Christmas Cake & Christmas Wishes!

Hello there, last year I bought a Christmas Cake from Marks & Spencer's which I thought was great, I loved the little fondant polar bears and penguins but this year I didn't like their new one as much so I decided to make my own. Up until this point I had never iced or decorated a cake before let alone made fondant characters!

 

My nan and my mum both dislike fruit cake so I made a sponge cake instead; a three layered Victoria sponge with buttercream and raspberry jam filling. My mum helped me put the marzipan and icing layer on (she has decorated cakes in the past, although a long time ago!). I then made all the characters, I wanted to make penguins as well but time got away from me. I am glad however I didn't as I wouldn't have had room for them anyway!

 

It is not the best cake in the world but like I said it is my first attempt and I am quite pleased with it. The snowflakes round the side have edible shimmer dust on them and the 'snow' on the cake is made using sanding sugar and edible glitter.

I will probably be taking the rest of the week off from blogging, although I do plan to be back before the New Year with my favourites of 2013. So I am ...

Thank you so so much for your support this year. I have really loved sharing my creations and videos with you all and I appreciate your comments so much. Merry Christmas!

Card Making Haul - December 2013

Hello there, today I have my monthly haul video to share with you. I am unlikely to buy anything else this month so I wanted to get this video up now. I didn't buy that much although I made a large order from SSS (not large in terms of quantity but large in terms of cost!) as I succumbed to the Avery Elle Stamp Pockets! I'll have to try them out at the beginning of the year and see how I like them.

 

Here is what I got ...

 

PRODUCTS:

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Thanks so much for visiting me today, I will be back with a quick post tomorrow. Have a great day!

I Say ... Merry Christmas!

Hello there, I am not a big mass card producer. Although I often think it will be easier making two or so of a design so I have one on hand, for some reason I just don't do it and I make new cards. The only exception to this is at Christmas time. Usually I mass produce my cards for my family (aunts, uncles, cousins etc.) but this year as I made so many Christmas cards in advance for my DT work, I have enough to give them all individual ones. I wanted to make some for my friends though, and for this I have made them all the same, with just a slight variation in papers.

 

The design is one of my own which I made for this card HERE. I thought with the added snowflakes it would make a nice Christmas design. I ended up making them production line style; I made and cut all the card bases, then embossed them all, then made all the sentiment strips, then cut the papers, cut the snowflakes and then right at the end I could put them altogether. Once I got going it didn't take me too long.

 

 

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Thank you so much for visiting me today, hoping you are staying warm in this cold weather in the UK. If you are elsewhere in the world I hope you are staying warm too, or if it is hot where you are, staying cool! :0)

Money Pocket - DTDF

Hello there, today I have a money wallet/pocket to share with you. I have made this for my brother so I have kept it pretty minimal and there is no glitter in sight (I had to try REALLY hard to resist! LOL). I have decorated the front of the pocket with MFT Let it Snowflake Die-Namics (yes, those again!) and then added the sentiment from the MFT Christmas Greetings Die-Namics set on top with 3D foam pads.

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Thanks so much for visiting me today. I hope you are all doing well with your Christmas prep. I still have all my wrapping to do and a Christmas cake to make and decorate! Have a great day!

Get Well

Hello there, I made this card months ago but didn't share it here earlier as I made a video showing how I made it but at the time my editing software was broken. It will be difficult for me to edit it now but I still thought I would share the card with you. I have used the Hero Arts Many Dots set and the layout was inspired by these amazing cards by Shari Carrol.

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Apologies for the overexposed photos. It was the best that I could do at the time sadly. Thank you so much for visiting me today, hope you have a good day!

Storage Sunday - Ink Pads

Hello there, today I have the last episode of my storage series to share with you. Today I am talking about ink pads. I have a few different ink pads, if I can, I try and get the dew drops/cube size as I like having a selection and they take up less space as  well as being cheaper. The full size ones I have are my black ones, Hero Arts Shadow inks (I get mine from Simon Says Stamp but you can buy a selected few from sirstampalot here in the UK) and TH Distress inks.

 

I have the ink pads in A5 semi-transparent boxes. I picked this size as not only can you fit quite a few ink pads in each box but they fit nicely in the drawer of my shelving unit. You can fit all of the PTI ink cubes in one box, you can also fit all of the Memento Dew Drops in one box. For the TH Distress Ink pads you can fit 12 in each box and for the Hero Arts ink pads you can fit 12 in these also.

 

 

I have my TH Distress Inks labelled using the print out which you can get from the Ranger website HERE. I just cut them out and stuck them to the side with DST; I have seen some people then colour the labels to see visually what the colour looks like but I have swatches that I have made so I don't feel it necessary to take this step.

 

For the Hero Arts Shadow Inks I have made the labels in Microsoft Word and again cut them out and stuck them to the two longer sides. I have separated the colours in to different boxes for these inks to make it easier for me to find them. I have blues, purples and aqua in one; reds, oranges, pinks and yellows in another and green, brown and grey in another. This helps me find them a bit easier. Again, I have made a swatch of the colours so I use this to pick the colour before I get it out.

 

Here the video showing how I store them all:

 

 

I do like that you can see through the boxes and it is also easy just to get a box out and put it on my desk while I am using the inks and then put them away. My black inks pads, as well as my Versamark ink, are stored with my personalised stamps in the top drawer under my desk. I use these so often I found it easier than having to get the boxes out every time I wanted one.

 

I hope this may have helped some of you who may have limited storage space or if you just like the idea. Thanks so much for visiting me today.

Whirligigs

Hello there, I made this card months ago but forgot to share it here. I used the Whirligigs stamp set by Paper Smooches - what a great set! I had never used it until this card. I think it's good for male cards where you want a generic card i.e. they are not into football, beer etc., I always find those difficult to make.

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Thank you so much for visiting me today, hope you are all keeping well. Oh and happy Friday the 13th, I hope it is not an unlucky one!