Creative Cucina

For those of you who read my blog, I apologize I’ve been MIA for a month. A month! It was just a case of life. Work, holidays, things like that. I have not stamped in a while. In fact I decided I was not going to send out christmas cards this year because I didn’t have time to make them (heaven forbid I buy a pack of greeting cards–people will think I’ve gone cuckoo). Today, being snowed in, I decided (read guilt-tripped) to make Christmas cards.

 

I had my eye on these from www.tinyprints.com and thought I could make them instead. I love tinyprints and have ordered before. I highly recommend them!

Supplies: Cardstock: Baja Breeze, Riding Hood Red, Whisper White, Shimmery White; Ink: Chocolate Chip, RHR, Stazon White; Stamps: Season of Friendship, Best Yet (hostess set).

This is a 4.25″ x 5.5″ postcard (on the back I printed out a label that says the greeting with our names). The snow is piece of torn shimmery white cardstock stamped with the Best Yet sentiment in RHR. I matted the picture on a piece of white and RHR cardstock. The background is Baja Breeze with the tree from Season of Friendship stamped on the far left side. Then I stamped the snowflakes in stazon white b/c I was NOT bothering with craft ink or emossing. The little bird I stamped in RHR on white cardstock and cut him out, sticking him on the tree with a glue dot. Yes I cut out 28 tiny birds!

Surprisingly, I don’t have enough christmas cards for all my family & friends but I’m out of envelopes and out of patience (LOL) so I’m using random xmas cards I made a few months ago. They may not be as cute but they’ll do!

I made this card for a swap. Since I figured most people would be doing Christmas cards, I stuck with Valentine’s Day to make sure there was some variety. Plus, I have these cute stamps just waiting for projects like this–I can’t resist this little guy. He’s soo cute!

The inspiration came from this card over on Splitcoast. Can you believe I’ve never used Kraft cardstock until now? Well I have to admit, I kinda like it 🙂 Kathleen’s card caught my eye for two reasons: the kraft and the googly eyes. I have A TON of googly eyes in all sizes left over from assorted Halloween projects that I have to start using up. This was perfect timing!

Supplies: Cardstock: Kraft, Sweet Always DSP, Chocolate Chip, Regal Rose, Whisper White; Stamps: Love Owlways; Ink: Choc Chip; Accessories: Regal Rose 5/8″ grosgrain, paper piercer, scallop edge punch, watercolor pencils, blender pen, regal rose marker, googly eyes, crystal effects, dimensionals.

This year my christmas tree will be all peridot and gold. I was inspired by some ornaments I saw at AC Moore a couple of weeks ago and decided on that color scheme. During that same shopping trip, I picked up some clear christmas ball ornaments to play around with. These were so fun to do, and addicting. I went back to buy a second set of balls so I could experiment with more color combinations. I tried many different things, these were my findings:

• Using reinker mixed with  water was easiest to ensure even coverage before glittering
• Colored glitter made for more intense color, coverage, and reflectivity as compared to dazzling diamonds alone
• Mixing the fine colored glitter (red, green, dazzling diamonds, and blue) produced a neat result

More pictures & explanations

Supplies: Reinkers, cosmo glitter, dazzling diamonds.

From left: (1)Riding Hood Red reinker with Romantic Red glitter; (2)Baja Breeze Reinker with Dazzling Diamonds; (3-4)Kiwi Kiss reinker with Green cosmo glitter; (5)Baja Breeze reinker with blue cosmo glitter; (6)Kiwi Kiss reinker with mixed glitter (see bullet above); (7-8)Kiwi Kiss reinker with green cosmo glitter; (9)Real Red & Pacific Point Reinker with purple cosmo glitter; (10)Pink Pirouette with Silver glitter; (11-12)Kiwi Kiss reinker with Dazzling Diamonds.

Directions: I found a great tutorial here. As I said before, this project is a lot of fun, easy for all skill levels, and the result is WOW!! Try different color reinkers with different color glitter, add rub-ons