Musical birthday wishes

Happy weekend crafty people!  What are you up to?  I’m having a lovely chilled out Saturday, reading my book (The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen – loving it so far!) and catching up on some crafty blogs until my husband gets home from his golf game.  I’m here to share a card I made for a birthday boy celebrating today and I’d like to enter it in the My Time To Craft Challenge .  The current theme is “men only”, I think 9 years old can count as a young man for this occasion!

The birthday boy has started learning to play guitar so it seemed the perfect excuse to pull out the Tonic Studios guitar die.  I kept it pretty simple with the guitar and the sentiment but I thought it looked a little plain so I added the three stars in the complementing colours.

I hope you like my card and that you are having a fantastic Saturday.  Thanks so much for visiting the blog and I hope to see you again soon.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA the Ginger Ninja!) x

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day crafty people, hope you have a great day.  I had to wait until today to post this (after my hubby opened it!).  It was inspired by the The Male Room Challenge .

I wanted to make a card using muted colours and different textures.  I pulled out some patterned papers and die cut some hearts to see what combination I wanted to use.  Then I cut some mats to layer and used a wood effect embossing folder from Tim Holtz to add some texture.  The LOVE is a stamp from a few years ago, I think from Hobbycraft.  I embossed it with white on navy and the fussy cut the letters separately before sticking onto the card front.

The hubby liked it and I hope you do to!  Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you again soon.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA the Ginger Ninja!) x

Magical dragons

Happy hump day crafty people!  How’s your week going?  I hope all is well and you are finding some creative time in your week.  Today I’m sharing a card which I am entering in the Back to Basics challenge.    This time the prompt is to use paper piecing in a project.

I had a flip through my stamps and decide to use this cute dragon from a MFT set.  Like many crafters I’m sure, I have a lot of corners and scraps of patterned paper so I pulled out a pretty green piece that I could use for the dragon and a spotty piece for a balloon.  Once I had stamped the dragon I added some alcohol ink and then fussy cut him out.

The white panel was part of a gift with Die Cutting Essentials magazine.  I used a blending tool to add some mustard seed distress ink.  I spritzed it with water and blotted it before sticking down the dragon and his balloon.  I mounted the panel on some yellow card to compliment the ink.  To finish it off I heat embossed the sentiment on dark green card stock (another wee left over scrap!) and added a strip of glitter card.

I hope you like this little sunny card and thanks for popping over to the Ginger Ninja Crafts blog.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA the Ginger Ninja!) x

Be my valentine!

Hi crafty people!  Hope you are having a good Saturday.  We had the six monthly check up visits for all three cats this morning so it was all hands on deck to get them rounded up and in their carriers.  It’s only about 10 minutes in the car but that feels like a very long time when one is moaning consistently and another complains loudly at every roundabout!  We are all home again now, they are all vaccinated and in good health, just need to plan for a bit of dental work for two of them in the next couple of months. Now we can chill out and enjoy some rugby on the TV this afternoon and hopefully a bit of cross stitching too.

Today I’m sharing a card I made to fit in with a couple of challenges, the Freshly Made Sketches Challenge and the Cupcake Inspirations Challenge

I started by cutting out a selection of hearts from red and pink card and patterned papers using various punches and cutting dies.  I then arranged them on the card blank and when I was pleased with how they looked I stuck them down.  I added some nuvo drops in red and cream around the hearts and the sentiment (from Clearly Besotted) embossed in white.

I hope you like my card and as always thanks so much for visiting the blog!

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA the Ginger Ninja!) x

Spread your wings and fly

Happy Friday crafty people!  I can’t believe this week has whizzed past so quickly.  I’ve neglected the blog a bit as I’ve been busy making lots of orders for the Ginger Ninja Craft Shop  mostly for Valentine’s Day next week However I’m back with an entry for the Alphabet Challenge Blog which is currently on W for Wings.

I had just picked up the current issue of Creative Stamping magazine which had some beautiful stamps including this pretty dragonfly and I thought it was perfect for the theme.

I started by making the smooshed ink background with some distress oxide inks.  It always takes me a bit of time to get a background I am happy with when I do this technique, it seems to go through a messy phase!  After I had dried it thoroughly I used the anti static bag and then stamped and heat embossed the dragon fly onto the background using the Wow embossing glitter in Calypso.

I cut a couple of squares from navy card and layered up the squares then topped it off with a dragonfly heat embossed in white on vellum and a stamped sentiment.  The sentiment came from the Tickle my fancy set from Clearly Besotted Stamps.

I hope that you like my finished card, and I’d love to hear your feedback.  Thanks so much for visiting the blog and I hope to see you again soon.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA the Ginger Ninja!) x

Monster Monday

Hi crafty people, I hope you are having a great Monday.  Today I’m sharing some fun I had playing with watercolour paints and salt.  This was prompted by the Back to Basics and Beyond Challenge and I thought it looked fun.  I had a set of watercolours in my stash from a brief spell at an evening class many years ago.  I watched the suggested you tube video for some inspiration and then taped some pieces of watercolour paper onto my craft mat and got going.  I wet each piece of paper and then applied the paint before sprinkling on some salt and leaving to dry.  I used both table salt and rock salt but I think I preferred the table salt effect.  I think the biggest lesson for me was that less is more as lots of salt becomes a little bit difficult to rub off when the paper is dry.  Here are my panels once the salt was applied and they were put aside to dry.

I thought they looked a little out of this world and the blue one in the middle almost looked like fur to me.  So I pulled out the Creative stamps Monster Madness set (which I got very recently for a real bargain from Craft Stash).  I stamped one of the monsters onto the blue panel and cut out the furry body.  I also stamped it twice onto white card stock.  One of the white versions I used as the base and I coloured the legs and arms and cut the monster out.  Then on the other white one I coloured in the mouth and cut the mouth and eye out and then glued all the layers together.  I used glossy accents to give him a lovely shiny eye!

To make the background I cut a semi circle from the yellow panel to make the planet and stuck it on a square of navy cardstock.  The stars were made with a stencil and some texture paste.  Once I lifted the stencil off I sprinkled some silver embossing powder, and in other areas some sparkly clear embossing powder before heating.  I added a mirror card frame and then mounted it on a navy card base which I had stamped and heat embossed with eek! and Boo!  The final touch was the sentiment “Monster hugs!” which came from a Hunkydory stamp set as it fitted the space a little better than the sentiments from the other set.

I hope my little monster makes you smile today!  Thanks so much for visiting the blog and I hope that you will pop back soon.

Crafty (Monster!) hugs

Jenny (AKA the Ginger Ninja!) x

SAL Sunday – 2

Hi crafty people, I’m back with my second SAL (stitch along) post organised by Ava and including a lovely group of stitchers. All of their links are at the end of this blog post so you can pop over and give them some love. I also want to say a big welcome to Jocelyn and Carmela who joins us for the first time, it’s great to have you in the group and I can’t wait to see what you are working on.

So 3 weeks ago I was here…..

and I can do a little happy dance because I got it finished! It’s far from perfect (hello crooked whiskers I am talking to you!) but I am pretty pleased with it as it’s a long time since I did any cross stitch! I’ve not decided what to do with it yet so it’s staying as is at the moment!

So I got to pick another UFO to work on. Let me tell you I have a lot to choose from and some are very nearly finished so I picked this one …..

It really didn’t need all that much done and so…. happy dance number 2…..

So I picked out another project which I will be working on in the next three weeks. Here is the starting point.

I’m looking forward to catching up with all the other blogs in this SAL group, please give them a visit too, I’ve linked them here so you can easily find them.

Avis , Claire, Gun, Carole, LucyAnn, Kate, Jess, Sue, Constanze , Debbierose ,Christina, Kathy , Margaret , Cindy , Helen ,Steph , Linda , Heidi , Jackie , Sunny , Hayley ,Megan ,Catherine , Deborah ,Connie , Clare , Mary Margaret, Renee, Carmela and Jocelyn

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA the Ginger Ninja!) x

Festive felines!

Happy Saturday crafty people!  Hope you are having a fab weekend.  I was delighted to find another new challenge which would help me build up my stash of Christmas cards for this year as well as give me an excuse to use those Marianne Designs cat dies again!

The challenge is the Christmas Kickstart Challenge and the prompt is festive felines!  I thought I would make something to reflect all three of our fluffy boys and I love that the die set allows you to make up so many different combinations of markings.

First I want to introduce you to the inspiration.  First up is Pepper who is in his 90s in cat years and is the furthest travelled, having adopted my husband when he was a kitten (Pepper, not the husband!) in South Africa,  The handsome tuxedo cat is Spats who joined the clan when he was 2 years old and is always hungry.  Last but not least is Mr Darcy AKA the Ginger Ninja (or Ginger Whinger as he is very vocal!)

Pepper

Spats

Mr Darcy

And here is the card version……

I used the sentiment from the Santa Paws Hobby Art stamp set again and used some patterned paper from my scraps box.  I hope these three cuties brightened your day!

Thanks for visiting the blog, crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA the Ginger Ninja!) x

Happy Fri-yay!

Happy Fri-yay crafty people!  I’m back again with an entry for the Fusion Card Challenge (see below for sketch and photo).

I decided to use both the sketch and the photo and as I’ve been a little bit obsessed with bokeh backgrounds I started by making one using blues (salty ocean, blueprint sketch and peacock feathers alongside brilliant white).  This time I made a background by blending the blues and then I added circles of the blues as well as the white.  I’m not sure that it’s really obvious from this panel but I liked the effect.  I had the other pattern papers in my scrap box on the shelf so I cut some flags to fit the card.  The penguin is a die from Marianne Design which I love.  The snowflake stamp and sentiment are both from a set from Hunkydory For the Love of Stamps that came with a magazine.  It felt very appropriate making this frosty birthday card during our cold snap!

I would also like to enter this card for the Crafty friends Challenge which has the theme animals/birds at the moment and the Simon Says Challenge Anything Goes which is currently “anything goes!”

I hope that you are keeping cosy and that you like my cute penguin!  Thanks so much for visiting my blog and I hope to see you again soon.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA the Ginger Ninja!)

Gin o’clock! (or is dry January over yet?!)

Hi crafty people, I hope you are doing really well.  It’s been another cold day here with a clear blue sky and a beautiful view of the snowy hills from my desk.

Today I am sharing a card I made for the Freshly Made Sketches Challenge which has this sketch to inspire creations…

I really love the diagonal stripes and I dug out my box of washi tapes to see if anything jumped out as inspiration.  I really loved the spotty circles (the top stripe on my card) and it made me think of limes and then I remembered that this stamp had just arrived this week and I knew what I was going to do!

I had the green gingham and glitter paper near at hand from another make and I thought they matched in perfectly.  The lemon and lime came from a die-namics set.

Thanks so much for visiting the Ginger Ninja Crafts blog and I hope to see you again soon.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA the Ginger Ninja!) x