LOVE-ly cards

With my first craft fair fast approaching I am trying to have plenty of cards available in many different categories and styles. I seemed to be lacking love, wedding and anniversary cards so I got making some.
I love working with my new Paperbag Studios stamps at the moment, the images are just so pretty.

Also I can't seem to stop making random stamped collages and then using snippets of them in my cards.

I am entering this into Hels Sunday Stampers Challenge, the theme is LOVE and to use things we love, well, I love anything Tim Holtz and especially my distress inks as you can see below, I also love my Paperbag Studios stamps so plenty of love from me.

The last frame of the year.....

The year is slowly coming to an end and how else could I end it other than with a frame. I started a distress crackle frame obsession not long after dicovering blogs, Hels' in particular, and I have since tried many techniques and made many more frames, most of which are hanging in my living room.

So I gathered 3 challenge themes and came up with this little rustic and old, music inspired frame. I textured the whole thing in terra paste and stamped a music stamp into it. Then I painted it in bronze paint and used a blue patina activator over the top. This stuff is from Modern Masters and I love it. Their rust paint is also fab!!!

I rolled up a few sheet music bits and distressed them and I just had to add a few Tim Holtz tickets as I just got the die and stamps for Christmas. And the quote is from the song Listening to you from The Who's Tommy rock opera, my all time favourite. So combining all these fab things created this lovely frame, it's gonna go on my wall with all the others.

I am enterting this into Hels' Sunday Stampers, of course, she's been a major inspiration and help this year. Also I am entering this into the Simon says Stamp Challenge and the Stamp and Show Challenge.

My first ever set of Inchies....

I made my first ever lot of inchies on Monday. It is one of the current themes over at Gingersnap and I thought I should give them a go.

They are so damn fiddly. I have to say Twinchies are much more my thing, these are just too small. But nevertheless I had fun making theme and to join in Sunday Stampers with the "IMAGINE" theme I thought I make a whole lot of them with a letter each.

Sunday Stampers and more christmas cards

The Sunday Stampers theme this week is Black.... so I wanted to join in with my christmas card making and thought of how to make a black christmas card, it's not a very festive colour after all is it?

So I got my perfect pearls out cause gold is christmassy. And that's what I've come up with. I had to add some white in to give it a bit of contrast, I hope that's ok. I let Hels be the judge if it's worthy of the Sunday Stampers this week.





I also experimented with the same card design and made it up in a krafty coloured, distressed look. I do like them both actually.

And here is some more christmas cards...... yes, lots of christmas cards!!!

You can see I recently got the Wendy Vecchi christmas set and I am loving the tiny type background wishing you a merry christmas. It goes with everything!

Sunday Stampers - Old and New

When I got back from Spain with my market finds like the wooden measure and old keyholes n stuff I already had this design in my mind, I just had to make an A out of the measure. Little did I know at the same time Hels was making an "Art" frame for Sunday Stampers and the theme is old and new. That's pretty creepy.
So I went ahead using old bits like the key, snaps, fabric tape measure etc and combining it with new things like the piece of chain, the vial (I poured some alcohol ink into this) and one of my new Wendy Vecchi stamps.
And there we go, an arty frame worthy of Sunday Stampers (I think) and it's also being entered into the Artistic Stamper challenge.

Things with wings.....

Hey everyone....
It's been a very busy day (and past week), I was away in Germany too see my family and I had a rummage around a flea market and brought back some bits... old fabric tape measures, snaps, keyholes... I have been playing with some of them already and the result will be posted later in the week.

For now let me show you what I came up with for Hels Sunday Stamper challenge.
I've had the birdcage die sitting in its box for a week now and finally had to get it out and play with it.
On someone's blog (can't remember where it was, sorry) I saw these layered flowers made from the tattered florals die and here I've used 4 flowers, all cut from Core'dinations whitewash cardstock in various pink colours. Just crumple it up, sand it a bit, cut flowers and there you go, instant embellishment.

I also had some red pearls lying around from my jewellery making attempt late last year (I decided to stick with card and ink!) and they work rather well on the birdcage I think.

Here is some of the snaps I bought a whole box of at the market, much cheaper than buying the idea-ology ones and they look the same. If you've been reading my previous post about the crackle paint frames, you'll see this is the pink frame I created back then. I've been using a lot of crackle paint recently, and I'm really into making these little frames. A trip to Ikea is overdue to stock up on frames!!!

I'm also hoping to do my first blog candy this week, so pop back for some goodies. It's all very exciting really! Read you soon!

Anika xxx

I totally forgot to mention that it is also being entered into the challenge on the Alter it monthly blog. Check it out if you havent yet. Some nice artwork for inspiration there. I hope this qualifies as something altered, I'm just never sure, but it's a frame I altered and decorated etc so surely it qualifies.