Happy Christmas, Shimmer Card

Every December I say the same; "Next year I will start much sooner, and I know I've said it before, but this time I really mean it!" And every year I believe what I say. No exception this year - but this time I really, really mean it.... (I'm so gullible, I think it's true - I honestly do!).

Anyway, I did send TWO Christmas cards this year (yay, right?). Here is one of them:

The embossed panel is Shimmer Sheetz, which is an iridescent metallic Mylar by Elizabeth Craft Design (I'm not affiliated, just love this product!). After embossing, I altered it with alcohol inks, sanded it lightly to reveal the silver core, then I added some bronze paste to the edges. I wanted to add some gold mica powder to the paste, but it flew everywhere and stuck to the alohol ink on the Shimmer Sheetz. I liked it, though - a happy accident - so I added more and set it with a fixative spray. The stamped trees are from the Whimsical Winter stamp set by Rubber Dance. I white embossed them and coloured them in with ZIG markers to match the colours of the card. I adhered the trees with some really sticky clear tabs (Power Tabs by Tombow) to raise them up from the card and make sure they stayed there.

With this card I wish you all a very merry and 

♥ ♥ ♥ Happy Christmas! ♥ ♥ ♥

50 Euro Worth of Stamps Challenge

Heyyy, good people! The December challenge over at the Rubber Dance blog is one you really don't want to miss. The lucky random winner will get a 50 Euro voucher to spend in the Rubber Dance web shop, and the DT Fave pick will get €25!!

I know many of you are busy right now, but the challenge is quite easy: Either use the challenge colours, OR enter any make with glitter.

I have combined the colours and a bit of glitter on my reminder card:

 I made the background mixing three colours of Distress Oxides. For the light blue, I mixed a couple of drops of blue reinker into the texture paste. I picked a Christmassy patterned stencil (Tim Holtz) to go with the stamped tulips, which was a Christmas flower here in Norway - I don't know if that's common all over the world, but we love tulips this time of year - usually white or red, but I love tutti-frutti :-)

I stamped the tulip randomly on two backgrounds and cut them out. 

Same with the stems and leaves - all stamps from the Rubber Dance set Crazy Flowers #1.

 

I arranged the cut out images over my background till I liked it, took a photo for reference and glued them all down. Quick and easy Christmas card, if somewhat unusual perhaps.

The challenge runs till 31st of December, so there's plenty of time still.

 Thanks for looking!

Birthday Giveaway!

Hey lovelies! In celebration of my birthday today, I'm having a giveway over at the Rubber Dance blog!
My post there is about quick and easy Christmas cards, but way at the end you'll find the giveaway......
and what you need to do :-)

Here's a little peek of my quick cards:

To see more and join my giveaway - pop over to my post at the Rubber Dance blog.

See you there! 

Cloud Stamp Cupkake - and Prizes!

Hey everyone! Can you believe it's December already? I can't, and I'm not ready - but December hasn't asked me ;-) 

Ready or not - how about joining our challenge at Rubber Dance this month? Here's what I made with our challenge colours and theme combined:

I have used stamps from several sets to make this (all from Rubber Dance);

sentiment from You Rock, mug and cherry (actually a snowball) from Whimsical Winter, 

"cake" is the cloud from Whimsical Summer, and the crown is from Poodle Power. 

The mug and sentiment are both stamped directly on watercolour paper, whereas the cloud, crown and cherry were stamped, coloured, cut out and glued down before adding lots of glitter.

Our challenge will run the whole month of December and there are prizes to win!

 

See my fellow teamies inspiration makes over at the Rubber Dance blog.

I hope you get a chance to join our challenge!

You may use stamps from any company.

Thanks for looking!

Is that a Penguin in your Window?

Hello, my fellow stampers!  I've made a picture for the current challenge on the Rubber Dance blog, where the theme is to make something inspired by a movie. Can you guess which this is?

 

'Mr. Popper's Penguins' is an American comedy from 2011, with Jim Carrey, Carla Guino, and Angela Lansbury, among others. The film was loosely based on a children's book of the same name, first published in 1938. 

Mr. Popper is a real estate entrepreneur in New York who inherits six penguins from his father. As Mr. Popper transforms his luxurious apartment into a penguin friendly winter wonderland, his professional life starts to unravel..

This family friendly comedy is kind of cute and I adore Angela Lansbury! Even if her role was not a big one, it's a vital one for the plot and she's there - on and off.

I've used a free photo from Wikipedia Commons for my backdrop - one can see the Empire State building from Mr. Popper's apartment. My "window" is a mini printer tray from Tando Creative, which I painted white. The snow on the window frames are mini art stones and glitter glue. It's really blingy in real life, like a thousand dimonds on glittery snow, but this was impossible to caputure on camera - so I edited my photo by adding some bling reflections in Photoshop.

I stamped the Playful Penguins from Rubber Dance on watercolour paper, coloured them in with Zig markers, cut them out and glued them to the window. And that's it! A quick and easy make, inspired by a cute movie.

There's still time to join our challenge at Rubber Dance - you have until midnight CET on the 30th of November to join (you don't have to use stamps from Rubber Dance).

Thanks for looking!

Mixed Media Beach Bathroom Decor

Heyyyy crafters! Let me first remind you of the release sale at Rubber Dance - with 20 % discount on all the new stamps. The sale ends on Tuesday, midnight CET. (Between you and me: I'm rarely up that late, so the sale ends after I get up on Wednesday morning, usually around 5 o'clock-ish, and get a chance to change the reduced prices).

I made this wall decor to send to Anti-Santa, or whatever the Santa in Antarctica is called. Since there are no penguins on the North Pole, it would be so silly to send this to the Santa up north, wouldn't it?

Turns out I didn't have the southern Santa's address in my Rolodex (remember those?), so I hung the sign up in our downstairs bathroom (aka loo), which has a beach theme. Not that we live on the beach, but a few times a day I can always pretend... (Raise your hand if you just starting singing "The Great Pretender", Freddy Mercury version! Grab a banana and slap me over the head if you can't get the song out of your mind!)

Properly propped on the bathroom basin with bath towels and sea shells (and a lighthouse to the left):

I posted this photo over at the Rubber Dance blog for my stamp release last week, but I thought I'd share some details with you. I stamped the Playful Penguins on watercolour paper, coloured them in with Zig clean colour makers, cut them out and set aside.

The surface I used is a 15 x 15 cm white/greyboard panel with rounded corners, from That's Crafty in the UK (you can find it here - pack of 5 for only £2.25!). These are white on one side and grey on the other, and I used the white side - without adding gesso first.

I wanted to test the crackle paste I had bought after a friend recommended it. I have tried quite a few crackle mediums, but frankly not been all that impressed with them - but I really liked this one! I'm not affiliated with the brand, which is Finnabair/Prima's Texture Paste White Crackle. I covered the whole board with the crackle paste, using a broad palette knife. I made both thin and thick layers to achieve different sized cracks. After having left it to dry for the cracks to appear, I smeared some acrylic paint in blue and green on top and wiped off some of the paint with a baby wipe.

The MFD signpost (below) is from Calico Craft Parts in the UK, and you can find it here (I'm not affiliated, just a very excited customer!). I love that it's so big - over 10 cm tall and 12 cm wide. I painted the signpost with white gesso and aged it with brown ink. The text was painted with blue acrylic paint, then some glitter on top to make it look more frosty (it does sparkle in real life...).
The "snow" is made with art stones (Finnabair/Prima), which I hadn't used before so I wasn't sure how to glue them down... but it worked fine with a thick layer of matte medium.

The very same day I was working on this, I received some happy mail - and one of the postal stamps was this with two penguins!!

So, there it is - Frankie goes to Hollywood has nothing on my Penguins goes to Anti-Santa!

The rest of this post is a promotion of my stamp company, Rubber Dance.
Just skip to the end if you're not interested.

 This is what the set of Playful Penguins looks like

(13 x 18 cm, or 5 x 7 inches if that's how you roll ...)

Other new sets, also at 20 % right now:

These two 9 x 13 cm sheets, packed full of funny sentiments

(at least I find them funny..... that's why I made'em!)

 ..... and this 13 x 18 sheet of lovely winter stamps:

 Hurry if you want that 20 % discount, 

the sale ends verrah soon!

All the new stamps are in the Rubber Dance web shop.

Thanks for looking! 

Out of Africa - Movie Challenge

Hello lovelies! I made a collage for the new challenge over at the Rubber Dance blog. The theme of the challenge is to make something inspired by a movie.

I'll admit that it took me a while to pick a movie, but my love for elephants lead me to choose 'Out of Africa', an American movie from 1995, starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. The movie was loosely based on the autobiographical book 'Out of Africa' by Danish author Karen Blixen, published in 1937.

I made the sunset background first, using Distress Oxides and a makeup sponge. I had masked a circle where the sun would be and coloured it in with Oxides after making the sky. There are some purple looking mountains in the back, painted with ink. I drew the tree by hand. The bird stamps I used are seagulls, so I added some feathers and adjusted the beaks a bit in an attempt to make them look like eagles. I stamped the elephants over the background and coloured them in with black ink, as I just wanted their silhouettes against the sunset. I adjuested the tusks of the left elephant with a black pen to make the two elephants look slightly different.

This is what the elephant stamp looks like.

It's easy to turn any stamp into a silhouette!

Some details:

 

I used a page from an old Danish book, since Karen Blixen was a Danish writer. 

She lived in Kenya, a British crown colony at the time, hence the British postal stamp.

Karen's husband was from Sweden - luckily I had a Swedish postal stamp.

I didn't have any postal stamps from Kenya, so I found some photos online and printed them out.

The Lion was stamped on a book page ... I don't know whether Karen Blixen made any sketches of African animals, 

but I imagine it would look something like this.

The African pattern in the back is also an internet photo that I printed out for my collage.

 

Karen Blixen wrote a lot of letters while she lived in Africa,

perhaps she sent some postcards as well .... 

I stamped the postcard with Distress inks and sprayed it with water

to make the ink seep for a vintage look. I also crumbled it up 

and added some ink here and there.

So there it is,

Out of Africa:

Stamps used (all from Rubber Dance):

Elephant and Lion from African Animals

Seagulls from A little Birdie

Vintage Postcard

Which movie would you pick, if you were to make something inspired by one?

Would you like to join our challenge?

You have until midnight CET on November 30th.

See you there! Maybe? ;-)

I want to end my post today by sharing this quote. I've printed it out and hung it up in my studio, as a gentle reminder in case I should forget .... (Feel free to do the same - I made it using a copyright free image of a torn book page. Print out and decorate if you wish!).

 

"Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, 

and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever."

Thanks for looking!

 

On thin Ice with Shabby Chick!

Hello good people! I have made an attempt on a style I'm not comfortable with, it just sort of happened! I was playing with the new stamps from Rubber Dance, and I thought the ice skates would look nice if I made them vintage... and one thing just lead to another .... 

So, what is this - shabby chick or vintage? Vintage Shabby Chick? No matter what the style is called, it was fun to try something different from what I usually make. You know I love a good challenge! :-)

 

The next card is more my style, wouldn't you say? I printed the text out, but the images are from Whimsical Winter - one of the new stamp sets from Rubber Dance.

Here's another "Bibi style" card. The sentiment and penguin are both from the new stamps at Rubber Dance
(released today!).

I made the background first - sea with Distress Oxides and a spray of water, sky with regular Distress ink. All the images were stamped on watercolour paper and coloured with Zig markers, cut out and placed on top of my background. I cut a line through the "waves" and tucked half of the whale behind the waterline.  The whale and clouds are also stamps from Rubber Dance, 'case you wondered. I drew the shark fin on watercolour paper and coloured it with grey and black Zig markers. It looked better, not so flat, as if cut out of black cardstock.

Below are some tags I cut out of a background I had in my stash. Just having fun with the new sentiments stamps from Rubber Dance :-)

If you want to see more artwork with the new stamps, most made by Donna Gray who designed the new Whimsical Winter stamps for Rubber Dance, check out my post on the Rubber Dance blog.

Thanks for looking!

♥ Wishing you all a lovely and creative week ♥

New Stamps from Rubber Dance!

Hello everyone! Right now I'm over at the Rubber Dance blog, bragging about the new stamps that are being released today! All the new stamps are 20 % off until October 31st. Yooohoo! :-) You can find them in the web shop here.

So far, I've made two cards and this picture with the new flower stamps:

I cut the spiral of the flowers to make them stand up:

 

Supported by foam dots:

The snail was made from two spiral flowers:

 

I used the same idea on this card:

I also made a tulip card with the new stamps.

 

I cut the middle out of two flowers to make mini-stamps I used on the edges.

Just pop them back in next time you use the flower stamps, or use them without.

I love that you can do that so easily with un-mounted stamps!

 

...and here they are, our brand new stamps:

 plus this set of sentiments:

If you want the new stamps, pop over to the Rubber Dance web shop for a nice discount!

 

Thanks for looking!