Safety Pin Bracelet

Drum roll please....Today is my daughter's debut on my blog with her safety pin and bead bracelet. I think it looks wonderful and she has made a brilliant job putting it all together. Katie doesn't share my enthusiasm for papercraft but she quite likes the idea of making things to wear so she had a go at this bracelet. Its just a collection of small safety pins that she has threaded with 5 seed beads each before closing the fastener, then the tops and bottoms of the fasteners have been threaded with black elastic, but alternated with a larger bead. When you have a row big enough to fit your wrist the opposite ends of elastic are tied together.
I wouldn't recommend this for small children in case they fiddle with the safety pins as they could come undone.

Paisley Canvas

Hi folks, just a quick post today. I made this canvas sometime ago but though it was worth a show. I painted the canvas with watered down acrylic paints. Stamped the flowers and paisley design (I think the set is one of the Woodware clear sets)onto some tissue using black staz-on and then pasted onto the canvas with a mixture of pva glue and water. The larger flower shapes that have been cut from black paper using a Sizzix die have been decoupaged with silicone glue and H2O paint has been splattered onto them.

Sew Simple!

Today I have a stitched flower card to show you. The stamp is from Elusive Images and has been stamped onto Grunge Paper. The image has been distressed around the edges with distress ink and the main flower design has been painted with Inktense water colour paints and then stitched. The backing papers are both from Dovecraft paper packs. The base paper has been inked with Peeled Paint Distress Ink. The happy birthday was stamped onto the same base paper and then stuck to some spare card to make it rigid so that it could be mounted onto the card with foam squares. As you can see most of the corners have been attacked with a round corner punch.

So simple!

Hi all, this card I have today is so simple it took minutes to make. The backing paper is from Junkitz - Girl Collectionz and the T Shirt and Shorts rubber stamps are from Artifacts and they were all part of my blog candy prize from Maria over on Imagine, Create, Inspire. Both the top and shorts have been coloured using Pro Markers and attached to the backing paper using silicone glue. I have a clear alphabet and number set which I used to stamp the recipients name and age on the T shirt (luckily it's a short name!). I cut the front of the card slightly narrower than the back and wrote Happy Birthday down the side of the inside edge. I find if you add dots to the letters it tends to disguise uneven writing and neatens up handwritten sentiments. I put a strip of masking tape alongside the Happy Birthday and then sponged red and blue distress ink over the wording.

The right hand corners of the card and backing paper have been rounded off with a corner punch and the card has been finished off with three punched stars stuck to a strip of card which has been attached the the bottom of the design.

Last of the School Cuties!

The title says it all really, this is the last of the cards I made for the teaching assistants and as you can probably spot it is another Popcorn Bear from Crafters Companion. As in previous posts this has been coloured with Pro Markers and the backing paper has been designed by Craftwork Cards that was given free with Creative Cardmaking Magazine.

Teacher's Memory Book

Hi all. Today is a milestone in my daughter's life as it's her last day at primary school so I decided to make a mini memory album for her teacher. The picture above is the gift box I made to go with it. The flowers are from Kaiser Craft and have been decorated with green and pink ink and finished off with a button and flat backed gems. The box started out as a plain piece of white card but I sponged pink Brilliance Ink across it and then added a little white Brilliance to tone it down before stamping the Hampton Art Swirls across again in pink Brilliance.

The above picture is the front of the book. The whole book is made from wood blanks from Kaiser Craft which I painted with pink acrylic paint on one side and light green acrylic paint on the other. I stamped the swirl stamp over the front as I did for the box and added a decorative flower. The letters are die cut Grunge Board from Tim Holtz which have been painted with light green acrylic paint and stamped over with a flower stamp with pink ink. Funky fibres, ribbon and a piece of broken necklace has been added to the binder ring.

This is one of the pages inside the book, decorated with Cricut Solutions, Home Accents cartridge, some lacy ribbon, funky fibres, buttons and Kaiser Craft Flowers.

This page has a little pocket for a tag that my daughter has written her message on for her teacher and again a couple of Kaiser Craft flowers have been added. The die cut letters are Quickutz and they have been sponged with Peeled paint distress ink.

There are other pages to the book but I have not added these as they include photos of children from my daughters school.

Popcorn

How cute is Popcorn Bear from Crafters Companion? I have all of the floral designs in the Popcorn Bear range so far and will definatley continue the collection as I think they are all fab. I have end of school year, Thank You cards to make for Katie's classroom assistants and thought Popcorn would be ideal. I love the image on this card as it also has little Souffle the duck. I coloured the image with Pro-Markers and the backing paper, designed by Craftwork Cards has come from this month's Creative Cardmaking magazine. I have finished the design off with a Cuttlebug diecut tag stamped with Thank you and decorated with flat back gems and strips of yellow card.

Introducing Souffle The Duck

Hello everyone, this card is for one of my daughter's teaching assistants. It's the end of the school year and I like to make her teacher a card and give a small present. However this year Katie says she has 3 teaching assistants, her class teacher and the teacher of the other year 6 class she would like to give a card to......! I don't mind really as it gives me an excuse to make a

few extra cards. This one is made using three separate sets of Crafters Companion stamp sets but just using the little duck, Souffle from each of the sets instead of the main character, Popcorn Bear. Have to confess to having a thing about ducks and geese so chose to use these 3 cuties to make one of the cards. They have been coloured with Pro-markers. I also used the lavender pro marker to colour the little flower (which started off white) to make it tie in with the rest of the colour scheme. I always buy any white or cream flowers when I see them as I can always change the colour to match the the colour scheme that I need them to fit in with.

Acetate Flower

Hello, thanks for dropping by. I made this card a couple of weeks ago for a friends birthday. It was super quick to do apart from letting the dries clear glue dry on the reverse of the acetate. The stamps used are both from Anita's and the Happy Birthday is from a set which came from Stamps by Woo. The background stamp on the base card was inked using red chalk ink and I used the same chalk ink to sponge the edges of the base card. The flower stamped onto the acetate was stamped with black staz-on. When the staz-on was dry I flipped the acetate over and sponged some red alcohol ink all over the back, I let it dry for a couple of minutes then added the glue to the whole of the flower before adding the red glitter. When everything was dry I went around the edges of the acetate square with a black Pro-Marker before mounting it onto a square of white card with the brads. A rectangle of black card was attached to the base card with double sided tape and then the acetate flower and white card were attached on top again using double sided tape. The Happy Birthday was stamped onto a strip of acetate and then the alcohol ink was applied to the reverse. It was then attached to a strip of white card using the brads and then the whole thing attached to the base card using double sided tape.

Another Birthday

I seem to be inundated with children's birthdays at the moment. This froggy/toad card is for my friend's little boy who will be 9 in a couple of days. I say 9 he could be 8 so for that reason I am not putting his age on the card as I am sure he would be most upset if I got it wrong! The images are from a clear stamp range of Penny Black which I have coloured with Pro-Markers and sponged China Blue Distress ink around the edge. The base card was stamped with a background stamp from Rubber Stampede using a Big & Juciy ink pad (I think the colour is Waterfall) I then sponged over Shabby Shutters distress ink. The sentiment is from the Penny Black set and it has been stamped on a Cuttlebug tag.

Shopaholic

My daughter has told me that she needs a card for one of her friends who has a birthday soon so I decided to use a Stamp Addicts Girl set of stamps again. I love this range as they are perfect if you have to create quick cards for young girls.
I stamped the images using black Brilliance and coloured with Pro-markers. I am gradually get the trick of blending with these pens but still have a way to go before I am completely happy with them. I stamped the word Shopaholic that comes with the set to make a bit of a background. I was feeling lazy so didn't make a mask of my stamped image, I just used a plain piece of paper to cover the bit that I didn't want to be stamped on, hence why one of the words appears by the outside of the girl's leg but doesn't appear on the inside of it, oh hum!

Well Done

My daughter came home from school yesterday with her school report and her SAT's results and to her credit the report was excellent and her SAT's result were fantastic too. So I dashed upstairs to my craft heap (room) and made a swift card that took no more than 30 mins to make (what do you mean you can tell.....!). I bought the stamp set from Stamp Addicts when I was at Newbury last Saturday as I knew Katie's report was due soon and thought it would make an ideal card. I coloured the stamped image with Pro-Markers which I am still very much learning to colour with properly and the letters used for Katie was cut using a Quickutz alphabet. The card was finished off with some punched woodware flowers.

July Graphicus Challenge

Evening everyone, I was lucky enough to visit the Newbury Stamp Show yesterday and came across a lovely lady from Lex Craft Supplies who happened to have Glenda's latest stamps! It was very hard to choose between the three fantastic sets but in the end I chose the Seahorse and shells set. I am really pleased with them and think I will probably be entering more than once this month as I have so many ideas. I chose to work with reds and browns for this card and started by punching a large square from a post-it note to make a mask for the tiled background. I sponged Antique Linen distress ink in the squares, trying to line them up carefully as I went. I then stamped the starfish and shell in each square using sepia Versafine ink. The shell panel was stamped with the Versafine as before but before I started I made a mask of each of the designs (using post-it notes)so I could make the shells look as though they have been stamped behind each other. The shells have been painted with inktense water colour pencils. The panel has been edged with a brown marker pen and then worn lipstick distress ink sponged around the edge. The worn lipstick was also sponged around the tiled background. I found some string in my bits a pieces box so used it to decorate the sides of the panel which was stuck to the card with Glossy Accents.

Time for Tea!

Hi everyone - two posts in two days, it must be the heat getting to me! - Here is a thank you card I made using the wonderful blog candy I won from Maria over on Imagine, Create , Inspire . The things used from the prize were the teapot stamp, square nestie, ribbon, cuttlebug tag, thankyou rubber stamp, Dusty Concorde Distress Ink and Once Upon A Time Paper Stack. The only things I added was a cuttlebug embossing folder, base card, inktense pencils, Quickutz leaf die with green card and gingham paper.
The rose is made from the Once Upon A Time stack, following the tutorial over on Maria's blog, the only thing I changed was to use a smaller 2 inch punch as I felt for this card the larger rose, made with the 3 inch puch would have swamped the card. I painted the inside of the rose with the distress ink as the card is white of the reverse.
I made a thank you card as I need to say a BIG thank you to Maria as the things I used really just scratched the surface of the amzing prize I won and will keep me going with ideas for a while yet.

More Flowers

Hi everyone, hope where you are you are keeping cool, it's certainly a struggle where I am. Anyway on with the card for today. The flower backing paper from Dove Craft has been glittered with Art Institute glue and Glamour Dust sprinkled on top. This was mounted onto some grey card and then stuck to the base card which is a landscape A5. The silver frame has been cut using a sizzix frame and embossed with a cuttlebug embossing folder. The pleat effect was made with folded strips of pearlescent pink and white paper that has been stamped with a clear flower border (Woodware I think) using pink Brilliance ink. The frame was finished off with some white funky fibres which have been wrapped around it. The large flower has been stamped twice and embossed with silver, cut out, coloured using pink, pearl crystal lacquer for the outer petal and an ivory pearl lacquer for the centre and then stuck to the card using silicone glue. The same stamp was then stamped twice onto shrink plastic, coloured with pink chalk, cut out and shrunk then stuck to the card with silicone glue. I have added some glitter glue to the centre of the shrink plastic flower. I got the flower stamp from a bargain bin at the Newbury show from Friends Stamps a couple of years ago, I think it cost me the princely sum of £1.50!. I am really looking forward to this Saturday as I hope to be going to the Newbury show again, can't wait to search out more bargains!