WOYWW 143

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.