Manualidades por mi

WOYWW 144

2012-03-07T10:00:00.009+01:00

Hi all. This is a very quick post before I rush out to my usual Wednesday sewing/chat group. I took my photo before I went to bed but it was in the very early hours of Wednesday. I started this at around 9.30, so it's only 8.30 in UK and I see there are already 85 posts!

I was having some fun last night playing around with clay and paint. Last Wednesday we had a man who was brave enough to visit a room full of women to collect any jewelry we wanted mended, and to buy any unwanted gold and silver. He is very clever at what he does, and I am really pleased with some repairs he has done for me. I am hoping today he will bring my ring. He has taken an old ring of my husband's and a small Thailand sapphire pendant of mine, and he is making them into ring for me. Anyway, I digress. Last week one lady who used to be a silver smith, brought in a box of off cuts and bits and pieces for him to buy and in amongst them was a silver plaque of the 'Madonna and child'. My friend asked if she could borrow it and promptly gave it to me saying I could make a mould of it and make replicas. (She said she was only thinking of her decoration next Christmas, because I usually make her one!) So I found my last little bit of mold-n-pour and made the mould (in purple on my mat). I then made it twice with air drying clay and three times with Hearty clay. I am pleased with the results. The detail is excellent except perhaps with the facial features using the hearty clay. So last night they were dry and I filed down the edges and gave them a first coat of paint. I experimented with luminarte, gesso and ordinary acrylic, and now I shall add various metal accents, mica sprays etc, to make them more interesting.

Also last night, while on the theme of 'Madonna and child', I tried out a cutting file that I bought from craftrobo megastore. I was using my silhouette cameo machine and I thought I would try it out with a thicker card, so I used 280g coated card, and after a couple of trial cuts, I got the settings just right and it cut beautifully. Here you can see the cut card which I have peeled off the carrier sheet, leaving a perfect negative image. I think I can make use of this as well, so two for the price of one. I shall try down-sizing it tonight, and see if it cuts just as well when it is smaller.

Well now I do have to go, but I'll be back this evening to visit all your desks and see what exciting things you are getting up to.

If you would like to see how other folk spend their time, pop over to Julia's blog and follow the links.

Five flower cards

2012-03-06T17:13:00.011+01:00

Welcome to my blog. Thank you for calling in. A special welcome to my newest followers; It's great to have you along, and I hope you will find something to inspire you here.

I showed the beginning of these cards on last week's post WOYWW, so I thought I'd do a quick post today to show I did finish them.

The idea was to use up some long-hoarded stash so I started with a selection of decoupage flower sheets, and a bundle of pre-cut and folded cards. I never buy either of these now but I used to and I have several boxes of them that really need to be used up! So each card has some decoupage on the main image, but I don't use all the layers because of posting them to UK. I then raided a box of rarely disturbed small paper stacks, and my snippits box and found mounts and embellishments for each card. The newest thing I used was the metal sunflower which I saw in the shop where I go for my parchment craft classes. There were nine on a sheet for 1 euro which I thought was a bargain, and as I had hoped, I found I could easily colour them with my copic markers. I also used some ribbons and gems, a Marianne die-cut butterfly and fancy circle frame, some foiled bee stickers, a clear square dome sticker to make a small tile, a German scrap border, and some leaf sprays and letters cut with my Silhouette cameo. I used one card for my friend's seventieth birthday on Sunday, and the tall yellow one was commissioned by a friend for her daughter's fiftieth, but the rest will go into my box ready for when I need one.

I am entering this collection in :
Kaboodle Doodles Challenge 109: Think Spring - Let's see some Flowers.
Crafty Emma's Store Challenge 75: Flower Frenzy.
Make it Monday Linky Party 79: Any paper craft.
The card on the right is also entered for :
Crafty Purple Frog Challenge; Get inspired with yellow and green.

WOYWW 143

2012-02-29T21:23:00.004+01:00

Well I am just scraping in on the right side of midnight to pop over to Julia's Stamping Ground and show what is (or isn't!) on my work desk tonight, and have a quick look at what a few of my fellow crafters are getting busy with. Now I am involved with a group on Wednesday afternoons as well as mornings, it is even harder for me to get any craft done, but I was determined to do something this evening, so, for a change, my desk isn't quite empty. I have spent more time just lately messing around with photos and cutting files, than actually making anything, but I have been trying to get a few birthday cards done. I have resolved to use up some very old stash so this week I raided my decoupage folder and selected half a dozen sheets. I spent a couple of evening cutting out. I find this very therapeutic as long as I am in the right mood and have a decent light, and last week I replaced my broken up-lighter, so I can once again see what I am doing in here. On another night I assembled the cut toppers, and then I set about mounting them, using as much as possible, pre-folded cards and envelopes, bought possible ten years ago!, and large and small off-cuts of paper. Tonight I have been doing some finishing touches. The green dish contains letters cut with my silhouette to glue to the long yellow card, and the pink tray is left over pieces from the decoupage which will go in the inserts, and some hand made flowers that may end up on some of the cards. Also in the picture is this months project from my parchment craft class. I am supposed to be doing some serious practice in this - hence the box of tools by the card, but unless I cut out sleeping altogether, there simply isn't enough time. Now I shall visit as many of you as I can, but it won't be too many of you tonight.

WOYWW 141

2012-02-15T21:38:00.008+01:00

I nearly didn't post today as once again I have an almost empty desk, but I wanted to thank all you friendly and helpful folk who commented on my invitations last week. With just a couple of exceptions, you all felt that my choice of a glue pen to attach the swirls was a good one and you were right. The paper I cut them from was a heavy pearlescent one right through, not paper backed as it sometimes is. This is almost fibre free so it cuts beautifully with my cameo. I was also gluing them to a textured pearlescent card so I wasn't sure how well this would work, but the glue pen stuck them beautifully. The stamp I was making for the word 'Invitation' was also successful. Here is a finished card. For the inside I cut one swirl in blue paper, scanned it into the computer and used photoshop to make a frame with the script inside. He wanted thirty of them and I found I only needed a couple of evenings to get them all done. (I have blurred the personal data). Tomorrow we are driving up to Benidorm to deliver them to my son and his partner, as they are on holiday there this week. It will be a long day (three hours drive each way), but I am looking forward to seeing them again.

As well as my usual Wednesday morning sewing group I have now committed myself to being out most Wednesday afternoons. My little church has started home/life groups and mine meets for a fellowship lunch followed by a Bible study, every Wednesday. They are a lovely bunch of people - here we are just as our meal is finished, and before we move on to the next bit, but it means I am even less likely to have anything very creative on my workspace. However, I rarely go to bed to before 1 or 2 in the morning, so I will have to start taking a very early photo before I clear Tuesdays mess away!

But just to prove I have made something this week besides my son's invites, here on my desk is a card I have made for my sister's birthday. I had to take a quick photo this morning so I could get it in the post when I went out. I wanted to use a new cuttlebug emboss and cut folder, and I am very pleased with it. I glued the embossed frame to a pink square card, added a decoupaged flower in the centre, and some very pretty gems in the spaces around it. I used a Marianne lace punch at the bottom and some sticky ribbons to hide the joins, and the flowers at the top are from a spray I bought at a pound shop years ago. The butterfly was cut with my cameo, using a file bought from the silhouette online store.

Well I have just about enough time to link this to Julia's blog and visit some of your desks, but it will have to be an unusually early night for me tonight if we are going to hit the road at first light tomorrow.

WOYWW 140

2012-02-08T18:39:00.006+01:00

Hi friends. I'm afraid I missed this last week but I'm here again today, and I think I should have called this post "Cutting Corners". My youngest son and his partner are holding a Civil Partnership Ceremony in May which just the close family are going to, but I am making them some invitations for the evening celebration. I sent them several designs to chose from, and in the end they agreed on a fairly simple one. You can see the prototype leaning on the pink tray. However this involved cutting sixty curly flourish corners on my silhouette cameo machine, which was not too difficult though it did take quite a while. But they seem to have a life of their own, and they are now a tangle in the tray, and it is going to take me an age to sort them out as I need each pair for gluing on to the cards that I have cut and folded ready for them. I didn't have enough sheets of double sided adhesive paper to back these before I cut them, and that would have made the sticking of them easier, nor can I easily buy an adhesive spray here, so for the sake of speed I am going to use my trusty glue pen. That should be fun!

The light coming in from the left is my table lamp that I am using to cure an imagepac stamp I have made for the word 'Invitation'. If I was more confident with the 'print and cut' feature of my machine I could have used this, but it is not something I normally do, so for me it was easier to cut a page of labels and use a stamp for the script. (The stamp is now cured and I have tested it out. It's fine so now I am ready to assemble them all). The inside is printed so that won't take me too long to do. Our son and his partner are on holiday in Benidorm next week which is about a three hour drive from where we live, and I am hoping we can deliver the invitations to them there, so they can get them sent out as soon as they get home.

Of course this is a good excuse for a brief visit to UK in May. We can only stay for a week as it will be the first time our dogs have been in kennels, and we are not sure how they will be, so we don't want to leave them for too long. But it will be lovely to see all our sons (we have five!), and their families, and hopefully have a quick cuddle with our great grandson too.

Right, a quick hop to Julia's blog to see what you are all getting up to, then I had better get cracking. Now, where is that glue pen?......

A set for Rudolf day

2012-01-31T22:08:00.009+01:00

This year I decided that I did not want to spend so much time making Christmas cards because last year I didn't seem to have any time left for all the other things that I wanted to do. Instead I thought I would do one challenge a month and make a set of matching cards for it. So when I read on my friend Di's blog about Rudolph day it seemed like just the prompt I needed. She directed me to Sandra's blog; Stamping for Pleasure, where I read all about it. The idea is that the 25th of every month is Rudolph day when you make a Christmas card and post it on her blog. So on 25th of January I did start my set, but unfortunately I am just a couple of hours too late to post them this month. (You have until 9.00 p.m. on the last day of the month). Nonetheless, I have another nice set of six Christmas cards made, and next month I will try harder to get them done on time.

For my cards I used a new, un-inked stamp that I bought from the Special offers page of Joanna Sheen's online shop. I was shopping for something quite different but it just sort of jumped into my basket along with everything else! It is a sweet image from Giordano Studio stamps. I stamped it six times on to coated white card and coloured all the images the same, using copics and promarkers. Then I cut each one out using a different die - Spellbinders nesties, Nellie Snellen and Marianne. I made six 12cm square white cards. When I got my new printer in November, and wanted to try it out, I printed off several Christmas backing papers from a variety of CDs, and then I never got round to using them, so I dug those out, along with several larger card offcuts, and mixing and matching with these, I made the set of six very similar, but still different cards. I used a Marianne die set to cut six large and six small snowflakes, and pairing them up I added one pair to each card. I know one card has two on it. That's because I stuck the main image on upside down so the card opened from the left. (You've all done it at some time!). I managed to take it off and turn it round, but I couldn't risk moving the snowflake, so I left it there and added another pair at the top. Then I added the odd gem and some stickles to each one, and here they are.

I am entering these in;
Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 57; Just make it Square.
Dream Valley Challenge 24; Animals
Make it Monday Linky Party 74.

A slightly different wedding card

2012-01-29T22:12:00.011+01:00

I thought tonight I would just do a short post about a wedding card I made a couple of weeks ago for my niece. She was married yesterday so I can now post the card on here. My niece is not your everyday hearts and roses sort of a lass. She always said she would get married at a bikers rally, but she has kind of grown beyond that so she settled for the slightly more conventional setting of the bandstand in the park, followed by a medieval banquet! So I had to think a while about the card. In the end I settled on a pair of swans. They are very faithful birds who mate for life, so I thought they might make a suitable image.

I used an Angela Burke designed cutting template that I bought from crafts'u'print. I ungrouped the elements and cut the birds and separate wings from white starburst paper, and their reflections and the moon from holographic silver paper, using my silhouette cameo machine. For the base I used some dark blue textured card which I spritzed with midnight glimmer mist. I then masked off the upper section and sprayed the lower section again, this time with moon-shadow walnut stain - smokey sapphire. I found a very old stamp of a wave pattern and stamped this in dark blue all over the lower section for the water. Then I glued in place the swans and their reflection. I raided my stash of feathers and found a few white ones which I glued on the wings, and then used silicone glue to fix these slightly proud of the main bird images. (My cats went mad when I opened my feather box, and it's a wonder I have any left). When it was dry I gave the panel a very narrow frame of the holographic paper, and then mounted it onto a plain white card. Again using my cutting machine and the same white glitter paper as I used for the swans, I cut two pairs of joined hearts. I then managed to cut out the wording so it would fit on the moon and hearts as in the picture. My camera has picked up lots of coloured reflections in the holographic paper, which is the effect I wanted, so I was quite pleased with the end result.

I am entering this for the following challenges:
Take Time for You, Challenge 59; Blue.
Creative Craft Challenges; We're Talking the Colour Blue.

Stampavie and More Challenge 161; Blue and White.
Crafting for All Seasons, Challenge 19: Blue and White.
Let's Craft and Create Challenge 37; valentine/Romantic.
Joyful Stamper; Inspire me Fridays 43; Anything Goes.

A First Attempt

2012-01-26T20:14:00.004+01:00

Despite still getting to grips with all the new things on my computer, a different camera, craft serif artist, and an on-line water-colour course, today I took on another new challenge. I started a course of parchment work for beginners. The timing isn't great but it has taken the organiser a year to get enough people interested, so there won't be another one for a while. The classes are only once a month so it shouldn't be too difficult to fit them in, but we do have to do lots of practice in between classes. Of course, it also meant that we needed to buy several new items of equipment. The only useful things I had were a few ball tools from the long ago time when we used to hand emboss card using brass stencils and a light box. So I bought enough today to keep be busy for now, and others are on order and should be here in time for the next lesson. As so often happens out here, two of the people who had signed up for the course are no longer around, so in the end there were only four of us, plus our teacher Brenda (in the red top), and Margaret (in the purple stripe top) who runs the craft shop up in Albox, where the classes are held. Today we learned a bit about handling parchment, and how we will be working with it, and mastered the very basic techniques. By the end of the day we had all put together a simple birthday card. Here is mine. It has lots of things I would like to do better, and I will have another go at it soon, but it is not too bad for a first attempt. This is something I have often looked at with admiration, so I am glad to have the opportunity to at least have a go at it for myself.

WOYWW 138

2012-01-25T22:10:00.009+01:00

Better late than never, I am popping over to Julia's Stamping Ground to add my untidy workspace to her list, and take a peek at what everyone else is getting up to.

I haven't anything very exciting to report, but I am making a few preliminary examples of stationery that I have agreed to make for someone. So this afternoon I put my new Silhouette through it's paces and did some pretty intricate cutting out. I also sorted out some paper and card that I could use, because it seems a shame to spend on on more when I have a cupboard full, but I haven't necessarily got enough of any one colour. Then I chose a few suitable font options. I'm really just playing around with ideas at the minute but it is a fairly last-minute thing so decisions need to be made. I will get a few bits put together now and send some photos in an e-mail so they can choose.

Then I think my tray, where I dump used items and left over bits after a project, is calling for some attention. I believe there is some new stuff in there too, just waiting for a home! Everything keeps sliding off it and I am tired of picking it all up.

Better get on with it then. I will do my best to get around a few more of your blogs this week too. I am sorry I never manage to get to all of you, but apart from a few of my 'regulars' I do try to visit different ones each week.

Seascapes

2012-01-23T23:45:00.012+01:00

I have been neglecting my paper-crafting in favour of photography just lately, so this week I decided to make a few birthday cards. I found an attractive lighthouse scene that was on a plate of Chocolate Baroque stamps, that I bought for one of the other images on it, and this one had never been used. So I stamped it a couple of times onto coated white card. I wanted one to look like a sunrise scene, and one a sunset. For both of them I used a mixture of copics and promarkers, and then added a touch of stickles to the water.

For the sunset I matched two colours from the image to double mat it, then attached it to a pale lilac card with a strip of glittery blue sticky ribbon across it. A vertical sentiment and a silver anchor charm finished this one.

When I stamped the sunrise I accidentally caught the edge of the cut rubber with the ink, so to eliminate this I cut it out in a rough outline of the image, and matted it onto deep blue, and then cream card. I made a base card of a similar blue, and added panels of printed papers from my snippets box and a printed band of seaside images from my Faye Wittaker collection CD. I mounted the topper on 1mm sticky pads at a slight angle and found a large sentiment peel-off for the bottom corner.

The third card is a bit different. I started by adding distress ink with an ink duster to glossy white card, in layers for sky, sea and sand. I then used an assortment of Art Impressions scenic stamps to make a tropical beach scene. I added a hand drawn boat and seagulls, and cut it out with a nesties label die. The frame is some shiny jade card that I rescued from a bank brochure. I mounted this onto a pale yellow 15cm square card but it was very muted colours and I wanted to brighten it up. So I stamped the flip-flops border stamp (Great Impressions), coloured it and cut it out, and glued it under the image. I then thought that as it was a tropical scene, some tropical flowers would be good. I turned to Penny Duncan's site, as she has made cutting files and tutorials for many different flowers. Unfortunately, as from this week the cutting files are no longer available*, but I was just in time to download the bird of paradise flower, and having watched her tutorial for hibiscus, I was able to have a go at cutting my own one out. Do visit her blog. She does some inspiring work. I cut my flowers from cream heavy paper and coloured them with distress inks before assembling them. For the stamen of the hibiscus I used a flower centre that you can buy in bunches from many craft shops, and I coloured it's post with a copic marker then coated the tip with glossy accents and dipped it into yellow flocking. I am quite pleased with these flowers though I have no idea how well they will survive if I decide to post the card. I may have to keep it for a hand delivered one.

* I am pleased to say that Penny has now resolved the problem with her files and they are again available on her blog. It is well worth a visit.

I am entering these cards in the Crafty Purple Frog Challenge; Anything Goes, Stamp and Create January Challenge; Anything Goes, and to the Make it Monday Linky Party 73.

Catching up with myself; Days 11-18

2012-01-18T23:35:00.013+01:00

Well I can't believe it is a full week since I last posted my photos. But this doesn't mean I haven't taken them. So far I have managed to take one every day. (Two in fact. One inspired by Suzie's prompts, and a random one of anything that takes my fancy on the day). The random ones I am loading into a clipping mask each day and I will show the completed page at the end of the month, but here are the past week's offering for Suzie.

Day 11; This Item of Clothing is one of my favourite dresses. It was bought at least twenty (yes, twenty!) years ago in Wembley market. It was love at first sight and I took a lot of stick for wearing it at the time. Now such colourful garments are the norm, and no-one bats an eyelid when I put it on. In fact people come up and tell me how much they like it. What goes around, comes around...

Day 12; I had been cleaning the interior doors and this Translucent one between the kitchen and utility room, disguises the muddle beyond it, just showing lovely pearly colours, which unfortunately did not photograph very well!

Day 13; What is Inside your fridge? In mine there is everything from diary goods to bread, a range of jams and pickles, fruit and veg. and dog food! Yes, just about everything that might have been stored in the larder back in UK, ends up in the fridge out here. It is the safest place for it all, so my husband bought me a larger fridge and I still manage to fill it.

Day 14; My Guilty Pleasure is a simple marmalade sandwich. Although my blood sugar level is 'acceptable' if I take my tablets, I am registered diabetic so I have to limit my consumption of all things sweet. But when I get a real craving for sugar, nothing cures me better than a slice of bread and butter, and my own home-made Seville orange marmalade.

Day 15: This is my new Silhouette Cameo in action, doing some fairly intricate cutting on very shiny holographic paper, for a wedding card I was making. My Generous husband bought this machine for me at Christmas, knowing how much I wanted it, even though, out of necessity, he had replaced my computer and bought me a wide-bed printer just the month before.

Day 16: The first of the new season fruit was in the street market on Saturday, so I bought lovely ripe apricots and strawberries. Along with a handful of my favourite toasted seed and nut mix, this made a healthy and very tasty Snack.

Day 17; We had our first taste of real winter weather this week, and our houses are built to keep us cool in the Summer, but not to keep us warm in Winter. Our only heating is small gas and electric fires which we light when we settle down to watch TV etc in the evening, but during the day I solve the problem of draughts by sitting on a sheepskin chair cover, and wrapping up in a colourful rug that my mum crocheted many years ago. But every time I stand up to fetch something, my Naughty Baggins curls up on my warm covers.

Day 18: It was very Pleasurable to stand and watch the breakers rolling in on a deserted beach on a sunny January day. (No need for crocheted rugs today!)

Right, that's me up to date again. I will try not to leave it so long next time. Now I'm off to have a look at how a few other folk have interpreted the prompts. And I will also post the logo in my sidebar. Why not take a look at some beautiful photos, or even join in and post some of your own.

WOYWW 137

2012-01-18T23:12:00.007+01:00

Better late than never, I am joining Julia and her friends over on her blog, to see what everyone has on their work-desk today. Mine started off in it's usual tidy Wednesday state. Last night I finished off a wedding card that I wanted to post today, but I had to make sure that was all cleared away for today's photo. I will do a post about it after the event on 28th of the month. Today, I had only just returned from my morning with my sewing group, when the courier was at the door with an exciting parcel for me. Yes; it was my new camera, complete with batteries and charger, a nice soft case, a mini tripod an SD card, and a lens hood. So of course I immediately unpacked it all over my tidy desk, unhelpfully 'helped' by my beautiful Arwen who claimed one of the plastic bags as her toy. This is a bridge camera, one step up from the digital point and take, but easier to manage than a full SLR. The only down side was that the only manual is on the accompanying CD so I spent the rest of the afternoon printing this out so that I can sit and go through it with the camera in my hand. It is going to be somewhat of a learning curve, but I am looking forward to finding out just what it can do. But first I am going to see what everyone else is doing, so follow me to Stamping Ground and join in the fun.

New stash

2012-01-14T18:56:00.010+01:00

Well I've been sadly lacking in motivation to do much crafting just lately, as well as being distracted by other things, such as taking photos and filing them regularly, but there is nothing like some new stash to get you going again. There were several items that I have had my eye on for a while, but I lacked the finances for them before Christmas. I also spotted several items in new year sales offers, so I decided to treat myself to one or two of them. So this week I have had four lovely parcels arrive. Three came on Wednesday and I took this photo for What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday, but I didn't find the time to post it! In amongst this little lot you can see several different types of crafty notions sprays which are the most delicious colours, (you can see the quick trial samples under them) a Cheery Lynn small doily die, some rainbow drops, and a CD from Joanna Sheen. I had made up my mind not to buy any more CD's but this was a very good price, and Faye Wittaker's illustrations are just beautiful. The three clear 'rulers' are a clever system to ensure that you cut all mats and layers evenly. This will be very useful for me because die cut frames are often not quite the size I want, and as both my eyes and my hands are failing, all my hand-cut work is uneven or crooked. I think these will make a big difference. There is also a small pack of hearty clay, just to make a change from the air-drying clay I can buy out here, and some die-cut chipboard 'Twiddlybits'. The next day I also had a parcel containing three plates of Chocolate Baroque stamps, and another with a multi surface distressing tool, a little Christmas stamp (!) and some of Aileen's clear tacky glue.

So I thought I had better get on and make use of some of these things before they are lost in a cupboard. I started by printing our four toppers from the CD two or three times, and also some backing papers. Using glossy card stock and alcohol inks with a silver mixer, I swiped butterscotch and stonewashed ink across the card, wiping the felt across the surface rather than dabbing to give a smooth finish for the sand and sea. I then added a little denim to the stonewashed and swiped across the top of the card to give a darker tone to the sky.

For two of the cards (back left and centre), I used this as a background and cut out some of the CD images , lightly decoupaging the children's hats, collars and ribbons. I added some shadows, grassy dunes and the kite tail with promarkers. I cut and matted these toppers using nestie die frames, and added them to cards that I had covered with backing papers also from the CD. For the third card I used a complete topper from the CD, again printing it three times so that I could decoupage the girl's hat, teddy, collar and ribbon. I used the new layering rulers to give this a neat double mount - they really did help - and attached it to another card. The sentiment is from a Crafty Individuals stamp plate. For the last card I used a piece of blue card with a waves border along one edge. I backed this with a strip of the backing paper. I then used a larger topper, without decoupage this time, and again used the rulers to double mat it. I folded the card to fit a DL envelope, attached the topper to the left hand side and in the space on the right, I hung two sea-side charms on fine thread and attached them under a double baker's twine bow, held in place with the new tacky glue.

So my new stash has proved very useful already and I have made a good start to my resolve to hold a stock of cards instead of having a mad rush to make one every time it is needed.

I am linking this to the Make it Monday linky party 71. and,
Crafty Ann's Challenge 56 where we are encouraged to 'Let's Think Hot', and these sea-side images certainly have a touch of sunshine in them.

Days 9 and 10

2012-01-10T20:48:00.012+01:00

Well I don't seem to be doing much craft work right now, though I did stick to my resolve and made five more cards like the robin one I posted last week.

This week I have concentrated on photography, mainly because I want to get in the habit of taking quick photos wherever I am, and particularly to enable me to keep up with project 365. I am also battling to get to grips with Adobe photoshop. I have bought a photoboard online which has 31 frames on it to take the photos from each day for a month. I read an article on using this in the new scrapbook magazine - Scrap 365 - and wanted to give it a try. I have to say that for someone who has never used photoshop before, this was a lot harder than it looked, but I have finally mastered it and my first photos are in place, and hopefully I will be able to add the rest daily, without too much of a problem. When the board is full I will show it on here.

Todays word on Suzie's blog is Metallic. By pure chance, when I popped into the local craft shop this morning, I picked up these pretty metallic self-adhesive studs. I thought they would be more useful than brads because they are so flat. When I got home and saw today's word I took a quick photo of them. They are not very artistically arranged because I haven't decided what I will be using them for yet. So I thought I was all done and dusted, but at teatime today, my dear husband took me down the road and bought me a new microwave. (After living here for three years, it still seems strange that little village shops re-open around six o'clock, but sometimes it is very convenient). My new oven is all shiny stainless steel, inside and out, so I took a photo of that too because goodness knows how long it will stay like it!

This is yesterday's photo for the word Water. One of my cats is an avid water drinker, so last spring I treated them all to a fountain which keeps their water aerated and fresh. They all love it, but particularly Baggins who sits by it and tells me off if the level is too low. A few days ago the pump failed and he was very disgruntled about it, but yesterday I fixed it and he immediately sat and lapped at it for ages. I was fascinated to watch how fast his little pink tongue went in and out. In fact I had to take several photos before I caught it in action.

I am actually keeping two separate folders of 365 photos, and the second one has no theme; just anything that catches my eye. So I am going to share today's photo which is a Romanesco cauliflower. Isn't it just beautiful! The mathematician in me sees Fibonacci spirals, and living in a house of computer buffs I also think fractals, but the rest of me just thinks how beautiful nature can be. It is almost a shame to eat it, but I like them too much to let it go to waste, so it will be in the pot by the end of the week.

Days 7 and 8

2012-01-08T21:09:00.007+01:00

Yesterday, for my photo, I chose the only cup that really cheers for me, a good old cup of tea. When I order this in Spain I am never sure what I will get. It ranges from hot water with just a hint of brown in it and no sign of milk or lemon, to a cup of cold milk with a teabag floating in it. I am amazed that they drink so much coffee out here but have not discovered how much more refreshing tea is. I like to use an old-fashioned teapot and loose tea, but that is not available out here, so I buy it in bulk, on line. So here is my photo for day 7; Drink.

Today's word is Cosy, and although we are having an exceptionally warm and sunny time right now, the minute the sun drops below the horizon it does get really chilly. With no central heating, and cold stone floors throughout the house, at tea time we all don our trousers, socks and fur-lined slippers, but I don't need those and I've got the cosiest toes here.

Miki may be a girl but she's no lady! I'm not sure whether she's just playing 'dead' or whether she's telling me something about my feet!!

If you'd like to see how other folk have interpreted these words, just pop over to Suzie's blog and take a look.

365 Frost

2012-01-06T17:16:00.005+01:00

Suzie's word for today is Frost. Not an easy one for me as we rarely see such a thing in Los Gallardos, so I have cheated a bit and am using a photo (taken in the early hours of this morning) of the Christmas street lights on the other side of the village. (We have blue angels and snowy churches by us). There is nothing extraordinary about it, but it just tickles me that they choose a snowflake as the feature of their lights when so many of the villagers have never seen snow. If it were a real snowflake it would be long gone. In the full sun, we must have been up around 30º today! I know frost isn't quite the same as snow but allow me a little photographic license today please. Follow my link to Suzie's blog and see how everyone else has interpreted this theme.

Back in the swing, and a blog candy challenge

2012-01-05T22:32:00.009+01:00

With just tomorrows Three Kings Fiesta to bring the seasonal celebrations to an end, I decided it was time to get back in to the swing of regular crafting. Although I enjoyed following several blog challenges regularly last year, I did find that the time it took me to do them left very little spare time to do 'my own thing' and I always felt sad that there was never enough time to leave many comments on other people's contributions. This year I have lots of new techniques to try and different media to experiment with. I am hoping to do more photography through participating in project 365, to follow an online watercolour course that I signed up to back in November but haven't managed to get started on yet, and to at least start on a hybrid scrapbook using the digital program Serif craft artist with added embellishments to give more dimension to the pages. So obviously some of the challenges will have to go. Instead, this year I am going to participate in a few when the theme particularly appeals to me, and when I am happy with a design I shall make a run of half a dozen or so of them, so that I will still have a good set of Christmas cards made ready for next year, and also some birthday cards ready before they are absolutely needed. (That'll be a first!!)

But to start me off I am sticking to what I am comfortable with, and making my first Christmas card of 2012 for Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge 53 which is an open theme this week. She also has some lovely candy on offer with this challenge so why not pop over to her blog and take a look.

I bought a rather lovely plate of stamps from Chocolate Baroque back before Christmas, but unfortunately it was really too late to use them, so they had not been inked at all. So today I took the main stamp image and stamped it onto a square of white paper that had been inked around the edge with Distress ink - tumbled glass, and I also brushed a little of the same ink over the center to soften the harsh white. I stamped the image with memento Paris dusk, and added colour to the holly with copic markers. I didn't like the blue robin, even when I added some colour to him, so I stamped him again with memento rich cocoa, coloured him and cut him out. Then I glued him flat over the main image which looked a lot better. The main panel is mounted on a 15cm royal blue card and I added crystal stickles to the snowflakes and leaves for a bit of sparkle. So now I am off to link this to CHCC, but this year I shall not be spending too much time searching for other suitable challenges for it. I'd rather be making a few more cards like this, and adding comments on to the blogs of other contributors to the challenge.

Project 365

2012-01-05T16:07:00.011+01:00

Hi friends. Today I thought I would share a new project that I hope to be involved with this year called 365. I am sure this is familiar to most of you, but in case it is not, the idea is to take a photograph every day of the year, so that at the end of it, you have a pictorial diary of how you spent your time. There are several internet projects on this idea but I am not really following any of them, more just doing my own thing. But one blog caught my eye this week called suzies365, and she is actually offering a word each day to match a photo to. This is more limiting than I want, as I hope to simply record how I spend my time, but I am running two folders side by side, one for my own photo and one for any that I take which I feel fits Suzie's criteria for the day. I shall be forming templates to display my own pictures in, either weekly, fortnightly or monthly, so that, by the end of the year, I will have a small book and I may share some of the pages on my blog along the way, but in the meantime here are my offerings for Suzie, for yesterday's word 'Pretty' and today's word 'Excitement'.

For Pretty I took a photo of one of my poinsettias that is out on the back porch, and it did indeed look very pretty yesterday as the Spanish sunshine turned it's leaves from red to orange.

I thought this picture caught some of the Excitement displayed by the children in our village today as they eagerly await the arrival of the Three Kings tonight. (See my post for yesterday to learn more about this). I took it at lunch time when we wandered over to the plaza for the opening of the medieval market and fayre. And 'yes' the knight on stilts did catch her, to squeals of excitement from her and her little band of friends!

I am excited too because, hopefully by the end of this month, I will have a new camera, and be able to be a bit more adventurous with the photos I take. In the meantime I will make do with the old digital one that I bought from my son when mine broke. It takes pretty dismal photos indoors, but seems to cope quite well outside, so let's hope the sun keeps shining for a few more weeks.

WOYWW 135

2012-01-04T15:27:00.007+01:00

Hello to all my fellow crafters. I hope some of you have had a more productive week than I have. All I have achieved this week is one quick card for a grandson, that needed to be in the post today. I may do a short post about that later today. Here in Spain we are still in holiday mode as our big celebration is at the end of the week when it is Three kings Day (or Epiphany). Tomorrow night the kings will arrive on a float that will drive around the village, and they will throw huge quantity of sweets at the children. They then alight at a large marquee in the centre of the village and distribute gifts to the children (previously left at the town hall by their parents), after which there is a bar open around marquee, and music and dancing will go on until late! One year we drove the ten minute ride to the coast and spent the evening in Garrucha, where, this being an active fishing village, the kings arrive on a fishing boat, and at the port they transfer onto three very elaborate floats to process around the streets. The children also wake up the next morning to find three gifts under the tree, or by their bed - one from each of the kings. (They may have already had a Christmas stocking or gifts from Santa on Christmas day, but for many families, all this is saved for Three Kings day).

The following day our little village has a Three Kings Fiesta. We are the only village to do this around here so there will be plenty of visitors. During the morning the kings will arrive at the plaza, usually on actual camels, though last year they were on horses, and all the villagers dress up and reenact the scene at Herod's palace where the kings enquired about the whereabouts of the new baby king, as foretold in the stars. This is followed by a day of fun at a medieval market, and a free feast for everyone that could be paella, migas or tortilla.

I digress but I thought you might be interested to read a little about the traditions of this season in Andalucia. Perhaps it explains a little why I am not back into craft-mode yet, and why my desk is still as clear and empty as it was last Wednesday. So for today's picture I thought I'd show you where I go each week on a Wednesday morning. This is my Wednesday morning work desk, where I sit each week with a group of other ex-pats, and we either knit, sew, do patchwork, crochet, lace-making, or occasionally make cards, and as we work we chat, swap patterns, teach one another new skills, and share knowledge of shops and events in the area. When you live so far away from your family, a good network of friends is very important, so groups like this are very popular, and we know we could call on one another in an emergency and find help and support.

Now I am off to see how many of you (probably most of you) have been a lot more productive than me this week! Join us at Julia's blog and share the fun.

WOYWW 134

2011-12-28T16:18:00.007+01:00

Well my workdesk today is so boringly empty that I am only posting a tiny photo of it. Last night I cleared away everything I had used to make a birthday card for my grandson who will be 17 at the end of January. I can't show the card here as some of his family follow my blog. So instead I will pan around a bit to my computer desk that sits at right angles to my craft desk. I have had to rearrange it because for Christmas, my lovely husband bought me a silhouette cameo machine to replace my defunct craft-robo. It is a much bigger machine as it has the capacity to cut 12" x 12" papers which will be great when I start my next scrapbook. To make sufficient room for it to work with the larger carrier mat I needed to move my second screen. I started using a monitor at the side when my PC was changed for a laptop which had such a small screen that I had difficulty seeing it. I now have a much newer lap-top with a larger screen but I have got used to being able to slide pages from one monitor to the other, and have several open at the same time, so I wanted to keep it. I tried moving it across to the other side to make the space needed for the silhouette but that didn't work either, and it conflicted with the out tray on my printer. Then, this week I helped Chris to raise his second monitor up above his main one and I realised that might be the solution for me too. So I now have two screens stacked one above the other and I can still slide pages between them. If I fold the lap-top down a bit you can see that the monitor is sitting on two large bricks wrapped in brown paper like a parcel. (They are hollow cell bricks and I didn't want any bugs crawling into the cells to nest!). So now I am all set to get to grips with my new machine. Incidentally, my current photo that I am using as a wallpaper on my screens is a scene from the amazing Angkor Wat temples at Seam Reap in Cambodia. It is a daily reminder of the wonderful time I had there back in 2008.

Well, better late than never I have managed a blog post today, so now I am off to Julia's blog to see what everyone else is getting up to now the Christmas festivities are over.
Happy New year to you all. I'll see you again in 1012!

Christmas Greetings

2011-12-24T10:31:00.004+01:00

There hasn't been much going on in my craft room for the past couple of weeks as I have been busy fulfilling all my orders for mince-pies, and singing with my choir. You can read all about that on my diary blog Kate's Adventures. I have made five New Year cards which I don't usually do, but I can't show them here as some of the recipients follow this blog. Instead I will leave you with this image of my 'White Mary and Joseph'. This is not a new project; I made them about ten years ago, after watching a very inspiring lady demonstrating at the craft show in NEC Birmingham. Each one is built around a wine bottle, I think with a wire and paper head, and then covered with strips of cotton fabric dipped in runny poly-filler which dries white. I remember scouring all the local charity shops to find a pure cotton sheet to tear into strips. Polyester-cotton doesn't hold the poly filler the same. It was a messy job but well worth it, and the resulting figures are very stable and robust. Many of my new friends in Spain have asked me to do a class to show them how to make some but I will have to do some research first to remind myself, and also try to find an equivalent Spanish filler that dries white.
I had the notion to make a whole nativity scene but I do not have sufficient space to display them. These two sit on my hall table where they are the first thing visitors to the house see, and for me they are the embodiment of what Christmas is all about.

So may I wish all my loyal followers a Very Happy Christmas and I hope 2012 is for each of you, a year full of Love, Hope and Peace.

Kate x

For two sisters.

2011-12-01T18:52:00.008+01:00

Actually the two birthday cards I needed this week were one for my sister and one for my sister-in-law. One is in her late seventies and one in her eighties, and I know they are both very fond of flowers so that's what I went with. My sister in particular is forever linked by the family to pansies, presumably because they were her favourite as a little girl and it just stuck. So I used my Joanna Sheen Fabulous Flowers CD to print out a few copies of a pretty lilac pansy and decoupaged it. I used a DL lilac card, a backing paper I found in my stash, (I had printed it but I can't remember it's origin), and two Marianne dies for the foliage. A cuttlebug ribbon slider for the greeting, some lilac organza ribbon and some matching gems finished it off. (It looks very blue in the photo but it is lilac!)

For the second card I again chose a DL blank, this time in white, and an off-cut of pink paisley paper which again is one I printed off too long ago to remember it's origin. I found some blue card to match the blue on the backing paper and softened it with silver glimmer mist, painted on because none of my sprays want to work these days. I used the same Marianne die as before for the side foliage, plus a Spellbinders lace border and nesties labels for the frame. The sentiment is a Chocolate Baroque stamp. The flower is one I made when I had a couple if friends over so that I could show them how it is done. It was made using the wet paper technique which is my favourite method of making flowers, and although they are quite chunky, they are also very robust, and I know they will survive going through the post. There is an excellent tutorial for making these flowers on Carole Clax ton's blog . While mine are still wet I rub an ink pad onto a white tile, spritz it with water and wipe the flower through it, as many times as necessary to reach the colour I want. I finished this card with a butterfly made using my new Framelet set of Sissix dies with Hero Art stamps, which I can see being very well used in the future. The set contained three sizes of the butterfly and two flowers.

I am entering this card in:
The Craft Room Challenge: Make your own flowers;
and both cards in Make it Monday linky party 65: Anything goes.

Christmas Flower Fairies

2011-11-26T10:06:00.008+01:00

About five years ago at the Hobbycraft Show in the NEC, Birmingham, I was wow-ed by the Pinflair stall where they were covering small chipboard squares with printed fabric to go on cards. I spent far too much money buying some, used them that year and then stashed them away, never to see light of day again. Well not never actually, because when Bah! Humbug! challenged us to use fabric on a card, I went straight to that box.

I did have some lovely old musical instruments on one piece of fabric but I seem to have used most of that, so instead I got out the piece featuring Christmas flower fairies. I probably bought this because I am an avid collecter of all authentic Cicely Mary Barker Flower Fairies items, but on closer inspection, the fabric is very badly printed and doesn't do her artwork justice at all. But undaunted I cut out one each of the four images and used them to cover the chipboard pieces, still stored with the fabric -amazing! I then jazzed them up a bit with red, green and clear stickles. I dug out a length of pretty green and red metalic mesh (I think Jean and I bought this between us on my recent visit, but goodness me - if I can't remember clearly what I bought a couple of months ago, it's no wonder I don't know where half of my stash came from!). Using this in various ways, together with papers from my Christmas off-cuts box, I managed to put together four aceptable Christmas cards, which I am entering in these challenges:-

Bah! Humbug! Challenge 46: Use Fabric.
Everybody Art Challenge: A Christmas card.
Scrapbook Sisters Card Challenge 61: Christmas Time.
Little Red Wagon Challenge 108: Christmas Theme.

WOYWW129

2011-11-23T16:38:00.007+01:00

Hi folks. I am rather late posting today as I was out all morning and have spent half the afternoon chatting to my youngest son via a video call on Skype. He is coming out to visit us in just over a week, and we are so looking forward to it. Also he is going to take something back for me that I have to finish off, so that is all that is on my work desk today.

Followers of my blog will know that I finished a scrapbook for my second youngest son just in time to take over ot UK when I visited in September. He was so thrilled with it but he asked me if I could add an extra page. Because of the way it works, this actually means two extra pages, so I put an extra slipcover in his book so all he has to do is slip these pages in to it when he gets them. The first one (that he actually asked for) is to highlight all the posters and fliers that have adorned the streets of Brighton, advertising gigs for his various bands - he is a drummer in a heavy metal band. He is well aware that I don't really go for his style of music, though I love to see his energy and enjoyment as he plays, and I am also not bowled over by the art work on many of his posters, but I understand the 'thrill' he says he gets to see his name (or the name of his band) in print, and they do deserve a space in his book. So I printed them out onto plain matt-finish paper and divided them into the four bands he has played in. I tied one to a lampost, put two behind acetate in a 'window', stuck most of them randomly on a notice board, and the most current ones onto a blackboard. That page is on my desk here.

For the other page I suggested he gave me his favourite photos of the bands in action, performing, practising, and just enjoying being together. And he did - some 35 of them! So the rest of my desk is covered with draft copies of all of them and I am experimenting with ways of displaying all of them on a 12" x 12" page! I think I am going for two cascades, one of the live performance pictures and one of the rest of them. These will just fit and I will have a tiny corner left to do a snippet of journalling. Best get on with it then....

I also just wanted to say a big 'Thank you' to everyone who gave me help and advice on the storage of copics, promarkers etc. It was very, very helpful, and I am grateful that you took the time to share your experiences.

Now I will just link this to Julia's blog and see what some of you are getting up to. I am sorry I can't get round to everyone, but I'll try to visit most of you in the next couple of days.

Hark the herald angels sing

2011-11-21T18:51:00.004+01:00

My order for some LOTV stamps arrived last week so I was all set to make my last run of cards with them when Hazel's latest challenge popped up and they fitted the bill nicely. The challenge is to incorporate some music and my stamps are all angels playing various instruments.I stamped an image and scanned it into my computer so I could flip it and have two angels looking towards one another. I added a touch of copics to their dresses and the clouds, and a bit more colour to their hair. I used a pastel blue promarker for the sky. I then cut the two images out vaguely echoing the shape of wings. I typed a verse of a well known carol and made sure it would fit inside a nesties die, and cut it out, distressed its edges with blue ink and matted it onto gold. (Originally I typed in my favourite carol, "It came upon a midnight clear" which includes the line "..from angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold", but I realised that I had used the wrong image. Another of my new stamps is an angel playing a harp! So I quickly changed the carol and I will make more cards later with the harpist.) . The background is cut from a rather lovely gold embossed scrapbook paper (make unknown). I used a Debbie Moore stamp to print music across the lower half of the card, and then assembled it all as in the photo. Then I added some sparkle with gold stickles on the stars and crystal stickles on the angel's wings.

I am entering this in:
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge 47: Music.
Wags'n'Whiskers Challenge 67: Christmas themed.
Creatalicious Challenge 28: Christmas, Make sure it sparkles.
Stampin Sisters in Christ: Use a music stamp.

WOYWW128

2011-11-16T14:20:00.005+01:00

I wasn't in the right frame of mind for my usual Wednesday morning sewing group, so I was around at home for a while. The first thing I did was try to take one photo that showed all twenty-three of the little (10cm square) Christmas cards I had been making. I finished them last night so my desk was completly clear. I needed to make a tiered stand so my big Spanish/English dictionary came in very handy. This was layered up with a couple of craft books, some storage boxes, some long acrylic stamp blocks and my mini easel. I got the photo I wanted (See my previous post), so I thought I'd show you the back view! Just next to that, in front of my printer with the coloured cloth over it, is my canvas bag of basic art materials that I keep packed to take to the art group in the village on Monday afternoons. I am fishing in it all the time to use the things, but if I am running late on a Monday, which is nearly always, I know I can grab the bag and run, and there will be something in there to keep me busy for a couple of hours.

Above that is a small basket containing my xyron sticker making, cocktail sticks, a pot for small stray items that I find all over the place, and loads of other bits and pieces. I keep this covered to stop the cats playing with it all.

Round a bit further, just to the left of where I sit, is a plastic shoe-box containing all my sticky stuff from glossy accents to PVA to silicone glue, glue dots and double sided tape. It is useful to keep it all within reach. In front of that is a water mister and two bottles of 90% alcohol, bought off the shelf in most Spanish supermarkets. It cleans up almost anything, from permanent markers to sticky scissors, and I regular wipe some over my green mats as I am a messy worker, and they always have something on them that shouldn't be there. And in front of that again is my box of copic markers - I have one set of 72 colours and I need to get the other set, but while I have been saving up for them, they have brought out another 45 colours. How tough is that! In the meantime, I supplement my range of colours with a handful of promarkers, (in the square pot) that I bought several years ago when they were introduced at the NEC show, and a set of flexmarkers bought recently in UK.

A question for all users of alcohol ink pens. - How do you store yours? I read somewhere that upright is better than horizontal, and the storage containers available for them all suggest this. But - I have encountered two problems. One of my copic markers appears to have dried out already. It is not one I use that often, but it is quite dry. None of the others bought at the same time are dry at all. I will buy a reinker for it, but I am wondering whether it has a faulty cap and I should be thinking of replacing the whole pen instead of refilling this one. Also the Flexmarkers that I bought last month are very, very pale colours. When I use them they almost make the paper just look wet, and you have to wait for them to dry to see the colour. I thought one of them didn't actually have any colour in it, but I have since discovered that the chisel tip makes the paper pastel pink, while the brush end leaves it colourless! Has anyone else experienced this? If I didn't live overseas I would probably send it back, but from here, it may not be worth the hassel. I have tried shaking it, and storing it with the brush tip downwards but it has not made a difference. That one certainly isn't dry, just without colour. I just love using these pens, but they are too expensive to buy faulty ones. What are your feelings about them? I'd appreciate your comments. Thanks.

Now it's time to link this to Julia's blog and see what my crafting friends are getting up to this week.

A Special One, and then Some..

2011-11-16T10:01:00.012+01:00

I was a bit non-plussed when Bah! Humbug! challenged us this week to make a card for 'Baby's First Christmas', as I had made the one I needed for my new great-grandson for Hazel's challenge to make a card for Someone Special, a couple of weeks ago. (You can see it here). But I decided to use the same MoManning digistamp as I used then, but a totally different layout and colour scheme, as I have a couple of friends with new baby girls in their families, so one of them may be able to use it. So here is the card I made this time.

It made a change for me, as our family is very weighted on the male side, and I don't get to do girly cards very often. The image is coloured with copics, the papers are all from a magazine freebie booklet from several years ago, the flowers and leaves are all made with Marianne dies, and the teddy is an old, much loved, PSX stamp. The bauble is clear embossed to make it shine.

And then some more of my little cards. I made a set of sixteen of these a while back and really enjoyed the challenge of making a small space look interesting. I sorted through my collection of Christmas cards this week, and although I have some 80 or so ready to go, I realised that I need about another forty so I thought I'd better get stuck in. I started by using Publisher to compile a page of Christmas digistamps, and here it is. The baby picture, Henry's little lamb and the cherub on a bauble, are all MoManning designs, the cute deer images and chicks are from pink cat studio, and the adorable Baby Jesus and the sentiment, is a pink gem design. Having printed this I removed the baby image and replaced it with more repeats of the others, and printed it out a couple more times. (Note to self; Spread them out a bit more next time. It was difficult cutting between some of them!) I had one arm in a sling for the weekend but fortunately it was my left arm so I was still able to use my pens, and I spent my time adding colour to all the images mainly with copic markers. Hiding away in my pre-cut cards I found a set of pale green ones with matching envelopes and a couple of red ones with green envelopes, so I made use of those and cut the rest from heavy white card. I can cut three of these from one A4 sheet, and this time I made sure they would all fit into the 9.9cm envelopes that I recently bought a pack of. Then it was a case of raiding my off-cuts box and using a variety of Nesties, Nellie Snellen and Marianne dies, to turn each image into a card, adding a variety of peel-offs, gems, and ribbons as needed. I tried not to make too many the same, and as I was using up oddments, this was easy. This morning I counted them up and was pleased to find I had made twenty three cards, so I arranged them as best I could, and managed to get them all into this picture. Quite a satisfying few days work. Now I just have to do it all over again and I will have enough!!

I am entering the first card in:
Bah! Humbug! Challenge 44: Baby's First Christmas.

Papertake Weekly Challenge: First Christmas.

And linking the whole collection to :
Make it Monday 63: Anything Goes.
Inspire me Friday 32: Anything Goes.
Digital Tuesday Challenge 137: Christmas time.
and to Shirley-Anne's blog, where I am sure I must have reached my target of fifty cards by 1st December.

Let your little light shine

2011-11-12T18:51:00.004+01:00

Hazel's challenge this week is 'Whatever lights your candle', and as I usually take themes fairly literally, I knew straight away what stamp I would use, but because my left arm is in a sling at the minute, I neded to keep it fairly simple.

I wanted to make separate elements in case I messed one up, so I found an off-cut of cream card and stamped the Penny Black image using three memento ink pads. It didn't stamp particularly well so I added colour with copic pens. I cut it out and added a bit of sparkle with yellow stickles on the flame and around the frame. (I find yellow stickles are much more effective than the gold ones for most things). I then found a precut card and envelope in some very old stash and as it looked a bit dark I added two lengths of Christmas foil ribbon bought recently in Hobbycraft. This left me with a space on the left that needed filling, so another search through my 'old stash' produced a suitable quote on cloudy acetate. I ran it through my Xyron and stuck it to the same cream card as the main image, cut it out and framed it with yellow stickles to match. The greetings banner is so old I can't begin to think of it's origin!

I made this card for:
Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 46: Whatever lights your candle,
and I am also linking it to Shirley Anne's blog towards my tally. I am determined to hit my total of 50 cards before the end of the month!

Skiing Anyone?

2011-11-11T09:15:00.005+01:00

Now I don't think this ranks among the better cards I have made, but as it was very much a case of trial and error, the end result is not too bad. Regular followers of my blog will know that a few months back my husband bought me a big set of Serif Craft Artist CDs, but due to unplanned events and circumstances, I haven't had a chance to really get to grips with it. The ABC team wanted us to feature Winter Sports for their challenge this week, and as I had no suitable stamps or digis I decided to use a 'real' photo and see what I could make. This is the photo I used, taken when we took some visitors up to Sierra Nevada a couple of Christmases ago. None of us actually take part in the sports there, but the scenery is stunning and there is a lovely holiday atmosphere in the village at the base of the slopes.

For the card I imported papers that were already on my computer, and used one of the Craft Artist CDs for all the frames and embellishments. I am sure there are a lot more complicated techniques available within this programme, but the basic assembly of this card was very easy, and did not take too long. I printed it out twice on to one sheet of A4 card, so, as you can see in my photo, I made two identical cards. I did think it was a bit 'flat' as I am now used to adding several, (sometimes too many), embellishments to my hand made creations, so I added a white organza ribbon bow over the printed one, and 'blinged-up' the snowflakes with stickles and gems.

I made this card for: ABC Christmas Challenge: W is for Winter Sports. I shall also link both of them to Shirley-Anne's blog.

WOYWW127

2011-11-09T16:59:00.003+01:00

I nearly didn't post this week as there was absolutely nothing on my desk this morning, except my array of green mats. But when I came home from my usual Wednesday morning craft group, I found a small parcel waiting for me. It was an order from Chocolate Baroque, so of course, I went to my craft room to open it and have a play. So you can see two newsletters and a rainbow of pearlescent card which are part of my CB Guild subscription renewal, three large plates of stamps with EZ Mount to put them on, and two lots of Crealies foliage dies that I have had my eye on for some time. I've already tried these out in my cuttlebug so one of my boxes of card off-cuts is out. Now I have to get the stamps mounted up on their foam and catalogued so that I can have a go with them.

It is a beautiful hot and sunny day today so I had to close my windows and wooden shutters to get this photo. The cats are curled up on top of my printer, in a sunbeam. They know how to make themselves comfortable!

Don't forget to pop over to Julia's blog to see what everyone else has on their desk today. I'm afraid I can't get to all of you, but I will visit as many as I can before the zoo start demanding their tea.

Trying something new.

2011-11-05T18:40:00.013+01:00

As I spend a lot of time (too much time!) hopping around blogland, I often read hints and tips and technique tutorials, so it is nice to give some of them a try now and then, and that is what I did for this card.

Unfortunately I can't remember where I saw this technique, but I suspect it was on a Make it Monday post. Anyway the aim is to produce a 'misty', sparkly topper, and is particularly suited to a snow picture. I wanted a sihouette image that would give a good, black picture, so I hunted through my snow folder and came up with this circle stamp set by Carolines. The holly is part of the circle frame, and there are several different, smaller stamps to fill the space so I chose the snowman. Once he was stamped I grounded him with a few pens lines. Next I cut around the frame and passed it through my Xyron machine, face down so the image was sticky. Then I carefully covered it with a used tumble-dryer sheet, and cut around it again. (I don't use a tumble drier, but a friend salvaged a couple for me). I cut this out again and then gently shook a fine irridescent glitter all over, tapping the excess off, which left this clearly visible image with a distinct shimmer.

I used a Nellie Snellen die and an off-cut of blue card for the frame. I chose a plain white base card and embossed the top, right hand section with a cuttlebug folder. The blue ribbon was from my stash, and I finished it off with several snowflakes cut with a set of Marianne dies, and blinged them up with matching gems and the same glitter as the topper, applied with a glue pen.

For those of you who don't have a Xyron, I think this would work with a good glue stick if you worked fast so the glitter was added before it dried. You might need to glitter it and then cut it out.

I am entering this card for the :-
Bah! Humbug! Challenge 43:- Snowmen.
Crafty Hazlenut's Christmas Challenge 45:- Bright colours and/or sparkle. (This one has the sparkle. I'll try to add a brighter one later in the week).
Winter Wonderland: Make your card sparkle.
Delightful Challenges: A very sparkly Christmas.
Heidis Hobbystuggu: A Christmas card with Bling or Sparkle.

Here is another little card that I made this week, this time using a Marianne large snowflake die, and a small bird on a branch die, also Marianne, which I coloured to look like a robin. I again used my Xyron to make the snowflake uniformly sticky, and covered it with fine glitter, and used stickles crystal ice to frost the branch. I shaped the leaves from little ovals, so they looked like holly and added red perfect pearls drops for some berries. The background paper is an old magazine freebie from my stash.

I am linking both of these cards to Shirley-Anne's blog to add to my tally.

Vintage Christmas with a Sparkle

2011-11-03T17:35:00.006+01:00

I don't do a lot 'vintage' stuff, so I had to dig deep in the stash boxes to find something for the ABC Christmas Challenge this time.I found the postman and car topper, rescued from an old Christmas card, and then I stamped the postbox (Creative Expressions; Create a scene set), and coloured it with copics to match. I also added matching irridescent glitter to the top. I mounted both of these onto some off-cuts of scrapbook paper, and used a Penny Black sheet to cover a cream base card which I had distressed around the edges with walnut stain distress ink. I used the same ink to distress the edges of the images and mounted them on the base. The greetings was from a tiny paper pad for vintage ATCs. Then I rummaged through my bit-box and found the red ribbon and leaves from some crackers last year, and a flower from my practice days when I had just read a tutorial about making them. I added some aged mahogony distress ink to darken the petals, and highlighted them and the leaves with burgundy stickles, and attached them all to the corner with silicone glue.

This card is for ABC Christmas Challenge: V is for Vintage.
Crafty Purple Frog Challenge 27: Sparkle
Pink Gem Challenge 33: Cold and Frosty

For Someone Special

2011-11-01T09:24:00.008+01:00

When I saw that Hazel was challenging us to make a Christmas card for someone special, I imediately thought of my new great-grandson Isaac. As his mum doesn't follow my blog, I feel quite safe in making a card for him and posting it here. So first of all here is Isaac, who obviously is going to be encouraged to share his mum's love of Disney videos, and her favourite Tigger.

And here is the card I have made for him.

I have used a MoManning digi stamp for the main image, called 'Baby's first Christmas', and coloured it with copics. The backing paper was from my stash, a magazine freebie I think, and the red is a very old sheet from when I had a phase of printing Christmas music as backers. I reversed it and used the back for the frames. The bauble was a bit insignificant so I gave it some shine with glossy accents. This has cracked slightly overnight so I may have another go using UTEE instead. I thought it would be fun to sit the baby in a flower, so the poinsettia and fir branch are Marianne dies and the script bauble was made with nesties circle dies, and computer generated words.

I am entering this card in:
Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 44: For someone special. Bah! Humbug! Challenge 43: Use Die cuts.
Make it Monday 61: All papercrafts.

And I am linking it to Stamping for Joy so that Shirley Anne can add it to my tally.

A little Christmas tree.

2011-10-28T17:56:00.005+01:00

I had a bit of bother with the post I have just done for my other blog, so I hope I am more successful with this one. I thought I would just show you the results of my labours all yesterday afternoon and evening! This isn't my design. Anyone who went to the recent Ally Pally show, may have seen it on Kay Rutter's stall. She had made one to show off the verstility of her Hougie board. I was impressed enough to buy her board, and it is proving to be quite a useful piece of kit, so I was keen to give the Christmas tree a go.

It is of course, a similar idea to Tim Holtz rosettes, but with the folds scored at the regular intervals on the Hougie board. It would have been far easier to make if I had a 'grass' border punch, but I don't, so I managed with my Marianne die 'icicles'. What I hadn't taken on board until I came to make it was that this is a finite die; i.e. it is a set length, (short), and it cuts right across at each end. I didn't want to be joining lots of little pieces together, so I tried to cut it about three quarters of way down its length, move the die along, and start cutting below the edge blade, stopping before the end again, and so on .. Needless to say this didn't always work and I did have to join some pieces, but I kept going. I also had to guess what widths I needed to make each rosette smaller than the prvious one, and what length of paper would make the best rosette. I found that particular die quite difficult to use because it either didn't cut quite well enough and I had to help it in places with my little decoupage scissors, or else it cut beautifully but the paper was too well wedged into the die and was difficult to remove without tearing it. No amount of changing shims seemed to help with this. But in the end I had my six rosettes which I joined with pieces of foam tape. Then I lightly brushed PVA glue all over and dusted it with irridescent glitter, and made the star on top from a wooden die-cut snowflake, heat embossed with Queen of Diamonds UTEE.

I am quite pleased with the end result, but I won't be repeating the exercise too often. It was too time consuming. If I do eventually get a border punch I might give it another go, because it is very pretty. Incidently I was surprised to find it took just over two A4 page of heavyweight paper to make it.

I will link this to Inspire me Fridays linky party 30, where Anything goes.

WOYWW 125

2011-10-26T16:17:00.009+01:00

I nearly didn't post this week as there is very little on my workdesk. In fact there is nothing - zilch - nada! Not even a cat, though, as you can see, she isn't far away. I have been to my usual knitting/sewing group this morning and decided against starting a new paper-craft project this afternoon.

Instead I made my workdesk the table out in the garden, where I sat and worked on a small piece of lace that I wanted to finish. It is a bracelet and I need to get several of them made over the next couple of weeks. Viewed from the other side, you can see that instead of the cats, I had our three hounds for company. Well one is a hound. the black one is his soppy sister, and the smaller one is a fussy little girl. They mainly live outdoors but they like it when we sit out with them.

Now my bracelet is finished and I am back indoors. So it is time to think about how I can mess up that tidy desk! But first I'm going over to Julia's blog to see what everyine else is getting up to today.

An unusual colour palette for Christmas

2011-10-25T16:46:00.006+01:00

One of the challenges I follow pointed out that this month many people 'celebrate' halloween, but as they are a Christmas card challenge they asked us to make a Christmas card using the colours we associate with halloween - green, purple and orange. I don't usually have anything to do with halloween, and these are not colours I would be likely to chose for Christmas but I gave it a go and here is what I made.

They also asked for a die cut and I have used one that was cut not with a die, but with my craftrobo machine (I hope that counts). A friend of mine was given a craftrobo last Christmas and asked me to go and show him a few things he could do on it. I wanted to show him some very simple but effective ideas, but also to demonstrate it's full potential, so I made a template to cut out this deer scene. Because it is quite intricate I used some of my Chocolate Baroque printed paper as I know my robo 'likes' it. I did this several months ago and I now have no idea where the original image came from, but I think it may have been a black peeloff. (I still have some that are animal scenes. I used to use them over a brayered background.). Anyway, I rescued this one from my 'spare die-cut' box.

The background is made by covering white card with purple mica mist at the base, and a mixture of sticky-fingers sunset yellow and pink dye sprays at the top. I made a mask to just leave a circle where the sun would be and embossed this with stardust powder. On the purple area I used my water-effect stampscapes stamp and embossed this in the same way. Then I layered the die cut over it, matching the water line and the sun, using 1mm sticky pads and added a very narrow border of silver mirri-card. In keeping with the Christmas theme I frosted the trees with ice-crystal stickles.

For the base card I lightly sponged a card with Adirondak juniper ink to take the stark whiteness away, distressed the edges with Memento bundled sage and used a set of tapestry stamps to randomly stamp holly leaves, a fir spray and berries in my three colours. Then I glued a strip of green paper from a magazine across the centre and added the main scene on top.

Finally I used some little clear stamps to print the sentiments, cut and distressed them as the base card, and glued them top left and bottom right of the card, highlighting them with purple and orange gems.

I am entering this card for:
Christmas cards all the year round, October Challenge: Halloween Palette and a Die Cut.
Bah! Humbug! Challenge 42: With Men in Mind.
Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 43: Make a Scene.
Christmas Inspirations Challenge 35: Use a Diecut or Punch.
Christmas Stamping all Year Long: Something Spar-ka-lay.

And I shall also be asking Shirley Anne to add it to my tally on her blog.

October ATCs

2011-10-22T18:16:00.009+01:00

I thought I would quickly upload this month's ATCs for the three swaps I am involved with. As usual I have left it late to make them so I was determined to get them all done and posted by Monday.

Firstly here are my swaps for the Stamp Man where the theme was Oriental.
For the first one I used a digi image of a tree on glossy card which was lightly coloured with distress inks and a sponge. The image is Great Impressions and I coloured it with copics, and attached it with 1mm sticky pads.. The second one uses two hand-carved wood stamps and a bead that I bought in Vietnam. And the third one is a black and gold acrylic background, and the stamp is homemade using imagepac, from a photo I took of a bread van delivering in Murcia, stamped into a 'puddle' of Russett and Fools Gold UTEE.

While in UK I bought some Fresco Finish Crackle Glaze, which gives excellent results when used with the Fresco Finish paints. However I was told that it would also work with other acrylic paints so I decided to try in with a black base and gold top coat. Unfortunately the gold refused to crackle. Rather than waste it I overstamped the gold with a Great Impressions stamp of bamboo and a versamark pad, and embossed it with sparkley Disco black embossing powder. This is the base of the second ATC. I tried the glaze again with the gold as the base coat and black on top, and though the result was not good, it did try to crackle! I used the best part of this for the third ATC and, hid the plain, uncrackled part under the seal.

My village is about a ten minute drive from the coast at Mojacar, and when I drive there I pass a dead tree. It has been there eversince we moved here, and on a winter's day, when there is not too much other vegetation around, it stands sihouetted against a blue sky, and I just love the shape of it. I knew one day I would have to stop and take a photo of it, before the council decided to cut it down, so I did, and here it is. After a bit of playing with it in Corel photoshop, I made it into the digi image that I have used in the first ATC.

Swap number two is for Angie Foxcroft of Crazicards craft supples, and the topic was Home and Family. I needed just two ATCs for this swap. The first uses a digi image I made from a recent photo showing four generations of my family. This was taken when I went to meet my new great-grandson last month. It is in a simple hand-cut heart frame and is embellished with gold gem hearts, ribbon and three small hand-made paper flowers. The second ATC used a Chocolate Baroque image, coloured with copics. It took me many attempts to make the script frame, usng Inkscape. I haven't learned to use that program very well yet, but I more or less achieved what I had set out to do. I mounted it onto plain green card and finished it with some green baker's twine and two flower brads.

My third swap was for the Chocolate Baroque Guild and our theme was Winter.
For the first one I used a stamp that was part of my subsciption pack when I joined the guild. I stamped it onto a very lightly coloured background, and again onto white card, and then a piece of acetate. On the first layer I stamped the little house from a recent Chocolate baroque stamp set, and added a little colour to it. From the card image I only cut the two front rows of snow, and added a little glitter to them. On the acetate I glittered the tree branches, and then I layered it all up with sticky pads. The large snowflake is a Marianne die, painted to match the sky, and glittered. For the second card I used some Chocolate Baroque background paper, and stamped the image onto a toning, but lighter shade of paper. I added some stickles dots for snow and mounted it onto the base card. Then I cut a frame using a nesties die, glittered it and covered the reverse with acetate. This I mounted over the owl like a window. The white snowflake is again a marianne die and the centre is a wooden shape, dipped into melted UTEE.

As well as linking this to the Stampman swap site, I am also adding it to Make it Monday 59 linky party, and
Inspire me Fridays 29, where Anything goes.

Two for the price of one.

2011-10-20T16:45:00.014+01:00

A couple of months ago I saw a pretty bauble stamp used by someone on a challenge blog, and thought how nice it looked. So when, at the Ally Pally last month, I saw a pile of these stamps on a counter I went to take a look. Apparently it is now discontinued and they were selling them off at a discounted price, so, of course, one just jumped into my basket! It is a papermania stamp in an unusual cream coloured rubber. The first thing I did when I got it home was to take it off the wood block and put it onto Ez-mount. And when I saw that Hazel's challenge this week was to use baubles I saw the perfect opportunity to give it its first airing. It is quite detailed so it can almost stand alone and I decided to try white embossing it on a dark blue DL card. I was not having a good day and the first thing I did was to drop the inked stamp on the card. I thought I might get away with that for the back of the card as it was versamark ink, so I just turned it front to back and tried again. This time I did stamp it but I got a really poor impression, with lots of the detail missing from the centre of the design. Not deterred I cut the card in half along the fold and turned each piece to it's 'good' side. Then using my purple stamping mat, and making sure I put good pressure in the centre, I managed to get, not one, but two good impressions which I embossed with sea-foam white powder.
It was still fairly plain so I added some very subtle colour with pale blue and gold interference paints. These only show at certain angles, hence in my first photo they are quite bright, and in the second they hardly show at all. I also added ice-crystal stickles to all the little dots. The first image I trimmed a little, cut the ends with a Martha Stewart punch, layered it onto silver holographic paper and then mounted it onto a plain white DL card.The second image I trimmed rather more but it was still only just small enough to go on an A6 card. But out here the standard envelopes are slightly bigger than in UK so I made a card to fit one of them. This is usually a bit wasteful as you can only cut one from an A4 sheet of card, but today I added the extra width by folding it off-centre and even-ing out the two sides by adding a strip of lace cut with the same punch and silver holographic paper as in the first card. I added small white pearls in opposite corners to finish it off. The sun has reflected rather strongly off the silver paper, but at least you can see it's design.

So from an impending disaster I have managed to salvage two Christmas cards which I will link to Shirley-Anne's blog for my tally, and I am also entering them in:-
CHNC Challenge 42: Baubles or anything hanging.
ABC Christmas Challenge: U is for Unused stash, (stamp). WhoopsiDaisy Challenge: free and Easy.

WOWW124

2011-10-19T14:08:00.011+01:00

What's on my workdesk? Well to be really honest the answer is very little! This is usually the case on Wednesday mornings which is my main reason for not joining in this bit of fun very often.

Because my two resident cats, who consider this to be their room not mine, have very long hair which they shed almost continuously, and also because if I leave anything on my desk they sit on it, I am used to clearing everything away on a daily basis. On Wednesday mornings I go to a little sewing group in the next town, so I haven't usually got anything out by lunch time. But I was home a bit earlier today so I thought I'd quickly finish off two ATCs that I started yesterday, and then assemble a couple more Christmas cards. Elements of these are at the left hand side of the photo, and the almost completed ATCs are in the foreground.

As for the yellow tray, well that is my 'work in progress' tray. I often work quite late in the evening and then I am too tired to clear away properly so anything I am working on goes on this tray which I slot on top of my files on the bookshelf. Today it has mostly new stamps on it that I have mounted onto foam, but not yet catalogued, snippets of paper, nice envelopes that I want to salvage parts of, and plastic trays full of odd beads, brads, bits of ribbon etc. Unfortunately I am very bad at clearing this at the end of a project and every now and then it gets so piled up that it won't fit on the shelf. We have reached crisis point again this week, so I thought if I got it out and stuck it on my desk in front of me, I might just be shamed into putting everything away before I start a new project. Well maybe ..... First I think I'll just finish off those Christmas cards!

As predicted, it didn't take my beautiful Arwen long to realise that the top of my new wide-format printer, makes a perfect cradle for her siesta - most of the day! Hence the coloured cloth covering it. But I have to say it is really funny to see her jump up whenever I print something!

Thank you for joining me in my little haven this week. If you would like to see what other crafters are up to, pop over to Julia's blog and take a peek.

Frosty

2011-10-13T08:43:00.005+01:00

A quick blog today to show the card I have just finished off using another little bit of my work from the village art group. (See previous post). This one is another Sheena Douglas stamp coloured with felt-tip pens and a water brush. To make it look more 'Christmassy' I added a layer of coarse white glitter. Then I mounted it up on a 15cm square card.

The base card is embossed with a cuttlebug folder and swiped with chalk ink. The sentiment is Crafter's Companion and the layered snowflake is a Marianne die.

Although this is not strictly speaking a home it is 'God's house' and it does include a roof top so I am entering it in
Crafty Hazlenut's Christmas Challenge 41: House or home, and also linking it to Shirley-Anne's blog for my Christmas card tally.

Deck the Halls...

2011-10-11T15:37:00.005+01:00

Now I like a little bit of bling on my cards, especially at Christmas, but I don't usually go for lots of glitter, but this week our theme at Humbug Hall was to use Glitz and Glitter, so I have done my best to rise to the challenge.

Yesterday afternoon, (after a big lunch and lovely walk along the beach, which you can read about here), I could have done with a bit of a siesta, but my village art group - manualidades, where I go to meet with some of the local Spanish ladies, reopened after the summer break. So I hastily collected together my latest Sheena Douglas stamps and some acrylic paints and off I went. One and a half hours later I came home with one holly branch painted. The rest of my time had been spent showing some of the ladies how I use stamping to get an image, and chatting about their work.

Anyway, in the evening I decided to make use of the little I had done, and as I sat looking at it I thought that somewhere I had a stamp of the opening lines of the song 'Deck the halls with boughs of holly' so maybe I could put them together. And that is what I did.I didn't want to hide all my painting under a lot of glitter so I just 'frosted' it with a clear stickles glitter glue. I then used a set of nesties labels and my cuttlebug to cut a mount out of starburst card. I have two types of this so I chose the rougher one as it has more sparkle. I was going to layer this on red, but it was already quite large, so instead I edged it with a red permanent marker. Using a smaller label die I cut a second piece and edged it in the same way, and on it I stamped the line from the song which turned out to be a Crafter's Companion stamp. It didn't stamp very well on the rough glitter card but I enhanced it with a black marker, and it is readable now. For the base card I used some plain green card which I stamped randomly with a holly sprig stamp by Clarity.

This card is for:
Bah Humbug Challenge 40: Glitz and Glitter.
Crafty Ann's Challenge 51: Inspired by a Christmas song.
Simon Says...:Sparkle and Bling.
Just Some Lines Challenge: Reminds me of a song.
Fab's Big Christmas Card October Challenge: Something Shiny and/or Snowflakes.

Of course, I am also linking it to Stamping for Joy so Shirley-Anne can add it to my total.

And now there is a set of 'Tinies'.

2011-10-07T12:33:00.008+01:00

Thank you for the kind comments you have left on yesterday's post when I showed a set of four tiny Christmas cards I had made for the ABC Christmas Challenge, T is for Tiny. Following on from there I have now, as planned, made a whole set of them. That's sixteen of them to be exact. Using the original set of small images, decorated using copics, ink pads, glitter glue, and die cut frames, I managed to get four cards out of each sheet of backing paper I had made with glimmer mists and a large background stamp. Every card has some of it on, though in some cases it is only a very small piece. I incorporated some ribbons and a few gems to bling them up where needed. Now all I have to do is make sixteen inserts and sixteen 4" square envelopes! (I think my new Hougie board could come in useful here). At least these will be a good size for posting to UK.
I am linking them to the Make it Monday linky party 57 and to Shirley-Anne's blog, Stamping for Joy, where they will make a substantial difference to my card total.

T is for Tiny

2011-10-06T09:29:00.007+01:00

T is for Tiny and the challenge from ABC is to make a set of four tiny Christmas cards. I was looking forward to this as I much prefer small cards to great big ones, especially at Christmas. I am not sure how small they need to be to count as tiny but I have gone with 10cm square (4") as this seems to have been the choice for several other challenge takers, and it's a nice size to work with. I wanted an excuse to use a new stamp I bought at Ally Pally called 'Cover the page-flourishes' by Impression-Obsession. This is one of a set of 6 x 6 stamps designed to make backing papers. It was mounted on foam, but I know these big stamps can be difficult to get a good impression from, especially in the centre, and I couldn't afford the big rocker block that was available to use with them, so I made do with my big flat block and put a purple foam, stamping mat under my paper. And I needn't have worried; I got a perfect print every time. So first I raided my white off-cuts box and found several larger pieces of card. I sprayed them with a variety of mica mists and then stamped them with the flourishes in a coordinating colour ink. I think I shall be using this stamp a lot!

Next I went through my Christmas stamps and pulled out a few smaller images. These I stamped several times on smaller offcuts of white card. My aim is to make a whole batch of tiny cards, each one using some of the flourishes backing paper and one of the images. The stamps I used are, angel square - Stampendous, star - Anita's, candle - Crafters' Companion, holly swirl - Denami, robin - Kars, and Joy bauble - Great Impressions. I then used a variety of card offcuts, dies and punches, pens and peel-offs, and a few bits of bling, and here are the four I have done so far. I am entering these in ABC Christmas Challenge ; T is for Tiny. Christmas Cards All Year Round October Challenge; Orange, green purple or black with a punch or diecut. (The orange card, top left, meets these criteria).
Paper Sundaes Challenge 89; Lots of layers. (Orange 5, blue and red 4, green 3).
Inspire me Fridays 26; Anything goes.
I am also linking them to Shirley-Anne's blog, Stamping for Joy, to add four more to my total. I hope to be back later with the rest of these Shirley.

Nativity

2011-10-06T09:06:00.003+01:00

It's good to be back making cards again after my little break with the family in UK. I am eager to progress with my Christmas cards. Time is rushing by and I want them 'done and dusted' in plenty of time, so I was pleased to see that this week's challenge at Bah! Humbug! is to feature the Nativity. I have loads of nativity related stamps so this was an easy one for me. But I have still almost run out of time so I went for the simplest of cards.

First I used a Big and Juicy pad (gumdrop) to brayer a background on smooth, matt cream card. I then stamped the scene using a set of tiny silhouette stamps by Stampendous, perfectly clear stamps. I have had them for years and have used them so much. The words across the top are from a set of Hero Arts sentiment border stamps.

Now with just an hour or so to spare, I am linking this card to Bah! Humbug! Christmas Challenge 39; Nativity

WOYWW 122

2011-10-05T14:59:00.013+01:00

Hello again fellow crafters. Where did that week go? My desk looks a bit more useable this week. Most of my new stash has found a home and now I am making use of some of it.
At the Ally Pally show I spent a fair bit of time at the Serendipity stall, looking at all the scenescape stamps. I love this technique of using lots of small element stamps to build up a picture. I already have a good collection of Art Impressions stamps which I use in this way, so of course I had to buy some scenescape ones as well. So surrounded by memento ink pads, that I find work very well on glossy card, a selection of acrylic blocks, a few pens, and other stamps from my collection, I set about making a night time scene (in blue). I was quite pleased with that so I double mounted that and let it stand alone on a card. Next I tried to make the same scene in daylight, (in green), which I don't like quite so well, but it is OK. Then I started to make a card front using another set of element stamps, this time by Hobby Art, which I also bought at Ally Pally. This design is a courtyard with an archway that I have cut away and hopefully it will eventually have the day scene behind it. So now I need to finish that off and clear everything away again before my cats come and sit on top of it all. (If you have any trouble keeping your workspace clear, invite a cat in. You'll soon learn to put things away!) But first I will link this to Julia's blog, and pop over to see what everyone else is getting up to this week.

WOWW 121

2011-09-28T17:20:00.009+01:00

Hi blogland friends. Thanks for calling by. I am now home in Spain again after two and a half weeks in England, where I have to say I was blessed with lovely weather. Everywhere looked so lush and green, and the autumn colours in the trees were beautiful, but I am still glad to be back here now. You can find out what I got up to on my other blog, Kate's Adventures.

I am pleased to say that the scrapbook featured in my previous post was finished just in time (including what turned out to be six drumming pages!), delivered to my son, and greatly appreciated. Now I hope to get back to some card and ATC making. I am not starting the scrapbook for son number three until after Christmas.

So, what is on my workdesk this Wednesday? Well basically it is all the lovely new stash I bought in UK. I visited a couple of craft shops with my sister Jean, and another with my son Ben, and also spent a day at the stamp and scrapbook show at Alexandra Palace, so of course I bought quite a lot! Everything is now unpacked so today I started by sorting everything into types of materials, and here is the result. The next job will be to find a home for everything, so I have some space to actually use some of it. It's hard to make any sense of all that muddle so here is the breakdown.

First there are a few tools, a couple of masks and embossing folders, and several packets of charms. Next there are some 'different' 3D stickers, that I just can't get out here, some acrylic paints and other mediums, and baker's twine. Then come several sets of dies, sticky ribbons, and rubber stamps. I bought a gorgeous selection of beads and bright, metallic threads for my lace making projects, plus some Christmas ribbons and pretty trimmings. Lower middle are some more stamps, just a couple of ink pads, and some paper. I'd love to have brought more, and I saw so many that I liked, but it's weight made it impractical, so I settled for the DCWV 12"x12" pad, linen closet that I have had my eye on for ages, and a couple of smaller pads, plus two pads of long strips of self adhesive card that are so useful for die cut letters and other tiny items. And lastly I replaced my favourite green water base marker, and bought just one set of the new promarker flex pens to try. I use copic markers solely because I prefer the brush nib, but these are a bit cheaper and easier to get hold of, so they may be a better option when they expand the colour range. And of course I had to try one set of TH tissue tape. So that's it. It's a bit like my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one. Now I can't wait to try it all out.

The only item on my desk that has any claim to being actually crafted by me is the little blue box with a butterfly on it. My sister Jean has three friends over every Wednesday for a craft session, and the week I was there she showed them how to cover a little chipboard box with a pretty tissue serviette using modge podge, so I joined in and this is my effort. I shall finish it off with a 3D butterfly and perhaps some flowers.

So now I am going to link this to Julia's blog and see what everyone else is getting up to this week. Why not join me, and then share what's on your workdesk too.

Special Moments

2011-08-31T21:20:00.007+01:00

I am supposed to be having a short while off card challenges specifically to complete the scrapbook I am making for my son, before I fly to UK next Thursday, when I hope to give it to him. So I thought I would just share with you the pages I have just completed.

Some of you will know that I have five sons. Two are older from my first marriage, and after a ten year gap I had three more, in fairly quick succession. When you are the middle one of a group of three little boys with only four and a half years between you, you have to fight for your share of attention, so I designed these pages to remind Jonathan of some special moments that we shared with him. (I have done similar pages for each of the boys and I think they are important memories to hold). For Jonathan, who since his teens has a had a preference for 'grungy' colours, I chose some grey paper, but as I find 'grunge' really hard to do, I ended up with red for the highlights! The large circle and it's scalloped frame, the script frame, and the letters for the title were all designed and cut with craftrobo, using the Design master software. The script about a mother was a template that I bought from craftsuprint. It was A4 size so I had to resize it, and then cut it, again with craftrobo. Unfortunately shrinking it down meant some letter strokes were very fine, and all my black paper had too many firbes in them and wouldn't cut cleanly. After three futile attempts I was about to give up when I remembered that I have a pack of mixed printed papers that always cut perfectly. So I chose one that wasn't really to my liking, and I swiped the reverse side with a versafine black onxy ink pad until it was completely black. Once it was dry, I had one more go at my cutting file and it worked! It's not perfect, but it is good enough.

My son is now twenty-six so I was working with really old photos which I scanned in, and then used a photo editor to crop them to squares. I decided to soften them by giving them all rounded corners to go with the scalloped frames.

My final job was to cut the two small scripts in red, using the trimmings from the photo mounts. For these I used my cuttlebug and a QuicKutz skinni-minis alphabet die set called Frankie. These are very fiddly to use, but you can cut just the letters you need. I decided to glue them in place with glue pen, and added a few dots cut with a hole punch. It was very hot this afternoon so picture me trying to pick up these tiny pieces with a ceiling fan going just above me at top speed and an even stronger floor-standing fan across my desk. Added to that I help from Baggins (See my previous post). It was a bit of a paper chase, but I got there in the end.

Now I am going to make some quote clouds to go on the two inside covers, and the summing-up page for the end of the book. If I get that done before I give it to him I will be pleased. I will still have two double spreads to do about his drumming and the groups he has played in, and posters from some of his gigs, but I can post those to him. What sort of music does he play? ... Heavy metal, and in particular 'Grunge' of course!!

I shall link this to Make it Monday 52: Any papercraft project.
And Inspire me Fridays Linky Party.

WOYWW 117

2011-08-31T18:30:00.008+01:00

There's not a great deal on my workdesk this Wednesday, but what there is, shows that I have had a very successful couple of days and have just about completed another double layout for my son's scrapbook. All that is left for me to do is add a few more words, and you can see I am sorting through some tiny Sizzlit mini-dies to find the letters I need. I have just enough bits of red paper left over after mounting the photos with it, to cut these letters, so I shall get them done now and maybe do a separate blog on the completed pages. I have a range of sticking mediums out. The tiny letters are a right fiddle and I can never be sure what will be best to use with them, but I expect I'll settle for a glue pen. Needless to say the rest of the space is occupied by Baggins, who is under threat of death if he moves onto my pages while my back is turned. I'm off to feed the dogs but it is such a nuisance to have to put everything away when you want to use it again in half an hour or so, so today I have risked leaving it out. (Just five more pages to do now, hopefully before I fly to UK next Thursday, when I want to give the completed book to him).

Now why not pop over to Julia's blog and see what everyone else is up to today.

Sing for Joy

2011-08-30T09:00:00.007+01:00

Well life has a way of tossing you around and upsetting even the best laid plans, and that is what has happened to me. My planned visit to UK for late October/November has been brought forward by six weeks or so, to enable me to attend a family funeral. However this will also enable me to get a much sooner than expected visit in with my new Great-grandson. Isaac Michael Edward made his appearance on Sunday morning, weighing in at a bonny 8lbs 2ozs. Did I make a card for this event?....Of course I did. Did I take a photo of it?....I thought I had but cannot trace it anywhere on my computer! So when I visit him I will take one then and blog about it later.

I now fly out next Thursday so one thing that won't be finished is my son's scrapbook. However there are only half a dozen pages to go so I will take him what I have done and add a few empty pockets at the end. Then I can post the final pages to him as soon as they are done. I don't return here until 26th September so my blog will be very quiet for nearly a month.For that reason I thought I would try to squeeze in a couple more Christmas cards but was a bit dismayed to find the Bah! Humbug! theme was 'Here come the girls'. Now I don't usually do 'girly' or even 'cute', but as Hazel's challenge over on CHNC was Build it up - lots of layers, I had a browse through my Christmas decoupage. At the bottom of the pile was a very ancient book of images, that I think I bought in Percy Thrower's garden centre at least ten years ago! I quite liked it at the time but I found the images were very intricate so I was lazy about using them. But looking through the book I came across these rather sweet little angels and thought they were probably girly enough. I emphasised their 'girlyness' by using a pink base card and layers rather than red, as the red of their dresses blended in with this quite well. They were very fiddly to cut but they actually layered up rather well. There are four layers which hardly show in the photo but as it is again very sunny this morning, you can see the shadows they cast. I mounted them on a left-over piece of scrapbook paper cut with a nestie label die, and cut a matching frame using a booklet of Christmas papers free with a magazine. They are not the sort of papers I would ever buy, so they have lurked in a box for several years, but I am making a real effort to use some of my 'past its sell by date' stash, and it fitted the bill here. The sentiment came from the same booklet. It still looked a bit stark so I used one more 'oldie' from my stash - a set of docraft peeloffs to add trees and parcels round the edge, and found a scrap of emerald satin ribbon to make a bow.

I hope my little angels are singing for joy, just as I am over our new little arrival.

I do apologise to all my fellow challenge-takers and followers that I haven't managed to comment very much just lately. After a busy fortnight with my visitors I then had to try to change my flights to UK and concentrate on things I need to finish off before my visit. But I will try to get to some of you before I go, and once I get back, normal service will quickly return!

I am entering this card in:
Bah! Humbug! Challenge 34: Here come the girls..
Craft Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 35: Build it up.
ABC Christmas Challenge: Q is for quote - use a quote or sentiment.
Crafts for Eternity Recipe Challenge 34: Recipe, Anything with a Christmas theme.
Christmas Crafting Challenge 2: Cute Christmas.

And I will link it to Shirley Anne's blog Stamping for Joy.

Away in a manger

2011-08-25T18:16:00.008+01:00

ATCs done and dusted, (see previous post), I wondered whether I still had time to enter this week's Christmas card Challenges, but for most of them I decided to wait for the new themes. But ABC Christmas Challenge runs fortnightly so I can do that one and this time the challenge is Q is for quote. I noticed some of the design team members had made lovely cards quoting the words of Christmas carols and songs and it reminded me of a project I did a few years back. I had just bought my first pack of mold'n'pour and went looking for things to try it out with. One thing I used was a very old decoration that has hung on my tree for many years. It shows a folk-art style nativity scene so I mixed up the two mold'n'pour elements and pressed my decoration into the resulting compound. Within a few minutes I had a flexible 'silicone' mould which I went on to use with air-drying clay. I was surprised at how much detail the compound had picked up. Once my decoration was dry, I painted it with a mixture of acrylics and permanent markers, and glazed it with diluted PVA glue. I made several of these and mounted them onto cards. Last Christmas I dug out the mould and made another dozen or so for my new friends in Spain. I knew I had one left over that must be lurking in a drawer somewhere, so I had a root around and found it, and used it for today's card.

I chose a royal blue base card, layered with pearlescent blue paper and then some shaded blue starry paper that I cut with a scalloped edge. (The bright sunshine has accentuated the shading in my photo). To mount the decoration I made a sort of rounded triangle with a scalloped edge using craft robo design master software, and cut it out of the same blue pearlescent paper. I typed the words of 'Away in a manger', cut them out, and used a matching blue mat cut with a nestie die. A tiny off cut of fused film made a bright star and I used shiny star peel-of strips down each side. I also have a Lavinia stamp of more words from this carol so I stamped that on an otherwise plain white, edged in blue, insert.

I am entering this in:
ABC Christmas Challenge ; Q is for Quote.
Make it Monday 51: Any papercraft project.
Stampavie and more: Christmas in Summer.
Totally Papercrafts Challenge 80: Christmas in August.
The Crazy Challenge, Christmas: Anything Christmas Goes.
And I am also linking it to Shirley Anne's blog Stamping for Joy, to add to my collection of Christmas cards.

A few ATCs

2011-08-24T16:09:00.015+01:00

Hello my friends. Thank you for looking in on my blog which has been strangely quiet for a couple of weeks while I enjoyed some family time with my son, his wife and my three grandchildren. They survived the heat, just, and we had a great time together. Now they have gone home and it is my house that seems strangely quiet, so I am using my time to catch up on all the challenges that I have missed.

My first task was to make four sets of ATCs for August swaps, all of which need to be at their destinations in UK by the end of the month. I usually play safe and allow ten days for this, but these only have 6-7 days so I hope Mr Postman is on the ball. I had some disappointments with last month's swaps when two sets failed to get back to me. I am hoping they were in just one batch of mail that went astray, as others arrived just fine. But this was tempered with some good news when one of my Vintage ATCs was a winner for the July swap at the Stampman. (See my post for 11th July). So, of course I wanted to take part again and their theme for this month was The Ocean. Here is what I made.I started by spraying two pieces of glossy white card with glimmer mists and pressing them together. I have seen this done on Youtube with memory mists and it gave a lovely variegated finish. But they use a different kind of pigment which stays in droplets, and I found the glimmer mists and sticky fingers mists just mingled together, leaving me with a pretty, but even, blue-green coating. I tried to add some texture with a squirt of Making memories silver but this was only partly successful as the nozzel had blocked and no amount of soaking and scrubbing would release it. So finally I got out my trusty cuttlebug and passed the cards through the swirls embossing folder, after which I felt they were ready to use. For the first one I made a seahorse ( Just for fun stamps)and fish (freebie stamp with magazine) with mother of pearl and blue nile fantasy film, and glued them to the background. I then stamped strands of seaweed onto acetate and fixed this over them with 1mm sticky pads and blue brads. For the second one I wrapped blue and green fibres around the card and between the lines I made wavy lines of glossy accents and covered them with a blue/green mix of seed beads. (While doing this I stupidly opened my box containing seven compartments of different seed beads, upside down, resulting in --a mess! I spent the rest of the evening patiently sorting them into their colours again. I am sure some of you think I must be mad, but it was quite theraputic, and I was pleased to see my neat little box back as it should be!). I still had a bare strip down the side of my ATC, so I cut some tiny fish from a sheet of decoupage backing paper and glued them on, highlighting them with a clear sakura glitter gel pen. The whole thing is backed onto a piece of card from a publication from a well known bank, which happened to be just the right colour. The third one is quite different because I looked above the ocean surface and saw a tall ship, sails billowing in the wind. I used blue card for the sky and cut around the swirls on all the offcuts of my base cards, layering them up to make the waves. I stamped a Crafters Companion ship stamp onto cream card twice, and added some shading with copic markers. I cut one out, decoupaged the sails from the other, and tucked it between the waves. There was quite an expanse of waves at the front, so I added three more of the fish as in the previous one, and stamped a Crafty Individuals seagull in the sky.

The Chocolate Baroque theme this month was The seaside and for this I used some more of the blue embossed card as a base and added a CB seagull stamp, and squares cut from Crafty Individuals backing paper. Some sand and a few tiny shells in the corner finished it off. For the second one I used a different sheet of the CI paper for the sand, and some oddments of painted paper from my snippits box for the sea. The main image is Crafty Individuals as is the bunting spelling BEACH across the top.

Angie Foxcroft of Crazicards craft supplies also runs a monthy swap and her theme was Words. So for the first one I stayed with the sea idea and used a lovely words stamp from Great Impressions. The photo in the background is my footsteps taken very early one morning on a beach in Thailand. The tiny shells I used as an embellishments were collected from the same beach. For the second one I did something completely different. This time I did make the backing card with memory mists on glossy card. I think you will be able to see the different effect of using these. I chose some words from a plate of sentiments by Chocolate Baroque, and at first I stamped them on the background in black. But they didn't pop out as I wanted them to so I coloured some white card with my palest copics, and used a variety of memento ink pads to stamp the words on this. Then I cut them out and mounted them over the black ones. I added coloured beads on a spiral of wire across the top. Next I cut out lots of tiny flowers with a special punch, using tiny oddments from my snippits box, and glued them in small groups, randomly over the card. A couple of colourful butterfly stickers finished this one off.

My finally for the Shillington swap the theme was 'Silhouettes'. When my sister said she wasn't sure she liked the theme, I had to confess that it was one of my suggestions! But as I was running out of time, and I knew today was really my last chance to post them, I didn't use some of my lovely silhouette stamps as I had intended, but instead I cut out black card silhouettes using my craft robe. The templates for these had been prepared previously for pages in my sons' scrapbooks, so it was easy to reduce them down to ATC size. For one I used a photo of a skateboard park as the background and added words on the computer, and two skateboarding poses. The background for the handstand was brayered using Big and juicy pad, Spice. I printed the music notes which were a part of the original image as they were too small and fiddly to cut easily, and the word 'Joy' is a Crafty Individuals stamp. This image was used on a scrapbook page along side my son in the same pose! For the third one I again brayered a background using Big and Juicy pad, Gumdrop, and masking the heart to give a contrasting colour. The words in it are a stamp I made ages ago using imagepac, and come from a fabric sticker I found in what must have been one of my 'lucky-dip' buys at the QVC surplus store. The family group silhouette came from the internet.

Wow. that was a bit of a marathon. Thank you for staying with me. Now I look forward to seeing what little pieces of art I receive in place of them. Hopefully all four sets will come this time.

WOYWW 113?

2011-08-04T11:37:00.012+01:00

My friend Di from Pixie's Crafty Workshop, has been encouraging me to join you so here I am. The main reason I haven't done this before is that there is usually the same thing on my work desk everyweek - Nothing! - except for one or two fat and furry cats. Baggins and Arwen consider my craft room to be their territory and view me as an intruder. So everytime I leave the room I have to put everything away, or they will ruin it. However, when I am busy in there I physically shove them over to give me enough space to work in, as I did last night when I was working on a welcome card for my first great-grandson due in around three weeks time. My visitors arrive on Monday and go home the day he is due so I am hoping they will take my card with them and post it in UK. Here is the rest of my space.

To the right of my desk is my paper store, now all sorted into design types and stored in the shelves hubby bought for me last Christmas. So nice not to have it all dog-eared (or should I say cat-eared). The fan is another reason why I put everything away. It is always on, and it lifts my bits and pieces and deposits them in the most obscure places! Along side that is a tall bookcase. All the big files contain my stamp collection. I have taken just about all the mounted ones off their wood blocks and put them on EZmount. Then I can store them on laminated sheets in plastic pockets with a stamped image for quick reference, and file them according to their image. The yellow tray just peeping out on top of some of the files, is where I put my current work when I have to leave it before it is finished. Every week or so I clear it off and start again.

Next to the bookshelf is my tall filing cabinet with all my plain card and paper in, along with boxes of embellishments, all sorted and labelled. It actually gave me great pleasure to achieve this, and it is now so much easier to find things. Mind you, there are a lot of long-forgotten items nestled at the bottom of each box, but it is fun to have a root now and then and use some of them up. And on the wall behind me I have also moved into the shelves section of the built in wardrobe. In here I store my Christmas stash, ribbons and flowers, prefolded cards and envelopes, smaller pads of paper and card, and anything else that hasn't got a home.

To the left of my desk there is a box of 'sticking mediums', my copic markers because they are in constant use, and small drawers holding some of my ink pads, fancy scissors, oddments of stationery etc, and underneath I have embossing powders, glitter, and everything for my cuttlebug.

And finally, in front of my workspace (which this morning has the white cat on it!) is my computer desk, with printer and craftrobo always connected, and few other drawers containing pens, pencils, paints etc.

So now you have been all around my room. I am so lucky to have my own space, with almost continuous blue skies and sun shine outside, and my furry friends to keep me company while I work.

Now I shall link this to Julia's blog, Stamping Ground, and see what everyone else has on their workspace this week.

A Fun Trio

2011-08-02T18:40:00.007+01:00

Yesterday I set out to make a card featuring something we eat at Christmas, and I settled on this cheeky trio of chicks with their candy canes.They are a digistamp from pink cat studio, which I printed out and coloured in plain, bold colours using some promarkers. I then cut them out with deckle-edge scissors and coloured the edges with my distress ink pad, barn door. For the base card I chose a yellow DL because I have a huge stack of pre-folded cards that I am determined to work my way through, and this was one of them. Rooting through my Christmas paper box I came up with these two pieces which I joined to make a background, and I thought I would cover the join with some lace. Another root through some boxes brought up this short piece of very grubby, screwed up broidery-anglais, which I rubbed with distress ink in antique linen and mustard seed. I then washed it out to encourage the inks to spread and blend, and ironed it dry with my craft iron. I threaded some red satin ribbon through the top. There was about a quarter of an inch lace to spare on either side so I was able to tidy up the ends and then I attached it across the card with double sided tape. I used some more of the ribbon to make a matching bow but I wanted something else small to finish it off, so on the spur of the moment I dug out my box of fimo. I haven't used this since I came to Spain almost three years ago, and I can't remember how long before that, so I was surprised to find it was still very pliable. I quickly made up a set of tiny candy canes which I baked first thing this morning. (I couldn't do it last night as I already had the aircon on cooling down our bedroom before we go in there, and the dishwasher was on, so I couldn't risk turning on the oven as well. Too many appliances at one time and everything fuses. Our electricity supply in the village is a bit suspect, but you learn to live with it!) once cooled, I varnished them with glossy accents and used some more to stick them down the side of the card. For the greeting I used another forgotten find that I unearthed on my root through my boxes, another of my spur of the moment QVC shop buys I suspect, and that is a set of very large metal brads with a matching set of rub-ons to go with them. I chose a yellow brad and a plain greetings and added these to the top corner of my panel. It is nice to make a card that has used so many odds and ends from my stash!

I am entering this card in:
Crazy Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 31: Feature some Festive Food.
Bah! Humbug! Challenge 30: Use Lace.
Christmas Cards all Year Round August Challenge:Choose 4 items from a list. (Inking, ribbon, metal embellishment, rub-on greeting).
Sketch and Stash Challenge 67: I've used lots of stash and followed the sketch, (more or less).
Stamping Sisters in Christ Challenge 100: Any Creature, Great or Small.

I am also linking this to Shirley-Anne's blog , Stamping for Joy, towards my target of 50 cards.

A bit of Joy

2011-07-30T17:35:00.004+01:00

I'm back on the Christmas cards today! The challenge was to use an old stamp, so I was looking through my Christmas stamp file to see if I could remember which was my first stamp, when I came across this one. I can't guarantee I've had it more than a year though I think I have, but it is very old! There was a craft shop not too many miles from here, that closed down as its owners were returning to UK and the lady who bought it, took it on with all its stock, just as it was. While she was sorting everything out, she found a treasure trove of 'oddments' under boxes, at the back of shelves etc, which she sold off very cheaply, and this stamp was one of them. It was so old that the plasticky image on the wood block was all cracked and yellow, and there was no make on there so I can't say where it came from, but I rather like it. As with all my stamps, I took it off the wood block and mounted it on EZmount so I could file it away, and there it has stayed, forgotten again. So I am glad that this challenge prompted me to give it an airing. I simply stamped it onto white card, coloured it with copic markers, and cut it out. I chose a small square, white base card (It looks blue in the photo because I took it in bright sunshine, but it is white), and used deckle-edge scissors to cut a mat of blue paper and then one of pale lilac holly paper. This is an oddment printed in fast draft from the Artylicious CD Seasons Greeting, and I thought it went with the shade of the angels dresses. You only have to look at them to know they are making a 'Joyful noise' to greet Christmas morning, so I chose that sentiment to stamp at the base of the image. (From and Art journey plate). Then I tied a piece of red organza ribbon round the left side to pick up the red ribbon in the image.

This card is for the ABC Christmas Challenge: O is for Older Image.
I am also entering it in Winter Wonderland Challenge: Fairies or Angels.
Christmas Inspirations Challenge 29: Free Christmas Project.

Also I am linking it to Shirley-Anne's blog, Stamping for Joy.

There's a tear in my eye...

2011-07-28T16:01:00.021+01:00

'Yes', there's a tear in my eye, but 'No', it's not because I'm sad. It is the direct result of inhaling a powerful mix of garlic, chilli and ginger. I tossed up which of my blogs to do this on but I thought that cooking is a craft in it's own right, so I decided to go with this one. It makes a change from Christmas cards doesn't it?

Now I am a visual learner and I have really enjoyed following some of my friends' photographic recipes so I thought I'd have a go at doing one too. Those of you who follow my other blog will know that earlier this week I found myself with a supply of beautiful fresh ripe tomatoes, (see here if you missed it), so that was the cue for me to make some 'Hot Chilli and Ginger Jam'. Although this is sweet enough to deserve the name 'jam', it is really more of a pickle, and it does something quite amazing for a humble cheese sandwich, (especially if you are going to toast it), and it also goes well with cold meats etc. I should add that the original recipe came from the internet a very long time ago, and I cannot attribute it to anyone. I have changed it a little to suit what I have readily available here.

So here is what you need: 2Kg ripe tomatoes. 1Kg sugar.
100g garlic cloves. 400g fresh root ginger.
5g dried chillies. 100ml malt vinegar.

In these photos I am using 1½ times these quantities.

Start by peeling the tomatoes. (Stand them in a bowl of boiling water for a few minutes and then rinse under the cold tap and they will skin easily).

Halve the tomatoes and rinse under running water to remove the pips. I am not too fussy about this as I use the chillies whole, pips and all, so a few stray tomato ones are not a disaster.

Place in a large pan with the sugar (no added water) and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. I use my preserving pan because it is less likely to burn, or to spit and burn my hands!

While they are cooking, peel and chop the garlic, (this is four smallish bulbs),
and the ginger, (a potato peeler can be helpful if the ginger is fresh enough to still be firm),

and chop the chillies. (The large ones are some I dried myself and the tiny ones were bought in the market). Fresh ones work just as well but you will have to guess the quantity!

Measure the vinegar. Add a little of each to blender and blend to form a fairly smooth paste, adding more of each until they are all used. I have a powerful hand-held 'blitzer' which is perfect for this, but any blender or liquidiser would do. This is the point at which the tears start to flow. It is pretty powerful stuff!

Add the paste to the cooked tomatoes, stir well, and simmer for a further 30 minutes.Blend the mixture until there are no large peices of tomato left. Again my hand-held mixer means I can do this in the pan which makes it easier.

Simmer for a further 60 minutes on a low heat, stirring occasionally. The resulting jam should be fairly thick so it is spreadable when cold. I had to boil mine a little longer this time as the tomatoes were so juicy.

Bottle, cover and label. Enjoy!

The original recipe used 4 x 500g cans of peeled plum tomatoes. Surprisongly enough, seeing as fresh ones are so readily available, or maybe because of that, canned tomatoes are quite expensive out here, and though I keep a tin at the back of the cupboard for emergencies, I rarely use them, but they work just as well. Strain them and discard the juice, and proceed as above.

The last lot I made was quite brown but this batch is a lovely bright red. It can only be down to the freshness of the tomatoes.

A word of warning; The first time I made this I used only my own dried chillies and we loved it. Last time I used only locally bought dried ones and it nearly blew our heads off! I mixed the two this time so we shall see ... I suggest you err on the side of caution, taste after you have blended them into the tomatoes and adjust the strength then. You can always add more, but you can't take them out again!

Throughout this process my fruit eating cat, Baggins, sat at my feet meowing, literally begging for some tomato. I eventually gave in and offered him this tiny titbit which he wolfed down. He then stayed there until I had finished, so when I went on to prepare chicken livers for our lunch I gave him some of them as a reward for his patience and he turned his nose up at them and walked away!

I am going to link this post to Inspire me Fridays, where Anything goes, but it will have to wait until next week as this week's collection has just closed.

Acrylics-A quick post for Hannah

2011-07-27T14:30:00.008+01:00

Hannah is my eleven (soon to be twelve) year old grand daughter, who is about to visit me with her family, and she is soooo excited. Every day she sends me the countdown to Spain, and we are at one week and five days now aren't we Hannah? Hannah has just left her primary school the proud winner of the Creative Arts trophy. She follows my blog and enjoys experimenting with paint and paper. Today she asked me if I have used acrylic paint, and what I have done with it. So here is my answer.

Now, while I may be a quite competent crafter, an artist I am not. I went to a grammar school where art was something they were obliged to make a small space on the timetable for, but it was not important, and the teacher was not interested in my frustration at not being able to make something look how I wanted it to, and gave me no encouragement to try something different instead. Because of this I steered clear of paints but I loved having a new set of pens, and happily coloured in other peoples art work!

Many years later, when I had abondonned my work as a secondary school maths teacher, and almost by accident found myself helping out at, and eventually training to manage a large pre-school, I made sure all the children had lots of opportunities to play and experiment with paints, clay, plaster, and anything else messy I could find. I encouraged the parents to buy them a simple polo shirt and sweat shirt as 'uniform' and to let them get it messy without fear of a telling off when they got home, and we had so much fun!

Now I am retired I have finally expanded my own range of materials to include acrylic paint amongst other things. I haven't yet managed to do a representational painting, but I am learning about form, and shading. As part of my efforts to integrate with the local people in the Spanish village where I live, I attend a weekly group called 'Manualidades' which does literally translate at handicrafts, but the room is let to us for a painting session, so that is what we are supposed to do. We are not given any tuition, but we give and receive advice from one another. There are a couple of very talented artists there, and a lot of ladies who just enjoy the company and consider it a part of their tradition to have hand painted cloths, glass and pottery ware in their homes. So I bought some very cheap acrylic paints and canvasses and here are my first efforts.

The shapes all originate from rubber stamps or printed images, which I have used for an outline, resized according to the canvas, and for now I am happy to just try to improve my shading. It is not easy here as it is so hot and the paint dries before you have time to do much with it. But it is a start. I am hoping to try an on-line painting course next winter, if I ever find the time!

Another time that I used acrylics was when I was asked to contribute some pages for a collaborated art journal for a friend to use with her students at school. For this I covered thick watercolour card with gesso and then with a layer of Buff titanium acrylic paint. When it was dry I used distress ink to colour the edges, and then, with more paint and an array of bottle tops and cardboard tubes, I stamped circles all over it. The centre image and swirl of writing was printed onto tissue paper taped to copy paper so I could put it through my printer, and then it was fixed to the page with a thin layer of diluted PVA glue.

And finally, here is a piece I made when I wanted a bright, colourful background recently. This was an absolute favourite at my nursery though we used squeezy bottles of poster paint rather than acrylic. I simply squeezed paint from my tubes onto a piece of sturdy white card, and pressed a second piece of card over it. I used my fingers to move the paint around between the cards until it started to ooze out at the sides, and then I just eased them apart to see what pattern I had made. The acrylic paint was thick enough to give this a great texture. This picture was taken as soon as I separated the two layers. When I have anything that needs a few minutes to dry, I use magnets to attach it to my metal filing cabinet, well away from my inqisitive cats. They could have had some real fun with this!

Hannah tells me she has just drawn a flower, painted it with white acrylic paint and then gone over it with a soft blue felt tip pen, and it looks really nice. I think we are going to have some fun together. See you soon Hannah.

Two more Christmas cards.

2011-07-26T20:44:00.011+01:00

When I saw that CrazyHazelnuts challenge this week was to use a reindeer I knew exactly what I would do, because last week I bought two of the latest Marianne dies of a reindeer and a sleigh.

I cut the deer twice from tiny off-cuts of brown pearlescent paper. Then I looked for a piece of card for the sleigh and found a little rectangle of an alcohol background I must have made at some time for another project. It was just big enough so I used that. I decided I didn't like the empty sleigh so I searched clipart until I found a picture of Santa that I could use. I had to mirror image him and trim him up quite a bit, but I did manage to cobble something together. (If I made this again I would print him on different paper to make him stand out more). I then stamped a couple of SeeD's parcels to fill the space at the front of the sleigh and mounted it all on to some starry scrapbook paper that I also bought last week. I mounted this panel on to a white DL base card and it was sort of finished, but I wasn't very happy with it. It was all rather dull, so I drew a rough frame with diamond black stickles glitter glue - it's slightly smudged as it is very hot here and I was working with both my ceiling fan and a floor standing one on, and they suddenly lifted my card and flipped it over! But I salvaged it as best I could. I also added ice crystal stickles to the main stars, and after a rummage through my Christmas peel-offs I found this one that says 'Santa's on his way'. It's not a sentiment that I would normally use but it fitted this card quite well and filled the empty corner of sky.

So I am entering this card in:
CraftyHazelnuts Christmas Challenge 30: Reindeer.
Die Cut Dreams Challenge 94: Animal Antics.
Gingerloft Challenge 22: Make it Sparkle.
Creative Inspirations Challenge 64: Christmas in July.
Craft Us Crazy Challenge 13: Anything Goes.

And now for my second card. This one was for the Bah!Humbug! challenge which was to use some beads. I love beads but am not particulalry good at using them on cards. I get frustrated trying to thread them onto bits of ribbon or fibre to make a 'dangly' embellishment. However I remembered one of my bargain buys from many years ago, and sure enough, right at the bottom of my Christmas stash, I found a whole heap of peel-offs with pricking patterns on for stitching. I don't remember where they came from but whenever I find I have a lot of something, it is usually from a bulk buy pack at the QVC seconds shop in Shrewsbury, near to where I used to live. They sell items that have been returned, split packs, and some that have been opened to use a bit for a demonstration. Sometimes they bundle a whole lot of oddments together and sell them really cheaply, and I have found myself the owner of lots of things that I might not otherwise have bought, and they can come in very handy sometimes. Anyway, I chose a Christmas tree image and stuck the peel-off onto little scraps of green and red card. At that stage it looked like the picture on the left. Then I raided my lace-making boxes and found some metallic thread and beads, and before long it looked like the picture on the right. Then I just needed to make it into a card.

I decided to follow the sketch given for SFYTT July challenge which you can see over on I love to stamp , because it was a fairly simple one which suited my tree. I covered a white base card with some pale green paper and made a mat for the tree from vellum printed with holly. Then I cut a strip of darker green paper to go down the left side. All three papers were from a very ancient book of Christmas card kits which I think is Dutch. It's time I used some of them! The band across the bottom of the panel is Woodware paper lace coloured with copic markers. For the three top motifs I chose three different sized bauble peel-offs, stuck them to the left-over piece of pale green paper and also coloured them with copics. Then I cut them out and glued them to the card. To finish it off I added a silver star to the top of the tree and stamped a Crafty Individuals greeting at the base of the card in Memento cottage ivy. So here is the finished card. Sorry there are such deep shadows on todays photos. It was very sunny, but I still get better photos outside than indoors. I only took them out for a few seconds but the sun immediately made the corner of the vellum layer curl up. But I shouldn't complain. If I could bottle a bit of our sunshine and send it to you all I would!I am entering this in:

Bah! Humbug! Challenge 29: Beads.
Christmas Inspirations Challenge 29: Free Christmas project.
Delightful Challenges: Christmas in July.
A Sketch For You To Try: July Sketch.
Make it Monday Challenge 47: Any Craft project.

And I am linking this to Shirley Anne's blog, Stamping for Joy to add two more cards to my collection please.

One for my sister.

2011-07-19T23:34:00.009+01:00

Some of you will by now have made the connection between myself and my sister Jean Straw, who is also a crafter and has her own blog called My Crafty Corner. Do pop over and see her work sometime. Her style is very different from mine, but she makes some lovely things. Anyway, when it is her birthday, of course I want to make a special card for her, so last week, this is the one I made.

The little girl is a Sugar Nellie digistamp. Her name is Grace, and I think she is so pretty. I printed her onto white card and I had intended to cut her out with a Marianne circle die, but I realised that it had too many 'cut-out' areas which would cut into the image, so instead I drew round the outer edge of the die and cut it by hand. I coloured her with my copic markers, edged the circle with Brilliance pearlescent lavender, and then layered her onto another Marianne die cut circle. This was layered onto a piece of printed backing paper from my stash, and then on to a lavender base card. I added paper candy dots to three corners and in the fourth corner I again made a boho flower from printed mauve paper and added a light spray of silver mica mist. I layered this over two Marianne cut foliage pieces. (I expect you gathered that I rather like my Marianne dies!).

I was pleased with the end result, so as it was also my lovely daughter-in-law's birthday last week, I made the same card again but with slightly different backing paper and a different shade of lilac paper for the large circle mount, again using up pieces from my stash. It wasn't quite such a good colour as the original, but I sprayed her flower with copious purple mica mist because I knew she would love that. (She tells me that she has just dyed her hair purple!).

I am entering these cards into these challenges.
Make it Monday Linky Party 46: Any project.
Joyful Stamper: Inspire me Fridays Linky party 15.
Stampalot Challenge for July: Anything Goes.
Southern Girls Challenge 23: Happy Birthday.
Scrappy Frogs Challenge: Summer Flowers.

A Shaped Card

2011-07-16T11:48:00.017+01:00

A shaped card is what Bah! Humbug! challenged us to make this week, so my mind immediately thought of lots of ideas, but because I am trying to keep my challenge cards more simple, to leave me time for other crafting as well, I settled on a circle. I know there are several lacy circle die sets available, but somehow they are never just the size I want, so I decided a while back to try designing my own using Design Master for CraftRobo. That way I can resize them as needed. So I made a template for a scalloped lace circle using a large circle and the letter 'O' from a fairly heavy font (I can't remember which one worked best).So when I came to make this card I decided to use that template and I added a plain circle to the back to make a folding card. It actually took me several attempts and several spoilt sheets of card before I managed to cut the base card out as I wanted it, but more of that later. Next I used the same basic circle and a smaller one to make a ring of blue pearlescent paper to go behind the edge. I could have just used a whole large circle but this way I have still got a fair size circle of my precious royal blue paper to use as a mount another time! For the stamp I chose one by Creative expressions, which, although not quite circular, I felt would fit into my circle frame quite well. I actually made a whole run of cards with this stamp when I bought it a good few years ago, but I don't think it has had an airing since then! I used Versafine majestic blue ink and a stamping mat which together gave me a good image. I also stamped a small greeting at the base of the trees in the same ink.

I added some sparkle to the snowy trees with stickles, and added a tiny gem to the largest stars. Hopefully that makes my card eligible for Crafty Hazelnuts challenge to use stars, though I may manage a better one later in the week. I trimmed a tiny sliver off the scallops at the base of the card to help it to stand, and added a bow to the fold at the side. Inside I stamped a simple sentiment (There was no writing on the wood block so it's origin is unknown.)

I am entering this card in:
Bah!Humbug! Christmas Challenge 28: Make a shaped card.
Celebrate the Occasion Challenge 22: Christmas; Must be a shaped card.

As I said above, I spoiled some card cutting it, so rather than waste it I used some to make another card. I had used one lacy circle as a trial run to see how the stamp fitted, and as it was a good print I used that. I had to hand cut a couple of scallops that had missed in the craftrobo, and this time it wasn't attached to a plain back. So I cut a circle of silver holographic paper to go behind it so it only showed though the lace, and not around the edge, and then mounted it onto a deep blue 15cm square card. I embellished the image as for the one above, and added three matching gems to the lower right hand corner, balancing them with a bow in the top left corner.If I am honest, I think I prefer the square card, but it wouldn't have fitted the challenges above. However, I am entering both cards in:

Christmas inspirations Challenge 29; Free Christmas project.
Digistamps 4 Joy Challenge 23: Christmas in July, with snow and ice.
Stamp Something Challenge: Christmas in July Somethings.
Simply Create Challenge 48: Christmas time.
Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 29: Seeing Stars.
And I am linking them both to Shirley-Anne's blog, Stamping for Joy, towards my target of 50 cards.

A Big Welcome

2011-07-13T17:28:00.005+01:00

Hi happy crafters. I am so thrilled to find that my group of followers has topped twenty now, so I just wanted to say a big welcome to all the new folk who have joined my group. I have managed to send personal e-mails to some of you, but if I have missed you, you are still just as welcome. I love to read your kind comments on my little offerings, and to visit you to see what you have been doing. I hope that some of the things I make and do will give you ideas and inspiration. I have tried so many new techniques since I arrived in blogland at the end of last year, all as a direct result of inspiration from other bloggers, so hopefully I can pass on some of the love.

I really love that I am making friends from around the world through our mutual interest in all things crafty, though so far I haven't got a follower from what is now my home country of Spain.

One of my newer friends is Shirley-Anne from Australia. She makes some lovely things, so do pop over to her blog, Stamping for Joy, and have a look. On her blog she has laid down the challenge to make 50 Christmas cards by December 1st. I have just counted my makes so far this year and find I have 38 (I thought it might be rather more!) but of course none of these have been linked to her blog, so I am a late starter. I am going back to yesterdays post to link that as my first entry, and then I will have to get my skates on to catch up. I certainly need at least fifty more, so there's an incentive to start with. I met Shirley-Anne through the Make it Monday challenge blog which is a great place to go if you want somewhere to showcase scrapbook pages, ATCs and other papercrafts as well as cards of course.

And now, because I can't do a craft post without showing a picture, here is a card I made a while ago when I sorted through some rather old stash, and decided to make something useful with some of it. It has not been entered for any other challeng

es, not been shown on my blog before. It is using a dufex pirima ge sheet, cut and layered, using 1mm sticky pads because too di mensional cards are not ideal for international posting. This is matted onto a spare scrap of light blue paper from my off-cuts box which has been punched once on each edge with a fiskars border punch. The panel is then mounted onto a square navy card and a silver peel-off greeting added across the corner. I hope this can be card number two towards the target fifty.

A Little Giving.

2011-07-12T22:02:00.009+01:00

Here's a quick and easy card from me this time.

Acording to the ABC Christamas challenge, N is for No Nonsense, so we needed to make a simple card with no designer backing papers and the minimum of 'extras'. I was also making a card for Bah! Humbug! who wanted to see some 'meeces'. Well as I only have three stamps with mice on, all by Great Impressions, it was not a too difficult choice, and I decided on the one where these two friends are exchanging Christmas gifts. So I stamped them onto plain white card and coloured them with copic markers. Then I cut the image out with nesties label 4 die and edged it with brilliance sky blue ink. For the base card I printed the sentiment from the computer in blue, then used my swiss dots cuttlebug folder to emboss the top two thirds of the card. It wasn't quite long enough so I had to emboss the last two rows of dots down one edge by hand. Then I found a length of blue spotted ribbon to go across the card and mounted the label panel on it with thin sticky pads. A touch of stickles glitter glue on the snow and it was done.

This card is for :
Bah! Humbug! Challenge 27: Meeces..
ABC Christmas Challenge: N is for No Nonsense.
Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 28: Spots before your eyes.
My Creative Moments Word Play: Christmas/Winter.
Moving Along with the Times Challenge 106: Christmas in July.
Little Red Wagon: Christmas in July.

I am also hoping to start contributing to Shirley-Annes challenge over on Stamping for Joy, to make 50 Christmas cards before 1st December, so this is my first card towards that total.

ATCs that are special to me.

2011-07-11T17:33:00.011+01:00

A few years ago I was a regular contributor to the Stampman ATC swap, but it became so busy that they couldn't cope with the practicalities as well as the running of the shop, so it closed. I knew it had restarted over a year ago but with my move to Spain, I never got around to joining in, but this month I decided to give it a go. You can find the details here.

The theme for July was Vintage. Now I have quite a pile of vintage photos that I have bought in sets, or downloaded onto my computer, but as I was thinking which ones to use, I had the idea to use something much more special to me, and that is this lovely photo of my maternal Grandparents. I never met them, but I just love this photo, taken around 1905 I think. She is so elegant and he so proud.

I made a few copies of the photo and for my first ATC I passed a memory glass slide through my little Xyron quick sticker, and pressed it over just my Grandmother's picture. I cut this out and edged it with aged mahogony distress ink. (This didn't dry properly but it did leave a hint of colour). Then I found some burgundy card with a gold sheen if you look at it at an angle, and embossed it in my cuttlebug. It looked a bit too good, so I sanded it, rubbed it with walnut stain distress ink and spritzed it with water. I glued a small strip of lace, left over from a scrapbook page, about two thirds of the way down, and mounted the slide at the left hand side. I then chose two feathers to glue the other side, (My ever-present lazy cat got so excited when I got my feather box out I think she would have attacked them all if I hadn't got the lid back on fast. I've never seen her so animated!), and then I knew it needed a flower to finish it off. My punches were all too large or too small, so I found a selection of paper flowers from my stash, all variations of pink and white. I rubbed tea dye and victorian velvet inks onto my craft mat and spritzed them, and let my paper flowers soak it all up. With some difficulty I then layered them up with a brad fastener through the centre, screwed them up and passed the petal edges through aged mahogony and walnut stain ink. Then I flattened it out, and when it was dry I glued it to the base of the feathers.

Then I thought I would use just my Grandfather's image for the second one. Although this photo was taken prior to the Great War, and though to the best of my knowledge he didn't die in that war, I have used his photo before to represent 'the great fallen', (See my top right side bar), and I wanted to do so again. Using a lighter brown base card I cut a mask and stamped part of the Crafty Individuals poppy field stamp across the base. I used copic markers to add a little subtle colour. I then used old paper distress ink to colour some ordinary copy paper and printed out the words of one verse from the Ballad of Willie McBride, also known as The Green Fields of France. This is a very poignant song that I have loved ever since I first heard it many years ago at a folk club. If you are not familiar with it, do spare a moment or two to read the rest of the lyrics which you will find one version of here, though there are are several others with small differences. This is the version I have on CD so I am more familiar with it. To make the 'brown leather frame, I screwed up a small piece of brown card, and rubbed it with walnut stain ink and then spritzed it, and left it to dry. Then I tore round the words and layered them up with the framed photo. I used two very small paper flowers, colouring them with barn door ink as for the flower above, and fixed them with a black mini-brad to make a poppy for the top right corner, and in the left I added two brown folk-heart brads.

I needed one more card for my swap, so this time I used the photo of both of them and added a metal frame from my stash. I had a piece of card, partially embossed, left over from my first ATC so I used that as the base. In the main photo, the 'props' were a fence and trailing leaves which gave me the idea to use a small piece of green mesh cut on the bias to represent a trellis, and some woven fibre 'ribbon' for the leaves. It lacked something so I added random tiny pearls for flowers. Then I found some beads from recycled jewellry that I buy in local markets, and threaded them on brown cord to hang below the picture, and covered the rather untidy join with a small cream organza bow. I hope you think I did my grandparents proud.

As well as the Stampman swap, I am entering these for the
Make it Monday linky party number 45.
Theme Thursday Challenge: Vintage.
Art Impressions Challenge 23: Use something from your stash.
One Stitch at a Time Challenge 70: Anything goes.

I am also linking to a new challenge for me called ABC because their current challenge is Y is for Yesterday. I am not sure if entries are meant to be a greetings card, but these fit the bill so well that I am giving it a try. I'm sure if it is only cards, they will let me know for next time.

A Birthday Card for a Friend

2011-07-09T22:29:00.007+01:00

One of my crafting friends turned 70 today so, of course, I made her a card. It just so happens that earlier this week I received an order from Chocolate Baroque which contained three sheets of their new stamp releases, so what better way to try some of them out.

I knew my friend likes butterflies so it was easy to decide which stamp to use as the main image. I wanted to work mainly in one colour, so I cut a 14cm square of white card and used a sponge to add some Memento rhubarb stalk ink, making it darker around the edges. Using the same ink pad I stamped the main image and added a little extra colour with copic markers. I then chose a large swirl stamp from a second sheet of my new stamps, and used sections of it to stamp all around the card. I mounted this onto a dark burgundy base card, and used pink and plum stickles to highlight the spots on the butterfly's wings.

For the corner embellishment I had a go at making some boho flowers. This was only my second attempt and I was very pleased with them. The larger one was not too difficult though the tiny ones were a bit fiddly. I made them from layers of pink card and white heavy paper rubbed with the rhubarb stalk ink pad. While they were still wet I wiped them through some of the ink that I had put on my craft mat, and then when they had dried I added a touch here and there of the darker stickles glitter glue. I could tell you how I made these flowers but a lady called Carole Claxton has kindly put an excellent tutorial on her blog which you can find here, so there is no point in my repeating it all.

Using the off-cuts of the base card, I cut two 'forest branches' with a Marianne die and using the back of one of them so that they both curved inwards, I glued them from the bottom left corner, and then glued the flowers in place over them. A small greeting in the same ink, added to the top right corner, finished it off.

I am linking this card to these challenges:
Scrappy Frogs Challenge: Summer Flowers.
Creative Craft Challenge: Pretty Blossoms.
Ooh La La Creations Challenge 83: Summer Flowers.
Make it Monday 44: All Papercrafts
Joyful Stamper: Inspire me Fridays 14 linky party.

Poppy

2011-07-04T21:11:00.004+01:00

This is a card I made a couple of weeks back, for one of my sisters. but as her birthday wasn't until last week, and I had to allow extra time for the vagaries of Spanish mail, I didn't want to put it on my blog until now.

This was my first attempt at Sheena Douglas' paint fusion. I have been 'sitting on' the stamps for a while but I have only just been able to source out here the paint she recommends, and when I tried with my usual acrylics, they were just too thin, and I wasn't happy with the results. I am still waiting for a new order of the paints to arrive, so I only have a very limited colour range, but I had enough to attempt the poppy. I had painted it on plain white card which looked rather stark to use as a topper, so in the end I cut the flower and its leaves out, and made a meadow background to mount it on.

For the background I sponged all over the card with distress inks in mustard seed, shabby shutters and peeled paint. I then randomly stamped over it with an Adirondak meadow ink pad and the peeled paint, using Hero arts grasses stamp and several meadow flower stamps by Elusive Images (now Chocolate Baroque). I edged the card with the darker green ink, mounted the poppy and added a green stamped greeting and a butterfly peel-off. I think that was a mistake but I couldn't remove it. Another time I would stamp a small butterfly and colour it. But I was pleased with the card over all and I hope my sister was too.

I am linking this card to
Make it Monday week 44; All paper crafts.
Scrappy Frogs Challenge; Summer flowers.
Stamping Sisters in Christ Challenge 96: Clean and Simple (Well it has no fancy embellishments).
The Paper Shelter Challenge 20: Anything goes.
Craft Room Challenge; Summer birthdays.

In the pink

2011-07-04T18:22:00.012+01:00

When one of your regular blogs sets a challenge to use something you hate, you have the choice to give it a miss this week, or stop muttering and give it a go. I decided to take the latter course, so here is my card using the infamous acetate!

For this card I used a set of images that I have had on my computer for years and I do not know their origin. I know they started as a cat sitting on a window ledge looking out onto the bare branches of a winter tree, and I expanded this into a set so I have one with and without the tree, and with or without the cat, and one of just the frame and just the cat. Using the frame and cat I printed this onto white card, cut and folded it into a standard A6 card, then cut out the window panes. Lightly pencilling around the edge of these to mark their position on the inner right hand side of the card, I used a stamp positioner, (and removed the pencil marks), to stamp inside the card with a winter tree stamp from Elusive Images (now Chocolate Baroque). I used eclipse paper to make a frame mask for this image, and one for the hills, and using a sponge I applied shades of pink/purple inks to the sky - Versacolor in lilac, hyacinth and grape. To make it a bit more 'Christmassy' I stamped the Crafty Individuals Santa and sleigh across the sky. I then gave a suggestion of frost with stardust stickles on the hills and tree branches.

While this was drying, I stamped just the cat image and cut it out. Then I dabbed it on a versamark pad and triple embossed it, rounded it a little, and using silicone glue for dimension, I atached it to the main image. To complete the front I used the same lilac ink pad to stamp a personal Impressions (Dawn Bibby) Christmas tree, SeeDs parcels and Clarity stamps baubles, and added a peel-off greeting that I had coloured with a black permanent marker.

Oh, and of course, I covered the open window panes with a piece of ACETATE, held in place with another window frame on the inside of the card! It is very hot and sunny here and this card did not photograph well. The base card is white, not pink, but I did my best.

I am entering this card in the following challenges.
Bah! Humbug Challenge 26; Use acetate.
Craftyhazelnuts Christmas Challenge; Use Pink and/or purple.
ABC Challenge; M for monochrome.
For Fun Challenge: To cool off those who are hot!
Creative Friday Challenge 47: Christmas in July.
Our Creative Corner: Christmas in July

Too much help! and more scrapbooking.

2011-06-27T20:07:00.010+01:00

I was just getting my bits together to make a simple challenge card (see my previous post) and I started by printing out the image. But it came out stripey, so I knew I had to give in and replace the colour cartridge in my printer that has been registering empty for weeks now! So I turned my back for a few minutes and when I returned to my table this is what I found! Arwen, my beautiful white cat has got the hump because she spends all day being moved off my work. her son Baggins is curled up in the elegant box I use for mica misting, and Luna, the tabby is mid-moult and is covering my chair with hairs! But at least they make me keep my workroom tidy because I have to put everything away, or at least on my 'working on now' tray, whenever I leave the room or they would ruin it in seconds. I dispatched them all and took back 'my space' to get the card made.

I wanted to keep the card simple so I could get back to making a few more pages of my son's scrapbook. I was quite pleased with these. Our son was diagnosed as having ADHD but not the severe type that would have had him and us climbing the walls. He was just a very active little boy with limitless energy, no concept of fear and little self control. So we tried to channel his energy into something worthwhile, and we knew that the best way to have a really enjoyable family day out, was to go to an adventure playground where he and his brothers could be 'on the move' all day. I wanted to capture his energy and fearlessness in these pages and I had so many photos to chose from. I wanted to use as many as I could so I featured two on the first page that perfectly capture how he was, and on the second page I made film strips of a few really fun days out that we had.

When I did a small filmstrip for a previous scrapbook I carefully cut out the frames and used a punch all along each side. This time I used a digital image of one frame, cutting and pasting it to make a strip. I then saved it as a bitmap and imported it into my craft robo. I cut it out of black paper and then carefully measured the apertures and edited each photo to the correct proportions, cropping a few so that each set were all either oriented vertically or horizontally. Finally I joined them in strips on the computer and printed them out. I was very relieved to find that I had got it just right, and the film strips fitted exactly. I also used the craft robo to cut out the large letters and their mats. Then I fiddled around trying to print the journalling on suitable triangle shapes to fit between the pictures and added an epoxy sticker and a few 'movement' words. So that's two more pages to cross off my plan. That's thirty three finished and seventeen more to go, and it has to be done by the end of September. That sounds fine but it is already almost too hot out here to handle the photos, so I am going to struggle a bit.Help!!

I am entering these pages in Paper Crafting Journey Challenge 13: Anything goes. Make it Monday 43: Always anything goes.
Inspire me Fridays 12: Any craft

P-P-Pick up a Penguin

2011-06-25T17:00:00.007+01:00

Bah! Humbug! challenged us this week to use a penguin on our card and that proved a problem at first as I have no stamps of penguins. Then I remembered this image that I always liked, from an OLD CD of Joanna Sheen's, - Animal Antics. It is actually so old that it refused to play properly on my newish computer which has Vista on it. I eventually managed to open the file of jpegs and pull out this image but I couldn't get to the backing papers etc.

I wanted to keep the card fairly simple but I was also working to the sketch on the Sketch n Stash blog, and trying to meet Daring Cardmakers challenge of using 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue', so I started with a base card in a cloudy BLUE design. For the first panel I BORROWED the Dreamweavers snow stencil from a friend and used silver mica spray through it onto BLUE card. This didn't turn out quite how I expected it to but I sort of liked it so I used it anyway. The second panel is printed from the Artylicious CD Season's Greetings. It all looked rather plain so I edged each panel with a fine silver peel-off and added strips of holographic snowflakes to the penguins. I used a simple silver peel-off sentiment and edged it with the same fine silver strip. The snowflake in the top corner is another ancient piece of stash, so old that its original packaging said 'Sainsburys. Two sheets for 99p'. I livened it up with another holographic snowflake in the centre. The NEW bit is the tiny blue gems in the bottom right corner and the darker ones in the top left corner. (You can tell I'm a true Libra; everything has to be balanced!)

So this card is for;
Sketch N Stash Challenge 64; Follow the sketch and use something old or new from your stash.
Bah! Humbug! Challenge 25; Penguins.
Daring Cardmakers Challenge; Something old ...etc.
Craftyhazelnuts Christmas Challenge 26; Anything goes.
Creative Craft World, Card Crazy Challenge; Christmas in June.
Christmas Cards All Year Round; Anything goes.

I won a prize.

2011-06-25T16:50:00.004+01:00

Many of the challenge blogs that I use offer a little prize now again, the winner usually being chosen by a random generator, and the prize being provided by a sponsor. I enjoy making my cards, and the challenges encourage me to think differently sometimes, and to try things I might not otherwise have done, but it is an added bonus to receive a prize. Last week my number was picked on the Daring Cardmakers Challenge Blog, and I won this pretty pad of papers, kindly donated by Emma at Crafty Emma's Store. Thank you Emma. The papers are such lovely vibrant colours and I am sure I shall get a lot of pleasure using them.

Going Green

2011-06-22T21:35:00.010+01:00

Today I was making a card on the theme Christmas wings, which for me has to be a robin or an angel. I have so many lovely angel stamps, so that's what I went for. I also wanted to work in monochrome and I thought angels are nealy always white, blue or gold, but why not a green angel? It would be different.

After Antonia, the lovely lady who runs our village post office, explained to me how the Spanish mail is priced, I have tried to stick to standard sizes for my cards. It makes sense to use A6 size for any that I may be posting to UK, but the 'standard small envelope' out here is a little larger then in England, so sometimes I cut a base card to just fit one of these. I prefer it to A6 as I have a little more space to work on, but it is not economical as I can only cut one from an A4 sheet of card. Today I chose to do this using a sheet of lime green card. For the backing paper I dabbed a green Marvy blending-blox onto my silicone mat, spritzed it with water and layed white paper on it. When it was dry, I cut it to fit the base card and used a Martha Stewart doily lace punch down each side.

Next I chose this lovely stamp by Great Impressions and stamped it with Memento cottage ivy, and coloured it with copic markers. Then I used black Stazon to stamp just the wings twice onto acetate, dabbed green alcohol inks on the back and cut out both wings from the first image, and then just the front one from the second. I cut a slot along the angel's back and tucked the edge of the wings through it so I could secure them with tape on the back. Then, starting with the largest nestability no 4 label die, I drew round it and extended it a little in length and quite a lot in width and cut out a template. I put this over my angel image, drew round it and cut it out by hand, and distresed the edges with the same memento ink. I then used the small Nestability die and an Art Journey sentiment stamp to make the small label. Finally I mounted up the layers and added three lime green gems to the top left and bottom right edges.

This card is for:
Craftyhazelnuts Christmas Challenge 25: Christmas wings.
Craft your Days Away Challenge 22: Monochrome, and
Stampin' for the Weekend Challenge 10: Lemon and Lime.

Brrrrrr!

2011-06-21T22:46:00.004+01:00

It may have hit 40º here yesterday, but today I am back in the snow making a Christmas card featuring scarves and mittens! I have kept it fairly simple with a printed backing paper and several SeeD's stamps. I stamped these with Memento tuxedo black and coloured them with my Copic markers. The snowman's frame was made with a conbination of Nellie Snedden and Nestability circle dies. A little bit of stickles sparkle was all it needed to finish it off.

I made this card for:
Bah! Humbug! Challenge 24: Scarves and Mittens.
Crafty Ann's Challenge 43: Christmas in June. and
Just add ink 72: Just add some Colouring.