I'm fine, how are you? I actually completely forgot I coloured this in. Two years ago. Yes, two years ago! I met up with some lovely crafty friends one weekend in Birmingham and had a lovely time stamping and colouring. We mostly did talking, but I stamped a few images and coloured them in and never made them into cards. Well now is the time!
With my business all about reducing waste, it was high time I went through my scrap box and pulled out this panel which I'd coloured with Copics all that time ago. I wanted to practice highlights and shading. I'm not too sure how successful I've been, but I enjoyed using some of the grey-blues in my collection. The stamp is from Simon Says Stamp.
I'm really enjoying revisiting my card making and getting a bit of a stash going again. Always useful when you're reminded it's someone's birthday or you just need to send a Hello.
Thank you for visiting as always. Keep crafting!
Ruth xx
You may not know it, but I actually have been doing some card making behind the scenes. Just not blogging about it. Well, a chat with my business coach Lynsey from the Handmade Business Hub (best money spent every month I can assure you!) got me thinking about blogs again. Naturally it related to my Etsy business - take a look at my new look and name change! - but I thought to myself, since I already have an established blog, why not spent some time revisiting and blogging on it before I move to business blogging. Besides I realised I missed not doing it even with cards.
I've also started a small craft club in a local supermarket once a month where a few of us get together to eat cake, craft and sit and chat. It's the one place I can get some peace and quiet to craft and this is what I made at our last session.
I've been going through my card making supplies for a bit of a destash and found this Stamping Bella set which was one of the first I ever bought, and it is still a favourite. Obviously I was inspired by the recent weather from Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis here in the UK. If only I'd looked that good when escaping the hail stones at the school gate...
She's simply stamped and coloured with Copics. I haven't done a course for a while, so I'm hoping Faye runs some more. I could do with a refresher on skin and folds - well basically anything at all, because it's been so long!
I then just mounted her onto a nice purple star background onto a C5 card - I've stopped making my own cards as I just don't have the time to cut and fold.
I hope to be back with more cards over the coming weeks, so would love it if you would check in. Hope life is treating you all well.
Happy Crafting Everyone!
Running a small business has left me with little time for card making of late - you can see my last blog post was way back in June - but at the end of September I took the time to go to another of Faye's colouring classes as it gives me the opportunity to a) get out of the house on my own; b) colour in peace and quiet and c) learn from an expert. I'll share my colouring when I've finished them off and made a card from the images!
I took some of my hard earned cash from my Etsy shop and made the most of Dies to Die For being there by having a good rummage. I decided upon two stamp sets for Christmas cards. I've been feeling a need to colour some Christmas cards and get a bit ahead of myself. Plus Lisa told me she's already made 20 so I know I need to catch up!! Lol!
I love Stamping Bella images and this polar bear is just adorable. I decided to try a technique I did a couple of years ago after watching Elaine Hughes' video on how to colour the Northern Lights. You can tell I need a lot of practice, but I really enjoyed myself with my markers. I'm getting to that stage where I need refills now though!
I started with the bear and stamped him out onto some Make It Colour! card and coloured him in with E41, 42 and 43 with R81, 83, 85 and a bit of RV34 for his scar. I love that I can use the colouring on the stamp packet for inspiration. Oh and the picture has bleached out the colouring I did for a shadow to ground him. He isn't just floating I promise you!
I then decided to cut him out for some reason. Don't you love how cards evolve? I didn't really need to!
But anyway, I took another piece of Make It Colour! card and got colouring. It took me a fair amount of time to get anywhere near a decent blend and it still looks fairly messy to me, but I cut it to the size of a C6 card and stuck it on. I then trimmed the bear piece to fit on the bottom and popped him up on foam pads - well actually, it was the left over bits around a pack of foam circles. Always reusing and not wasting!
I feel pretty good I was inspired to try this again. It had been a long day on a school trip with 60 eight year olds (they were all excellent) and my brain needed something creative to do just not sewing....
Happy World Card Making Day! Hoping to get inspired to do some more very soon so I'm not rushing in November like always. Happy Crafting Everyone!
Hello! I was so excited to reach 100 sales in my Etsy shop that I've decided to have a giveaway! You and a friend could win £15 EACH - because I believe in sharing good fortune.
All you have to do is enter on my Bagageddon Instagram and follow the instructions on the post :)
If you don't win, don't worry, look out for a site wide sale to carry on the celebrations next week!
Hello crafty friends! What's this, I hear you in amazement, it's a card!
I popped along to my local craft club on Wednesday night with some stamps, some Copic paper and some Copics and this was the result. A Stamping Bella fairy in funky colours - well I did take an odd range of colours with me! - on a very plain background. Just some stencilling with a Uniko butterfly stencil and squeezed lemonade Distress Oxide put on with an ink duster so it wasn't too heavily coloured. She's been fussy cut and popped up on foam pads.
It felt good to colour again and actually blogging too!
Things in life are a bit more back on track again after illnesses with the children and a bout of depression for me.
The Etsy shop has had me busy, and I just hit 100 sales the other day, which is a goal I've been dreaming of for a very long time. Initially it was my aim to get there by December, but I managed it 6 months before that. What's surprised me is that my biggest seller has been my sets of reusable wipes and small coin purses to put them in. I've been learning as much as I can about making reusable products and more of these will be added to the shop over the coming year. I've also had a request for wholesaling some of my items, and I will share details soon :)
Thank you so much for all your support and for reading as usual. Happy Crafting Everyone!
Hello! I'm back again today with more from Hunky Dory. This time I chose a block of card stock - Ink Me! 6" x 6" Essential Card Block - and a packet of toppers - Watercolour Wings Topper Deck. Toppers are not something I would naturally choose, as I am more of a stamp and colour girl, but I like to try new things and thought it would be good to have something different to review.
I tried several things with the Ink Me! card block. I really like the size as I can cut it down to size for a standard US A2 or UK C5 card blank without too much wastage. It is also a nice thickness and very smooth, so I tried both ink blending and some Copic colouring:
1. Ink Blending with Distress Inks and Distress Oxides with Stencils
I had a play around with various distress inks and oxides and a couple of stencils. They were really easy to use with both a blending tool and my ink duster. I used some stencils from my stash from Funky Fossil Designs and Clearly Besotted Stamps and they worked really well. The ink went on nicely, didn't smear and I blended two colours together easily. I used Spun Sugar on one and managed to build up layers easily to get a darker colour.
I now have several of these pretty butterfly bride to make up into cards - perfect for birthdays, weddings, engagements. I do love a good stencil session!
2. Toppers and a card
Part of the reason I got the topper pack was because I loved the designs. I am a huge fan of owls and when I saw the watercolour designs, I thought they could be used for lots of different projects - and even be cut out - I do love a bit of fussy cutting.
On this card, I took a card blank from my stash (a C5) and cut the stencilled background I'd made from the previous stencil session (birch tree background) down to size to fit. I adhered it with some double sided tape. As I already had my distress inks out, I decided to do something I rarely ever do, distress ink the edges. I thought this went so well, I inked up the edges of my card blank as well. I then attached the topper onto the background with some foam pads. Easy as pie and I really like the outcome.
The toppers are also a really nice quality card, the designs very pleasing on the eye - watercolouring being quite the thing at the moment - and they can be easily made up into cards.
I used my own card blanks, but Hunky Dory also have a range you can use to make your final cards with:
https://www.hunkydorycrafts.co.uk/papercraft/card-making-supplies/card-blanks.html
3. Copic Colouring
I do a lot of Copic colouring and use speciality cardstock for it, but I always like to try any new card, especially if it's nice and smooth, which the Ink Me! is. I wouldn't recommend it solely for Copic Colouring, but I managed a decent blend on this Stamping Bella image without much bleeding, which I find can get with Neenah, the alternative I sometimes use. I definitely wouldn't dismiss it for the Copics, for quick colouring, if you have it to hand.
A thank you to Hunky Dory Crafts for having me and for giving me the products to review. None of my links are affiliates and my views on the products are entirely my own. I hope you've found this useful, and if you have any questions, please leave me a comment or drop me an email.
Hello! Things have been quiet on here for a few weeks, haven't they? Etsy got busy, Easter holidays happened and small children got sick and took quite a long time to get better, all of which impacted on my blogging. But....... I have an exciting blog post today..... read on....
A few weeks ago a very nice lady from Hunky Dory contacted me about doing a review of some of their products for them. I've heard of them, and indeed seen them on Create and Craft and had a very fixed idea of what they did. Card stock and toppers is what I had marked them down as. Before I said yes or no, though, I had a good root around their website Hunky Dory Crafts and imagine my surprise when I saw they also sell fabric and sewing notions as well as card stock, stamps, paper, toppers, pens.... So I said yes, picked my items and I'm here today to show you what I managed to do with 3 fat quarters and a glue stick...
So let's talk about those fat quarters. I use a lot of fabric in my Etsy shop, Bagageddon and I was very pleased with the quality of these. I have used fabric from the Craft Cotton Co. before and sometimes it can be a little hard even after washing. This was lovely from the start and washed up beautifully. You should always wash your fabric before using it to minimise future shrinkage. I also find that blues and reds can bleed quite a lot on the first wash, so this also helps, although with these there was no issue at all. I chose these for the beautiful Japanese style patterns which complement each other nicely, making them very easy to use for mixing and matching.
The fat quarters I chose were:
Kimono by Stuart Hillard - Fat Quarter - Waves (navy)
Kimono by Stuart Hillard - Fat Quarter - Abstract Flower (cobalt)
Kimono by Stuart Hillard - Fat Quarter - Dragonfly (white)
You can also buy this fabric in metre lengths, and I think it's a good price for a metre of nice quality cotton (£2.50 a fat quarter, so £10 a metre), given you can pay up to £15 a metre these days.
So what did I make? You really can get a lot out of fat quarters for lots of small projects. Here's my list and I have half of it left for more. I haven't given instructions on how to make them as that would take too long, but there are many easy to follow guides on YouTube.
1. A set of reusable make up remover wipes and a small drawstring bag to keep them in. You can easily get 6 sets of these out of 2 fat quarters. They are 2.5 inches each and backed with cotton or bamboo terry. A really great way to get into zero waste items. You can use old towels for this project too.
2. Two glasses cases - one slightly wider than the other to accommodate larger sunglasses. These are padded with fusible fleece and use two different fabrics. One for the lining and one for the outer. I use around half a fat quarter for each one.
3. A lavender eye bag - I discovered these at yoga and wanted to make some myself. Here's a picture of me down in my sewing basement using it. This uses about a quarter/third of a fat quarter with a muslin bag inside filled with lavender.
Throughout my sewing, I used the Stix2 Fabric Glue Pen. It's a washable pen that keeps your fabric together while you sew. It was really easy to use, not really sticky and I liked that it was pink so that I could see where I had put it. I used it on most of my initial sewing and was impressed at how well it kept the fabric flat, even when sewing the terry towelling for my wipes. That's a big win for me as pins and sometimes clips can even ruck the fabric slightly. I had absolutely no problems sewing with it - no residual stickiness or issues of any kind.
It comes with a refill which is good as I did use quite a lot of it. I found it a useful tool to have in my arsenal. Not something I would use entirely instead of pins and clips, but something to have for smaller projects where clips can overwhelm the project. I will be doing some more research - particularly with zips as they can be a big nightmare, and also stretch projects. I can definitely see it as being very useful for applique as it keeps fabric flat for sewing.
It's a definite thumbs up from me for both of these items. The fabric for the quality and quirky patterns. The glue stick for a useful addition to my sewing notions.
I hope you found this useful and if you have any more questions, please leave me a note in the comments or send me an email. I will be back tomorrow with more, this time with paper crafting! Thanks for reading and Happy Crafting, Everyone :)
