An afternoon of distractions in the craft shed

This afternoon, I went down to my shed for my regular Sunday afternoon craft session. On the agenda was making progress with my canvas for the latest project for our shared Craft Stamping Quartet blog. My lovely shed is down in my wild garden in a wooded area, on the way I had to snap this lovely rose - isn't it a beauty?

On the way down to the shed I spotted one of our resident rabbits go down a new burrow that has only recently been excavated near the shed and as I arrived down at the shed I disturbed a baby rabbit who was sunning himself on my verandah. Sadly I didn't manage to get a picture of him.

I started some painting for my canvas and while I was waiting for it to dry, I started a little tidying and found this beauty. This is a Burnet Moth and is one of my most favourite native species of moths and butterflies - this is a little bit of a ragged specimin, but look at that colour! I managed to catch him gently in my hands and set him free in the garden.

It wasn't long before something else caught my eye. I have this little bird house outside my shed. It has been there a couple of years unihabited. This year however, my favourite bird - the wren - has built a nest and is raising babies. She spent the afternoon to-ing and fro-ing feeding the babes and cleaning the nest. This is the best pic I could get, as my battery chose a bad moment to run low, excuse the quality.

To be honest I didn't make much progress with my canvas, I think I may have to give up trying soon and get on with something I can do! There was only one thing I successfully decorated - my hands!

But I did have a lovely peaceful afternoon. I hope you'll forgive my distractions from the crafty content, but I love the pleasures my garden provides.

Elaine xx

Home again!

Well, I can't believe how long it has taken me to report back from my crafty holiday with my Craft Stamping Quartet companions, Jo, Judith and Lesley.

Apart from the day we all travelled and arrived we had the most amazing weather - in fact some days it was a tad too hot! I was the only one of us to travel on public transport. Despite all the other girls being really kind and bringing as much as they could for me to use to save me carrying too much, my bags were like lead weights thanks to me packing so much "essential" craft kit and cakes!!

We found some really nice accomodation which worked really well for us. Seeing all our craft kit together was completely unbelievable - there were piles and piles of boxes everywhere. In true dedicated crafters' style, we made a mess very quickly. You all know how much mess one crafter can make - just imagine this multiplied by four!!

I did try and tidy up my working space from time to time. At one point I am sure Jo thought I was trying to steal the whole table - sorry - I really didn't mean to, but I suppose I am used to having my whole shed to myself!! Making space to eat our meals was a continual challenge!!

We just had a perfect time. We showed each other techniques. Judith taught us the essential techniques of jewellery making - she was very patient as I was a bit of a sloppy pupil I think!!!

A lot of our time was spent making the circle journal pages for each other. We worked in pairs keeping the final version secret until the last evening when we handed them over. We all managed to make two each, but somehow we all managed not to make any for Lesley, so she had three IOUs. Sorry Lesley, but I am making quite good progress with yours now!

It was so interesting working alongside each other - seeing how we all work in such different ways. I think the results were amazing - I know this is in large part due to the care and attention everyone devoted to the pages we made for each other. They felt like a really special gift for fellow crafters who really understand the pleasure of what we all do.

These are the pages I made for Jo. I planned my designs before I went away to make sure I took all I needed with me. My starting point was knowing how much Jo likes kraft paper. The ideas blossomed from there.

These are the pages I made for Judith. I knew Judith liked the Basic Grey Wisteria range, so this background paper drove my colour palette. I had to include poppies as they are Judith's favourite flowers, so I stamped these on mulberry paper, decoupaged the layers and added black seed beads in the centres to reflect Judith's love of jewellery making.

We also fitted in a brilliant class with Linda Elbourne at LB Crafts - making a fabulous wall hanging. I haven't finished mine yet, but will post it as soon as I can. It was great and shopping at LB was a treat too, what an amazing place with a fabulous choice of goodies.

My efforts at teaching were to show the other girls how to do my leafy background techniques, using the plume poppy leaves I had bought from home. I blogged these a while ago here. The leaves were sadly a little floppy by the time we got round to it, but everyone got really good results in the end.

Some people got quite messy in the process - no names mentioned, but you know who you are!!

We kept ourselves fuelled with cakes, chocolate, a little wine, lovely home cooked food and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables of course!! We laughed lots, talked about life, the universe and everything - including crafting of course, had horrendously late nights and just had the best time ever. We popped out to the outside world now and again and spent time dodging the very large resident black great dane who was nearly as tall as me with his feet on the ground!

Sadly our few days together were over so quickly it was like the blink of an eye. Saturday morning when we all said goodbye was just so sad, we had shared so much. So thank you Jo, Judith and Lesley - how often can four women spend so much time in such close proximity and never have a cross word - you are great pals - I hope we can do it all again before too long.

Elaine xx

An exciting day!

Today is a really exciting day as I am packing to go on a mini craft retreat with my three Craft Stamping Quartet companions. It isn't often enough we are able to get together in real life, in fact we have only once had all four of us together in one place ever, so this holiday is an amazing treat to have real quality time together. 

Tomorrow we set off for four days of crafty heaven together, in some holiday accomodation in rural Bedfordshire - the location chosen because it was fairly centrally located between all of us. We have planned a schedule of activites to keep ourselves occupied, sharing our skills and knowledge between the four of us and generally having a brilliant time. We have also managed to fit in a workshop with the very talented Linda Elbourne at LB Crafts. I am so looking forward to visiting the shop for the first time as I love shopping at their stand when I go to Alexandra Palace.

One of the things we will be doing in the evenings is making circle journals where we decorate the pages for each other, so we all end up with a journal at the end of our break. This is the cover for my CJ and I have lots of ideas for the pages I want to create for the other girls.

The base layer is a gorgeous paper from Graphic 45, with all sorts of memorabilia added that really suit my taste. It makes a change to make something just for me!!

I cannot tell you how much stuff I have packed for the trip. We have all co-ordinated our packing lists, but I still feel like there is so much stuff I absolutely must have with me!! I think my craft shed must be nearly empty! It is like I am doing a weigh bridge test on my new crafty tote. If a wheel falls off I have had it!! I will just have to try and look like a pathetic damsel in distress when I am getting on and off the hovercraft, coach and train in the hope I might get some help lugging it on and off!!

To finish off look at this beautiful geranium I have blooming in my window box at the moment. Isn't that the most stunning colour? I think it really has a wow factor. 

Enjoy your week, I will report back when I get home.

Elaine xx

Cupcake Heaven

Elusive Images launched these gorgeous cupcake stamps a while back as part of their celebrations for the company's 10th birthday. I decided to make something a little different. I love making cupcakes, I am an avid baker - I love making cakes and eating them - so I decided to use the designs to decorate a cake box!

I bought a plain cake box and went on a glitter fest, covering the sides and top of the box with panels of glitter card. I cut out the letters with my Cuttlebug.The little cupcakes were coloured with marker pens and the whole image covered with Glamour Dust glitter. Under each corner I added some fine satin ribbon in four pastel shades.

On the side panels I used the larger cupcakes, with the cake cases embossed in gold on white and the tops given the glitter treatment again. The tag is made using a Just-Rite stamp on a nestie scalloped circle, with a little cupcake stuck in the centre.

A little selection!

This week I had to make a card for a friend who was being inaugurated as a Professor, not an easy choice of design. His subject includes food, hence the choice of labels.

Not sure of the brand of the sentiment stamp. The labels are all from a Webster's Pages paper, the bird from a serviette, with a Tim Holtz adage label and memo pin, metal corners and a pen nib. It is all backed onto

Basic Grey Wassail paper.

I have finally finished my April project for the Craft Stamper's Quartet blog I share with my three lovely friends. Here is a sneeky peek only.

For the full reveal, please go to the CSQ blog here.

Last but not least I promised an apple blossom picture. This is from a young tree and the variety is called Howgate Wonder. It is an amazingly large sweet cooking apple and I am hoping we may get our first crop this year. if you are interested in apples you can find out more about this variety here.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Elaine xx

A quirky birthday card!

Well in the midst of my cute card making I needed to make a card for one of my blog sisters Lesley. I wanted to do something a little different and here is the result which I thoroughly enjoyed making. I was a little self indulgent because I made this card in my favourite colours.

This is another 8 x 8 card. I started with a frame that I covered with aluminium tape that I had coloured with Stream, Demin and Eggplant alcohol ink,  don't look too closely at that!  It was the first time I had ever used alcohol inks on a project. The background was decorated with glimmer mists through a swirly mask, but not much of that shows. I used a variety of stamps, from Darkroom Door, Beeswax stanps and Invoke Arts to make different elements. All were coloured with the same blue and turquoise Adirondack inks. The main panel was an altered beer mat - courtesy of Linda Elbourne. The large flower was stamped onto Grungepaper with a stamp from the Elusive Images Big Flowers plate, coloured with dye inks again and with a decorative brad and little turquoise jewel stickers. I added a triple embossed chipboard butterfly, a chipboard dragonfly decorated with some jewels and opal dust glittery finish and a selection of flowers including some made from inked book pages. The little metal heart was painted with precious metal paint and glimmer mist and a Tim Holtz wish adage ticket was added using a TH memo pin. The happy birthday sentiment was stamped onto seprate tiny tags using a Darkroom Door alphabet set and decorated with little star brads.

Thanks for visiting!

Elaine xx 

Another cutie!

Here is another cute card for one of the younger members of our family. It is another version using the same Papermania Rose Garden papers and the digital Mo Manning stamp as I used before. I actually enjoyed making this one, maybe I am warming to the cuter style!! I even cheated a little and used some of the die cuts from the paper pack. After all, they do match nicely! The image is coloured with Coloursoft pencils.The leaves are punched using the McGill pine punch. It is lovely and adds a delicate touch to the flowers.

The fruit blossom is blooming in our garden and I took a picture of the cherry blossom earlier. The apple blossom is almost all out too, I'll try and catch a picture of that over the next few days too.

Shame the long weekend is over!

Elaine xx