CCAYR ~ March Christmas Challenge

  Hello crafting friends and welcome to this month's 

Christmas Cake Challenge at Christmas Crafts All Year 'Round.

March Christmas Cake Inspiration

Holly & Berries &/or Stars, with Brown as the main colour!

Brown is not a colour I typically associate with Christmas, so this really was a challenge for me, but I think I managed. What do you all think?

I started by looking through my Christmas papers, and chose this patterned paper from the Woodland Winter Paper Pad by Studio Light.  Next I cut out the brown paper mats and Petra's Botanical Star, from Marianne Designs, both in brown and in white. I decided to use the white for the front with the brown inlay in order to make my little squirrel multi layered image stand out a little more.  The squirrel is from the Holly Jolly Christmas cutting sheet by Yvonne Creations.   I used pop dots in between each layer to add dimension. The stamped greeting is from the Vintage Christmas stamp set by Whimsy Stamps and was stamped using Brilliance's Coffee Bean ink.

On the inside, I the brown star with the white inlay so that I could stamp my sentiment.  This  sentiment is from Great Impression Stamps, and was also stamped using the Brilliance Coffee Bean ink.  I added my favourite little holly stamp, from Stampabilities, and coloured it using copic markers.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Now it's your turn to make a Christmas project that falls within our challenge theme, and come play along with us.  You have till the end of the month to link your project to our blog at  Christmas Crafts All Year 'Round.

Crafty hugs,

Glow in the Dark Ghostie

 Hello crafting friends. I have a fun Halloween card to share with you today.

👻 It's a Glow in the Dark Ghost card 👻

With lights on ....

and with lights out!

How cool is that?

I first saw this glow in the dark embroidery floss on a fellow crafter's blog. She had done a snowflake.  I was totally surprised!  I don't do a lot of cross stitching, so I had no clue they made glow in the dark floss. How cool is that?! Well, I went investigating, and online shopping, and let me tell  you that it's not easy to find.  You can find it on Amazon, but it is rather pricey, almost 4 times the price I got it for at a Michaels near me. 

Now let me tell you that it took me forever to get this done!  I'm not very proficient at cross stitching as is clearly seen on my ghost above.  It's all stripy and I believe it's caused by uneven tension of my stitches.  Well, that might very well be, but guys this floss was not easy to work with either.  And, yes, probably because of my lack of experience, but this floss is a little stiffer than the normal floss and it frails as it catches on the paper.  I had to stop and untangle the floss with almost every stitch - now are you surprised that the tension of the stitches is all messed up? 

I used the Cross Stitch Canvas die from Altenew which was great, but the holes are miniscule compared to the cross stitch dies from other companies.  It's wonderful for larger pieces because the spacing is almost as small as normal cross stitch fabric, but it really was a labour of love.  There was definitely sweat, blood and very close to tears.  Sweat as I tried to keep count of those tiny holes, blood as I pricked my finger a few times and very close to tears of pure frustration 😀  But if you're one of my followers, you know by now that I'm stubborn determined, so I was going to get through it, finish it, and I did!

The background scene was taken from Google. The card base is a design from the Silhouette store. The inside was made using one of the new Whimsy stamps.

Between you and me, this card is going to hubby.  That way I get to keep it when he's done with it.  There is no way I'm going to part with this card 😀  That little ghost is just too darn cute glowing in the Halloween night sky.

Well, I hope you liked my card. Any and all comments and suggestions are very welcome. Trust me when I tell you that I need all the help I can get 😀

I'm going to play along at

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenges

Till next time,

stay safe and healthy.