Con-Grad-Ulations!

 

Not a lot I can say about this card except I absolutely love it and, although the date has passed, it has not actually made it to its intended recipient yet – thru no fault of mine! The colour scheme came about from my printer having a mind of its own, the stripes were meant to be red and were intended for my huts card last month…!

I’d like to enter this for the Daring Cardmakers challenge – Hat Boutique

Feeling a bit sketchy?

I’m not much of a one for sketches, I am often amazed by how people can interpret a series of geometric shapes into a fantastic card but I don’t find they do anything for me… until… My cousin gave me a pile of old mags and I found this article by one of my faves Jo Kill and not only was I inspired to properly try my hand at machine stitching, I’ve since made four cards in the same style:

(of course I only remembered to photograph two!). I’m pleased with this woodgrain, I versamark’d and clear embossed the wood grain stamp onto white card, coloured over it with weathered wood Distress Ink, sliced it up into ‘planks’ and glued it back together onto a backing sheet after roughing up and inking the edges. I let it dry but decided I wasn’t happy with the contrast so I rubbed a white chalk ink pad over the surface to fade the colour out a bit and I like it a lot better! The Stampin’ Up! bird is stamped on a digi paper I altered in Photoshop to resemble a lovely shirt Noel Edmonds was wearing on Deal Or No Deal the other week! Inspiration is everywhere, folks!!

Who Ever Said Wood Grain Had To Be Masculine?

Well actually probably nobody but it sounded good. This is my first creation using my new (Well, new to me) Studio Calico wood grain stamp - I think we will be having many more adventures together!

WOYWW147 – Explosion in a craft factory!

Hello WOYWWers, long time no see! I was plodding away at my bomb site of a desk and I thought “this looks like some of the desks I used to see when I took part in WOYWW!” so I decided to join in this week…

I’m meant to be playing with my haul from the NEC on Sunday but all I seem to be making is a mess! so much so I can’t even find my large… acrylic… block – oh look there it is leaning up against the Scor Buddy! Ha! Moving on…!

Use the link in my sidebar to visit the hub and start the blog hop to some much tidier (and probly much messier too!) desks and Happy Wednesday!

Is It Gonna Blow, Joe?

My best friends eldest boy recently turned four and he is obsessed with dinosaurs and volcanoes – and its taught his mom more than she ever wanted to know about them too!

I knew I wanted to make a pop-up card and I searched out tutorials for a couple of designs but it had to be a volcano, really so I set about working out how to make an eruption!

I’m really pleased with the final effect – and luckily so was Joe!!

Are You My Mummy?

I’ve wanted to make a tent card for ages and I’ve had these horrible oval aperture cards for even longer and suddenly inspiration struck!

I liked the idea of a washing line, altho when I did a bit of research all of the designs seem to be new baby (and we don’t need any more of those in my family thanku very much!). I printed off the papers from my digi stash, the props are made from cocktail sticks, coloured with alcohol inks. Oh and the twine and the cloud stamp are from the Simon Says Stamp kit (sick of that yet?). Cute, huh?

I have a design in mind for another one so I’ll be doing this again but If I were to make it from scratch I would need to make the base wider, it just doesn’t seem in proportion somehow.
p.s. The post title is due to the fact I was watching The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances while cutting the letters out. Complete coincidence I promise!

Sew Unbelievable!

I am not a seamstress! I am not a homemaker, I am not a domestic goddess. I am a little girl with big ideas, zero patience and a “slapdash” approach (that last one courtesy of my A-level Art teacher!) but I have made this:

Yeah, ok as photos go its not much of a reveal but its a purse!

Based loosely on my old ‘coin purse’ (and improving on where I thought it failed me), its made from Crafty Computer Paper’s Printable Cotton, with my favourite design from Cosmo Crickets Garden Variety collection printed on to it. I cut it into A6 portions and sewed all four together to create an outer shell with three compartments. On the advice of various tutorials I tried to cover sheets in clear sticky back plastic but this wasn’t so successful, mainly cos I ran out and also cos it creased summat awful when I turned the project right side out after stitching. So I have a few lessons to keep in mind for mark two but for now I just want to see how long it takes to trash it (as I inevitably will)!

Listen To Your Soul

This paper from My Minds Eye was one of those ‘eureka!’ moments, as soon as I saw the sentiment I knew I wanted to use my tape stamp purchase from a few weeks back. I did try creating a background but I wasn’t happy with the finish so I tried making a charm with the stamp and shrink plastic.
I’m really pleased with the finished card, I didnt really want to put it in the post! Oh and the scallop was cut by RoboCop – I think he loves me again, yay!

On Yer Bike!

Part of the Simon Says Stamp March Kit was a stamp set from My Minds Eye Follow Your Heart collection which included this bike. And lo this lil good luck card was born with a new job starter in mind…

Simon Says Stamp March Card Kit

Happy First Of March! (Oh yes it is!)

I joked about cancelling February (n my ‘big’ bday) but I didn’t have to, it went past in the blink of an eye all by itself!

I’ve been looking at subscribing to one of the many monthly kits that seem to be out there in webland, weighing up the costs of shipping from the US versus the convenience of having my craft shopping done for me.. and I decided to try the Simon Says Stamp kit, compiled by the rather wonderful Kristina Werner. And here it is (only 8 days after dispatch)…

You can see a full list of the contents here so now just watch this space and see if it ignites my mojo over the coming days…

Elegant Grey

I have a real thing for grey (is it my age?) and wanted to use some of this grey ribbon up. I stamped the SU Medallion (thanks Loraine!) in Versamark and sprinkled it with silver embossing powder. This powder is Papermania and its really quite a vibrant, molten silver when its used properly so I firstly brushed some of the powder away with my fingers (how come it brushes off so easily when u don’t actually want it to?!) and then after heat embossing I rubbed not-so-gently at the image with sandpaper. Sounds fairly drastic but I was pleased with the result. I embellished it with some ivory lace and the aforementioned grey ribbon. The cage is part of a set of three I’ve had since last summer and it just seemed to fit the style somehow.

Bow Wow

There is just something so scrummy about bakers twine and just SO many colours to choose from now! I’ve seen Jen Rzaza do a few designs similar to this and wanted to have a go myself so I did…

Simple but effective.

A Lil Weekend Project…

Well… it was meant to be a weekend project but it only actually took me, well three & a bit episodes of Smallville actually so how long is that? Two hours? Not made my mind up about Smallville yet but I love that house! Really amazed by how easy it was to do. I was a bit skeptical by the (badly translated) instructions on the packet of Decoptach paper which told me to tear the sheets into little bits but the pattern still really works and you can’t see (unless u look REALLY closely) where I’ve torn it.

I can’t find any before photos but it was originally black metal (a halloween decoration from TK Maxx) and I had tried to colour it with various spray inks and mixes of cosmic shimmer, water and alcohol but it wasn't really successful. Unfortunately this first attempt led to some of the colour transferring to the design but luckily it kind of adds to it.

This was one of those about-to-nod-off ideas, probably inspired by the veritable success Helen over at Fiddle Fart has with Decopatching almost everything in sight so I took myself off to Hobbycraft to find Decopatch was on 3 for 2 – which is the good news… the bad news is I bought three packets of the same design, not knowing how much I would need and this didn’t even take one full packet… Now I just need to decide what to do with the trees…

Hyacinth Bouquet

 

The graphic nature of certain flowers really appeals to me and I like the sketch quality that seems to be popping up in quite a few stamp lines just lately so I was pleased to rediscover this hyacinth image on my PC that I’ve obviously put to one side at some point. This banner design is a layout I’m fairly keen on just lately, so get used to it!

The flowers are coloured with Stampin’ Up inks & cut n dry foam and I went over with a white gel pen to lighten the centres.

A Rose By Any Other Name...

...would stamp just as well? Got a bit of a Jones for background stamps just lately so this gorgeous hero arts creature fell into my basket last week. I knew I wanted to go subtle and I'll show u the fruits of my first experiment when I can decide how to embellish it but for now I'm really very proud of this creation, a layout I've seen quite a lot - I coloured the 'embellishment' roses in with Regal Rose ink by Stampin Up and cut em out with my own fair hands *smug*

Rock out…

I’m not sure what made me buy this stamp set.. except it was cheap and tapes make me think of bein a kid. I’m not sure if I’ll use the sentiment very often (a lot of my cards go to old people!) but the tape is cute so hey ho

Getting Away With It...

They say u can pick ur friends but u can't pick ur relatives. Most of my relatives have a fairly good sense of humour - some would say strange - but even then there r only so many who I could get away with this card! It was inspired by Lucy Abrams' post about the latest Hero Arts digi kit releases, I decided I wanted the 'key to my heart' kit and needed a justification. Happy Birthday, Uncle John!

Eat, Drink & Be Merry

How cute is this paper? Its from Cosmo Cricket Garden Variety. The day I found out I could purchase it digitally was pretty much the highlight of my year! I used it as the basis for this card for a person whom I know likes food & cooking.

I printed the Graphics Fairy image on tissue paper, layered it over the Cosmo Cricket ‘tossed salad’ and artfully(!) tore it. I then sponged some old paper Distress Ink around the edges - which somehow makes the tracing paper seem more translucent, I think its an illusion – and then spent a very long time fiddling with a shrink plastic, only to end up printing the sentiment on paper and mod podge-ing it to resultant tag. A lot of faffing but a pleasing result!

Daylight, How Novel!

I sat down at my desk today and thought, wow I’m actually sitting here in the daylight! Unfortunately that was after 2pm on a thoroughly miserable day so it wasn’t long before I was switching the light on! I wanted to share this card with you, a request that I found quite difficult at first but I think it turned out ok in the end:

 

I was mostly impressed with these foam letters that I’ve had for ever and can rarely find a project they will suit but in this case I tried heat embossing them (I covered the surface in Versamark first) and I quite like the effect!

And in case you’re wondering what I did all morning, behold:

Festive or what?! Hmph!

A Stampin’ Up! Christmas!

      

Pop over to the blog of the incredibly talented Loraine to check out the details of these three gorgeous cards made with Stampin’ Up products. Finger crossed Santa brings me some £moolah to enable me to have another spending spree after Christmas!