Pure Sugar

I'm In Love. I'm in Love with the Sugar Nellie stamps. I was really naughty and ordered two from Funky Kits :) I just could not resist. Here is Chef Hamish and I thought I would enter him into the Cute Card Thursday Challenge this week which has a patterned paper theme and a chance to win fab pattern paper downloads from Kaboodle Doodles.

Candy Candy Candy

Enfys has some great blog candy on offer for getting to over 40,000 blog hits. Well done Enfys and thanks for the go at the blog candy :)

Card for boys

This card is made for a boy's birthday. It's funny but most of the babies I know, children of friends and family, are boys. So I seem to be making lots of cards for young boys - at the moment. I thought I would go bright primary colours for this one and add texture through embossing (by hand!) and using corrugated card collected from some packaging and painted with acrylics. Thought I would enter this card into the fab blog candy challenge on the Dies to Die For blog and also the fun challenge from Papertake Weekly :)

So finally...

I can put the card up that was partially inspired by period stone work in London and I partially described the making of in an earlier post. I was going to give this card to my mum for her birthday, so was delaying posting it here. But then I had a change of mind and have an even better card for you Mum - but you will just have to wait and see :)

An ATC for a Bank Holiday weekend

Looking out my window on this wonderful bank holiday weekend in London I see that it is cold, wet and very grey and windy. What a good excuse to stay at my crafting desk and enter a few challenges perhaps?


In this challenge from Think Monday - Think ATC the idea was to produce two linked ATC's that can stand independently of each other but had a shared image.

Blog Candy

There is some fantastic blog candy up for grabs at:

Heidi's Papir Verden blog

Ellis Keeper blog

Good luck you all.

Using Acetate

Wanted to try making a card using acetate rather than card stock for a change. Thought it might be interesting. The layout comes from Friday Sketchers challenge blog and I thought I would put it up on the Tanda Stamps circle and flowers challenge.

More challenge Cards

Here is another challenge card but this one is for two different challenges.

Friday Sketchers blog has a great sketch for their second challenge. Then Stamp Something has a little something to say 'Thank you' challenge.




So this card was put together in black, white, blue and green using papers from DCWV's All Dressed up stack and some hand drawn pictures - I don't have enough stamps so had to make do :) The flowers were made by sticking sellotape to the papers, stamping a flower with stazon, cutting the flower out and then soaking the paper off. The pattern from the paper stays on the sticky tape and you have a fab flower embellishment. The bird was finished off with some patterned paper for the wing and a pearl-like bead cut in half for an eye.

Recycling Fabric onto cards

So this weeks challenge on Arty Girlz Challenge blog is recycling and as I love recycling everything (well hording really as I can't seem to throw anything away) I thought I would put this card up. It uses fabric from a sofa cover material coloured with ink pads. It is a simple design but I quite liked it :)

Bitten By the Challenge Bug

I’ve been wanting to alter the cover of my travel journal from my trip last year to China for a while now and this week's challenge of Travel/Places from Arty Girlz gave me the inspiration to finally do it. So here is my go at the challenge:


The background uses a black and white photocopy of a map of China that I have coloured in using the same technique as the background for the flower card but then highlighted areas with watercolour pencils. The main highlights being the actual journey we took from Beijing to Xi’an to ZhengZhou and back to Beijing. I then stamped a dragon onto acetate with stazon and coloured the dragon with cosmic shimmer mixed into three dimensional glue. The letters were all cut out by hand and ‘China’ has been accentuated with three dimensional glue. It was great fun doing this AND I've ticked off one of my jobs from my 'To Do' list :)

Making my own background papers

I love all the wonderful background papers that you can buy. There are some beautiful works of art in paper that I often find them hard to cut up, I'm sure you know what I mean? But I also love making my own background paper. This was one of those 'I wonder what would happen if I....' occasions and I was really pleased with the result and plan to use it again to make some more.


Found it quite hard to get a good piccy of it though, as a number of the pictures I took did not capture the gold shimmer.

So the background starts by cutting out photocopied snippets from my large Oxford Dictionary of quotations and layering them onto a piece of white A4 paper at different angles, holding in place with a dab of glue stick. The next stage is to photocopy this collage of words and quotes onto ordinary white A4 paper. I cut the background into the shape I wanted and then started to colour with distress ink pads brayered onto a craft mat, sprayed with water and then brayered onto the paper, keeping the darker inks to the edges. Allow this to dry a bit before spraying with a gold glimmer/mica spray. Allow to dry and then flatten under some books (or all your craft magazines).

Thought I might enter this for the challenge on the 'Lots to do Challenges blog' using Crafty Individual stamps.

Carried away

One day I got a little carried away with my bead collection and just made beaded bracelet after beaded bracelet. I suddenly realised that I now had more bracelets than I actually knew what to do with :)

But there is just something about beads and all those lovely glittery colours. A friend bought me a fantastic book about beads for my birthday which had a bit about the history of bead work - very interesting. I'm just soo easily distracted by shiny objects. Perhaps I was a magpie in a former life?



And this isn't all of the bracelets - I've already given some away as presents.

And again with the ATCs

Some more ATC's. The top two used clear embossing onto a glue stick - I quite like the coverage you can get and the bobble texture it makes so use it every now and again. I had two images of the angel so one image I used as a background and slipped it behind clear-embossed cut-out flower borders. The angel herself was then cut from the second image and decoupaged on top of the background and borders for dimension.

Then the bottom ATC is actually a collage of tiny baking pictures cut from the John Lewis Christmas Catalogue :) But I really liked them and fancied doing a collage ATC so.....

Bookmarks

Here is the image of the 'Home Sweet Home' Bookmark, inspired by the 'Home Sweet Home' ATC. Promised I would put it up when I found the picture!


The bookmark went into a housewarming present (which was a book btw - handy that).

I've entered this into the My Time to Craft Challenge as it was for a New Home and went with the New Home card shown in a previous post.

And now some ATCs

Artist Trading Cards or ATCs are fab for trying out new techniques on a small scale. I love them but must admit I don't do that many. Here are some of my more recent ones, trying out different ideas. The 'Home Sweet Home' ATC was actually inspired by the 'New Home' card and I have also made it into a bookmark. Shall put that up in another blog post- when I've found the piccy :)

Brown, Orange and Green Challenge

So I thought I might have a go at the Brown, Orange and Green with flowers challenge on Donna's Bearly Mine Craft Blog. So here is my attempt.....



This was great fun to do. It uses colours I don't often try so it really made me think. Thanks Donna.

Cards for Kids

I have a thing about Dinosaurs, I love them. Of course this is quite a confession for a woman of my age. So any opportunity I have I hide my obsession by designing Dinosaur-related things for younger relatives and children of friends. It's what kids like right? So here is a Dinosaur design I drew for my boyfriend's nephew's second birthday. Had difficulty giving the card away :)



And for my next confession, well space has always been another favourite of mine, so for a friend's four year old.....

Lucky both children where boys - but then that probably wouldn't have made a difference to me :)

Insomnia Rules ZZzzzzz

I'm having one of those nights were I just can't sleep. Do you have them? I thought that if I did some blogging and caught up on my reader subscriptions I might relax my brain. I think it has actually had the opposite effect.

Well, seeing as I am here, I might as well put some piccies up ;)

I got this wonderful pink and brown card and paper set from a friend (also a papercrafter) for my birthday. So three cards on a theme....







So now just need to sleepzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Cards Cards Cards

So here are some more cards. Some mixed styles and uses. The first card I used for a friend's bithday and was one of those accidental things where I was just trying out inking a stamp with mutliple colours from distressed ink pads. The card also uses tearing and one of the layers has been bronze embossed using a glue stick to cover the card. The edges where further distressed with an ink pad.



The New home card was made using shapes cut from different patterned 12" by 12" papers and a some free lettering from a magazine. I used a brad for the door knob and faux stitching to highlight the windows and door.



So the final card for today uses patterned paper on a plan background and accented with ribbon, pre-printed chipboard sentiment and vellum flower cut by hand. Glitter glue and inking the edges gave the finishing touches.

New Skirt

I have recently bought a new sewing machine. The motor went on my second-hand and very old Frister and Rossman. Having two sewing projects on the go and feeling a bit lost without a sewing machine I bought a new one. Wahoo. And have now completed my skirt (one of the uncompleted projects). Wahoo again.


Now just have to work on the other project......

Making Presents

As I seem to be in the blogging mood I'm putting up some old projects I have photos for. Some of the things I've been making for friends and relatives as presents. I decorated a tray with acrylic paints and decoupage and knitted some scarfs. My knitting leaves a lot to be desired but the scarves seemed to have come out alright :) Then there are beaded bracelets, of which I have made quite a few and I'm sure I will get around to blogging all of them at some stage ;)

String and Brown Paper

Some more card designs whilst I'm at it :)

Scrapbooking

Been having a go at scrapbooking and really enjoy putting together scrapbook pages. The big scale is fun to work with after cards. My only problem is I have too many photos and not enough time :)




The page with the picture from the gardens at Alhambra, a beautiful Moorish Fortress in Granada, Spain, used a mix of printing onto acetate and flowers from some Basic Grey paper. The second scrapbook page I experimented with textures, acrylic paints with sand medium, fabrics and stones. The last pages uses one of my favourite pictures I've ever taken of flowers. If you go to the gardens at Hampton Court at the right time of year the public garden is just a bed of Daffodils. The background stripes were made in photoshop and there is a handmade flower paper clip and bead accent.

Bank Hols

So May has arrived and it is May bank Holiday here. The weather is warm, a little overcast but still very nice. I thought I would take some time to blog.

I have just so many projects on the go at the moment that I am finding it a bit hard to focus :) I don't know about you, but I do like to have a number of things on the go at once so that as you are waiting for one element of a project to dry, or come together, you can put it to one side and work on another project.

Only trouble is trying not to start too many things as I get too excited about a new thing and forget to finish ongoing projects. It is also nice to have end products after all.

So here is something I'm working on at the moment. Just waiting for some ink to dry before I can put it together.


Bought this great paper from K&Company and really liked how it looked with this rose picture from Botanicals ATC collection, memories in the making pack of pictures. I used 3 dimensional glue on the rose itself and aged the script paper by screwing it up and ironing out then inking with some distressing ink.



Decided that the rose should have a period frame. I keep also sorts of pictures in an 'inspiration' folder and had an old Christmas card tag from my parents that I really liked. This was finished off with the great period styling on the buildings along Piccadilly. I free-hand drew a frame around the rose onto tracing paper (folding in half to match both sides). This then could be easily transferred onto gold paper and finished with black ink (hence waiting to dry....).



And the final touches I stamped and coloured some butterflies with mica paints and giving them dimension by sticking three copies together so that the butterflies 'jump' out from the page.




All I need now is to put them all together :)

New Baby Cards

I wanted to share some of the baby card designs I've made to celebrate births. With lots of family and friends having babies at the moment it is always useful to have some New Baby cards around :)