Christmas Card Club Challenge - Animals at Christmas

Hand stamped Christmas Card by UK Stampin' Up! Demonstrator Zoe Tant with We Must Celebrate

I'm a little late for our fortnightly Christmas card club challenge set by Kate up in Scotland, but a) I didn't have it made yesterday to post and b) it just felt not quite right being Easter Sunday. So I've enjoyed tinkering today and have made this card for the theme Animals at Christmas.  Mine are cute, fluffy and not what you'd usually expect for Christmas, but I think this fun combo of stamp sets from Stampin' Up! and animals has worked out quite well.  If you like cute and humorous Christmas cards you may also like one I made last year with Stampin' Up! This Little Piggy.

Ready for Christmas provides the tree, gifts, ornament, main sentiment and cute little dog.  The other critters are from the Stampin' Up! spring catalogue set We Must Celebrate which I adore as it is so sweet and full of great sentiments like 'We're behind you all the way" and 'We think you're the best' which are great for teachers and children to give to teachers.  I used the tree lights from a set called Confetti Celebration stamped them in black ink and add white gel pen to make it simple white lights.

As the critters are adding baubles to the tree I just added some gold metallic enamel stars to help them along the way and the tree was first stamped with old olive ink and then just partially with garden green to give some shading although my photo doesn't show it ever so well.  The parcels coloured up nicely with my stampin' blends alcohol markers and I gave them some depth by raising some with stampin dimensionals.  To break up the old olive matting layer I embossed it first with the Scattered Sequins Dynamic Textured Impressions folder.  My card base is 5.75" square and so I was able to make it from a sheet of thick whisper white card.

I hope you've managed to have a relaxing Bank Holiday weekend and that the weather has dampened your spirits as much as your garden.  We've played games and chilled and it's been great to have Olivia home from Uni.

I'm now spending the week doing a little more of the above and some final preparations for going to the Stampin' Up! Onstage event in Telford next weekend.  I've made my swaps ie cards to trade with others for ideas and now just have my team presents to wrap.  Hope you have a good week.

Zoe xx

Hinged Box Tutorial for Thinking Outside the Box

Welcome everyone to my blog and March 2018's Thinking Outside the Box Blog Hop.  If you've arrived from Tanja's blog in Germany you probably know what a blog hop is, but someone pointed out to me the other day that some folk might not know and so if you're starting here and have never come across a blog hop this is a good place to start.  Just like the Easter Bunny on my hinged box you can hop onto the other ladies blogs to see their version of our monthly challenge which this time is  a hinged box.  You hop from one blog to the next to get lots of inspiration for using Stampin' Up! products and different versions of the same theme.  Enjoy and we'd love you to leave a comment to let us know you visited.  

I normally make a video for this hop, but it's going to be a little late this time as I'm full of cold and also have torn my calve muscle and am not able to walk too well so I've created a template and will add measurements for you for now in cms and inches.  

How to make a simple hinged box

1.  Cut a piece of card 21 cm x 30.5 cm (12" x 83/4")

2. Score on both sides at every 7cm so on landscape 7cm,14cm, 21cm and 28cm (inches 2 3/4, 5 1/2, 8 1/4 and 11.)

3. Now following the template where the dashes are scored lines and the solid lines are cut lines.  

Before putting the template together you'll need to decorate it. I've stamped in Stampin' Up! Archival Grey ink and coloured the daffodils in with watercolour pencils.  I used lemon lime twist from the Stampin Up Lots of Happy Card kit and old olive, but you could just use the latter.  The flower heads are daffodil delight with a touch of early espresso for the sheath from the flower blended with a blender pen with the yellow.   TIP Fold each panel of the box so that you only get stamping where you want it.

The bunny is from We Must Celebrate and he was stamped in black memento ink and coloured with Stampin' Blends. I fussy cut him out.  The daffodils and and sentiment are from You're Inspiring.  My usual bling bits added on this project are Tutti Frutti adhesive-backed sequins with rhinestones.  

To add a simple handle to open the box I pierced a hole in roughly the centre of the lid with the end of my snips and then pushed the larger ball end of my scoring stylus through to the inside.  Pass the loop of lemon lime twist ombre ribbon from the top into the lid and I stuck it with tear and tape but tombow or any wet glue would do it. I also to make it neat and tidy added a square 6.8cm x 6.8cm (2 11/16 x 2 11/16 inches) over the ribbon ends.  

Thanks for hopping with us and if you are in the UK and wish to purchase any Stampin' Up! products please do visit Zoe Tant  Stampin Up online shop

Bye for now Zoe x

1. Shannean Moncrieff (Australia) 2. Tanja Kolar (Germany) 3. Zoë Tant (United Kingdom) 4. Yoshiko Endo (Japan) 5. Sharlene Meyer ( New Zeeland) 6. Dena Rekow (USA) 7. Beate Wacker ( Austria) 8. Aude Barbara ( France) 9. Barb Stewart ( Canada)