Sunday, December 25, 2016

Snowflakes and Bookmarks

Merry Christmas to all of you and I hope that you holidays have been filled with joy, peace and happiness spent with your family and friends.  It's such a fun time to spend baking and cooking and making special gifts to give,  I really do love the magic of Christmas!!


If you were lucky enough to receive a favorite book for Christmas or just have to the finally to sit by the fire and read a good one, I have a fun and quick project that you can do.  GSLC has lots of these beautiful tags that you can decorate anyway you want so I got a few of them out and set to work to create a few for my winter book reading.  The tags come in 2 sizes.  I chose the large tags D92B for mine.  I first traced around each of them both front and back with papers from my stash and then cut it, sanded around the edges and then inked them with a light brown chalk ink.


Then I set to work and decorated each of them with die cuts and punched snowflakes to match and also stamped images.  The papers from Maja Designs Vintage Frost Basics gave each one of them a really pretty look and they also had pretty images that I could cut out and decorate on the tops of my bookmarks that I made to share with all of you.


This one is my favorite.  Not only for the tag, but for the beautiful St. Nicolas image that I found.


It was really fun to add pearls, Stickles and other fun little goodies to make them look more winter like.  We don't get much snow here in California so crazy as it may be, I love snowflakes!!


Here is a quick photo of the tags and the shapes of each.  They are the perfect size for all kinds of projects.  Holidays, Birthday and even baby showers!!  

Thanks so very much for stopping over and from all of us at GSLC we wish you
a Very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!!

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Happy Holidays!

Hello everyone. Shanna here and today is very special for me. This is my last post with Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts. Sad but not so sad. I have been with Gina for 4 years now. I have loved every minute of watching her creative process and being on this amazing team as well as having input on different designs in the store. You have no idea how cool it is to be a part of something so amazing.

So sad because my time has come but at the same time I am so excited to see what the new team creates. I am above and beyond excited for Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts to further make more amazing chipboard pieces and the new team to really kick off the creativeness!

So I decided to create a quick and simple card as we have been really busy with family, school functions, and getting ready for the holidays!


So to start off I cut my cardstock for a card and pulled some pieces of chipboard I wanted to use.


Then I covered the chipboard with gesso.


Once the gesso dried I painted the mittens with some paint twice for good measure. 


Then I tied some string and placed my snowflakes. 


The next set of snowflakes got a coat of silver stickles and then assembled the card. 


Here is the finished card.


Here you can see the amazing sparkle. 


Layering the snowflakes also created wonderful dimension!


Product Used:


Friday, December 23, 2016

Scrooge and Marley's Counting House Pt. Two

Happy Holidays, Cool Yule and Merry Christmas to all! Also, in the spirit of my room box - Bah Humbug!

I give you the final pictures you've been waiting for! Scrooge and Marley's Counting House from Charles Dickens Christmas Carol. It's bleak, 19th century London before Scrooge has his eyes opened about the wonders of being a nice fellow.




 

This is the 1:12 scale stool by Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts.



The stove is locked up tight because Scrooge won't allow anymore heat this eve'.

Stack of books filled with cases and files.


The snowy, frost covered window.

Coins being counted, the keys to the stove, the quill and the candle. 

The picture hanging on the wall of old Jacob Marley (happens to be my great grandfather) and in the corner is a calendar, marking it the 24th of December.

Top down view of the shop.

Umbrella and books.


A sign on outside of box.



Have a wonderful holiday season everyone!

Materials Used

7x7 Corner Room Box
1:12 Scale Stools

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Gingerbread House Mini Album

Hey everyone!  It's Christmas time, and what's better than a Gingerbread House?  How about a Gingerbread House Mini Album Tall from Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts.  It's beautiful, fun, and best of all, has absolutely no calories!

Front
Back

This shape set from Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts has lots of shapes suitable for decorating your very own Gingerbread House.


Cover all album pages with the print paper.  I used the new Sweet Peppermint paper from Prima.  I also laid out some of my shapes to see how they would look.  It is always a good idea to take a picture at this time so it is easy to remember placement later.


Distress all edges with brown distress ink, and then mark and punch holes for the binder rings.


To decorate the door, I used two shutter pieces and cut them apart, as shown.  I used the top left and lower right pieces to form one solid piece that now fits the length of the door.



Cover the door with a piece of the paper from the collection and add a small brad for a door knob.  Paint the two shutter pieces with red paint and glue to the door front.


Here are the pieces I have so far.  Each of the pieces were painted with acrylic paints, as shown, and the candy pieces were glued over the topiary tree.  I wrapped bakers twine around the two columns and used pictures from the paper collection to glue behind the windows.


Add the laser cut elements to the front page, as shown.  Add snow along the roof line, windows, door frame and topiaries.  Add liquid glass with a sprinkling of glitter to the candies on the topiaries to make them look sparkly and shiny, like hard candy.  Add tiny drops of red 3-dimensional paint to the wreath to look like berries.


Page 2:  Die cut a decorative border strip from cream card stock and  adhere to left side of page.  Add images from the paper collections with foam dots.  Paint three  candy canes with red and white acrylic paint, adhere as shown.  Lastly, punch a decorative snowflake edge that has been distressed with brown ink and add along the roof top.


Page 3:  Paint two candy canes with red and white paint, adhere along roof line, as shown.  Make a mini paper rosette and add to the center top of he roof, and then place paper images, as shown.  The train image was glued only around the bottom and sides to form a pocket for journal cards.


Page 4:  Adhere strip of paper that has been die cut with the rosette die along the roof line, and an image circle punched from the paper with foam dots.  The Santa image was glued along right side and bottom area to form a pocket.  Two pieces of card stock were cut to 3"x4", forming a journal card, and images from the paper collection were adhered, then inserted into the pocket, as shown.


Page 5:  Ribbon was adhered along roof line, and a rosette was placed in the center, as shown.  The three stockings were adhered with glue dots, along with the girl image.  A gold Dresden Christmas tree was antiqued with brown ink and adhered with the Joyful image, as shown.


Page 6:  Red Dresden border was adhered along roof line, and the wreath with bow were painted and adhered to center of roof.  The remaining images are from the paper collections.


Page 7:  Pink ribbon was adhered along roof line, and a pink bow was tied and added to the center of the roof.  A strip from the paper was adhered to the lower half of the page, gluing only the sides to form a band to slip journal cards into.  The Cardinal was adhered over the wreath image with pop dots for dimension.



Page 8:  A snowflake punched edge was added to the roof line, along with a rosette to the center.  A trellis design was die cut, distressed with brown ink, and adhered to the page, as shown.  The bell images were adhered with foam dots for dimension.  Two gingerbread cookies and word stickers were adhered, as shown.


Page 9:  Paint two candy canes and a round candy with red and white paint, adhere candy canes along roof line, as shown.   Make a rosette from the paper and adhered the round candy piece to the center.  Fussy cut a second image from the bottom of the sheet, and adhere to the bottom of the page with foam dots.  This makes a thick pocket for holding many journal cards.



Page 10:  Red Dresden border was adhered along roof line.  Die cut images of ornaments from the paper collection were adhered along the top, while a few were adhered with pop dots for dimension. The Light String Border was painted with red and green paints, and liquid glass was added to the light bulbs.  This was glued along the right side of the page, along with paper elements from the collection.


Page 11:  Pink ribbon was adhered along roof line and an image from the paper was added to the center with foam dots.  The doll and cookie image were glued only along the side and bottom to form a pocket to hold journal cards.  Three round candies were paint with red and white paint and added to the background, as shown.



Back cover:  Red Dresden border was adhered along roof line.  Paper images were adhered, as shown.  Two  trees, candy cane, and round candy were all painted and adhered to page, as shown.


Use binder rings to bind the book, and tie pretty ribbons onto the rings.  As you can see, it has become quite fat and chunky, but I love it like that.


Supplies Used:

GSL Light String Border
Prima Sweet Peppermint Paper Collection
Tim Coffey Christmas Embellishments
Spellbinders S4-436 Anne Border Strip
Cream card stock
Gold Pearl 3D paint
Distress inks:  brown, green, evergreen
DecoArt Americana Chalk Paint
  Vintage
  Romance
  Rustic
DecoArt Americana Multi-Surface Satin
  Cotton Ball
DecoArt Media Liquid Glass
Assorted Brushes
Timeless Twine (Bella Creationz)
Mini brad (for doorknob)
Sizzix dies: Mini Paper Rosettes, Label Trellis
3D Foam dots
Decorative punches
Assorted Ribbons

Thanks for stopping by, and have a very Merry Christmas!!!

Happy Holidays all!!

Barbara