ATC's & Men

Some nice and easy Christmas ATCs for you today. The first one is a snowflake ATC using the mid winter music paper. And with 25% off at the moment too! I added a little bit of ribbon to the left hand corner. I cut out some snowflakes using some scraps that I had left from a HOTP Christmas paper. The "Noel" comes from the HOTP Cardmaker's word fragments. And to finnish off I added a bit of sparkle using some glamour dust.
The second one is using some HOTP Christmas 12 x 12 paper. I also added some Christmas transparencies across the stripes from the HOTP personal shopper - December monthly kit.
The kits are brill and with a whooping 50% off how can you resist? The little stars on top of the trees are from a Cardmaker's pack.
The third and final one is covered in paper from the 12x12 Bo Bunny Homespun range. I made a little tag with the same papers and added a little ribbon tag. The pocket is made with the reverse side of the Bo Bunny paper. Across the pocket I added some more transparencies. Along the right side I added a tag from the Bo Bunny cardstock stickers - Holiday range. The "celebrate" comes from the HOTP Cardmaker's word fragments.

My second piece is a "Thanks Dad" card. I find it so difficult to make male themed cards but with these charms it was easy! So I used a DL card for this one and cut out some circle apertures. I then covered the card with the American crafts double sided cardstock. I used the reverse side with the plain cardstock to make the frames and the vine shapes. I tied a small amount of ribbon to the tool charms and hung them in the apertures. Just to finnish off I added brads to the top right and bottom left of the card.

I hope you enjoyed these and I'll be back on Tuesday!

A couple of quickie cards!

Its that time of year - as Looby said yesterday - so busy for a lot of us! So here are a couple of quick cards I made using some stuff from my kit, plus some gorgeous Winter Swirl stamps available at the Crop Til You Drop Webshop. The stamps are so versatile - I have a few different sets of swirly type stamps, but as soon as I saw these stamps, I thought - gotta have em! The swirls are really elegant, and one has some gorgeous little snowflakes on. The pic of my Christmas card doesnt really do the stamps justice at all - you get a nice clear and crisp image - I decided to do something a little different using a resist technique on this first card. You can achieve similar results by randomly stamping onto a piece of card and embossing with clear powder (in fact you could use any colour, just bear in mind that whatever colour you use will be visible after you have inked over it!). Then ink over with your chosen final colour. This technique works particularly well with gloss card. I added the chipboard frame after painting it with red acrylic paint, then giving a quick coat of clear glue like these here, to give a shiny finish. Added a little red wire heart and some ribbon, matted and layered onto a red card and hey presto! Oh not forgetting the snowflake brads, snowflake border overlay and that gorgeous little glittery red heart - I hope our Guv will step in here to pop in where I can find that though because I have hunted high and low and cant find it! Check out our Guv's blog for some more fab ideas for the winter swirls too!

Next is this little card for my brother's birthday next week! For this I used the busy scrappers boys to men paper pack - and all the letter tiles and little star embellies that come with it. The only thing I used that wasnt in the pack was the little brad buddie present that you see to the right of the card, but I thought it went well with the colours of the card (after I inked it up with blue ink!) and added the little red bow!

So thats all folks - if you invest in anything over the Christmas crafty season though (apart from all the fab paper and other crafty bits on offer at the webshop!!) I would definitely get my hands on some of the winter swirls stamps (PS why not take advantage of this fab offer and subscribe to the stamps only kit?? There's a freebie in it for ya, check it out!!) - they're not just for Christmas you know - they're for life! Lol have fun creating!

Edited by the Guv to say: more than happy to jump in and solve the mystery of the missing red glittery heart! LOL. They are actually in this mixed pack of buttons & flatbacks. HTH

Quick and Simple!

This time of year is soooo hectic, that we need to make life a little easier on ourselves! So here's some really quick and easy projects for you.

For this first card I covered the card blank in this Bo Bunny Jack Frost paper and, I then matted a smaller piece onto cardstock from this pack and mounted on the card. I then die cut some snowflakes from the scrap paper and card and added an overlay greeting from the December 06 Personal Shopper kit


For this second card I covered the card blank with the reverse of this Bo Bunny Homespun holiday paper and then added a mat of this Bo Bunny paper. The ribbons are from the December 06 Personal Shopper kit, as is the sentiment in the centre of the Bazzill flower.



The final card was also covered in the reverse of this Bo Bunny paper and I then punched 3 circles with this Marvy punch on the right side of the same paper. I punched 3 smaller circles from the reverse of this Bo Bunny paper and added a HOTP Christmas brad to the centre of each. I put a strip of this paper down the middle and mounted the circles with foam tape. The sentiment is from the December 06 Personal Shopper kit.


And finally, the simplest project of all! I had this acetate pillow box hanging around at home, but you can find lots of templates on the internet to make your own. I simply wrapped round a strip of paper from the December 06 Personal Shopper kit, added an overlay greeting from the same kit and then wrapped with some ribbon - easy peasy!

Don't forget - there's still time to enter Challenge #18 - and you could win a fabby prize!

Gift bags & baubles

Hi it's me again. This time I made two little gift bags, ideal for little trinkets or sweets. I used the HOTP Busy Scrappers Solutions - Christmas pad for these. I cut the bags out of the papers and then added some Christmas transparencies from the December 06 HOTP monthly kit. The kit is in the Crop til you Drop webshop now with 50% off! The brads are also from the HOTP range. To finnish the bags off I attached some ribbon with a brad to the handle.

My second piece is a bauble to hang on your Christmas tree. I cut out scalloped circles with the gorgeous Bo Bunny Jack Frost shimmer papers. Then scored a triangle on each circle and then folded and glued them together. To be able to hang them I attached some ribbon and painted the tiny cotton reels with some gold paint. A great ornament that the kids could make too!!

Friendly felt and child-friendly projects!!

Hi Guys!! Check out the frame above! Its made from the stiffened friendly felt which holds its shape, and I've die-cut the swirls and flowers, hand-cut the leaves and stitched on the leaf detail by hand. The flower centres are brads. Its sooo easy to make, super as a gift idea, and all you need is 3 different colours of the felt...so i reckon you could make 4 for just over £1.50!!! That is what i call a bargain :D Mine is super bright...but the felt comes in all sorts of colours {check them out here} so you could easily adapt it to suit tastes/decor. I've even stitched a small loop on the back so it can be hung on the wall...

These little ornaments are also made from the felt, and are a super project to do with the kids on a soggy/bored/argumentative day! Simply cut your chosen shape out of the felt, and decorate with brads, more felt shapes, buttons, blooms or eyelets. Tie with a ribbon and hang on the tree/attach to school bags/bedknobs/totes/etc. The felt is so versatile, you can even use your cropodile on it!!

Next time I have more paper-based crafting to share...but for now...I just can't use anything else. Wonder if I can get a job as a felt-crafter anywhere?? ;-)

Challenge # 18 - Celebrations!

Welcome to our lastest challenge!
Shary has kindly agreed to post this up for me as it's my birthday tomorrow, so I'm out on the town tonight!!
And, coincidentally, my birthday has prompted the theme for this week's challenge - CELEBRATIONS!
So we want you to create a LO, card or whatever else you want on the theme of celebrations - so a nice big scope this week!

Don't forget to leave a comment, so we know you've completed your challenge and email it to sales@croptilyoudrop.co.uk for inclusion in our gallery. This week is your last chance to enter November's challenge competition - you may win a fabby prize!!

A couple of ideas to get you going:

For this LO I used the Bo Bunny Homespun holiday papers. The Christmas tree was cut from Friendly felt (this amazing stuff is pre-stiffened so it cuts like a dream!) I then added a friendly felt star and some Bo Bunny ribbons and some buttons. I painted these mini cotton reels with red acrylic paint and then wrote the letters on them to spell Christmas. I threaded them on to ribbon, set some eyelets into the tree and threaded them through.

This card was made using the HOTP Citrus Creative Pack and Instant card art and Ribbons. The parcel was cut from friendly felt.








Enjoy the challenge - can't wait to see what you come up with!

Looby x

Oh I wish it could be Christmas.....

Mind you if it was Christmas every day I would need a bigger book for all my journalling! This is my latest project with my kit. I was thinking of making an advent calendar with my Bo Bunny Advent paper, but Alix already made a fab one here, so I thought I would try and do something a bit different with mine. So I though - why not make a Christmas Journal and use the numbered squares to date the pages? So that's what I did!

And also - it gave me another excuse to use some of this fab and very friendly felt again - this time for the covers of my book. I just did a rough drawing of the Christmas tree and cut it out, and then set eyelets into it, and tied a bit of ribbon around for tinsel - which I also added to the book rings that I held it together with. The ribbon is from the classic cardmakers ribbon pack from HOTP, and comes packed full of cool coordinating Christmas colours. I then pierced a couple of designs - the lime green border and the red shape in the corner and stitched into the felt. Added a star brad to the top!


As you can see here - I cut out the squares from the Bo Bunny paper (advent) and stuck them back to back on each page (also Bo Bunny Papers, I used Frost and Ornament - fab papers and double sided!!). The Advent papers also come with some really cute Christmas art on them - great for embellishing your projects - I'm going to use them to add to the completed pages. These papers have a 20% discount on them at the moment so its well worth popping over and having a good old shop (lots of other bargains and discounts to be found too ;o)!

I'm going to take a pic of my son each day leading up to Christmas day, and write a little bit about each day now he's starting to take more notice of it all.

Hope you like it - why not make your own Christmas Journal?

Oky doky guys I shall see you next Thursday when I post my next project - but don't forget - its challenge night tomorrow - and there's some fabby prizes up for grabs!! You'd be mad to miss it!!