Love Books

Do I have to claim reading is my second favourite pastime now?! Sam would say sleeping comes first! I think reading and crafting are about on a par, they r wot I would prefer to spend most of my time doing, they both take up a lot of brain space when I'm not doing them n they have both been known to stress me out!!

Anyways to business, this is based on the lili of the valley sketch and I've used a stamped image of the Little Girls - Story Time kindly donated by my luvley cuz, the background is from a charity shop book - which unfortuantley has a description of a whale attack on a boat but hey ur not meant to b looking at that!! - and the panels r scraps from my stash. I've stuck very closely to the sketch as I didnt feel brave enuf to vary it too much! And the colours went thru many variations before I settled on these! Njoy!

P.s. I brightened the photo a lil, naughty me :)

Performance Anxiety...

I decided yesterday that that is what I'm suffering from! And in the still warm light of today it seems even more ridiculous cos this piece isnt half as hideous as it seemed yday!

Its not the best thing I've ever made but I'm still finding my feet as a crafter so I need to be a little less hard on myself! (yeah like thats ever gonna happen!)

Anyways to business (and then I might write a post to show why I've done no crafting this weekend!): This is based on the sketch challenge from 2sketches4you and as I had some of the ingrediants on my desk I combined it with the 'Black, Lime & Lilac' challenge from C.R.A.F.T. (honestly that panel at the back is lilac, I promise u!) The four squares are cut from some junk mail and are meant to be chameleon skin! I have some more so they may well feature again... Right back to watching Muse @ Glastonbury on the Iplayer - yum!

Arsenic & Old Lace

Ooh am I finally beginning to understand this vintage craze? I was tidying the room that my stash is slowly but surely taking over and I found a big reel of lace of my moms (hope she doesn't mind!) so I thought I'd have a go at the C.R.A.F.T. Sketch challenge which asked for strips of ...something across the design! I attacked a bit of graph paper with my new Tim Holtz Distress Ink (old paper flavour - not sure I bought the right shade but its too late now!) and some bronze ink then I attacked the lace too and stuck two lengths across the card. The oval is from DCWV Mango Frost cardstock - drawn around an aperture card, lol! - and the scallop is quite dodgily constructed from three Nesties circles which works ok at times but I found the position of my flowers was rather dictated by the dodgy side that doesn't line up!

I added a strip of narrow gold ribbon (recycled from somewhere!) to make the third stripe, added some paper flowers and some I die cut and sponged orange and blue ink across. The sentiment is stamped and heat embossed and raised up on foam pads...

...oh and after all that I missed the deadline! DOH!

Butterflies Flutterby...

Again, with the paper piecing - can you see a theme developing here? I just can't help it as I said in my poppies post, it hides a multitude of sins!

Not sure where I got the butterfly image from, I put a search for colouring pages into google and again I printed it on white card and onto, well by the end four, different sheets of Funky Hand Dreams Come True paper and proceeded to cut each individual section out! The design kind of evolved as it went a long cos originally I was gonna use a proper patchwork effect but as the patterns were just a smidge too big, that wasn't very effective so I ended up completing whole sections in the same pattern! I got the letter stickers from Tesco and the antennae are those things you use in jewellery making whose name escapes me! Just one last thing to find out - is it a big mistake to give this to a two-year old??

p.s I think I'll enter this for the By The Cute & Girly June Challenge as its “something old (I've had the CD for a while), something new (my new technique that I love), something borrowed (I pinched the template for the diamond card from...somewhere...), and something blue..(my fave shade of teal/blue)”

Field Of Poppies

Really pleased with how these have turned out! I saw the idea on Kaths blog and thought it was beautiful but (as I heard a trimmie say) I'm on a 'stash diet' so I wasn't about to rush out n get that stamp... but as a real stroke of luck, later in the day I found this almost identical digi stamp freebie from Birds Cards (Theres a fair few good un's on there, I'm gonna use the VW van next, I think!)

In fact I liked it so much, I made two! The first one is actually more teal than the grey it looks in this pic and I spent AGES tying the blumming bows! Its not so easy to tell on the pic but the flower heads r actually paper pieced, the paper is printed from the Funky Hand Dreams Come True CD (using that LOADS lately!), I printed the design onto white card then onto the patterned paper and combined the two! I'm really gettin a taste for this cos laying the one design over the other hides the imperfections in my lack-of-cutting skills!

Blog Candy!

Have a butchers at The Stamp Man blog - where my very clever cousin has just been made design team member *sigh* if only it ran in the family! - as they are giving away blog candy (way easier than making cards, lol) and I'm hoping it might be jus the impetus I need to enter the scary ass world of Tim Holtz!

The Holy Trinity...

...of the seaside! This should be a simple post "what does Summer mean to me?" A day trip to the beach for sun, sea, sand, chips & ice cream! Ok thats a quin-ity but still!




Technically this is me trying to emulate someone elses style and I've really not succeeded! On the up side I don't know where all you's r gettin ur brown card blanks from so I made my own from the inside of a roll of wrapping paper (the cheap 'roll of card' kind, I'm not the hulk!!)

Entering this for The Shabby Tea Room - Fun In The Sun
http://theshabbytearoom.blogspot.com/

Sail Away With Me...

Well everybody seems to be at it so u can't accuse me of not jumping on the bandwagon!

My first entry is a card thats been in my Trimcraft gallery for a couple of weeks now but as I made it with The Funky Hand Challenge in mind I'd better get it blogged before I run out of June!

Its a digi stamp and papers from the Funky Hand Dreams Come True Papercraft Factory. I printed it out on three diff papers, glued it to my card and cut it out (and that was a mare let me tell u! Don't look too close u'll see where I slipped up!)

So I'm entering it for June - Pink, Brown & Cream http://getfunkyandcraft.blogspot.com/