Winner ....

Morning Snazzy followers .... Christmas seems to have come and gone so quickly, hope you had a lovely festive break with loved ones. As we near the end of 2012 we have the winner of this months kit to announce.

This months winner chosen at random is #22 which corresponds with MaryAnn .... Congrats MaryAnn please e-mail your details here to claim your prize.

On behalf of all the design team I would like to wish you health & happiness as we make our way into 2013 .... may it be filled with everything you have wished for.

The design team will resume normal duties from the 7th January .... until then stay inky!

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town...By Hels Sheridan

Goodly Morning Snazzyfans and a very Happy Christmas to you all.  Today I am here with my DT offering featuring the gorgeous Carta Bella Christmas Day Collection papers - oooh lalalalaaa, Carta Bella always do the most fabulous designs and these papers are simply beautiful.  The colour palette appeals to me - it is a vintage red, green, cream and brown toned collection, absolutely perfect for all your Christmas projects - do scroll back through the month because the DT have made some totally amazing arty pieces using the papers.

I am in a bit of a Paper Blocking mood at the moment and each year I make something festive to pop onto the wall... so this year I decided to alter a canvas, using the Paper Blocking technique - which really is simple, use up all your little off-cuts by simply layering them onto a board or canvas, smudge over some watered down creamy coloured paint, in my case I used Traditional Tan paint, using Cut & Dry foam... once this is dry, use either Multi Medium or Glue & Seal to give the whole piece a waterproof seal and then use either charcoal, black paint or a Stabilo All pencil and smudge along the overlapped bits to add some definition.  I added on one of the stickers from the paper collection, I bobbed him onto some card, cut it out, glued it to the canvas and then edged around him so he pops from the design.  The finishing touch was the addition of the Christmas Muse Token... I love these little charms because they are so versatile and the word fits perfectly with my theme.

As ever, Snazzy's are doing a special offer on the DT Collection, you can find the details HERE on the website.  Also, if you click HERE you can leave a comment and be in with a chance of winning one of the DT kits.  Thanks for looking... I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and hope that all your wishes come true!  TTFN

DT Project #2 featuring Hero Arts Believe stamp se...Carta Bella Christmas Day Collection, Hero Arts Believe stamp set

Hello everyone and welcome. Today I will be showing you my second and final project for this month....

Well, here we are, less than a week away from the big day. I don't know about you, but even though I don't consider myself a card maker as such, at this time of year my mind definitely turns to making some quick last minute cards, and I tell you, the Design Team Kit we are using is great for just that.

Here are the ones I made

I'll talk you through them one by one:

For this one I took one of the deep burgundy papers and ran it through one of my embossing folders. I then sanded the raised bits to bring out the embossing and reveal the white core of the papers. To call them papers is actually a misnomer I think as they have almost a card-stock quality to them. I matted it on another of the papers and then first on white and then burgundy card-stock. I embellished it with  a diecut, a ribbon and some other bits and pieces from my stash and of course the sentiment is one of the stamps that come with the kit. which I stamped in Archival Maroon Ink

Card number two was made in a similar way, by matting some of the papers, using a die cut behind the Santa image (fussy cut from just the cover of the collection!), one of the stamps, this time stamped in Library Green Archival Ink and the merry Christmas image, which is cut from one of the papers in the collection.

For the final card I used another bit of the burgundy paper from the collection, ran it through a different embossing folder, sanded the raised bits and then matted as before. Then, I know this is getting boring, I embellished with some die cuts and bits and pieces from my stash. The pretty bird in the center is not a stamp but one of the elements that comes with the collection.

That's it from me for this time, pfew, 3 more cards to cross off my list. Hope you liked them and don't forget to come back on Monday when Hels will show you some further examples of what you can do with this wonderful kit.

Well, before I leave you I'd like to say a big thank you to all of you, - followers and visitors and also to my lovely teamies, you are all stars! And our bosses, well I can tell you THEY ARE THE BEST!!!

Wishing you all a blessed and peaceful festive season and I look forward to seeing you again in the new year.

Until then, - stay crafty!

Christmas Light DT Project #1 By Astrid Featuring Carta Bella Christmas Day Collection and Hero Arts Believe Stamps

Hello everyone and a warm welcome to the Snazzys blog. 

Most of you I'm sure will have seen the fantastic projects posted earlier this month already, if not, don't forget to scroll down! For those of you who are still looking for some last minute Christmas inspiration, I will share one project with you today and another one later on in the week. And, don't forget, you can win the awesome collection we are working with just by leaving a comment HERE

I decided to use the wonderful papers and elements in the collection to make a Christmas lantern:

The quality of these paper is so good that it is easy to make something like this as the thickness of the papers makes it very sturdy

I want to apologize in advance that the quality of the photos is pretty awful, the light has just been so bad, but I hope you get a bit of an idea.

I started by cutting 2 pieces of Kraft card to 5 1/2 by 81/2 inches and scored them along the 81/2" side at 4 and 8 ". You are then left with a 1/2" piece at the end which is the glue strip. I then glued both pieces together, this leaves you with one long bit as shown in the photo:

Cover each of the panels with a bit of your chosen  paper, cut to 3 3/4 by 5 1/4. Next cut apertures in each of them so that light can shine through. I cut mine with a Gothic Arch Window die from my stash, but you could obviously use any suitable die you may have or even cut an aperture by hand. I then covered each of the apertures with a bit of parchment paper, large enough to cover the aperture from the inside. Now all you need to do is glue the remaining glue strip to the end panel and you have made your basic lantern. I embellished mine with some of the lovely elements on the papers which I fussy cut and glued around my windows. Here are some pictures still of the different sides:

This was an easy and fun project to put together and could just make a little last minute gift for someone special.

Hope you are all a lot more organised with your Christmas preparations than I am, and if you have a minute, pop by again on Thursday when I'll show you another project still. Until then stay happy, warm and crafty!

DT Project #3 by Minxy, Featuring:

Carta Bella: Christmas Day

Tim Holtz Christmas Muse Tokens

Hero Arts Exclusive {Basic Grey} Collection Believe Stamps

***

Hiya Snazzy Gang

Well, here I am with my final project of 2012

I would just like to say a massive thank you to all you snazzy folks who have supported me and left comments on my work throughout this year.

It's been an absolute pleasure, and i'm so looking forward to the new year and lots more arting for you guys and gals x

Right enough festive gushing, Onto my project

Sorry no Utube for this one, but then you don't really need it.

You get some glass jars, you get your fancy Carta Bella papers, you wrap ya jars, 

HAY PRESTO

I stuck all the paper to the glass with cosmic shimmer glue.

Oh and there's a bit of stamping for your labels, 

I stamped and cut out the  Hero Arts 'believe' stamps in frayed burlap distress ink, then mounted these onto a fancy die cut shape, and attached with a strip of seam binding behind to break up the paper a little.

To finish I attached a muse token to some twine and tied round the neck of the jar.

***

So I hope you have enjoyed my projects this month, Don't forget you still have time to enter the random comment comp to win this months kit by leaving a comment HERE. And Astrid will be along on Monday with more christmas inspiration.

I wish you all a Very Merry Christmas

And i'll see you all in the New Year

Till then.. Stay Inky

DT Project #2 by Minxy, Featuring:

Carta Bella: Christmas Day

Tim Holtz Christmas Muse Tokens

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Hay Snazzy's Gang

As promised i'm back again with another festive project for you.

This time some Christmas Crackers, Literally!

 I made all 4 of these from 1 single 12"x12" sheet of the lush Carta Bella 'Holiday Borders' paper.

I used some of the muse tokens threaded through the ribbon to add a nice finishing touch .

So I guess your wondering what happened to the instructions...

Well you guessed it.. coz I love you guys i've done another quick UTube  Enjoy

I'll be back on Friday with my final project of 2012!

Till then, Stay Inky

DT Project 1 by Minxy: Featuring:

Carta Bella: Christmas Day

Hiya Snazzy Gang 

Well Christmas is almost upon us.. Are you ready for it yet?

NO.. Well here is a fun project to add to your list of last minute makes lol

For my first offering this month i've made an
Origami Christmas Wreath

 I started by cutting 2 sheets of the paper into 9x 4" squares.
I used sheets 'December 25th & Ornaments'

I've made a quick vid for you to see how I made the cubes. Enjoy.

     

You will notice in the vid that my paper is not double sided like the Carta Bella paper is, This is because the paper is such good quality, therefore quite thick for the small cubes I was making, so I gently peeled each square apart giving me 2 sheets from each square.

After folding 27 cubes, I set to work threading them all together with some garden wire.
I did the outer ring first, then the inner ring, joining the wire at the top in a loop to hang.
I concealed this with an Element Sticker.
I mounted the stickers on some card and cut them out to give them a bit more ridgedness, and stuck them to the wreath with cosmic shimmer glue.
I wrapped the loop with some leftover strips of paper.
I then embellished the wreath with some die-cut holly and mini poinsettia from more scraps of the Carta Bella christmas paper and Element Stickers.
***
I hope you have enjoyed today's offering, I will be back on Wednesday with my 2nd project for your viewing pleasure.
Till then, Stay Inky

DT Project #2 featuring Hero Arts Believe stamp set posted by Lesley

Hello again lovely Snazzys visitors.

Well, I made it back with a 2nd project ............. just!  To be honest it's only half a project really because I had a little accident with the other half :o(.  I decided to make some tealight lanterns using the lovely word stamps from our DT pack and some of the snowflake stamps from last month's pack too.  OH and I don't seem to eat a lot of stuff that comes in jars so I only had one in the recycling crate and purposely finished a jar of marmalade (in the interests of crafting, lol) to give me another one.  Unfortunately, when I came to wash the marmalade jar ........... you got it..............I dropped it! 

Anyway, with my lonely little jar I did the stamping in Versamark a section at a time around the jar, sprinkled with gold embossing powder (I used Ranger Queen's Gold and Snazzys have a great selection of embossing powders to choose from) and heated with the heat gun.

A couple of tips here.  First of all give the jar a liberal dusting with an anti-static bag because the embossing powder will stick to the smallest area that your fingers have touched.  Secondly, although the glass takes a while to heat and the EP to start to melt, once hot it's very hot and stays that way for quite a while so be careful and watch your fingers.  Also, because of the time it takes to cool down don't attempt to stamp and emboss another area while it's still even warm because the EP will stick and start to melt as soon as it touches the glass and you end up with a right old mess!  Guess how I know that, lol?  The handy thing is if you make a mess of an area, you can wipe it off and start again while the EP is hot and melty.

I'm afraid my photography leaves a lot to be desired and I found it impossible to show how pretty this looks when the tealight is lit.  The above is the best I could do ;o)!

After all the stamping I made a hanger out of strong wire and an embellishment from an Ideology Fragment adhered with Glossy Accents over a bauble on one of the Christmas Day papers and together with a Muse Token, an Ideology tassel and various bits of chain, I hung from the wire handle.

Stamping onto glass is another first for me and I tried various ways of stamping the images.  First of all I tried laying the stamp flat on my craft mat and rolling the jar across the stamp but I couldn't seem to get an even pressure and the image was squashed out of shape or missed. I then tried pressing the stamp onto the glass without a block but that was a disaster for me.  Finally, I put the stamp on a block and rolled it over the glass.  This meant I could see when the stamp made contact with the glass so I knew I had the full image and also it helped me to not press too hard.  That was the method that worked for me anyway and I'm really happy with the end result.  I just need some more empty jars now, lol!

Well, that's it from me for 2012!  My next week to post on here will be just after the New Year so I'll be back then.  I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas with lots of crafting goodies from Santa and a very happy New Year too.  Don't forget to leave a comment HERE to join in the draw for this lovely DT pack of products if you haven't already.

See you again in 2013!

DT Project #1 By Lesley (Merry Christmas) Feat Carta Bella Christmas Day Collection and Hero Arts Believe Stamps (posted by Lesley)

Hello Snazzy Visitors 

and 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

This week is my last week to post projects for the wonderful Snazzys (aka Val and Don, the best bosses ever) for this year - Wow, how fast that has flown!  The DT have had some wonderful products to play with over the past 12 months and this pack is no different in that respect.  We were sent the wonderful paper collection by Carta Bella called Christmas Day, a set of stamps from Hero Arts caqlled  Believe and some seasonal Muse Tokens and here is my first offering of the week which I hope you all like.

 

I made a base from some thick mountboard I had in my stash by cutting two 12 x 4.75 inch pieces and gluing them back to back.  I then used one 12 x 12 sheet from the collection to wrap completely around the base and sanded all the edges.  I followed this with some random stamping first with Versamark using a Christmas script stamp.  I only inked the stamp roughly and didn't use an acrylic block but just curved the stamp roumd my fingers so that I only got a partial imprint.  I then heat embossed with embossing powder from my stash.  I then used the little strip of music stamp from last month's DT stamp set and stamped this with Black Soot Distress Ink having stamped off onto scrap first.

You can see the background stamping in the above closeup.

Although these lovely papers are quite a substantial weight, I wanted them a bit more rigid for my  lettering so I cut strips from a selection of 3 papers and adhered them to medium weight card before cutting out my letters using my Wordplay die.  I inked all the edges with Black Soot and arrranged them on my hanger.  I decided to raise some of the letters on 3D foam pads and adhere the rest flat using Cosmic Shimmer Glue.

I then stamped the Joy and Peace stamps onto ivory card using Black Versafine and cut them out with a circle die, inked the edges with Black Soot and Aged Mahogany DI and then triple embossed with Snazzys clear embossing powder.  This has a lovely gloss finish but I couldn't get it to show on the pics.  In fact, taking photos was a bit of a nightmare because of the awful weather :-(.    I diecut the motif and mounted the discs on 3D foam pads to the centres before attaching them to the hanger, again with 3D foam.  I used one of the Muse Tokens as the 'dot' for the letter i.

 

Finally I punched holes with my Crop-a-dile, made the hanger out of wire making some spirals so that the ribbon and lace would stay in place and added the little bells on some waxed thread.

I really enjoyed making this project and hope it has put you in a Christmassy mood.  Finally, don't forget if you would like to be in with a chance of winning this month's DT pack of goodies go leave a comment HERE to be placed in the random draw at the end of the month. 

Please call back later in the week when I will have another project to share with you. 

Till then

Design Team Project #3 ....

Morning Snazzy fans, today I'm back sharing my last project featuring this month's design team collection.

Using my faithful alterable item to go to (Paper Mache Hanging Board), I collaged various papers from the collection using Claudine Hellmuths Matte Medium.

Using the Ideaology Festive Adornments to embellish the hanging, I coloured them using Treasure Gold Wax.

Ideaology Muse Tokens (Festive) coloured as above.

I love the dimension from the papers which have been accented with Fresco Acrylic Paint & Treasure Gold Wax (Spanish Topaz).

A little smidging of Rock Candy Distress Crackle Paint on the number 24.

The back has been decorated using the Hero Arts Clear stamp set (Believe) which has been inked with Archival Ink (Library Green).

Lesley will be here on Monday sharing her projects with you, until then if you want to be in with a chance of winning this collection click HERE and leave a comment.

Thanks so much for all your lovely comments ... until next time .... stay inky! x

Design Team Project #2 ....

Did you see our news!!!!!!!! .... oh my I'm still giddy with the excitement. To see all the details and how to register your interest, click HERE.

So today I'm back sharing an easy peezy project using the beautiful 12x12 papers & embellishment sheets. A quick and easy way of journalling your christmas day memories either to keep for yourself or to share with a loved one.

Simply cut your preferred cardstock cover to size, score down the middle, ink edges with Distress Ink (Walnut Stain), then cut various size pages from remaining cardstock and embellish with tags/stickers from the collection. It really is as easy as that!

(inside front)

(2nd page)

(3rd page)

(4th page to which I have added a kraft gift label for extra journalling/notes)

(the journal has simply been bound with gold metallic thread)

(back cover)

If you are like me *a real paper hoarder* this is a quick and easy project to use up your cardstock, it doesn't just have to be for christmas.

I will be back on Friday to share one more project with you, until then thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. x