WOYWW - Slow n steady wins the race

I'm conscious of how often I use the word bombsite but I really do have a talent for making a mess. Last month or so I've been furiously attempting to fill up my stocks in preparation for my first craft fair next month but I seem to have slowed down considerably in the last week! I also have mutiny on the craft robo front, he's chewing up almost everything at the mo, wasting card left, right n centre :( So after two hours in here last night I only produced one card but I'd better not show it to u cos it is still only September and some of you might get an attack of the vapours!

Kiss Me Quick

I'm so glad Lucy Abrams has picked up her blogging again as I find her work so inspirational and she stops me feeling guilty bout using computer generated embellishments (I dunno, somehow it feels like a cop-out but I think I owe this all-consuming hobby to the digital crafting world so go figure!)

She made clever use of a recent Hero Arts digikit release that was actually autumn themed (I.e leaves) but she went down the xmas route instead and created this:

Which I thought was such a great idea I literally ran home (well ok maybe not literally!) and made these tags:

The 'berries' are homemade card candy using scrap card with liberally applied versamark and pearl embossing powder stuck down with rolled up glue dots. There are five of them tied together here, thats not a huge ribbon embellishment!

Knees Up

Not only have I not been blogging lately, it seems I haven’t actually photographed any of my creations! So here’s a quick post about a get well soon card commissioned by my main customer for a knee operation patient:

It took a bit of faffing (and swearing at the printer) but I was pretty chuffed with how Robo Cop cut these crutches out in the end… and look how CAS it is!!

Christmas In July

Edited to add: Yes I did make these in July, somehow this post never got uploaded, oops!

I heard a DJ exclaiming over the ridiculousness of shops and restaurants already looking toward Christmas, taking bookings putting out merchandise etc. I was very tempted to text in and explain that in papercrafting circles Christmas in July is pretty much a staple and I’m afraid I’ve kind of jumped on the bandwagon this year as it dawned on me not so long ago that, as December is one of the busiest months in our family for birthdays and how much effort it takes to craft on the dark wintery nights, perhaps some forward planning would be sensible…? Yes you heard it sensible! Who’d’ve thought it? Am I getting old? Mostly I was inspired by this layout which I pinched from Therese Calvird at Lostinpaper:

which just shouted out to be recreated with snowflakes so I made these:

with my new Waltzingmouse stamps. Am I finally succumbing to a stamping addiction cos I really wanna go back and buy some of their frame sets… even tho I don’t own any nesties or even a manual die cutter!

Poppies & Gladioli

The Daring Cardmakers dare this week is the birth flowers for the month of August – poppies & gladioli. Here’s my card:

The paper is from a country diary paper pack and I cut the poppy centres out on Robo Cop. I’m pretty pleased with it but I have no idea how I’m gonna package it!!

Happy Birthday Lisa!

So yday was Lisa Sparkle’s bday and I couldn’t leave it any longer to post the pic’s of wot I made her cos I’m well proud! Without wanting to give too much away it was a special bday so I had to put some effort in to and I decided quite a while ago to make an exploding box:

The larger stickers where 29p from Home Bargains (gotta love that shop!) and I made the smaller letters myself with clear self adhesive paper from Crafty Computer Paper.

Remove the lid and ta da!

All the Alice In Wonderland characters are by The Octopode Factory – I was looking for an excuse to buy them and lo and behold I found one, so thanks Lise!.

 

I stuck with my original sentiment of “Its not what’s on the outside, its what’s on the inside that counts” which I decided was fitting for  Alice’s boredom of the outside world versus the craziness down the rabbit hole.

 

I created the chequerboard with some offcut red rubber in black n then I went a filled a few in with Versamark n various embossing powders.

 

Hope u like it n HAPPY BIRTHDAY CUS!

 

Going Round In Circles

This was a card that begged to be made, springing fully formed from my mind even down to the font to be used (Arial Rounded). I think I've seen the design somewhere else but I don't know where so I'm not deliberately not crediting someone, I promise!

I'm hoping it fits the CAS regulations of the Less Is More challenge which this week is circles, with emphasis on the plural. Well to my mind theres at least four on this card so...!

WOYWW 111 - The Aftermath

Seriously, I hate deadlines. For most people deadlines make them concentrate, buckle down and give their all. Me? Its brings out the queen of procrastination in me - "I'll get on with that important task... just let me sit down n have a cup of tea & a biscuit first..." So two weeks ago, it was panic stations cos I was behind in the wedding preparations and I hadn't ordered 'this' and 'that' was floating somewhere in royal-mail world... and now? I think bereft is a good word! I've got nothing to do! No motivation! July & August are quiet months by our family standards - altho the wondrous Lisa Sparkle has a bday coming up... I can tell you that, right? - and I'm bursting with ideas but I've got no oompf it seems! Hence the bomb site of my desk and the debris of half finished projects:

Oh well, stop whining n pull ur finger out, girl. Mr Mojo can't be far away and he always comes home in the end!

Happy WOYWW everyone, n no I haven't eaten all those sweets yet!

WOYWW 110 – What Of Your Windy Wedding?

Hmm, yeah ok I could’ve done better there but I do intend to make this post all about THE wedding and it was a fairly windy day. This is gonna be picture heavy, guys, if thats no good for your browser, please look away now!

Now before you get all excited, it wasn’t my wedding – in fact it wasn’t even a member of my sprawling family, I commented to my friend that it would be the my first day out in a loooonnnng time where I wouldn’t be referred to as Aunty Jody!! – it was the long awaited wedding of a good friend of mine who let me bully her into making things for it! You may remember I asked your advice on the invites all those many moons ago, finally settling on this design (below,left):


The theme of the cupcakes came from the happy couple’s decision to go for a stack of cupcakes rather than a traditional tiered cake.
I sourced a number of images while I was making the samples and they plumped for a similar design for the order of service booklets (above, right) …I wonder if anyone noticed?!

We toyed with the idea of making cupcake shaped favours for the tables but in the end economy won out and she stuck to organza bags filled with sweets. The tables also had gorgeous Victorian style sweet jars filled with traditional sweets which lent their names to identifying the tables:

And there was a fair bit of bartering going on between the tables too!

Sticking to the theme of sweets – and its not the first time I’ve been told I’m hard to buy for -  look what was delivered on the Friday before the big day. A complete surprise, I was so chuffed:

and in return, my gift to them was born from an idea of recycling the extraneous materials I’d collected during the make but ended up being made from scratch with the help of Robo Cop (right). I also made the table plan and the name cards (complete with the individuals menu choice on the reverse which proved handy!) but of course I forgot to photograph them so I’ll leave u with some shots from the day…

The Happy Couple	The Bride & Her Maids
Me & My Plus One, lol	The Bride & Me

Thanks for looking & happy WOYWW!

Creative Expressions Calling Card Challenge

The highly talented - and massively pregnant! - Sam Poole drew my attention to a design team call for Creative Expressions thats taking place until July 12th. The requirements to take part are all on their blog and in addition to the normal rules there is also a challenge with the theme of...

Calling Card
The only requirements of this challenge are that you create a project that includes rubber stamping of some sort and that an ATC is featured somewhere in the piece. Other than that the challenge is completely open to your interpretation! (NB: You do not have to use Creative Expressions stamps for this challenge).

As soon as I read the title I immediately thought of this beautiful Graphics Fairy image and the 12 days of Christmas song (I was pretty obsessed with this song last Christmas, I guess that never went away!). The card itself was pretty easy to put together, the panel on the left is a scrap of Pink Petticoat paper from last year and the panel on the right is card embossed with a snowflake folder. I added some ribbon from the Fantastic Ribbons special value pack, printed the image out to ATC dimensions with the sentiment added in Photoshop and stuck it down with foam pads. You can probably just make out that I stamped some curlicews and another sentiment and heat embossed them with WOW embossing powder in white pearl. All in all, its pretty damn close to how I imagined it and I'm really quite pleased!

Happy Birthday Tiegan!

You have to love Sj's Little Musings, she has such a way of drawing people... and animals or objects for that matter. I made this lil beauty with her Layered Lillie kit of 36 images.

It went thru a few design changes - the wardrobe was originally twice the size and a different colour - but I eventually got it to work how I wanted. The outfits are all laminated with velcro added to the back and to Lillie herself and I added a title along the front edge to make it clear exactly what it was meant to be - I mean the recipient is only three! Wanna place your bets on how long it'll take her to trash it?!

WOYWW 107 - The Debris Of An Evil Tuesday!

Does anyone remember when I first joined WOYWW, how tidy I was? Well, you know its only polite when u've got guests coming round isnt it? On my desk is a nearly finished blue version of my previous post, the inkblot butterflies, on which I have managed to smudge the sentiment, crease the vellum and glue down upside down... r u feeling wot kind of Tuesday I was having?! You may just be able to see the other colours... I think I'll leave those til I've calmed down a bit!

Following on from the theme of my last couple of WOYWW posts, on the windowsill is yet another canvas that I have painted a seaside theme on, this time with Paperartsy Fresco paints. Then I tried the Mod Podge transfer technique I asked about last week... n it didnt work! I did it Monday night, left it dry and out-of-the-blue on Tuesday, at work, it hit me that applying the water to get the paper off was gonna degrade the paint underneath and I was right. So.... back to the drawing board for how I'm gonna make my huge canvas that lil bit more adventurous....

Simply The Best

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best and the easiest to execute. I decided to treat myself to a craft mag over the weekend and from the selection I chose one that had a sample version of Serif Craft Artist on CD as its free gift - only belatedly realising that its actually Crafts Beautiful magazine and not an exclusively card making title, oops - and with it a set of free digi kits. The first one I opened is called Inkblot Butterflies (already a winner just from the title!) and one of the backgrounds was this beautiful creation:

Don't u just love an image that you don't really have to do anything to? I printed it out on some vellum and cut around some of the wings to make them stand up. Mounted onto kraft then a cream card base, I first tried to use foam pads but found them difficult to disguise so I balled up some glue dots and made my own card candy (google it, its so easy!) to finish.

I'd like to enter this for St Lukes Challenge - Come Fly With Me! - but I intend to make more of these so not actually sure what style you guys will receive!

Rainbow Wreath

A week or so ago, when I was looking on Ebay for some Safmat, it seems a Big & Juicy ink pad accidentally fell in to my virtual basket and I was really excited when it arrived - its so pretty! I was thinking about the Less Is More challenge earlier today and it occured to me that this stamp  kind of fitted the bill and then when I sat down at my desk I remembered the ink pad and lo, a card was born. Quite chuffed with it, actually.

WOYWW 106 - Experimentation

Following on from last weeks plea and ongoing discussions between my first and second greatest critics, I have managed to decide my large canvas will involve a seaside theme as I just love the beach (yeah I know I'm in the midlands) and the colourscheme of my room is kinda aqua n shades of blue & green. I was also inspired by this gorgeousness from the incredibly talented Vinnie Pearce - not only is she a very talented mixed media artist, i very much approve of her surname, lol - so I spent the weekend experimenting with some small 20 x 20 cm canvases from Wilko's.

From left to right: 1) Cosmic Shimmer Mist 'blended' with rubbing alcohol - got the effect I wanted, after a fashion, but none of the mica survived so not sure its exactly a sucess. 2) Distress Ink Reinkers & water to create the blend with a Vinnie Pearce scrapbooking overlay printed onto a white T-shirt transfer - not really a sucess as the transfer doesn't melt effectively. Bits of  it looks good but then bits look awful and now theres a plasticky layer over the whole thing which isn't nice. 3) A Pink Petticoat Perfect design printed onto a dark T-shirt transfer which gives good coverage but again gives a kind of plasticky finish so I think it will depend on my final design choice. 4) The first attempt at a white t-shirt transfer which I peeled off while still hot so at least its a matt finish but it really didnt adhere well, leading me to PVA some coordinating paper to cover up the worst of it. The wording is on Safmat which I'm quite disappointed didn't work as well as I hoped, I guess its not really designed for textured surfaces.

I think I'm just gonna have to - what is it Kath says? pull up me big girl pants! - swallow my misgivings n self-doubt and just put brush to canvas. Its not like I've not done it before and its not like a seaside has to be particularly detailed... I just wish I didn't have a burning desire to include text in the equation... eep :S

Edited to add: I noticed last night that the Safmat is now curling up at the edges that are in contact with the textured part (the lighter bit) - has anyone tried the mod podge transfer thing and/or on a large scale?

Finishing Post

So here we are at the end of the marathon, I've broken the tape and got my silver space banket thing and bottle of water... do I get a biscuit or is that jus for giving blood? Here are the final examples of the 2 scrap ladies creativity and my assembly skills:

I can only apologise for my appalling photography skills, but I have just run a marthon y'know! Who would've thought kraft and plum (it is more plum in real life, I promise) would go so well together. In fact so well I was inspired to do this one all by very own self:

Final Furlong

9, 10 & 11 are some of my faves, this owl punch from Stampin' Up is just ace isnt it? And the amount of different things u can turn it into (including an alien!) is pretty cool too! Not to mention  the book pages, which makes this a real winner!

This cow parsley (?) stamp is very me, I keep saying I'm not much of a stamper but I love both of these. I added my own touch with the lace and ribbon just to give it more dimension. The bird stamp is just gorgeous, I've admired since I saw it on Julia's blog a while back and I enjoyed playing with the twinkling H20's too, all my fave colours. Not 100% sure but I think the bird is embossed with cosmic shimmer EP which is just lovely, can see some of my pennies going in their direction. I didn't get around to stamping the sentiment on the day so I copied the wording from one of the earlier cards and applied it with Safmat.

Middle Ground

No's 6, 7 & 8 (for those of you who r counting - Loraine!) of the Marathon haul... so wierd to think this time last week I was panicking about getting lost, being late or all of the above! The smile one was on of those simple to put together ones that just looks so great, the pink one was my first play with a Martha Stewart punch (I didnt kno the sides folded up!) and this top right one took me a while to remember how u rolled the roses up but I got there in the end! I also added the hat pin things in - hope u dont mind Julia! - cos I have no idea wot I'm meant to do with em otherwise!!

Grandson

(Not mine, I hasten to add!) My first attempt at a hmm, what are they called double slanted easel card! Man, the positioning of the brads was tough! Think I moved them three times!

WOYWW 105 - The Week After The, Um Week Before...

After telling a whole bunch of people on Saturday that I'd met Julia thru WOYWW - without admitting quite how long it had been since I'd joined in - it seemed only right and proper that I should join in this week.

But as I suspect the majority of you (UK dwellers neway) will probly be showing ur PIF gifts off, I thought I would also buck the trend and play Whats On My Wall Wednesday. You see I've had this rather large canvas tucked away for quite some time and having moved my room around found I had wall space on which to hang it... but now I don't know what to do with it! I have considered painting some kind of scene on it but then I have considered a lot of things including a mural of Graphics Fairy goodies so I'd like to pick your considerable collective brain WOYWW - can u inspire me?