Happy Anniversary

Hello

You go to the seaside for a couple of days and think "A walk along the prom will be so nice in between doing the various jobs at the flat", but all it does is rain the whole time.  One little venture into town and you are sodden and desperate to get indoors again!

Oh well, at least the flat in Southwold is looking good.  The photographer is booked and soon the lovely people at Suffolk Secrets will be putting it on their website as available to book for your holidays!

Despite the rain there was still a lot of snow piled up along the verges where it had been moved by the snowploughs, and what with melting snow and copious rain there was quite a bit of flooding on the winding country roads, the fields look totally water-logged.  

Hopefully we'll all get some nice dry and sunny weather soon!

My crafting project for this time is a Wedding Anniversary card using the new LO from The Sketch File blog

 Info:

 Here is the LO I used to make the card

The Sketch File, March 2018

 Materials;

Smooth White card blank

Ruby red Bazzill card

Gold card from Spellbinders

Gold Twine

PC generated sentiment

Punches for medium and tiny hearts

I used the fancy insert and one of the plain rectangles from this beautiful die set 

Double Heart Gatefold Card from the Timeless Heart Collection by Marisa Job 

Shapeabilities Etched Dies

First I used only the fancy insert die to cut the panel from the white card Blank

A piece of Ruby red card was adhered inside the card

On the gold card, the fancy insert die was taped inside the plain rectangle to keep them exactly in place, then run through the Platinum machine.

I saved some of the gold 'waste' from cutting the fancy panel and adhered them to the punched hearts to make the hanging hearts.

The gold panel was glued to the front of the card, lining up with the pattern cut in the card blank

The hearts were assembled then attached to gold twine.  A gold twine bow was added at the top

The Sentiment was printed from the pc, matted onto gold card and adhered in place using scraps of chipboard for dimension

Some tiny punched hearts were added to complete

I love these pretty panels that often form part of Spellbinders die sets, they are so beautiful and so versatile.

That's all from me  this time, I hope you like the card, and that you'll feel inspired to use the LO this month, we'd love to see what you come up with

Getting To Know You

Hello

Happy Friday!

It's a lovely day here today - feels as though Spring really is just around the corner at last.

I've had a lovely crafting week this week and managed to get a few things ticked off my to-do list. Today it's Daring Cardmakers Day and Dawn really let us have some fun with her challenge!

Here's what Dawn says:  

Getting To Know You

I want to get to know you as a crafter.  What are your favourite techniques and where do you like to craft?

I love to make shaker cards.  I think they are so much fun and I get to add another of my favourite crafting elements, glitter and sequins.  I also love to craft in front on the TV on the living room rug in the evenings when the children have gone to bed.

You can check out the design teams favourite techniques by clicking HERE

Hubby and I share the study, a large part of which is my craft area.  I'm also lucky enough to have two desks, one for crafting the other for my pc.

I do all my crafting in this room, I don't craft in front of the tv and I don't tend to take stuff with me when we go away.  I like everything to be at hand!

For my card I chose a few of my favourite things, some old, some new.

I'm a relatively new convert to stencils and already have 2 folders full of them, plus a few in a box waiting for me to buy another folder.  

Info

I started my card by using a mask to create the peachy-pink panel across the card, then used my absolute favourite stencil and various different inks over most of the card.  There's pink, peach, fawn and several blues in there and I moved the stencil a couple of times to make it less uniform.

I admit to owning a lot of dies.  I've been hooked on die-cutting ever since I acquired my very first die cutter - do you remember the old QuicKutz thing with the handles you squeezed to cut the dies?  It was hard work, but I loved making those little shapes!  It didn't take long to progress to ever bigger machines and of course much bigger dies too.

I just can't resist flower die sets!  I love the way you can shape the petals and use the same die sets for several different flower shapes.  I decided to make some shabby chic flowers for this card - I damped the various sizes of petals with water, scrunched them up and left them to dry. once dry, open them carefully and fix them together to make lovely crumply flowers.  I added a little bit of Glamour Dust glitter to some of the petals and a sparkly gem in the centres

I'd already cut the three heart shapes for a project that didn't work out as planned, so decided to use them on this one as a background element for the matching flowers.  One of my other go-to 'filler' techniques is to use swirls, leaves and flourishes behind my flowers.  So I had to put some of those in too.

Finally, I used this fab swirly, loopy "with love" die cut sentiment to finish off my card.

Materials and Tools

The papers are all from a very old K&Co mini pad 

Stencil is "Mini Spinning Tops" (The Crafters Workshop)

Dies are all from Spellbinders

 Prim Hearts Etched Dies 

Happy Grams #4 Collection by Tammy Tutterow Shapeabilities

Succulent and Mum Flower  (Thoughtful Expressions by Marisa Job)

 Shapeabilities Etched Dies 

 Mosaic Vine (Thoughtful Expressions by Marisa Job)

 Shapeabilities Etched Dies

 Sentiments 3  

Die D-Lites Etched Dies

That's all from me today, I hope you will join in with us this week - it would be so lovely to hear about your crafting habits and favourite techniques!

Happy Crafting

Bird's Nest Basket - Spellblogger for Spellbinders

Hello! 
Happy Monday to you
We didn't have as much snow as other parts of the UK, but thankfully even that has all gone now and things can get back to normal!  
Or what passes for normal, round here!
I had a sudden moment of inspiration a couple of days ago!  I'd used the gorgeous Spellbinders twiggy wreath die to make the card I posted on Friday when the lightbulb switched on, and I thought it would make a perfect project for my next Spellbloggers post

 Once again I'm using dies from Lene Lok's Four Seasons range from Spellbinders. This time I've used two die sets; the Twiggy wreath and the Wreath Elements die sets and made something a bit different, but totally in keeping as our thoughts turn to Spring

 Info:
I started off with a plain die cut circle of brown card adhered to a stronger chipboard circular base.  Then cut lots of the wreath shapes in different shades of brown card and loads of leaves from the various leaf shapes in the Wreath Elements die set.
Then it was just a case of layering up the wreaht shapes and adding a few leaves in as I went.  I made best use of the brown card by
cutting part-circles from the cut out centres left over when the wreaths were cut.  I just arranged them around  nest shape as I built it up
I used chipboard coloured with brown ink and cut into tiny pieces between the layers.  I glued the chipboard to the underside of the leaves to hide them.  You could use dimensional glue, or dark coloured foam pads instead.
I finished it off with a few real feathers inside the nest and poking through the sides.

Here are the Spellbinders die sets used this time 

Four Seasons Wreath by Lene Lok 

Shapeabilities Etched Dies
 

Wreath Elements;  Four Seasons by Lene Lok 

Shapeabilities Etched Dies

Platinum Die Cutting and Embossing Machine
 

Obviously the real finishing touch is to fill the nest with chocolate eggs - and I promise that I only ate one in the making of this post!

here is the card I made using the same two die sets, you can read
 more about it HERE

That's it for this time,
Thank you 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 much much more!

Happy Crafting

Spring Shades

Hello!

Today I'm sharing my latest project for Bubbly Funk Through the Letterbox, and this time I thought I'd use not on;y some of the trims from my "Seeing Stars" box, but also some other things from the shop. So I've used a stencil and one of the gorgeous new flowers.

If you are anything like me, you'll feel you should use your pretty Primas etc, but find yourself unable to use more than one,per project!

 You can find more info on how I made this card over on the Bubbly Blog.

When I use stencils I find it hard to resist using a lot of inks and stuff.  This was no exception and there's a lot of ink, a bit of wax and some gorgeous glitter paste involved.

One flower would have looked a bit mean, so I made some smaller, crocus-like ones using some of the 'flat' flowers I have gazillions of, in this case three daisies

Links:

  Basketweave stencil 

"Seeing Stars." Through the Letterbox craft box ( gold and silver jewelled trim, and silver jewels on the purple ribbon)

  Prima Flower from  HERE

That's all for this time. Thanks for popping by

Happy Crafting

March Elemental Inspiration

Hello!

I really hope you are staying warm and safe while Britain endures the Big Freeze!   We've not actually got much snow here, maybe only an inch or two, but its been bitterly cold.  The weather put paid to our plans to spend a few days of this week over at the flat in Southwold - it was supposed to be the final 'push' to getting it ready for the photographer and onto the website.  Knowing that it was worse further east and that a lot of the journey is via country roads we soon shelved that plan and decided to stay put! 

Definitely the right decision and a good excuse to stay in and do some crafting!  

I've made some little boxes (to share here later), and some cards and I have a few other projects ether 'on the go' or waiting for inspiration to strike as to what to do with them! 

 It was Miri's turn to choose the Daring Cardmakers' Elemental Inspiration Picture  for March and I don't think she was expecting most of Europe to be gripped by the "Beast from the East" - well, you wouldn't, would you?  

There's an old saying about the month of March; "In like a lion, out like a lamb" - we're certainly experiencing the roar of the first part, so lets just hope that the cute, fluffy, soft and cuddly lamb isn't too far behind!

I've got some more of the gorgeous Lene Lok 'Four Seasons' dies from Spellbinders and spotting the wreath on the door of the top left picture in Miri's mood board (you need to look closely!) it was time to use the twiggy wreath die, along with some pretty glowers and the all-over background design in the lower left picture

The pretty background paper is another of the latest digital paper collections I've found on Etsy.  I'd been looking for some tools and DIY papers to use for hubby's birthday card (scroll down to see that one on a recent post) and just  had to see what else was around while I was at it. When it comes to digi papers  Grepic is one of my favourites and this paper comes from the Pink and Grey Flowers set. I LOVE using digi downloads - you can have them there on your pc ready to use within minutes and it's easy to resize to exactly what you need, then print them out on whatever paper you want to use.

 Info:

Background paper from Pink and Grey Flowers paper set by Grepic

Scraps of pink, lemon and peach card for flowers, Green card for leaves and matting the pc printed sentiment, Light Brown for twiggy wreath

Star and stamen punches

Tiny silver gems, ready made flower stamens, Green organza ribbon tied in double bow

The Twiggy wreath and Wreath Elements die sets from Spellbinders

Four Seasons Wreath by Lene Lok 

Shapeabilities Etched Dies
 

Wreath Elements;  Four Seasons by Lene Lok 

Shapeabilities Etched Dies

I've got another pack of the Twiggy Wreath die set to give away, so I'll be back with the details on that soon.

I hope you like the card, and feel inspired by Miri's picture to join in with us this tiem.  You can check out all the gorgeous cards on
Daring Cardmakers' blog

Thank you for looking

Happy Crafting