Christmas Card & Flower Vase

Guest Designer: Barbara Rankin

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us, we can go all out on the biggest holiday of the year, Christmas! See what our guest designer Barbara Ranking created below!

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!! Barbara Rankin here, and I am so excited to have been invited to be the guest designer for Craftwell today.

I was asked to tell you a little bit about myself, so here goes. I have been a crafter as long as I can remember. I am currently on two design teams and was invited to join the Mixed Media Art Article Writers Team. My first post will be late next month. I have been published in several magazines and was a guest artist in a book. I started out my paper crafting adventure by making cards, then I began making and altering books, and have recently graduated to mixed media and art journaling. I love dimension in my work, and I am always looking for ways to make that happen. Now, on to the projects!

By the way, Craftwell USA makes the eBrush, the Teresa Collins Cut 'n Boss and eBosser machines, and extra large embossing folders.

Speaking of embossing folders, I received this beautiful Teresa Collins Bella Rose embossing folder to use for my post today. This is a very large (8-1/2" x 11") embossing folder, and it will emboss an entire sheet of paper. Can you imagine what you can do with an entire sheet of beautiful embossing? I can, and so here are a couple of projects that I made with my one sheet of beautifully embossed paper.

This cute coffee mug and matching Christmas card used less than one entire sheet of embossed paper. As you can see, the mug is made entirely from a piece of the rose embossed card stock. The card, however, is embellished with fussy cut pieces of embossed roses and adhered to another piece of red print card stock (from My Mind's Eye All is Bright paper collection) that I embossed with a Spellbinders M-bossibilities (Nobility) embossing folder. I then highlighted that embossing with green ink. I love how you can enhance any paper, even a print paper, and make it more suitable to your project.

Here, I have added some Christmas picks to the mug for a beautiful table decoration, but this would make such a quick and easy gift that you could fill with candies, tea, or even hot chocolate packets.

And here is a close up of that card that looks so complicated, yet was so easy to make.

I could not stop there. You see, I was able to borrow the Teresa Collins eBosser machine from a friend, and so I wanted to give the machine a good workout while I had use of it. I had this very intricate die of snowflakes, and these edger dies, as well. I had always had such a problem getting complete cuts with my die cutting machine. Well, let me tell you, the eBosser machine is now on my wish list. It worked like a charm, as you can see from this beautiful Christmas card I made, again, in no time flat.

I used several Spellbinders edger dies, the Joy Craft snowflake circle die, and the Teresa Collins woodgrain embossing folder.

And here is a closeup of those delicate, intricate snowflakes. The eBosser gets my vote from now on.

I hope you enjoyed my set of Christmas cards and coffee mug for home decoration or gift. I also want to thank Craftwell for asking me to be their guest designer today. It was such a pleasure to design something for you and to hopefully inspire you with their fabulous products.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful and creative week!!

Barbara Rankin

http://blackholeartstudio.blogspot.com/

Thanks for creating for us Barbara!

Be sure to check out Barbara's blog for more craft ideas!

November 30, 2014