Christmas comes early!

Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to let you know we have had a large delivery of Penny Black Christmas stock.
If you have a moment, pop over to Crimsoncloud.co.uk to see the full range, but in the meantime here are a few teasers!

Have fun! xxx

T is for Tri-fold

Today we were lucky enough to sponsor the Top Tip Tuesday "T" challenge.  If you have a moment - pop over there - it is great fun.
Our submission was "T is for Trifold". Unfortunately there was not enough room on the site to show the full card - so here it is in all its glory!

Front of card

Inside right hand page of the card

Centre of the card

I used the silhouettes die cut packs (Three Kings, Shepherds, Nativity Scene) from Crimson Cloud and matted and layered them using Spellbinders Nestabilities - Grand Ovals and Elegant Posts.
All that was left to do was to blend a little distress ink around the edges of the ovals to make the silhouettes really stand out.
So that is my first Christmas card of the year made - only another 50 to go!
xxxx

New Range In Stock

We have just added Alcohol Inks to our range and have a wide variety of colours. These work wonderfully on shiny surfaces such as glossy card, acetate, metal and glass. Included in the range are the metallic mixatives which give a metal effect to the alcohol inks. Most importantly we have included the applicator tool, felts and blending solution - essentials tools to work with the alcohol inks.

Hope you have fun with them :-) x

New Clarity Stamps in stock

 We have just received our latest delivery of Clarity Stamps - and they are beautiful! I can't wait to start playing with them - will get some pictures up on the blog soon.
As well as the stunning La Petite Musique, and the classic silhouette stamps, we have some more Christmas stamps -  for those of you who are organised enough to have started making your Christmas cards.
Hope you like the new stash :-) Below is a selection of the new arrivals - check out the website for the full range. xxx

Sonny's Party

I have been looking at blog challenges recently - and came across this great DT Challenge from Tales From Pollycraft. The challenge was to create a card using one of their digi-stamps - I chose Sonny's Party - isn't she cute? Once I had printed her out, I coloured her using Promarkers and then matted and layered her using Spellbinders Labels Fourteen and Labels Twenty nestabilities - two of my favourites. I also used Fancy Tags Three for the sentiment. To create the floral decoration, I used Spellbinders Foliage and Rose Creations (can you tell I am a fan?) and blended some distress inks on the leaves to really make them pop. I took some Vintage Ribbon and dyed it to match my project using the new Distress Stains. I added the ribbon and some hat pins behind the Rose. To add some texture and detail, I used a Martha Stewart punch (Embossed Scallop Edge) to decorate the large floral paper panel. I wanted to make the most of Sonny's balloon so I punched some more balloons out and used a fine line pen to add the strings to her hand. I am entering my submission today - wish me luck! xxx

Rocking Horse

Did you catch any of the Spellbinders shows on Create and Craft today? Sue Wilson is one of my favourite designers and she inspires me hugely. I have adapted some of her ideas from this morning's show on today's card. I mounted the Rocking Horse die cut (exclusive to Crimson Cloud as a pack of dies cuts or as a downloadable svg file) onto several layered nestabilities dies (Heart Circles, Grand Circles, Grand Ovals). I embossed one of the ovals with the Lattice embossing folders to give the card some extra texture and dimension. Taking inspiration from Sue, I used the Spellbinders Elegant Posts and cut them down to fit the corners and to frame the pink circle. I think that this makes a lovely new baby card - or could even be used for a 1st Birthday card.
xxx

Have a "Whale" of a Day!

As it is Father's Day this weekend, I thought I would continue with the Male Card theme. The whale makes the card fun but is not too "cutesy" so would work for adults as well as children. 
This was a very quick card to make. I used a Spellbinders circle die to cut the aperture. I then stamped the greeting (from Creative Expressions Mermaid and Friends set) onto the backing paper and then embossed the paper using my Grand Calibur. I stamped and cut out the whale and painted him using Distress Inks. All that was left to do was emboss the strip of decorative paper for the front and assemble the card. This was one that took longer to design than make!
xxx

You're a Classic!

Cards for men are always the hardest to make - but thankfully there are a few products out there to help.
To make this card, I used a Spellbinders die (Labels Fourteen) to cut an aperture in white card. I then embossed the card using the Creative Expressions Brick embossing folder. To bring out the brick effect, I used Cut'n'Dry foam to blend some Chipped Sapphire Distress Ink around the edges. The car and sentiment stamps came from the Classic Cars unmounted stamp set from Creative Expressions. To colour the car, I dabbed some ink from the Chipped Sapphire and Broken China distress ink pads onto a non-stick craft sheet, and picked the ink up with a water brush to use as paint. This is a really easy way to give a watercoloured effect.
Once I had cut out the stamped car, assembled the card and stamped the sentiment, I used the Spellbinders Elegant Posts die to decorate the bottom right corner.
This card is much easier to make than it looks - why don't you give it a try?
Mel xxx

Swimming Mermaid

Fantasy themes, especially mermaids, are very popular with card makers at present. We used our exclusive die cut mermaid whose tail we coated with glitter glue along with our die cut coral from our Ocean collection to create this beautiful easel card. Spellbinders Grand Nestabilities, scalloped ovals created a wonderful contrast of backgrounds. 

The blue layers were stamped with Brilliance Galaxy Gold using the Personal Impressions Sea Shell background unmounted rubber stamp. The sentiment is from Creative Expressions fantasy collection -

Cast your eyes on the ocean

Cast your soul to the sea...

When the night’s o neverending

Please remember me...