Altered Book Box

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.   

It's been a little while since I did a post so I'd like to show you a book box I've altered.

A very close friend's daughter is having a baby and I'm making a mini album for her which I am placing into this box.  The mini is still a work in progress but the box is done.

The paper collection I'm using is Baby Steps from Simple Stories.

Here is the original box.

 

 I purchased it from one of our cheapie outlets ( I think it was Ned's ) and all I had to do was re-cover it with my selected papers. 

 

In this paper collection there are a lot of different tags and on one of them was this little banner so I cut out the letters, glittered the edges and then attached them to a piece of twine. But it didn't stand out enough from the cover so I decided they needed to be matted.  I cut some white cardstock to size and glued them onto that.  I then attached them to the front with pop dots to give them a bit more dimension.

 

The bird cage and bird are from Scrapmatts.  I painted both with Paint Daubers in white and glittered the birdcage completely.  For the little bird, I inked the edges with Versa Color Cinnamon and then glittered the wings and the tail  and also a little around the edge.  I colored his/her eye with a blue Texta.

The flowers are a mix of Prima and Kaisercraft and the little white berries and the white flower with the pearl stamens are from Magnolia Ink.  I trimmed the hooks off some heart charms I had in my stash and glued them on with 

Helmar glue.

  The leaves  are pieces I cut from a larger velvet leaf that I also had in my stash.

The lace came from my stash.  I cannot remember where it's from which is a shame because I love it and would like to get some more.

 

I also trimmed the hook from this little bear charm before attaching it to the bow.

I really like this paper collection.  It has some pink and blue but it's really not gender specific, and it's pretty without being too over the top.  There are some really cute tags and sayings with it as well which will make it easier to decorate the album.

So, there you have it, the box is ready to go, now I just have to finish the album.  The baby is not due until February so I still have plenty of time.

Thank you so much for visiting.  Take care and God Bless and
 wishing everyone all the best for 2013.
oxox Marg

Easy Peasy Christmas Tags

Hello everybody!  I made some really, really easy Christmas tags yesterday.  

I had some kraft tags and all I did was ink the edges with Walnut stain distress ink. Then got some tags and labels from a number of Kaisercraft's  Christmas paper pads, mixed them up, inked the edges and glued them on.

For the back I used some papers from the same collections, inked the edges as well. I then cut to size some of the borders and placed them on the side so I would have some room to write a message.
And that's it. Sooooo easy and really quick to make. If you wanted to you could add glitter, maybe use sticky dots to add dimension, but I am quite happy with these the way they are.
That's all for now.
Thank you for visiting, take care and God Bless.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
oxox Marg

More Christmas Cards

Hello everyone.  Just a short post to show the last of the Christmas cards I made this year.

These are the straight easel cards.

 

As I said in my previous post, all of my cards were made using similar elements, I just changed the papers and the aspect a little so I won't bore you by explaining it all again or by showing all of the cards  I made.

Perhaps next year I will have plenty of time to make something really specky.
Yeah, right, dream on girl. LOL

That's all for now.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Take care and God Bless.
oxox Marg

Christmas Cards

Hello everybody and welcome to my blog.

I'd  like to show you some of the Christmas Cards I made for this year.

As I said in my previous post, they were made in a hurry, so there's not a lot of detail and they are all pretty much the same, I just used some different papers and slightly altered the design.  They are all easel cards and the  ones I've shown here are the twisted easel.

 

 The papers I've used are from different Kaisercraft Christmas collections.

 This card simply twists in the opposite direction to the previous one.

 The base of all the cards is brown cardstock and I've matted the fronts with cream.

  The poinsettias I made myself also out of cardstock and the little branches underneath them were 

punched out with a Martha Stewart punch.

   The gold bauble sprays were from some larger sprays which I purchased and then cut into smaller pieces.

All of the shapes on the cards, the circles the swirls the fancy mats, were cut out using my new Silhouette Portrait.  I love this little machine, if I'd had to cut out everything one at a time I would not have been able to finish as quickly as I did. 

These  are just a sample of the cards I made.  In my next post I'll show you the straight easels and the inside. Hopefully you'll be interested enough to come back and take a look.

Thank you so much for visiting and I wish each and everyone a very Merry Christmas and a safe and  happy New Year.

Take care and God Bless.

oxox Marg

Aaaaah!!! Christmas

Hello everyone.  I LOVE CHRISTMAS but it can be really stressy in the lead up, especially when you're running way behind in making your Christmas Cards.  I've just spent the last three days madly trying to make my cards for this year. 

I actually started making my cards in early November  ( thought I was really good this year to start so early - HA!! )   The first one I made was an advent calendar card. 

Made the Poinsettia out of cardstock.  Spent quite a few evenings in front of the telly cutting out lots of  petals, spraying them and scrunching them up a little bit and then glueing them together.  Enough for all my cards. The leaves were cut using a Tim Holtz die.

 I really like this card.  I downloaded the template from Norma at 'From my Craft room'. You can find it HERE. 

This was going to be my card for everyone this year.

Silly me.  Didn't happen.

 It's not a difficult card to make but it does take a bit of time to do especially with all those little number cards you have to print and punch and cut out. Then my lovely man and I got really busy with lots of different stuff and I found myself running out of time.

 So I decided to make shaped side step cards. They don't take long do they?  Got all the bases and the mats cut out with the help of my daughter-in-laws Silhouette Cameo and put them together and then got the inside done. But when I decorated the outside on one of them, I did not like it at all.  I don't know what went wrong but it wouldn't sit right and it just looked ... blah!  Soooo!!!  I had to start all over again, hence the mad rush in the last few days.
I  ended up making easel cards.  Hopefully I'll get them in the post tomorrow and then I can show you.
Whew!!  
Like I said, I love Christmas  but sometimes ....
Thanks for visiting.  Take care and God Bless.
oxox Marg