Live, Travel and Explore...

Hi everyone!!

Ok, I'm going to sound really boring now but....lol, it's been another really busy week here at Chez Williams!! There's so much to do and so many deadlines to meet but as always, when each email or phone call comes through...I can't wait to start on the next new and exciting adventure!!

Of course, I won't be able to share many of my projects for a while yet...yep, my*lips are tightly sealed* but in the meantime, here's something I've made earlier and I hope you like it!

Every month when I receive my latest DT box from Merly Impressions, I usually just sit at the table, oohing and aahing at all the gorgeous Kaisercraft goodies that are inside and this collection was no different!! Ta~dah...I present the Check In collection.

...and for the first of my three projects that I've made using Check In, I created a memory box!! Somewhere that you can keep special mementos of a special day, holiday or occasion...something that you can keep for yourself, or even better make as a gift to someone else. If you want to see how I made it, click HERE! 

Thank you so much for all the lovely comments you left on my last post for The Artistic Stamper, I was overwhelmed with them all and as always, every single word means so much to me!


I'll be visiting all your blogs and catching up with you all later but until then, hope you all have a lovely evening and see you soon!
Bye for now!
Love Emma xxx

Christmas ~ A Time For Reflection

Hi everyone and hope you all had a great week. Well, it's been another busy day and as I sit here watching Corrie...I thought I'd better pop on to say hello!

It's seemed very strange showing you all these Christmas cards in July and I know that Christmas is a dirty word to some of you, so early in the year!! lol But to be honest, it's always been my favourite time of year and no matter when, I always enjoy making Christmas cards...even if I was doing them with the sun shining through the window, my strawberries growing outside my back door and wearing a maxi dress and Birkis. The life of a crafter is a strange one... :)

Anyway, today is the final day of my Clarity shares and look...you've got two for one and I really hope you love both of them, as much as I do!

This first card, uses the stamp kit above and is just such a fabulous little set of stamps, which I built up and up, to make this snowy, winter scene.

The second card features the Holly and Ivy Flourish, which I can see being very useful in making my Christmas cards this year. There are just so many ways that you can incorporate this stamp into all your card making. And look how different this looks, using traditional Christmas colours, to the one that I showed you earlier in the week, on another of my samples.

Well, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and whatever you have planned...enjoy!!

See you next week and thank you, to everyone for all your lovely comments and for your continued support!

Love Emma

xxx

Lucky Star

It seems ages since I was here last...where does the time go? Hope you're all having a great weekend and that the sun is shining. Of course, today is the first Sunday of the month and that means that Barbara has been on Create and Craft showing all the new (and old) Clarity Stamps that she has to offer. I'm sure some of you have watched but for those that didn't, as always...I'll be showing all my samples that I made for the shows, here on my blog throughout the week.

And this is the first of my samples, featuring the "Peace On Earth" set of stamps, which I believe are still available to buy.

I didn't actually see this card amongst the samples today, which was a shame because I worked so hard on it, cutting out all those little pieces and colouring each section bit by bit. But that's the nice thing about being able to share these samples with you...you get to see what others didn't! lol

The actual image itself was coloured using Promarkers and I built up each section to make a decoupaged star, adding Glossy Accents to give a raised, glazed look to the final image. I added some of those beautiful flourishes, that I keep talking about and just love, love, love...from Spellbinders (can you tell how much I love them? lol) and some stars, that I die cut using one of the dies from the Spellbinders Snowflake set. All this work was added to a piece of card that I embossed using a Tim Holtz embossing folder and as the final touch, I stamped the Peace On Earth message, using a Versamark ink pad and embossed with gold embossing powder. I hope you like it....

Well, I'm off to see what I can find in the freezer for tonight's dinner. I think it will be a good, old fashioned Sunday roast.

I'll be back tomorrow with the second of my shares from the shows and can't wait for you all to see them!

See you soon and thank you to everyone who left a comment on my last post...I've passed all your well wishes onto my Dad, who now thinks he's famous in the craft world ~ hehe...and he thanks you all!!

Love Emma

xxx

Beauty Queen

Hi everyone!!

I know, I know, lol...humble apologies because I promised this post yesterday but due to an eye infection, an horrendously busy schedule, my Mum not being very well and last but not least, an old neck injury raising it's ugly head~do you think I can be forgiven? Plus, on top of all this, I think my mojo has gone missing. I've looked for it everywhere and after sitting at my desk all day yesterday, trying to do some DT work...at six o'clock last night, I still hadn't come up with a thing!! Sometimes, these mojo's can be such pests and why do they always go missing at the most inconvenient of times? Grrrr

Anyway, enough about me and the fact that I sound like a walking medical encyclopaedia...hehe

Here's the card that I wanted to share with you all, yesterday...hope you like it?

This was another of the cards that I made for the Kuretake shows, last week and features, this beautiful stamp from Clarity. Every bit of this image is handpainted using a combination of Wink of Stella and Art and Graphic Twin pens.

The flourishes are die cut using my new Spellbinders flourishes die...I have a sneaky suspicion that you'll be seeing a lot of these on cards over the coming month...I love them!! And of course, it wouldn't be one of my cards without the finishing touch of some handmade paper roses.

So, I hope you're all having a great week and hopefully, I'll be back tomorrow with another card!!

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to leave a comment and a big hello to any new followers!

I appreciate you all so much!

See you soon!

Love Emma

xxx

Ray of Sunshine

It's another beautiful sunny day, here in London and I hope you're all enjoying the sunshine, wherever you are. It feels so good after such a long winter to throw open the windows and finally let some warm air into the house. At the moment, I'm at the dining room table, papers spread all over it working on some new and exciting projects, music is playing and there's a cool breeze blowing through the room...I'm in my element. And it makes up for yesterday, when I spent two hours waiting for my appointment in a stuffy waiting room at my GP's. Oooh, I was so angry...plus, when it came to my turn, I was only in there 2 minutes just to be told I needed an iron supplement! Grrr...lol

Anyway, enough about me...here's day four of my Clarity shares...I hope you like them!

Once again with both of these cards, I wanted to try out some different shaped card blanks and I thought the twisted easel card worked really well on the images that I was using. There was such great detail in the image of the Dandelion fairy stamp that I wanted to keep it simple, to capture the look of a detailed etching but it also needed some colour and to inject that colour into the card, I added some matts of blue and green which really made the image, pop! The embossed background is achieved using one of Tim's embossing folders and some Centura pearl cardstock. I stamped the sentiment onto a die cut label, which I had coloured using my "Big and Juicy squidging method".

For this card, as with the previous card, the image of the cat had such fine detail, that I wanted to keep it simple, So, once again, I stamped the image using a brown Memento ink pad, onto plain cardstock but this time I die cut a frame, to use around it. I then mounted the image onto an embossed background and chose these pretty papers as the backing. I stamped the sentiment separately and adhered this to the elongated back section.

So, tomorrow will be the final share and I think I saved the best, in my opinion, until last!!

See you all tomorrow and hope you all enjoy the rest of the day!

Love Emma

xxx

For Lisa: To make my paper roses, I usually use either the Tattered Florals die from Tim Holtz or the Grungeflower die from Paperartsy and then run them through a die cutting machine. I then just build each layer up, shaping the petals as I go. I hope this helps and maybe, if I get some spare time...watch this space and I might see if I can do a tutorial!

x

Dreaming of a White Christmas...

Even though the majority of snow has disappeared here in London, it's still extremely cold out there and we still have the threat of more bad weather to come! I wonder if we will have a white Christmas? That would be, my dream come true!

But there's so much to do before then and my list seems to be getting longer instead of shorter... arghhhh!!

In the meantime, I've made lots of lovely cards to share with you all over the next couple of weeks and I can't wait for you to see them. I am so proud of some of these cards...and I particularly like the one I'm sharing today...and here it is...

I love the way this card came together, it's extremely colourless, if you know what I mean...but so effective! For me, it captures that icy, wintery feel, so well.

I must admit, I am loving using my Cuttlebug and Big Shot to die cut and emboss all these elements and for me, these two machines have really transformed my work. I don't know where I'd be without them...it would be like cutting my right hand off! hehe...

Of course, that beautiful, elegant deer is from Tim Holtz's Alterations range and the snowflakes are die cut using a Spellbinders die, which has been so useful for all my Christmas cards this year. The JOY message that I stamped onto white card is from Paula Pascual's Stamp range and I matted and layered it all using papers from Dovecraft, some Bazzill cardstock and some Centura Pearl card, that I embossed using a Cuttlebug embossing folder.

Finally, I just wanted to let you all know that the wonderful Barbara Gray and Clarity Stamps, will be on Create and Craft tomorrow morning at 11:00am and if you look carefully, together with all the lovely cards from the fab DT at Clarity, you might see some of the samples that I made for the show and will be sharing with you all next week!

I hope you all having a wonderful weekend!

Thanks for stopping by to look at my work...

Love Emma

xx

Entered into The Stamp Man Challenge Blog: Challenge 11 ~ Take Any 3 colours!

Snowflakes are Winter's Kisses....

Happy Monday and I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend.

As for me? I had a good weekend and even managed some relaxation time...I know, it's a miracle! I'd forgotten what that was! But I do love what I do and I'm never happier than when I'm creating my little masterpieces and just lately, I'm pushing myself to become more and more creative...trying to find new ideas for cards all the time. As much as I love the easel card and I was even tempted by Kirsty Wiseman's new inventive idea of the double easel card which I saw her make on Create and Craft last week...I really did want to try some new ideas to showcase all the fabulous products that are around and with this card...I hope I've done just that! To be honest, you know when you make a card and just will NEVER be able to bring yourself to give it away?? Well...for me, this is it!!!

It's actually a frame card and everything that you see on this card, is created by my own fair hand from two pieces of A4 cardstock and a scoring board and my tip for making a card such as this...use good quality card...I used Centura Pearl in Snow White from Crafter's Companion and the pearlescent sheen that you get with this card, is stunning!! I've really tried to show you every little detail about this card and I hope that the photos can do it all justice.

The main decoupage image, is of course from the Gorjuss Winter Decoupage by The Crafthouse Press and when I saw it, I really wanted to showcase the beauty of these illustrations and a frame just seemed like the perfect idea! I die cut the snowflakes using Spellbinders Snowflake dies together with some more Centura Pearl card and I punched some Bazzill card, using a Martha Stewart punch to make the little picket fence behind the main image. The snow comes courtesy of Flower Soft and just gives that wonderful feel of freshly fallen snow. As finishing touches, I added some adhesive gems to complete the look.

So, I really hope you love this card and thanks for stopping by to take a look...it's always fab to hear what my fellow crafters and friends have to say!!

Have a wonderful week....

Love Emma

x

Entered for the Winter Wonderland ~ Walking In A Winter Wonderland theme challenge!