Sarah's Craft Stuff

If you're not quite sure what you are doing... Just Wing it!

2012-01-08T12:00:00.009Z

Well I am back again. Had a very busy last few months with one thing and another, mainly my baby son having to go into hospital for a minor op. He was in and out same day but we have had this hanging over us for months, and you know how us Mummys worry. The thing that seemed to bother him the most was not the pain or anything like that but the fact that he wasn't allowed anything to eat or drink. He sure made up for it afterwards though and ate a days worth of food within half an hour... I was worried he was going to pop! So as you can imagine I've been a right stresshead!

The first Dream Valley Challenge for 2012 is Anything Goes! I love these sort of challenges as I like to try and do something completely different and try out a new idea. I have a habit of starting out on a project then getting distracted by 'real life' and end up with a stack of bits and pieces which I put to one side in the hope that I will one day get to finish it. I wanted to make a bookmark out of some of the bits and pieces, but wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do, so remembered a phrase that someone I used to know used to say a lot and so I decided to 'Just wing it!'.

I have used some beautiful stamps Hannah Lynn's Bookworm Fairy on the main part of the bookmark and Sweet Pea's Lisa Victoria's The Butterfly Dragon on the 'tag'. I used a large tag from a pack which I bought a while ago and never got round to using, spritzed with Glimmermist sprays in pinks and purples and blues to co-ordinate with the colours of the coloured images and swooshed them around a bit with another smaller tag which I had cut using a Sizzix tag die. Not a drop of that beautiful shimmery ink was wasted! Once it had all dried, as is usual with any paper or card which gets wet with inks and stuff, it was all curled up so I used some stiff black card to flatten it out again and trimmed to size.

For the smaller tag image, I stamped the wings onto fantasy film using an iron and trimmed them and layered them so they stand out more. For once, I think the camera has actually caught the effect quite well, but it looks even better in real life. The flower I created myself with some shimmery chiffon type material which I had been given, using a flower diecut to create the petals and held all together with a brad. I realised once it was on the background it was disappearing a little with the colours so I cut another shape out of black card and backed the flower with it for definition. A couple of eyelets and a short length of purple ribbon to link the two parts together and it was complete. :)

Any regular visitor to my blog will know, I love quotes and often spend many an hour browsing quotes sites online looking for that perfect quote. I found a perfect quote this time and just in case you can't make it out on the photograph it reads “To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.” written by A C Grayling in the Financial Times.

Now, as it is a bookmark I thought I would show it to you in use in the manner to which it is intended, to mark a place in a book. The book I show it with here is the new book in the Wereworld series, written by an old schoolfriend of mine, Curtis Jobling (yes he of Bob The Builder and Raa Raa the Noisy Little Lion and not forgetting Frankenstein's Cat of course). Shadow of The Hawk is the third book in the series and I picked it up when he was doing a book signing session at Waterstones. See, even the book fits in with my wing it theme!

I would like to enter this for the following challenges

Challenge up your life - Bingo - Diecut, purple, sparkle

Our Creative Corner - Show us your shapes

Crafts and Me - Anything Goes

Flutterby Wednesdays - Open (but must have wings and this has plenty!)

Really Reasonable Ribbon's Ramblings - Sparkle and Ribbon

Magical Monday Challenge - Anything Goes

Tilda-th do us parts...

2011-10-17T12:00:00.007+01:00

It was my turn over at Crafty Cardmakers to set the challenge and I didn't have to think about it for very long. I knew what I was going to set straightaway and I hope you will enjoy it too, it's Cute with a dark twist, just perfect for Halloween! Much as I like some of the cute stamps you see out there in cardmaking land, I do tend to lean towards the darker side. So what better stamp to use for my very own challenge than the Magnolia stamp, Tilda with Cherries? "But that's too cute!" I hear you cry. "You can't do something dark to a Tilda!" WATCH ME Bwahahahahaha! It made quite a refreshing change to abandon my usual skin tone promarkers and reach for the cool grey and light greens, it just felt so wrong! But it also felt so right for this card. I think she looks positively zombified with her deathly green pallor don't you? Yet even in her newly putrified state, she still looked too darn cute... even with her featureless face with the eyes which bore into the depth of your soul...

So I gave her what she has need all along. Fangs! They just suit her so much hehe!

I have used some papers from Craft Chaos Design's Creature Feature set. I have been hoarding these papers for months and been itching to use some of them, but the usual cute and cheerful happy smiley stampy style didn't really fit with them very well, but here, they really come into their own. I folded the card into a step card as I wanted the zombie girl to have somewhere to sit besides her pumpkin (which was plain until I drew the face on it) and hoped to create a bit of shadow to add to the spooky feel. The shadow shows great under the room light, right up until I try and take a photograph and then it vanishes. You can see a bit of it behind her hair - see! Even now the evil one is taunting me!

The sentiment - and boy is this a sentiment and a half - came from Tiddly Inks. I have been storing this one up for months too. I printed it, tore it and inked it up with pepper red adirondack ink and added the finishing touch of some inky/bloody fingerprints - MINE! So how is that for a unique stamp eh? Just finishes it off I thought.

Happy Halloween! xx

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

Addicted to stamps - Halloween

Magnolia Stamp Lovers - Halloween

Totally Tilda Challenge - Halloween Tilda

Tilda, roses and things

2011-10-03T12:00:00.001+01:00

Sometimes you just have to face a fear head-on. Regular viewers of my blog may have picked up on the fact that I have a little fear of Tilda, and it's not completely irrational. The featureless children make me a little uneasy if I am honest as the human face as a mouth and a nose as well as eyes... I know I am not alone in this fear too as I saw somewhere on my travels round t'interweb a tutorial for adding features to the faces! A while ago I picked up a couple of Tilda stamps on a sale table and I decided that I was going to be brave and have a go. This is the second one I have done now and they still freak me out a little!

Over at Crafty Cardmakers this week we have a challenge running for Anything Goes! We've all had a bit of a break over the summer months with one thing and another and this is our first challenge with the newly formed team so it would be lovely if you could pop over and have a look what we have all been doing :)

I have coloured her in red promarkers for the dress etc and used shades of ginger for the hair. I have made all the background papers myself with a combination of repeated stamps and a background stamp I have. The multi-coloured background is made with adirondack inks, dabbed around to make a blended background, then stamped over with clear inks and embossed with clear powder so the colours would show through, then brayered over with red. I really liked this technique and have plans to use it again with snowflakes and the like on xmas cards. At the very back is a piece of Core'dinations black magic paper, embossed with a stripy sizzix plate and then sanded to oblivion to bring out the stripes. The circles are cut with both plain and scalloped edge nesties. I have layered the card up with red paper to trim and used a scrap to cut a strip of butterflies as a ribbon across the card. The roses are also made using Core'dinations paper roughed up with sandpaper (to match the background) then die-cut using a rose making die. I love the way these form as it just doesn't look like it will work when you are looking at a wiggly spiral of paper but a bit of careful rolling, a good splodge of tacky glue and a hold for a few seconds and hey presto, pretty flowers! The spirally bits form magically when you cut a very thin strip of paper using a blade and a metal ruler. I discovered this by accident and think they look really pretty and give a bit more dimension to the flowers.

So there it is, a Tilda card, and my second one at that! As I have been so brave, I am would like to enter this one at Just Magnolia as I have used their sketch for this card's layout. Papercrafting Journey want to see die-cuts or punches. Creatalicious Challenges are running one for Anything Goes too :)

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn...

2011-09-25T15:18:00.001+01:00

It's autumn again. Not that I think summer ever really happened for us here in the UK, it's been a bit of a miserable one. OK, we have had a few nice days and it hasn't rained all the time so have to think positively really, and it has made all the garden grow, especially the weeds which have been steadily taking over my garden. Seems as soon as I have got to one end of the garden and cleared them all, some more have poked their ugly little faces through the ground and sit there taunting me. A friend of mine bought his wife some sort of flame-throwing weed killing device which greatly appeals to me and the mere thought of this caused me (and his wife apparently) to laugh maniacally. Bwahahahaha! Die weeds! Die! And the flipping oak tree which has been taking a battering in the wind and bombarding my car with acorns... Oops I am being negative again. Hehe

I've rambled previously about how autumn is my favourite season and I have to say I am not enjoying this one so far. My little boy started school at the beginning of September and the weather has pretty much been lousy every since. First day the rain was blowing sideways on our journey home, and wasn't that the day we decided to go the longer route so he could let off a bit of steam on the way back? Then a few days later the heavens opened exactly to coincide with the time my daughter came out of school. I think it was the tail end of Hurricane Katya as we had mega gusts of wind, rain and hail blown horizontally into the poor children's faces as they were walking home. First I knew of anything was hearing the screaming from outside of children who were getting shotblasted with little balls of ice. It had been so nice earlier in the day too! Then the sun came out and we had blue skies. Confused.com lol

Anywayyyy, onto my card. I'm sure you don't need to hear quite so much about the weather eh? I have used the beautiful Sweet Pea Stamps ching-chou kuiks Come Softly, coloured with Promarkers. Yes, I still love colouring in ;-) I've been practicising hair and trying to get shine into it rather than it just appearing flat. I think I am getting there slowly, but still have some way to go. I have used just pink, brown and cream colours to colour the main image and then created the background directly behind her with Adirondack ink dye pads blended in with my blender. I was very pleased with how it turned out and even more pleased when I realised it was a perfect match for some Basic Grey 'chantilly' paper I had. I have used that at the back of the card and used some other Basic Grey papers 'two scoops' and 'blush' to build the card up. I have followed the sketch at CASE study for the layout, with the stitching and the panels.

Now, back to autumn, and that darned oak tree. Last week it dumped a great big branch, laden with little acorn cups, onto my driveway and as it wasn't raining (for once) I picked it up and took it into the house and let it dry out a little more as it look perfect for autumn projects. I cut a small piece off and sprayed it with gold shimmer mist and I love the effect. I finished off with 3 ribbons tied together into a bow.

I think the oak tree is having it's revenge as I type as I have just heard another load of acorns hit my car *sighs*

Vintage - It's the old brand new!

2011-08-19T21:47:00.000+01:00

It is easily overlooked that what is now called vintage was once brand new. - Tony Visconti

I love vintage clothing! I am particularly fond of fifties style dresses and as soon as I find an occasion to wear one I will sooooo be in one! I love the sticky out skirts and the starched stiffness and the net skirts which go underneath. I also like the necklines, halter necks and wraps, enhancing the décolletage which give a really sexy look but without revealing too much and retaining that important air of demure. I was thrilled to find that Michelle Perkett Studios are running a 'Vintage' theme to their challenge this time round and was even more pleased with the stamp they had on offer as a freebie. This dress just rocks! I seriously want to wear it!

I have coloured the main image with promarkers in vanilla, rose and baby pink to match a piece of backing paper I had in mind for the card. I cut it to an oval shape then cut a slightly bigger oval from some Coredination paper which I ran thru my Sizzix with a polka dot embossing plate and then attacked with some sandpaper to bring out the dots. The rest of the backgrounds I have made myself using a combination of a background stamp and a brayer to apply adirondack caramel ink. The very back of the card is made using just the run-off ink left over from inking the stamp. Brayers are fab for applying ink to that sort of stamp and always have plenty of ink left to make some paper. Nothing is wasted! Regular visits to my blog will know I love making my own backgrounds. I have lots of designer papers but nothing is quite as much fun as making your own. I am forever on the lookout for new ideas of things to do like that. The DP I have used on this one is designer unknown... I have a habit of picking up papers just because I like them and think I could use them and sometimes pick up odd sheets here and there so I end up with loads that I haven't got a clue what they are or where they came from...

The paper ribbon behind the main image is a strip I had left over from another project, it's made using adirondack inks sploshed around and then stamped over with my favourite olde worlde wordy stamp. I keyed the colours in a little by rubbing over with the caramel ink pad I used for the background. I used some lace ribbon at the bottom to further add to the vintage theme (it's pretty old!) and added 3 amber coloured gemstone brads for that all important bit of bling! The sentiment comes from an Anna Griffin set of stamps - stamped then embossed with gold.

I have used the sketch supplied by PaperWorks Co. Creative Stamp Friends challenged us to make our own background so that's what I did! Digi Design House wanted to see 2 patterned papers, a ribbon and 3 brads.

A Summer Daydream

2011-08-15T02:18:00.003+01:00

It's summertime, apparently. The weather most of the time would suggest otherwise! Apart from the odd couple of days of sun here and there, we seem to have been cursed with grey skies and miserable weather on the whole. 6 weeks of 4 bored kids who I can't even take to the park to run off some energy because you can never be quite sure what the weather is going to do next... My elder son has ADHD and to coin a term of his Grandma 'is like Tigger on speed!' and I think if I haven't gone completely grey by the end of the year it will be a wonder. He's off to big school in September and it will be a break for us all, especially my youngest who is 2seriously attention starved as his big brother hogs it all. The poor baby is a boy of very few words, mainly because big bro says it all for him - he never gets a chance to get a word in edgeways! Still, he has words for his favourite things, like juice, banana, kitchen (where the food comes from!) and perfect. He learnt 'perfect' a couple of nights ago as he was looking at the word on his vest and I said what it was and he started repeating it. I was thrilled! So now, when I get him ready for bed he waits for me to give him a new word. Tonight's was 'maiden', which has pleased his Daddy no end as he is a big Iron Maiden fan!

Summertime when I was child was my favourite time of year as it meant a long time off school, always off out with my friends playing out somewhere and getting into scrapes. I will have to put on my rose-tinted glasses for while and remember the sights and smells of summer - I just remember that there was always lots of flowers around. I don't think a lot of people seem to have time for their gardens anymore - I know I don't get much chance with looking after the children but there is nothing nicer than a garden in bloom. My daughter seems to be quite happy to stay indoors drawing or on her laptop which just seems really alien to me as when I was her age, I was never in the house. She's probably saving up all her energy for going on holiday next year with my sister. They are going on a cruise now she is finally in possession of a passport :-)

Flowers are very popular in the world of craft too. The digital stamp I have used for this project is one by Michelle Perkett and is called Daydream Fantasy. I have had it in my collection for a while and to be honest, I have never used it as I thought it looked too complicated, but today I decided to be brave and give it a go. I don't have the fancy new fine-tips for my promarkers yet so I just had to be very light and gentle adding the finer detail of the flowers. I've used carmine and magenta for the pinks and olive and pear green, plus a little saffron and yellow for the hair. I've used stickles and cosmic sparkles to add a bit of shimmer to the wings and the leaves, in fact I added shimmer to it all! What you are looking at is actually the front cover of a notebook. I will be demonstrating how these are done in my next blog post as this is actually the fifth one I have done. I added a few more flowers to give more of a summery feel in pink and purple.

Just added this extra shot to show the sparkle a bit more :)

And also added this to show that it is a notebook :)

I'd like to enter this for the Craft Your Passion Challenge for Anything but a card. Make My Monday want to see a Fairies or Angels.

Sparkle and snowflakes and just a touch of red

2011-08-02T14:06:00.000+01:00

Just been having a root through my blog and found this which I hadn't posted!

This time of year always amuses me. How do you do Christmas when you're not religious? You may notice from my recent bloggings, I just don't do Christmas at all! I think I have done fairly well so far to produce a few Christmas card which are neither religious or traditional and don't actually mentions the C word at all. I'm not a descendant of Scrooge, honest, I just loathe all the commercialism that surrounds it all. So, given the choice, I will choose wintery themes, snowflakes and sparkle, only this time I decided to go for something a bit different.

I am obsessed with red. Well actually I'm not as obsessed as I used to be, but that is probably because now I have a full house and lots of kids running about, there isn't as much opportunity for all the little knick-knacks I used to favour. You should see the state of my lovely red candle set after they got toddlerified lol So every so often I decide to indulge myself and do some crafting in red, and this time of year gives the perfect excuse. I can do festive if not Festive right?

The image I have chosen for my card is Sweet Pea ching-chou kuik's Fluttering-butterflies. It's a really pretty stamp and I have had some stamped images on paper sitting around for a while, just waiting for me to decide what to do with them and I was flicking thru the stack and spotted this and just knew she would look stunning in red and green. I coloured the dress and wings in a combination of poppy and forest green promarkers and the moon and lantern with buttercup and vanilla and touches of gold. The background is coloured with indigo blue, and the skin with almond and dusky pink. Hair I coloured with cinamon and gold and I think it looks like her hair has captured the moonlight. For a bit of added sparkle I have used my trusty gelly roll pens - always good for a bit of bling.

I am rather fond of my nesties, would love to be able to buy more but they are soooo expensive, definitely worth it but still! I trimmed the main image using the biggest in the deckled rectangle set and had a bit of an accident where it wasn't lined up properly so I shifted the image up a bit and cut it again and hoped for the best and luckily it cut straight so I got away with it, phew! I love my starburst stains and had made a sheet of red card which I used as the background then I used some red glitter paper from my stash to trim the edge and cut again using the largest die out of an offcut of the starburst background, but I didn't think it stood out well enough, so I dipped the edges in glue and then in ultrafine red glitter to make it really sparkle. Coloured a few flowers with poppy and dipped their edges in glitter too, and the coloured a peace of lace ribbon using poppy again. This I placed along the side of the glitter paper and offset the red card and the image and put that on and added the glittered flowers. I used a few red gems to add an extra bit of sparkle. I knew the card needed a bit more, but I couldn't think what.

When I visited The Stampman a few weeks ago, Vix was demoing triple embossing and although I tried it as soon as I got home, I couldn't quite get the hang of it, but I had to have a go again for this card. I was lucky enough to get some Christmas shape chipboard a while ago and in there I had some stars in different sizes. I used moonglow angel wings ruby and layered it up using my heatgun and then stamped into it with a snowflake stamp... and it worked this time! I attached the stars to a a thin piece of ribbon and punched a hole in the card, added a yellow star (which I coloured up a little with pink promarker so it wasn't so yellow and attached the stars so they hang freely like a tree decoration.

CCM Spotlight on ATCs - Hope I have got the idea now

2011-07-18T12:00:00.001+01:00

Hello again! Long time no blog lol

So what have I been doing whilst I've been gone? Oh the usuals, taking care of my family and working... it's like having two jobs and I am lucky that I have two jobs which I love! Sometimes when things get a little busy in both jobs I find I have very little time to do any crafting and that's what has happened lately. I seem to have spent the last few weeks either organising something, working, or taking care of poorly children. We held a joint birthday party for the boys as they turned 2 and 4 within a few days of each other so a combined afternoon tea was the perfect choice, slapbang in the middle of the two birthdays. Then the next day was spent making sure that my daughter had everything she needed to go on a camping trip with her school. She's back now and is a little pink with sunburn, and apart from moaning about having to sleep in a tent, I think she had a good time :)

In a quiet moment to myself, I managed to have a little catch-up crafting session and get something done! Yay! Crafty Cardmakers is such a good place to find challenges which well, errrr challenge you! I have learnt so much since being on the DT there and occasionally a challenge or spotlight is set and I read the brief and thing OMG what the heck am I going to do for that, go away, hyperventilate a little and then have a think about how I am going to go about it and then go on a little googlehunt for something which will help me find out what it is I am supposed to be doing. The girls at CCM are fab as they always have good ideas and I am truly in awe of some of the samples which get produced to provide inspiration.

The Spotlight this time is on ATCs. I remember having had my ticket to go to Port Sunny last year for a couple of weeks and we had got to a few days before when Vix told me that at a certain time in the day, everyone meets up to exchange ATCs. Moment of panic! I wasn't even totally sure what an ATC was, let alone had made any... so once again google was my friend and I learnt that day that an ATC is usually 3 and a half inches by 2 and a half inches and you create a mini work of art. I must apologise now to anyone who got one of mine on the day as they were truly awful! I didn't have a clue what to do with them and cobbled something together in a rush... and it showed lol So when this Spotlight came up I thought oooooh now's the time to face my fears and have a go.

I cut some cardstock to size and decided to steer away from the mono-dimensional abominations I made last year and go for some texture. I tore up some sellotape into small pieces and did the same with some masking tape, added some pieces of linen from a reclaimed storage drawer from under my bed (drawer went to tip lol) and added some paper diamante centred flowers and then coated the whole piece liberally with pva. Then I had to wait for it to dry so I could carry on... I don't like having to wait, so I went to bed lol When I got up I applied some alcohol inks using some a kitchen sponge cloth , added some shimmer with mica powders and stamped over with good old stazon ink... well I doubt anything else would work on that background lol Unfortunately the shimmer has made it pretty difficult to get a decent photo so I hope the one here will do. Might try and do another one outside in daylight - just hope the weather behaves itself ;-)

Crafty Cardmakers - Use a Food Container

2011-06-13T12:00:00.006+01:00

It was my turn this week over at Crafty Cardmakers to set the challenge and I had a think about it and then decided to take my inspiration from something I love... FOOD! Hehe! Food is fab, we need it to survive and it comes in packaging of all shapes and sizes and how often do you end up dumping it in the bin when it could be used for something else? So why not have a challenge to make something else out of a food container? It could be a jar, a tin, anything at all which once contained food. I am a bit of a hoarder when it comes to that sort of thing, and my craft room is packed with lots of things which I think might come in useful for something at some point. I just pity my poor fella who has to share the room with the tiny little computer desk I have allowed him to have in the corner lol

My inspiration this time came from a combo box from a well-known pizza chain. I really love their food and especially like the combos that they do with chicken strips and potato wedges. It just seem such a shame to throw the box away and I decided to have a go at making it into something else. It already folds up to make a funky shape, and has holes in it to contain the dips and that set me thinking. Why not make it into a funky gift type box to hold something else?

I set about painting it with white acrylic paint to start with as the company logo is emblazoned on the box in strong colours so it took a few coats to white it out to give me a nice base to work on. It was only after having a chat with the manager of the shop who let me have a new unused one that I realised that if I had folded it the other way it was white to begin with and I wouldn't have needed to use so much paint. Doh! Never mind eh? I had gone this far already so decided to plow on. What's the point in getting this far with a recycling project to only go and throw it away?

Once the paint had dried, I sprayed it all over with some Adirondack color wash and let it dry then stamped with some stazon using a swooshy stamp and let that dry too. The dip holes are a perfect size for putting a tealight into. I wouldn't recommend using real tealights unless you want to set your box (and probably your house too) on fire, instead use battery operated tealights which you can usually pick up quite cheaply from the likes of Hobbycraft.

I shredded some tissue paper to make the packaging inside. Now, you really could put anything inside this. I have put an outdoor tealight holder which you can hang from the branch of a tree, or even your washing line to add a bit of mood lighting to your bbq. You could use it to put make-up or even jewellery in and if you added one of the stick on mirror panels which you can generally get for a quid or so, it would provide a nice gentle light to put your jewellery on by. Tidy.

The Fabulous Mad Madam M

2011-05-31T00:30:00.000+01:00

I have been wanting to get my hands on this Stitchy Bear stamp ever since I first saw it in the banner at OSAAT. This is my daughter. Well it isn't actually my daughter, she's 12 and a touch more three dimensional than this picture lol but this is my daughter's fashion sense! Well I suppose I am probably to blame for that as I have never been known for my eye for fashion either, but DD loves her clothes and sometimes likes to wear as many different colours as she can, all at the same time! Well nobody could ever accuse her of being dull. Unfortunately she didn't come supplied with sunglasses for everyone who looks at her. Don't think by reading this I am being mean by the way, she is sitting next to me whilst I type wearing a purple t-shirt, a platypus coloured cardigan (her description - I think it refers to her TY Patti the Platypus, but I can see what she means) and a knitted cream hat, complete with cat ears... her Havana cat is currently chewing my socked foot (he has a fetish for socked feet) and she has just had to run into the kitchen to get him to follow her. It worked! We have lots of random moments in this family I can tell you!

At Crafty Cardmakers this week, our challenge is Love The Lasting Kind. I don't think there can be any better display of love than the love a mother shows to her child. From the first moment they are placed in your arms after you have given birth to them, nothing ever compares to that. The overwhelming emotions of holding this tiny little bundle (and believe me, my DD was tiny!) and knowing that they have been growing inside you for 9 months and they are finally here, out in the real world, small and vulnerable and needy of everything to survive. I think those in the midwifery profession call it bonding, I call it pure, all-consuming Love.

Things haven't always run smoothly for my daughter and I. She was only 6 and a half years old when I finally decided enough was enough and turned my back on her father, and left her to live with him as it seemed to be the best for her at that time. I still maintain that it was the best then as I needed time to sort my own head out but it hurt me, and more sadly it hurt her. I think she felt I had rejected her too, but I made it up to her, slowly but surely and as she grew older, she realised that the parent she really wanted to live with was me, someone who would be there for her all the time and not just pass her around relatives because they couldn't prioritise family over work commitments.

Whoa! I am getting really sentimental here! I am supposed to be talking about the card! Hehehe!

The stamp is a digi stamp from Stitchy Bear Stamps and I have coloured her with promarkers and added depth and definition with black polychromos pencil. I ran round the edge of the image with cool grey 1 and cut her out to make the image pop out more from the background. The many background papers I have chosen to co-ordinate with the main image - mainly because I have used so many garish colours on it, I had a great job finding just one which would do it, so I decided to layer it. The 'flowery' part is drawn freehand onto sticky backed canvas with Derwent Inktense pencils to match the leggings on the main image, then edged with bright pink then torn to reveal orange. The orange is torn to reveal hot pink leopard skin print - this is in homage to a similarly coloured pair of leggings that DD wore to death, until they finally didn't fit her. I created this paper with an Anne Geddes stamp. The lime green, final part of the topper is embossed with a stars embossing plate in my Sizzix. I then backed the whole lot onto black paper and added the 'Fabulous' sentiment which is an embossed stamp from the same Anne Geddes stamp set, I have used orange, red and black then coloured the background with Inktense pencils and trimmed to size.

Whoa! This is a bit pink for me!

2011-05-29T12:00:00.001+01:00

Wow, has it really been 2 weeks since I posted anything here? Life has been busy busy busy for me lately, having 4 children in the house certainly doesn't leave much time for anything else. I wouldn't have it any other way really! Since I last blogged, my beautiful daughter has turned 12 and it amazes me everyday how lovely she is, so mature for her age, she certainly has got a good head on her shoulders, is doing brilliantly at school and I am sooooo proud of her!

Well this card is a bit pink innit? lol

Over at Dream Valley Challenges we are running a challenge 'Stamp Something'. I love stamping! I remember before I started making things that I always thought stamps were just something you used to decorate a card or other project, kiddie crafts almost. How wrong was I? The lovely stamp I have used for this project is a Jasmine Beckett-Griffith one of the fabby stamps you can buy from Crafts and Me Stamps. I fell in love with this lady's work a few years ago when I was in Lincoln with my darling OH and we wandered into Salamander a truly awesome new age shop hidden away up a sidestreet. They had just taken delivery of a selection of greetings cards designed by her and one of them really caught my eye as, to me, she was the spit of my daughter. I was over the moon a few months ago when I learnt that I could now get stamps of her designs! I have coloured the image with promarkers in shades of pink and added some sparkle to her wings with gelly roll pens. I used my scalloped edge circle nesties to create the circle behind, which I used to cut out from some paper I had made previously with cosmic shimmer mists, then embossed it and sanded it to distress it a little. The rectangle behind the ribbon is some more of the paper stamped with some inkadinkadoo stamps. Behind that is a selection of Anne Geddes papers which I acquired on one of my swoops at the QVC shop and some meshy ribbony type stuff which I think is lovely. Oh and don't forget the bling, always have to have a bit of bling lol

Revenge - A Dish Best Served Cold

2011-05-13T22:46:00.002+01:00

Don't you just love that phrase? It's true isn't it? Why rush in when someone wrongs you and give them the reaction they want, just leave it... don't forget about it... leave it until they think you have forgotten about it lol

I have used a fab Tiddly Inks digi for this, she's called Pinky and if ever a stamp was more suitable for this phrase I have never found it. I mean come on! She's standing there with a skull on top of a cake! I don't know who cheesed her off, but I don't think I would like to get on the wrong side of her, would you? That girl has issues lol I have used just 6 colours on this card, black, red. grey, purple, white and satin for the skintones. Not that I have given her much skintone at all, she's as pale as me... in fact this could be an alter-ego of me! The background is also from Tiddly Inks and is called Toasting Properly. Goes perfectly with the image I think and the general feel of the card. So with 6 colours, I added 6 paper roses, made using a diecut and a few scraps of coredination's paper as it is red on one side and black on the other and it gives such an impression of darkness to the petals. And of course, 6 words too. I used a ransom note style font which my lovely stepdaughter gave to me. Sometimes it is so handy to live with a font geek! So there we have it... 666... The number of the beast. Scared yet? You should be! HDH Challenges, you've just gotta love 'em! Mwahahahahahaha! ;-)

I'd also like to enter this in The Burtonesque Dolls zombie challenge. I can just imagine a zombie serving up a skull cake. I think it would be damn rude not to hit up the Tiddly Inks Anything Goes challenge with this one, I hope I have done it justice Christy!

Magical fairy wonderland

2011-05-02T21:43:00.002+01:00

We call them faeries. We don't believe in them. Our loss. ~Charles de Lint

I was talking earlier today with my daughter, whom is now almost twelve about the fancy bedding we can get for kids these days. I grew up in the times before duvets (sheets and blankets for me!) and children's character themed bedding, and whilst my son has Rubbadubbas, Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder and my daughter had Jellikins and Hello Kitty, I had none of these luxuries. I said to her at least you have never had to suffer hideous wallpaper in your bedroom (her rooms have generally been painted - apart from when she was a baby and I decked her nursery out with Peter Rabbit borders etc - only to be told when she was old enough to speak that she hated Peter Rabbit - Meh!). I described the wallpaper I had growing up in the 70's as a pink and lilac floral nightmare! This was replaced around the age of 6 or 7 by green woodland fairies. I was never particularly into fairies (I was into Adam and the Ants at the time!) but my Mum loved it and bought it and decorated my room with it and I still had it on my wall at about 13 years of age - albeit covered up with as many posters as possible!

I've been raiding Vix's stamps again lol

One of the stamp ranges which they sell over at Crafts and Me is a rather fabby artist called Hannah Lynn and I love them! This one is called Bookworm Fairy and I decided she would look just lovely coloured with pink and turquoise shades of promarker and added some definition with a polychromos pencil. I treated myself to some stickles a few days ago and have added some to the wings and the frondy bits of the butterfly and it does look very sparkly in real life, but my camera has managed to completely not capture it in this shot! I also added some stickles to the lantern as they tend to reflect the colour of the bit underneath so it really looks like it is glowing. Again you will have to take my word for it lol I trimmed the image and gave myself a near heart attack when I was cutting the frondy bits as I have a habit of cutting them off, but miraculously I managed to leave them attached - Go me! lol I have created the background using cosmic shimmer mists in a blend of greens into blues, (I've not tried a blend with the colours before), then stamped over the top with the frame from the Starburst Fairies stamp set from The Stampman. I trimmed the frame leaving a narrow border and glued the image to it. Doesn't it look like she is in a magical fantasy land?

I made the card into a twisted easel as I had more shimmery card left from earlier and stamped with some sentiments from the Starburst Faires set and added some gems for a bit of bling in pink and turquoise colours.

I followed a couple of challenge themes for this card, Stampalot have one running for Magical Worlds and I don't think you get much more magical than a fairy woodland scene. I chose the colour scheme from The Corrosive Challenge for Turquoise and Pink. Sweet Stampin' want you to try something new, and I tried a new technique with my shimmer mists - I usually just spray all over and hope for the best lol/

Steampunk fairy

2011-05-02T12:00:00.002+01:00

Over at Crafty Cardmakers this week we have a spotlight on Steampunk or machines. Well until I set to work on planning for this challenge, I had never really done anything at all like it. From other things I have seen around the web, I knew cogs and modern type machines made in a Victorian style was the key and I was a bit wary of how to start. Luckily I stumbled across some digi stamps from Delicious Doodles and bought a few to have a play around with and I think I can safely say I am a little hooked on darker things at the moment! As I said in a previous post, I like gothic styles and the steampunk genre fits in quite nicely I think.

I started by colouring the image in with promarkers, aside from the skin tones I really limited myself on colours to red and greys and a touch of green for the rose leaves. I wanted to keep her skin pale and interesting so have only lightly shaded it. I have used a black polychromos pencil to add shadow and make it pop out a little more. Directly behind the main image (which I trimmed) is a piece of core'dination paper, embossed and sanded gently to bring the red from out of the depths of the black. I have a few embossing folders which I rarely use, but core'dination paper is fab for making use of them. The panel behind is some black and white design paper from my stash. I am not sure what make it is as it didn't have any labels, but I bought it from Carole's Crafts. Behind that I simply used a scrap of black lacy material stretched over card and a broad piece of black satin ribbon to continue the black and white theme I seem to have going on here lol

So what's the steampunk feature? The cogs of course! I cut them out from a template and coated them with aged metallic Perfect Pearls powder, spritzed and battered away with the end of the powder brush whilst the powders were still damp to create a distressed aged metal effect.

I followed the sketch at Hanna and Friends for this card.

Gothic pin-up girl

2011-04-20T23:47:00.000+01:00

There is just something about the whole gothic style of dress that inspires me. This probably stems from having grown up in an era where the likes of The Mission, Sisters of Mercy and The Cure reigned the charts and the dress-code for that type of music was out of this world. Long flowing coats, long flowing locks, make-up, long boots, bodices, waistcoats.... It's all just so dark and brooding and fab! I like to think I was a goth at some point in my life (my sister will tell you different tho lol) but the most goth I got was dying my hair black and dressing in black all the time and a bit of dark make-up. Well apart from the last bit, what has changed as I am sitting here with dyed black hair and dressed top to toe in black? Oh that and the girls were always skinny and tall, neither of which I have ever achieved Hehe!

The image I have used is a fantastic artist I have found called Teri who sells her digi stamps under the name Delicious Doodles. I found her art when I was looking for some steampunk digis and I fell in love with this one. A true gothic fairy! I have coloured her with a combination of promarkers and prismacolour pencils to make the wings 'pop' out. The background behind the image I created by running some coredination red/black paper through my sizzix in an embossing folder, then sanding it gently to bring the colour through and then distressed the edges a bit more with another session with the sandpaper. The swirls are Tim Holtz diecuts which I had cut out in red then attacked with some shimmer mists. The main background is a black shiny crocodile skin paper I found in a Anna Griffin papers set and I thought it was just perfect to go with this theme. The flower I made myself with a spare scrap of the background paper and a smaller flower made out of the coredination paper, run thru a snakeskin embossing folder then sanded off again. The centre is a brad.

I think I might have got a bit carried away with my set-up for the photo of this card with the candlesticks, rose and wand, but I felt they just matched the gothic theme so well!

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:

Haunted Design House - Gothic Pin-up
OSAAT - Make It Sassy
Simon Says Stamp - Emboss It

Love is in the air?

2011-04-18T21:53:00.001+01:00

I think you would have had to have been in hibernation for the past few months to have not realised that there is a Royal wedding at the end of this month. Everywhere you look someone is flogging something to do with it, there are posters advertising events at pubs on the day and we have all been given an extra day off! The extra day off is the highlight of it all for me, I don't really give two hoots about the Royal family to be perfectly honest. Looking at some of the photos of Kate Middleton from prior to the engagement, and then after the engagement, nobody can deny she is a pretty young girl, but already the Royal machine is in motion to turn her into a fuddy-duddy who dresses like a 50 year old woman at a WI tea party! Look what happened with Diana if you don't get what I mean. She was only very young when she got engaged to Charles and in a lot of the early formal photographs she looked like she had been dressed by her Grandmother! The people I really feel sorry for are any couples who have had the same date picked out for their own weddings for the past couple of years (you would possibly not believe how far in advance you have to book to get the church, the venue, the cars all on the same date etc Then your whole day gets hijacked by the Royals! Meh!

Anyway, moving swiftly on as they say....

I haven't been to an actual wedding for years, apart from evening dos. The last wedding I went to I think was my ex sister-in-law's wedding in 1999! My daughter was only a couple of months old at the time and it was an unusually hot day for the beginning of September, I was still breastfeeding her, she was getting restless because she wanted more grub or to go to sleep (probably both!) and my deranged old bat of a mother-in-law (which is what her darling son used to refer to her as) was insisting that I had to hang around until the photographs had been done. The photographs took the best part of two hours, I was only called to be on one of them and I never actually saw the finished album. So what was the point of putting me and my daughter through all that discomfort! Oh, I am still ranting.... oops!

Moving on again... lol *Thinks happy thoughts of love and harmony*

As I haven't been to a wedding or known anyone who has got married since I started making cards, I have never actually made a wedding card in my life. Remembering back to the ones I received at my own (FAILED) wedding, they were all white with wings and toasting champagne glasses and pretty little doves. Over at Crafty Cardmakers this week we have a challenge for red, white and blue and/or a wedding card so I have chosen to do both. The image is one that I asked Vix to print out for me and I have coloured it simply with red and blue (with grey for the trousers) promarkers with a touch of gelly roll shimmery pens here and there. It's a good thing that a lot of brides get married in white as it made it VERY easy to colour her dress... there was the white without me even having to lift a pen lol I trimmed the image to size then used my hearts corner punch and back onto red paper so the hearts show up in a nice way. I have followed the sketch from I Love Promarkers as it was just perfect for my plans for this card. The 'congratulations' design paper is one I made myself in good old MS Paint. The satin look paper is a free one I found whilst trawling the net in search of something to match my image. See I usually do it this way round which is why it was so unusual for me to plan ahead and key my colours in with the DP on my previous post! I have backed each of the panels with red and added some red gems for a bit of bling and a paper rose which I re-coloured with berry red promarker to match the flowers and bits and bobs on the happy couple. I think I have kept this pretty clean and simple really.

Well I hope you enjoy the extra day off, whether you spend it tuned to the box with one of the Dimbleby's droning away (or whoever the Beeb pick this time), having drinks in the local pub or maybe just spending some time with family. Enjoy!

*Hugs* Sarah

I would also like to enter this for the following challenges:

Happileigh Scrapping - A Royal Challenge
Polka Doodles - Tie The Knot

Bunny in my pocket

2011-04-18T19:04:00.002+01:00

Our challenge over at Dream Valley is to create something to do with Easter, and what could fit the bill better than a bunny? Cute little chap isn't he? I'm not sure where I picked him up but I think it was a spring freebie last year, so if anybody recognises him, could you please let me know? LOL

I have coloured him with promarkers and, although it hasn't shown up very well on the photograph, I coloured it a few more times and have paper pieced it to make it a little 3D and Digi Design House want to see paper piecing. I have followed the sketch at The Sweet Stop which has a bit of a twisted theme this week, hence the angle, and wanted to see something with wings and the butterfly fits the bill there I think :) The 3 design papers I have used are from my stash, not sure what any of them are as I found them all in little leftover bits during a paper sort-out. I bought a set of drawers to organise all my papers and somehow I still have a box cram packed full of odds and sods. How does that work? *Confused face*

The flowers are from a set my other mum got me on one of her trips to the states. I'm not usually a pink person and so haven't used many of them before, but I think they look just fab stacked with the gems in the centres. The brackety bits are using one of my nestie sets and cut from some paper I made a while ago and the ribbon strips are Kanban I think and the meshy ribbon in the background is from the big roll I bought a few weeks back - see I said you would see it again didn't I? lol

I made the sentiment using a scalloped nestie and a peel-off (shhhh) which I coloured in with promarkers to match the image and then doodled the flowers, faux stitching to tie in with the main image, and the text freehand.

Passion for Purple Promarkers

2011-04-14T00:46:00.006+01:00

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, with a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me, and I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves, and satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter ~ Jenny Joseph (I love this quote! It's so ME! lol)

If you were ever to visit my house or look in my wardrobe, or indeed view the photos from my handfasting, you would probably be thinking that my favourite colour is red. Well you would be wrong. One of my lesser known secrets is that my favourite colour is purple. I have always loved purple. It's just such a lovely colour and there are so many variances in shade, plus with my dark hair colour and anaemic complexion it is one of the colours that adds colour to my pasty white skin and doesn't leave me looking washed out. Oh and it usually looks fab with my green eyes! ;-)

The stamp I have used is ching-chou kuik's Dark Royalty from Sweet Pea. Yes, it's another Sweet Pea! I just love their stamps and as purple is my favourite colour it fits the In a Sweet Pea Dream challenge. I have coloured using a range of promarkers in shades of purple (my favourite) and green, and for once, I chose my DP first and then coloured the image to coordinate with the colours in the paper. This may not seem unusual to many people, but believe me, it is highly irregular for me! I usually set about colouring an image and then discover that I have no paper to match and have to reach for my stains and shimmer mist and create my own. Well as you can see I have actually used a panel of my own, which was made with shimmer mists then embossed with a polka dot embossing folder. Felt quite strange to be so organised for once!

I was so organised, I even sat down and made all my embellishment flowers, as challenged to do by Passion for Promarkers, to match. I had a great time with my coffee filters and stains and heat tool. Made a batch of 3 large flowers - 2 turquoise and one purple, and 4 small purple flowers, all with gems and pearls in the centres with the full intention of using them all, but I went downstairs this morning to find der der der! No small purple flowers... seems my dear cat has been playing with them (I found one of the turquoise flowers in the bin next to my desk). But now I am worried as the rest are nowhere to be seen and he has a habit of eating random thinks so he is possibly going to pass some very interesting poop... cats, grrrrrr Anyway, the few flowers he had left me to decorate my card with had escaped intact.

I have assembled this card following the sketch at The Sweet Stop as the moment I looked at it I could see all the papers I had planned coming together, great when I plan eh? The main design paper with the large purple flowers on it is one I picked up in my local craft shop and even though it came in a pack of 10 sheets of the same paper, I just had to have it! Might take me a while to use it all though... The DP on the circles behind the flowers and the bracket at the bottom is from a Laura Ashley set. The panels are either trimmed with purple paper or with purple edging borders to coordinate with the image and papers. Oh and then I added a couple of turquoise gems to finish off. The colour scheme fits perfectly with Sketchy Colors challenge for turquoise, purple and green too :-). I hope my gems will pass for pearls for the Magical Monday Challenge too, the card would have had lots more pearls if it hadn't been for my darn cat lol. This is probably going to end up as a birthday card for one of my mothers so hope it fits in ok at Sweet Pea Stampers as it is a feminine card and uses a Sweet Pea image.

It's a bit bright...

2011-04-13T21:46:00.001+01:00

I've been having a fiddle about again! I recently discovered that the box of coffee filter papers I had stashed away at the back of the cupboard (left over from the time we had to use an old style coffee machine whilst awaiting for the arrival of a new jug, following a toddler induced accident with the old one) can actually be put to good use in craft. Yay! They make the most gorgeous flowers and are pretty easy to do, especially if you have a suitable scalloped nestie as do I. The first one I made, was huuuge and may well end up as centerpiece for a card at some point but once I had mastered the art, I became a little addicted and keep churning them out. Well you can never have enough flower embellishments when you're into crafty stuff now can you? Whilst the regular unbleached ones are good for darker colours, they aren't so good for lighter colours as the 'beige' effects the colour of the flower. However, a quick search of t'interweb found me a supply of white ones, 400 of them in fact, and the colours that you get from those are much more delicate. The first batch, which I used on this card, are made with the unbleached filters and cosmic shimmer mists. They came out really well with the purple and green I had, and the mica shimmer looks lovely on them. They are held together with a tiny little brad and have a nice diamond pearl in the centre. I enjoy making these so much that what the hey, I think I am going to do my first ever tutorial on them!

The image I have used on this card is Sugar Nellie Web Knitter. Coloured with promarkers and a bit of sparkle added to the leafy wings with cosmic twinkles. The DP is from my stash and the coloured papers are from my ever dwindling supply of Paper Mill papers - why oh why did you have to close your shop near me? :-( Anyway, the image was trimmed to size with a nestie and I used a scalloped nestie cut in purple to create the frame. The challenge at The Sugar Bowl is to use purple and green, a sketch and one of their own images so a check in the box on all three counts I hope.

Happily, during one of our crafting and gabbing sessions, Vixykins brought round a big Tim Holtz swirly scrolly sizzix die cut which I used to cut out some swirls in an array of colours, so I have used some paper made from purple and green cosmic shimmers spritzed onto card, which is actually the same mists I used to create the flowers. With the pearls and swirls and magical theme I hope this one fits the challenge at Magical Monday :-)

It was quite difficult to photograph this as the shimmery bits seem to nab the colours out of the image a little and are making the paper look a little blue but they are purple, honest!

Spring fever

2011-04-04T12:00:00.003+01:00

It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ~Mark Twain

Spring is fab! Out in the garden, things are blooming and adding lovely colours to everyday life. As we only moved to this house at New Year, I didn't get the chance to put any bulbs in, but I was thrilled when green shoots started poking through the ground and was hoping that they would be daffodils, and they were! The bright yellow colour is so cheerful and if I could just stop my 3 year old son beheading them and bringing them to me, the garden would be full of them! Ah well, I'm sure he will grow out of it... and then my younger son will start lol

The challenge over at Crafty Cardmakers this week is to use mainly yellow and these 3 embellishments stitching, rhinestones and ribbon, so a springtime card was just the perfect idea to fit. I used a Sweet Pea Stamp, Jennifer Nilsson's Daisy Flower Fairy which I coloured with a range of yellow and amber promarkers and gold star gelly roll pen to add sparkle to the wings of the fairy and the bee. I added a couple of orange rhinestones as earrings and then I couldn't decide what to do with it. I knew I had yellow cards and things, but I couldn't think what to do next. After a bit of a head scratch, I remembered back to a conversation I had with Vix during our Promarkers in the Park session last week and recalled that she had mentioned about twisted easel cards. I have never done one before, so I decided to have a play with some card and see if I could do it... then decided to go two steps further and turn it into a triple twisted easel card! It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, but is soooo effective don't you think?

The three panels are backed with some backing paper I made myself using yellow card and my new favourite friend, my I-cling flower stamp, stamped and embossed with orange, then diecut with my trusty old friend, my deckled rectangle nestie. The main image was trimmed with the second largest nestie and then matted to one of the bigger diecuts. For the front panel I printed the sentiment 'Just for you' in orange using my printer, then embellished with paper flowers I had coloured to match and added some opaque amber rhinestones for the flower centres:

I then added some faux stitching around the images with a black sparkle gelly roll so the 'stitches' would be more subtle.

For the back panel, I used the Mark Twain quote shown at the top of this post (just in case you can't read it on the photo):

The foldy bits (god I'm technical) I covered the visible side of the fold with yellow gingham paper which I had printed off from a freebie site. For the stops for each part, I used a large flower, adhered with a sticky pad and teased the petals up so that they provide a firm stop. I embellished the main part of the card with some yellow ribbon from my stash and was thrilled to find it matched perfectly without my having to recolour it! Yay!

What's more, the whole card folds flat so it will go in an envelope, which is always handy in the case of a card ;-)

On that matter, I would like to enter this in the following challenges:

Quirky Crafts - Twisted Easel (Hope a triple twisted easel counts!)

Paper Sundaes - Spring Blossoms (I think it certainly has a few of those!)

Basic Grey Challenges - More than one fold (check! lol)

In A Sweet Pea Dream - Hello Spring (I'd say there is more than just an element of that!)

Sweet Pea Stampers - Pack a punch (ANOTHER Sweet Pea from me - anyone would think I was addicted lol)

My other Mother...

2011-04-04T00:05:00.005+01:00

I'm quite a lucky girl really as I have 3 people who I think of as 'Mum'. The first being my Mum, always been there for me (despite a few dodgy patches, she has come through for me) and naturally I do her a card each year. I have already done her card, it's the green one with the teddy on it. Then there is my partner's Mum. Her's is the lilac fairy. So that just leaves one Mum to make for, and that is my ex's Mum, Jean, my elder son's Grandma. Since my son was born she has been there for me 100% of the time. She's helped me out wherever she could, listened to my happy tales and been there as a shoulder to cry on when I have needed one and been the best possible friend I could ever hope for. She's going through a bad time at the moment herself as her Mum has been diagnosed with cancer and as she is an elderly lady we're not expecting her to be with us much longer, so I wanted to make a special card for her this year to let her know we're all thinking of her at this hard time.

The image I have used is a Sweet Pea stamp, Ching Chou Kuik's Ladybug. Isn't it just adorable? I really loved colouring this one with my promarkers and I worked with a few different red pens and a touch of blender pen to create the shiny wings. The flowers are coloured with antique pink and amber with various yellows worked in. The leaves are leaf green with emerald and moss green. I trimmed the image with my deckled nestie and then had a rummage about for a piece of paper I had made with starburst stains ages ago, cut that with the next nestie size up and ran it through my sizzix in a flowery embossing folder. Because Jean (who makes cards herself) is very much a perfectionist, I deliberately set the main image off at an angle, mainly because then I wouldn't have to panic about getting it straight lol

I made my own design paper for this one, choosing a simple flower and stamping it out with orange versamark ink. I love this stamp, it was only 99p in Hobbycraft and is a Cling-it one. I then embossed in gold some leafwork in a band across the centre and added some see-thru gold ribbon diagonally across the centre. I used one of my new nestie shapes to cut the scrolly bit out of a bit more of the paper I had useed earlier and coloured some paper flowers to match the colours of the flowers on the main image. The smaller flower was already an amber colour but I tied it in a bit more with a few touches of antique pink.

To make the card personal to Jean (as it doesn't seem right putting Mum on the card!) I added her name in gold to the bottom of the image. I then finished with a couple of red gems.

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

Off the Wall Craftiness - Colour inspiration - this is where I chose the colour scheme :-)
Passion for Promarkers - Bugs
PaperCrafting Journey - For the Ladies in Your Life
Sparkles Forum - Springtime
Paper Sundaes - Spring Blossoms
Creative Inspirations - Mother's Day
Sweet Pea Stampers - Pack a Punch
In a Sweet Pea Dream - "Hello Spring" Sweet Pea
I Love Promarkers - Emboss It

Pretty things with wings

2011-04-03T12:00:00.004+01:00

As I said in a previous post, I have 3 Mums who I make cards for each year, and this is the second one! I made this one for OH's Mum and as her favourite colour is lilac, I chose that as it is also a lovely springtime colour. The challenge over at Dream Valley this fortnight is Things With Wings and this beautiful butterfly fairy fits the bill perfectly.

The image I have chosen is a wonderful one from Michelle Perkett which I was lucky enough to win in a challenge last week :-) She is called Lilly The Fairy of Enchantment and isn't she just stunning? I love the simple posy of flowers she is holding and those beautiful wings. I have coloured her with promarkers on some fantastic paper I have found. It's really good for promarkers as it doesn't bleed at all so you can really work at blending without worrying about fuzzy lines or putting a hole in the paper! You can also print digi stanps on it with great clarity and printable design papers come out fab too. I printed the design papers on it and you really cannot fault it. These papers were just free to download ones and came out of the printer looking really professional so I was really pleased. I edged round the whole stamp with a grey promarker and then trimmed the image. I used a scalloped circle nestie to create the 'frame' round the sun, trimmed the design papers to size and then edged with some silver butterfly peel-off borders. There I said it. Peel-offs. I used peel-offs. I now expect to be drummed out of the DT lol Well, they were needed to add a bit of bling so :-p

The sentiment is another peel-off (mwahahaha) on a deckled rectangle of the same lilac card I used round the main image and 'secured' in place (well I actually stuck it down with DST) with a single butterfly.

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

Sketch and Stash - Sketch
Michelle Perkett Challenges - Flowers
Wee Memories - Favourite Colours

Bursting your own bubble

2011-03-24T23:38:00.003Z

We live in a strange bubble. Brian Molko

There have been times in the past, whilst suffering with depression, I had described life as like a bubble, or living within a goldfish bowl and feeling everyone was looking in and observing me like I was a ruddy big goldfish or something. Then, one day, the bubble burst and I was able to breathe more freely and see myself and my surroundings for what they really were. I made some big life changes and have never looked back. I am happy, I am loved and I love. Most importantly, I stopped caring what other people thought of me and decided to be happy within myself and focus on the more important things in life. Having fancy holidays and financial security does not shape my life at all now, instead I am happy with what I have and am surrounded by people I love and that is what truly matters in life don't you think?

I love trying something different and learning new skills and being into crafty things, this soft spot of my personality comes in very handy indeed. I take inspirations from anywhere and anything and if I spot a technique or style I like, I am away to my craft desk to try and emulate it and master whatever it is. One of the card styles I like is foldy cards. I have done quite a few easel cards in the past year and ventured into trying different sorts of folds, but I spotted a different sort of fold on my travels and decided to have a go myself.

The image I have used is Michelle Perkett's Princess Oceana, a wonderful digi stamp I chose as part of my prize for a challenge I won. Isn't it just fab? I love the way her hair can be coloured in more conventional colours or totally differently in blue tones like I have done here. I have used my newly acquired technique of colouring dark to light with promarkers and I think it looks like waves of water. Well that was my intention anyway! I trimmed her using my favourite deckled rectangle nestie and then cut a bigger one with brown paper and sprayed it with white pearl shimmer mist. The spray adds an almost water bubbles effect I think. I then added a couple of clear blue gems to the corners of the image.

The base of the card I folded to create three waves using dark blue card which I had sprayed with white pearl and it has come out looking like a myriad of tiny bubbles which was perfect for my plan for this card. The papers on each wave are from stock, I can't remember where I got them from, sorry (though I think it might be papermania?) and were cut to leave a border visible on each wave to show off the effect on the card. I think the papers look quite shell like and fitted in wonderfully with the blue and brown theme I had planned.

The next bit was a new idea to me, incorporating acetate into a foldy card... wasn't sure if I would be able to do it, but it worked. I always worry when I do a foldy card that the recipient won't be able to stand it up on display as not everyone in the world knows what an easel card is. Here I have used a piece of acetate sheet stamped with silver bubbles and cut to size to hold the whole thing together, so when it is folded into an envelope, it will come out and almost pop up so it will be obvious how it stands up! The acetate is secured to the card with brads so no glue or tape is visible and therefore can't come undone (another of my fears of sending cards through the post - the recipient opening the envelope and random pieces fall out loose).

I would like to enter this into the following challenges:

Michelle Perkett Studios - Colour Challenge Blue and Brown
Fab 'n' Funky Challenges - Do it more than once (more than one fold)
Karen's Doodles - Challenge 55 More than one fold
Shannon's Sentiments - Unusual Fold

Coming of age

2011-03-21T12:00:00.007Z

The challenge at Crafty Cardmakers this week is special birthday so I have done this with my stepson Sean who will be turning 18 very soon in mind. If there is any one thing any self-respecting teenage lad who comes of age will be thinking about that is drinking beer (legally!) so I have used Victoria Case's 'Heidi' digi stamp as I felt it was just perfect for the occasion.

Cards for men are always so difficult I think. You can't have any gems, flowers, glitter or anything blingy at all really! Any inspiration you find is boats, cars, fishing, computers, football or beer. With it being for an 18th birthday and 18 being the age you can legally drink in the UK, beer was the obvious choice. A nice buxom young barmaid holding two glasses of beer pretty much has to fit the bill for an 18 year old lad really! I have coloured with promarkers and mastered the art of colouring dark to light which was a bit of a mindshock but I think I managed it. I used Meesh's tutorial as it actually uses the image I was planning to use. I cut the image to size and trimmed the corners with my corner cutter and backed onto some paper I had made previously with some of Tim Holtz's Adirondack Color Washes as the colours matched the image. Then I had a bit of a brain freeze and couldn't think what to do with it!

So, I consulted the man in my life, Sean's Dad! He came up with the idea of a beer glass shaped card and I just looked at him horrified at first, then the idea grew and I sketched a template and this is what I came up with.The 'glass' is coloured using the same colours as the beer glasses on the image and accentuated with a white highlighter to make the glass look a bit more realistic.

I'd like to enter this in following challenges:

Magical Monday Challenge - Use a shaped card
One Stitch At A Time - Something for the boys

Going green for Mother's Day

2011-03-21T01:53:00.002Z

One of the cards I like making each year is Mother's Day cards. I have three Mum's who I send a card too so if you see some more cards popping up, that's why. I have my Mum, my partner's Mum and my son's Grandma who has been like a Mum to me the past few years, and I make a card for each of them. I make them all different so three lots of Mum's make for three different challenges lol Anyway, this is for Mum No. 1. I haven't decided which one it is going to go to yet! This weeks challenge over at Dream Valley Challenges is Mother's Day so I have the perfect excuse to make the first one. Why not pop over and have a look, it's a new challenge blog and we're all very friendly!

The image I have used for this stamp is Tiddly Ink's Mother's Day freebie and I think it's just so cute! Their challenge is Lucky Me and green is supposed to be a luck colour isn't it? I have coloured using promarkers, tan, cinnamon, antique pink and ruby. I have then cut it out using one of my x-cut oval cutters. I have followed the challenge sketch from A Spoonfull of Sugar and have used a selection of bought green-based papers to build up the card, the dark green paper at the very back I made myself using a stamp, embossing powders and inks. The ribbon is from stock. To tie everything together I have used faux stitching around all the different pieces and also on the letters which I cut using my sizzix.

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

A Spoonfull of Sugar (link above) - Sketch

Tiddly Inks - Lucky Me

Crafty Catz - Mother's Day

Crafty Purple Frog - Going Green

Make your own fun

2011-03-13T12:00:00.002Z

Sometimes when things are getting you down it pays to make your own fun. Making your own backgrounds definitely constitutes my idea of fun as it gives me the chance to not only be creative but usually to get my hands messy! And boy do I get them messy! The DPs for this card were created using Tim Holtz' Adirondack Colour Wash sprays in stream and raisin colours over an embossed in lilac over some Inkadinkado stamps. Lovely strong colours but about as messy as it gets. My hands have been looking either bruised or gangrenous in lovely shades of red, blue and green. But they're addictive and I can see I am going to end up buying some more soon. The ones I have came at the bargain price of £2 each from my local art shop who have a sale table where they will sell on stuff other crafters have finished with and I have picked up all sorts of bargains there - these were an especially good bargain as they were brand new, unused and 2 of them even had the seal still intact! My daughter nearly disowned me as I did a little happy dance when I found them! The spotlight over at Crafty Cardmakers this week is on making your own design papers, so if you fancy making some of your own, have a go and come over and join in!

I have used ching-chou kuik's Black Rose Fairy coloured with promarkers for the main image which I trimmed with my trusty deckled rectangle nestie. Behind the main image there is a piece of paper which was made using the same colours, but then dry embossed and rubbed over with embossing ink then sprinkled with moonglow powders to give it a little sheen, then trimmed with my largest nestie to created a border effect behind the main image. The prima flower came from a pack at QVC outlet (half of them were missing so I bartered and got them cheeeeap) and the ribbons are from Hobbycraft in the sale. Got a big roll of it and I love the colour so expect to see it in use quite a bit!

I hope this fits the following challenges:

Lawnscaping - Use stamp in unconventional way

Crafty Purple Frog - Things with wings

Southern Girls - Use Flowers

The Sugar Bowl - Sketch, spring, try something new

Jac-Inks - Technique Challenge - Masking

The Big Bang?

2011-03-12T12:53:00.000Z

Depending on whether you are an evolutionist or a creationist, you will either believe the Earth and the Universe were created by a big bang or you will believe it was created by some higher being. I am of the former school of thought! I went to school and studied sciences and have seen and heard far too much since to believe that life as we know it was created by anything other than a chain of scientific phenomenon. So when the challenge at Dream Valley Challenges was 'New Beginnings' I decided to try and think outside the box and steered away from birth, marriage and home moves and come up with something a little different.

I started this project off by stamping some circles and swirls using my clear acrylic stamping block and my Inkadinkadoo stamps using clear embossing ink and then sprinkled silver pearl powder over dusted off and embossed. I don't think it matters what colour you use as long as it is a light one (which I will explain in a bit). I created the background using Tim Holtz' Adirondack Color Wash sprays in stream, raisin and pesto. I wet the paper first and gave a quick blast with the 3 colours to create the background. Just love the way all the colours merged and swirl about and create a quite random design on the paper but they are so damn strong! I ended up with a left hand looking like I had early stages of gangrene and pretty blue cuticles when I first tried them out. The lesson of the story here is to use gloves but I can never find a pair when I need them and like to get down and dirty with dyes so invariably I end up with multi-coloured hands (it washes off eventually lol). Anyway, moving on. Once the inks had been dabbed off a bit (Usually get very strongly coloured pools of ink, hence the multi-coloured hands problem) I heated up my iron to it's highest setting. I use a normal household iron for this, but it is VITAL not to have any water in it at all so it doesn't leak or randomly give you a head of steam which does not work well with inks and paper! Next step, using a sheet of newspaper with a sheet of greaseproof paper over the top, simply there to make the iron glide easier and to stop newspaper inks marking the iron plate (an important item if you want to use the iron for it's original purpose afterwards), I ironed over the image. This causes the embossing powders to melt again which then get absorbed in their liquid form by the newspaper. Clever huh? What you are then left with is a nicely dyed piece of paper with a bleach effect as the stamped image is now white.

Using the same stamps again, I inked up with black and then, using the central stamp to line up, I turned the block clockwise and stamped, then repeated again. The idea I was going for was to give the impression of the beginning of the world with explosions and lots of molecules flying about. I 'think' it worked :-/ I then used some individual letter stamps to create the text 'In The Beginning...' around the forming planet, stamped in black then highlighted with white.

Under the sea...

2011-03-06T00:29:00.002Z

Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.
H. P. Lovecraft

Do you know sometimes you are browsing in an art and craft shop and you spot something which takes your eye, but you can't figure out where or when you will make use of it? Happens a lot to me! Happened a couple of months back when I picked up the stamp I have used for this card. I have no idea who makes it as it was on the sale table and has no branding on it whatsoever, so if you can shed any light, please let me know as I would love to know what make it is!

It is quite an ususual stamp and I have another one like it which is a jungle scene, so I don't think it is a one off. I have coloured it using promarkers in blues and greys. All the time I was colouring it, it has reminded me of a cartoon which was in Viz called The Pathetic Sharks! They do look a bit daft and childish with their goofy teeth, don't they? The stamp, when trimmed, fits perfectly inside the largest of my scalloped nestie circles and I cut out from a piece opaper I had sprayed with some cosmic shimmer mists. I don't know what is wrong with the spray bottles on these, but the last two I got leak when you shake them so I invariably end up with dyed hands. My first two bottles were fine and are no trouble at all but these two seem determined to make me look like a Smurf or an extra from Avatar! Ah well, no pain no gain eh?

I wanted to include something to give the impression of waves and hit upon the idea of using my Cuttlebug honeycomb die but just using the offcut it leaves behind. I used some silver leaf flakes to create the stripe using a strip of DST and a soft brush. Wasn't sure if that technique would work but was pleased that it did. I then created another paper using some more cosmic shimmer mists on photo paper and added some embossing powders whilst wet then heated with my heatgun to create more shimmer. I cut a perfect square out of it and then matted onto a dark blue square which I had stamped with a texture stamp in silver. I then used some blue and green chalks to soften the edges of the card and then I used an Inkadinkado stamp stamped over the top with more silver to create a few air bubbles and added three pearls for the final touch.

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

Crafts and Me - Under The Sea
Shannon's Sentiments - Spray Misting
Fairy Tale Challenge Blog - Something for a child
Aifactory Challenges - Water project
Desert Island Crafts - Fits the following: 2. Inspired by Nature, 4. Hand colored image, 6. Pearls, 8. No sentiment on the front

Gently does it...

2011-02-28T12:00:00.003Z

“Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun. Care for those around you. Look past your differences. Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices no more easily made. And give, give in any way you can, of whatever you posses. To give is to love. To withhold is to wither. Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.” ~Kent Nerburn

The spotlight over at Crafty Cardmakers this week is silhouettes and our sponsor is Stitchy Stamps. I adored this digi stamp from the moment I saw it and I had all sorts of ideas bouncing around my head about what I was going to do with it, but I wasn't sure whether any of them would work! lol

I decided to be a little adventurous and see if one of my ideas would work. I had been wondering for a while if Cosmic Shimmer Mists would work on a glossy photo paper so I set about with a few sprays, got my hands into their usual inky mess and crossed my fingers that it would work. With the careful application of a piece of cling film to spread the ink around a little, and then an even more gentle removal of said cling film, I was then scared to touch the paper incase I smeared it, but I was brave and gently carried it to my workstation using the sheet of baking parchment I used to spray on and set about it with my heatgun on a low setting and very gentle strokes across it to stop it from warping. I have used gentle a lot there, but I found that being gentle was the key to doing this successfully! I was worried I was going to end up with a slidey messy piece of paper to add to my messy hands, but it worked.

My printer decided it was in a good mood as well and when I set it to 5x7 glossy, it printed it perfectly! I was in shock! Random ideas I have rarely come off well for me especially where my finickety printer is concerned lol You should see some of the disasters I have had in the past with it, especially when I have been trying to get it to print on vellum - you would think I had asked it to print on toilet paper the amount of times it has refused to feed the paper through properly!

I trimmed the image to a square then backed it onto a slightly larger square of black paper and added some matching diecut corners. I would swear that die hates me as sometimes it cuts perfectly and other times it half cuts the pieces and I have to finish it off carefully with my craft knife. This was one of those times grrrrr. But still, the effort was worth the end result! The diecuts frame off the image nicely. I decided to leave the card as it was as I didn't want to detract from the main image.

Grinning like a Cheshire Cat

2011-02-27T21:01:00.004Z

The stamp I have used for this card is Sweet Pea Ching-chou Kuik's Cheshire Cat Illusion. I must admit, I have had this stamp sitting in my collection for ages and have never used it as, to be honest, the cat scared me! No, I don't mean I was frightened of it, more that I was scared of colouring it. The original artwork shows the cat as wispy and almost not there, as indeed the Cheshire Cat is portrayed in the book, afterall he is just a grin at some points, and I was worried how to go about colouring him so that he was neither here nor there. I opted for grey promarkers and a touch of clear star gelly roll pen in the end to try and create an illusion of being partly invisible. I only used cool grey 1 and 2 for the head and a touch of pastel green for the eyes.

For Alice herself, I used powder blue and sky blue and really blended them into each other at one side to add depth. Her skin is coloured with satin and sunkissed pink and her hair a combination of buttercup and canary with accents of gold gelly roll pen. The toadstools are coloured again with sunkissed pink, pink carnation and ruby, with the stalks being cooly greys 1 & 2. The background is denim blue and powder blue blended into each other to give a misty effect.

I cut the imaged out using a nestie and then stuck it to some silvery paper and trimmed it to follow the lines of the nestie diecut as I didn't have one larger. The background papers I created myself using starburst stains on one side which is embossed, then overembossed with moonglow powders to emphasise the patterning. The other side is blue and pink starburst stains with sepia brown swirled about on photo paper and then stamped onto using a frondy flowery stamp plate I picked up for just 50p on the sale table in my local art shop. I have no idea who makes it but it's fab don't you think? The 'seam' between the 2 backgrounds is covered with a piece of shimmery lilac ribbon and then I added a few tiny gems for a bit of bling. I decided to make this into an easel card and used a long border stamp again a 50p bargain on a scrap of the photo paper and an Alice in Wonderland quote printed on vellum to create the stop.

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

Quirky Craft Challenges - Alice in Wonderland
Sparkles Forum Challenge - Pink, Brown. Blue

Design Team Call at Sweet Pea

2011-02-19T22:04:00.004Z

How excited was I to find out that Sweet Pea Stamps Challenge Blog were having a Design Team Call?

Any regular viewer of my blog will know I absolutely love their stamps and get even more excited when I am expecting a new delivery. I find their stamps stamp up really well and the ones I have have lots of lovely skin areas and I just adore how nicely they colour. I have a bit of a soft spot for Ching Chou Kuik's range which they sell but got my mitts on a couple of Jennifer Nilsson's designs with my last delivery. So cute!

Whilst I am still a relatively newbie cardmaker, I cut my stamp colouring teeth using Sweet Pea Stamps and as such have developed a great fondness for them. I would love the opportunity to be on the Sweet Pea Design Team as it would give me even more excuses to use their stamps and hopefully pick up on some more ideas from their ultra-talented existing DT! I'll try anything once! They have asked to see at least 2 different examples of my work but I hope to be able to show a few more than that! A couple of the cards I have done have been featured on their blog, so I hope the links below show what I am truly capable of:

***Please hover over the Artist and Stamp Names for links to the projects xx***

This is the latest card I have done using a Sweet Pea stamp. It's using Ching Chou Kuik's Radiant Butterfly stamp and it is such a lovely stamp to use. I have a feeling this one is going to become a favourite of mine!

This one is Jennifer Nilsson's Daisy Flower Fairy. It's the first stamp I have done using one of her designs and it's not the only one I own. I also have My Sister and Me, for which I am just waiting for the perfect opportunity to give it it's debut airing.

Which brings us onto one of my favourite stamps - Ching Chou Kuik's Blue Eyed Fairy This is one of the most versatile stamps I have come across as it can be coloured in so many different ways. I have previously done her with brown hair but for the challenge this card was Icy colours, and Lil Miss Blue Eyes was the perfect stamp to use. If you look at the photograph she looks positively hypothermic! lol

One of my other favourite stamps for it's versatility is Ching Chou Kuik's Masked Fairy in Green, but I have to say I don't think I have ever coloured her in green! She worked wonderfully well in autumnal colours and this card won me a challenge prize. I created all the backgrounds myself too. :-)

For this project, I had wanted to do something a little different, so I set about finding out how to make a trinket box and found a tutorial that someone had done for one on one of the blogs. I had already stamped and coloured Ching Chou Kuik's Faraway Moon and created card to match.

The stamp I used for this easel card is Elaine Cox's Little River Mermaid. I decided to have a break from my beloved Promarkers and have a dabble at painting with some Twinkling H20 paints. Managed to get quite a wide colour range out of them which wasn't bad seeing as I only had 6 to choose from!

And finally to the first Sweet Pea stamp I ever used, Ching Chou Kuik's It's My Birthday. Here I have made a bottle hanger to match a birthday card for a 40th birthday. I think I fell in love with their stamps from this moment. Seems strange to put it last in the list, but I wanted to put my most recent first as I hope my skills have improved since this one!

Havana wonderful time

2011-02-19T15:01:00.001Z

Firstly I must apologise for the awful pun in the title of this entry but we got a new family member at the weekend. He's a havana cat called Mojito, or Momo for short. He's the most wonderful chocolate brown colour and the most over-affectionate cat I have ever met! He really does not take no for an answer and I have already had to give him three cuddles since I sat down to start writing this blog. He is a rescue cat who had been rescued from the home of a lady who had been neglecting him and others due to mental issues and when he was found he was practically skeletal. Bringing him back to health slowly but surely and he certainly does like his food and he eats like he doesn't know where his next meal is coming from, which given his background is understandable but doesn't make him any less 'in-your-face' when trying to eat something yourself in peace! Combined with his general chocolatey goodness and my love of the genuine chocolate article, is it any wonder that my mind has been on all things brown this week?

My delivery of Sweet Pea stamps arrived earlier this week and one of those was Ching Chou Kuik's Radiant Butterfly which is actually quite a large stamp by their usual standards. I loved this one when I saw it as it was a little different and couldn't wait to have a go at colouring it. I coloured the image using my promarkers in cinnamon and tan for the dress and hair, honeycomb and peach for the butterflies and jewellery, sunkissed pink and satin for the skin, pear green for the headdress and pastel beige for the fan in the background. I added a touch of bronzey gold metallic gelly roll to the jewellery to give it some bling.

Just to show the promarkers I used.

For the design papers I have used a Colorbok set which a friend bought me in the states. I used 2 different pieces to form the 2 halves of the background and an additional piece which I backed onto plain brown. I cut the stamped image out with a circle nestie and then using my scalloped circle, cut a piece of plain brown which co-ordinates with the image colours. I used a piece of ribbed brown ribbon down the centre to hide the join between the two DPs , put it all together and embellished with 3 frosted amber gems.

And not forgetting my colour inspiration this week... ladies and gentlemen I would like to introduce to you Mojito!

And no, he doesn't like to open his eyes for photographs - the flash sensor always makes him close them! During the writing of this blog entry he decided to climb inside my housecoat to keep warm... lol

Pals Paper Arts - Sketch
Gingersnap Creations - Coffee and Cream
Passion for Promarkers - Coffee and Cream
In a Sweet Pea Dream - Anything this time

Brown and Green and Buzzy things!

2011-02-16T16:57:00.003Z

I ordered some new stamps online a week or so ago and they were from Sweet Pea in the US as they had a fab sale on and I decided to treat myself to some new ones. I was so excited when I sent off the order and even more excited when I got an email telling me they had been despatched! Only took less than a week to arrive too which is amazing considering the distance they have travelled. Took less time than ordering from this country! Had to work last night but I couldn't wait to get home and have a play with them and luckily it was a quiet night so I got to knock-off early and head home. I had spent an hour or so carefully trimming the stamps to size as they were unmounted when they arrived and marvelled at just how sticky the sticky side of foam mounting sheets really is when I had random pieces stuck to my hands a clothes....

The stamp I have used for this card is Jennifer Nilsson's Daisy Flower Fairy. It's so cute! I also have another of her designs which I am waiting for the right project to use. Really sweet stamps and this one is really getting me in the mood for spring. I coloured the stamped image with promarkers, mainly using tan and cinnamon for the fairy with almond and dusky pink for the skin, a touch of pumpkin and honeycomb for the flowers and mint, leaf and lime green for the leaves. I added a little sparkle with my gelly roll stardust pens to the hair and wings to make them shimmer and trimmed the image and matted onto a piece of orange paper and trimmed to leave a small border. I am quite obsessed with my nesties at the moment and a few weeks ago I got a set of scalloped circles to go with my plain circles and I used the scalloped die to make the green circle and the plain circle to make the brown one. I spotted a challenge at Mojo Mondays whilst mooching about on blogger which had a sketch to follow so I have used that to create this card. I covered a square card with brown paper then added a square of paper from papermania's rich green pack and trimmed and stuck to the brown paper. I placed the image on top of the scalloped circle and added 3 green gems then used a piece of pumpkin coloured ribbon behind the image with the final touch being a bumblebee charm I have been hoarding for about a year now, waiting fo the right moment to use it and here it is. It's not glued or attached onto the ribbon in any way, simply threaded on which makes it easy to remove for a additional gift for the recipient to put on a charm bracelet. Ok not quite Pandoro but I can't afford their charms lol

I hope it fits the following challenges too:

Crafts and Me - anything with wings, especially fairies & angels
Bunny Zoe's Crafts Spring - flowers Everywhere!
Paper Cutz - ladybugs, bees or butterflies
Simply Create - bold & bright
Delightful Challenges - get punchy/use punches or die cuts
One Stitch At A Time - Make it Pretty

Plastic Fantastic!

2011-02-14T12:00:00.002Z

I have a whole box of acetate sheets which sits on the shelf in my craft room waiting to be used and getting very much ignored for most of the time. I usually dust it off when I make shaker cards or need a nice surface for mixing some stains on and creating background papers or for making butterflies 'fly' off the card, but other than that I haven't really done much with it at all really. So it was a real challenge for me to come up for something for the Crafty Cardmakers spotlight on plastic and the only plastic I had to play with was acetate (unless you include shrinkies which become more like foldy-uppies-and-mangle-in-a-messies). I know, from a bit of research, that alcohol inks just about take on acetate, and the only alcohol based ink I have is promarkers so I decided to have a dabble.

I went to a craft fair last year where I picked up a stack of peel-offs (as a lot of newbie crafters do) and amongst those were some butterfly ones which I quite like but have hardly used simply because they were peel-offs! But still, they were perfect for what I had in mind so I stuck one onto a sheet of acetate, coloured the reverse with promarkers and cut it out and bend it a little with my heatgun. See I can do something with plastic lol Luckily it didn't turn back into a caterpillar and fell into roughly the right shape. I then used some new nesties I have to create some concentric scalloped circles with some lovely hot pink shiny mirror card (rescued from the bottom of a giftset of hairbrushes!) and then squidged some shimmer mists about on another piece of acetate and cut that out with the next size nestie, then did another bigger still in black. Stuck it all together with a combination of glue and DST then started on the background. I used a spare bit of my fave silver meshy background and chucked a bit of silver embossing powder about and heated it for good measure.

Here's a closeup of the centre of the card:

I would also like to enter this for the following challenges:

One Stitch At A Time - Make it Pretty
I Did It Creations - Bling it up

Let your heart guide you...

2011-02-07T12:00:00.002Z

Love is not written on paper, for paper can be erased. Nor is it etched on stone, for stone can be broken. But it is inscribed on a heart and there it shall remain forever.

Valentine's Day is just around the corner so what better excuse to get the hearts out and create something filled with lurrrrrve. The challenge over at Crafty Cardmakers this week is to use hearts. I have had to be very secretive in the production of this card as I usually show stuff I make to my darling OH Steve, but for this challenge I am having to keep it hidden away... I hope he doesn't decide to read my blog before the big day! He will probably have guessed that I am up to something as I have been busy working away in my craft room all evening and not shown him anything yet lol All he will know is that I have been working with something blue as parts of my hands currently match the card hehehe

The colours I have chosen this time are fairly masculine but with a bit of shimmer. I have used cosmic shimmer mists in aqua lagoon and twilight black to create both the paper which I have dry embossed and cut the 2 paper hearts and also used it to spray paint the stamped plastiroc panel in the the centre of the card. I then used a long card in a co-ordinating turquoise colour with a panel of silvery shimmery webby background topped onto that. A piece of sheer black ribbon down the centre to centre the 3 hearts off and the addition of 3 ice blue heart gems to add a bit of bling. The hearts are embosseed sizzix embosslits and I ran one heart thru with the paper upside down so that the embossing is reversed on them both and also altered the orientation of the heart.

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

Creative Cowgirls - Love is in the air
Creative Inspirations Paint - Hearts
Crazy 4 Challenges - Valentines
I Did It Creations - Love Is In The Air
Simply Create - Give your heart away
Southern Girls - Dry Embossing

Spring has been spotted

2011-01-24T12:00:00.003Z

I was looking at the garden of my new house the other day and cold as it is outside, there are already green shoots from bulbs poking through the earth. A sign of spring being not too far away I hope and a promise of some colour to brighten up our dreary lives. I think I have just about had enough of winter now! The weather was lousy for most of 2010 and I am hoping 2011 is going to be better. I really hope it is as now we have a garden for the boys to run around and play in, it will keep them from getting under my feet the whole time. We got a lovely little play house for them at the start of summer and I think the eldest boy got to play in it about 3 times before the weather turned and he had to stay indoors.

I was lucky enough to win a challenge a couple of weeks ago where the prize was the brand new Polka Doodles Sugar Birdies CD which is full of lovely things to print and colour and backgrounds to print and use. I was itching to have a go with it and the Crafty Cardmakers Floral challenge this week was the perfect avenue to give it an airing. The image is Polly, a digi on the cd and I printed her out a couple of times so I could colour the main image with my promarkers then add a couple of 3D layers. I chose two backgrounds sugardaisy pink and cherrydots to co-ordinate with the colouring on the main image and used some purple ribbon from stock to tie the whole colour scheme in. Added a few more coloured digi flowers and made those 3D too. A simple sentiment 'Thinking of You' finishes it all off.

It's spotty and with just a touch of spring thrown in for good measure and very girlie which is quite unusual for me but was fun to do!

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:

Tellen's Place - Polka Dots
Stamp Something - Cute Something
Do you stack up? - Pink

Pencil me in!

2011-01-17T12:00:00.003Z

One item of my craft stash which is well under-used is my coloured pencils. I used to use them a lot when I was young and still have some in a box which are over 20 years old! Since the spotlight at Crafty Cardmakers this week is on pencils, I had a perfect opportunity to blow the dust off and get colouring in. Felt really strange not to have a marker in my hand! One of the things I like about pencils is that you can get the depth of shade you are after more readily than with a marker as you can shade very lightly or go over it again to make it darker and can blend quite easily too. I dug out my watercolour pencils for this as just a touch of water on a paintbrush can alter the colour depth and great some really unique results.

The stamp I have used is from Inca Stamps - The Fuschia Fairy. I have a couple of their mounted stamps which I have acquired in various places and I really love them. It's the first time I have used this one since I bought it a few months ago and really enjoyed using my pencils to colour it. Made a nice change from promarkers. Once I had coloured it, I touched it up with some water on a paintbrush to add definition and depth to the colours. I then used my deckle edge ruler to define a rectangle around the image and then used two co-ordinating colours from the main image to sketch some alternating lines and then washed over them with the wet paintbrush to make the lines softer and blend them together to create a sketchy background which I again trimmed using the deckle ruler. I used a trio of pink gemstones in two corners and my favourite architectural corner sizzix to accentuate the corners plus a couple of flowers from stock with more pink stones in the centres. I then cut the card to size leaving the back slightly longer and embellished with some ribbons in pink and purple to co-ordinate with the image.

Crafty cat card with cut out bits!

2011-01-10T20:26:00.000Z

Well, this is my first blog post of 2011 and also my first blog post in the new house! If anyone ever suggests moving house to you over the Xmas period, tell them to go and take a running jump! Yes, it is handy as kids and OH were off school and work, but that also meant no nursery open to take my 3 year old who almost achieved his lifelong aim to drive us all round the bend. Now if he could have provided a van to drive us in, that would have been a great help. So Christmas day for us was, here's your presents, unwrap them, look at them and then pack them into a box to move over to the new house... not the most fun we have ever had to be honest... but still, every cloud has a silver lining as I now have a decent sized craft area, just have to scale boxes to get to it at the moment!

What better card to crack open the new year with than a birthday card for my friend whose birthday is on 1st Jan? I had an excuse not to do him one earlier as all my stufff was still packed, but my challenge over on Crafty Cardmakers this week was red and a die-cut. Have to admit this was inspired by one of my favourite colours and also the fact it was a celebration of the new nesties I treated myself to but hadn't allowed myself to play with yet. So new house, new year, new nesties lol.

The stamp I chose for this card is by Inca Stamps and is called Cat Blocks... can't see where they got that name from hehe! I have had it sitting around for a while and not used it before and Peter's card seemed as good an excuse as any. It's always hard to do a card for a man, so I was grateful of the challenge rules for this one. I coloured the stamp with promarkers and then cut it out with my scalloped square nestie and cut a bigger square out of red paper. I haven't made an easel card for a while so stuck to a simple fold and a centred image for this one. The backing paper is a small piece of red and black almost marbley effect paper which I have had lying around for a while and matched the colour scheme perfectly. I cut and stamped a couple more diecuts and edged with red promarker then stuck onto a torn-edged piece to create the stop. I also tore some more strips of red paper and embellished with some black and red Happy Birthday sticker strips.

I would like to enter this card for the following challenges:

Crafts and Me - Paper Tearing
Allsorts - Fancy Fold

In the words of Barthezz....

2010-12-29T00:35:00.000Z

We're on the move (again). Been so busy lately with packing and the 'C' word Christmas that I've not been able to do any blogging and not much crafting either for that matter! But the upside of this is I am moving to a house where we have bags more room and apart from one corner which is going to be occupied by my OH and his computer desk, I am going to have a nice big craft room all to myself.... *dances and goes woo! a lot* lol

So I'm not going to be around much for a couple of weeks but just as soon as we have been connected with our super zippy cable broadband connection, I will be back!! And probably with pics of my new craft room *dances again*

Best wishes to all for 2011

Sarah xxx

Inside out upside down

2010-12-16T16:21:00.002Z

Every so often, I find inspiration to make something and then struggle to pull the rest of the idea together... this was one such occasion! I found a template for making a pop up Christmas tree centre for a card and loved the idea so much I had to have a go. I cut it and folded it where it needed, then coloured it with forest green and the background with black promarkers and thought hmmm that worked, but it needs something else! I bought some tiny little beads from Hobbycraft in their January sales this year and they have just been sitting in the bag not doing anything since then, but I thought they would look good threaded onto the tree like lights so I punched a lot of holes with my pokey tool, and stitched with gold thread and added a bead in every other stitch and there it was, a nice little decorated tree to go inside a card, so I backed it onto some glimmer mist card and stitched it all together with gold thread and added a little punched star to top the tree... only problem was I hadn't got a clue what to do on the outside of the card!

I decided to have a backing paper making session the other night and made green papers. I don't usually work with green, red is my favourite colour, but I made some green card sparkly with some starburst stains and when it had dried, I stamped it up with my wordy stamp and embossed it with gold. I just love how the gold I have works, it really does look like it has been gold plated and it added just the right amount of bling. I then roughed up the edges with my deckle edged ruler and then back it onto some black paper, trimmed to size and then covered the card front with some red glimmer mist card I made a while ago and stuck the topper onto that. Used my sizzix corner accents with black paper and decorated 2 of the corners of the sentiment panel and then had brain freeze for a few hours as I couldn't decide what to do with it next! The more I looked at it, the less I could think what to do with it, so I just left it to go back to. Passing the pram in the hallway I suddenly remembered some black chiffon ribbon I had bought a few weeks ago which was still in the basket at the bottom of the pram - so THAT's where I had put it lol Fashioned a bow with it and placed it at the bottom of the card and still couldn't thing how to decorate the top. Then I thought hang about! I've got more beads so I threaded some more onto wire and looped them round a couple of black brads. I'm pretty into triple embossing at the moment and found I had a little cute tree chipboard shape so attacked it with the gold embossing powder and then stamped into it with a snowflake. It looks like a piece of jewellery now, perfect to finished off the top of the card as it now looks like a necklace.

The inside of the card needed a little extra, so I cut out some more accent corners using scraps of the glimmer mist card and was about to stick them on when I spotted the underside of the card was quite interesting as it was white with red splashes and stood out much better on the black and red lining so used it that way round instead and hence the upside down title lol

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

OSAAT - Anything Goes
Allsorts - Last Minute Christmas

Doe a deer a golden deer

2010-12-03T20:25:00.000Z

Anyone who knows me will know that I love red. The obsession started about 5 years ago when I split with my ex-husband and moved into my friend's spare room and suddenly, for the first time in many years I was able decorate exactly how I wanted (ex hated red!) so I went a bit mad! Painted a wall red, bought red bedding, red candles, red dreamcatcher... loved it! I've done quite a bit of crafty stuff in red too, but as it's not everyone's cup of tea, I have had to tone things down a little and not use it as much as I'd like. Then I found a challenge which was to use the opposite colour on the colour wheel from what you usually like, so for me it was green!

I've never been a great lover of green, unless it is lime green so I needed to try something new. I started making some papers using my trusty starburst stains (holiday wreath set) as I had some lovely greens in there. I added a few splashes of red and squished it around and dragged it about and left it to dry wrapped in clingfilm. When it was dry, I covered the front of the card with it and trimmed to size then made a piece of green card sparkly with gold starburst stain and whilst it was still wet sprinkled some gold embossing powder onto it and heated it up with my heatgun and it set really nicely. I love experimenting! When the card was dried I cut it with my deckle rectangle nestie.

For the stamp, I used a stamp which my Mum had given to me ages ago but I had never got round to using, it's from Anita's but I am not sure what it is called or even if it is a reindeer or a deer, but I think it will pass for either. I stamped it up with clear embossing ink and then embossed with gold embossing powder. I don't use gold very often and I have a huge tub of it but it's a shame I don't use it more as the effect is really nice and looks gold plated. When it had set, I coloured the body with cinnamon promarker, adding a bit of depth and shadow in places, then cut out again using my largest nestie. My local art shop had some bags of offcuts of nice Christmassy papers on sale for a quid, so I availed myself of those last week and have used the holly embossed shiny card from that pack to create the panel across the centre of the card. The green deckle rectangle I placed on top of that and the reindeer/deer panel offset on top of that.

It's a good job I have so much of the gold embossing powder really as the snowflake in the top right hand corner was done using the smallest nestie from the deckle set and a piece of cornflake packet then triple embossed and stamped with a snowflake. At the bottom I put some tartan red and green ribbon then to finish, I stitched a gold bow in the bottom right hand corner. I picked a bag of these up about a year ago and have never used them!

The more I look at this card, the more the red and green background looks like a forest when it's not quite light but with the gold there is a little sunshine coming through the trees as the sun rises or sets. I think it looks quite magical :-)

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

The Stampman - Take Any Three Colours Christmas Theme
Ladybug Crafts - Caz's color wheel (my usual is red so I used green mainly)
Passion for Promarkers - Old and New (Stamp is old, triple embossing new technique)
The Corrosive Challenge Blog - Things That Move (The deer is running lol)
Rainbow Lady's Challenge - Christmas Animals

Winter white with a splash

2010-11-29T12:00:00.004Z

When winter arrives, you know it will be white! If not snow, it's frost on windscreens and on the ground with that lovely shimmer it gives to everything. Lovely that is right until you have to go anywhere outside and it hurts to breathe and there is a high chance that you might slip and end up flat on your bum lol Nothing better than being inside in the warm when it is like that and looking out on it all in all it's beautiful whiteness.

Challenge 35 over at Craft Cardmakers is for white and a splash and a winter themed card fits in really well I think. I have made this for my mother-in-law and her husband as their Christmas card, and once again I have succeeded in making a card which doesn't actually mention Christmas, but has all the elements of winter in it. A few weeks ago, on one of my regular raids on the second-hand table at my local art shop, I found a lovely wordy stamp which is Funstamps - Let it Snow, winter words with some snowflakes thrown in for good measure, picked it up for a couple of pounds and I was made up with it as it was brand new too! I used stazon cotton white to stamp it onto some acetate, and then used one of my deckled rectangle nesties to cut it out and used a larged nestie to cut some lilac paper to match, then I used just a touch of tacky glue in the corners of the acetate to stick it to the lilac layer.

I have become quite a ribbon hoarder sinced I started crafting as I found a stall in the market which bags up ends of rolls and sells them quite cheaply so whenever I am passing I stock up as you never know what colour ribbon you will need next when you're making cards. Hence I usually have a colour for every occasion - only problem I had this time was finding one which was the right thickness to match the lilac, but the only one which was the right thickness was purple, but it makes the snowflakes standout more - plus it is just the right width to use to trim the gift I have made to go with it (but you will have to wait to see that!). The corners are die-cuts from sizzix architectural accents which I picked up on Ebay a couple of months ago which I bought purely because with combined p&p I didn't pay much for it at all and I have to say I am glad I did get it as I have used it more than the item I was actually buying in the first place! So with corners put in place, and a few snowflakes to finish off I think this is a very simple and clean but effective card. Just hope my mother-in-law likes it!

There are a few challenges I would like to enter this for:

Crafts and Me - Dreaming of a white Christmas
Artful Inkables - Punches and or Diecuts

Crafty candle container

2010-11-24T13:19:00.004Z

Over at Crafty Cardmakers this week we have a spotlight on containers and fancy envelopes, and I wanted to try something new so I went off in search of a different type of container to make, thinking outside the box as it were lol A quick google search found a whole zip file of downloadable templates for making all sorts of different boxes, but the one I chose was mysteriously named box_flap_lrg... and it is really simple to make. It's basically a square of card measured and marked and scored in the right places so that it folds up and makes a lovely box which you can put things in! Being a bit short of cash this year, most people are going to be getting something handmade and I have got a stock of lovely smelly tealights ready to be gifted, but need to make some boxes to put them in!

Once you have got the card cut from the template and folded, it is really simple to decorate and you could do anything with it really. In my stock I have some sheets of a silver paper/material which is really shimmery and perfect for using as the base for the decoration of this box. As anyone who has read my blog will know, I have a love of starburst stains and occasionally I experiment making a new background and then don't use it for a while and this is what happened here. A while ago I made one using the mayday flowers set and it sat in my paper storage paper looking for a home, and with the addition of some snowflakes stamped onto it and cut to size to fit the flaps on the top of the box, I found the perfect home for it.

I punched some holes in and put some matching eyelets into the centre corners of the flaps and tied the whole thing together with some pale blue ribbon and adorned the tips with some snowflakes punched from the leftover card.

So what is inside? 4 ice blue tealights which have a lovely ocean breeze scent, but you could really use it to put anything in! Money, chocolates, jewellery :-)

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

Caardvarks - Giftcards/Money Holders
Stamptacular Sunday Challenge - A Time for Giving

A Crafty card and a matching gift

2010-11-15T14:26:00.001Z

A few days ago, I was asked to join the Crafty Cardmakers Design Team and must say I was over the moon to be invited. I have been following their blog as long as I have been blogging and have loved the projects that the existing team have produced and it was a real honour to be asked to join them!

The challenge at the moment is to make a card and a gift. There's a fab prize on offer from the sponsor The Stampman who have a £10 spend in their shop up for grabs for the winner. Definitely worth an entry with that fabby prize on offer. The Stampman have such a lot of exciting stuff on sale for the craft-minded types. I went to their shop in Skipton a few weeks ago as there was a demo day and I have to say their shop is fantastic! I spent all day there and wasn't bored at all as there was so much to see and do and buy... I was like a kid in a sweetie shop! The staff there are really friendly and helpful too so if you are in the area it is well worth the trip to visit them.

One of my most favourite crafting products in the world is available from The Stampman... and that is starburst stains. If you have a look on my previous bloggings, you will see I use them a lot. I have 2 different colour sets (Mayday Flowers and Holiday Wreath) plus a few extras for variety of colours and they really are the most amazing products I have ever got my mitts on. You can create backgrounds and paint with them plus do lots of other things with them and the effect is amazing. I have used poinsettia red gold, tiger lily red orange and cathedral pines olive from the Holiday Wreath set to colour a piece of off-white card. Basically I painted it with the main colour and then added splodges and dashes of the other colours and then covered it with cling-film and scrunched it up a bit as that makes lovely veiny lines when it's dried. I fashioned the card into a box, punched some butterfly shapes in each of the four faces with my Sizzix paddle punch, backed the holes with some amber-coloured floral vellum (not that the design mattered, I just wanted the glow!) and decorated the box with some paper flowers which I coloured to match with promarkers in ruby and bright orange. Then, I created a smaller lid type thingummybob inside the box to hold a battery operated tealight. And there you have it, a tealight luminaire, perfect as a gift!

The card, is made from matching card and I made it a foldy card, decorated with some freebie digi papers I found online and embellished with some more flowers to match the luminaire. The centrepiece is a Lily Pickle Decoupage fairy from their Xmas package. I loved it when I saw it as being a slightly gothicy style liking person, and with a daughter mad into manga and anime I knew I would have a lot of uses for it. It's perfect and fits in with my card so well. I used the punched out butterflies to add an extra bit of continuity between the card and the luminaire and there it is a card and a matching gift!

As you can see here, the luminare glows beautifully and it actually flickers like a real candle but obviously with out the risk of burning the house down owing to it being sat in a cardboard box lol

I'd like to enter this for the following:

The Stampman - Christmas

Icy cold creation

2010-11-11T15:16:00.001Z

Winter is definitely on it's way. There is a cold chill on the wind and every night a light frosting forms on my car, that is providing it isn't raining... it's still doing a lot of that too. Guns n' Roses didn't have it far wrong with their song titled November Rain did they? I quite like winter, though not as much as Autumn, providing that it isn't too icy and snowy making it dangerous to drive (or walk) anywhere. I wonder if we are going to have as much snow as we did earlier this year... it was quite funny as my partner and I saw the snow one evening and he said it wasn't going to stick, yet an hour later we looked out and it was approx 5 inches deep! Not let him live that down yet... in fact I have it as one of my favourite quotes on Facebook lol I think the snow took us all by surprise to be honest as we don't usually get much snow where I live and I certainly hadn't seen anything like it in my life!

Winter, to me, means ice and cold and snowflakes. It means Christmas is on it's way (Boo!) and everyone is going to have to get up extra early to de-ice their cars before they can drive to work. This card captures the general feeling of coldness in the air, in fact I started to feel decidedly cold whilst making it and had to go and put on a jumper! I started with a Sweet Pea stamp ching-chou kuik's Blue Eye Fairy. I love this stamp as there are so many different colours which suit it, she looks lovely with natural coloured hair, or coloured blue which makes her look like and ice maiden. I have coloured the image using promarkers in powder blue and denim blue for the hair and dress, then ivory and a touch of almond which has given her a very pale complexion, perfect for a cold winter. For the flowers in her hair I used a touch of sky blue and then highlighted with some gelly roll metallic pens to add a bit of glitz. I then cut the image out using my deckled rectangle nesties

I love flowers at anytime of year, and I bought some Color Me Crazy white paper flowers from my local Hobbycraft a few days ago. They are really pretty with a gem in the middle to start with, but because they are paper they take any colouring technique you want to throw at them. I threw a combination of matching promarkers and gelly roll pens to coordinate with the rest of the image then set to work on building the card up. The blue snowflake backing paper is one I bought from a local arts & crafts shop last year, but I have just been back there today and they no longer have any which is a real shame as it is so glittery and sparkly that it is perfect for winter time cards. In my stash, I have been hoarding a pack of papers I bought from QVC earlier this year which are white and silver designs and I really thought it was just papers until I opened it and discovered that there are some sheets of printed sheer material in there and I used a piece that looks almost sprayed on to dress the centre panel of the card. The sentiment was stamped in silver and then embossed with a little powder to bring out the bling, then I backed the main image and the sentiment with a piece of glittery blue paper and offset it slightly, added the flowers and here it is. Brrrrrr don't you get cold just looking at it?

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

In a Sweet Pea Dream - Where have all the flowers gone?
Crafts and Me - Glitter
Sir Stampalot - Christmas Traditions
I Love Promarkers - Icy Colours
OSAAT - Winter Wonderland

Snowflakes, Sparkle and Something New!

2010-11-05T00:01:00.003Z

Well, I've finally done it. Yep, I've made a start on my Christmas cards! Not got too many to make, but this time of year is a great excuse to make lots of cards and blow the dust and cobwebs off all that festive stuff I have been hoarding. Being a fairly new card maker I like to try out a few new ideas on my cards and have certainly done some different and new things on this card (well they are to me lol)

I am what you would class as a hoarder. I hoard everything and my only defence is I come from a long line of hoarders... and craft stuff is no exception. I think it was because the first papercraft project I ever did was my partner's scrapbook for his 40th birthday, and I still refuse to throw away any scraps of paper 'just in case they come in useful'. And believe me I have folders and storage boxes full of scraps and other bits and bobs I just can't bring myself to throw away. I did get myself sorted earlier this year and put all my xmas stuff separate so it wasn't cluttering up the rest of my stash when it was only going to be used a couple of weeks a year. Fun side of that is I generally forget what I have and it always comes as a nice surprise when I dig it all out again and discover things I had forgotten I had :-)

Anyways... onto this card. I only discovered Stazon ink a few months ago and was so impressed with it's ability to stamp onto awkward surfaces and bought myself a pack of acetate sheets to have a mess around with and then the whole pack sat on the shelf waiting for me to decide what on earth I was going to use it for. Christmas cards and the like seem to be obsessed with snow, but snow is white and unless I embossed with white powder it didn't really show up as snow, just blank bits on a piece of white paper. Well that just isn't good enough hehehe I while ago I had bought some cotton white opaque stazon and snow is the perfect use for it when stamped on acetate. I found I had a nice snowflake stamp and it worked really well on the acetate in white... so from this point the snow shaker card was born... a first try at a shaker card for me and I think it worked (though I have to admit I had a prototype that went a bit pear-shaped when I tried to take out some of the snow, but I will pretend that never happened). I stamped a cute snowman image onto some card and coloured it with promarkers and then coloured round it in black (I can take no credit for this part as my daughter suggested the snow would show up better on a dark background) and then I created a reservoir for the snow out of a roll of foam tape so I had some nice long strips - it was too wide but I cut it down the middle and it worked just fine and formed a frame around the stamped image. Then I filled it with snow (or holographic embossing powder to you or me as it was nice and fine and a little goes a long way) and then peeled off the paper from the tape stuck the snowflake stamped acetate to seal in the powder. Trimmed it to size, stamped some more snowflakes on some dark blue card and made a frame for it.

Another thing I have accumulated is embossing folders. I have a few in varying sizes but they are usually too small for my project or not the right pattern but I used a really simple polka dot Cuttlebug folder for this one as I wanted to do it in two halves for sky and ground. I initially embossed a piece of the same dark blue card I had used for the frame and swiped the white stazon over the nobbly bits (I am so good with my descriptions aren't I?) to pick the detail out in white so it would look like snow, but although it showed up ok, it wasn't totally clear as the ink is opaque. So I waited patiently for it to dry... (ok, so I cheated and blasted it with my heatgun) and then got out my clear embossing pad and really worked it into the pattern so that it would get down to the flat bit and then sprinkled a load of the holographic embossing powder I had used for the snow, tapped off the excess and blasted it with my heatgun again and OMG if it doesn't sparkle like a snowy sky! I then embossed a piece of plain white and did the same embossing trick with it to create a carpet of gleaming snow for the base of my card.

With having the snow behind acetate to contend with and the likelihood of this ending up on a family member's mantlepiece this Christmas, I think an easel is the only way this would stand up at the right angle without falling over due to the additonal weight of the acetate frame at the front. Might try another construction as I LOVED making this card but this one works great. The stopper for the easel and the sentiment is cut from a test piece of the dry embossed card with holographic powder embossed over that, cut with my labels 4 nesties set from The Stampman. The sentiment Let It Snow (the title of my all-time favourite Christmas time song!) was stamped and embossed with some Jydrangea Blue Mauve moonglow powders (also from The Stampman) and then embossed over again with more of the holographic stuff. I've been hoarding a small length of tartan ribbon as it needed a Christmas card to live on and I hope it likes it's new home at the front of this card. I punched a few snowflakes (again embossed for added sparkle) and used these as the finishing touches.

This photo shows the snow all over the image, which is probably how it will look when the recipient takes it out of the envelope...

But as the card is tilted, the snow begins to fall and collects in drifts at the bottom of the window...

I'm going to have a play around with a few more thinks to insert in the reservoir on some more cards. Thinking glitter or some tiny pearl beads maybe, but that will have to wait until my next card ;) Might even have a go at my first tutorial on doing this as it is really quite simple to do but so effective, so let me know you are interested and I will do one.

I would like to enter this card for the following challenges:

Craft Challenge - Dry Embossing
I Love Promarkers - Snowflakes
Creative Inspirations - Create a Shaker card
Charisma Cardz - With Love at Christmas
Everybody Art Challenge - Untraditional Christmas
The Stampman - Anything Goes Christmas
Pattie's Creations - Make a Christmas Card or Creation

Sequins, Swirls & Spots!

2010-11-02T00:57:00.003Z

Not been able to craft much lately due to the half term holidays, having 4 kids at home and trying to get time to myself is not the easiest thing in the world... add to that my 3 year old has just come down with chickenpox... then just when I thought I would have time to get something done I got a migraine... not been a good time all round really!

The image I have used for this card is one from Michelle Perkett, which I was lucky enough to win in a challenge - my first ever prize! Yay! It's called Princess Oceana. One of the things I love about digi stamps is the way you can print them to whatever size you want and it also makes it easier to layer the image and make it a little 3D. The shells on this image just screamed out for that. I coloured the main image with a combo of promarkers and gelly roll pens to add a bit of sparkle. The flowers are from stock and the 2 smaller ones are coloured to match the image and centred with a sequin for a little more sparkle.

To add a bit more depth to the card, I stuck the image to the front of the card and trimmed along the edges of the image to give a cutaway effect to show off the flowers which are inside. The inside of the paper uses a Bearly Mine freebie which is a gorgeous design I think. I then punched the corners and added some silver trim to show the paper off.

I am entering this for the following:

Bearly Mine Designs - Design Team Call
Crafty Cardmakers - Spotlight Digital Plus
Lexi's Creations - Anything Goes
Michelle Perkett Studio - Under The Sea

Autumn Tactics

2010-10-18T22:20:00.030+01:00

So you're back this way again... Winter's one breath away...

If you know Chicane, those words might sound familiar, and if you haven't already guessed from the title of this post, that's where my inspiration for this card came from. Autumn (providing it doesn't rain constantly) is my favourite season. I just love the colours, the trees fading to shades of brown, orange and crimson but above all I love the smell! I don't know what it is about the scent of autumn that appeals to me so much, but I love the scent of walking through a forest and there is that smell of damp earth and leaves on the ground. Plus knowing that winter is only just round the corner too...

The stamp I chose for this project is Sweet Pea ching-chou kuik's Masked Fairy in Green, but obviously I haven't coloured it in green! I used pumpkin,burnt orange, cinnamon and ruby promarkers to colour the dress and the wings and hair and used touches of pear green for the leaves and used dusky pink and blush to colour the skin. Used one of my new nesties I bought at The Stampman shop the other day and edged it with burnt orange. Got hold of some new starburst stains and moonglows there too and have used these to make the papers. I posted the other day about making some paper using the scrunch technique and finding a devill staring back at me when I unfolded it, well I have used half of that piece to make the background of this, so it's now only half a devil lol Used a sizzix paddlepunch leaf design to bash some holes in it to show off the stained paper underneath and used the punchouts to edge the bottom of the image and added a flower and some pumpkin orange coloured satin ribbon made into a bow trims it off, shredded the edges to add a more distressed look (obviously a scrunched background doesn't look distress enough lol) then, simply because I wanted a bit of bling, I added a butterfly charm :)

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

The Stampman - Autumn
Cowgirls Sunday Challenge - Create your own background
The Craft Pad - Distressed or torn edges
Let's Ink It Up - Use halloween colours
Crafty Cardmakers - Use a freebie (the ribbon was free)
The Pink Elephant - Brown and Orange

Devil of a time with The Stampman

2010-10-16T22:58:00.000+01:00

I spent a lovely day up in Skipton today at The Stampman. Had a fantastic day. Came home to play with some of my stash and used some of my starburst stains to do some paper using the scrunch technique and was showing my darling OH how it is done. Opened up the scrunched piece of paper to show him the effect and was like OMG! I could see a devil in it. Please look and tell me I'm not going mad!

Should I be scared?

Foldy Fairy of Forgiveness?

2010-10-13T00:43:00.004+01:00

Last year, my partner and I were in lumber with his sister as we forgot her birthday. Oops! My only defence was I didn't actually know when her birthday was to forget it, but my partner did, and I don't think she has spoken to him since. It's not as though I wouldn't have welcomed the excuse to make another card now is it? Well, this year, I am taking no chances and have made her card a month early and left it at her mother's. Ha!

I have been fascinated with foldy cards for quite some time, done a few easel cards, variations with easel cards and also done a few cutty foldy cards. This is another cutty foldy card! It looks quite complicated to do, well it is and it isn't. Just takes a bit of preparation and careful measuring and then it is quite simple. Simple but effective and makes people go WOW! Well that is the reaction I have got from the people I have shown this card to anyway.

It started life as a plain and simple piece of A4 card which I measured in increments of 1 inch from either end, leaving the centre section a different size. Then it is a matter of deciding where the peaks and troughs should go, creasing or cutting where appropriate and decorating. Of course, I now have a template I use so I know where to cut and fold, but I had to work it all out for myself initially lol

The image I used is Serenity from The Stamping Boutique, it's a digi stamp and I love the way you can resize them which you obviously can't with a rubber stamp. Coloured with bluebell and amethyst promarkers as my sister-in-law's favourite colour is lilac which is the colour theme I continued throughout the card - even the main card is lilac! Once I had put the card together, I decided to colour another copy of the dress and face part of the image and make it 3D as with all the folds it was looking a little flat. I had forgotten that I had resized the image slightly when I printed the first one, and the second one was a bit smaller, which I didn't actually notice until I had coloured it and cut to size and applied the sticky pads. Turns out it was a happy accident as it still lined up nicely at the top and gave some layers to the bottom of the dress. Yay! The papers were courtesy of Vix who kindly printed off some sheets from a CD she has. Couldn't resist making some of the butterflies on the paper 3D too :)

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:

Crafty Cardmakers - Spotlight on Fancy Folds
Karber Monthly Challenge - Fantasy using a digi
Craftalicious Challenges - Anything Goes
OSAAT - Digi stamp
Create4fun - Use digi stamp

Summer is gone

2010-10-04T13:19:00.003+01:00

Well it is over, it's now October, we've had lousy weather all summer, so why is the sun shining and we have blue skies? We could have done with nice weather during the summer holidays when the kids were off! Instead, stuck at home most of the time with a hyperactive LOUD toddler, a teething baby plus 2 older kids who were bored. Ah well, should enjoy the sun whilst I can! My eldest has gone on a residential trip this week with school so she should be having fun and not be getting too wet, well for today at least.

The inspiration for my card this time, came in the form of a picture message I got on my blackberry, a cute snuffly hedgehog hiding in the undergrowth. I haven't seen a live hedgehog for years, sadly the only ones I ever see might have done well to study the green cross code. But there he(she?) was and I thought autumn is definitely here now.

The image I have used is a Tiddly Inks digi stamp of a hedgehog and butterflies. What better image to choose for autumn colours? Mr Hedgehog is coloured using cinnamon and sable promarkers and the butterflies coloured using burnt orange and pumpkin. I have hardly seen any butterflies this year, but for some reason they love the plant which climbs up a neighbours wall and I have seen common anglewings and red admirals which inspired the colours for this card. Ripped edges touched up with tan promarker added to the rustic feel. I added some pumpkin coloured ribbon and some paper flowers with buttons stitched onto them to finish the topper off. The backing paper is a colorbok paper from a set my friend bought me in the states, and the base of the easel uses a sheet of crackle effect paper I bought in papermill earlier this year. The 'stopper' is another piece of the first DP cut and punched on the corners with a punch which I think looks just like the lower wings of the butterfly at the front of the card.... The butterfly in front of the hedgehog, is cut from the same DP as the backing to the image and it really does fly as I mounted it behind the easel on a strip of acetate, so when there is a bit of airflow near it, it flutters :)

For many years, I have loved looking up quotes to fit my mood or an occasion and the quote I have used on this card is Autumn is a second spring when every leaf's a flower by Albert Camus. Sums it up perfectly!

I am entering this in the following challenges:

Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge - Easel
Tiddly Inks Challenge - Crackle Accent
Aly's Sunday Challenge - 2 DPS and 2 buttons
Craftalicious - Harvest Festival/Autumn
Sentimental Sundays - Autumn or fall
The ABC Challenge - E is for Easel

A helping hand

2010-09-29T10:54:00.001+01:00

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering. - quotation from Doctor Who

al·ter (ôltr)

v. al·tered, al·ter·ing, al·ters

v.tr.

1. To change or make different; modify: altered my will.

2. To adjust (a garment) for a better fit.

3. To castrate or spay (an animal, such as a cat or a dog).

v.intr.

To change or become different.

Well much as it amused me to see the definition of alter described in the terms of the castration of an animal, I didn't really think it quite appropriate to use for my project (besides I don't have any furry pom-poms ;) So I shall use 1.

I have been into decopatch for a fair few months now, and find it is the perfect medium to alter an item. My friend Mandy had made a mould of her hand from plaster of paris ages ago to keep her rings on and in my search for something to alter, I talked her into letting me get my hands on it (no pun intended lol).

Mandy likes animal prints, but I didn't want to make this too jungley so I just used some tiger-striped paper I had. Because you use at least 4 different patterned papers when you cover something, it really doesn't use up much paper at all. And I love it. So far I have altered a mirror and a papermache heart to match each other to go in my bedroom and will one day get them actually into my bedroom when I have moved my baby son into his own bedroom as he currently occupies the area in front of my dressing table. The mirror currently resides in the kitchen. Sits on top of the hob when not in use which may sound a strange place to keep a mirror, but it sure comes in handy for putting make-up on due to the hob light lol

Anyway, the hand is now sufficiently altered and the plus side of the decopatch glue is that it puts a nice hardwearing glaze onto the item so it should be pretty resilient now :)

Close-up showing it in use as a ring-holder

Makes me think of The Addams family in this one lol

I am entering this into the following challenges:

The Stampman Challenges - Altered

Oriental wishes

2010-09-28T01:12:00.004+01:00

My 11 year old daughter is obsessed with all things Japanese, sushi, manga, anime... so she came in very handy as the source of the stamp set I have used for this card. We bought it in the QVC shop earlier this year, it's a Personal Impressions stamp set, possibly from the Beryl Peters Collection as that is what it says on the side of the stamp of the lady.

I stamped the images out onto white cardstock intially and coloured with promarkers, and only used 3 different colours, ruby, pastel yellow and gold metallic. I wanted to keep a very simple colour scheme of black, red and gold and used my nesties to cut out the black paper which backs the kimono then used a larger size to create the frame. The edges of the card are again a QVC find and I have loved using these again, finally having an excuse to use the Japanese writing ones. The kimono itself is raised from the background using some foam pads as it needed a little depth I felt to bring it to life. I wanted to put a sentiment above the kimono to say Happy Birthday (in Japanese of course) and as usual my printer was refusing to play ball and print on vellum, so I printed it on white paper and traced it onto a piece of white vellum using a fab Japanese brush pen (ok I bought that in QVC too lol - have you guessed I live pretty close to the outlet shop yet? lol)

Not sure if the photo shows up that the front of the card is smaller than the back of the card or not, but I did a cutaway to used the lady and the fan as a runner down the inside, but wanted it to be visible, if that makes sense? Nothing with me ever makes sense to other people but it all makes sense in my head... honest! lol

I have entered this for the following Challenges:

Crafty Cardmakers - Spotlight Oriental
Creative Inspirations - 2 or More Stamped Images
Incy Wincy Designs - Anything Goes
OSAAT - Anything Goes - As you like it

The Stampman Challenge Blog - Blog Hop!

2010-09-24T17:12:00.000+01:00

I've never actually done a blog hop before so as this is my first I guess that makes me a blog hop virgin! *blushes*

There's a fab prize to be won over at The Stampman Challenge Blog - £30 to spend with them and there are lots of prizes to be won off the design team ladies on the way round. Good luck to everyone if you fancy entering!

Pretty distressed box

2010-09-20T00:19:00.001+01:00

There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, "Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams." Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there. - Erma Bombeck

I have a thing about making boxes at the moment. I think the interest started a few weeks ago when my daughter asked me to make her a box so she could decorate it with faces and call it Dennis. Dennis the box. Ok..... then she was traumatised when Marcus sat on it, so I had to make another one, and Marcus wanted one too, which he said was called Billy. He's a friend of Dennis apparently... or rather he was until Mitchell squashed him hahahaha. So now he is in the bin, and I decided this time I would make a box for myself and decorate it. I haven't given it a name yet... don't want to tempt fate!

Another love of mine at the moment is getting my hands messy and making papers to use in my projects. I've seen a few 'distressed' items on various blogs and have toyed with the idea of having a go to see what I could do. I really think it is a matter of getting the right paper to start off with as I tried 'ageing' some paper in a nice bowl of roiibos tea, but when I took it out, it fell apart. Oops! So I scrapped that idea and stuck to techniques I know, and armed with cosmic shimmer mists and a scrunched up piece of paper I set to work on my trusty hob. Now don't get me wrong, the resulting piece of paper was pretty and shimmery, but even though it was crumpled, it just didn't look distressed enough, so I waited til it dried out (OK I didn't exactly wait, I chucked it on a shelf in the oven when it was cooling down after tea) then attacked the paper with some staz-on coloured ink pads and it was starting to look pretty battered up now *grin*. Like with a number of my projects where I try out something new, I find myself with a piece of paper that I know I can turn into something, just can't quite decide what... So I left it overnight and suddenly I had an idea involving a box!

Unusually for me, I managed to find a template online which would fit the bill of what I was looking for quite easily. I wanted a heart sort of thing on top so that it folded together and closed rather than a box with a lid and I found one. It went together quite easily and then I flattened it again and covered it with the paper I made earlier - amazing what you can do with a bit of DST... so now I had in my hands what looked like a crinkly box, but it wasn't distressed enough godammit! So I flattened it again and attacked the poor thing further with clear embossing ink, enbossing powder and a good blast from my heatgun mwahahahaha! I got a load of pink lace in the market a few weeks ago and I trimmed the heart to make it stand out, but plain old pink didn't look quite right so I whipped it off, grabbed another piece of lace and misted it and attacked it with more staz-on inks hehehehe I then stamped a Panda stamps butterfly onto a scrap of the distressed paper, stuck that on, wasn't looking quite right so did another butterfly, embossed parts of it and layered it on to give it a 3D look and roughed up the edges of the heart a bit more. Well I'd say it looks pretty distressed now *evil grin* lol ;)

Took this pic to show it is a box and how it opens:

And the back of the box to show the distressed paper in more detail:

Just in addition, my long-suffering partner Steve was having a wipe round in the kitchen the other day and was confused as to why there was pink shimmery stuff on the cloth when he wiped the glass table down, then found even more on the hob. What's this stuff he says, me *smiles sweetly*

Annnnnd whilst I was hard at work distressing my box, my 1 year old son was busy distressing the living room for me. In the absence of his 3 year old brother/partner-in-crime, he did a pretty good job all by his little self!

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:

The Stampman - Distress
The ABC Challenge - D is for Distressing
The Corrosive Challenge - Unused Craft Stuff
Sir Stampalot - All Distressed

Box for Blings and Fings

2010-09-19T23:47:00.000+01:00

Well, I am here with another box, well not quite a box but you can keep things in it... and I really enjoyed making it too. It's based around a chest of drawers at the bottom, the template for which I found here http://apathofpaper.blogspot.com/2010/08/4-drawer-easel-card-for-h2h.html but I changed the easel part and adapted it slightly. I remember making a set of drawers in primary school many many years ago but they didn't come out like this, which is why I abandoned the idea back then and started making a stagecoach instead... ok well I was probably the only 8 year old I knew back then who was obsessed with Adam and the Ants and it was the Prince Charming era. That turned out a lot better but I have no idea what happened to it, though it may well still be stashed somewhere in my parents' attic lol

I hadn't used my starburst stains for a while and I wanted a misty sort of effect to co-ordinate with the sweet pea image I used this time, Ching-chou kuik's Faraway Moon. The moon is embossed with silver pearl to give it a shimmer and the image is coloured mainly with denim blue and powder blue promarkers, touched up in areas with my trusty gelly roll pens. Not found anything else yet to add a bit of sparkle which is so easy to use and doesn't involve me getting in a glittery mess. I think I have captured the shimmer quite well on this pic.

At the front of the box, as the stop for the easel, I have used a piece of plasti-roc which I have stamped into and then painted with carpathian bluebell starburst stain and embossed to highlight the details of the moon and sun on it. I suddenly hit on the idea that it might work a few days ago and I am pleased with the results, though I do have to say trying to emboss using a clear embossing pen on a semi-porous material can be a bit tricky...

I was lucky a few weeks ago as a family friend went to the states and brought me back a load of craft stuff, mainly embellishments as they can be so expensive over here. I used quite a few embellishments from that haul today, namely the brackets, the sentiments and the blingy bits. I think they call them rhinestones lol

Anyway, here's a pic with one of the drawers open so you can see it is actually quite functional. Seriously skint this year so I think a few friends and family might be getting something similar for Xmas. Hope my Dad will like it lol

So here is where I am entering this one:

Paper Play Challenges - All shapes and sizes
Crafts and Me - Easels
Creative Belli - B-themed embellishments (bow, brackets, blings)
The Sisterhood of Crafters - Simply Handmade
Southern Girls - Anything Goes
Paper Pretties - Pearls, rhinestones or glitter

Mermaid moments and memories

2010-09-07T21:43:00.001+01:00

Thank f*** the kids have gone back to school so I have a bit more time to think of crafty things!

A new craft shop opened at the weekend near where I live and naturally I had to go and pay them a visit. Quite a nice little shop they have there. I was very happy to spot some Twinkling H2O paints as I had seen something similar at a craft fair a few months back and kicked myself for not having bought some then. Much as I love my promarkers and sakura gelly rolls, I love my watercolours too, but have found that I can't always get the sort of effect that I want on my projects. These paints are totally different as they have sparkle :) You can use them in the same way as normal watercolours, blending and watering down to get very subtle shades, as you can see here which is handy as there were only 6 colours in my set.

The stamp I used is a Sweet Pea stamp, Elaine Cox's Little River Mermaid. Now I have seen the name of it again, it makes more sense as I was a little confused why there was a frog on it and no shells! Ah well, just a good job I didn't find any shells to add on as details lol I painted the stamp with the H2O paints and I can only enthuse about how lovely they are. Really nice to use, and the pots look like I haven't even used them so looks like they will last me quite a while. The colour names are really nice too, Pewter, Ginger Flower, Guatemalan Green, Wild Blueberry, Honey Amber and French Lilac (the only one I didn't use this time round). The shiny colours lend themselves so well to a shimmery mermaid. Anyway, I borrowed the stamp from my good friend Vix, so must thank her and give her credit for that. Handy having a craft guru living close-by and raiding her stash occasionally, plus she's been a good friend to me, especially when she looked after my daughter for the night when I was having my last baby!

Anywayyy I digress. Well it is my blog so I can ramble if I want to! The image was taking on a bit of a bluey green theme, so I accented the flowers with pink and added a little glitter. I bought the glitters months ago at another craft fair and I think this is actually the first time I have actually had a dabble with them. Glitter to me takes me back to school days with bigs tubs of PVA and seemingly even larger tubs of glitter. Somehow I always ended up with more glitter on me than on the paper! Much easier to do little details when you have a glue roller pen like I have now. I trimmed the stamp to size and was about to matt it onto the shimmery bluey green paper which I bought in Benidorm a couple of years back, but then I spotted my threads and thought hmmm, a bit of stitching detail would add to the shimmer, so I did a running stitch around the edge which framed it subtlely. A while back, my Mum gave me a tub of little blue tiles as she thought I might have a use for them at some point and they have just been sitting around waiting to be used ever since. I counted them all out and discovered I had just enough to create a frame to my image and stuck the individual tiles to a piece of DST. Took a while and a few botched efforts. but I finally got them all on and pretty straight. Now I had a framed mermaid and no idea what I was going to do with it!

I have, in the past had a go at doing a few easel cards but they have always been pretty standard in their construction and I wanted to make this one a little different. I started out with a piece of A4 card and folded it in the usual way, then trimmed it so it would fit the framed mermaid correctly. After rummaging thru my stock of papers and drawing a blank, I suddenly remembered that I had the perfect solution, my Starburst Stains! I have been very restrained with using them as I didn't want to waste them just playing about and not be able to get any more easily, so they have been sitting in a box on the shelf taunting me for months, so I decided to get them out for a play :) I love starburst stains. I got the version in the tubs so I have to daub them onto things rather than spray, so set to work with a piece of card, and used Carpathian bluebells and Maidenhead fern green which is a colour combo I haven't tried out before, and slapped a piece of cling-film over the top and had a squidge about. Luckily in our new house, we have a halogen hob which as Vix has told me in the past is the ideal place for messing about with messy stuff as it is so easy to clean up afterwards, so what it lacks in cooking practicality (I prefer gas hobs) it makes up for in craft use plus it has the added advantage of an overhead light - bonus! Of course, I can never wait for my stained papers to dry out so I gave it a little blast with my heatgun and got back to the project and trimmed and stuck a piece of the stained card to the front of the easel - the weight of the image needed a bit of reinforcement lol

I am always on the look out for ribbons for my various projects and I happened to mention that to my Mum ages ago and she said that she had a bag somewhere in the house, full of ribbons which she had found at my Nanna's house when she died. She's been gone just over 11 years now and when I opened the bag, it smelled of my Nan's house. Loads of memories came flooding back and my eyes were welling up. My Nan was a very talented knitter and crocheter before the arthritis in her hands got the better of her and used to buy ribbons for trimming baby bonnets and finishing off sleeves etc oh and a lot of knitted toilet roll covers too! She tried numerous times to teach me but I could never get the hang of it and it was only last year I taught myself to do a veryy basic crochet stitch and can now knit strings. Very useful, not! In the ribbon bag was lots of different shades of turquoise/aqua colour ribbons and so I ran my needle thru a few lengths to make some flowers - again a first for me! Pretty pleased with the results and finished them off with a punched flower and a gem. I tied a ribbon round the frame which matched the tiles and used another piece of it on the bottom of the easel which I covered with the same shimmery blue paper I stitched the image onto. I made a stop for the foldy bit (technical term) of the easel, as it needed all the support it could get to keep the frame upright out of a piece of the stained card adding a few punches to the corners so you can see the shimmer thru the holes. A few flowers and gems and a bit more ribbon finished it off. Here's a close-up of one of the ribbon flowers, I think it's quite pretty :)

And another photo to try and show how much the paints sparkle. :)

The Crafts and Me challenge at the moment is for Gems and Sparkle. I doubt I could get anymore sparkle into this if I tried, so I am entering it there. One Stitch At A Time want to see Blooms Butterflies and Blings, and as this had plenty of two out of the three, I have entered it there too. Crafty Cardmakers are looking for Glitter and Sparkle and Craft Your Days Away have Girly 'n' Glitter theme and I feel this fits both of those specs too. PaperPlay Challenges theme is In Stitches so I hope the stitching shows up well on these photos. Really should get out the manual for my camera and learn how to do clear close-ups properly lol

Flowers and Wings and more sparkly things!

2010-08-08T15:32:00.002+01:00

Hello! Not blogged properly for months now due to the house move and struggling to find which safe place I had put certain items of craft paraphernalia in. Have you any idea how much I searched for my DST? lol

Anyway, I'm back, and slowly but surely getting my crafting area back into some sort of order. I'm at that time of year when I don't have any birthdays for a month or so, so had to go in search of challenges for inspiration.

The stamp I chose for this card is called The Lilac Fairy, part of the Flower Fairies from Inca Stamps. It was one I picked up in Hobbycraft and as purple is one of my favourite colours, I couldn't wait to get colouring it in. Using two of my favourite promarkers, orchid and bluebell, I coloured the fairy's dress, wings and the flower heads. For the leaves I used soft green and leaf green and then trimmed the coloured image following the lines. I embossed the wings then stamped and coloured and embossed another set of wings to give a 3D effect. For the backing I ironed some fusible fibres to create a mat and trimmed it with silver edging. Some paper and ribbon from stock finished the card off and then I added a bit of bling with the gems. The green ones came from the states, given to me by my friend who had been out to California and bought me loads of goodies for a fraction of the price for which you can get them over here. The flowers were plain white paper to start with so I coloured them with matching promarkers and added the gems for the centre.

The Crafts and Me challenge at the moment is purple and green and I would say this card fits the bill :-) Flutterby Wednesdays as ever ask for something with wings, but this time they want to see your favourite colour too, and as mine is purple (bet you thought it was red, no red is just my obsession!) I have entered it there too. Creatalicious Challenges wanted to see some 3D, and I think these wings really stand out. Sir Stampalot's challenge for this month is Bring on the Bling and this one certainly has a bit of that! Finally, as this card is cute and girlie I am entering it over at Creative Card Crew :-)

Sorry I've not been around much!

2010-07-27T13:25:00.000+01:00

We moved house at the end of May, which was stressful enough in itself with 4 kids in tow, despite only having moved 300 yards round the corner. We did it all ourselves just using cars as I refused to hire a van for that short a distance! Well, we're all in and settled now, it took over a month for us to get reliable internet access back and my craft area looks like a bomb has hit it! There are still bits and bobs in various places in the house which have not yet found a home and most of it seems to have ended up in the middle of my craft stuff, 'Oh Sarah will know what to do with this, I'll just leave it here for her to deal with rather than put it away myself.' Grrrrrr lol

Ah well, mustn't grumble. The new house has a lovely well lit front room which has been mainly taken over by all my craft fings and I have only managed to do a couple of cards and things for people and I really should get more blogging done. But I do have a good excuse for not having done much, not only did we move house, my baby boy turned 1 and we had his naming ceremony on the same day and wehad a handfasting too! So I am now married (but not legally recognised) lol

Shimmery wings and sparkly things

2010-05-11T10:02:00.005+01:00

I had a great day out on Saturday at the stamping fair in Port Sunny. Never been before and I can heartily recommend it. Loads of stamps, inks and other bits and bobs for crafting, brill! Saw some lovely watercolour glimmer paints on one stall, but didn't buy them as I am going to treat myself to them next time, besides I wanted to buy some other shiny things so had to save my money til I found them. And boy did I find them. Vixykins was demoing on The Stampman stall with Starburst Stains and I honestly don't know how I have coped so far without getting some for myself. They're fantastic! I couldn't wait to get home and try them out. Bought a few new rubber stamps, namely some fairy ones from the same stall and some butterfly ones from another. I've never had a decent sized butterfly stamp to use before and I had decided that I would have to buy one at the fair. Got a lovely set too. Bought a couple of spray bottles of cosmic shimmer mist in red and pink too. Oh and I bought a few more promarkers (ok about 20 more) and a tub of gilding flakes in variegated red, though I didn't have a clue what to do with them, they were just soooo pretty lol In my investigations online as to what I could do with them, I found out about angelina fibres and films and was very happy to find a pack in the QVC shop to have a play with. They also gave me the perfect way to stick the flakes onto my work. Yay!

So onto this card. Having been playing with starburst stains and making some very pretty backgrounds I decided to have a go with the cosmic shimmer mist using the same techniques. The red and pink go together beautifully, and with a bit of clingfilm scrunched on top, it gives a lovely distressed silvery glimmery veined effect on the surface when dried. Once it was dried out I set to work with a couple of fairy stamps out of the new pack with my new pad of jet black StazOn ink. Was pleased with how well it worked on the shiny surface as my previous experience trying to stamp on shiny bits had been a little bit trying lol But it worked this time and it dried quickly so all was good. I spritzed a couple of fabric flowers to coordinate with the background and added a couple of gems to the centres to add that all important bling. I stamped out a butterfly on some of the remaining shimmery paper and added some gilding flakes to add accent, cut it out and stuck it to the corner with good old DST. I had bought some netting from a wedding favour supplies shop a few weeks ago and cut a piece off, ruched it up and stuck it together with a bit more DST and a lot of luck. I used a bit of the trim off of the net to created a 'swoosh' between the flowers and the butterfly with a bit more of the gilding flake for good measure. It was finally beginning to look like a card!

I tried setting it on a white background but it just didn't look right, didn't look right on plain black either so I set to work once again with the glimmer mists and a piece of black card and wow! How fab do they work on black?!? Gave just the effect that I was after. The newly acquired pack of angelina fibres was calling to me so armed with iron, greaseproofed paper and a couple more gilding flakes I created a lovely shimmery background to set the whole thing off. So now I had a topper of card, backed with net, backed with angelina fibre to stick onto a shimmery card, a liberal squidge of tacky glue on the back and a night spent under a heavy book and it all holds together. Wooo! :-)

Entering this over at Crafts and Me Challenges who want to see Sparkle, I think this card has a bit of that! Also Flutterby Wednesday want to see a butterfly, By The Cute and Girly - Celebrations (well I was celebrating using the new stuff I bought and I will be using this as a birthday card also as the card has a Distressed! air to it I am entering it over at Crafty Cardmakers. Sir Stampalot's challenge is for Butterflies and Blossoms and finally Creatalicious Challenges - Flowers and Wings (also a DT entry).

A bear's home is his castle

2010-04-24T23:42:00.002+01:00

Well, I have really gone 3D this time! I started with the Pixie Dust Studio's DT challenge image, Wink the bear, whom as was said on the site was getting his castle ready. This bear needed a home! As it was St Georges Day when I started on this card, I had dragons and castles in mind so a castle was definitely on the cards (pardon the pun!). As is usual, I come up with these ideas, inspiration runs away with me and I then put my mind to working out how on earth I can put my plans into reality.

Firstly I coloured the image in browns for the bear's fur, then reds for the robes as bearfitting (sorry!) a bear of royal blood. I then drew some rolling English hills and topped the most distant one with a castle, flags flying at full mast as their King is home! I then cut the image with my circle cutter and made a frame out of grey textured card and drew on the brickwork. To add a bit more depth I cut out part of a circle, cut a flat side to it and made it into a crenellated balcony for our King to stand on. Now I needed to build a castle structure to home King Bear. Really must learn to think these things through before I come up with smart ideas!

I took another piece of grey card and measured out where the crenellations of the castle ramparts would lie, and cut them so they sloped down the card, adding a very strange sense of perspective to the card structure once assembled. I added brickwork onto the card so that as it stands up, you can see brickwork like you would see on the inside of a square tower if that makes sense? I added a cardboard hinge to attach the front image onto the castle and made a latch to secure the image on the other side of the castle 'tower' so it all stands up. I think it works, lol. I had to take the photograph from a strange angle to try and show the detail on the front and the castle structure, hope you can see it truly is a 3D card and can probably just about make out the latch on the lefthand side which holds the whole thing together. :-)

A birthday comes around...

2010-04-20T22:30:00.011+01:00

...but once a year. OK cheesy gag, but it was my inspiration for this card! For ages, I have struggled with cutting out circles as they have always gone wrong somewhere in the cutting process and ended up looking a bit lopsided and mis-shapen. Not any more! Was wandering round the QVC outlet shop craft section and lo-and-behold, what did I find but the We R Memory Keepers magnetic cutting mat complete with circle cutter, and a bargain at £13.15 once the discount had been deducted. I usually go there to kill some time whilst my son is in pre-school, but once I bought it I had to head home to play! It really is a fab bit of kit and is the mat designed to go with the WRMK interchangeable cutting head paper cutter ruler I bought last week, the ruler clings magnetically to the board and makes cutting fancy edges to paper soooo much easier (easier with the proper mat than stick the ruler to my regular mat with DST anyway lol)

I am very fond of Tiddly Inks digi stamps, and the one I have used here is 'Annie', a freebie image which was given to all the members of Christy's PCP page to use to create a DT entry. I tried and failed :( but really love the image and it was the first digi I actually coloured with my promarkers so I have a bit of a soft spot for it. I coloured her for this card using cocktail pink, tan and buttercup promarkers and then got a bit carried away making circles and thought hmmmm better work out what I can do with them. Annie looked rather sweet set behind a circle border of pink, so I glued and trimmed the image to the same size as the pink circle and then used a nice buttercup yellow sheet of card to make a bigger circle, and stuck it all together. It looked to be a combination between a side plate and a frisbee so I figured I had better come up with some ideas of what to do with it now!

Due to my previous lack of skill at cutting circles, I have never worked with them, so it was full-steam ahead to discover what I could do now. Determined as I was to make a circle card, I cut out two more circles to make the 'back' of the card and then punched some holes in, added some pink eyelets and went to rummage through my ribbons bag. I wanted some pink, yellow and brown to match the image and hit lucky with some pink and yellow, but had no brown. Then I spotted it, the brown twisted cord I have been hoarding in my craft drawer for ages with no particular purpose and I had the missing item I needed. Woohoo! Threaded the three ribbons through securing the front and back together and tied them into a bow, added a pink skeleton leaf and a yellow butterfly to make the card really stand out. Had a dig in my gems box and found some pretty pink and yellow gems which I stuck all round the edge to add a bit of bling. Then I stood back and thought, oh pants, it's round, it's heavier on one side than the other and it doesn't open like a conventional card. IT'S NEVER GONNA STAND UP! AAAAARRGH!

Racked brain and decided it would have to go on a plate stand or something similar, remembered I don't have any plates which need stands and went on a mission to find a plate stand I could make out of card, and to my surprise, I found one and it works.

Think I need to go and lie down now... oh but first I will have to hide the card from my kitten who was trying to help out at the ribbon tying stage and I am sure would love to get her paws on a floaty butterfly topper!

As I have used no other colour but pink, yellow and brown, I am entering this in the Crafts and Me Challenge of the same colour scheme. Tiddly Inks have an Anything Goes challenge at the moment so I have entered it there too.

Butterfly flutter by

2010-04-18T14:06:00.020+01:00

I found a stitching pattern for a butterfly online a while ago and couldn't wait to have a go at it. As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I had done all the stitchwork in Guttermans sulky sparkly blue with the tub of blue pearl beads which I had in mind, then couldn't find them anywhere. Turned up under the radiator - though I still don't have any idea how they will have got there although I do suspect involvement of my 2 year old in some part...

I stitched the butterfly straight onto a card using a sharp pointy awl to make the holes and added a frame the same way, adding a few more beads to add definition to the corners, and then cut to size. The butterfly colour dictated the rest of the card, so I scoured my stash and gave the whole card a blue theme. Stitched the butterfly onto my favourite sparkly paper (don't know what I will do when I run out as I got it in the QVC outlet shop) and trimmed the edge with a scallop edger.

I then stuck the sparkly paper onto some pretty blue floral paper and placed the whole piece onto some turquoise card, trimmed with some extra pieces of sparkly paper, some nice co-ordinating blue ribbon. Added a few clear blue flowers and a felt flower onto which I had stitched a blue sequin and a pearl to create the flower centre.

The card became an easel card when I realised I quite liked some ribbon sticker I had with the sentiment 'Best Wishes' on it and then got out my gelly roll pens and some butterfly peel-offs to make the stop.

So there it is, a combination of a lot of my favourite hobbies, cardmaking and handstitching!

I have entered this card into the Allsorts Week 48 Challenge - In Stitches, The ABC Challenge - S is for Sparkle, Stampavie and More - Butterflies & Flutter By Wednesday - Butterfly, Fairy or Angel & Createalicious - Flowers and Wings & My Time To Craft Challenge - Pretty Pearls

Fairies for Forty

2010-04-17T15:57:00.010+01:00

As you may have seen on one of my earlier posts, I made a card for my friend's 40th birthday, the surprise party is today and she doesn't suspect a thing Mwahahahaha! I spotted that a lovely lady called Gina had made a bottle neck hanger and thought it would be a nice idea to go round the neck of the pink bottle of champagne I am giving as a gift. I missed the little link at the bottom of her blog post which gave a tutorial of how to make one, so I spent most of yesterday evening trying to fashion one out of some pink card. Doh!

I've used the same stamp Ching Chou Kuik's It's My Birthday stamp as I used for the card so the gift matches nicely, added a couple of embellishments like a sparkly cake, a flower and a pink skeleton leaf.

Anyway, at least I know how to make one from scratch and have made it big enough to be able to fit some nice goodies in that any self-respecting 40 year old woman will need... you know, chocolate, Resolve (for the morning after the party) and anti-aging cream hehe

I have my sister's birthday coming up in a couple of weeks and she likes a tipple too so I already know what I can make for her now.

I hope you like it!

I've submitted this as a third entry into the Sir Stampalot Fantasy Challenge and By the cute & girly - Fairytales and also Createalicious - Flowers and Wings

Fanciful Faeries

2010-04-15T09:23:00.009+01:00

I seem to be using a lot of fairies in my craft projects lately, don't know what it is about the craft world but fairies rule! Just so much detail to colour and add that bit of sparkle to, give me an excuse to be girlie. I am probably one of the least girlie girls I know so it makes a refreshing change.

I've used the beautiful Prairie Fairy DT call image to create this card. Really pretty image I think she looks young and fresh and the colours I chose to go with her are young and fresh and quite springlike yet remaining quite muted. I used powder blue and bluebell promarkers to colour most of the image, adding a touch of bling once again with my clear star gelly roll pen. The cards sparkles in the right light and her wings positively glow. Used some K & Company scrapbooking sheets which I got in a boxed set with other bits and bobs to create a softly coloured background to match the fairy colours and added some co-ordinating ribbons to the background. She needed a little more bling I felt so used a couple of tiny gems and an embellishment of a flower which accentuates the other colours quite nicely. A sentiment to finish it off from stock and here it is, and not an easel in sight lol

Entering this into:

Prairie Fairy 2nd Design Team Call
Sir Stampalot - Fantasy (2nd entry)

Sweet April Showers...

2010-04-09T00:08:00.013+01:00

And so onto springtime. I love all the colours, the slight raise in temperature and of course, the rain. Ok, I lied about the last one, but the rest of it is true! I always struggle round Easter time, as I am not religious at all and find it a bit two-faced to give an Easter card, but always feel duty-bound to do something for my Mum as she always buys us and the kids something.

The image I chose for this year's card is a Digital Pencil Too digi stamp of a little girl with an umbrella being followed by some ducks, all splashing in the puddles. Isn't that just a lovely April image? Pretty much sums spring up for me!

I decided to limit myself to the spring colours pack of promarkers (with a hint of cool grey 1 and pumpkin here and there which I snuck in for detail) and the colours lent themselves to the image beautifully, lilac and pink for the wee girls coat and wellington boots, green and yellow for the umbrella and blue for the puddles. Added a few co-ordinating elements and was making it into an easel card when what did I find in my stash box? A little wooden yellow duck. Perfect!

Happy spring-time crafting everyone! xx

Entering this for:

I Love Promarkers - Animals

One stitch at a time - Anything goes

Quixotic - Spring

Stamptacular Sunday Challenge - Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice!

Sophisticat Challenges - Raining Cats and Dogs

Glittery fairies and wings and fings!

2010-04-07T00:46:00.006+01:00

Got my mitts on a beautiful sweet pea stamp to use as I was looking for something special to make into a 40th birthday card for a friend who likes pink and purple and sparkly things so it looked to be just the ticket. Gave me a chance to put my shiny new promarkers and my fave gelly roll pens to good use. To make sure the sparkle shows when it is put up with the other cards on my friend's big day, I made it into an easel card (my first one) :-D

Quite difficult to catch the sparkles right under artificial light and camera flash but I think you can see them ok on the photo above. Got to wait a few weeks now before I can give it to it's intended recipient...

Entering this into:

Crafts and Me Challenges - Fairies or Wings

Allsorts Challenge - No design papers

Pile it On - Easel card

By the cute & girly - Fairytales

Sir Stampalot - Fantasy

2010-02-16T16:23:00.005Z

Not posted for a while but as I'm sure you can guess I have been busy crafting, well where I have been able to fit it in looking after the kids!

Been lucky lately as the baby has been fairly settled in the evenings and I have been able to get a bit done. I've done more decopatching and have covered a heart to match the mirror. All that is stopping me from covering more stuff at the moment is lack of papers. I have been attacking a little IKEA Lack table with some recycled wrapping paper too, seems to work pretty well on a flat surface, but not sure how well it would do on anything more shaped. Oh and I have been using watered down PVA too which is a lot cheaper than buying the decopatch glues. Can't really tell much difference either except the dearer one seems more glossy on the finished item than the cheaper one, so might save that for the glaze coat and do the covering with the cheaper glue.

Here's the heart I covered. It's going to go up in our bedroom over the bed. Awwwwww lol

About a year ago, my best mate Mandy had a clear out and decided she was going to stop making cards and gave me a load of bits and bobs she no longer needed, so whenever she needs a card making now, she comes here and I make it for her. I don't mind this at all, in fact I love it as it gives me an excuse to make more cards! First on the list the other day was a birthday card for her new boyfriend's sister. Always hard making a card for someone you have never met, especially hard when she hadn't met her either! It was going to be given at a family meal out where she was meeting the family for the first time too, so had to make sure it was a good one! Worked on a hot pink theme, decided to use a clear, gold edged peel-off of a bodice and stuck that to a swirly background paper, cut that out, punched the holes out and laced it onto the card with some thin purple satin ribbon. Well it saved on glue...

Decopatching

2010-01-31T23:44:00.006Z

I have seen items done in this style in the past, but never known how to go about doing it. I went to the craft show in Manchester today and there was a stall there selling the papers and glues to do it with and also demonstrating how to do it. Boy, have I been hauled in on this one!

About 4 years ago, I bought the mirror shown above for £3 in a second hand furniture shop. It was a tatty looking circular one to go on a dressing table and I had planned to 'do something' with it. Well 2 babies happened and a house move and it never got done, just remained looking shabby in my bedroom. So I decided to buy the papers I liked to transform it, see below...

Only took a couple of hours and I am pretty pleased with the result and am trying to decide what I can attack next! You can jazz up pretty much anything, furniture, bottles, boxes etc. Once I get hold of some more papers, nothing will be safe :-)

Here are a couple of close-ups so you can see the effect better. Looks a bit dark round the edges, but that's just because I used the flash and it was close to a mirror so obviously a bit of flashback occurred.

You can see in the first one the little bits of frame showing through underneath which are now covered.

Talented Toddler

2010-01-25T13:35:00.008Z

One of my many 'works in progress' for many months now has been a mural on my toddler son's wall. I am only able to work on it when he is staying the night at his Grandma's house and I can literally only get a little bit done each month, so the paints have been stored in his bedroom up on a high shelf, where I thought he wouldn't be able to reach... and I thought I was right as it took him 3 months to fathom out that if he bust the safety locks on his wardrobe drawers so they would pull out, he could use them as a ladder to climb up onto the radiator cover and pull the shelf down... half a litre of grass green emulsion paint may not sound much but spread over a cream carpet and then danced about in... well you can see the results below...

Note the happy smiley face on the aforementioned toddler who won't even stand still for photographs normally. He appeared as I went to take a photo and said 'SAY CHEEEESE' I think he was quite proud of his handiwork.

Also note the knackered drawers in the background...

Here, you can see the 'paint-job' in a bit more detail. What isn't too clear from the photos is the hand drawn embellishments he added with the black sharpie pen to the radiator cover and the wardrobe...

Note the shelf lying in the upper left hand corner of the photo. It has been turned upside down to obsure the green handprints which he obviously decided didn't go with his overall 'vision' for the room...

And here it is, minus grinning toddler. Took my dear partner approximately 3 hours working with a Vax and a scrubbing brush to get the carpet clean again.

Note the way the carpet is now colour-keyed into the lower half of the wall...

Well, it serves me right for having left the paint in there in the first place I suppose but never in my wildest nightmares did I think he would ever be able to reach the paints!

Just goes to show, craft stuff must be in the blood... Mwahahahahaha!

A little work in progress

2010-01-24T23:44:00.004Z

I'm quite into doing stitched cards at the moment. Bought a set of papers and a book of patterns in the QVC shop last week and once I had got hold of an awl for making the holes neatly (the drawing pin I had been using was hurting my thumb lol) I set to making the above butterfly. Decided to make it in blue using gutterman metallic thread as I knew I had some tiny blue beads to use for the body which would match nicely. So I did the stitchwork and have spent 3 days searching for the ruddy beads! Finally found them, under the radiator. Have not got a clue how they got there! Anywayyyy stitched the beads on tonight and I am now trying to decide what to turn this card into...

Birthday Cards

2010-01-24T14:09:00.006Z

I wanted to make a special card for my step-daughter's 15th birthday. She's not like any regular 15 year old girl I know as she loves dinosaurs! I scoured the internet for a colouring page of a dinosaur and found this, a dinosaur stealing a birthday cake. Couldn't really do anything else once I had found that one! Printed the image off to the right size on premium paper and set to work with my watercolour paints. I had forgotten what fun painting can be! Haven't done any for years, not since leaving school anyway so it was quite refreshing to be able to add one of my old pastimes into my new hobby. Shannon was impressed with end result and thought it might be awesome if this did happen in real life. Apart from the fact that dinosaurs are instinct and would probably eat us for dessert after the cake, I had to agree with her XD

This card idea grew out of nowhere from a search for something which I could paint in lilac, the recipients favourite colour. She turned 13 on 1st January and as her mum and nan both like making cards too, I decided to push the boat out. I used the card as a demonstration to my daughter as to how little paint you need when using watercolours (in this case a tiny spot of purple which didn't even get all used up) and a couple of embellishments from stock.

Xmas cards

2010-01-24T13:20:00.006Z

I decided that I would make all my xmas cards this year as it would give me something to do. Thanks to Vix doing me a couple of printouts of paper from a cd she has which got me started and having a box full of bits and bobs which I had been hoarding since the year before, I raided a set which I had picked up cheaply in QVC and added to them from my stock. The greeny coloured one worked quite well I think and the bits and bobs I added enhanced the main colours.

This card was again embellished with card parts from a kit, but I am never happy just knocking a card out to someone else's ideas so I had to add more to it. Was just grateful when they were all done as I really truly do hate Xmas!

2010-01-24T13:18:00.004Z

Just trying to fathom out how to add photos here. If you see any strange ones appearing, bear with me...

2010-01-24T11:19:00.006Z

Well this is my first post. Can't think what to say lol

Well I supposed I can begin by telling you a little about myself. I'm a 35 year old mother of 3 (4 if you include my stepdaughter, ranging in age for 6 months to 10 years (15). Happily living in sin with my fab partner of 2 years, with our 3 cats and umpteen freshwater tropical fish.

Some time in early 2008, not long after I met my partner, I decided I was going to make a scrapbook for his 40th birthday. Good idea you may say, but considering I had never done anything at all in the way of crafty stuff other than stitching, I was beginning to think I had taken on a bit more than I could chew at one point. Fortunately I had a prolific scrapbooker/card maker on hand to offer advice (and lot's of embellishments) and I was very pleased with the result. Reduced my partner to tears when he saw it :)

Since then, the love of making fings has grown and so has the amount of boxes and shelves and drawers that I need to keep it in. I have tried all sorts of different techniques and styles and my inspiration comes from anywhere. Sometimes I don't even need inspiration to make something as my growing collection of cards made 'just-for-the-hell-of-it' will testify!

I will be posting up a few samples of stuff I have done as I go along, but I am very much a beginner so please be kind lol