Fiskars Craft

Easter almost here - but its not too late to whip up some mini baskets

Hi Everyone

Hope you are enjoying the Easter break....I certainly am and the NZ weather is behaving and we have a lovely sunny day for Good Friday.

I've been madly busy of late with home and work and Easter crept up on me so I had to come up with something quick in the way of a little gift for our visitors over the Easter weekend.  While surfing a few blogs a week or two back I came across one that used paper cupcake wrappers to make a wee gift basket (apologises I cant recall who this was) but I've put my own spin on this idea and came up with the wee basket below.

So go to your pantry and see what you might have on hand by way of cupcake wrappers....I cheated a little and bought some pre-shredded papper for my "nest" but scrap paper would shred up nicely for this job. 

To create the handle I used one of my all time favourite Fiskars punches "Apron Lace".  Got a scrap piece of white cardstock and punched an edge both sides and glued a strip of ribbon to the centre to give it a bit of a colour punch. 

 Last job was to staple handle to cupcake wrapper, fill with shredded paper and place  
mini eggs inside.  Done in all of 10 minutes..... You could customise these by punching a tag and writing on the name of the person you will be giving it too.   

So if you thought you had run out of time but have some cupcake wrappers on hand you might just be able to save the day and whip some of these up for your little visitors.

Wishing everyone a very happy Easter weekend...

Jo

New Envelope Template

Hi Jo here, hope everyone had a wonderful Xmas and have plans for a fun New Years Eve tonight. 

My family and I are off shortly to our annual neighbourhood New Years Eve party.  Over the years we have taken turns to have it at each of our homes (luckily we all only leave a few streets apart so don't have to worry about the drinking and driving) all our kids are friends as well, so makes for a fun family event. 

But before I whip off and make my salad and cream the pav to take along, I thought I'd share a envelope I created for my son Taylor that I placed on a special Xmas present so I could give him a special xmas letter.

 
Creating this envelope was so easy using the new large scalloped envelope template and the Ultra ShapeXpress.  I wanted to use contrasting paptterns inside and outside the envelope so cut 2 envelopes out and glued them back to back. 

Stripes on the inside

 
and a vintage holly on the outside

 
Wanted to make this look shabby chic  - so to achieve this look I inked up the edges of the envelope with my favourite green ink pad "bamboo".  I also used a vintage font to address the envelope and an old postage stamp that had no post marks on it, so I was able to stamp my own post marks to give it the look I wanted.  A punched snowflake and it was done.

I can see myself using this envelope template time and time and being able to customize it again for difference people and different occasions.

Merry " Fisk-mas " oops we mean Christmas!!!

Hi everyone,

We would all like to wish you a lovely Christmas Day!  May you have a lovely time with family and friends no matter where you are around the world! Stay safe and if you are travelling be careful on the roads!

" We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year"

         xoxo          Fiskars Craft Ambassador TEAM

 

      

  

 

  

     





 

Xmas Card - non-traditional colours

Hi, Jo here, just popping in with a quick card I whipped up using scraps of pp from my stash and some gorgeous glittered snowflakes that gave me the inspiration to create some cards in non-traditional colour schemes this year.

Ingredients for this card were 

• piece of white bazzill cardstock for card itself

• scraps of black & turquoise pattern paper

• Glitter snowflakes

• Clear bling to finish off centres of snowflakes

Used my all time favourite Fiskars punch "threading water" to give the card a bit of texture and finished off with a bit of doodling around the edge to tie it all together.

So if you still have a few cards to make go to your scrap paper stash and find some non-traditional colours to play with......

Love new combo border punch - Lace & Lattice

November is almost over and I am one of the last to show the meal that I ordered from Lianne

So I ordered - Garlic Bread, Baked Lemon fish, tossed salad & Cheesecake to finish

And got my order back - 12 x 12 LO, using red, black & white colours, fabric & buttons, 4 different patterned papers, plain cardstock optional extra....and this is what I came up with....

Have to confess didn't have any fabric that worked on hand, so used ribbon through the large button instead, and sneaked in a few rub ons.....

Loved playing with the new punch that Fiskars had sent me last week - Lace & Lattice combo border punch (apparently available to Wholesalers now!!!).... Here's a close up shot....

Lovely little size and fantastic that I can go around corners....will be seeing this punch appear on plenty more layouts in the future as I love scallops of any kind and this is a mini one and so cute!!!! Love Love Love it...

Thanks for looking....

October Design Course

Running a bit late in contributing to Debbie's wonderful design course which has been running this month.

Any way better late than never.....

White Space

I struggle when designing my pages to achieve this style....love it but its not something that somes naturally to me....but I do have a couple of layouts to share that shows this style.

 

Repetition

Love using small photos - and have used a repetition style in this layout repeating the same size and shape with the photos & embellishment squares (have rounded the corners and sanded edges to help the square stand out)

These layouts were made with the help of some of my favourite Fiskars tools e.g. my finger tip cutter, threading water punch and corner rounder

Recycling Corrugated Cardboard & Old Book Pages

Been meaning to play with corrugated cardboard for ages - so with the recycle, reuse, repurpose challenge on this month - now seemed the perfect time.

In this layout I tore a strip of cardboard, swiped it with 2 complimentary paint colours and used it to layer part of my title on.

Used my small Fiskars circle punch to punch out some circles out of old book pages, I then cut them in half to create a scalloped border -  Also punched a tab and used another circle in the title.

Finally wanted to accent the layout with some black - so punched a strip using my all time favourite Fiskars Border punch - Apron Lace.

I will certainly use corrugated cardboard again....loved the texture it gave the layout.

Recycle, Reuse, Re Purpose - Vintage Style

As soon as I heard about the recycle challenge I knew I wanted to use some of my vintage stash...I have a growing collection of old lace, buttons, books and all types of ephemera that I pull out and use on layouts and altered art projects.

On my last trip to my local council Arts Recycling Centre I stuck GOLD - a stack of vintage album covers and knew they would work great on a vintage layout. 

So here is a layout of my Nana who was a stylist 1920's flapper....."She has Style".

Using old album cover and vintage buttons & lace and my all time favourite embellishment - Heidi Grace heart stick pins!!!!

Fathers Days Layout

Fathers Day is just about at an end and I thought I'd post a layout I did for my hubby for Fathers Day. Our son Taylor is a typical boy and loves spending time with his Dad. 

He gets plenty of opportunity as his Dad is also his Scout Leader and his rugby team Manager, but apart from that they enjoy doing all the usual boy stuff together -  Fishing, cycling, building, supporting their local rugby team etc etc.

Always love getting my hands on some boy coloured rub ons and have used Heidi Grace "Forever Love" Borders and Words Rub Ons on this layout along with Heidi Grace "Urban Acres Blvd" alphabet cardstock stickers.

We celebrated Fathers Day with a sleep in, cooked breakfast and afternoon tea at a cafe and lots of "Dad Time"

Hope you had a great Fathers Day.....

Colour Me Happy - Back to Black!!

What a fantastic month of colour ending with one of my favourite background colours - BLACK!!

I love using bright colours, and they really pop when you put them with a strong contrast colour like  black. 

The layout below is a good example....the punched circles of bright scraps of patterned paper (using my fiskars small circle punch and another smaller punch in my stash) really stand out and anchor the bottom of this layout.  Love how the lime green transparency circle also makes a statement against the black. 

So if you love strong colour, try using black as a background or accent colour and see how vibrant it can look.