant, which was a bummer. I then had the idea to stamp each leaf again, but offset it slightly, and emboss each image using a shiny gold embossing powder. Didn’t it turn out great in the end!?

To finish the card, I added a little stitched detail to the edges using a die, and I gave a little splattering of gold paint to the card. Last but certainly not least, I added some of these gorgeous Honey bee Stamps Sequins from the Autumn Sunset collection.

And that was the project finished!
well, I better go and get my pumpkins carved….I hope you have a beautiful day and a SPOOKTACULAR evening!

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Hey there friends!
Have you ever felt that you are constantly playing catch up? Like your To-Do list is more of an essay? That is exactly how I have felt recently! Its been busy at work, and we had a wedding to go to which required planning and organising, and all in all, I haven’t really had much time to get my crafty therapy on!

I know that I do this crafty thing for me. It is 100% for me. And believe me when I say that it is therapy. In the last few days in particular, I have felt myself being impatient and grumpy – like a wicked wasp. I don’t like that version of me – but alas the ugly beast arises every now and again.

And lucky for me, I have an amazing husband who knows me, and understanding me and my needs. Today he made some arrangements to take Princess Piper out of the house so I could get some crafty therapy. He even came home with some grocery shopping! I am one lucky duck! I love him!

It felt great! Not only to get some crafting done, but also to cross some things of the list. I could felt the tension slipping out of my shoulders. YAY!

It wasn’t until I was finishing making today’s card that I realised something, and had a little giggle to myself. I had made a ‘Thank You For Your Kindness’ card, and I had put a bear on it. Funnily enough, my nickname for my hubby is BEAR! I guess I was truly very grateful, and this subliminal gratitude seeped out into my card making! LOL.

Anyway… enough rambling, and more crafting!

Today I am mixing up some Lawn Fawn and Mama Elephant stamps and dies. This card features the Page Huggers stamps & Park Avenue dies from Mama Elephant and the Big Scripty Words and Jump for Joy stamps along with the large and small stitched rectangle dies from Lawn Fawn.

Be sure to watch the video to see how this card evolved. You can probably tell that I didn’t quite know where it was going to end up, but I just kept going and it all turned out rosy in the end!

Here’s the video for you to enjoy! Please do leave a LIKE if you enjoy it, and subscribe for more videos.

Have a fab day and I will be back tomorrow with a card featuring some Honey Bee Stamps as I am also on their blog tomorrow. See you then!

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