My final Funkie Junkie project, Christmas must be just around the corner

Phew, I managed to get my final Funkie Junkie project finished yesterday. I really like making a collage of them all together...this represents12 weeks of fun crafting.

Your will see that for my final entry I decided to make a money wallet for my dear son. Boys always like a bit of cash to splash after Christmas don't they.

Christmas must also just be around the corner as I was so delighted to see on Thursday morning the festive foils appeared on my milk bottles. It's these little things which fill me with delight. We still have our milk delivered by a wonderful milkman called Mo, who never ever lets us down.  I am proud to support his doorstep delivery service.

I have also got my wreath up on the front door. My daughter had this one made for me by her local greengrocer.....I was thrilled with it...so many lovely details and a big red bow to finish it off.

So back to my money wallet....
For those of you who are new to Linda's challenge you can read all the rules of it here. In a nutshell you use her weekly tag for inspiration and you can create anything crafty. If you get your skates on you could still enter as Linda has extended the deadline by 1 week and you can link up your projects until 27 December.
 You also have a chance to win one of her generous prizes. I was lucky enough to win $25 dollars last year to spend in her wonderful on line boutique which sponsors the challenge. Do have a look here at her shop, her stock is enormous and her prices really keen.

I choose to use the challenge to create 12 special Christmas cards.

This is Linda's lovely final project here

I used a variation of the wallet I made last year which was originally designed by my friend Brenda of Bumblebees and Butterflies.I have tweaked it as like a bigger size.
I was inspired by Linda's use of Tim's holly stencil which is one of my Christmas favourites. I also wanted to feature some holly leaves as she did. I really like her red berry highlights inside her card so decided to use this idea too.

Here is what I got up to in my studio.
I  coloured my card with some festive colours.

and cut my pieces

I added distress ink through my holly stencil

and some festive stamping

I used the great "with love" die I won from my dear blogging friend Di in her fun Pixie playground.

Here is my finished wallet ready for my son.

This is a peep inside

and the back with all the bright berries

I would like to enter my wallet into the following challenges.

The Funkie Junkie's 12 tags of Christmas 2015 #12
Pixies' crafty playground #208 and #209
Inspiration Emporium 'tis the season
That's Crafty 2/3 anything goes
Sweet Stamping 1/2 Merry Christmas
Emerald Creek Dares celebrations around the world

A vintage journey  vintage Christmas

Anything but cute you've got happy mail

Penny Black and More 3/3 anything goes with a stamp
Stamping sensations 2/3 anything goes with a stamp and ribbon
The Artistic stamper Christmas
Country View Challenges make a scene
Vintage Stamping Winter trees
The Craft Barn Trees
Fashionable stamping 2/3 make your own background
Art with heart Favourite things
Crafty hazelnut Anything Christmas
Love to Create anything creative/mixed media #26

I would like to thank Linda for all her hard work hosting this challenge. It is a highlight of my Christmas crafting and her inspirational tags this year have been wonderful.

It's now just 5 more sleeps until the Big Day......are you ready? I very nearly am and I finished off the crackers yesterday. We have darling Daisy staying over later....this is the last time we will see her before Christmas as she is going to her other grandparents this year. We will have to wait until Boxing day until we catch up. We plan a family brunch to celebrate today, lots of lovely catching up.

Thanks for visiting,

Back soon with my last few countdown to Christmas posts.

Jane x

The final tag of 2015, Jane's Journal style

Wow how quickly the year has flown by and I find my self sharing my December card, my final version of Tim's tags for 2015.

Here are all my entries for the year....I love putting them all together in a collage. There are a lot of creative hours represented here.  It's really hard for me to choose a favourite but if I was pushed it was the Mother's day card with all that gold embossing, pastel flowers and butterflies and my Dad's birthday card featuring him as a little boy...how cute is that photo.  All the recipients of these special cards really did love them as much as I loved creating them.

Those of you who have followed my creative journey this year will be able to spot my December creation.

Tim's inspiration tag can be seen here.

I took inspiration from his tag to use the hessian (burlap) background  and his cool spray inking technique using a stencil. Instead of a wreath for the door I created a starry wreath. You can see all the techniques over on his blog.

I used my TH stars stencil and sprayed this background onto my hessian sheet. I carefully moved the stencil over and repeated to cover my hessian. I did "mess up" the first one but I have since made another card with it so even mistakes come in handy.

My Hb and I have  just been to see Kew at Christmas in London and I really wanted to use something to do with one of the scenes from our fab night out. We had a really great evening and I will share a full post in due course but this was the "field of fire". It was so atmospheric in the darkness. You can see where my stars inspiration came from too.

I decided to create a moon face myself, similar to one I made earlier this year. I die cut a circle and drew my moon face. I used Sakura glaze pens to get the shine in the eyes and on the lips.

Instead of the garland wreath which Tim uses, I wanted to surround my moon with a garland of  shiny stars.
I die cut lots of stars in glitter card using my Cheery Lynn snowflake die and Noor stars garland die.

Then it was time to put on my creative hat....

and this is my finished card.

with a couple of close ups

So that's my 12th card completed for the year.

I would like to enter it into the following challenges;

Tim Holtz 12 tags of 2015 December
Pixie's snippets playground  3/3  #206
Sparkles Christmas 3/3 die cuts for Christmas

A vintage journey  vintage Christmas

That's Crafty 3/3 Season's Greetings
Ribbon Girl 3/3 anything goes
Love to create anything creative/mixed media #25
Simon says stamp Wednesday let it snow
Artistic Inspirations anything goes/Christmas
Visions of Sugarplums 2015 Christmas/Winter
Our creative corner Wish upon a star
Papertake Weekly fun fun fun I had such fun making my 12 cards this year

Anything but cute you've got happy mail
Art with heart December favourite things my card versions of Tim's tag have been some of my favourite creative things this year,
Inspiration Emporium 'tis the season

I would like to thank Tim for another amazing year of creativity which he so selflessly shares. I have had such fun and learnt so much.

I look forward to the 1st January when I really hope he continues with this amazing challenge.

Thanks for visiting me here and for all you kind comments, Billy also wants to thank you for the comments on his post and sends a purr :0) 

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Tim Holt'z 12 tags of 2015, November, Jane's Journal style

It's now the penultimate of Tim's 2015 tag challenge. I have been making cards for this challenge all year and decided to use his design for November to another Christmas card. Below is Tim's tag and you can see his process over on his blog here.

As with last month's tag on my first look I struggled to think what I could make. I don't own the pumpkin or autumn dies and as this Halloween has been and gone there would be no point in me making a card with any pumpkin images on. I honestly use all the cards I made; I never make any "just for the sake of makin" cards. Of course in America they are looking forward to Thanksgiving but it is a festival we do not have here in the UK.The only "Blueprint" stamp I own is the same snowman I used last month for my decoupage October card. After some deliberation I decided to use my snowman stamp again.

I used the same technique as Tim to make my background but I wanted to use crisp winter colours and rather then his background stamp I used a Visible Image crackle background stamp to create the acrylic resist for my ink sprays.

I had fun with my sprays; blue and pewter...I love these colours for Christmas card

I added some water and after heat drying this is my finished backing card.

The paint on the crackle stamp gives a wonderful frosty feel by resisting the inks and the pewter gives such a gorgeous sheen.

Here is my stamped snowman

I  coloured him with distress markers and inks.

 I then de- and embossed my snowman and padded him up with foam.  He took up a fun rounded shape.

It's hard to see but he has a nice plump shape now.

I then put on my creative hat and put my card together with some of my own details. Here is my finished card.

I don't have any cut out dies like Tim's autumn sentiment but I really liked the cork texture he used so inspired the cork I went off on a tangent. I used some hessian for texture and added a Tim Merry Christmas stamped sentiment. Rather than the rivets I used star brads in the corners.
I also used his adhesive foil around the edges in random strips.

I added some blue paint to some silver foil Cheery Lynn holly leaves and added some bells and a scarf charm. I added a piece of CL die cut icicles too.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges.

Tim Holtz's 12 tags of 2015 November
Rubber dance white/blue/red winter inspiration
Country View Crafts the colour blue
Penny Black and More anything Christmas 3/3
Flonzcraft  Vintage Traditional Christmas 3/3
Our creative corner 2/3 Topsy turvey my piece is topsy turvey as it started out with thanksgiving pumpkin inspiration and I turned it into a snowman Christmas card!
Frilly and Funkie 3/3  let there be light my light is from the glow of the silver paint and card and the crackled background.
The Craft barn Fireworks mine are my glimmery background and the scarf charm..essential to keep warm with on a cold November night.
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas bright or sparkly colours
Mixed Media world anything goes
That Craft place kraft I used a Kraft card blank to mount my piece on.

Thanks for visiting me here today, I cannot believe that next month's Tim card will be the end of this year's challenges. I still have lots more Christmas projects to share with you in the meantime. I hope your Christmas preparations are coming along well?

I thought I would end with a photo of my sweet Daisy Jane from her birthday..thanks for all the kind comments you left for me on my last post and I'm blushing about your cake comments. She had a wonderful day at the zoo. My daughter sent me this photo........

What a wonderful image....I might need to make a journal page of this. Enjoy your weekend, we're off to see Spectre on Saturday night...I do love Bond!

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Tim's 12 tags of 2015, October, Jane's Journal style

Wow here we are at No 10 of Tim's 12 tags of 2015. I must be very honest here that his tag for this month really had me foxed. I am not heavily into Halloween and would not be buying any of the 3D Halloween dies he used.

Below is Tim's creation and the details of how he made it are over on his blog here

So I spent a few days racking my creative brain and then had a light bulb moment...I would create a 3D effect by decoupaging (is that a verb?) one of his dies.

I decided to use a lovely framelits snowman die and stamp set that I bought last year. My son loves snowmen and I think this may well be his Christmas card so shhh, keep this a secret.

I stamped and cut it outseveral times and then cut parts out that I could layer up

 I coloured some of the layers even though they would be underneath in case they were visible.

I used Pinflair glue to keep the depth of the layers as I put them together

 I even die cut his hat in black and added a ribbon

and of course plenty of glitter.

Here he is fully "decoupaged!" Well hello Mr Frosty

I then decided that he needed a snowy background and so I use Tim's snowflake stencil and some glitter medium to create a sky on black card.

I die cut using a mixed media thinlet  the ground and added lots of snowtex and glitter for sparkle. I added gems to the eyes and the holly corner die cut.

Below is my completed card. My holly corner is Cheery Lynn and the tags are LOTV.

 I even decoupaged his carrot nose and the black gems gave his eyes more dimension

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Tim Holtz 12 tags of 2015, October
Natalie and Amy snowpeople 1/3
Country View  add some texture
Papertake weekly anything goes 2/5
That's crafty boys will be boys
Little Claire's favourite stamp 1/3 I love this snowman stamp, he can be used so many ways.
Allsorts no designer paper 1/3
Crafty friends use gems and/or pearls 1/3
Vintage stamping use a die
Ribbon Girl anything goes with an image 1/3
We love 2 create anything creative/mixed media
The Craft barn light my light is star light
Crafty ribbons Christmas carols mine has to be It came upon a Midnight clear

Thanks for visiting and enjoy the end of the weekend. It's been such fun, fun fun here with our kids.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Tim's tags of 2015, September, Jane's Journal style

We are now onto the 9th of Tim's 12 tags of 2015. I had some craft time in my studio on Thursday and decided to get my card version of Tim's tag made.This one will be the birthday card for my Mum in November. Life gets hectic in November so it's good to get ahead now, I know this from previous years.

Below is Tim's lovely tag and his process is over at his blog here.

 I was inspired to make a similar alcohol ink background.I don't have the butterfly stamps so I used his gorgeous flower stamps instead.

Alcohol inks are such fun to play with but so messy.  I had such fun making this background with lots of bright colours and some gold.

I added clear embossing paste through the flourish stencil.....love this effect Tim used 

Tim uses frosted (which I don't own) to restamp his butterflies and give them a 3D effect.  I decided to use vellum and created  more of a decoupage effect for depth.

 Because the vellum will not stand up as Tim's frosted does I cut the centres out

 which I then coloured with distress markers.

I also made base out of distress card which I added some of his words to.

So here is my finished birthday card, another one that is so difficult to photograph. The colours are gorgeous, they literally glow and the gold gives a lovely rich effect.

 Hopefully you can see the details in these close ups

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges

Tim Holtz 12 tags of 2015 September

Penny Black and More anything goes

Our creative corner shades of autumn

Simon says stamp Wednesday make it colourful

Frilly and Funkie a touch of gold I have used gold alcohol ink in my background.

Creative Inspirations warm colours

Papertake Weekly anything goes

Craft Barn stamping

Take it make it September Take a stamp

Pixie's Snippets playground #193 I used snippets of vellum for my flowers

I am back on Thursday with my guest design post for Frilly and Funkie and I have really pulled out the stops for my piece....there is a little magic involved and Billy........do come back, but if you're a little timid you might like to look from behind the sofa..........mwah ha ha ha ha.....;O)

Thanks as always for visiting.

Bye for now,

Jane x