Hey Cupcake - Spellbogging for Spellbinders

Hello there!

Thank you for joining me for another Weekend Spellblogging post for Spellbinders

This week I've been making some cupcakes!

I made a couple of cards using the same lovely  Let's Party Sweet Wish Die D-Lites Etched Dies die set.  This is such a great little set - not only do you get the cute cupcake, but you get a candle shape, a cherry for the top, some heart and star shapes which are very useful to have, plus  the word "wish" in a gorgeous loopy font.  
I like to add sentiments to my cards which are mix printed and die cut words and this one will be especially good for that.  

Here's the first of my cards

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I stencilled the spotty background using my current fave ink pads, then used them to colour extra pieces of card for cutting the shapes I needed, and for the various backing pieces too.  
The embossing and stencilling options are especially useful in this die set and instead of running them through the machine using the embossing mat, I just used a ball tool on the back while the pieces were still in the die, then flipped it over to stencil through with some ink and an old baby wipe


The cake was assembled on a scrap of chipboard before adhering to the green and white matted section along with the 'wish' sentiment
To finish I used the hearts and stars from the die set to decorate the cake and cut some triangles for the bunting from the scraps I had left over

Here's the die set I used this time:
 Let's Party Sweet Wish Die D-Lites Etched Dies

card 2

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This time I chose coloured card in pinks and red, adding the stencilled highlights either in ink or glitter gel 
(just be sure to clean those dies thoroughly before that stuff dries!)
I cut a couple of the cherries for this one, giving them a layer of clear dimensional glaze to make them shine.
This time the cake has a 'box hinge' behind it - rather like the cover part of a match box - it means the cake folds flat against the card for posting, but then pops up, away from the background for display

 It makes me happy when I get a new die set that immediately makes me see that the included pieces are versatile and will find their way onto other projects.  They are the sets you get your moneysworth out of, rather than the ones that are only useful for one thing.

  Anyway, that's enough rambling for one day!  Thanks for visiting, if you click on This Link  you'll find yourself at the Spellbinders store where you will be tempted by lots of lovely dies, stamps and all manner of other loveliness!

Happy Crafting

Citrus Sorbet

Morning Friends!

Hope you are enjoying the sunshine and not feeling too 'hot and bothered'!  If only we got the heat without the humidity, eh?  My lovely Dyson fan goes walkabout all around the house with me when the weather is like this, and its especially welcome when I'm in the study and at my craft desk; I always manage ti be working hunched up in a tiny space and wondering why I'm feeling so hot!

Over the last couple of days I've had a lovely time making something for The Daring Cardmakers' July Inspiration challenge, and I even managed to steer myself away for the gorgeous colour palette this time.

 I hadn't really decided what colours to use until the new "Fruit Cocktail" set of Versamagic Dew Drop Inks that were sitting on my desk caught my eye.  What a perfect confection of Summer shades!  

Anyway, here's our July Inspiration piece, which was chosen this time by Dawn.

From this pretty mood board I chose to use candles, flowers (of course!) and a sprinkling of little stars. Here's my card

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I started by inking a few pieces of card to cut the shapes for the background

These layers were cut using Nestabilities Label 56 (Renaissance Jubilee by Stacey Caron for Spellbinders)

I stamped the sentiment on white card, and made a frame using two of the above die set.  The sentiment is from Special Birthday Sentiments Stamp set
(also Spellbinders)

I used the inks to created a striped piece of card, then cut into pieces and rolled to make the little candles.  I hand cut the flame shapes and added some glitter glue swirls to them.

Now came the fun of making all the flowers.  More inked pieces of card and lots of different dies and punches were used for this bit and I'm not going to list them all!

To finish I cut various leaves to tuck behind the flowers and fill out and help highlight the flowers. 

Various pucnes were used to make the gold stars, some from glitter card, others from plain gold card

Some pearls and gems were used to finish off the flowers

I had such a lovely time making this!  There is nothing quite like spending a while making little flowers.  The photo above shows the sort of mess I can make when I get the 'flower-making bits' out!

I do hope you'll pop over to the DCM BLOG to see what the others have made - it all looks soooo pretty!  We would love you to join in with us too

That's all for this time, thank you so much for popping by

 

Market Fresh Blog Hop - Spellblogging for Spellbinders

{This post will stay at the top until the blog hop closes. so please scroll down for more recent posts}

Hello, and Welcome to my blog

As you may already know, I've recently become part of the Spellblogging team for Spellbinders.  

Well. it's an exciting day for us today as we are launching our first Spellbloggers Blog Hop to  showcase the fabulous Spellbinders

Market Fresh Collection 

Now, there are a lot of "fours" coming up here......

There are FOUR Spellbloggers taking part in the hop, plus the Spellbinders

'home' blog

We have FOUR fantastic prizes up for grabs

Each of these prizes consists of FOUR dies from the Market Fresh collection. 

The Market Fresh Collection includes various fruit and vegetables that you will find at the market, including Apples, Carrots, Olives.....and even a tiny little treat-sized bag in the shape of a grocery bag.

 

Check out the Spellbinders website for all the details of the Market Fresh Collection by Debi Adams

I just couldn't resist making a 'cake' for my project using the Aren't You Sweet Etched Dies set.  After all, it's that Garden Party and Wimbledon tim, so I'm sure there will be a few Strawberry Gateaux gracing tables over the next few weeks! 

I'll do another post soon with more information about how I made this cake shaped box (the 'icing' lid lifts off, so it could be filled, perhaps with strawberry truffles 😁)
You don't just get strawberries, you get cherries too with this cute set.

So, if  you fancy winning one of those 4-die set prizes, all you need to do, is visit and leave a comment on each of the following blogs - there are only 5, so it's a nice easy hop to be part of!

1. Spellbinders

2. All Things Pretty Craftee - Dawn Barwick

3. Going Buggy - Enfys Cashmore

4. Kathys Waffle - Kathy Black (You are here!)

5. Glitter Angel - Sharon Curtis

The blog hop runs from now (Monday 26th June) till midnight July 3rd, 2017

Don't forget in order to be entered into the prize draw you need to leave a comment on all the above blogs.

Happy Hopping, and Good Luck!.

Kaleidoscope - Spellblogging for Spellbinders

Hello there!

Thank you for joining me for another Weekend Spellblogging post for Spellbinders

This week I've used something that caught my eye in the Spellbinders store a few weeks ago - it's quite different from the usual dies I go for but at the time I had a great idea for using it.  Obviously by the time I got it in my sticky little hands I'd completely forgotten what that idea was! 

This is a single die called Geo Steps Kaleidoscope by Lene Lok (Shapeabilities  Etched Dies)

I love mosaics and am always enchanted by those wonderful mosaic floors in Roman villas I've seen both in the UK and other parts of Europe.  I was always fascinated by kaleidoscopes too (still am, truth to be told!), I loved watching all those teeny pieces arranging themselves into colourful patterns.  Maybe that's what drew me to this die.

Geo Steps Kaleidoscope

This wonderful corner mosaic is streamlined and modern, with its simple geometric shapes.  I think it will be great used as a pocket, as extra dimension over a pretty paper, or used as a stencil, using the die itself or the the die-cut - I've not tried this yet but I will!

Info
I used a smooth white card blank and extra of the same card for die cutting
I adhered the die cut triangle onto the card base.  I'm too lazy to colour all the little shapes that come out of the panel, plus, some are very tiny. Instead I inked up a few pieces of the same card with the various colours I wanted to use, laid them over the die and cut again, repeating a couple of times more until I had enough of each colour and shape.
Next it was just a case of arranging them all into the holes - I just used wet glue to stick them in, but it would probably have been quicker to use a Xyron type gadget or something along those lines.
It was a pleasing way to spend some time, arranging all those little shapes but I tried to be fairly random about what went where.
To finish, I inked some more card with some of the inks.  I cut the phrase using some word dies from various sets (I keep a rather random collection of word and phrase dies all in one folder).  I taped them kind of
diagonally onto the inked card so that the colours blend and fuse nicely across the words 

Don't Miss Out!
 Now, just before I close up, I must remind you about the Market Fresh Blog Hop.  There's only a couple of days left to enter and all you have to do is visit and comment on 5 blogs; Dawn, Sharon, Enfys, mine and the Spellbinders home blog - all the info you need can be found HERE, along with links to follow to the other blogs.
You can also see more of my project, this Strawberry Gateau!
 

Market Fresh Blog Hop

That's all for today, so thanks for visiting, if you click on This Link  you'll find yourself at the Spellbinders store and explore the huge array of dies, stamps, machines and so much more!

Happy Crafting

 

Stargazing

Morning All
I hope you are having a fabulous Friday.  What a weird old couple of weather weeks we've had.  Last week the heat and humidity was leaving us gasping for air, this week, well, lets just say the central heating came on in our house a couple of times!  Our weather is never boring.
It's Daring Cardmakers Day today, and while last week it was down to the sea with Lythan, this week Miri wants us to travel much further!

WELCOME TO MY GALAXY

"A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter." (wikipedia) And astronauts and spaceships and aliens ...
Create a galaxy card with a galaxy background or galaxy elements.

First I had to resist the urge to buy some lovely Galaxy chocolate and stick the wrapper on a card

Now, the whole Galaxy Background thing has largely passed me by, but when I saw the challenge I did register seeing quite a few mentions of them over the last few weeks.  So it was time to investigate and maybe try something new.
I found THIS tutorial for a watercolour galaxy background which was simple and straightforward enough for even me to try!

I had most of what I needed; watercolour card, brushes, white acrylic paint.... but, shock, horror!  I don't seem to have any watercolour paints  {weird!}.  Time to improvise then.  I have Gelatos, I have Distress Inks and both can be used to watercolour with.

I was fairly happy with the background I made, but going back to it the next day to actually make something, I decided it looked a bit too pale, so I added a blob of a dark purply blue ink to a palette (well. an old glue pot lid) and added some water, then brushed that onto part of the background I'd already made until I was happier with the result.

I added more flicked-on white dots and also some silver Starlight paint ones.

As some of the Gelatos I used are the metallic ones, there is a nice sheen to the background piece.

Other Info:

I inked the card blank with Memento 'Paris then stencilled the stars and dots with a Memory Box stencil

I printed the sentiment on white card, cut down to size then die cut the heart shapes (Die'Namics nested hearts)

There's a layer of scrap chipboard between base card and upper panel to add dimension

A few small stars and a tiny heart were punched from various silvery papers and added to the card to finish

It was fun to make the background.  It did take a while to get clean afterwards though 😉 🤣

There are lots of great ideas from our clever designers to see over on on the blog this week and I hope you'll take a LOOK

That's all for this time so thank for visiting

 

Bright and Bold Birthday!

Hello there

I hope you've had a minute to join in with the Market Fresh Blog Hop that's running at the moment it's just the four of us (Dawn, Enfys, Sharon and myself), in conjunction with Spellbinders - so a total of five blogs to visit and leave messages on.  There are four fabulous prized to be won - please check my project HERE to find out all you need to know.

Today though, I have a card using the June LO from the Sketch File to share with you.  It's a very simple design as I needed to get it made in a bit of a hurry!  Fortunately the current Sketch is really good for that sort of thing....

 Info

Kraft card blank, white, black, green, yellow and orange Bazzill card

The FAPPY letters were cut from a double layer of each card using a Memory Box die

Most of the stars were cut using a Tonic Nested Stars die set.  Others were punched with various punches

'birthday' is part of a Lawn Fawn 'happy birthday to you' die

Here is the sketch

The Sketch File June 2017

 That's it for this time.  Thank you for visiting

 

I Must go Down to the Sea Again

Good Morning!

I've been "Bonjour-ing" for the last few days, but after a lovely, if ridiculously hot and uncomfortably humid few days in France, we're back in England now.  I know the weather was hot and humid here too!  We stayed a night in St Omer before heading off into the Champagne region for a few days.  We have a subscription with 3D Wines, and 'needed' to visit the growers to pick up our order.  Life can be such a hardship sometimes.......
Actually, with the weather being as it was, it was almost as much of a pleasure to get down into the cool of the caves as it was to taste the various champagnes!  Well, possibly 

I wasn't going to miss out on Lythan's Daring Cardmakers challenge this week though - not when it was all about going "Down to the Sea", so I got my card made before we left.
I was actually paddling in the sea on Wednesday afternoon and we stayed the night in Boulogne to break up the long journey home - and then on Thursday travelled via the Eurotunnel, so I went under the sea too!
Anyway, here's my card

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Papers from two 6x6 paper pads called "Summer Feelings" by Studio Light

 (I just had to have them when I saw the beautiful colours and seaside designs)

The Beach Hut is die-cut using one of my newest favourite sets:'Prims' by
Spellbinders

I created the little hanging plaque in Paint Shop Pro and added a couple of starfish cut cut from one of the papers, and some Bakers Twine to hang it with

I've also cut a few other elements from the papers to add some dimension on the lower edges raising them on small pieces of chipboard.

I used a dark red scrap of card to give a pop of brightness and interest

There's a little shell 'button', a hand cut lifesaver ring and a tiny half pearl for the door handle.  The small red hearts are cut using a punch

That's it for this time, thank you so much for visiting.  I'll be catching up with your own blogs to see what I've missed just as soon as I can!

Carnations for Carol - Spellblogging for Spellbinders

Hello there!

Thank you for joining me for another Weekend Spellblogging post for Spellbinders

This week I've used some gorgeous dies, both new and old to create a very special birthday card.
This is a commissioned card for a customer who has a friend celebrating her 90th birthday - what a great excuse to be extravagant with flowers and flourishes!

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I used a smooth white card blank matted with green card to begin with.
Next I arranged three of the dies from
Victorian Garden Romantic Vines  Shapeabilities  Etched Dies set onto a piece of Diamond Bling card so that they made a pretty border in the lower right corner.
Once they were cut, I matted the white square onto my card so that the lovely green shows through the die cut areas 
I inked up the gorgeous leaf and flourish shapes that had been cut out in a toning shade of green to use under the flowers.
The lovely flowers are created with the Carnation Creations set by Donna Salazar.  I used Foamiran to make all three flowers.  This product is a very thin foam which is easy to shape into the most beautiful flowers - and there are lots of fabulous Spellbinders dies which are perfect to use to cut the shapes you need!

I created the sentiment on the computer and used a circle punch to cut it out, then matted onto this lovely flower doily shape from
Moroccan Accents Shapeabilities Etched Dies To finish, I tucked pieces of the inked flourishes under the flowers, added a little ribbon bow, some pearl strands and a few flat backed pearls in the corner. 


Victorian Garden Romantic Vines  Shapeabilities  Etched Dies

 
Carnation Creations  Donna Salazar Shapeabilities  Etched Dies

Moroccan Accents Shapeabilities Etched Dies

All of these dies are by Spellbinders

That's all for today, so thanks for visiting, if you click on This Link  you'll find yourself at the Spellbinders store where you will find more temptation than you've ever dreamed of ;)
And you can get your hands on these lovely die sets, of course!!
Just before I sign off - please take a little peek at my sidebar, where you'll see an advance message about a bit of fun my fellow Spellbloggers have cooked up along with the lovely people at Spellbinders

Happy Crafting

 

Not of This World....

Hello - Happy Friday to you!

A quick post from me today - it's a busy one so I must not witter!

It's Daring Cardmakers Day again and this time Joanne posed a rather non-Kathy-friendly challenge for us:

Out of this World

It's Joanne here this week, combining interests again! I've always been a big fan of stories - whether written, spoken or acted. Since time immemorial it seems we've told stories of the fantastic and unexplainable. Let's see some imaginary or mythical beings this week - fairies, mermaids, aliens, unicorns, hobbits, dragons... where will your imagination take you? 

Hmm, "What to do with that?' I thought!

Then while putting away some papers from a recent "Craft Box" I came across a piece of paper covered with cupid drawings  and decided to go down the Classical Mythology route, with the "Birth of Venus"painting by Botticelli as the focus.

To be honest, I'm not happy with this,but I didn't really have enough time to start over

I won't list how I made this as frankly, I can't remember everything!

 I used papers, die cuts, stencilling, various inks and paints, flowers both handmade and ready made, pearl strands, pearls, gems and dewdrops.  
The picture is from Google Images and I resized it to fit my project before printing out.

If you teleport over to The Daring Cardmakers Blog you'll find a whole galaxy of other-worldiness!

It would be great to see what you could make.....

Have a great weekend

Drive On

Hi there
Just a quick post and a simple card to share with you today.
 
It's little scrapling-style card using the June LO from The Sketch File Blog.  Scraplings are the strips left over when you fold and cut a piece of A4 to make a square card.
I've used papers from an Authentique 6x6 pad for this, and at last managed to use a piece from one of those papers with little pictures on - lots of paper collections have them and I never know what to do with them!

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Paper all Authentique

Vintage car picture cut from one of the papers then adhered to 

a piece of scrap card

Bakers Twine

The 'steering wheel' is from a bag of mixed metal cogs

Tiny squares punched from red card

This sketch:

The Sketch File June 2017

I've not added a sentiment - yet - It may be a birthday card, or it could also be a 'you've past your driving test' sort of card.

That's all for today, thank you for popping by, please take a look at The Sketch File Blog - we'd love to see what you could use the sketches for.

Prim and Proper - Spellblogging for Spellbinders

Hello there!

Thank you for joining me for another Weekend Spellblogging post for Spellbinders

This week I'm using a fabulous die set called 'Prims' which doesn't really give a lot away as a title, does it? 
As you can see from the picture above, what you get are all the bits you need to make a really cute house, complete with flowers for the 'garden' and gorgeous star and heart shapes to add a flourish

 
Info
I used a smooth white card blank, then for the top section I printed the sentiment directly onto another piece of the same card, cutting down to size to fit on the deep aqua mat
To give you an idea of size,when you fit the triangle and rectangle together to make the basic house, it measures abt. 11cms high and 5cms at the lower edge of the triangle.
Here's all of the components of the sweet 'Prims' die set 

- you get a lot in this one!

I kept this really simple, just cutting the various pieces from coloured card. I stencilled through the door piece with slightly darker ink, which gives a subtle highlight to it.
 I couldn't resist adding a tiny bit of bling, so I cut the tiny circles for the flowers from yellow glitter card.

The only extras were the tiny punched hearts in the lower right corner. 

When I saw this set in the Spellbinders shop, it just had to come and live with me - I could see how versatile it would be.  The various pieces combine to make a lovely little picture, but all of them will find their way into other projects - even those basic shapes will be handy, and the heart,star and flowers are just adorable!
I made this as a card, but wouldn't it work perfectly as a little canvas?  A lovely gift for a New Home, perhaps....

   Thanks for visiting, if you click on This Link  you'll find yourself at the Spellbinders store and you can get your hands on this beautiful die set too!

Happy Crafting