Mirror number 4

I hope everyone had a really lovely Christmas, we certainly did. It's been a busy few days visiting family and friends and, although It's been very enjoyable, I have to admit it's nice to be home.

So, I've now got a chance to show you the mirror I made for hubby for christmas. We're in the process of buying a house (fingers crossed, if nothing goes wrong, we should be moving in the next couple of months). We're planning to turn the second bedroom into a spare room, come study, come craft room so that I can stop using the dining table for crafting and hubby doesn't feel like he's relegated to the box room to use his computer. Anyway, getting to the point, we're thinking of decorating this room with a bit of a vintage travel theme, so I made this vaguely steampunk mirror with a travel theme too.

The background map is one from an ancient maps calendar we had kept with the intention of framing the individual pages. I used similar techniques to the first mirror I made, and added various clips and memo pins to make it useful for holding notes or other bits and bobs. The image of the man was cut from Graphic 45 Steampunk paper.

I used various stamps, including a Tim Holtz clock and this cute steampunk birdy from Graphic 45.

Got to finish there as I keep getting whiffs of wonderful tandoori chicken smells from the kitchen and my stomach is growling too much to type :0)

xx

A Decorated Diary

Another of my Christmas related crafty projects was to decorate a diary for my Mum. Every year I buy her a diary as part of her christmas pressie and I try to find one that is a bit unusual - paperblanks ones most often. This year I couldn't find a nice one so hubby suggested I just got a cheap one and give it a new look. Its quite simple, but hopefully she'll like it.

Now I have one more craft project to do before christmas, but I'm keeping that one under wraps for now (i haven't even started it yet anyway!)

Christmas cards at last

Inspiration had deserted me for a while, but last weekend I finally got my christmas cards finished. I had a go at playing with some kraft glassine paper and some reindeer die cuts I bought ages ago and I loved the results. I think I was at least a little inspired by Tim's Twelve Tags of Christmas  and I really am going to have to get the Tim Holtz reindeer die for myself for next year!


Here are a few samples:

The kraft glassine on this one was coloured with forest moss distress inks and gold perfect pearls. The camera hasn't picked up the shimmer too well, but it is gorgeous in real life. The patterned background paper is from Basic Grey.

For the next two cards I used some gorgeous deep purple card and aged mahogany DI which is just perfect with the glassine paper. This time I tried stamping on the glassine. I particularly like the effect with the torn strip at the bottom.

For this one I embossed the glassine as well as colouring it with perfect pearls and distress ink - such a stunning effect. 

One thing I wasn't sure of with the glassine paper was how to attach it since I'd read that glue doesn't work well due to the coating on the paper. I attached it to the card with brads then realised I still had to work out how to attach the reindeer to the glassine. Amazingly, my trusty double-sided tape seemed to work quite well.

I was really pleased with the little bell/baubly things I used on each of the reindeer - I think they were originally on some indian style trim I've had for years.

The stamps I used on all these cards were from Basic Grey (Winterland), Autumn leaves (?) and Debbi Moore.