Pastel blue Christmas card

What's the connection between Christmas, pastel blue and a blonde angel? If you get inspiration from the wonderful blogs, anything can be connected ;o)

The angel stamp was ready since a couple of days ago and I was waiting some snowflake die cut templates I ordered last week to prepare the embellishments. However, I couldn't wait more and I got another idea. I had some wooden stars that would go well with the angel and here it goes...

The paper ribbon is made with my favourite border punch with stars from Artemio.

I hope you like it!

Challenges:

- Pink Gem Challenge 10 - sketch and optional extra a christmas card in non traditional colours (you see where the inspiration came from...)

- Crafty Ann's Challenge Blog #27 - Guess what... christmas card in non traditional colours ;ο)

- Crafty Cardmakers Spotlight - Dry embossing

- Delightful Challenges - Glitter it up

- Secret Crafter #109 - Sparkle & shine

- Paper Sundaes #44 - Two of: punches, Ribbon, Embossing and colour Blue

- Simon Says Stamp - Sparkle

- Flutterby Wednesday #131 - Anything goes with butterfly, fairy or angel

- Crafts and me #17 - Glitter

- Christmas stamping all year long #70 - Christmas card with anything stripe
- Pollycraft Challenge #70 - A Glittery Christmas

Materials:

- Pink Gem Desings stamp, my favourite Chloe

- ProMarkers Ivory, Blush, Cool Grey 1, Pastel Blue, Powder Blue, Pastel Yellow, Vanilla, Tan, Blender

- Sentiment stamps from Fairy Doodles by Buzzcraft

- Blue pigment ink

- Nestabilities Lacey Squares

- Border punch stars by Artemio

- Fiskars texture plates Snowflakes and Filigree

- Papers: white cardstock, pale blue cardstock by Papermania - Colossal colour card pack, silver Gemstones

- Blue chalk

- Blue ribbon

- Wooden stars

- Acrylic paints Pebeo Argent iridescent and Indigo iridescent

- Perles

- Stickles Icicle

Iris folded christmas card

I had been flirting with the idea of trying an iris folded card lately as I have found some stunning cards online, but somehow it wasn't getting at the top of my priorities (seemed a bit too complicated to tell the truth). And then, while in London two weeks ago, if found a book with many great cards and (most importantly) patterns. The book is 460 Iris Folded Cards to Make by Maruscha Gaasenbee & Tine Beauvese.

This is my first attempt to prepare an iris folded card and I have to admit it was easier than what I thought - as long as you have the pattern!

Challenges:

- Get Creative - Christmas cards
- Lexi's Creations - Anything goes
- Fairy Tale Challenge - Anything goes
- Cute Card Thursday 138 - Anything goes
- ABC Challenge Blog - H is for Holidays
- Craft Your Days Away 8 - Christmas trees
- 2 sisters #13 - Christmas
- Crazy 4 Challenges - Christmas

I thought I should keep the card simple, without any embellishments, so that the folded pattern could stand out. Didn't want to keep it too simple though, so I prepared an easel card, and since there wasn't too much space left for cropping the pattern, I used some stitching instead.

Materials:
- Papers: Orange Canson cardstock, My Mind's Eye - Bloom & Grow and Wild Asparagus
- Sentiment stamp: Fairy Doodles from Buzzcraft, Memento ink pad - Rich Cocoa
- Star punch from Heyda

Amigu... What???

But what is this Amigurumi?

According to Widipedia, Amigurumi, or 編みぐるみ is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals and anthropomorphic creatures. The word is derived from a combination of the Japanese words ami, meaning crocheted or knitted, and nuigurumi, meaning stuffed doll.

In a few words, I make crocheted dolls.

I don't make many, nor often, but they are indeed one of my most pleasant hobbies...

In this first post, I will share some of the first amigurumis I have prepared so far. I hope you like them, although, as it is obvious with some of them, I am really a beginner!

Note: the photos are the best I could do today. If I manage to have some better ones later on, I will change these.

So... here they are:

My first amigurumi: the objective was to prepare a little dog, finally I got an alien dog... take a look at the photos and you will see what I mean ;o)

It is a little strange, isn't it? The first lesson I learnt from my first amigurumi is that it doesn't matter if the separate parts (head, body, legs, ears) are correct, if you don't sew them together correctly, the result will be.... let's say funny. And using a multicoloured yarn didn't help either.

After this I took my lesson and decided to do something that wouldn't need any joining... and is very simple to do. So I prepared an egg to give to my mother for her eggs collection:

Although sewing the felt to prepare the cheeks troubled me a bit, I liked the egg quite a lot. (Now I can give it to my mother, after so long!)

Next I prepared another funny amigurumi... the ice cream-crazy-artist:

With this amigurumi I learnt something else: the right stuffing is as important as sewing together the different parts. How can someone understand that this is supposed to be an ice cream with the overstuffing?

For the next one I did everything according to the pattern, but finally the pattern was a bit strange, as I thought at the beginning. So here goes the really wide heart:

At some point I will change a bit the pattern and prepare another heart.

I really loved the next amigurumi, because it was the first one that I really liked:

The picture doesn't do it justice, but I think it is a really cute pear.

After the pear, I thought I should try again something with legs. And I think I overdid it. It was quite hard to sew the 8 legs of the octopus! But I was very satisfied with the result:

I wanted to prepare the octopus' kid as well... but it is still pending ;o)

Finally, I found online some really cute christmas trees and I started experimenting with them. The results are the following:

I liked the first one quite a lot... but it was a bit difficult to find buttons to use as ornaments. So I tried a single coloured tree next:

I did like it, but I wasn't very satisfied with the colours.

Now I am preparing a series of Christmas trees that I will give as presents for Christmas to family and friends. I haven't taken photos of them yet, I will prepare them when I have finished all of them. So long, I have prepared five in different sizes ;o)

As for the patterns, I found the ones for the heart and the christmas trees in Ravelry. The rest of the patterns are from the books of Ana Paula Rimoli. Take a look at her blog to see her really cute amigurumis... hopefully one day I will be able to make my amigurumis as cute as hers!

New blog

The last few weeks, after kicking off my two blogs, one where I share the cards that I make, and another one that I share with my cousin, sharing the items we decorate with the decoupage technique, I was thinking about starting a third blog, sharing my crochet and amigurumi creations. However, I was thinking that it would be tricky for me to maintain all these blogs.

Until yesterday I discovered that there is a way to add tabs (similar to the internet browsers) to my blogs! And Ι found an more convenient way to have separate posts for english and greek, so that my bilingual posts are not confusing to the readers.

So yesterday I spent some time (well, a few hours, as I know nothing about html editing and I am new with bloggin!) and finally I prepared my new blog, where I will be sharing the results from all my hobbies!

I just took some photos of some crochet items I have prepared... and now I am ready to post them as well.

So from now on, I will stop using my previous blog "Astero's cards" (luckily, there is a way to import my posts from there to this new blog! the things that one can discover, hehehe). I will use the current blog, where I will share everything that I make - and even more, soon enough I will post some photos of my cats!

Hugs,
Anastasia - the cat lover ;o)

Decoupage

I have a separate blog about my decoupage creations, which I share with my cousin.

Please visit http://nteteo.blogspot.com/

We will be expecting you!

I made it to top five!

I was so happy to see yesterday that I made it to Top Five on Pink Gem Designs blog challenge with one of my Christmas cards. This morning I got my very first badge... Yippee!!!

A few more Xmas cards

It's still early November, but I thought that I should start preparing some xmas cards, against my "wait until the last minute" attitude ;o)

I would like to enter this first card to A Gem of a Challenge #9 . I have already submitted another card, but hey, I had received my new Pink Gem stamps and I couldn't wait for the new challenge... hehehe

I don't like the photo that much (the same for the following photos), but I didn't have a good light today and that was the best I could do.

The products that I used are:
- Ping Gem Designs stamp
- Promarkers (Cool grey 1 & 3, blender, Magenta, burnt orange, grass)
- Stickles (icicle)
- Brads (I think Papermania) - I changed the colours with embossing as usual by now
- Perles
- Toga rub-on letters
- Nestabilities
- Xcut round corner punch


The following card is similar to the first one, with different colours - but same sketch and stamp.

The papers used are from the collection Jolly Happy Christmas by Dovecraft and the brads are Christams Shimmer Brads by Dovecraft as well.

I used papers and brads from the same collections for the following card. There is another brad from Making Memories. I also used Artemio border punch. The stamp is a wood mounted stamp I bought for 50p in Edinburgh last summer. ;ο)

Finally, for the next two cards I used the decoupage sheets from Deer Friends collection by NitWit Collections Essentials, with similar papers and brads as the previous cards.

However, for the first time I did some real stitching - and I love it!

White Christmas card

I thought it was time to start preparing some christmas cards... And while I have vertigo from a blow I got on my head a few days ago (thankfully, I feel much better now), I have to avoid the pc (well, just a few minutes now to prepare this post!), so I thought what better way to spend a bit of time than preparing a card... So here it is:

I would like to enter this card to the following challenges:

- Get Creative - Christmas cards 

- I ♥ ProMarkers #39 - Snowflakes

- Simon Says...... Are You All White ?!!

- A spoonful of sugar #128 - Relish to Embellish

- Delightful challenges - Circles

- Alphabet challenge blog - A for Angels and Fairies

- Bah humbug #42 - Presents

- 2 sisters challenge blog #11 - No designer paper

- Bee crafty #41 - Christmas

- Craft your days away #7 - All white

- Mark's finest papers #27 - Holiday card

- Flutterby Wednesday #129 - Butterfly, fairy or angel

- Creative cottage #26 - Embossing

- ABC Christmas challenge - W is for Winter Wonderland

The materials I used are:

- White cardstock

- Fairy Doodles stamps from Buzzcraft

- ProMarkers: blender, cool grey 1&3, burnt sienna, tan, burnt orange, red, bright orange, peach, tulip yellow, ivory, blush, amethyst, orchid, lush green, mint green, azure

- Big shot and nestabilities classic scallped circles

- Mulberry paper flowers (small) and white hydrangeas by Pink gem designs

- Fiskar texture plates Dots & Snowflakes

- White ribbon