Waltzingmouse blog waltz - Winter/Christmas

If you'd like to have a chance to win some blog candy ribbon leave a comment over on my bloggiversary post here.

Welcome to this months waltz!


The theme this month is winter/Christmas, and what better set to use than the ever versatile teeny trees. I remembered seeing someone on the gallery use the teeny tree trunks to make a snowflake shape and I knew thats what I wanted to do. As I'm a little short of time at the moment I decided to combine a few challenges, and also to keep it simple. I decided to do a kraft tag with white embossed stamping.
Its all pretty self explanatory, I used the smallest of the tree trunks, but all of them would make a snowflake shape. I used versamark to stamp with, and white Wow embossing powder. To finish it off I used some antique linen distress ink around the edges and some gingham ribbon!

This is also being entered into Speedy Cats Friends challenge - Favourite technique (stamping!) and Casual fridays Tags challenge

World Card Making Day fun!

Ok, so yesterday was World Card Making Day, and I was able to set aside a couple of hours to craft in the evening when my dear husband was out, and my little monkey was in bed. I tell you, I had such a great time! It's the first time in a long time I have sat down and made 4 cards, now admittedly two are very similar, but even so, 3 unique designs is pretty good! I'm going to share one now, and the rest over the coming days.
At the moment I'm loving going back to my CAS roots, and although its sometimes a challenge not to sponge to death my cards, I'm restraining myself!

Here is a card which is for a few challenges. First of all I spotted the sketch over at Card Patterns and knew it was something I'd like to have a go with, and secondly this months Stampendous challenge is to do a CAS Christmas card.


I searched through my stampendous stamps for something Christmassy, but couldn't find anything, plus I'd already got something in mind for the sketch which used a snowflake stamp.

I embossed my cardstock with my cuttlebug embossing folder snowflakes, then used two types of ribbon and stamped and heat embossed some small silver snowflakes onto some circles I'd die cut. This would be a perfect batch card for Christmas, as it comes together very quickly.
I hope you had as much fun as me for World Card Making Day!

My presents!!!!

Now before you say anything, they're not Christmas presents, these are my birthday presents!!! This is the start of my craft haul which will continue on Christmas day. Honey was given the task of organising everyone with what to get me, and so far, so good!!!!
The centre piece was my gorgeous cuttlebug! All the other bits kind of revolve around it!! I got 5 embossing folders (Baby, snowflakes, stylised flowers, divine swirl and another I can't remember!), 3 sets of nestabilities (large circles, labels 1 and labels 4), cuttlebug square frame dies and a cuttlebug man shaped die.
I've had lots of fun playing around with them - especially as we had a snow day on my birthday which gave me an excellent opportunity to have a play whilst monkey was at nursery- and had put them to good use already making tags for christmas and I'm so excited for after Christmas when I can have a really good play around!These first tags are based on the ikea wrapping paper I bought, its great as its reversible, and has this lovely stripe on the back which I've attached to some black card. The larger tag also has a glitter snowflake, which I got a pack of 8 from Home Bargains.

These next tags are all based on some really cheap asda wrapping paper. I attached it to cream card, used a gold ink pad to edge it and then used a variety of my smallest nestabilities dies and stamped christmas words on them. The bottom one has a digital stamp which I made on DSA2 and printed. It was much harder than I thought getting the die to cut exactly round the circle! I then stamped a postmark in gold and embossed.

The next tags are all backed with burgundy cardstock. The top two have the digital stamps and then I've stamped with christmas images and embossed. The bottom tag is just some gold paper embossed with the Divine swirls folder.

Below we have various snowflake tags. I was just playing around with what I liked best. Using only a quarter means they go much further, but I'm still undecided which looks best. The top left had a gap along the side where the embossing folder (cuttlebug snowflakes) finished, so I stamped the sentiment and embossed. The cardstock is electric blue pearlised card.

Unfortunately I can't figure out how to rotate this next image, I should have rotated it before posting! oh well. It shows two tags, both made from a little embossing folder which I got free with a magazine recently - I wish I could remember which one actually, because it came with some really nice Christmas stamps aswell, the sentiment on the card was included! I did two different sizes just by using the top of the tree image. It looks good though any size. I then used a gold pen to go over parts of the embossing. I layered the image onto cream card which I had embossed the edges of with gold embossing powder.

I don't think any of the 40 tags I made where the same, but it keeps it interesting that way!

Next thing I was to do is some snowball gifts and cupcake flannels, so keep watching!!