Flowers and Wings and more sparkly things!

Hello!  Not blogged properly for months now due to the house move and struggling to find which safe place I had put certain items of craft paraphernalia in.  Have you any idea how much I searched for my DST? lol

Anyway, I'm back, and slowly but surely getting my crafting area back into some sort of order.  I'm at that time of year when I don't have any birthdays for a month or so, so had to go in search of challenges for inspiration.

The stamp I chose for this card is called The Lilac Fairy, part of the Flower Fairies from Inca Stamps.  It was one I picked up in Hobbycraft and as purple is one of my favourite colours, I couldn't wait to get colouring it in.  Using two of my favourite promarkers, orchid and bluebell,  I coloured the fairy's dress, wings and the flower heads.  For the leaves I used soft green and leaf green and then trimmed the coloured image following the lines. I embossed the wings then stamped and coloured and embossed another set of wings to give a 3D effect.   For the backing I ironed some fusible fibres to create a mat and trimmed it with silver edging.  Some paper and ribbon from stock finished the card off and then I added a bit of bling with the gems.  The green ones came from the states, given to me by my friend who had been out to California and bought me loads of goodies for a fraction of the price for which you can get them over here.  The flowers were plain white paper to start with so I coloured them with matching promarkers and added the gems for the centre.

The Crafts and Me challenge at the moment is purple and green and I would say this card fits the bill :-)  Flutterby Wednesdays as ever ask for something with wings, but this time they want to see your favourite colour too, and as mine is purple (bet you thought it was red, no red is just my obsession!) I have entered it there too.  Creatalicious Challenges wanted to see some 3D, and I think these wings really stand out. Sir Stampalot's challenge for this month is Bring on the Bling and this one certainly has a bit of that! Finally, as this card is cute and girlie I am entering it over at Creative Card Crew  :-)

Sorry I've not been around much!

We moved house at the end of May, which was stressful enough in itself with 4 kids in tow, despite only having moved 300 yards round the corner.  We did it all ourselves just using cars as I refused to hire a van for that short a distance!  Well, we're all in and settled now, it took over a month for us to get reliable internet access back and my craft area looks like a bomb has hit it!  There are still bits and bobs in various places in the house which have not yet found a home and most of it seems to have ended up in the middle of my craft stuff, 'Oh Sarah will know what to do with this, I'll just leave it here for her to deal with rather than put it away myself.' Grrrrrr lol

Ah well, mustn't grumble.  The new house has a lovely well lit front room which has been mainly taken over by all my craft fings and I have only managed to do a couple of cards and things for people and I really should get more blogging done.  But I do have a good excuse for not having done much, not only did we move house, my baby boy turned 1 and we had his naming ceremony on the same day and wehad a handfasting too! So I am now married (but not legally recognised) lol

Shimmery wings and sparkly things

I had a great day out on Saturday at the stamping fair in Port Sunny.  Never been before and I can heartily recommend it.  Loads of stamps, inks and other bits and bobs for crafting, brill!  Saw some lovely watercolour glimmer paints on one stall, but didn't buy them as I am going to treat myself to them next time, besides I wanted to buy some other shiny things so had to save my money til I found them.  And boy did I find them.  Vixykins was demoing on The Stampman stall with Starburst Stains and I honestly don't know how I have coped so far without getting some for myself.  They're fantastic!  I couldn't wait to get home and try them out.  Bought a few new rubber stamps, namely some fairy ones from the same stall and some butterfly ones from another.  I've never had a decent sized butterfly stamp to use before and I had decided that I would have to buy one at the fair.  Got a lovely set too.  Bought a couple of spray bottles of cosmic shimmer mist in red and pink too.  Oh and I bought a few more promarkers (ok about 20 more) and a tub of gilding flakes in variegated red, though I didn't have a clue what to do with them, they were just soooo pretty lol  In my investigations online as to what I could do with them, I found out about angelina fibres and films and was very happy to find a pack in the QVC shop to have a play with.  They also gave me the perfect way to stick the flakes onto my work.  Yay!

So onto this card.  Having been playing with starburst stains and making some very pretty backgrounds I decided to have a go with the cosmic shimmer mist using the same techniques.  The red and pink go together beautifully, and with a bit of clingfilm scrunched on top, it gives a lovely distressed silvery glimmery veined effect on the surface when dried.  Once it was dried out I set to work with a couple of fairy stamps out of the new pack with my new pad of jet black StazOn ink. Was pleased with how well it worked on the shiny surface as my previous experience trying to stamp on shiny bits had been a little bit trying lol  But it worked this time and it dried quickly so all was good.  I spritzed a couple of fabric flowers to coordinate with the background and added a couple of gems to the centres to add that all important bling.  I stamped out a butterfly on some of the remaining shimmery paper and added some gilding flakes to add accent, cut it out and stuck it to the corner with good old DST.  I had bought some netting from a wedding favour supplies shop a few weeks ago and cut a piece off, ruched it up and stuck it together with a bit more DST and a lot of luck.  I used a bit of the trim off of the net to created a 'swoosh' between the flowers and the butterfly with a bit more of the gilding flake for good measure.  It was finally beginning to look like a card!

I tried setting it on a white background but it just didn't look right, didn't look right on plain black either so I set to work once again with the glimmer mists and a piece of black card and wow!  How fab do they work on black?!?  Gave just the effect that I was after.  The newly acquired pack of angelina fibres was calling to me so armed with iron, greaseproofed paper and a couple more gilding flakes I created a lovely shimmery background to set the whole thing off.  So now I had a topper of card, backed with net, backed with angelina fibre to stick onto a shimmery card, a liberal squidge of tacky glue on the back and a night spent under a heavy book and it all holds together. Wooo! :-)

Entering this over at Crafts and Me Challenges who want to see Sparkle, I think this card has a bit of that! Also Flutterby Wednesday want to see a butterfly, By The Cute and Girly - Celebrations (well I was celebrating using the new stuff I bought and I will  be using this as a birthday card also as the card has a Distressed! air to it I am entering it over at Crafty Cardmakers. Sir Stampalot's challenge is for Butterflies and Blossoms and finally Creatalicious Challenges - Flowers and Wings (also a DT entry).

A bear's home is his castle

Well, I have really gone 3D this time!  I started with the Pixie Dust Studio's DT challenge image, Wink the bear, whom as was said on the site was getting his castle ready.  This bear needed a home!  As it was St Georges Day when I started on this card, I had dragons and castles in mind so a castle was definitely on the cards (pardon the pun!).  As is usual, I come up with these ideas, inspiration runs away with me and I then put my mind to working out how on earth I can put my plans into reality.

Firstly I coloured the image in browns for the bear's fur, then reds for the robes as bearfitting (sorry!) a bear of royal blood.  I then drew some rolling English hills and topped the most distant one with a castle, flags flying at full mast as their King is home!  I then cut the image with my circle cutter and made a frame out of grey textured card and drew on the brickwork.  To add a bit more depth I cut out part of a circle, cut a flat side to it and made it into a crenellated balcony for our King to stand on.  Now I needed to build a castle structure to home King Bear.  Really must learn to think these things through before I come up with smart ideas!

I took another piece of grey card and measured out where the crenellations of the castle ramparts would lie, and cut them so they sloped down the card, adding a very strange sense of perspective to the card structure once assembled.  I added brickwork onto the card so that as it stands up, you can see brickwork like you would see on the inside of a square tower if that makes sense?  I added a cardboard hinge to attach the front image onto the castle and made a latch to secure the image on the other side of the castle 'tower' so it all stands up.  I think it works, lol.  I had to take the photograph from a strange angle to try and show the detail on the front and the castle structure, hope you can see it truly is a 3D card and can probably just about make out the latch on the lefthand side which holds the whole thing together. :-)

A birthday comes around...

...but once a year. OK cheesy gag, but it was my inspiration for this card! For ages, I have struggled with cutting out circles as they have always gone wrong somewhere in the cutting process and ended up looking a bit lopsided and mis-shapen. Not any more! Was wandering round the QVC outlet shop craft section and lo-and-behold, what did I find but the We R Memory Keepers magnetic cutting mat complete with circle cutter, and a bargain at £13.15 once the discount had been deducted. I usually go there to kill some time whilst my son is in pre-school, but once I bought it I had to head home to play! It really is a fab bit of kit and is the mat designed to go with the WRMK interchangeable cutting head paper cutter ruler I bought last week, the ruler clings magnetically to the board and makes cutting fancy edges to paper soooo much easier (easier with the proper mat than stick the ruler to my regular mat with DST anyway lol)

I am very fond of Tiddly Inks digi stamps, and the one I have used here is 'Annie', a freebie image which was given to all the members of Christy's PCP page to use to create a DT entry. I tried and failed :( but really love the image and it was the first digi I actually coloured with my promarkers so I have a bit of a soft spot for it. I coloured her for this card using cocktail pink, tan and buttercup promarkers and then got a bit carried away making circles and thought hmmmm better work out what I can do with them. Annie looked rather sweet set behind a circle border of pink, so I glued and trimmed the image to the same size as the pink circle and then used a nice buttercup yellow sheet of card to make a bigger circle, and stuck it all together. It looked to be a combination between a side plate and a frisbee so I figured I had better come up with some ideas of what to do with it now!

Due to my previous lack of skill at cutting circles, I have never worked with them, so it was full-steam ahead to discover what I could do now. Determined as I was to make a circle card, I cut out two more circles to make the 'back' of the card and then punched some holes in, added some pink eyelets and went to rummage through my ribbons bag. I wanted some pink, yellow and brown to match the image and hit lucky with some pink and yellow, but had no brown. Then I spotted it, the brown twisted cord I have been hoarding in my craft drawer for ages with no particular purpose and I had the missing item I needed. Woohoo! Threaded the three ribbons through securing the front and back together and tied them into a bow, added a pink skeleton leaf and a yellow butterfly to make the card really stand out. Had a dig in my gems box and found some pretty pink and yellow gems which I stuck all round the edge to add a bit of bling. Then I stood back and thought, oh pants, it's round, it's heavier on one side than the other and it doesn't open like a conventional card. IT'S NEVER GONNA STAND UP! AAAAARRGH!

Racked brain and decided it would have to go on a plate stand or something similar, remembered I don't have any plates which need stands and went on a mission to find a plate stand I could make out of card, and to my surprise, I found one and it works.

Think I need to go and lie down now... oh but first I will have to hide the card from my kitten who was trying to help out at the ribbon tying stage and I am sure would love to get her paws on a floaty butterfly topper!

As I have used no other colour but pink, yellow and brown, I am entering this in the Crafts and Me Challenge of the same colour scheme. Tiddly Inks have an Anything Goes challenge at the moment so I have entered it there too.

Butterfly flutter by

I found a stitching pattern for a butterfly online a while ago and couldn't wait to have a go at it. As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I had done all the stitchwork in Guttermans sulky sparkly blue with the tub of blue pearl beads which I had in mind, then couldn't find them anywhere. Turned up under the radiator - though I still don't have any idea how they will have got there although I do suspect involvement of my 2 year old in some part...

I stitched the butterfly straight onto a card using a sharp pointy awl to make the holes and added a frame the same way, adding a few more beads to add definition to the corners, and then cut to size. The butterfly colour dictated the rest of the card, so I scoured my stash and gave the whole card a blue theme. Stitched the butterfly onto my favourite sparkly paper (don't know what I will do when I run out as I got it in the QVC outlet shop) and trimmed the edge with a scallop edger.

I then stuck the sparkly paper onto some pretty blue floral paper and placed the whole piece onto some turquoise card, trimmed with some extra pieces of sparkly paper, some nice co-ordinating blue ribbon. Added a few clear blue flowers and a felt flower onto which I had stitched a blue sequin and a pearl to create the flower centre.

The card became an easel card when I realised I quite liked some ribbon sticker I had with the sentiment 'Best Wishes' on it and then got out my gelly roll pens and some butterfly peel-offs to make the stop.

So there it is, a combination of a lot of my favourite hobbies, cardmaking and handstitching!

I have entered this card into the Allsorts Week 48 Challenge - In Stitches, The ABC Challenge - S is for Sparkle, Stampavie and More - Butterflies & Flutter By Wednesday - Butterfly, Fairy or Angel & Createalicious - Flowers and Wings & My Time To Craft Challenge - Pretty Pearls

Fairies for Forty

As you may have seen on one of my earlier posts, I made a card for my friend's 40th birthday, the surprise party is today and she doesn't suspect a thing Mwahahahaha! I spotted that a lovely lady called Gina had made a bottle neck hanger and thought it would be a nice idea to go round the neck of the pink bottle of champagne I am giving as a gift. I missed the little link at the bottom of her blog post which gave a tutorial of how to make one, so I spent most of yesterday evening trying to fashion one out of some pink card. Doh!

I've used the same stamp Ching Chou Kuik's It's My Birthday stamp as I used for the card so the gift matches nicely, added a couple of embellishments like a sparkly cake, a flower and a pink skeleton leaf.

Anyway, at least I know how to make one from scratch and have made it big enough to be able to fit some nice goodies in that any self-respecting 40 year old woman will need... you know, chocolate, Resolve (for the morning after the party) and anti-aging cream hehe

I have my sister's birthday coming up in a couple of weeks and she likes a tipple too so I already know what I can make for her now.

I hope you like it!


I've submitted this as a third entry into the Sir Stampalot Fantasy Challenge and By the cute & girly - Fairytales and also Createalicious - Flowers and Wings

Fanciful Faeries

I seem to be using a lot of fairies in my craft projects lately, don't know what it is about the craft world but fairies rule! Just so much detail to colour and add that bit of sparkle to, give me an excuse to be girlie. I am probably one of the least girlie girls I know so it makes a refreshing change.

I've used the beautiful Prairie Fairy DT call image to create this card. Really pretty image I think she looks young and fresh and the colours I chose to go with her are young and fresh and quite springlike yet remaining quite muted. I used powder blue and bluebell promarkers to colour most of the image, adding a touch of bling once again with my clear star gelly roll pen. The cards sparkles in the right light and her wings positively glow. Used some K & Company scrapbooking sheets which I got in a boxed set with other bits and bobs to create a softly coloured background to match the fairy colours and added some co-ordinating ribbons to the background. She needed a little more bling I felt so used a couple of tiny gems and an embellishment of a flower which accentuates the other colours quite nicely. A sentiment to finish it off from stock and here it is, and not an easel in sight lol

Entering this into:

Prairie Fairy 2nd Design Team Call
Sir Stampalot - Fantasy (2nd entry)

Sweet April Showers...

And so onto springtime. I love all the colours, the slight raise in temperature and of course, the rain. Ok, I lied about the last one, but the rest of it is true! I always struggle round Easter time, as I am not religious at all and find it a bit two-faced to give an Easter card, but always feel duty-bound to do something for my Mum as she always buys us and the kids something.

The image I chose for this year's card is a Digital Pencil Too digi stamp of a little girl with an umbrella being followed by some ducks, all splashing in the puddles. Isn't that just a lovely April image? Pretty much sums spring up for me!

I decided to limit myself to the spring colours pack of promarkers (with a hint of cool grey 1 and pumpkin here and there which I snuck in for detail) and the colours lent themselves to the image beautifully, lilac and pink for the wee girls coat and wellington boots, green and yellow for the umbrella and blue for the puddles. Added a few co-ordinating elements and was making it into an easel card when what did I find in my stash box? A little wooden yellow duck. Perfect!

Happy spring-time crafting everyone! xx

Entering this for:

I Love Promarkers - Animals

One stitch at a time - Anything goes

Quixotic - Spring

Stamptacular Sunday Challenge - Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice!

Sophisticat Challenges - Raining Cats and Dogs

Glittery fairies and wings and fings!

Got my mitts on a beautiful sweet pea stamp to use as I was looking for something special to make into a 40th birthday card for a friend who likes pink and purple and sparkly things so it looked to be just the ticket. Gave me a chance to put my shiny new promarkers and my fave gelly roll pens to good use. To make sure the sparkle shows when it is put up with the other cards on my friend's big day, I made it into an easel card (my first one) :-D

Quite difficult to catch the sparkles right under artificial light and camera flash but I think you can see them ok on the photo above. Got to wait a few weeks now before I can give it to it's intended recipient...

Entering this into:

Crafts and Me Challenges - Fairies or Wings

Allsorts Challenge - No design papers

Pile it On - Easel card

By the cute & girly - Fairytales

Sir Stampalot - Fantasy