Nature's Beauty - an ATC swap

One of the blogs that I really enjoy following is that of Diana over at The Velvet Moth. Diana makes the most exquisite pieces of art, often incorporating textiles and beads and of course often velvet!!! A while back Diana put out a call for anyone interested in doing an ATC swap. I was rather behind everyone else by the time I replied, but Diana and I did make contact and agreed we would do a one to one swap.

I have had a very busy time over the last few months with family commitments taking up a lot of time and although I have been doing various knitting and crochet projects, plus had a much needed and special holiday, apart from some essential card making, I have not been keeping up with my papercrafting and mixed media projects. So making contact with Diana and agreeing to do this swap, gave me a much needed incentive to get myself organised and plan something a bit more creative and demanding on my creativity.

Diana was ahead of me and her beautiful Moonlit Garden ATC, decorated box and tag arrived while my project was still pretty much in the planning stages!  Diana's project incorporates die cuts, lace, velvet, beads, gold embossing and script. For more information about Diana's design pop over to her blog where she has also posted about our swap.

Not surprisingly, I had also planned a nature themed project as the natural world provides a great deal of inspiration to both of us. The title for my project - Nature's Beauty only came when I was nearing completion of the project.

My first step was to take a sheet of A4 white card and cover it with my leafy background technique (see my labels on the right for other posts about how I do this), using Distress Inks. I cut out the ATC panel and I then added stamping with the little ferns with first and second generation stamping and a little stencilling, before adding the heat embossed tree die cuts and the little ferny butterfly which must be one of my most used stamps. I shaded the edge of the panel to give a glowing light to the centre, as I wanted it to look like a woodland glade. The final touch was the word "Beauty".

Diana had made a lovely little box to hold her ATC so I thought about what I could do as an alternative.

I used the beautiful Crealie labels dies that I had a feeling Diana would like and cut two out of the leafy backgrounds and two out of toning green card for the insides. I stuck them together back to back and joined them at the bottom.

These are decorated again with die cuts decorated with Treasure Gold gilding wax, some tiny micro beads on the hollyhock flowers and butterflies stamped with the script stamp in the beautiful Delicata Gold ink which I had never heard of until another of my special crafty friends gifted it to me. The insides are stamped with dye inks. I made a matching small tag and finished that off with some leafy ribbon that has been in my stash almost since I started crafting, so it was nice to find a use for it.

To hold the ATC, I wanted something to hold it in place vertically so had a play with some scrap card and managed a little paper engineering to invent what I needed!

I absolutely loved doing this swap with someone so talented who likes the same sorts of motifs and themes as I do. I have been struggling to get inspired and motivated and working on this little miniature gift has got me kickstarted again I think, so thank you Diana and for the beautiful Moonlit Garden ATC, box and tag you sent to me!

My project used the following supplies:
Dies - Impression Obsession - Hollyhock; Craft Emotions Hogweed; Tim Holtz - Wildflowers; Memory Box - Darla Butterfly; Sizzix Framelits Tags Rounded; Taylored Expressions - Birch Trees; Crealies Extreme Labels; Stampin Up butterfly punches; Tim Holtz Bigz tag die

Stamps - Inkadinkado - Meadow; Darkroom Door - Artist; Crafty Individuals - CI207/231/021; Woodware script; Chocolate Baroque - Poppy Meadow

Inks and sundries - Distress Inks - Vintage Photo, Peeled Paint, Squeezed Lemonade & Twisted Citron; Stampin Up dye inks - Crumb Cake & Chocolate Chip; Ranger Archival Olive; Delicata Gold & Versamark. Treasure Gold in Florentine Gold, Oxynite and Green Amber. Embossing Powder in Copper and Gold. Dark Green micro beads.

A card with some backbone!

Recently my dear friend Debbie asked me to make a suitable card for her osteopath. She wanted a spinal theme in there somewhere and I must confess I was somewhat flummoxed. However, my OH rose to the challenge and suggested using the curve of the spine for a landscape - here is the result!

I started with a computer generated picture of a spine, which I carefully cut out. I inked the sky using the old favourite scalloped nestie masking technique and a masked sun. I added Crafty Individuals trees in suitable places and a swallow from an Artemio set. I used various green inks to colour the foreground and added grasses, ferns and flower heads with a selection of Crafty Individuals and Inkylicious stamps. I matted and layered a couple of times and finished off with a couple of little ready made butterfly embellishments.

Apparently the recipient loved the card, so job well done!

Elaine

Alpha tags E, F & G

I can't believe the month has passed again and it's time for me to share the latest batch of tags I sent in for the alpha tag swap. I have been overly preoccupied with some pending hospital treatment for my OH which was happening this week, and as a result I seemed to struggle with this batch of tags. Thankfully the treatment went very well and got the planned result pretty easily, so I have been able to relax a bit in my days off this week.

So onto my tags. The E tags to start! This was my first attempt, using the Chocolate Baroque Baroque Eggs stamps.

I coloured the egg with coloured pencils, mainly Inktense and added some highlights with Coloursoft pencils. I then covered the whole egg with a thick glaze. The background is made from embossed pale green pearlescent vellum. Disaster struck when the dried glazed egg warped and I managed to crack it when I tried to stick it down! So, I had to make a mark 2!

This time I embossed the egg in green EP and added ambossed flourishes around the edge in pearlescent powder, I added colours with various Adirondack dye inks and highlights with a white pen.

My F tag is on the theme of ferns. I used a large fern from the Chocolate Baroque Wild Meadow set, a small fern from Mini Meadow and the fern butterfly from the Crafty Individuals Elements set of butterflies.

I stamped in green versafine ink and added shading in Adirondack dye inks.I added some smaller ferns in a Jenny Bowlin Brown Sugar ink. I used Flitter Glu to stamp a couple more ferns and added gold leaf. The butterflies were embossed in a copper EP into green pearlescent vellum and cut out and decoupaged onto the tag.

Finally I chose the theme of grass for my G tag.

This is a simple one layer design. I just masked a sun and stamped various Chocolate Baroque grass stamps from a couple of different sets in black Versafine. I added butterflies from the same Crafty Individuals set I had used on the fern tag and a bird from a small Artemio set stocked by CB. I added shading with Adirondack dye and Distress Inks. Finally to finish off I added a dusting of gold pearlex powder around the edges.

I already have my plans in place for my H and I tags. Fingers crossed they go a little more smoothly!

Have a great weekend.

Elaine

New project

It's been a busy old time for me lately and I am playing catch up as usual. I have though managed to stick down the first page in a new project I have had in the pipeline for some time.

Back last year I saw an amazing collage book in Somerset Studio gallery. It was all stuck into a 12 x 12 artist's sketch book with black pages. Back last year I bought myself a similar book, which was actually a bit pricey, but I wanted to do this project as pure self indulgence so it seemed justified and my OH unusually actually encouraged me to go for it!

The idea for me was to create beautiful pages using some of those lush 12 x 12 papers that I had bought but couldn't bear to part with. It just seems so sad that they sit there doing nothing. Doing these layouts which are more collages that typical scrapbooking (which I don't really do) gave me a reason for using them and I can still look at them and stroke them any time I like!

I actually gathered all the elements of this page together last year, but in the last couple of days I did the deed and stuck them down!

Now, I love book print papers, things with a French theme and birds, plus a little subtle glitter so I was bound to fall for this My Mind's Eye paper, which I bought at the Ally Pally show a couple of years ago. I have added cut out sections from 7 Gypsies Conservatory paper and also some Websters Pages in the corners. The little girl tag and the Eiffel Tower ticket are both Crafty Individuals stamps. The word Beauty is from a quite new Chocolate Baroque set called Artistic Expressions. I added an image from a postcard, a frame from K & Co and some bargain butterfly embellishments.

I just wanted to ask are people finding when they load my blog that the background is now floating in a reduced size with the text superimposed over the top? I look at my blog on three different computers, over time this floating thing has happened in turn on each of the three computers. I think I may have to finally abandon the background I have had ever since I set up my blog which will be a wrench and also delve back into the new blogger template designer which I really don't like very much as it doesn't seem to do what I expect. If anyone has any good ideas of how to get over the problem I would love to hear from you!

Have a good weekend

Elaine x

Alpha tags C & D

Thanks to manging to keep up (so far) with the Alpha Tags challenge, I have a couple more things to show you.

My C tag was made using a cog theme. I used cog stamps from the Chocolate Baroque Steampunk Christmas set to be found here. I inked my tag with DIs, and then stamped my cogs in russet archival ink. I embossed some of the cogs in a rusty Judikins EP that I really love, and added some large bronzey brads before decoupaging them onto the tag and adding some metal cogs. The edging is cut using a Tim Holtz die (again embossed in that lovely rusty finish, courtesy of my very kind crafty friend Judith) (as were the metal cogs). So far I have had to beg and borrow things for three of the four tags I have made so far - it's a good job I have indulgent friends. I finished off with a piece of fraying sari waste. I was a little sad this tag wasn't a bit more exciting, but I made this tag when my chest virus was pretty full on and I felt a little lacklustre.

My D tag is based on diamonds and led me to my theme Diamonds are a Girl's best friend. I used a Crafty Individuals diamond stamp for the first time. I embossed it onto black card using a Stuart Gill marcasite EP which gives a coarse black finish with silver glittery bits.

I cut out some of the diamonds to make the pattern more obvious. I wanted the feeling of luxury and decadence for this one, so I cut my tag out of red illusion film which is like shot silk. I cut a very fine flourish out of black glitter card using my lovely new Memory Box flourish die for the first time. I added computer generated words, backed with more glitter and added tiny gem highlights, a gem flourish and a black glass flower from a Primark earring! I added a black velvet ribbon.

Again not the best photos, but I had to take pics quickly to get them in the post for the deadline which I just made.

I need to get on with the next batch of tags very soon. There are three to make this month, so no time for me to be a slacker this time around!

I am looking forward to seeing which tags pop through my letterbox for the swap very soon.

Elaine

Alphatag Swap - A

This year I am taking part in a tag swap between members of the Chocolate Baroque Guild. There are almost 30 of us taking part. The idea is that we produce a tag for each letter of the alphabet using mainly Chocolate Baroque stamps or stamps and other products sold by them. My theme for A was architecture.

Like a lot of us, I struggled to get a good picture at this murky time of year, so I have posted a couple of pics here. One darker which I think shows the detail a little better.

I started by stamping the arch from the Echoes of Italy stamp set  and then sponging a brick effect onto my tag around the arch using Versamagic chalk inks. I then embossed the gate onto some Crafty Individuals Italian themed paper and cut it out and decoupaged it onto the main image. I added shading onto the bricks of the arch with Coloursoft pencils. I cut out the little road name from the same Italian themed CI paper and added a thin embossed border around it to add definition. I added the words from a Beeswax stamp.  That isn't from CB, but it was so perfect I couldn't resist! I finished by punching lots of little leaves from the same paper pad and gently inked the edges with DIs and added them like they were trailing down the wall. My final touch was a piece of sari waste ribbon.

I am not sure who got my tag, but I hoped they liked it as much as the one I received from Mickey which was also an architecture themed tag using the antiquities plate from CB.

Thank goodness it is Friday

Elaine

A purple birthday

It was my special crafty friend Judith's birthday recently. She has been having lots of celebrations lately and keeping us busy on the card making front. This is the card I made for her birthday and she loves purple!

I started on a black base and layered up a deckle edged Laurence Llewellyn Bowen paper, topped with an art nouveau themed Joanna Sheen paper that Judith actually gave to me so I knew she would like it, The stamps I used were the gorgeous Crafty Individuals tag, with the little girl image that in our little group of crafty friends we called the Shirley Temple stamp. I stamped in my favourite Versafine in Imperial Purple and shaded with Victorian Velvet and Dusty Concord DIs.

The berries and leaf stamp is from Stamp Camp, embossed in a coppery Moonshadow powder. I used the same stamp as a watermark on the sentiment panel which uses a stamp I bought from Rubbernecker at Ally Pally on my last visit. This sentiment is especially appropriate for Judith as I always call her the Queen of Flowers because she often adds beautiful handmade flowers to her cards. I finished with some grosgrain ribbon, purple arum lilies (also a gift from Judith) and two little metal earrings, that I bought especially, to incorporate into a project for Judith some time.  

Thanks to Judith for taking the picture for me as I was so pushed to get this in the post I didn't have time to snap it myself.



Have a good weekend!

Elaine x

A butterfly card

This is a card I made recently for a work colleague who was leaving.

This is a green and purple colour combination inspired by the main papers which are gorgeous designs from My Minds Eye. I added a stamped panel using nesties, which are stamped in Imperial Purple Versafine on a Quietfire word stamp with a little Crafty Individuals butterfly added. The die cut leaves use a Crealie die, the butterfly edging is an X-cut border punch cut out of pearl green parchment. The purple butterflies are cut using a Martha Stewart punch. I added olive green ric rac, purple gros grain ribbon, purple paper roses in two different colours and a few green gems. 

Life is pretty hectic right now, so I don't seem to be posting so often at the moment or managing to visit many other blogs either. Hopefully, things will settle down a but soon.

Elaine

As Free as a Bird

Well here is my take on the latest Crafty Individuals challenge Free as a Bird.

For some reason I had it in mind that I wanted to base my design on a patchwork quilt. The original concept didn't quite come together, so here is what I ended up with! I stamped CI 184 in Teal Stazon twice and then shaded with a mixture of DI, Eco Green and Adirondack dye inks. I mounted the birds onto nestie Fleur de Lis Square die cuts. I mounted the main panel onto a sheet of CI paper which I overstamped with the CI 182 flourish stamp in Aqua Vivid Ink. I edged that panel with more die cuts, this time cut with a Crealie border die in pink and lilac pearlescent card and mounted the whole thing onto a sheet of DCWV 8 x 8 paper. I added the little bird squares and then matted a couple of times with different shades of purple and some pink die cut edging strips that have been in my embellishment box virtually since I started crafting. The resulting panel is over 9 inches square.

The colours are a little washed out as I took the pic in direct sun.

Thanks for looking - have a great day!

Elaine



Simply Square - green fern frame

I am not one for challenges, only because I am so short of crafting time. However, when I saw that Crafty Individuals had started a challenge on their blog, I knew I had to take part. Their first theme is Simply Square.

I took a small MDF frame and covered it with black gesso and then two coats of Ecogreen pistachio paint. All the stamps I used are from CI 207, except the word. I love ferns, I have lots of them in my garden and they are just beautiful. I embossed the ferns in a copper EP from Judikins. I think it is called rusty nail and it is nice as it has a slightly textured effect. I added some streaks of Lava Green Inka Gold on the frame and then toned it all down by adding some Lettuce Adirondack dye ink. I used a K and Co paper inside the frame and then inked four stampbord inch squares with Citrus ink. I overstamped with the little fern square stamps in Olympia Green Versafine ink. I emboosed the word Treasure in gold on green and added little charms, square lime green brads and a green flower. I finished off with some sari waste ribbon for a hanger. I tried to think of what Jean Hardy would use when she makes her perfect little creations, to make sure the project captured the Crafty Individuals spirit.  

I am off on my Easter break now and I have promised myself I will finish one project everyday. Some of them are half done things that have been hanging around for a while. This was one I started from scratch though and I am quite pleased at how it has come together.

Hope you all have a super crafting weekend!

Elaine

Are there fairies at the bottom of my garden?

Back last year I had this great idea of making a set of altered giant playing cards - one every week! Unfortunately with my snail's pace crafting, work and life generally getting in the way, etc, etc, it has not happened. So, I think this is more of an occasional series. I do like doing them though, as they are a nice size to work with.

Here is my next one, actually made some time back in the new year before my life got turned upside down, but mislaid between the temporary bedroom craft room and my craft shed movements. It turned up again last week.

This design uses Adirondack dye inks for shading and black archival for stamping. The fairy is from Elusive Images, I added some Glamour Dust glitter to her wings. The sentiment is from Quietfire and the ferns and dragonfly are from Crafty Individuals. The vine leaf edging stamp is one I use over and over from Lavinia Stamps.

This design was inspired by my dear crafty friend Jo, who said when she came to stay with me, that if fairies existed they would live in our garden.

The garden is certainly a wild and special place!

Thanks for popping by!

Elaine x
 

Crafty Individuals have a blog!

Any regular visitors to my blog know that I have a bit of a passion for Crafty Individuals stamps. Whereas most of my stamps get filed by subject in plastic boxes, there is something about CI stamps that means I have to keep them separately in their own little baskets! I adore them because I love minature projects and they work perfectly. Plus I am really inspired by Jean Hardy's work. It was one of Jean's projects that I chose as the first for the Craft Stamping Quartet blog I share with Jo, Judith and Lesley.

So I am delighted to see Crafty Individuals now have their own blog and needless to say I have become a follower.

So today I decided to post a project I made late last year with the gorgeous abbey stamps (CI - 286) and a little ornate corner from a bird stamp (CI - 266) that I also love. I have to say, the corner was a little freebie stamp I got when I ordered direct from CI. The little extras in their parcels like the beautiful postcards, badges and stamps,together with the little messages from Malcolm make every order feel like a present.

Using silver detail embossing powder I repeat stamped the text panel and corner stamp onto black. I carefully cut them all out and pieced them together to cover an MDF frame that I had painted black. I used one of the Essentials tile frames that CI sell, that fitted perfectly inside the frame. I stamped the different abbey images in black archival ink onto white. I mounted different sections of these into the frame, alternating with black and white photos of the wonderful abbey on Mont St Michel where I visited in October. I finished with the "Everywhere Peace, Everywhere Tranquility" text from the stamp embossed again in silver and added some tiny silver gems in the corners.

I love Mont St Michel and I could visit over and over and never get fed up - I can even forgive it's commercialism which is a rare thing for me! My love of cloisters inspired another of my projects on our CSQ blog which also uses CI stamps to a large extent.

Make sure you become a regular visitor to the CI blog as it's going to be a great source of inspiration.

Elaine

I've finished my Christmas cards!

I started off with such good intentions of keeping on top of making Christmas cards this year. I did actually start on Christmas cards in the summer for Elusive Images Design Team samples, but my own had to be put on hold. The cards in this picture were made in a big batch, with all the components stamped ready to assemble when I went on holiday in France in October. The deer on the red card design is a Papermania stamp - I just love this design. I added the greeting from the same stamp set on a tiny tag, tied on with red paper string. I finished the design off with punched snowflakes and a little red gingham bow. The green design has misteltoe corners, decorated with self adhesive pearls for berries. The sentiment is from the Waltzing Mouse Very Vintage Christmas set, a really useful set of small sentiments and labels, and the flowers are cut with a small Marianne poinsettia die.

The next card was a birthday card for my brother. I wanted to use the lovely Quietfire Walt Whitman quote stamp again and masked a sun and inked a shaded background before adding stamping. The birds are from a Tim Holtz set. the vine, from Lavinia and the plants are from Crafty Individuals

I really enjoyed making these cards, although they are quiet different in their approach, the second card is closer to my preferred style.

Hope your Christmas preparations are going well and you get some time for some creative escape.

Elaine

My first exploding box!

Earlier this month it was my crafty friend Judith's birthday. I wanted to make something special for her as she had been feeling really poorly with a horrible virus. I decided to have a go at making my first ever exploding box card. I have been really inspired by the work of another Elaine on her Magic Boxes blog and in particular, this amazing Indian inspired box which was commissioned by a chap for his wife - lucky girl.

I started with this lovely Persian Shrine stamp from Lost Coast, available from Happy Daze. I embossed the arch in fine silver EP and then cut out the shape and inked panels to go underneath in my favourite Adirondack dye inks over little stars stamped with a Lavinia stamp embossed in clear EP and a Viva clear flourish stamped in archival black ink. I mounted these panels on dark blue and turquoise card layers.  

I made a lid from more blue card and decorated it with the beautiful Elusive Images Indian Flower mandala stamp, glittered in shades of blue, with self adhesive jewels added. I decorated the edges of the box with glitter card and a phrase from the gorgeous set of abbey stamps CI 286 from Crafty Individuals, embossed again in silver.

I decorated the inside of the box with panels stamped with a tree stamp CI 209 from Crafty Individuals,  this gorgeous vine leaf and tiny slender mushroom stamps from Lavinia. Once again I shaded with the Adirondack dye inks in various shades of blue applied with Cut 'n' Dry foam. The central panel was stamped with the vine stamp, decorated with dark blue fabric flowers, with an oval panel with the delight stamp which is from a Hero Arts set. I added a couple of little stamped dragonflies whose wings had been painted with Opal Dust paint.

As always I love this kind of inking, building up the depth of colour and getting a sort of glow in the centre of the panels. I have to say it took me ages to put this together, but I was quite pleased with the end result and felt it had been worth the effort.

Last but not least, if you haven't already seen it, do pop over to the blog of the very talented Lynn Brown of LB Crafts where she has a very generous Tim Holtz giveaway going on until the New Year - someone is going to be a very happy bunny!

Elaine

A pretty frock!

I saw these gorgeous B Line dress stamps being demoed by Linda Brown and Linda Elbourne at the LB Craft stand at the Ally Pally show in April and had to add them to my wish list. When we visited LB in June as part of our mini Retreat trip to Bedfordshire, I had to buy them. You may have spotted them in a recent issue of Craft Stamper in an article by Linda Brown.

It took me until yesterday to get around to using these stamps and I made a card for a friend. I'm sorry the picture is a little out of focus, I only took one quick snap before I needed to get the card in the post.

I stamped the images in Ranger jet black archival ink on a sheet of K & Co matting card that had a natured themed design. This is actually textured card, so not the best surface for getting a really sharp image, but hopefully good enough to show the final result. I added more stamping from a Crafty Individuals set, the flourish is from the Tecnnique Tuesday Whirly Words set that had been on my wish list for ages and I finally got at Ally Pally in April. The sentiment is from the B Line dress set. I cut out and edged the dress with Shabby Shutters DI and mounted the whole thing onto dark green card, that I folded and cut out into a dress shaped card and just added a little wooden button.

I really enjoyed christening this delightful set of stamps.

Elaine xx

Just tinkering!

I have been tinkering with a few different cards and styles over the last couple of weeks. I do like to mix and match the styles I try out.

Firstly, this one uses a stamp from the Brocade Backgrounds plate from Elusive Images which has some gorgeous images. I stamped the image onto green vellum in black Perfect Medium and heat embossed in Angel Wings Gold Moonshadow powder. I then cut out all the leaves and stuck them onto a background of Artylicious paper from my Graphicus Guild pack. I actually cut all these out while I was on the coach on the way to meet up with my Crafty Friends at Alexandra Palace with my trusty little decoupage scissors from Tesco! A nestie sentiment panel, ribbon and green dewdrops completed this design.

This next card uses several Adirondack dye inks in Cool Peri, Stonewashed, Sailboat Blue, Demin and Eggplant. Starting with the lightest colours, applying with Cut 'N Dry foam and working outworks to add the darker colours closer to the edge. The stamp is Vine leaf from Lavinia Stamps, stamped in blue Versafine ink. The sentiment is from a Darkroom Door set Art de Fleur, volume 2. The butterflies are from a Crafty Individuals stamp (CI 231) that I find really useful.

This card uses another Crafty Individuals stamp (CI259) stamped in grey Versafine ink, I cut out the panels separately and shaded them with Adirondacks again. I backed the stamped images onto a Crafty Individuals backing paper from their Background Papers collection 4 - Trees. I added some punched and shaded paper leaves from a book page.

Lastly this is a bit of a cheating card, for a housewarming. I rarely use ready made embellishments these days, but I thought this little shaker style house was rather nice. I also used a little heart decoration I found in a lovely local shop at the weekend. I mounted the heart and house onto panels of Basic Grey paper from their Wisteria collection - this is one of my all time favourite paper collections. These are mounted on dark green Re-Make card, with a punched edging using the Martha Stewart Garden Trellis punch.

So I have been quite busy one way and another!

My other blog!

Well, not just mine! Today I was the last to post the first project on the blog I share with three other talented crafters. Please pop over and take a look and what we have all created.

Elaine x

A new bird stamp!

I have been really busy at work lately and haven't done nearly enough crafting lately. I gave myself some time off on Saturday and went to a craft show in London. This was a treat as I met up with my crafty friend Jo and indulged in some very enjoyable craft retail therapy. I bought one of the new Crafty Individuals stamps.  I adore this stamp and knew when I first saw it, I just had to have it!! I think it will be very useful for those ever problematic men's cards.

I stamped the image in black archival ink and then cut the tiles out separately. I masked the bird's heads with Eclipse tape and then added different shades of Adirondack dye ink with Cut 'n' Dry foam. Once I had built up the colours I wanted, I removed the masking and coloured the birds with Coloursoft coloured pencils. I mounted the tiles on a small hammered white card. These are actually wedding favour cards from the Paper Mills shop, but they make lovely small cards and have very nice card envelopes too.

I sent this card to another crafty friend Judith, who hasn't been feeling very well lately.

Elaine xx

A very frosty morning!

It's been a while since I posted, but I've been really busy and experienced considerable disruption thanks to the weather. Stupidly, though I think I was getting a little complacent, forgetting how cold it has been getting, because, guess what - I woke up today to ice on the inside of the bedroom window again and the water frozen again!!! There is an amazing frost here this morning - everything is sugar coated like this!

One of the reason's I have been neglecting this blog a little, is that I am excited to say I am part of a new craft blog venture with my distant crafting pals Jo, Judith and Lesley. We don't see each other very often as we live quite a long way apart. In fact Lesley and I have never met in person - only virtually!! We wanted to find a way to craft together across the miles and so we set ourselves the challenge of choosing one project a month from Craft Stamper magazine that we would use to inspire a project we would all complete in the following month. I was lucky enough to choose the first project which was Jean Hardy's Enveloped Elegance from page 34 of the February issue. As I have said before I am a big fan of Jean's work and I know I have set a hard challenge for some of the other girls. This is all about us going outside our comfort zone and trying new things and I know we are all going to interprete this project in very different ways. Having chosen the project, I think I am going to be the last one to complete my project though! You can see our new blog here. The others are streaking ahead and there are various posts so far of the materials we have all chosen and sneeky peeks of work in progress.

I put together a kit of materials for my niece's birthday today - Happy Birthday Hannah - to get her started on book making and art journalling. She loves her present and as she is doing a graphics course I know she will get stuck in and make great progress.

Here is the card I made for her. She loves black and white photography and dictionary definitions, so I chose a design I hoped she would like. The photo isn't great as I had to take the picture in artificial light, and the flash kept bouncing off the glossy paper.

I used one of the new Crafty Individuals stamps of tree silhouettes. I stamped these in black archival ink onto glossy paper. I am not keen on glossy paper even though it is great for really sharp images, but for a photograph-like project it was just right (apart from being impossible to take a flash photo of). I cut the panels of the stamp up into individual images and mounted them on black card I had punched with a film edge punch and matted the whole thing onto silver satin card. I used a dictionary birthday definition stamp I got from the bargain bin at a show and finished off with leaves punched from a printed page with a Woodware punch and edged with Weathered Wood Distress ink and silver maple leaf brads. 

Keep warm everyone! 

Graphicus Paradise Weekend Retreat

I've been a little quiet for a couple of weeks, because I was busy preparing for, and taking part in, the first ever Graphicus weekend retreat and how lucky I was! I had to make some ATCs to take - I had never made any before, but I quite enjoyed doing it!

On Friday 13th November, after a long trek north, I was one of 40 lucky ladies who descended on the Blackwell Grange Hotel in Darlington for a weekend of some of the most intense crafting most of us had ever experienced!!

Starting at 4pm we were greeted by Glenda and Lynn of Graphicus, who were to be our tutors for most of the weekend. Our craft room was at that point beautifully tidy for the only time over the whole of the weekend, all tables laid out and covered with waterproof covers and all essentials for the session to come. Each of us had a goody bag containing most of our materials for our weekend projects, plus lots of treats of Graphicus papers and other delights.

Our first class was a foundation class and preparation for projects the next day. This was followed by a three course meal, and then we continued crafting with Lynn until 10pm making an accordian book with pamphlet stitching. This was a really useful skill to learn as I love making little books. Not content with this late finish, my room-mate Jo, next door neighbour Judith and I did some essential crafting until not far off midnight!!

Bright and early the next morning, we were raring to go and after a hearty breakfast, we embarked on an ambitious project - a diptych book. This incorporated an amazing number of techniques, using gesso, tissue, fresco flakes, paint and gold leaf to distress a cardboard cover. We also distressed and stamped the inside pages and made a mosaic edged acetate cover. We learnt how to use the amazing Golden gel medium to achieve a photo transfer technique which we then mounted on a tag. I cannot show you my finished book yet, because I was one of the class tortoises and it has yet to be completed!!

After another filling lunch, the afternoon session was to decorate four 6" x 6" canvases and make them into a wall hanging. This time we used paint and stamping on tissue paper as the main techniques. The ideas was to join the canvanses to make a hanging. Again, me being such a slow coach, I only managed to get part way through my project which I decided to base on the four seasons. This is how far I got, but I was very pleased with the start I made, because I have always considered myself to be completely useless in the art department!!

I mainly used the brilliant Ranger paint dabbers applied with baby wipes and little brushes. Little bits and bobs of ephemera were added and stamped images on tissue paper applied with Golden gel which help make the tissue edges disappear. As you can see I still have quite a lot to finish, but so far so good!! All these projects were decorated using the beautiful rubber stamps from the Elusive Images range from Graphicus.

After another meal - yes we did get fed very well (and I haven't mentioned the cookies and glittery cupcakes in the coffee breaks or the chocolate to keep us going during the evenings) - we continued crafting again until 10pm with Lynn and Glenda teaching us various card making techniques including gold leafing and direct to paper inking. As you can imagine by this time we were quite tired, but very happy crafters.

Sunday morning and we were, of course, all bright eyed and bushy tailed again, ready for a brilliant session with Jean Hardy of Crafty Individuals who a guest tutor for the morning session. We transformed a simple little wooden box into a delightful little shrine project, which I did finish and here it is!! We had a great time in this session using the fabulous CI background papers, images and stamps, which as anyone who reads my blog knows come from one of my favourite product ranges along with Elusive Images so I was indeed in my crafty element with the programme for the whole weekend!! For those who were fast enough, they also made a tag with a CI image and one of their new swirly frames that are popping up on many blogs and in articles like the latest Craft Stamper magazine.

After lunch our last session of the weekend was a Stampbord class with Glenda and Lynn and the main project was a pencil pot. I has tinkered with Stampbord before, but this gave me much more confidence and the simple idea for constructing the pencil pot was excellent.

Finally, we had our graduation session and I think many of us felt really sad to be almost at the end of what had been a brilliant weekend. As we started to go off our separate ways, many of us headed first to Graphicus for some late night shopping. This was indeed a treat for me as I had only ever ordered from them through the post before, so it was great to see the products they have to offer and the beautiful artwork on display in the shop. Of course I also had to do some essential shopping while I was there!

A small group of us with longer journeys stayed at the hotel on Sunday night, so we got the chance to have a good chat - mostly crafty topics needless to say.

The weekend was wonderful and I wouldn't hesitate to do it again in a flash! Glenda and Lynn were great tutors who worked hard to deliver some excellent sessions. The helpers for the weekend Lesley, Annette and Cath who espcially looked after us on our table, were tirelessly helpful and the weekend wouldn't have been the same without them. David, Lesley's OH who became water pot monitor extraordinaire, who always got the right brushes back to their owners deserved a medal and Adrian who carted stuff back and forth to make sure we had the supplies we needed and acted as photographer with loads of cameras at the end, also deserves special thanks.

I need to say a special thanks to Jo and Judith who were my special companions over the weekend - it was great to spend special time with you, but also to the many others I met and shared such a great time with. Here are some of the ATCs I swapped - the styles of everyone are so different which is one of the fascinating things about us crafters.

I had a long journey home on Monday and it's been a long week at work since. I just managed to do a little crafting in front of the TV with a new stamp plate from Elusive Images that we were allowed to use at the weekend. Using Coloursoft pencils I have coloured some huge butterflies, slightly embossed the edges and mounted them on a lovely lichen covered branch that came down in my garden in the high winds last weekend.

These stamps will be a lovely reminder of a brilliant weekend. My only regret was that it whizzed by in a flash, after the weeks of excited anticipation I can't believe it is over already!