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Saturday, 24 December 2016

Just Instagrammed


via Instagram http://ift.tt/2hTXT18 Dressing up the wee folks beds with Christmas quilts for Christmas Eve. Good thing I made a load of these way back in '07, plenty of choice, no arguments over who gets which! #red #green #christmaseve #christmas2016 #quilt #quilting #christmasquilt #canmakeeverythingexceptmoney #blog

Just Instagrammed


via Instagram http://ift.tt/2hbFZDg This is always my favourite corner at Christmas. This tree was a cheap ornament from Lidl stores one year and I love it!! #lidl #blog #christmasiscoming #christmas #light #tree #christmastree #wooden #wood #woodenornaments #christmaseve

Tuesday, 20 December 2016

Just Instagrammed


via Instagram http://ift.tt/2ho9Nxn Cute mouse in a shop window! I would love one of these, plan to try and make one in the new year, since I missed getting dibs on any of them in the store. #belfast #christmas #mouse #christmasmouse #inspireland #visitbelfast #visitireland #blog #christmasiscoming

Monday, 19 December 2016

Just Instagrammed


via Instagram http://ift.tt/2hLbvwk Pretty lights in Belfast, at Victoria Square. #Belfast #inspireland #blog #christmasiscoming #2016 #christmas #christmastree #christmasshopping #frantic

Saturday, 17 December 2016

Just Instagrammed


via Instagram http://ift.tt/2gVnSWW German sausage stall at Christmas market Belfast. The produce looks amazing, but I had too much of a sweet tooth and forgot to go back to him after the pancakes... #belfast #christmas #belfastchristmasmarket #2016 #christmasiscoming #blog

Just Instagrammed


via Instagram http://ift.tt/2haqGM5 Christmas market at Belfast is actually not bad, highlight for me were the Lithuanian ceramic houses, and the Dutch pancakes... #belfast #christmas #christmasiscoming #market #wishiwasinaustriathough #blog

Tuesday, 13 December 2016

...Gina K Designs – December Inspiration Blog Hop – Day 2


The Cast and Crew for Gina K Designs welcomes you to another fabulous blog hop celebrating the new stamp release for December by our illustrator team! We hope to inspire you with some beautiful card projects as you hop along to each of the designer’s blogs! Today, we are featuring the stamp sets by Beth Silaika and me - Claire Brennan!
Here are the sets:
http://www.shop.ginakdesigns.com/product.sc?productId=2830&categoryId=16
Xavier Zebra from Beth

http://www.shop.ginakdesigns.com/product.sc?productId=2831&categoryId=16
 Half Pint Heroes by Me
http://www.shop.ginakdesigns.com/product.sc?productId=2832&categoryId=16
 Half Pint Heroines by Me

Enjoy the gorgeous inspiration samples from the team and then comment on each blog for your chance to win a $20 Gina K Designs gift certificate! To see who won, check the Big News Forum at StampTV a few days after the hop. Ready for some inspiration? Here are a few of the projects I have created for today’s hop:


 For my card for Beth's set, Xavier Zebra,  I pounced on this cheery little toucan and gave him the bright treatment - what a great little image! This set is kind of a twofer - there's a super cute little zebra in there too!


I'm so excited to bring you these two 'heroes' sets. These are a favourite of mine because they speak to my heart. The first of these sets to be created was inspired by my son - my little dude. We were doodling one night and just to amuse him I started drawing pictures of him inside space rockets and cars - he loved it! It fired his imagination to picture himself in those sorts of situation even though he was just a kid. I thought that the images would make a great stamp set, not only for me to make cards for him with, but to let him play with as well. It's his top favourite set of mine.

My first Heroes card has a little dude's head peeping out of a spaceship - I created a galaxy background for this image and then I stamped and coloured the spaceship and trimmed it out before popping it onto the galaxy with foam dots. The sentiment "My favourite li'l space cadet" is added with versamark and then white embossing powder, heated. This really helps it to pop on that dark background.

That's my dude in the space ship - the set comes with many little heads, hopefully one of them will loosely resemble the little dude in your life - and you can have fun putting him in different scenarios. 


I made a co-ordinating taggie for this card, to add to a gift, but my little man wants it as a book mark so I wasn't 'allowed' to stick it on to anything...lol.

My second 'Heroes' sample today is a little interactive card I made - the spaceship can zoom around the moon thanks to a strip of clear acetate pinned to the card base in the bottom right hand corner and covered with a paper moon shape. My kid likes to spin himself around the moon on this card. This makes a great birthday card or even an invite!


This next card is an oldie but goodie - it shows my little dude in the car from the set:

Ok, on to the girls!
This first card is especially dear to me as the elephant stamp from this set was drawn by my smallest daughter. When I was making the girl set to go with the boy set I wanted to continue the vehicle theme to help foster the idea of exploration and travel - the idea that you can do anything/go anywhere you want if you just put your mind to it - My little lady and I came up with a list of vehicles that she would like to 'drive' and one of them was an elephant...and why not! So, she drew this elephant for me and I was delighted to add him, I want my wee folk to feel like they have the potential to do anything!


The sentiments in these two heroes sets are all important for me - I included several phrases that could work in many different situations. I wanted the wee folks to know many things - how important they are to me, how happy they make me, and how they can do anything!

I added pockets to this card, so that I could add more messages!

The inside of the card. Incidentally this is one of those cards that doesn't need an excuse such as a birthday - make something like this and send it, just whenever you feel like it!

Just like the boy set, the girl set contains options for various girls, I sure hope you find one to suit!
This is my middle chick, and this is how my kids make me feel, every day!

Ok, have you room for one more?

I adore the hot air balloon! I cut out some clouds from felt for this one. The right hand cloud is a stamp included in the set, you can use it as a guide to freehand a slightly different shape if you need a family of clouds.

And just one more - I wanted to show you that the sets are fully interchangeable - you can swop the vehicles and the people! My pal Anya made this for me - she made this gem with a girl and a boy in the car!


Ready for more awesome creations?! Just click on the links below for more
from Gina and the Cast & Crew:


Claire Brennan
Beth Silaika
Gina K
Cathy Tidwell
Chris Dayton
Donna Idlet
Karen Hightower
Kendra Wietstock
 Laurie Schmidlin
Melanie Muenchinger
Sean Fetterman
Sheri Gilson
Silke Ledlow
Susie Moore
Theresa Momber

Don’t forget to pop over to the Gina K Designs Store and check out all of the new products available this month in the “What’s New” section at http://www.ginakdesigns.com.

Thank you for stopping by!

Monday, 12 December 2016

...Gina K December release Inspiration Blog Hop Day 1


The Cast and Crew for Gina K Designs welcomes you to another fabulous blog hop celebrating the new stamp release for December by our illustrator team! We hope to inspire you with some beautiful card projects as you hop along to each of the designer’s blogs! Today, we are featuring the stamp sets by Melanie Muenchinger and Theresa Momber. 

http://www.shop.ginakdesigns.com/product.sc?productId=2833&categoryId=16

 Holiday Frame Filers by Melanie

http://www.shop.ginakdesigns.com/product.sc?productId=2834&categoryId=16
Framescape - Winter Trees by Theresa

These stamp sets are extremely versatile! You will be able to create amazing card projects using each individual set or by combining the images and sentiments from multiple sets from this release.

Be sure to visit each team member to see the fabby samples and then comment on each blog for your chance to win a $20 Gina K Designs gift certificate! To see who won, check the Big News Forum at StampTV a few days after the hop. Ready for some inspiration? Here are a few of the projects I have created for today’s hop:


I couldn't resist adding a little red nose to my Rudolph - this is the stag from Theresa's gorgeous Framescape - winter trees set. I applied a speck of white acrylic paint o the end of his nose - a good tip is to use the point of a pin - so that the dollop of paint is not too large. Once it dried I coloured it red with a copic, - Of course if you have red paint....
The pattern paper here is from Gina's Winter Cheer paper pack. The sentiment is from Melanie's Holiday Frame - Clear set.



 I like to make tall cards as well as landscape layout cards and so I just inked up the trees for this card and left off the frame. I popped in a few mountains, also from the set ,and added my traveller silhouette down beside the sentiment. I think this works a treat. I love the simplicity of the black ink on kraft cardstock, I think this makes a great masculine card.


I used the whole framed image for this card - it's the same image as the card above, but doesn't it look so different! I created a Northern Lights background before stamping the scene in Versamark and then adding white embossing powder. I added a Christmas sentiment from Melanie's Holiday Frame - Clear set because I thought the snowy scene really lent itself to the season!



Melanie has just released Holiday Frame Fillers which is a follow up to her
Holiday Frame - Clear set. The images are perfect for extending your use of that original set, or for creating stand alone cards using just this new set. I used the snowman form Holiday Frame on this card, I thought he would look sweet in a shower of sequin snowballs! The sequin stamps are such fun and I can see those being pulled out for a multitude of cards - here I have white embossed them and then smooched a little colour behind them to make them pop.

One of the other stamps in the fillers set is a banner stamp - I used it to create criss-crossing banners on this Welcome home card (you might have spotted this card at the release party), it's a great celebratory image. You can fill the banners in with flat colour using the co-ordinating solid stamp, or you can customise them with a little chevron stripe stamp, or even add patterns. Make yourself a little mask as shown in this wee pic and place it directly over the flag you want to fill. You can then use larger stamps to add pattern to the flag without getting it all over the surrounding area.





This card also uses an image from Melanie's new set, you might have seen this card at the party. It features a charming little trio of pumpkins. I paired the image with some pattern papers from The Simple Things paper pack.



Ready for more awesome creations?! Just click on the links below for more

from Gina and the Cast &Crew:

Gina K
Beth Silaika
Cathy Tidwell
Chris Dayton
Claire Brennan
Donna Idlet
Karen Hightower
Kendra Wietstock
Laurie Schmidlin
Melanie Muenchinger
Sean Fetterman
Sheri Gilson
Silke Ledlow
Susie Moore
Theresa Momber

Don’t forget to pop over to the Gina K Designs Store and check out all of the new products available this month in the “What’s New” section at http://www.ginakdesigns.com.

Thank you for stopping by!

Saturday, 10 December 2016

...a little toucan...

http://www.shop.ginakdesigns.com/category.sc;jsessionid=FB75683F745381246278E691E7BE8BFD.p3plqscsfapp004?categoryId=16

Folks this is a wee card I made the other evening for the new Gina K release party. Gina has a bunch of new goodies out right now - here's a clickable link to all the new stuff. I'm working my way through some bits and pieces that I will be showing you in the coming hops from Monday on, but you should really pop over to see what's the latest right now, I have a feeling some of these sets may be sold out before long....

This card features a little Toucan from Beth's new set,  Xavier Zebra. I loved the chance to use some bright colours, not a palette that I normally reach for, but most refreshing on a grey day.

Monday, 5 December 2016

Just Instagrammed


via Instagram http://ift.tt/2gcOb9c In towels because my hands are not made of Kevlar, and kilns are hot! #maker #ceramics #pottery #mushroom #shrooms #red #ceramic #craft #craftfair #christmas #blog

Just Instagrammed


via Instagram http://ift.tt/2h6nFMa Nature colours it best I think! #igersireland #visitireland #mushroom #moss #irelandisdamp #ireland_insta #ireland_gram #shrooms #blog

Thursday, 1 December 2016

...a few Etsy trinkets


A heads up for the folks who asked - I popped a small handful of ornaments onto my Etsy store this evening. I made a big batch of these some weeks ago and went to a couple of craft fairs. I don't have a ton of them left and I really should make a few more, but you know how busy it gets this time of year... anyhow these 5 are on Etsy this weekend just for funs, they may not be there next week as I might have to commandeer them for my last Christmas Market.... ta for asking!