Copper snowflakes

This is a card I made for a special friend. I started with a background made with Paper Artsy Infusions.

I added some snowflakes embossed in copper EP and then mounted the panel behind a die cut square aperture. I added die cut snowflakes and a sentiment using a copper coloured pearl card.

Elaine

Recycling Christmas cards

Although it is lovely making completely hand made cards, I do feel guilty about the lovely cards we get sent that just go into the recycling. This year I have made a couple of cards using cards we were sent last Christmas. I have combined them with die cuts and a stamped sentiments.

The first design used a mixture of Marianne, Memory Box and Avery Ellle dies and a Stampin' Up Embossing folder.

This cards uses Crafters Companion and Memory Box dies and a Kaisercraft sentiment.

I know these are very simple designs, but it feels right to try and save some of these lovely cards we have been sent and to give them a new lease of life.

Elaine

December is here!

I seem to have been AWOL from my blog for absolutely ages. Life is mad! Anyway, with Christmas looming like an express train, I decided I better get on with some festive posts! I have been making some batches of simple cards.

This card is pretty flat ideal for posting.

Stamps: My Favourite Things Snowflake Flurry; WPlus9 sentiment
Dies: WPlus9
Inks: Distress Inks - too many to mention!
Other: White embossing powder

Hope your own plans are on track for getting organised for Christmas

Elaine

Snow Fairies

I am quite behind with Christmas card making this year, I have about 70 to make, plus about another 10 special designs, so I need to get started quite early in the year. I think this time last year I had all my main batches made! Anyway, yesterday, realising the autumn equinox had passed and starting to feel slightly panicky, I sat down determined to make a small dent in the task.

At the start of the year I bought the Penny Black Snow Fairies stamp set. I am not one for cute designs as a rule, but sometimes the character of particular designs calls to me and these rather mischievous little fairies were an example of this. I actually stamped these images on watercolour paper in archival ink months ago, coloured them with my Faber-Castell Aquarelle watercolour pencils and a waterbrush and fussy cut them out in front of the TV one evening.

I decided to take a production line approach to make the batch of 10 cards, so I cut the teal matting, squares of two types of designer paper and die cut and stamped the snow drifts, ready for the sticking session.

Originally I was going to stamp and emboss a snow fall background, but I took the lazy route and used a couple of sheets of 12 x 12 designer paper.

 

 

I added the pre-stamped die cut snow drifts, being carefully not to glue right at the top, so I could tuck a little foot down behind the snow where this looked appropriate for the design.

 

 

Thanks to the three different fairy designs and the different backgrounds, I got a bit of variety in the designs. I finished off by adding a little sparkle to the wings and snow balls with a clear Wink of Stella pen.

 

It is always nice to see a new batch of cards packed up into a cello bag (usually a recycled one) and ready to go into the Christmas card box!

 

 

So in the space of less than two hours I made my 10 cards and I was pleased with the result.

 

Stamps used - Penny Black Snow Fairies, Stampin' Up Flurry of Wishes

Dies used- My Favourite Things Die-naimics Snow Drifts

Designer Paper used - Do Crafts, Sandy Lion and Core-dinations

Inks used - Stampin' Up Lost Lagoon

 

Hope you are having a good and productive weekend too!

 

Elaine x

The adventures of Bunjamin Benny and a Happy Birthday!

It's my sister's birthday today and like me she is into recycling (I much prefer the term to upcycling I have to say!!!) Anyway, I am a fan of Country Living magazine mainly for the gorgeous photography and I am especially fond of the little crafty supplements they often include as they are printed on matt paper. I save them for future use and making my sister's birthday card seemed the perfect opportunity. This is the one I used to make her card having carefully removed the staples.

This is the card I made from the pages I recycled, the front, with some added cloth tape, the red heart with stamping, some little wooden hearts and the wish ticket. 

This is the inside, the main addition is the little dress which is stamped and cut out, with buttons sewn on and some matching ric rac braid and a little stamped patch added to the pocket.  In the pocket is a picture of a knitted rabbit I made - more of than in a moment! I also added another heart with a stamped Happy Birthday sentiment and some Tim Holtz stickers (the black and white words on the left hand side which read "It's the little things that make life big" which seemed ideal for this theme.

I made the little rabbit for my sister back earlier in the year. I enjoy crochet, but despite coming from a family of very talented knitters with my Mum, Nanna and Mother in Law producing some incredible intricate work in days gone by, I was never tempted to knit as it always seemed too slow growing and fraught with the complete terror of dropped stitches. However, the thing that tipped the balance for me was seeing the beautiful little cotton rabbits produced by Julie Williams over at her blog . Julie is celebrating 10 years of blogging. Anyway, Julie sells her patterns and I decided to take the plunge which for such a novice knitter who could basically just cast on knit and purl was a big step. Julie's patterns give great instructions and links to suitable tutorial videos to help knit wits like myself! Here is the start of my little bun!

Here he is when he only had a head! I must confess I struggled to get the nose right, so mine is sewn on!

 

 

Here he is when he was finished and ready for delivery.

 



At one time you could buy Little Cotton Rabbit rubber stamps and I have had one of these for ages, so I was able to make a customised label colouring his clothes appropriately with coloured pencils. You can just about see it in this picture.

Anyway from Day 1, my sister has loved this little rabbit who was christened Bunjamin Benny and he has certainly settled into life with her very quickly and I get frequent reports of his antics which are a source of great amusement.

Bunjamin pops up at work with her.

He has helped with a book promotion

He enjoys his snacks (although I think we might have to teach him about his 5 a day)

 

but he also remembers to get some exercise climbing trees!

Most of all he remembers the importance of a good work life balance and remembers to relax, whether its daydreaming,

.... enjoying a good book .....

 

...  or relaxing in the bath with his very good friend on his lilo!



As you can see this little fella is giving us both a lot of pleasure and best of all, once I had made him my confidence in my knitting abilities has really grown and now I have also managed to teach myself to knit socks and am currently on my fourth pair!

It's a horrible wet day today, so I feel spending some time blogging is an ideal way to while away some time!

Hope you are having a good weekend.

Elaine

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.

About time too!

It's been far too long since I managed to do a blog post. Thanks to 6 weeks down with germs in the end, I lost the end of February and all of March to any useful activity really. I feel like I am playing catch up on all fronts, not least the vegetable garden. Family commitments have also been quite challenging recently and I seem to have got very little paper crafting done, although crochet and even some knitting has continued.

I thought I would share a few projects that haven't been aired here before. I plan to make batch cards, but rarely do. A while back I bought one of the texture plates designed for use with UTEE etc. I decided to have a go stamping with it. At first my less than perfect impression put me off, but then I decided it was actually perfectly fine for using and the following set of cards was the result.

I inked the plate with some of my underused rainbow ink pads and rather like the colour gradation.

Here is a closer image of one.

The shell is a Hero Arts stamp, not sure where the sentiment is from. I combined with various die cuts and matting using card from my scrap box.

Here is a birthday card I made my Mum. This one uses a Sue Wilson pansy die and a Honey Doo sentiment stamp.

I have been spending a lot of time in the garden and greenhouse getting veg plants started. 6 varieties of tomato started life like this far too late.

These plants are now quite a lot bigger and planted out in our polytunnel.

I just about managed my annual pilgrimage to the craft show at Ally Pally in April. I must confess it was touch and go up until a couple of days before as I was still feeling so ropey, but a long term plan to meet up with my special crafty friend Judith, made me determined to get there! Here is a pic of my shopping from the day. Needless to say, much of it untouched as yet!

 

Finally a couple of sky pics I captured, these are back from April. A stormy one as we were crossing the water. 

 

A beautiful sunrise when we got up very early one morning to listen to the dawn chorus that was really spectacular that day. This is a pic of the track up to our house and the sky that day was a real bonus.

I have more to update, but I will try and do another post before too long.

Thanks to any one popping in, who has not given up hope of ever seeing a post from me again!

Elaine x