Craft Room Update - More storage and another card

Hello! Welcome back :) Glorious sunshine outside and beautifully crisp and frosty. But you didn't come here to discuss the weather, you wanted to know (I hope!) what I've been up to crafty wise. 

Well, deep down I knew that when I moved the craft desk into it's new space, the reorganisation and sorting out would tail off a little. I was right. Having things closer to hand meant I could get crafty easier. But, it's not all forgotten, and I have added in a little IKEA Trofast Unit to my craft space. It's designed as children's storage but it is flexible enough to be used with plastic tubs and also shelves. I've decided to go with it rather than the Alex drawers, because if I find I have to move to another space in the house sooner than expected, I can move this to the children's room without any trouble and it will have another use. We have to be quite flexible with space around here, as there isn't a lot of it!

  
I've not quite decided what will go into it yet as I've another large bookcase full of stamps and other crafty things that I need to go through and move, but the space is coming along nicely. More sorting next week I hope!

I have another card to share using those highly versatile Sugar Pea Designs I got before Christmas. I managed to use quite a few new things on this card!

I stamped the little bird (it's a calling bird, you get it??) onto some Neenah Solar White 110lb and coloured it in with some Copics. I then cut it out using one of my SSS stitched circle dies. I then stamped the CB Hello in Altenew Ocean Waves and die cut it out using the matching die - sensibly I bought this one!. 

I then took a grey card base and rounded the corners with my WRMK Corner Chomper 1/2" and adhered the bird, then the Hello on top and stamped the sentiment in VersaFine Smokey Grey. I added a few enamel dots for effect.

[Supplies: Sugar Pea Designs Every Day is Christmas; Clearly Besotted Congrats to You stamp and die; Copic Markers; Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 110lb; Simon Says Stamp Shapes with Stitches; Altenew Cool Summer Nights; VersaFine Smokey Grey; WRMK Corner Chomper; Echo Park Enamel Dots Hello Winter; Double Sided Tape; Ranger Multi Medium Matte]

Simple yet effective, don't you think?

Thank you so much for your lovely comments as always. I hope to be back soon with more cards and more craft room updates.

Enjoy the rest of the week :)

Birthday Balloons

Hello craft addicts! I really wish all the stamp and craft companies would stop bringing out new dies and stamps every month - said no crafter EVER! That includes me! As I said last week I got some stamps and dies from the new Clearly Besotted release on 5th July. I've scraped out some time to use the fabulous birthday balloons that were designed by Stephanie's (CBs Head Honcho) daughter. They are fabulous and perfect for little ones, so I inked them up to make a couple of cards for my bestest buddy's little ones' birthday - the plural is correct, for there are indeed two!

She also asked me if I would do more of a step by step and as baby slept really really well when I was making them, I had some more time to take photos as I went. Hope it makes sense!

Step 1 - I wanted the cards to be bright and cheerful and as I don't have enough Copic Markers to colour the balloon animals as I would like, I chose to ink them onto some Lawn Fawn Let's Polka papers using Memento Tuxedo Black. It's a technique that Lucy Abrams uses with great effect.

Step 2 - I then took the matching dies and placed them round the stamped images and secured them with some Washi tape. 

Step 3 -  I die cut them out two at a time - I find I don't get enough pressure sometimes with smaller dies if I do too many at once, especially as the die cutting machine cuts best on the top left hand corner!

Step 4 - Once the pieces were die cut out, I trimmed some white card to a size slightly smaller than the pre-cut cards I use. I like 9x13cm, as the cards are 10.5x14.75cm in size.

Step 5 - I like the corners rounded sometimes, so as I don't have a corner rounder, I use the one on the WRMK Envelope Punch board! Works just fine for me at the moment :)

Step 6 - I wanted some nice paper as a background, so I chose some coordinating papers from the Lawn Fawn Let's Polka Mon Amie collection. I trimmed it to fit the front of my card blank, as it's a 6x6" pad.

Step 7 - I then used some double sided tape to stick it down on the card front. I would love an ATG tape dispenser, but that will be in November's Simon Says Stamp purchase!

Step 8 - There are some balloon strings in the stamp set, so I positioned the balloons and stamped the strings underneath, then with some more double sided tape stuck the balloons on top.

Step 9 - I wanted to add their names, so stamped them on the front underneath in some little letters I got in Hobbycraft.

Step 10 - I didn't want the sentiment on the outside as it would be too cluttered, so I stamped them on the inside.

Step 11 - I wanted a little bit of dimension, but it needed to be firm as it's going in the post to Europe, so I used some fun foam on the back of the panel. It's such a genius idea thanks Jennifer McGuire! Love how you can see my knees in this photo! It's so professional ;)

Step 12 - Done!

A better picture of the cards. Decided not to colour the words, as I liked the clean look.

Supplies: CB Best Birthday Stamps and Best Birthday Dies; Lawn Fawn Let's Polka and Let's Polka Mon Amie 6x6 paper pad; Memento Tuxedo Black Dye Ink Pad; Hobbycraft Outline Alphabet  

Well done on getting to the bottom of this post. Hope you found it helpful/interesting, and as always, have a great weekend!

Graduation Thanks

Hello lovely readers! Sharing a very simple card with you today with the cutest set from last month's Clearly Besotted release. Sunday 5th was their latest release and I managed to get some more lovely stuff to play with - can't get enough of their things! The design team do such a good job of inspiring me.

On Wednesday it was nursery Sports Day and Graduation. Yes. Nursery graduation. It sounds like a silly idea, but really it's a way of saying farewell to those about to start school in September, and noting that they're about to start a new chapter. We went along to thank all the wonderful staff there who have helped our 4 year old turn into a confident and caring little girl. A card at least was required. (Don't worry, we also made thank you cakes!)

As you can see I've been practicing with my Copic markers. I met up with a crafty friend last Friday in the craft shop she works in not too far from here. She was so wonderfully helpful and I managed to get some more Copics as well as a myriad of other things.

Supplies: Clearly Besotted Let's Roll stamp and Let's Roll die set; Clearly Besotted Thanks Word die; Copic Ciao Markers; Stick It!; Foam Tape; Papermania 6x6 Capsule Collection; Ranger Multi Medium Matte; Memento Tuxedo Black

Apologies that the photo is not great. It's part of my birthday list to get a better camera, but that's not until November, I'm afraid.

It is so simple, just one of the CB Let's Roll hedgehogs stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black and coloured with Copic Ciaos (E57, E59 for the prickles; E53, E51 for the face; E18 for the feet and YR02 for the ears). I stamped the mortar board and scroll onto pink paper and die cut them - talk about tiny dies!!! I die cut out the CB Thanks die with some Stick It! on the back to make it easier to adhere to the panel of white card. Stuck the hedgehog in between using Multi Medium Matte glue then his mortar board on top and then the scroll at the bottom. The card blank has two strips of 1.5cm pink card stock at either side and this adds some colour - pink is her favourite colour, which is why I chose it. The main panel is adhered with foam tape and I added some Wink of Stella and Glossy Accents to the scroll. Simple and effective!

Thank you for reading as always. Have a fantastic weekend as always. Here's a picture of those Thank You cakes - pink as well of course. It was a brilliant day despite the weather - well it has to rain on Sports Day!

 

Tea-riffic!

Hello crafty friends! Been a bit hectic this past week without a huge amount of time to do any crafting. We're away for a few days visiting family and also celebrating a big birthday for a really good friend. It's a birthday with a 0 at the end of it and this friend deserves a really good do. I'm sharing the card I made her with you today. She loves tea, so the Best Pun Ever from Lawn Fawn was just perfect:

[Supplies: Spellbinders Nestabilities Large Circles (I did not buy them from here, but they are no longer listed where I did buy them); LF Let's Polka 6x6 Paper Pad; LF Best Pun Ever stamp set and dies; LF Large Stitched Squares; Ranger Dye Ink; Ranger Glossy Accents; Wink of Stella 8mm Pen; Caran D'Ache Prismallo Aquarelles; CB Long Flag Die;]


It's a shaker card using the tea cups from the set and also some cupcake stamps I bought cheap in Hobbycraft, as the shaker elements along with some clear sequins. The tea cups were stamped in different Ranger Dye Inks, as was the tea cup on the outside, coloured using my Prismallo Aquarelle water colour pencils, then covered in glossy accents. The cupcakes have also been outlined using my Wink of Stella pen to add some sparkle. I encased them all in a square from my Papermania capsule collection cut using my LF large stitched squares, with the aperture cut using my Spellbinders large circles. I adhered it to the card with lots of fun foam. The background paper is LF Let's Polka. The sentiment is from the Best Pun Ever set stamped in Ranger Dye Pink Gumball onto the CB long flag die.

I really love this card and hope she does too. Thanks for reading and as always, have a fantastic weekend!

Funky purple thanks

Hello! So who is still doing The Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge? I'm still going, with the odd hiatus - sometimes you have to do housework! This card was inspired by Kathy Racoosin's Day 8 post, where she created an amazing card background just using a roll of tape and markers. It was pretty inspiring, so I came up with my own interpretation. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll have seen the first few photos, but not the finished product!

Basically I started with a piece of watercolour paper and took a couple of my Spellbinders Nestabilities Large Circles and drew around them in a random pattern with some of my purple Spectrum Aquas, overlapping to create the different shapes. I then got to colouring in between the lines using all my different purple and blue markers and pencils - from my Spectrum Aquas, to my lonely blue Inktense and my Caran D'Ache water colours and my Artists pencils too. This was the result:

It looked a bit odd with the water colour pencil as is, so I blended those bits with water to soften it up. In hindsight, I shouldn't have used a water colour marker to draw the circles - they naturally bled a bit, and it looks a bit messy up close. You don't get anywhere by not experimenting though!

Pretty funky, but what to do with it? I've seen some great inlaid die cutting on cards, so after watching a Jennifer McGuire video and one from Lawn Fawn, I got busy with my CB Thanks die cutting it out from the corner of the funky panel and then several from white card stock:

I then glued the white Thanks together using my new bottle of Ranger Multi Medium Matte with its precision tip - that makes it much easier! - and then added the coloured panel on top. To stick it back into the panel, I put some double sided sticky tape on the back of the panel so the blank space for the thanks was now sticky. I stuck it on carefully, and put back in with my tweezers all the little extra die cut pieces from the 't' and 'h' and 'a' etc. Blimey, that is fiddly work!

I then simply attached it to my card blank. It's quite subtle because it blends in with the background, but some Wink of Stella and Glossy Accents help it pop out a bit more.

[Supplies: Water colour card; Spellbinders Nestabilities Large Circle Dies (out of stock where I purchased them); Spectrum Aqua - Floral; Derwent Artists' Pencils; Caran D'Ache Prismallo Aquarelles; Derwent Inktense Pencils; Clearly Besotted Thanks die; Wink of Stella; Glossy Accents; Ranger Multi Medium Matte; Precision tip; Double sided tape]

Thank you so much for reading and have a lovely weekend :)

Hooray - You're Engaged!

Honestly, all these lovely people I know getting engaged, and I've got the trials of having to make a card ;). Of course, this latest lovely couple are just lucky enough to get one made with my new Hooray shaker die from Clearly Besotted - it is just yummy and fantabulous in one fell swoop....

I got some inspiration from the fabulous Clearly Besotted design team and gave another shaker card a go and am really happy with the results!

I took a basic card blank - C6 I think it is! - and trimmed another piece of white card stock to fit in the middle. I took some time to line up the Hooray die to make sure it was centred and level (not entirely convinced, but it's close enough!) and cut it from the card stock. I then cut it twice more, once from spare white card and once from some nice light turquoise, having put some Stick It! on the back before cutting. I then cut out the Hooray from each of these and put them to one side to make the shaker section.

I put some acetate on the back using strong red tape to cover the Hooray and adhesive fun foam to give depth and contain the sequins. I used some of Lucy Abrams Glacier selection - these are so beautiful! - and they obviously go well with the shaker dies she designed. With some strong red tape I contained the shaker part with another piece of white card stock, the same size as the shaker piece making it easier to attach to the card. I then attached the extra 'Hooray' words, one on top of each other, to give it depth and colour. I also then stamped the sentiment (should have done this first really!) from the Clearly Besotted Mr & Mrs set in Memento Tuxedo Black.

I then attached two thin pieces of Lawn Fawn Let's Polka paper to either side of the card before attaching the shaker section, to frame it.

Thanks as always for reading :)

CAS-ual Fridays CFC139 - Happy 4th Birthday!

I've decided to try my hand at another challenge, this time CAS-ual Fridays. I love popping along to their blog during the weeks the challenge is on and seeing what people create. The colours appealed to me this time, so I've given it a go. Honestly, my creations are nothing compared to the beautiful cards some people come up with, but it's all about practice, so here you are. I've come up with two because I always like to use the negative from a die cut where I can - waste not want not!

I started with some white card blanks and chose my turquoise and orange from my Papermania Capsule collection. I die cut the circles using my Spellbinders Nestabilities standard circles (large) and the dragonflies using the free die from Simply Cards and Papercraft issue 134. I adhered a dragonfly to its opposite colour circle before attaching as seen. The sentiment dies are from Clearly Besotted - happy and birthday - and die cut from my Papermania collection. I used some Stick It! I got from Make the Day Special - it's great stuff for intricate dies. I fussy cut the happy birthday from some white cardstock before adhering with foam tape to add a bit of lift. I've added a few sequins from the Lucy Abrams sequin mixes I bought with my last purchase from Clearly Besotted Stamps - this one is Glacier. They really are beautiful. 

This card is made from the negative of the happy birthday with a dragonfly and sequins as above. It's a tent fold this time. I tell you, getting all the little extra bits of paper from the die for the 'a' and 'h' etc was rather fiddly! 

So there you are, another challenge - that makes three this month. I'm getting carried away!

Thanks for reading, hope you've all had a good Monday!

Musical notes

Morning! It's another lovely day here in W Yorkshire, baby is asleep and I've the cards I made yesterday to share. I have two occasions to make cards for. One is for our singing group leader who set up the group a year ago, and has done loads of work with us, and the second a birthday card for my future brother in law. Both were made pretty much in the same way and after some inspiration from Nichol Magouirk (the frame) and Pops (white on white).

Here they are:

After watching Nichol's video, I took my stitched edge rectangle dies and cut the frame using two of the dies from white Bazzill textured card stock. I then cut the inside panel from white card and stamped the musical notes (they are Twinchies from Inkylicious, but I can't find them on their website - I got them at a show) in various colours with Memento and Ranger Dye Inks, adding a little glossy accents to them. I then put some musical washi tape around the outside of the card base, added foam tape to the frame and stuck it on, adding the middle with double sided. I reckon it would have been easier the other way around, but I only thought of that later!

The words are both Clearly Besotted, happy birthday and thanks. I die cut them with double sided tape attached, a great tip for making it easier to stick down once you've cut them. I added a little green gem to the dot for the 'i', because I always lose it when I peel it out, it is so tiny!

Thank you for reading, hope you have a great weekend :)

Birthday Bicycle

So, those cards I destroyed and didn't get started the other evening, I finally made them on Sunday night once the kiddies were in bed! Yay! This one is for a friend whose birthday is this week. I think it suits her because she's literary and we met at library school.

I started with an A6 pre-cut card and cut a piece of backing paper slightly smaller from Dovecraft Curiosity Corner 6"x6" paper and stuck it to the card front with double sided tape, leaving a small white border. I then layered up a couple of strips of Bazzill card in matching colours - I love the muted greens and browns I found in my mini stash - onto the backing paper with some tacky glue - I'm still getting to grips with what glue I like and I like this, but I think it made the card a bit wet and it warped slightly. I then stamped the bicycle from the Good Times collection from Clearly Besotted onto the die cut bicycle using Ranger Archival ink in jet black (that was a pain to clean off!). I'd cut the die out ages ago onto some cream Bazzill I had to try it out and it came in very handy. I attached it to the card front with some foam pads. I then stamped the sentiment onto some Bazzill card stock and rounded the ends using the reverse punch on the WRMK envelope punch board - that's come in very handy indeed! - and affixed to the front with foam pads.

Still haven't had a verdict from my friend, but my husband gave it a big thumbs up!