Crafty Cardmakers - Use a Food Container

It was my turn this week over at Crafty Cardmakers to set the challenge and I had a think about it and then decided to take my inspiration from something I love... FOOD!  Hehe!  Food is fab, we need it to survive and it comes in packaging of all shapes and sizes and how often do you end up dumping it in the bin when it could be used for something else?  So why not have a challenge to make something else out of a food container?  It could be a jar, a tin, anything at all which once contained food.  I am a bit of a hoarder when it comes to that sort of thing, and my craft room is packed with lots of things which I think might come in useful for something at some point.  I just pity my poor fella who has to share the room with the tiny little computer desk I have allowed him to have in the corner lol

My inspiration this time came from a combo box from a well-known pizza chain.  I really love their food and especially like the combos that they do with chicken strips and potato wedges.  It just seem such a shame to throw the box away and I decided to have a go at making it into something else.  It already folds up to make a funky shape, and has holes in it to contain the dips and that set me thinking.  Why not make it into a funky gift type box to hold something else?

I set about painting it with white acrylic paint to start with as the company logo is emblazoned on the box in strong colours so it took a few coats to white it out to give me a nice base to work on.  It was only after having a chat with the manager of the shop who let me have a new unused one that I realised that if I had folded it the other way it was white to begin with and I wouldn't have needed to use so much paint.  Doh! Never mind eh? I had gone this far already so decided to plow on.  What's the point in getting this far with a recycling project to only go and throw it away?

Once the paint had dried, I sprayed it all over with some Adirondack color wash and let it dry then stamped with some stazon using a swooshy stamp and let that dry too.  The dip holes are a perfect size for putting a tealight into.  I wouldn't recommend using real tealights unless you want to set your box (and probably your house too) on fire, instead use battery operated tealights which you can usually pick up quite cheaply from the likes of Hobbycraft.

I shredded some tissue paper to make the packaging inside.  Now, you really could put anything inside this.  I have put an outdoor tealight holder which you can hang from the branch of a tree, or even your washing line to add a bit of mood lighting to your bbq.  You could use it to put make-up or even jewellery in and if you added one of the stick on mirror panels which you can generally get for a quid or so, it would provide a nice gentle light to put your jewellery on by.  Tidy.

The Fabulous Mad Madam M

I have been wanting to get my hands on this Stitchy Bear stamp ever since I first saw it in the banner at OSAAT.  This is my daughter.  Well it isn't actually my daughter, she's 12 and a touch more three dimensional than this picture lol  but this is my daughter's fashion sense!  Well I suppose I am probably to blame for that as I have never been known for my eye for fashion either, but DD loves her clothes and sometimes likes to wear as many different colours as she can, all at the same time!  Well nobody could ever accuse her of being dull.  Unfortunately she didn't come supplied with sunglasses for everyone who looks at her.  Don't think by reading this I am being mean by the way, she is sitting next to me whilst I type wearing a purple t-shirt, a platypus coloured cardigan (her description - I think it refers to her TY Patti the Platypus, but I can see what she means) and a knitted cream hat, complete with cat ears... her Havana cat is currently chewing my socked foot (he has a fetish for socked feet) and she has just had to run into the kitchen to get him to follow her.  It worked!  We have lots of random moments in this family I can tell you!

At Crafty Cardmakers this week, our challenge is Love The Lasting Kind.  I don't think there can be any better display of love than the love a mother shows to her child.  From the first moment they are placed in your arms after you have given birth to them, nothing ever compares to that.  The overwhelming emotions of holding this tiny little bundle (and believe me, my DD was tiny!) and knowing that they have been growing inside you for 9 months and they are finally here, out in the real world, small and vulnerable and needy of everything to survive.  I think those in the midwifery profession call it bonding, I call it pure, all-consuming Love.

Things haven't always run smoothly for my daughter and I.  She was only 6 and a half years old when I finally decided enough was enough and turned my back on her father, and left her to live with him as it seemed to be the best for her at that time.  I still maintain that it was the best then as I needed time to sort my own head out but it hurt me, and more sadly it hurt her.  I think she felt I had rejected her too, but I made it up to her, slowly but surely and as she grew older, she realised that the parent she really wanted to live with was me, someone who would be there for her all the time and not just pass her around relatives because they couldn't prioritise family over work commitments.

Whoa!  I am getting really sentimental here!  I am supposed to be talking about the card! Hehehe!

The stamp is a digi stamp from Stitchy Bear Stamps and I have coloured her with promarkers and added depth and definition with black polychromos pencil.  I ran round the edge of the image with cool grey 1 and cut her out to make the image pop out more from the background.  The many background papers I have chosen to co-ordinate with the main image - mainly because I have used so many garish colours on it, I had a great job finding just one which would do it, so I decided to layer it.  The 'flowery' part is drawn freehand onto sticky backed canvas with Derwent Inktense pencils to match the leggings on the main image, then edged with bright pink then torn to reveal orange.  The orange is torn to reveal hot pink leopard skin print - this is in homage to a similarly coloured pair of leggings that DD wore to death, until they finally didn't fit her.  I created this paper with an Anne Geddes stamp.  The lime green, final part of the topper is embossed with a stars embossing plate in my Sizzix.  I then backed the whole lot onto black paper and added the 'Fabulous' sentiment which is an embossed stamp from the same Anne Geddes stamp set, I have used orange, red and black then coloured the background with Inktense pencils and trimmed to size.

Whoa! This is a bit pink for me!

Wow, has it really been 2 weeks since I posted anything here?  Life has been busy busy busy for me lately, having 4 children in the house certainly doesn't leave much time for anything else.  I wouldn't have it any other way really!  Since I last blogged, my beautiful daughter has turned 12 and it amazes me everyday how lovely she is, so mature for her age, she certainly has got a good head on her shoulders, is doing brilliantly at school and I am sooooo proud of her!

Well this card is a bit pink innit? lol

Over at Dream Valley Challenges we are running a challenge 'Stamp Something'.  I love stamping!  I remember before I started making things that I always thought stamps were just something you used to decorate a card or other project, kiddie crafts almost.  How wrong was I? The lovely stamp I have used for this project is a Jasmine Beckett-Griffith one of the fabby stamps you can buy from Crafts and Me Stamps.  I fell in love with this lady's work a few years ago when I was in Lincoln with my darling OH and we wandered  into Salamander a truly awesome new age shop hidden away up a sidestreet.  They had just taken delivery of a selection of greetings cards designed by her and one of them really caught my eye as, to me, she was the spit of my daughter.  I was over the moon a few months ago when I learnt that I could now get stamps of her designs!  I have coloured the image with promarkers in shades of pink and added some sparkle to her wings with gelly roll pens.  I used my scalloped edge circle nesties to create the circle behind, which I used to cut out from some paper I had made previously with cosmic shimmer mists, then embossed it and sanded it to distress it a little.  The rectangle behind the ribbon is some more of the paper stamped with some inkadinkadoo stamps. Behind that is a selection of Anne Geddes papers which I acquired on one of my swoops at the QVC shop and some meshy ribbony type stuff which I think is lovely.  Oh and don't forget the bling, always have to have a bit of bling lol

Revenge - A Dish Best Served Cold

Don't you just love that phrase?  It's true isn't it?  Why rush in when someone wrongs you and give them the reaction they want, just leave it... don't forget about it... leave it until they think you have forgotten about it lol

I have used a fab Tiddly Inks digi for this, she's called Pinky and if ever a stamp was more suitable for this phrase I have never found it.  I mean come on!  She's standing there with a skull on top of a cake!  I don't know who cheesed her off, but I don't think I would like to get on the wrong side of her, would you?  That girl has issues lol  I have used just 6 colours on this card, black, red. grey, purple, white and satin for the skintones.  Not that I have given her much skintone at all, she's as pale as me... in fact this could be an alter-ego of me!  The background is also from Tiddly Inks and is called Toasting Properly.  Goes perfectly with the image I think and the general feel of the card.  So with 6 colours, I added 6 paper roses, made using a diecut and a few scraps of coredination's paper as it is red on one side and black on the other and it gives such an impression of darkness to the petals.  And of course, 6 words too.  I used a ransom note style font which my lovely stepdaughter gave to me.  Sometimes it is so handy to live with a font geek!  So there we have it... 666... The number of the beast.  Scared yet?  You should be!  HDH Challenges, you've just gotta love 'em!  Mwahahahahahaha! ;-)

I'd also like to enter this in The Burtonesque Dolls zombie challenge.  I can just imagine a zombie serving up a skull cake.  I think it would be damn rude not to hit up the Tiddly Inks Anything Goes challenge with this one, I hope I have done it justice Christy!

Magical fairy wonderland

We call them faeries. We don't believe in them. Our loss. ~Charles de Lint


I was talking earlier today with my daughter, whom is now almost twelve about the fancy bedding we can get for kids these days.  I grew up in the times before duvets (sheets and blankets for me!) and children's character themed bedding, and whilst my son has Rubbadubbas, Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder and my daughter had Jellikins and Hello Kitty, I had none of these luxuries.  I said to her at least you have never had to suffer hideous wallpaper in your bedroom (her rooms have generally been painted - apart from when she was a baby and I decked her nursery out with Peter Rabbit borders etc - only to be told when she was old enough to speak that she hated Peter Rabbit - Meh!).  I described the wallpaper I had growing up in the 70's as a pink and lilac floral nightmare!  This was replaced around the age of 6 or 7 by green woodland fairies.  I was never particularly into fairies (I was into Adam and the Ants at the time!) but my Mum loved it and bought it and decorated my room with it and I still had it on my wall at about 13 years of age - albeit covered up with as many posters as possible!

I've been raiding Vix's stamps again lol

One of the stamp ranges which they sell over at Crafts and Me is a rather fabby artist called Hannah Lynn and I love them!  This one is called Bookworm Fairy and I decided she would look just lovely coloured with pink and turquoise shades of promarker and added some definition with a polychromos pencil.  I treated myself to some stickles a few days ago and have added some to the wings and the frondy bits of the butterfly and it does look very sparkly in real life, but my camera has managed to completely not capture it in this shot!   I also added some stickles to the lantern as they tend to reflect the colour of the bit underneath so it really looks like it is glowing.  Again you will have to take my word for it lol I trimmed the image and gave myself a near heart attack when I was cutting the frondy bits as I have a habit of cutting them off, but miraculously I managed to leave them attached - Go me! lol I have created the background using cosmic shimmer mists in a blend of greens into blues, (I've not tried a blend with the colours before), then stamped over the top with the frame from the Starburst Fairies stamp set from The Stampman.  I trimmed the frame leaving a narrow border and glued the image to it.  Doesn't it look like she is in a magical fantasy land?

I made the card into a twisted easel as I had more shimmery card left from earlier and stamped with some sentiments from the Starburst Faires set and added some gems for a bit of bling in pink and turquoise colours.

I followed a couple of challenge themes for this card, Stampalot have one running for Magical Worlds and I don't think you get much more magical than a fairy woodland scene.  I chose the colour scheme from The Corrosive Challenge for Turquoise and Pink.  Sweet Stampin' want you to try something new, and I tried a new technique with my shimmer mists - I usually just spray all over and hope for the best lol/

Steampunk fairy

Over at Crafty Cardmakers this week we have a spotlight on Steampunk or machines.  Well until I set to work on planning for this challenge, I had never really done anything at all like it.  From other things I have seen around the web, I knew cogs and modern type machines made in a Victorian style was the key and I was a bit wary of how to start.  Luckily I stumbled across some digi stamps from Delicious Doodles and bought a few to have a play around with and I think I can safely say I am a little hooked on darker things at the moment!  As I said in a previous post, I like gothic styles and the steampunk genre fits in quite nicely I think.

I started by colouring the image in with promarkers, aside from the skin tones I really limited myself on colours to red and greys and a touch of green for the rose leaves.  I wanted to keep her skin pale and interesting so have only lightly shaded it.  I have used a black polychromos pencil to add shadow and make it pop out a little more.  Directly behind the main image (which I trimmed) is a piece of core'dination paper, embossed and sanded gently to bring the red from out of the depths of the black.  I have a few embossing folders which I rarely use, but core'dination paper is fab for making use of them.  The panel behind is some black and white design paper from my stash.  I am not sure what make it is as it didn't have any labels, but I bought it from Carole's Crafts.  Behind that I simply used a scrap of black lacy material stretched over card and a broad piece of black satin ribbon to continue the black and white theme I seem to have going on here lol

So what's the steampunk feature?  The cogs of course!  I cut them out from a template and coated them with aged metallic Perfect Pearls powder, spritzed and battered away with the end of the powder brush whilst the powders were still damp to create a distressed aged metal effect.

I followed the sketch at Hanna and Friends for this card.

Gothic pin-up girl

There is just something about the whole gothic style of dress that inspires me.  This probably stems from having grown up in an era where the likes of The Mission, Sisters of Mercy and The Cure reigned the charts and the dress-code for that type of music was out of this world.  Long flowing coats, long flowing locks, make-up, long boots, bodices, waistcoats....  It's all just so dark and brooding and fab! I like to think I was a goth at some point in my life (my sister will tell you different tho lol) but the most goth I got was dying my hair black and dressing in black all the time and a bit of dark make-up.  Well apart from the last bit, what has changed as I am sitting here with dyed black hair and dressed top to toe in black? Oh that and the girls were always skinny and tall, neither of which I have ever achieved Hehe!

The image I have used is a fantastic artist I have found called Teri who sells her digi stamps under the name Delicious Doodles.  I found her art when I was looking for some steampunk digis and I fell in love with this one.  A true gothic fairy!  I have coloured her with a combination of promarkers and prismacolour pencils to make the wings 'pop' out.  The background behind the image I created by running some coredination red/black paper through my sizzix in an embossing folder, then sanding it gently to bring the colour through and then distressed the edges a bit more with another session with the sandpaper.  The swirls are Tim Holtz diecuts which I had cut out in red then attacked with some shimmer mists.  The main background is a black shiny crocodile skin paper I found in a Anna Griffin papers set and I thought it was just perfect to go with this theme.  The flower I made myself with a spare scrap of the background paper and a smaller flower made out of the coredination paper, run thru a snakeskin embossing folder then sanded off again.  The centre is a brad.

I think I might have got a bit carried away with my set-up for the photo of this card with the candlesticks, rose and wand, but I felt they just matched the gothic theme so well!

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:

Haunted Design House - Gothic Pin-up
OSAAT - Make It Sassy
Simon Says Stamp - Emboss It

Love is in the air?

I think you would have had to have been in hibernation for the past few months to have not realised that there is a Royal wedding at the end of this month.  Everywhere you look someone is flogging something to do with it, there are posters advertising events at pubs on the day and we have all been given an extra day off!  The extra day off is the highlight of it all for me, I don't really give two hoots about the Royal family to be perfectly honest.  Looking at some of the photos of Kate Middleton from prior to the engagement, and then after the engagement, nobody can deny she is a pretty young girl, but already the Royal machine is in motion to turn her into a fuddy-duddy who dresses like a 50 year old woman at a WI tea party!  Look what happened with Diana if you don't get what I mean.  She was only very young when she got engaged to Charles and in a lot of the early formal photographs she looked like she had been dressed by her Grandmother!  The people I really feel sorry for are any couples who have had the same date picked out for their own weddings for the past couple of years (you would possibly not believe how far in advance you have to book to get the church, the venue, the cars all on the same date etc Then your whole day gets hijacked by the Royals! Meh!

Anyway, moving swiftly on as they say....

I haven't been to an actual wedding for years, apart from evening dos.  The last wedding I went to I think was my ex sister-in-law's wedding in 1999!  My daughter was only a couple of months old at the time and it was an unusually hot day for the beginning of September, I was still breastfeeding her, she was getting restless because she wanted more grub or to go to sleep (probably both!) and my deranged old bat of a mother-in-law (which is what her darling son used to refer to her as) was insisting that I had to hang around until the photographs had been done.  The photographs took the best part of two hours, I was only called to be on one of them and I never actually saw the finished album.  So what was the point of putting me and my daughter through all that discomfort!  Oh, I am still ranting.... oops!

Moving on again... lol  *Thinks happy thoughts of love and harmony*

As I haven't been to a wedding or known anyone who has got married since I started making cards, I have never actually made a wedding card in my life.  Remembering back to the ones I received at my own (FAILED) wedding, they were all white with wings and toasting champagne glasses and pretty little doves.  Over at Crafty Cardmakers this week we have a challenge for red, white and blue and/or a wedding card so I have chosen to do both.  The image is one that I asked Vix to print out for me and I have coloured it simply with red and blue (with grey for the trousers) promarkers with a touch of gelly roll shimmery pens here and there.  It's a good thing that a lot of brides get married in white as it made it VERY easy to colour her dress... there was the white without me even having to lift a pen lol  I trimmed the image to size then used my hearts corner punch and back onto red paper so the hearts show up in a nice way.  I have followed the sketch from I Love Promarkers as it was just perfect for my plans for this card.  The 'congratulations' design paper is one I made myself in good old MS Paint.  The satin look paper is a free one I found whilst trawling the net in search of something to match my image.  See I usually do it this way round which is why it was so unusual for me to plan ahead and key my colours in with the DP on my previous post!  I have backed each of the panels with red and added some red gems for a bit of bling and a paper rose which I re-coloured with berry red promarker to match the flowers and bits and bobs on the happy couple.  I think I have kept this pretty clean and simple really.

Well I hope you enjoy the extra day off, whether you spend it tuned to the box with one of the Dimbleby's droning away (or whoever the Beeb pick this time), having drinks in the local pub or maybe just spending some time with family.  Enjoy!

*Hugs*  Sarah

I would also like to enter this for the following challenges:

Happileigh Scrapping - A Royal Challenge
Polka Doodles - Tie The Knot

Bunny in my pocket

Our challenge over at Dream Valley is to create something to do with Easter, and what could fit the bill better than a bunny?  Cute little chap isn't he?  I'm not sure where I picked him up but I think it was a spring freebie last year, so if anybody recognises him, could you please let me know? LOL

I have coloured him with promarkers and, although it hasn't shown up very well on the photograph, I coloured it a few more times and have paper pieced it to make it a little 3D and Digi Design House want to see paper piecing.  I have followed the sketch at The Sweet Stop which has a bit of a twisted theme this week, hence the angle, and wanted to see something with wings and the butterfly fits the bill there I think :)  The 3 design papers I have used are from my stash, not sure what any of them are as I found them all in little leftover bits during a paper sort-out.  I bought a set of drawers to organise all my papers and somehow I still have a box cram packed full of odds and sods.  How does that work? *Confused face*

The flowers are from a set my other mum got me on one of her trips to the states.  I'm not usually a pink person and so haven't used many of them before, but I think they look just fab stacked with the gems in the centres.  The brackety bits are using one of my nestie sets and cut from some paper I made a while ago and the ribbon strips are Kanban I think and the meshy ribbon in the background is from the big roll I bought a few weeks back - see I said you would see it again didn't I? lol

I made the sentiment using a scalloped nestie and a peel-off (shhhh) which I coloured in with promarkers to match the image and then doodled the flowers, faux stitching to tie in with the main image, and the text freehand.

Passion for Purple Promarkers

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, with a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me, and I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves, and satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter ~ Jenny Joseph (I love this quote!  It's so ME! lol)

If you were ever to visit my house or look in my wardrobe, or indeed view the photos from my handfasting, you would probably be thinking that my favourite colour is red.  Well you would be wrong.  One of my lesser known secrets is that my favourite colour is purple.  I have always loved purple.  It's just such a lovely colour and there are so many variances in shade, plus with my dark hair colour and anaemic complexion it is one of the colours that adds colour to my pasty white skin and doesn't leave me looking washed out.  Oh and it usually looks fab with my green eyes! ;-)

The stamp I have used is ching-chou kuik's Dark Royalty from Sweet Pea.  Yes, it's another Sweet Pea!  I just love their stamps and as purple is my favourite colour it fits the In a Sweet Pea Dream challenge.  I have coloured using a range of promarkers in shades of purple (my favourite) and green, and for once, I chose my DP first and then coloured the image to coordinate with the colours in the paper.  This may not seem unusual to many people, but believe me, it is highly irregular for me!  I usually set about colouring an image and then discover that I have no paper to match and have to reach for my stains and shimmer mist and create my own.  Well as you can see I have actually used a panel of my own, which was made with shimmer mists then embossed with a polka dot embossing folder.  Felt quite strange to be so organised for once!

I was so organised, I even sat down and made all my embellishment flowers, as challenged to do by Passion for Promarkers, to match. I had a great time with my coffee filters and stains and heat tool. Made a batch of 3 large flowers - 2 turquoise and one purple, and 4 small purple flowers, all with gems and pearls in the centres with the full intention of using them all, but I went downstairs this morning to find der der der! No small purple flowers... seems my dear cat has been playing with them (I found one of the turquoise flowers in the bin next to my desk).  But now I am worried as the rest are nowhere to be seen and he has a habit of eating random thinks so he is possibly going to pass some very interesting poop... cats, grrrrrr Anyway, the few flowers he had left me to decorate my card with had escaped intact.

I have assembled this card following the sketch at The Sweet Stop as the moment I looked at it I could see all the papers I had planned coming together, great when I plan eh?  The main design paper with the large purple flowers on it is one I picked up in my local craft shop and even though it came in a pack of 10 sheets of the same paper, I just had to have it!  Might take me a while to use it all though...  The DP on the circles behind the flowers and the bracket at the bottom is from a Laura Ashley set.  The panels are either trimmed with purple paper or with purple edging borders to coordinate with the image and papers. Oh and then I added a couple of turquoise gems to finish off.  The colour scheme fits perfectly with Sketchy Colors challenge for turquoise, purple and green too :-).  I hope my gems will pass for pearls for the Magical Monday Challenge too, the card would have had lots more pearls if it hadn't been for my darn cat lol.  This is probably going to end up as a birthday card for one of my mothers so hope it fits in ok at Sweet Pea Stampers as it is a feminine card and uses a Sweet Pea image.