Adorable Animal Boxes

Hi crafters! We are celebrating Lucia today, and Christmas is coming nearer. Leo was a very cute gingerbread man. You can read more about Lucia here, if you are interested. I found a piece of tinsel that I used to have in my hair on Lucia long ago, and have been wearing it most of the day. 

I have another tutorial on this Sizzix blog, and this time I made three adorable animal boxes. These were such fun to make and I am not sure which is my favorite. Leo loves pandas, but the unicorn is so nice and shimmery, while I love the fun look of the fox. They were all made with one single die, the Animal Box die by Lynda Kanase. You can make a large number of other animals too, with the same die, and they would be great as treat bags for parties or as a little gift bag.

I had fun using some of my own childhood ornaments to stage this photo.

You can find the full tutorial on the Sizzix blog.

Happy crafting!!

Anna-Karin

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

Christmas Tree Ornaments Tutorial

Hello crafters! I have a fun tutorial on the Sizzix blog, for four tree ornaments, which are quick and easy to make and can be combined in various ways.

These would make great little gifts for Christmas stockings, or you could add one to gift wrapping or together with a Christmas card. Children would also love to make their own ornaments. The ornaments are two-sided, with a different design on the back. They were made with the Traditional Christmas & Hanukkah collection by Sizzix & Katelyn Lizardi. I used various Sizzix surfaces to make them, such as the Watercolor Wash Adhesive Sheets and Brite-ons Paper Sheets.

You can find the steps and more photos on the Sizzix blog.

Happy Christmas crafting!

Anna-Karin

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

Vintage Christmas Tin Tutorial

Hi friends! I hope you had a lovely weekend! We had a Christmas baking day on Saturday, baking gingerbread cookies and Christmas sweets together with friends. The smallest member (Leo) managed to bake the most cookies and now wants to bake cookies every day. The kids also drew handmade baubles that are now hanging in our tree.

This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a Warm Winter Wishes theme. Don't miss the project by our wonderful December guest designer Ann Barnes, with her blog Aksbarchitect Creates.

Warm winter wishes, made me think of gold, so I decided to make a vintage Christmas altered tin, using lots of gold and some pretty ephemera papers. A friend of mine in the US sends me Altoids, and or course I save the tins since they are such fun to alter. For another altered Christmas tin, check out my Winter Altered Tin tutorial. Normally, I make sure that you can close the tin, but I really wanted to use Tim Holtz's Salvaged Santa, and he was a little too wide, and since the tin would in any case not close, I added even more dimension.

Start by dropping some Alcohol Ink Gold Mixative in a plastic bag. Place the Santa in the bag and move him around until he is turned into gold. Repeat with the deer and baubles.

The Small Woodland Tree was made golden by using Tarnished Brass Distress Paint.

I had the ephemera piece with the birds on my desk for a while now, since I really wanted to use it. This was the perfect time. The ledger paper pieces were cut from patterned paper, while the rest come from Tim's Christmas Ephemera. Round the corners and ink the edges.

Glue to the tin with matte medium, and also add sparkle tape around the inside edge.

Dry brush a little black paint on the Santa and deer to distress them. Smear some white texture paste on the tree and Santa and then add quite a bit of it to the base of the tin. Press the tree and the Santa into the paste, which will function as a glue. Add some baubles and then cover everything with Rock Candy Glitter.

I also glued a tree ephemera piece to the back - before adding the snow elements.

Drop alcohol ink on a Gumdrop Heart to make it red. You could also make it brown or gold.

I liked the look of the vintage gold Santa, with the little bits of frost. You can also paint the Santa in different colors. For a similar example, check out my Winter Wonderland Shadow Box.

The sparkle is a little hard to capture, but this method of creating snow is very effective, and one of my favorite methods.

The bird turns the leaf in the calendar to reveal the 25th of December, but since Santa always comes on the 24th here, I covered the date up with a small piece of ledger paper and added a Clippings sticker to change it. The Christmas Story Stick was distressed with black paint.

There was just enough space on the edge of the lid, for the snow and deer to fit. 

I glued the icicle paper strip along the outer edge of the tin.

The front and back of the tin is covered with papers and another sentiment.

Here you can see the dimension a little better. Altered tins are such fun to do.

I hope you will join us this week in our Warm Winter Wishes challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy Christmas crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

SSS DieCember® Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to my blog! I am happy to take part in the Simon Says Stamp DieCember blog hop, to celebrate the release of the new DieCember dies. You should have arrived here from the very creative Marge Yoon, and I hope you are enjoying all the inspiration along the hop.

The DieCember release is a really big one, with 44 sets of wonderful and versatile dies. You can find the whole release here.

Don't miss the free gift! If you use the code DCMBR27, you will get a free Nutty & Bright stamp set (while supplies last!) with any purchase. The code will expire Sunday, 12/9 at 11:59 pm EST.

I made a winter panel and a spring tag, to mix up the seasons a little, and there are step photos for both. So let's start!

The background is sort of the main thing on this winter project, and It was such fun to make. The technique works for any season or theme and for lots of different types of projects. For the wall-hanging, I wanted to use a fun Christmas color-combo of turquoise, pink, red and white, which by total coincidence coordinates with the banner for the DieCember release. It's 6 x 6.3 in big.

I used these five DieCember dies on my projects: Grassy Edges, Celebrate, Nested Banners, Hooray, and Bixby Arch.

The Nested Banners set is so versatile, and you get a lot of dies, which can all be used in many different ways. When I saw the Nested Banners, I immediately thought the rectangular banners would look great for a background. Instead of separating the three dies, I kept them intact and die cut lots of nested rectangles from watercolor paper. This gives you two frames and one thinner center piece. If you have already separated the dies, you can use the Sizzix Magnetic Platform to keep them in place when die cutting.

Smear Distress Inks on a craft sheet, mist with water and press the papers into the ink.

When dry, I started applying them to a piece of mat board. You can use a sheet adhesive, such as this one by Sizzix, but I couldn't find mine, and instead used my ATG gun. Vary the colors and the placement until you are happy with the lock.

When you are done, cut the mat board at the bottom and cut off the overhanging rectangles on the sides. I almost didn't want to cover any of this background up.

Die cut snowflakes from White Diamond glimmery cardstock and from Schoolhouse Red cardstock, using the Kinley Snowflake and Stitched Flakes dies from earlier releases.

I also die cut a snowman from felt, using the Picture Book Snowman. The scarf was cut by hand, but there is a die for the scarf too.

Splatter the background with white paint for texture and sand the edges of Tim Holtz idea-ology Christmas Quote Chips.

Glue the snowflakes to the background with SSS glue, and add the snowman. I also placed dots of White Opal Liquid Pearls on some of the snowflakes. 

Use the Celebrate die to die cut a title from White Diamond glimmery cardstock. This cardstock has a lovely shine, but it was a grey day when I took these photos, and I however much I turned the panel around, there wasn't enough light to catch the glimmer.

Now to the spring tag. 

Sometimes in the midst of winter, it is nice to do a spring or summertime project and to use some bright flowers. My favorite part of this tag, was creating the overlapping hills and grass, which were all done with DieCember dies. 

Start by coating a tag with gesso.

When dry, paint the sky with Distress Paints and mist with water. 

Die cut hills, grass and flowers from heavystock paper using the Bixby Arch and Grassy Edges sets. 

Ink with shades of green by smearing the ink pad directly onto the paper. The lower parts of the larger die cuts won't show, so I didn't ink them.

Mist with water droplets.

When dry, stamp with the Good Reading background stamp and Fern Green and Leaf Green Archival inks.

Color the flowers by pressing them into the ink pads. This is such a quick coloring method and gives lovely vibrant colors. 

Stamp the sky with a sentiment from Uplifting Thoughts and smaller words from Tabbed Sentiments. Add birds and a border with a white gel pen.

Glue flowers here and there with the fabulous fine-tipped SSS Tacky Glue. I love these tiny flowers. Add a dot of White Opal Liquid Pearls to each flower. When it dries, the Liquid Pearls will take up some of the color of the ink, which is not always an effect I want, but in this case, I liked the tone-on-tone look it created. If you want to avoid it, color the flowers with acrylic paint instead.

Die cut the Hooray sentiment from White Diamond and Baby Blue glimmery cardstock and glue to the background.

There are of course prizes to be won and at each stop on the hop SSS is giving away a $25 coupon, randomly drawn from those who leave a comment. The winners will be posted post on the Simon Says Stamp store blog on Wednesday, the 12th of December.

Your next stop on the hop is Gayatri Murali, and I hope you won't miss the inspiration she has in store for you. If you get lost along the way, this is the hop list:

Simon Says Stamp Blog 

Debby Hughes

Amanda Korotkova

Yoonsun Hur

Amy Rysavy

Vicky Papaioannou

Karin Åkesdotter

Marge Yoon

Anna-Karin Evaldsson (you are here)

Gayatri Murali

Elena Salo

Emma Williams

Ankita Gupta

Olga Direktorenko

For more DieCember inspiration, remember to check out the DieCember gallery at SSS, and if you make something with products from the range, it is fun if you post it in in the gallery too. There are galleries for all releases, and for the card kits, full of inspiration. There was also a part one of this blog hop last week, with even more wonderful projects.

Tomorrow we are going to do bake gingerbread cookies and make Christmas sweets with some friends. It is going to be fun and I bet the kids will eat a lot of cookie dough.

Thank you so much for visiting today and I hope you will have a lovely weekend!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

Glow In The Dark Space Panel Tutorial

Hi friends! I hope your weekend was a great one! We went to a Christmas market yesterday and I was happy to find a ceramic Santa/gnome. Last year, at the same market, I bought one of the Santas, which were made maybe 50 years ago by a female artist and forgotten in a box in an attic. This year, they had only one Santa/gnome left, and now it is living in our living room with its friend. I love Christmas ornaments with a good story. I wrote Santa/gnome, because Swedish Santas are both of the more traditional Santa Claus kind, but sometimes even more what you might call gnomes. These were small santas, living especially in barns, and helping out at the farm, but they could be naughty too if you didn't treat them well. You can read more about them here. 

This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a 'B is for' theme. Since it is the first Monday of a new month, the team is showcasing a specific designer/company and this week it is Brutus Monroe, which has a wide range of very cool stamps, embossing powders, and other interesting products. You can find them all here. You don't have to use Brutus Monroe products to join, but it is always fun if you do.

Our guest designer for December is the very creative Ann Barnes, with her blog Aksbarchitect Creates. Don't miss her project!

I made a space wall-hanger for the boys, on the theme of being brave. This was such a fun project to make and it shines and glitters, and even glows in the dark. How cool is that!? It is the first time ever, I make a project which glows in the dark, something that always fascinated me as a child, and it will be a winner with many children. The finished wall-hanger is 8 x 9.5 in.

These are the Brutus Monroe products that I used: Flat Back Acrylic Bubbles, Glitter Flat Back Acrylic Bubbles, Abstract Art stamp set, Monster Party stamps, Milky Way Embossing Powder, and Glow in the Dark Seaglass. Unfortunately, the Abstract Art set is no longer in stock, and I didn't discover that until the project was done, but it isn't essential to completing the project.

I started with a left-over watercolor paper from my Misted Galaxy project, which had been misted with the Distress Resist Spray. It was misted with Distress Spray Stains. The Resist Spray resists the ink, forming stars and galaxies.

Mist with Brushed Pewter Mica Spray.

Apply Embossing Dabber Ink around the edges and emboss with the Milky Way powder. I used a chunky powder, but could only find a fine powder in the shop now. It will still work almost the same, you just need to add two layers if you want it to look thick. Remember to be careful when using a heat gun so that you don't burn yourself.

Stamp the fun monsters on watercolor paper. I thought they made perfect aliens. I always stamp more than I need, in case I mess up coloring. And as you can see, I dropped a stamp on the paper.

Watercolor them with Distress Inks, by smearing the inks on a craft sheet, misting once with water and picking it up with a paint brush.

Die cut three circles using the Sizzix Circle Framelits set. My paper was already inked with Antique Linen. Smear the ink on a craft sheet, mist with water and press the papers into the ink.

Continue using Frayed Burlap and Hickory Smoke, aiming for a splotchy and textured look.

Stamp with Abstract Art shapes. You can skip this step, if you don't have the stamp set. I even thought the planets might have looked better without the extra stamping. 

The title letters were die cut from white mat board using Tim Holtz's Letterboard die. Inked with Lucky Clover and covered with sparkly Crystal Stickles. I used the same stickles here and there on the background, it glows almost in a green shade.

Now for the really fun part, glue Glow In The Dark Seaglass to the background, so that they look like asteroids. Add Flat Back Acrylic Bubbles here and there. They actually do glow in the dark and the panel looks really cool with the glowing asteroids. I can't wait to hear what the boys say when they get the panel.

This little character is such fun, and got a whole planet for himself. I planned to add white circles to the background, but forgot to do it before having glued the seaglass, which made it hard to trace the circles with a plate. Instead, I just scribbled faint uneven circles with a white gel pen.

The aliens are a lot of fun to color. I added Glossy Accents to their eyes and a little Stickles here and there.

The combination of the clear Flat Back Acrylic Bubbles and the Glitter ones is very cool. The glitter ones are very sparkly. Anton has been using some of both of these to craft with, and will enjoy seeing them on this project too.

Two aliens are peeking out from behind the planet.

The seaglass pieces are dimensional and I love their uneven shapes. So cool. Brutus Monroe also has a glow in the dark embossing powder, which I am going to get in my next order.

I hope you will join us this week in our B is for.. challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.