Remember

UKS tag swap theme for November is "Remember" and the gemstone is citrine, so we had to include something amber/orange and something to do with remembering e.g. bonfire night, armistice day etc.

Lots of distress stains/ink used and my poppy is made from four red circles with a distress stickles centre.
It's beautiful and sunny here today (and dry!  No mist or drizzle).  I feel a walk coming on!

Have a lovely weekend X

Christmas Dressform

Another swap on UKS - this time making a Christmas fairy from Tim Holtz's Sewing room die.

I've made a little wand for my fairy, and a little reindeer friend.  I shall be receiving another 8 fairies from the other swapees and I'm really looking forward to them.

The photos are not very good, it's so gloomy today and I only had my iphone handy.

Thanks for looking X

Alice in Wonderland Jigsaw Swap

I'm taking part in a swap on UKS with 8 other ladies and we are making an Alice in Wonderland Jigsaw.
We are all decorating 9 pieces and then we will receive one piece from each participant making a finished Jigsaw with 9 different pieces.

Here is mine, almost ready to send in the post so it can be swapped with all the others.  I can't wait to get my Jigsaw back, there have been some gorgeous creations made already.

My puzzle pieces don't have a set theme, they are a bit of a mixture with Alice, "Eat me", the Cheshire Cat, the Playing Cards, Hearts and either the Queen, Rabbit or the Mad Hatter.  I wanted them to have an "old book" feel.

Going to get my thinking head out of the cupboard now and make plans for my next swap..........Christmas Fairy Dressforms!

Thanks for looking X

Artsycrafts weekend

I've just been lucky enough to spend another weekend at an Artsycrafts event in Warrington.  The time just flew by, the company was great, the projects were lovely and we had a fantastic time.

On Saturday we used Paperartsy fresco finish paints and grungeboard on the back of a wooden frame:

For our next project we changed colours and we used the paints on some glass bottles:

For our final project we used moulds, plaster and the fresco finish paints to create an antiqued panel.

I didn't use this lion mould but I'm going to use him at home, I love him.  I used a cameo mould:

I love these weekends, so thank you Lin and Leandra and I can't wait for next time.

p.s.  I do apologise for the weird placing of some of the text in this post - sometimes blogger editing will NOT do as it is told! LOL X

May Tag Swap

This is one of 6 tags I made for the May tag swap on UKS:
The tag had to include the colour green and something mystical/mythical.

The background was coloured with distress stains swiped over some clear embossed stars (bit hard to see here).  This was then overstamped with foliage using distress inks.  The face is a Studio 490 stamp and my doors were inked with black fresco finish paint, then fresco crackle, then fresco finish green paint.

When you look through the garden gate this is what you see:

More clear embossed stars with a distress ink background, then fairies and toadstools by Lavinia stamps and foliage by Elusive Images.  The fairies have a little bit of stickles on their wings.

Thanks for looking.  Going to do some baking with my son now - I will try not to eat the finished result but I know already that I will fail! X

Magical Places

During the Easter holiday my lovely hubby took us to Disneyland Paris for 3 nights and Paris itself for 3 nights.  We had a fantastic holiday and we were lucky with the weather too most of the time.

Here at last!

The view from our bedroom window.

One of the floats on the parade

Coffee in Paris

Outside Notre Dame

The Louvre

One of the beautiful Louvre ceilings

We walked and walked and ate and drank some delicious things.

  We were also quite brave about some of the rides we went on - I can't believe that we ALL went on two rides that had a 360 degrees loop - woo hoo!   It was all brilliant but exhausting and we needed a good rest when we got home! Lol!  Unfortunately it was straight back to work and school but I really wish we could have stayed for a month, we loved every minute.

I have some tag photos to post soon and with a bit of luck I'll be doing some more crafting before long.  It's been a bit manic around here as we are in the process of converting a playroom/dumping room (complete with massive Barney the Dinosaur and Teletubby paintings on the walls- inherited when we moved in to this house 9 years ago- yes we like to get jobs done quickly - ha ha!) in to a sitting room.

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Queen for a Day

Here is my tag for another swap on UKS

The background is Distress Stains and Distress Ink.  This was then stamped over with a script stamp (Crafty Individuals) using Distress Ink.

The girl (Paper Artsy) was stamped on tissue paper and stuck to the tag. The crown at the top right is die cut from a book page and glittered with Distress Rock Candy stickles, then some bling was added to the points of the crown.

I stamped "Queen for a Day" (by Anna Griffin) on the bottom, and added a crown from Girls Paperie above that, and on the girl's head.  Then came more bling around the ribbon strip and on the bottom of the tag.  I stamped the threaded ribbon with a small image by Making Memories.

Hope everybody is enjoying this beautiful Spring weather.

X

A bit of Bunting

I'm doing a Bunting swap on UKS and this is my effort.

The light was shocking when I took my photo so it looks a bit "muddy" - it's much brighter than this.

The background was done with Distress Stains ( so quick!), then overstamped with Crafty Individual stamps and an Italian script stamp using Distress Inks.  I sprayed the whole thing with gold perfect pearl mist and added some German scrap, some lace and a punched heart with a button on top of it.

I sprayed some book pages with pink glimmer mist and made some flowers using Tim Holtz Tattered Florals die and finished them off with a gem centre.

I used green Inka Gold on all the edges.

I'd better try to get the Post Office with them this week or else it will be a last minute job. ( My forte!)

Thanks for looking X

Quick Anniversary Card

I suddenly remembered an Anniversary on Monday so I needed a quick card:

The star stamp is by Lavinia, stamped in rocket gold ink.  The paper is Prima and I stamped on the right hand side of it using pink glimmer mist and a border stamp - love the smudgy effect.

The hearts were punched out of Kraft cardstock, inked with the stars again and outlined with stickles.

The banner stamp is by Clarity stamps and the ribbon is SU.

It's all much more "glimmery" in real life! X

Let's Ink it Up - Die cuts/Punches

I have made another card using my Tim Holtz dressform die and a fabulous EK button and needle border punch for this month's Let's ink it up challenge.

I die cut the dress form on grungepaper and then again with sticky backed canvas to make the dress.  I stained the dressform and the dress using distress stains. The next step was to stamp a pattern on the dress with archival ink.

After I'd stuck the dress on the dressform I added a ribbon belt and frill and glued some German scrap along the neckline.

The background card is SU stamped with SU Bliss stamp.

I punched the button border twice and gold embossed the whole border and added a piece of plain border on top.

What a beautiful day...... but I'm going back to bed to nurse the stupid cough and cold that I have that just won't budge.

Thanks for looking X

Travel wallet

 

The Just for Fun  challenge is "A different Format", so I thought I would decorate a 7 gypsies wallet that has been in my "to alter" drawer for ever.

We are going to Paris later in the year and we have lots of different travel documents and tickets to keep safe.  I decided to make a travel wallet so that everything can be kept together safely.

I covered the outside and the inside with 7 gypsies paper and added gaffer tape to the inside and tissue tape to the front cover edges.  I made a little tag using a Tim Holtz label and 7 gypsies stickers.  Then I have added two stamped images, both by Tim Holtz for Stampers Anonymous - I stamped the Eiffel Tower on tissue paper and adhered it with matte medium, and I stamped the French stamp on to a paper background using red archival ink.  I added a rub-on post mark, distressed it all a bit with Vintage Photo Ink and then I sprayed the whole front cover with gold Perfect Pearls mist.

 

Inside

Back cover

Thanks for looking. X

Dressform Card

This is the card I started at Sarah's Cards retreat.  I used Tim Holtz's dressform die and one of his new stamp sets.  The swirl is by Paperartsy.

A night on the tiles

Well, a couple of nights anyway.   I played with this mirror in our non-class time at Sarah's Cards retreat a couple of weeks ago.  Tim Holtz has an example in his Compendium of Curiosities, but he used more tiles than I have done.

I had intended to be sensible ( ha ha) and not stay up too late but on Friday night we went to bed at about 1a.m.  This meant yawns and matchsticks on Saturday morning, so that night we were REALLY going to be sensible.............we ended up going to bed at 2 a.m!  Anyway, we had a fabulous time.

So - I spent my spare Sarah time laughing, (great company), and sticking Ideaology Fragment Tiles to various papers - Graphic 45, K & Co and Tim Holtz, along with a few stamped images, and arranging them on my mirror.  I didn't finish it off til this week, and , Michele, it was VERY hard to stick the tiles on straight - I'm sure that you would have done a much better job.  I bet it would be an easier job if the mirror was absolutely chock full of tiles like the example in the book (excuses, excuses).

 Almost forgot to say that I stained the mirror first with Vintage Photo Distress Stains - so quick, I love Distress Stains!  I might add some alcohol inks to a few of the tiles - if I make a mess I can always wipe it off with blending solution.

I also played with my new Tim Holtz stamps and dies to make a card, but will save that for another post.

Sarah's Cards Layouts

Last weekend I had a fabulous time with good friends at Sarah's Cards retreat in Warrington.  I haven't scrapped for ages so it was great to do some layouts for a change.
Here are three of the layouts that I did in the classes.

 I'm still finishing off the other three layouts that we did.

Hope you are all having a good weekend.  We went to the theatre in York last night to see "Count Arthur Strong's Command Performance"  It was brilliant - after the first ten minutes I was aching so much with laughing that I didn't know how I was going to last through the whole show........very good.

Thanks for looking. X

P.S. For Karen's benefit(LOL!) the photo in Trafalgar Square is of my big sister, me (I'm the one turning round to look at the fountain) and my big brother.

Woo hoo! Look where I've been!

Don't ya think I look a tad excited???? Standing next to Tim Holtz! LOL!  It's because I was at this fabulous event:

Artsycrafts with Lin (LB Crafts), Leandra (Paperartsy) and Tim Holtz.

I arrived on Thursday evening and met up with Neet in the bar.  Neet had done the Thursday class and was on her way home, but we had time for a quick drink and a chat.  Then it was time for an early night as registration was 7.30 Friday morning!

I was on the early Tim class (there were 4 classes over 2 days - 288 attendees in total - the mind boggles at the time and effort spent in prepping all those kits).
We were all given a goody bag courtesy of Ranger:

In this little bag was a distress ink, a blending tool and pad, a paint dabber, a bottle of perfect pearls mist, some glossy accents, some matt medium and a scraper tool.  We were also given 2 rolls of tissue tape each and I was thrilled to find that mine weren't ones that I had already.
The project was a configurations box and our kit contained every piece of paper cut and scored to the correct size.  We also had a set of grungeboard letters and numbers and the new grunge tiles which are fabulous and enable you to make look alike printers letters.  There were some really interesting vintage dictionary pages which I loved - Tim had brought a whole dictionary so we could help ourselves.

For the first part of the class we added our papers to the box, secured with tissue tape and then distressed it with ink and added perfect pearls for a hint of glimmer.  We also made our "printers tray" letters/numbers.  Then it was tea break time.  Tim and Mario thought this was a fabulous idea and I think they are hoping to incorporate tea breaks in to their USA classes. Lol!

Tim was such a charismatic teacher - he explained things so well with a great deal of humour, he walked round all the tables all the time and was available to help anybody when needed. It was brilliant.  He was happy to sign things for people and was just so friendly and approachable, nothing was too much trouble.

When we got back to our tables we had been given a little calico bag each that was STUFFED with treasures for us to put in to our boxes.  In all the excitement I forgot to take a photo, but it was filled with things like little bottles with corks, ideaology metal items, buttons, a charlotte doll, an old car, cotton reels, numbers, tickets, a metal birdcage, flowers, tokens, pen nibs, string - marvellous.  So then we set to work and filled our boxes.
The last step was to add our metal feet.

I still need to add some metal corners (which were also in our calico bags) to the top corners.  I love it!

I almost forgot to mention the raffle prizes which were fantastic too - Stamp sets, Dies not yet available in the UK and limited edition Trade show bags. 

All too soon it was time for lunch and then off to our second class with Lin and Leandra.  We made this little house out of one large frame and 2 small frames:

The hinges were made from grungeboard and coloured with inka gold, and again these had all been pre-cut for us and the trees had been pre-embossed for us - an enormous amount of work.

Class finished at 5.30 and then it was time to drive home.

  Thank you to all concerned, it was amazing, and after looking forward to it for 5 months it lived up to and exceeded all expectations.  Happy bunny here. X

Romancing the Paper

Front Cover

I have just completed a wonderful on-line course taught by Rachel Emilie Jackson called "Romancing the Paper".  Over 5 weeks we covered lots of paper staining and colouring techniques, learned how to press flowers and then we combined all the techniques in a little reference pamphlet.

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Back cover

I really enjoyed the whole course and I shall be using all the techniques over and over again.  Thank you Rachel!
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