Free Silhouette Image

Grab your inks, your pens and your paints to create a beautiful background for this silhouette image.  Playing with colour is lots of fun and you can achieve some wonderful effects by mixing colours and mediums on your papers.  Alternatively, try printing this out on some of your favourite patterned papers... it's a great way to use up your stash of offcuts!

 

 

image © Beccy Muir

Napkin Art Candles

I attend a stamping club with lots of lovely and talented ladies.  A few months ago one of them showed us how to make cards using paper napkins or serviettes.  It was a surprisingly simple process with basic tools and supplies that most of us would have lying around our craft studios.

Anyway, another lovely, generous lady gave me a little pile of gorgeous napkins that she had collected for her stash.  I took them home, looked up napkin art and found that they can be used on all sorts of items, including candles. 

 

There are lots of great tutorials online, so I won't recreate the wheel, but I do encourage you to give them a try... I warn you now though, this process is extremely addictive and you will require more than one candle!!

Tutorial - Diaper Fold Pouch

Diaper fold pouches are not cards in the traditional sense of the word, but they are fun to create and if you're looking for something different to send to someone, then they are the perfect little project.

 

 

 

1.  Start with a large square of sturdy, double-sided paper.  It doesn't really matter what size you choose since this card isn't made based on measurements (isn't that nice for a change??).  For those of you who like to have an idea of size, I used an 9" square.

 

2.  Fold the paper diagonally, corner to corner and press the crease firmly.

 

3.  Use a grid mat with a diagonal guide line to find the centre of your folded paper.  Mark the centre with a small pencil line.

 

4.  Bring the top corner of the paper down to the mark you made in step three and crease firmly.

 

5.  Unfold.  The crease you created in step 4 will form the guide line for the next couple of steps.

 

6.  Bring the right hand corner into the middle, lining up the edge of the paper with the crease line you created earlier.  Do the same for the left hand corner.

 

7.  Trim down the two points so that they fit together without overlap.  This helps to reduce bulk and keeps the pocket sitting nicely.  Secure them with some double sided tape or glue.

 

8.  Bring the top flap down over the two corners and secure with double sided tape or glue.  You've now created the pouch.

 

9.  Cut a square of cardstock or sturdy double sided paper to fit inside your pocket.  Stamp it with an appropriate sentiment and decorate as desired.  Have fun!

January Challenge

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are now feeling rested and inspired for another year of paper crafting.  Hopefully Santa left some lovely goodies for you to create with, which should help get those creative juices flowing again after too much eggnog!

 

Simply create a card or project using any of the Beccy's Place images, free or purchased, upload a photo of it to your blog and then submit a direct link below.

You can enter as many times as you like and you can submit your card to any other challenge you wish. At the end of the month three random winners will be chosen to receive three images of their choice from my online store... at this time of year we need all the inspiration we can get!  I will also personally select a Guest Designer for the month of February. Good luck!

 

Sleepy Snowy

2012 has finally drawn to a close here at Beccy's Place and I have posted my last image for the year!  I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all the fabulous ladies who have headed up my design team for the year - you've been wonderful and provided us all with lots of inspiration.

Sadly, Vivien Hodge, who has been with me since the very beginning of this grand adventure, will be stepping down from the design team.  Thank you so much Viv for all your hard work, the gentle reminders and your unfailing support throughout the year... it was nice to know you had my back!

And finally, a warm and hearty thank you to all of you.  I love reading your comments, visiting your blogs and seeing your work.  I wish you all a very happy Christmas and a safe and inspiring New Year.

Cheers,
Beccy

 

Available in Store Now

Vivien's very last DT card!

She made a wonderful gatefold card and sponged

the background using a mask for the hills.

Viv Tomlinson created this cute red and white card

with a beautifully embossed background of snowflakes.

I used traditional greens and reds but with softer tones

that blend well with the vanilla cardstock background.

Snowy Snowflake

I hope you've all had the opportunity to finish your Christmas cards and greetings, or at least made a good start on them!  I'm still hoping to make some place cards for the table as well as more bonbons filled with lovely little trinkets for my family and friends.

I've managed to make and post all my Christmas cards, so any that are made now will go into the stash for next year... it makes me feel very organised to have cards ready to go in January!

 

Available in Store Now

I used lots of soft, pretty pastels for my card and finished

it off with a wreath of punched pine branches.

Eret made this cute circular card and layered the

snowman a couple of times for added dimension.

Vivien went with black and white for a lovely

card with an embossed snowy background.

 

Viv also went with black and white with an embossed

background, but she decided on a different folder.

Snowy Pair

I absolutely adore snowmen, which may be considered odd given it never snows where I live and Christmas is celebrated in the heat of summer time!  Still, there's just something sweet about these rotund little individuals dressed up for the holidays that I can't resist.

 

Available in Store Now

Eret made this wonderful shaker card

and an easel style sticky-note folder.

Viv Tomlinson created this fabulous decorated box that would

be perfect for holding Christmas candy or a very special gift.

Vivien designed this lovely layered

card using non-traditional colours.

I decided on mono-tone for my card and created a two

layered wreath using lots of little snowflake pieces.

Joy Card

I love to create white on white cards, it's one of my favourite styles.  I really like experimenting with dimension and interesting textures to differentiate between the various design elements.  The items I find most useful when creating one of these cards are my embossing folders, die cuts, foam tape and dimensional mediums such as texture paste and kindy glitz.

 

Christmas Wreath Cottage

For those of you collecting each of these little cottages, this is the final image in the series.  As with the other designs, this one also comes with a non-Christmas image, which Viv has used on her card below, as well as a full-colour version to use as a colouring guide or to print out for a quickie project.

 

Available in Store Now

Viv Tomlinson used the non-Christmas image to create this lovely card for new home owners.  She coloured it with beautiful soft shades and matched it perfectly with some lovely pastel paper.

I used all three of the Christmas Cottage images to make a card with a little village street.  I printed the images a couple of times so I could build up certain sections of the design for extra depth.

Christmas Tree Cottage

This is the second little cottage in the series, this time featuring a cute Christmas Tree decorated for the season.  Each of these cottage designs come with two black and white line drawings - one with the Christmas decoration and one without - as well as a full colour version of the image.

 

Available in Store Now

Our lovely new designer, Viv Tomlinson, created this beautiful card using soft colours and pretty lacey edged papers.  You can check out more of Viv's work on her blog... it's well worth the visit!

How cool is this project from Eret?  She has made a wonderful easel card that also holds sticky notes.  She coloured the image with lovely warm reds and pinks.  You can find even more inspiration on Eret's blog.

The lovely Vivien, master of clean and simple, has created this wonderful card that highlights the image and the chosen sentiment.  Vivien's blog is also full of fabulous cards and projects with an emphasis on her favourite style - less is more.

Poinsettia Freebie

Here's a little something to help you along with your Christmas cards.

 

November Challenge Winner and Guest Designer

The random winner of the November challenge is the wonderful Janice Melton! Congratulations Janice, you've won three images of your choice from my online store.   A big thank you to everyone else who joined in the challenge this month, it's always lovely visiting everyone's blog to see what they are creating.

Our new Guest Designer is the lovely Viv Tomlinson, who will be joining us for the months of December and January.  She has lots of beautiful projects on her blog, which is definitely worth a look.

 

There will be no challenge for the month of December since most of us are busy with Christmas preparations and school holidays.  We'll be back with a brand new challenge in January though, so keep that mojo handy!