Christmas craft fair - more Christmas decorations

I haven't had a chance to write a blog post for a little while and although Christmas seems such a long time ago, I wanted to share the last of the Christmas related crafts we made for our school Craft Fair.

We had some plain white tiles which we made into Christmas decorations. I added the letters NOEL in red glitter paper and silver sparkl snowflakes to some ...

... and I decorated others with Christmas trees in pink and green glitter foam.

I painted the edges of the tiles to give a neat finish: cream on the Noel tiles and green on the Christmas tree tiles.

I was inspired once again by something I found on Pinterest: a simple tree made by folding a semicircle of card. I used the large scallop Bigz die which I then cut in half. It took me a few attempts to get the fold just right but once I had a template, the folding was very quick and easy. I added a glittery star to the top of each tree to finish it off.

I then punched two small holes at the top of each tree and threaded the trees onto some bakers twine for simple bunting. I found it was neater to add the star after the tree had been threaded (see the two pictures above for the difference).

I also cut some letters out in matching paper, punched two small holes into the top of each letter and threaded onto the twine. The only one that caused me problems was the A as I couldn't get the two holes next to each other - making the letter slightly lopsided!

I also made a simple Christmas card with the folded tree, although I didn't make any to sell at the fair. 

The last Christmas thing we made was some cute reindeer food. Some muesli and edible glitter was put into small bags then sealed using the Top Note die folded in half and stapled over the top of the bag. A red glitter circle for Rudolph's nose, white circle eyes with a black dot in the middle and some leafy antlers and it was ready to go. All finished off with a cute poem found via Pinterest! These were incredibly popular at the Fair and we even had people asking for some afterwards ...

We did make lots of other things for the fair (not Christmas related) and I'll be posting details of these soon! 

© 2014 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Recent cards using my Big Shot

I have had the chance to use my Big Shot die-cutter recently on a few cards, and to try out some of my new dies.

One of my favourite dies is the Sizzix Bigz Die - Pear although I hadn't had a chance to use it,  until now. I saved the the card from a Stella & Dot jewellery box (I loved the colour and pattern) and paired this (ha ha!) with some brown striped card, also saved from some packaging a long time ago. This was for an anniversary card and reads "You make the perfect pear". Next time I will print the sentiment out so it is a little neater (the perfectionist in me is never happy with my handwriting!)

I also had fun with the Sizzix framelits die set Banners/Pennant with stamps to create two cards: one for my lovely mummy ...

 ... and the other for Sophie's class teacher.

The teacher's card reads "Thanks ... for helping us grow" and I wrote the name of each of the 29 children in the class in the flowers below. I hope she likes it!

The paper on both bunting cards came from the family calendars we have used for a few years now and the white flower lace on the birthday card was from Poundland, so all the cards were a great way to use up my huge stash of card and paper - very satisfying!

© 2013 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

I've got a new toy!

I had my little Sizzix Tag-along (now called the Side-kick) die-cutter for my birthday about six or seven years ago and I have loved creating cards with it ever since. Once I figured out what it could do, I started lusting after it's grown up brother the Big Shot but I could never justify spending the money to upgrade.

I recently got the chance to buy a Big Shot for half price (thanks to a school mum who is a Stampin' Up demonstrator) and after not very much soul searching I went for it. AND it is awesome!!!

The next thing I needed to do was get some more dies: my existing sizzlit dies still work in it but don't take advantage of the heavy-weight capability of the Big Shot so I bought some Bigz dies that can cut everything from paper to fabric and even aluminium. I bought directly from Sizzix and chose all the dies from their clearance sale (saving up to 75% on some of them!) which meant I could justify buying a few more and also didn't feel so cross over the £7 postage they charge.

I have had lots of fun over the last week playing with the new dies and creating a bunch of cards: take a look at what I've done so far ...

Dies used (in order from the top):
Sizzix Bigz die - caged bird (656634)
Sizzix Sizzlits die - butterfly #12 (656512)
Sizzix Bigz die - daisy blast (657390)
Sizzix Sizzlits die - heart, lace (657418)
Sizzix textured impressions embossing folders - flourish, dots & ribbon set (656980)
Sizzix Bigz die with textured impressions - flower #2 (657362)
Sizzix Framelits die set with stamps - flowers, doodle (657580)
Sizzix Sizzlits die set - bird set #2 (657080)

And with the extra bits from the Daisy Blast card above, I created skirts for some little fairies!

I haven't been too ambitious with the heavy duty Bigz dies yet and still have some other dies that I have yet to use so watch this space ...

© 2013 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.