As I Say Goodbye To 2017.......

The time has almost come to say goodbye to 2017 and to welcome in the New Year.

I hope that you have all had a great Christmas.

For me, 2017 has gone in a flash.  It has had lots of ups and downs, but is definitely a year to remember.

It started off with both Dan and I being ill, me over my birthday!  Didn't even celebrate New Year 2017 with bubbly! But it got better.....  I was invited to join the Country View Crafts Design Team and have also become a regular PaperArtsy blog contributor.

I have spent alot of time travelling with work, and spend alot of time in London, which inspired the card above.  One of our London offices is in the court yard of St. Paul's Cathedral - it's always a wonderful sight - as many of my Facebook followers will know by the amount of photos I share of the cathedral.  The card I have shared was made for the Branch Manager of the London office, Het, who loves the Cathedral as much as I do!  

I have tried to be as kind as I can throughout the year and in 2018 I hope this will continue.

What does 2018 hold in store for me?  Well, I start the year with a 'big' birthday.  I am hoping that I can make more time to do the things that I love - spending time with family and friends and crafting.  My calendar is already filling up with lots of craft events, so I hope this continues throughout the year!

I really appreciate you visiting my blog and sharing my journey with me, thank you.  Your comments always mean so much to me.

Before I sign off for the year, I would like to wish you all a very Happy and Healthy 2018. I look forward to sharing the next year with you.

Warm Wishes

Miriam

.....These Are A few Of My Favourite Things.....Blue Christmas

Right from the start of this project I have not been able to stop singing the song in my head!!

Today I am sharing a post over at the PaperArtsy blog.  The theme for this fortnight is "My Favourite Things" - this got me thinking - I have so many favourite things it was hard to  limit them.

Here is the card that I have created using 5 'favourite things'

So, what are my favourite things in this card??

1.  PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk paints

Regular followers will know that most of my projects contain Fresco Finish chalk paint!  I started by brayering London Night, Marlin, Blueberry and Glass Blue paints onto Tim Holtz tissue paper.  I really liked how these paints blended together  - I purposely wanted darker patches in some areas.

2. Texture

I love texture of any form.  For this project I brayered Fresco Finish Chalk paint onto the tissue paper using a textured roller.  I just loved the white specks!

3.  Hot Picks

I have always adored PaperArtsy Hot Picks stamps, which leads me on to my 4th favourite things...

4. Christmas

I used Hot Picks HPXM03.   I stamped the holly flourish in the background around the edges of the card.  The lamp post was then stamped and coloured using Fresco Finish chalk paints.  Here, I used Haystack, Autumn Fire, Berry Red and Hyde Park.  

For the highlight I used a white pencil.  I edged the card using a gold marker.

To finish I added a sentiment from the same Hot Picks set.

So, have you guessed what my 5th favourite thing was??  Well..... blue!!...which also features in a lot of my projects!

I really enjoyed creating this project for the PaperArtsy blog.

I hope that I have inspired you tonight. Make sure that you pop over to the blog to see the amazing inspiration!

Thanks for joining me......

Country View Crafts Challenges - Christmas

Hi again.  Today I am sharing my second project for Country View Crafts.

Here is my second Christmas project:

To start, I covered a card blank using Tim Holtz Christmas paper.

I then die cut a stitched circle and stamped the wonderful trees from a JOFY Christmas set that was released earlier this year.  I coloured the trees using alcohol markers and added some colour around the edges to blend out the white.  I mounted this onto the card.

To finish I added lots of Christmassy embellishments.

I love making Christmas cards, even if the thought of how many I have to make.

I hope that I have inspired you today.  There is still plenty of time to join in with the latest challenge.  Pop over to the challenge blog to see what the design team has been creating.

Thanks for joining me today.

Country View Crafts Challenge - Christmas

It's the last challenge of the year - and what better theme than Christmas.

Here is the card that I created for my first project of the month...

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed making this!!

I started by cutting matts from the Tim Holtz Christmas stack and Kraft stack.  I love the Kraft stack so much I had to buy a second pad because I used it so quickly!  Once cut, I distressed the edges f the mat and inked using Walnut Stain distress ink.

These were layered to a card blank and a stitched circle in Kraft card stock added.

Next, I die cut the largest reindeer from the newest Tim Holtz set and some ferns from Tim's Christmas Greens set.  The reindeer was offset to the right side of the card and the ferns to the top left of the circle.

I added pine cones and seam binding ribbon.

I added metallic distress crayon to a Tim Holtz words and numbers tag.  

This was tied to the seam binding, along with bells.

To finish the card I used a metallic rub-on.

Yes, this card was a Tim overload, but boy did I enjoy it!! 

Pop over to Country View Crafts Challenges to see what the other design team members have created.

Thanks for reading my post today.....