Angel of the Sea - 14th March

Hello!


I hope you liked my Garden Angel yesterday, today's hangs on the bathroom door and she's a little bit of fun! This angel was made from a doll pattern and the material for the wings was dyed with tea. I sewed the hair on with brown embroidery thread and drew on her face with a very fine art pen. The shirt and pantaloons were all made from some fat square fabric in my fabric box. The life buoy is made from the same material as the doll, but painted and stiffened with acrylic paint, as were the stripey legs and black shoes. A cute and fun way to display that this is the bathroom, I think!


Tomorrow I have one last sewn project before I return to cards...and this will be the one that hangs on my craft room door!


Carole X

Garden Angel - 13th March

Good Morning!

No card today - I am still busy trying to keep up with commissions, none of which I can post as yet! Today I am sharing with you a sewing project I made last year and which now hangs on our lounge door...

A friend who lives in Australia first got me into making these decorative angel dolls, although I had always seen them pretty widely in the USA. Wanda (my friend) gave me a beautiful one that she had made and I don't profess to be at her standard, but I was pretty pleased with this one when I had finished her.

I got the pattern from an American website and because I have bought from a few sites, I will need to check and amend this blog when I have found which one. The clothes are all are from scraps in my material box and I actually tea-dyed the dress the old fashioned way - with tea! I embroidered the floral detail on the front and loved every stitch. The doll and seams were all sewn with my sewing machine, but everything else is hand stitched. I bought the basket, hat and wings from www.calicocrafts.co.uk some time ago.


The tag on her basket reads: 'Where Angels fly, a garden grows'

Hope you like her...I will share another tomorrow!

Thanks for stopping by,

Carole X

Troublemaker Tutorial - 12th March\

Hello friends on another Monday morning....but wasn't it a wonderful Spring weekend? My husband couldn't understand why I chose to spend most of it indoors crafting, but I do have a deadline for quite a few cards by the end of this week! I spend most of today on one special card...the Wonderland theme, but I can't share it here for a week or so..that's if I figure out how to photograph it!


The card I am sharing today is made using  Kenny K's 'Troublemaker' stamp from Whimsy Stamps- hope you like it! At the end, I have also added a little tutorial (the first on my blog) about matting stamps, because a few friends have asked me about it lately.

My base layer for this 8x8 card is purple paper from stash, I matted and layered this with coredinations paper, embossed with an M-Bossability and sanded to bring out a turquoise core.


I stamped the image on  Neneh card and as I wanted something for her to be leaning against, I matted her and stamped a wall from Creative Expressions Tatty Button 'worker stamps' behind her. I coloured her with Promarkers, Flexmarkers and shaded the background with Faded Denim distress ink.


The flowers were all cut from the Spellbinders Floral Creations set and the greeting was also die cut using the Peony die. I also stamped greeting tickets using Sam Poole's  Celebration Tickets stamps with Perfect Medium and embossed these in black and white. I finished off with some lace and purple satin ribbon.


Quick Tutorial


I'm adding this mostly because a couple of friends, have asked me to and because I thought it would be fun from time to time...so here you are, I know you never post messages but I also know you visit! Because you tell me!


1. First of all stamp the image that you want to be in the foreground of your design twice - once on the card you are using for the design and once on paper, preferably something like a Post it note, which is a  bit tacky on the reverse.

2. Cut out the post it note image as above and place it directly on top of the original image.
3. Take you background stamp (in this case the wall), place where you want it and stamp over the original masked image. The mask will prevent the background being stamped across the main image, which will now look like it's in the foreground.

This is a really easy effect to create once you have practiced it a few times, but if you still aren't confident, you can always stamp the background and cut out your foreground and matt and layer her in front...two ways with different effects!

Thanks for stopping by!

Carole X

Christening card - 11th March

Morning!


I have decided to post a card rather than another project today after all, one I made for a commission recently and hadn't got around to sharing.

This is an 8x8 card, my size of choice for a large card, which I covered with some pink paper I had in my pinks collection! I cut a rectangle of plain pink card, which co-ordinated well with the check and matted and layered this with white card, with edges softened with spun sugar distress ink and finally white card embossed using an M-Bossability. I added a little strip of lace to the lower edge before adding it to the card.


The imaged is a Lilli of the Valley (LOTV) stamp, coloured with Promarkers and shaded with a mix of Spun Sugar and Milled Lavender distress inks after die cutting using a Spellbinders Romantic Rectangles die, which is in turned layered over the the plain pink card, cut with a larger die from the same set. I time a gingham bow around the layer before adding to the card. Finally I added some little roses, buttons and pearls from stock and printed the greeting before die-cutting with Spellbinders Labels Four Small.


Today I will be crafting most of the day as I still have a lot of deadlines to make for commissioned Mothering Sunday cards, plus I am working on a special Alice in Wonderland (a la Tim Burton!) themed birthday card, which I will share with you in a few weeks time!


Have a super Sunday and thanks for visiting my blog.. would love you to follow and leave comments!


Carole X

Little Gift Bag - 10th March

Morning!


The weekend is here and whilst the sun isn't shining, Spring definitely seems to be in the air! No card today, I am a little behind with my card making, simply because I have been working hard on commissions and I don't upload any of those creations until I have handed them over to the customer.


So today I am going to share a gift bag I made last year for our friends' daughter's 21st birthday. I did upload the photo when I first started this blog, but back then I wasn't really saying very much about my creations, so please forgive me from time to time for sharing some projects more than once, if I feel the need!


I remember at the time of making, being very pleased with this bag; I used to try out so many different crafts from sewing projects to jewellery and knitting (I'm still only half-way through a chunky jumper I started last summer; good job it was a mild winter!), but papercrafts, in particular cards always win the day and leave little time for any other craft. It was my new year pledge to complete some non paper craft projects this year...I'll be posting here if I succeed!


Meanwhile, back to paper crafts and the gift bag...

To make the bag I used a template and some gorgeous A3 silk card (about 300gsm I think), that I bought from Creata about 2 years ago and had never used. It's quite a simple bag to make and if I get a chance (!) some time I will make another and photograph each step.


Everything used to make this bag was from my stash cupboard or box, so please bear with me for being vague...I didn't use one Spellbinder die for this project and there is a good reason: I made it last April and I got my Grand Calibur for my birthday last March, so I had hardly any dies and hadn't really picked up on the Spellbinder 'addiction' as yet! What I did use for almost everything else was my little Cricut. The labels  were cut free hand, just by tracing around one I already had, but the '21' was cut with the Cricut and then I sprayed the darker card and the numbers with Stick and Spray.


I  also cut the flower using the Cricut, a flower shape from the George and Basic Shapes cartridge (also used for the 21), cut on a lightweight cream paper in several sizes and held together with a sparkly brad and scrunched up to give it a kind of peony look. The leaf/flourish was cut using The Storybook Cartridge and the Scalloped Circle was just a large punch!


Two holes were punched each side at the top of the box and strengthened with copper coloured brads. However on the front of the bag, I also added some quite ornate Morrocan style beads from my bead jar and a key that was in my box of 'little metal things'. I always make sure I have some keys  there, as they come in handy for quite a few types of card and project.


I finished it off with co-ordinating ribbons. The recipient loved it and I like to think she kept it, at least for a while, but of course I'm not going to ask!


Have a good Saturday...tomorrow may be a card or one of my sewn items....


All the best and thanks for stopping by and to those of you who follow me and leave comments, a big thank you! I would also like to say thank you to Oskana for the absolutely gorgeous ATC I won on her blog, which arrived yesterday and is now on display in my craft room X


Carole X

Ahoy there Matey! 9th March

Good Morning to ya!


Today's card was made from scraps left over from a large pirate themed birthday card that had been commissioned for a little boy. The only part of the card that was not a 'left over' is the stamp. I had used the same stamp on the earlier card and wanted to incorporate it here. It's one of the Lilli of the Valley (LOTV) stamp collection. I do love their cute little images,which actually lend themselves to going overboard with the embellishments because they still pop out, never seem 'swamped'!

The stamped image was coloured with Promarkers and then I tore all around the card and inked the edges with denim distress ink. The skull and cross bones paper was downloaded from Crafts-u-Print. I couldn't believe that amongst all my CD's there wasn't anything suitable for a little boy's pirate card, the closest I came was a super design for a teenage girl on Debbi Moore's Funky Diva CD. I had used that quite a lot in the past and one day soon, I will put one up here, but the papers didn't suit a little boy card.

However on Crafts-u-Print I was quite spoilt for choice and decided on the Little Monkey Pirate Aventure Pack as it has a super selection of papers  that I will use again and again...all important when considering buying stash. The brown card with the wording was not from this pack, I got this from a pad of boy themed card I had in my stash.

I cut a rectangle from blue card (also from the boys paper pad) slightly larger than the stamped piece and then faux stitched with white jelly roll pen around the edge. I  then cut a slightly larger piece in black to matt and layer on the front of the card. The silver mirror card edge was cut using a Martha Stewart Punch.

A black velvet feel ribbon was used to divide the two papers and a skull and crossbones flag was cut from the background paper. I cut the skull and crossbones and the flourish with my Cricut (remember all these bits were extras from the bigger card) and the buttons, bakers twine and knotted rope were all from stash.

The big circle was cut using a punch and I know what you're thinking....no Spellbinders die??? Wrong!

I cut the inner black scalloped shape and the white scalloped shape with the typed greeting using my Peony die!

This was just a fun, wind down card that I just enjoyed putting together at the end of a day working on commissions...often I find it so satisfying to just make one I can add to my craft fair box or box for cards to send for a charity I try to support (though never get enough sent off to)....

Have a good Friday and thanks for dropping by!


Carole X

little brown bear - 8th March

Hello!


A quick card for today! Just lately I have been receiving a high number of commissions, which is great, but with having to work at a day job in-between (!),  has left me little time to play. Yesterday, for example I spent the entire day creating three commissioned cards. The hardest part is staring at the order and trying to create a design in my head, sketching it and getting started. Once I get past that stage, it's usually all systems go. If I'm asked for something really specific I have to confess, I often cringe, whereas a general idea is a great starting point! One of the cards I made yesterday was a child's pirate theme..that was a lot of fun to make and I had just the stamp I needed. That card will be revealed at a much later date, but look here tomorrow for a smaller card I made with left over pieces of paper and card at the end of the day!


Something I do if I can after a day of making cards for commissions is to 'wind down' by making a quick card for my craft fair box or the  box my husband keeps at work. I don't always get the chance, but there have been a few nights of football on TV this week, so I didn't feel guilty about insisting he watched it on the big TV whilst I disappeared to the craft room! 
This card I made a couple of nights ago from left overs...
The last time I made a card for my blog featuring this adorable little bear (Aloysius) from Indigo Blu, I stamped him on silk art card and coloured him with tea-dye distress ink a few times ahead of making more cards.


This time I die-cut him inside a Spellbinders Romantic Rectangles die and distressed the edges with tea-dye. This is part of the set of dies I bought recently from Create and Craft as part of my birthday present (It's not my birthday until the 19th, but it seemed a shame to wait!). This die set is proving very useful as the largest one is really quite large and as of yet, I don't have many Grand dies. It also has a very pretty edge with a slightly 'vintage' feel.


I had been making a card where I had embossed with M-Bossability Mistique and had enough left over to cover a 6x6 card. I distressed this all over with Antique Photo ink and mounted the image in the centre.


To finish off I added a chocolate coloured piece of vintage ribbon, tied  a bow and added a button threaded with bakers twine.


Thanks for stopping by,
Carole X