Times to Treasure

I'm loving the sweet Marianne's Designs die sets I recently bought, sweet little birds, birdhouses and a great picket fence are among them and I've used a few for the elements on today's card.

I coloured this sweet Lili of the Valley image with my Copics whilst at the fabulous Craftathon held in Bristol in February - where a number of Craftbubble members got together for a weekend of crafting and socialising - but I hadn't used it on a card until now.  There's Glossy Accents on the book to give it some dimension and Stardust Stickles around the edges of the image layer. 

The grass, fence, birds and birdhouse were all cut with Marianne's dies using my Cuttlebug and bits of Stampin' Up cardstock and the background papers are magazine freebies which are just perfect with the floral theme and colours which match those I used on the image.

Sail Away

My lovely pal Lauren set the saturday sketchie challenge over on the Craftbubble 'Craft Mad & Loving It' group this week with the theme 'Sail Away'. 

I do love this Lili of the Valley stamp, he's a real cutie and perfect for the challenge.  I coloured the image with my Copics and added Glossy Accents to the boat to give it some dimension.  The background papers are from the Papermania Portobello Road pack and I tied some natural twine around to secure the button.  The sentiment was a diecut from a Goody Bag I received in a Secret Santa gift at Christmas. 

A Nice clean and bright design for this one, not too fancy or fussy so ideal for a guy's card, after all no matter what age they are all still little boys I find !!

Playing with Pastels and Lavinias

I'm loving playing with my new pastels, creating pretty backgrounds and using masks.  I was thinking I hadn't used my lovely Lavinia stamps in a while, so thought I'd combine them with a pastel background.

I firstly created a mask by cutting an aperture using a nestie die and my Cuttlebug.  I then used a mixture of colours of pastels to create a background scene through the scalloped aperture onto a blank card.

The Lavinia toadstool houses and small toadstools images were stamped using black chalk ink over the pastel background.  I then tried a technique I'd seen in the latest issue of Craft Stamper.  After stamping the images lightly, I used a black marker to roughly draw over the top to give it a hand drawn effect.  The sentiment is by Stampin' Up! and again was stamped using black chalk ink.  Finally I added touches of Stardust Stickles to give the design a little 'Fairy Dust' effect.

I do enjoy the challenge of creating a one layer card, and my new pastels are just perfect for this type of work.

Thanks for dropping by, I've more projects to share in the next few days.

With all My Love

I must apologise for not posting anything up here for such a long time.  What with the building going on in the house installing the kitchen and refurbishing the ensuite, the house has been in such a state that I couldn't find much of my stash or get a space in which to craft.  I'm still battling the dust but at least the kitchen and ensuite are completely finished now and I'm really pleased with how they've turned out.

I'm pleased to say that my health is now very much improved and in fact I saw my surgeon last tuesday and he is happy with my progress and doesn't need to see me again - Hurrah !  I do feel so much better now and am working on increasing my stamina and getting back to normal.

The other reason I haven't been blogging lately is that my Mojo had just totally disappeared - didn't have a single design in my head for a project, nada, zilch !  It felt like I might never craft again as I didn't know where to start, but I decided yesterday to sit down and make something, no matter how it turned out, even if it was only good for the bin at the end of it ! 

It's a while since I made an entry for the Less is More Challenge so I decided to check out this week's theme and use this for my first project in ages.  We've to use script on our projects this week and make a one layer card. 

I received some money for my birthday recently and was wondering what to spend it on, so I got myself some pastels to play with.  I created a background using pastels and a TCW butterfly design mask.  I then used a couple of stamps from the Papermania Botanical Print set, one of which included some script in the design and the other was this pretty little butterfly.  Both were stamped with Rich Cocoa Memento ink straight over the pastel background.  I then hand doodled a frame around the main image with a brown marker pen.

Clean and Simple and I hope it fits into this week's LIM challenge OK. 

Thanks so much for dropping by today, now I've started crafting again, I hope I'll have more to share with you over the coming days.

Birthday Bear on a Bicycle

I needed to get a card made urgently for a male member of my family and with my limited access to stash and tools, I thought I'd go down the CAS route. 

Recently I took delivery of some lovely Stampin' Up! goodies and this cute bear on a bicycle Happy Birthday image was in one of the stamp sets I got this time.

I stamped the image in blue ink then borrowed my pal's matching label punch to cut it out (I've got this punch on my Wish List, so hope to get it in a later order).  The small dots under the main image were cut with my SU! 1/2" circle punch from a scrap of navy blue cardstock.  The ribbon has been lurking in the bottom of my ribbon bag for ages, so I thought it was about time it saw the light of day !  I added a touch of Glossy Accents to the bear's party hat (well I think you all know how much I love my GA !!) but it isn't showing up on the pic.   I hope the Birthday Boy likes his card.

As my design has punched elements on it, I'm going to submit it as a second entry to this week's Less is More challenge.

Thanks for dropping by to check out my latest project and I'd like to extend a warm welcome to my two new Followers, I hope you'll pop back from time to time to see what I'm getting up to on my table of craftiness.

Watch the Birdie !

At last I've got a new card to share with you!  This week's challenge on  Less is More is to use diecuts or punched elements.

I still haven't managed to clear a space to craft in yet, but did find a corner of the table to set up my Cuttlebug and found a couple of sets of Marianne's dies to use for this project.

This month's Simply Cardmaking and Papercraft magazine had a lovely set of bird themed stamps as the free gift, a couple of which I used on my card.

The large birdhouse was stamped directly on to the basecard bottom right, and the branch with birds and nest stamped in the top left corner, using black Memento ink.  The hanging birdhouse, fence, grass and birds were all diecut using the Marianne's dies and some black cardstock.  As a finishing touch, I added little touches of Stardust Stickles to the stamped birdhouse image. 

Hope you like it, I'm entering it into this week's LIM challenge, although it might just be a tad too busy to be truly Clean and Simple. 

What a Knit Wit - A Life Less Organised......

Things have been a tad stressful in my 'neck of the woods' over the past three weeks, mostly the 'joys' of having a new kitchen fitted and coping with the major disruption to life that this entails.  No cooker for the whole time, just microwave, kettle and toaster in the conservatory, quite a challenge to try and prepare meals I can tell you !  We've frequented our local pub for evening meals on more than one occasion.

With the whole house upside down and huge amounts of dust everywhere, I adopted the route of least resistance and spent lots of time knitting and cuddling my little dog Tilly who has been upset by the upheaval.  With no space to craft and everwhere so dusty and dirty, knitting is the only crafty pastime I've been able to indulge in.  No point in trying to do any housework with all this going on - well that's my excuse anyway LOL

Here's a warm and cosy jumper I knitted for Tilly, she was feeling the cold a lot during the recent frosty spell, especially as she had her hair cut short the week before.  Her new jumper has kept her nice and warm and the added benefit is that it used up some of the yarn that had been lurking at the bottom of my knitting bag for a while.




Here she is wearing her jumper and posing for the camera !





I've also knitted a couple of little shawls, well this one is a shawl which you can wear tied at the back and it just fills the neckline of a jacket, or over the shoulders in the usual way. 

The other one is more of a cowl or collar and should have been knitted in the round on a circular needle, but my needle was too long, so I adjusted the pattern to be able to knit it on a pair of straight needles.  It turned out OK and looks like the picture on the pattern anyway !  Hard to photograph well though, but at least you can get an idea of the lacy pattern.

Although the kitchen is not fully complete yet, at least my cooker and washing machine are in place and working, so life has suddenly got a whole lot easier, just got to wait for the builders to come back and replace skirting boards and do the final fixings and we should be back to some sort of normality.  It's driven me crazy with no space to do my papercrafting.

Here's a piccie of my lovely new cooker, got to get used to using an electric hob though as I've had gas ones for most of my married life.   Thanks for dropping by today, I hope to have some cards to share with you all very soon.  There are a few challenges around which I want to enter and I need to get back to working on my DT projects as soon as I can.

Get Well Soon Lauren

As I promised you in my last post, today's project is the Get Well card I made for my crafting pal Lauren who's poorly at the moment and needs to rest and recover. 

I know she is a huge button fan, so I decided to use two sizes of button stamps from a set by Papermania and stamped them randomly on to a strip of cardstock.  I cut around the edges of the buttons at the sides to give the panel a more interesting look and coloured the buttons using Promarkers.  The sentiment is from a set by Dark Room Door and I use this set a great deal, they are great for Clean and Simple (CAS) style cards.

I've been doing more knitting whilst still in post-surgery recovery and I'll share my latest makes with you in the next few days.

A fabulous New Home

Today I'm sharing with you the card I made for a lovelycrafting pal who recently moved house.  It was hoped that they'd be moved and settled well before Christmas, but in the end they didn't actually move until January. 

I know just how stressful moving house can be, but luckily I haven't had to do it for quite a few years now.  I had all the elements for the card prepared well before Christmas, but didnt want to tempt fate by sticking everything down before I heard the move had gone smoothly ! 

I used the stamps, papers and card from a recent Little Claire's monthly kit and knew as soon as I saw the kit it would be perfect for a New Home card.

The image is coloured using Copics and I added Glossy Accents to the kettle, cooking tools and a few other elements to give them a little dimension.  I do love the red gingham and kraft papers together, they look so stylish.  The colours I used were influenced by the plans for my new kitchen as it will be predominantly cream with a few red highlights added with the kettle, toaster and coffee maker.  We have a mini range cooker which looks a bit like a baby Aga, but all electric, I just can't wait for it all to be finished.  The Home Sweet Home sentiment is from a set of stamps by Dark Room Door.

Sadly my pal is now quite poorly, I think she just wore herself out with the house move and everything and she now needs to rest and recouperate - it was such a shame that she had to miss last weekend's Craftathon in Bristol as I was so looking forward to seeing her again.  I made her a Get Well card and I'll share that with you in another post over the next few days.

Thanks for dropping by today.

Craftbubble Craftathon 2012

If you've stopped by here lately, I apologise for not having posted for quite a few days.  I'm recovering well from my recent surgery, but the whole house is totally disrupted whilst the builders are refurbishing our ensuite shower room and fitting a new kitchen.  The work should have gone ahead before Christmas, but when I got sick it had to be postponed.  I'm at the stage right now when I wish we had never started it, but I can see the kitchen coming together at last and I know it will be worth it once it's finished.  They've been working on the two rooms for the past 3 weeks and I'm finding it so difficult without cooking facilities except a microwave.  Beans on toast for dinner for us this evening I think!  We have dined at our local pub a couple of time, but there aren't too many interesting items on the menu sadly.

I spent last weekend in Bristol meeting up with some of my lovely crafty pals who are members of the Craft Mad and Loving It group on Craftbubble.  Thanks to the tireless effort by my pal Kathy, the whole weekend went really well.  We all met up on friday, everyone arriving from various locations throughout the country and at different times but all able to get together for dinner on friday evening at our hotel.  The pic on the left shows us all unpacked and raring to get crafty in the hall we'd hired for the weekend.  Who would have thought that so much stash could come out of the relatively small amount of luggage everyone (well most of us!) brought with us. 

During the weekend we all created a canvas (thanks to Clare who brought the necessary supplies and gave us lots of helpful tips); coloured seam binding, buttons, dominoes, old CDs and glossy paper using Alcohol Inks (thanks to Kathy who is our Purple Princess of AIs); diecut and coloured shrink plastic and turned it into jewellery, phone charms etc (great job Cherry! your Art Journal is sooooo fabulous Dahlink!)  In fact we all had a huge amount of fun. 

I demonstrated the techniques I use with Copics and Promarkers to colour images, and in the background we had a couple of  DVDs on Art Journalling running and projected on to a screen.  I think we all learned a great deal from these and from each other and the different techniques we use and love. 

Here's a close up of my canvas, I used my lovely new stamps from Chocolate Baroque, stamped the images using Rich Cocoa Memento ink and coloured with Copics.  I distressed the edges with inks and after sticking on to the canvas, I applied Crackle Glaze and rubbed over gold wax medium to emphasise the cracks.  The other elements were added using stencils, stamps, copper and gold paint applied using the edge of a piece of plastic and old bottle tops in addition to the stamps. 

I hope you've enjoyed seeing my canvas, thanks for dropping by to check out my blog today.