Beady Eyes

Hello

Hope you've had a good week and haven't been blown away in the windy weather!

I failed again with my blogging this week.  I had this plan for getting back into more regular posting and aiming for two a week.  Oh well, I'll try that one again next week!  It's not even that I don't have things to blog - I do, there's a bit of a backlog actually.  I'm just rubbish at sitting down and writing stuff.

Anyhoo on to the new Daring Cardmakers challenge, and all the way from Germany we have Miri in the hot-seat:

Turn up the bead(s)

I’m quite sure that you as a crafter have a stash of beads in all colours and sizes somewhere. Right?! And if you’re anything like me, you might not know what to do with them.

So let’s inspire each other and share your beady creations with the Daring Cardmakers this week.

See what the members of the design team made by clicking HERE

I think Miri has been spying on me! I love beads and have many boxes of them stashed away in my cupboards!  I had a bit of a jewellery making phase a while back but now I don't use them much at all.  

This was a lovely opportunity to use some - though, as you'll see I ended up using just a few teeny ones for my card - not really even a tiny dent in the bead collection to be honest!

 Info

Smooth quare card blank

White, green and pinky-lilac Bazzill card 

Gorgeous patterned flower from Bubbly Funk 

Lilac stamens (I changed the original ones to match my card)

Silver thread

Dies from Spellbinders:

Background for flower: 

Heart Leaves from the Joyous Celebrations Collection

Leafy Flourish: Foliage Flourish Shapeabilities Etched Dies

We were given some money towards an Afternoon Tea for an Anniversary present, but for one reason and another (mainly being ill!) we'd not got round to doing anything, as it was my birthday last week we had a bit of a double celebration and went off to one of the local Country House Hotels at the weekend and 'took tea'!  We've been here a couple of times before, its such a lovely hidden away place and the building and gardens are stunning, which really adds to the whole thing.

I thought I'd share some photos with you.  Neither of us like fruit scones, so our scones were plain ones and some yummy lavender ones

Right, this has taken way longer than it should have done, so I will shut up and go and make myself a coffee - and then maybe I will make something new....

Have a fabulous weekend

Happy Crafting

A Bit of Embossing

Hello

It's a lovely sunny day here again, I hope its nice where you are too.  I really struggled with my crafting this week - nothing worked!  My desk looks like a tip.

The card I've made for the Daring Cardmakers is not thrilling me, even though it's taken days to put together - I'm totally frustrated with it!

I did have one good result while making it though; I lost one of my favourite flower dies a few weeks back, search high and low and couldn't find it anywhere.  I'd just about come to terms with having to buy a replacement then, when using my circle die stack for cutting the circles for this card, I felt something on the reverse of the magnetic sheet and there it was.  Oh Happy Day!  More bizarrely, though I also found a tiny tulip head die stuck to the GoPress and Foil magnetic tweezers - and I haven't a clue where it's from.  I think its a Spellbinders one because its the brown metal sort, but I can't remember which set it might be from.

So now I have 2 small dies stuck to my fab Main Attraction

while I try to work out where their 'homes' are!

Anyway, Here's Ruth's challenge for this week:

  Hello and Happy Friday!

 My  theme for this week is

Who's the (Em)Boss?!

Let's see all your embossing creations and don't forget to tell us 
how and what you have used!

Well, that's nice and straightforward, I hear you say - but as I mentioned before, I didn't find it so at all.  So I've a feeling this one will either be binned or pulled apart and the bits used for something else!

 Info

Pale Blau, Navy Blue and off-white card

Silver card for matting

Blue satin ribbon and lots of inking

Silver Hot Foil (Couture Creations)

I used two different embossing folders on this.  The lower panel is a Woodgrain one (SU) and the lighter one is the lovely 'Blistered' paint effect one from Spellbinders

For the sentiment panel  I used a hot foil stamp and my GoPress and Foil machine.  I think the 'stamp' is by CraftStashUK but it may be Couture Creations

The Initials are definitely from the Monograms set, which is one of the new Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil range  - I indulged in a few of theirs last week! 

We'll call them an early birthday present to myself ;) They are really lovely.  There may be more heading my way soon!

In case you were wondering what a Main Attraction

is, it's a diamond shaped object which has a really strong magnet inside and it's perfect for popping your dies on mid-project!

 

That's it for this time,  Thanks for looking

Have a great weekend!

Gold Star Shaker

Hello

I've never had much success at making shaker cards, they've always turned out a mucky mess when I've tried them in the past, but inspired by my lovely friend and DT teamie Dawn, I've felt the need to crack the technique! 

  Over the last few years I've seen some wonderful shaker elements Dawn has added to cards and other projects and it made me a tad jealous that my own past efforts were so awful!

Anyway, thanks to Dawn (and Bubbly Funk Through the Letterbox) I just needed a good excuse to have another go.  The perfect excuse came a couple of weeks back when our youngest nephew deserved a gold star for doing brilliantly in his GCSEs

There's more info on what I used and how I created this star-shaped card over on the Bubbly Funk Through the Letterbox Blog and of course you'll find more of Dawn's shaker creations there too - they are definitely worth looking out.

I filled the shaker section with sequins from the Hooked! Through the Letterbox craft box and added a few small stars punched from one of the larger glittery stars in the Seeing Stars box

I'm so glad I decided have another  try at making a shaker card - it was fun!.  Thanks Dawn for encouraging me to do it!

Bubbly Funk's fabulous Through the Letterbox Craft Boxes can be found HERE and are always full of lots of interesting and inspiring bits and bobs to keep you crafting for absolutely ages!

Thanks for looking

Happy Crafting

September Elemental Inspiration Picture

Hello

How can it be September already?  It hardly feels more than five minutes since it was cold and dark and I was longing for Spring!

I hate it when the nights start drawing in, but at least the weather has stayed nice and we've had some lovely warm sunny days lately.

I think my dear friend Shabneez feels the same about hanging on to Summer for a while longer - its her turn to set the Daring Cardmakers' challenge this week and its an Elemental Inspiration one this time

It's Shabneez here and yes, I know it's September but I just can't let go of the summer - not just yet anyway!  The elemental board I've chosen has fond memories of summer on it and lots to choose from so I hope you'll join in.  You simply have to pick 3 elements from the board which can be an item, colour, shape etc.

The two things I loved most about this picture board were the bright, vivid colours and the actual layout of the mini pictures.  So I really wanted to use those on my card.  The third element was harder to decide on but in the end I went for the pot plant,  I did actually add another element in to the background of my card, but it doest show up so well on the photos.

Info:

To begin I needed to create the inky background, which I planned to cut up into the tiles on the layout.  I used a piece of plain 350gsm white card stock and got to work with various inks and also some Fresco Finish paints to cover the whole piece of card.  Once dry I chose the sections I liked best for each tile and cut them out roughly before trimming to the correct sizes.  I cut a few spares too, just in case it all went pear-shaped! 

My chosen tiles were matted onto plain white card pieces of the same sizes, and the edges were inked in dark blue.

Next I added a thin coat of Glossy Accents to each tile and left them to dry

The white background piece was the extra 'element' I mentioned; rather than leave it plain I wanted to emboss it with the wavy lines from the lower middle square on the board.  However I don't have a wavy lines embossing folder, a couple of chevron ones but they looked a bit too 'spiky'. So I improvised and with the square of card resting on one of the foam mats I used for shaping flowers I just 'drew' some wavy lines with an embossing stylus.  That's about as far as my drawing skills go, but it worked out quite well, I think! They show up better on the photo below

The white square was matted onto yellow, then onto the card blank.  The tiles were added, and also the die cut sentiment.

The cute cactus or succulent plant is from a Spellbinders die set which I've been meaning to use for ages.  I cut the pot from a leftover red section of the original inky card, and again added Glossy Accents to give it some shine. The plant was cut three times in green card and the little flowers in the same yellow used elsewhere on the card.

Spellbinders dies:

Die D-Lites Sentiments 3 Etched Dies ( loopy Happy Birthday and With Love

Succulent Garden Die D-Lites Etched Dies

It may have taken a while - with all that waiting for things to dry, but I had a lovely time making this.  There's something therapeutic about getting properly inky and painty, and there's the surprise element too as you're never really sure what sort of result you'll end up with (well I'm not!).  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but the fun is always there.  And in my case this time the messy blue fingers!

I hope you'll pop across to the BLOG and see the other cards inspired by Shabneez's great Inspiration board, and of course we'd love you to join in and see what you can come up with too.  We have news about our lovely new DT member and our fantastically talented September Guest Designer over on the blog aswell.

Thanks for visiting

Have a wonderful weekend

Our Silver Wedding

Hello

It's time I got back into better blogging habits, and it's definitely time I blogged something about our Silver Wedding Anniversary.  It doesn't seem possible that it's now over a month ago!  

Anyway, first up I'll show you the card I made to give to my lovely OH on our special anniversary.  It was a good excuse to use the beautiful large, intricate heart die and some fabulous pewter charms that I've had in my stash for literally years and been completely unable to part with!  This way I've not actually parted with them, I suppose!

Info

Silver Stardream card made to a customised size

Inked card piece to use behind the die cut created using various blue and aqua coloured inks

Matted onto Bazzill card in white and a matching shade of blue

Silver card for cutting the heart, sentiment background, and lower layers for letters

Red Glitter card for hears

Silver twine

Pewter champagne and corkscrew charms

Computer generated sentiment

All dies are by Spellbinders: 

Swirl Heart  - On the Wings of Love Collection by Joanne Fink
Alphabet Die Set - Small Die of the Month Club April 2017

Shapeabilities Blossom Tags and Accents 

 To make the heart I cut the die in silver card firs, then in some scrap card to make a template.  The template was used to cut the inked blue card to shape. I placed the blue card into the heart die and used a stylus to emboss into all the gaps.  In 'real life' the blue sections are quite 'puffy' within the swirled pattern of the heart.  The silver heart was then glue in place and I repeated the embossing on the reverse to get as much of a cushion effect as I could.

The heart was adhered to the white and blue panels then using silver thread and a needle I attached the charms through the layers of card before adhering this whole section to the base card
The letters were cut several times in silver card and adhered together, then cut in white for the top layer

The 'ribbon' across the lower section was made from  strips of blue and silver card.  I created the sentiment on the pc and resized to make sure it would fit into the white oval before printing.  Once printed, I taped a Nesties oval die over the top and ran it through the machine. This piece was adhered to the silver fancy die cut and glued in place using some chipboard to add dimension and make sure it was all nicely level.

To finish I punched some glitter hearts and fixed in place, then added a multi-loop bow tied in silver twine

We spent the week of our anniversary in Portmeirion.  It's somewhere we've always talked of going to but up to now hadn't got around to.  So our 25th anniversary was the perfect excuse to 'push the boat out' and book into the village for a week.
It's not a 'real' village, as far as I know no-one actually lives there.  There is a hotel down on the quay, and many of the buildings around the village are actually serviced 'hotel' rooms - just with that added extra of being hidden away in the various buildings of the village!  There are also several self-catering holiday lets, Telford's Tower was out home for the duration.

Telford's Tower - all ours! 

The view over the village from the top of the tower section of our 'house'

and from our private terrace in some weird evening light

The Portmeirion Hotel and estuary

And just a few photos taken around the village - you find something new every time you take a stroll!

That's all for now - I won't bore you with any more photos this time ;)

Thank you so much for visiting, please don't go without leaving a message!

All Aboard!

Hello

Another week without blogging between Fridays!  It's just not good enough, I shall give myself a stern 'talking to' and try to do better!

It's a lovely sunny morning here, in fact the last few days have been like this - I was beginning to feel the onset of the dreaded Winter Blues, but a couple of sunny days sends those thoughts away, even if you just can't avoid the speed that the nights are drawing in now 😞😞😢

 It's my turn to set the challenge on the Daring Cardmakers this week and I decided to set everyone off on a bit of a jaunt:

"Travelogue"  
This week I'd love to see your cards on a theme of travel.

You could feature transport, places, dream locations, suitcases....the world is your oyster!
Anything to do with travelling is good, so pack your bags and lets go! 

Here are some great ideas from our fab design team to get you in the mood

For my own card I thought I'd get as much stash out as possible, have some fun and make a mess, sorry, I mean a collage card!

Eventually it turned out like this

It started out as a 14cm sq card but it looked squashed so in the end I cut the front of the card off and matted it on to a larger navy blue card blank.

The pile of suitcases are made using one of my old Silhouette templates and I cut all the various pieces from some vintagey flower and wood effect paper from an old MME  paper pad.  Part of the background, and the TRAVEL letters are also cut from pages from the same pad.

There are some old 'real' postage stamps (never throw a postcard away without retrieving the stamp first!), a die cut Eiffel Tower and some tiny reproduction postcards.

Info:

I created an inky background using various Distress Inks, stencilled my favourite "Mini Spinning Tops"over it with a couple of different blue Versamagic inks then inked around the edge with brown and black for a distressed, vintage look.

I cut a corner detail from a page of the paper pad to adhere n the lower left corner, then used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the various pieces for the suitcases from more of the patterned paper.  I also cut a base layer for each suitcase to give stability, then laid them onto my card to work out roughly where I wanted to stick them.

Now I added the die cut Eiffel Tower and the two tiny postcards, then using some small pieces of chipboard to give dimension adhered the three cases in position.

As the chipboard pieces are smaller than the actual suitcase shapes, I was able to slide extra details such as the postage stamps and tiny luggage tad under their edges.  

To complete the card I used a square punch to cut out the letters (paper from the same pad), ink the edges and add dimensional foam pieces to the backs before fixing them in place.

Paper Pad: MME 'Record It' 6x6 

Stencil: "Mini Spinning Tops" (Crafters Workshop)

Eiffel Tower "Ooh La La" die set by Spellbinders

Mini Postcards from The Fruit Pixie

That's it.  There are some wonderful ideas on this week's BLOG, so I hope you'll head over to see them - and we would really love it if you'd join in with us too.

Thank you for coming by

Have a great weekend 

Great Results

Hello!

Happy Friday - I hope you've had a good week.  I'm pleased to say that at last I'm starting to feel better.  Still have no energy, but the cough is gradually receding and things are beginning to return to what passes for normal around here!

Now, if only the mojo would come back.....

It took a fair few tries to make something which didn't look like a 'dog's dinner' to send to my nephew in celebration of his recent wonderful A level results, fortunately I think it tied in quite nicely with  this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge, so my poor be-fuzzled brain could get away with coming up with one idea.  Honestly, making something half-way decent is like getting blood out of a stone just now!

Hello everyone it Dawn here with this weeks challenge.
For this weeks challenge I have picked the theme of
Back to School
I know its a little early but in some parts of the world the children have already gone back.
I would like to see something school related on your cards, books, alphabet, desks, etc... Lets celebrate the children and all those wonderful teachers.
We can't wait to see your creations and have fun.

Follow THIS LINK to see this week's inspiration from the fabulous Design Team.

So Dan will be off to read Maths at Durham Uni in a few weeks time.  The "can do maths" gene in the family completely passed me by so I'm a bit in awe!

I used gold card in a couple of  different finishes to make the rosette, then matted it onto a star embossed piece of white card with a piece of shiny gold behind.

Info

White square card blank

Shiny and matt gold card

White Bazzill Bling card

Stars embossing folder (Teresa Collins)

The tails of the rosette were hand cut

Rosette and Alphabet both from Spellbinders

 Tiered Rosettes 

 Elegant 3D Vignettes by Becca Feeken Shapeabilities Etched Dies

Alphabet Die Set - Small Die of the Month Club April 2017

That's all for this time, hopefully I'll get back to more crafting and blogging soon,

Thanks for popping by today, don't forget to check out the Daring Cardmakers HERE

Happy Crafting

Strawberry Fayre

Hello

Welcome to the sick bay - don't come too close!  Yes I'm still hacking away and the tissue box is never far from my elbow, but I think things are gradually improving.  Poor old OH didn't stay far enough away from me though and has also been suffering.  Whatever this bug is, it's a real horror, it's really pole-axed us both.   Never mind eh, as I said, I think we're both on the mend now.

I've not really felt like doing much this week, and all my good intentions for my Daring Cardmakers card ended up in the bin, along with various attempts at making something halfway decent.  Which was a shame, because its a fun challenge, set by our lovely Joanne and it has a bit of an extra twist, should you be big enough to accept it!

It's Joanne here this week and I'd like to know "What's cooking?" - it's a challenge with options! You could choose to use an item from your kitchen to help you make your project (think cling film backgrounds, spices in a shaker card, paint with coffee, stamp on a teabag, use cupcake cases to make a flower etc). Or if you don’t fancy raiding the kitchen you could feature an image of food. Extra brownie points if you manage to do both!

I had a couple of ideas to try, one being to finally give Dawn's method of making a shaker card a try, using sugar strands in the shaker.  I made a cupcake using a real cupcake case.....and that was as far as I got with that plan, it just looked a right dog's dinner!  Then I tied using it in a different way and it looked worse.  So I went and had some lunch!

In the end, I turned back to a favourite Spellbinders die set and a favourite way of using it to make a 3D element.  I added a little bit of red food colouring to the ink I used to colour the card base.  I admit it was a very little amount as I didn't want to have to start all over again!

Info

Card blank inked to make the inner area paler than the outer edge

I cut a circle aperture in the upper card layer, then embossed it with a woodgrain folder from SU.  I added colour to the embossing by just swiping a few different shades of ink over it. It was then adhered in place using some pieces of chipboard between that and the base card.

Strawberries, flowers and leaves created using dies from Aren't You Sweet  by Debi Adams from the Market Fresh collection 

Aren't You Sweet 

 To finish I added some tiny yellow gems to the flowers and tied some Baker's Twine around the top, adding a triple bow to complete

I don't actually like strawberries, but my OH does, so we have a couple of plants in the greenhouse, here's a photo from earlier in the summer with a few ready for picking

For some great ideas and inspiration from the team click HERE and see if you can spot the kitchen items in use! A visit to the various personal blogs will clear up any mysteries!

Thank you for taking the time to visit

Happy crafting

From Flat to Flouncy!

Hello

Today I've a Bubbly Funk project to share with you

A few weeks ago, I posted a paper rose tutorial and it got me thinking about all those lovely 'flat' mulberry paper petals you can get.  I have a load of lovely ones from Bubbly Funk, they come in packs of the same shape, colour and size and I was interested in finding out whether I could use the  technique as in the tutorial to make some mulberry roses with them.

It turns out it works just fine, though I did need to use an extra set of petals to get a nice 'full' rose

.I chose petals in brown, cream and a lovely bluey-turquoise colour to make the roses.  As mentioned I used an extra flower shape to fill out the rose - to do this I separated the flowers into single petals and trimmed off the inner point from each.  Next I just dipped the now straight end into some glue and tucked them into the rose wherever they seemed to be needed to make a good, full shape.

The basic Rose Tutorial is Here

From the Bubbly Funk shop I used

Brown Primula

French Vanilla Primula

Whirlpool Primula

From my stash; Kraft Card blank, Pearls,

The die cut sentiment is by Spellbinders and comes from

 the May Die of the Month set

Why not have ago at making some flowers yourself - I bet you've got loads of flat paper petals to practise with, and if you don't, well Bubbly Funk can help you there!

Happy Crafting