Spirograph inspired

One of my Dad's favourite activities as a young boy was playing with his spirograph, which is what inspired me to try this technique of wrapping Island Indigo bakers twine around a large scalloped circle.

 This was layered on a Pool Party base and a Top Note cut out on the Big Shot in Soft Suede.

 Here is a close up of the central image.

The Thank you sentiment was embossed in Silver.

Not long now til Christmas preparations go wild!!! So many great projects to share with you starting on Saturday 1st December!!!

Whip up a favour

Here are some little gift packaging I made up the other day. They would be perfect to contain a cello bag with sweets, biscuits or even buttons as a small gift when going out for drinks or to go with a birthday card.

This is the first one made with Pennant Parade and the co-ordinating punch.

 

The next is using Owl Occasions and cute little Vintage Trinkets.

 

 The last one uses Papaya Collage and a paper daisy.

I could not wait to use the little bird image. It's so sweet!

Sorry about the absence this week. Munchkin has been unwell while DH is away on business so it's been exhausting nights followed by dragging days... Still, I'm back on form now!!! Keep your eyes peeled as my 12 Days of Christmas series starts on Saturday 1st December with quick cards, gifts and decorations!!!

Emboss resist technique

It's Saturday again so here is my weekly video! This week I am showing you how to do a technique called Emboss Resist. This means embossing an image and then adding ink on top. A bit like those drawings we all did as children using white crayons and then washing over them with paint to reveal the picture we'd drawn underneath.

 

Here is a visual of the stamp set featured, Summer Silhouettes:

 And here is a picture of the finished card:

Have a great Saturday!!!

Knitting update

Yes I have been knitting like a lady-possessed. DH has started calling me the knitting goddess!! I am definately not a good knitter but I have been having fun trying.

 

Here is the first hat I knitted. No pattern was used, just judging it by eye. It looks cute on Munchkin but she is not at all impressed with wearing any hat, let alone one Momo has made!

 Here was my second hat. It was meant to be for me but the thinner wool than the previous hat it didn't "grow" as fast. I might have got completely a little impatient and so it ended up being another hat for a Munchkin sized person.

 Next is a pair of slippers I knitted. The best bit was making the pompoms. Munchkin was in awe as she has only seen those little craft ones before and was amazed that they could be made by hand.

Hope you enjoyed seeing my knitting progress. Check back tomorrow for a technique-based video!

Christmas boxes

A colleague at work runs a dance school and asked me to make little gifts for her students. As most of them are girls, I thought I would make quite feminine boxes using the Cracker die on the Big Shot. The colours of the boxes were inspired by the colours in the paper from the Autumn/Winter Catalogue called Snow Festival (pg10): Baja Breeze, Cherry Cobbler, Gumball Green, Primrose Petals and Soft Suede.

 Tags Til Christmas (pg11, main) is the stamp set used and was easily punched out with the scalloped square punch.

 The scalloped square was layered on a Large Oval punched out piece in a contrasting colour.

 The combinations are endless and by using a DSP pack you get lots of patterns that all co-ordinate together.

 It would be really sweet to have a basket of these filled with chocolates of Haribos by the front door to give guests as they leave.

Sorry about this last picture being blurry. It serves me right for taking the pictures with my daylight lamp instead of the natural daylight!!

Summer 's back?!

This card makes it feel like summer is coming back. It's inspired by one on Pinterest but I used Summer Silhouettes as the stamp set as I didn't feel there was enough stamping on the original design!

 

As you can see there are lots of nice floral images, which I can't wait to use. The background stamping was done with the border stamp in Crumb Cake to match the base card colour.

To make the patterned card to punch out the butterfly from, I used the arched blossom cloud to create a unique patterned card in Primrose Petals. This was layered on a large scalloped Tangerine Tango circle and a piece of Primrose Petals CS.

Birthday card trial

As DH's birthday approaches I've been trying out different cards. This was a quick card using Gumball Green as the feature colour. For some reason I'm not happy with it, but can't decide what's wrong with it. Any ideas?

Inspired

My recent visit to Convention has been quite inspiring. I really feel like I can achieve my goals, which reminded me of the set Just Believe. Such a beautiful set and I LOVE the sentiment from the set that I used in this card:

It's been teamed with French Foliage for the leaves and a piece of Cajun Craze CS that has been run through the Woodgrain embossing folder on the Big Shot. Simple, but a lovely card to send to someone who needs a little perking up.

Flowery gift wrapping

At the beginning of the month it was my Mum's birthday. As I was at Convention during the celebrations I wanted to make her gift extra special:

 

Here is a close-up of the finished flowers:

I ended up hot-glueing the flowers to make them more securely fastened.

 Here is a video of how the flowers were made!! I hope you like it...

Tea gift holder

Another Pinterest inspired project... I followed this tutorial to make the basic sizes work. It makes a cute little gift holder that can hold a gift card, teabags and/or beauty product samples.

It was great to get out Tea Shoppe again. It's such a sweet set and really works on this kind of gift.

Here's a view of the inside. On the left is patterned paper featuring Baja Breeze. On the left are the gift envelopes cut on the Big Shot with cute buttons.

This shows the envelopes in more detail. Aren't they cute?

This would be a great gift to make en masse as it is super quick to measure and score but also easy to personalise with different papers and themes.

All yellow

Hi there, dear readers! It's been a few days as I have not had time to get my posts all ready for you, but fear not because the next 3 days or so are covered!

 

Today's card, as the title suggests, is all about yellow. It's based on one I saw on Pinterest but I have changed it quite a bit, whilst keeping to the general layout and cupcake.

 

Here's a close up of the cupcake:

It's all glittery! Such a versatile layout; I'm sure it could be adapted to fit other themes.

Knitting!

When I was about 6 years old my Nanny taught me how to knit. It's been a loooong time since then but I decided I wanted to give knitting another try. The question was, what to knit? Being a Generation Y girl, I need instant gratification, so despite the requests for a cardigan from Munchkin, I gave a cup cosy a go:

Nice chunky wool and to finish? Stampin' Up! buttons of course! Sewn on with linen thread, naturally.

 Here's a close-up, although I know it's pretty blurry!! The top buttons are in the Autumn/Winter Seasonal catalogue, called Brushed Bronze.

This was my first attempt and has light wood buttons, which are from the main catalogue.

Cheat's fabric pennants

It's always good to be versatile, and I realise that not everyone can/wants to sew. Here is an easy way to make fabric pennants!

This pennant pack is just £1 at the Range. A bargain and a really great starting point.

The next cheat is this pack of self-adhesive 12x12" sticky sheets. Imagine a full sheet of Snail glue and you're quite close to imaging what these are like. Plus they stick permanently so can be used for all sorts of craft projects.

 So firstly, stick the pennants to the sticky sheets. Then peel off and stick to the fabric. For this project I chose the Orchard Harvest fabrics in the Autumn/Winter 2012 catalogue.

 The brilliant thing is that the fabric can be smoothed out with your hands or a bone folder so it doesn't matter how creased it is!

Next, the scraps of leftover fabric were stick directly to the self adhesive sheets. This made a sticker type of thing which was fed through the Big Shot with the Pennant die. This made the perfect sized triangle to decorate the centres.

To finish, the triangles were fed onto a narrow (retired) ribbon in Early Espresso. In between each piece of the bunting a small piece of Cherry Cobbler wavy tuile was tied to add further texture.

I hope this gives you some inspiration if you like bunting/pennants but are scared of fabric/sewing.

Fly away with me

Happy weekend! Here is a card I whipped up really quickly using my new favourite stamp set Affection Collection and the delicious International Bazaar DSP.

 

The card is heavily influenced by one I saw on the inspiration board at Convention. Here is the original design I CASE'd:

Hope you have a great Sunday!!!!

Scrapbook Club November 2012

Here is a short (incomplete and unedited!) video of how the page was created:

Below is the finished page:

 Here is a close-up of the bottom right corner. Am loving those buttons!!!

 To tie in with the patterned papers, a scrap is in the corner with some added bling.

 

So there it is. Just shows how versatile the Affection Collection stamp set really is.

 

Stamps: Affection Collection

Papers: International Bazaar

 

Check back tomorrow for another design with this fabulous set.

Sweet press cookie stamps

You may have read a previous post about sweet pressed cookie stamps but I've added to my collection! These ones are perfect to make as gifts for customers and I got them (guess where?!) at Convention:

There are other designs available on pg161 f the main catalogue. Special Events:

Holidays:

 Occasions:

 Here is a photo of Munchkin in action pressing cookies.

As soon as they came out of the oven Munchkin "helped" me get them off the tray and tried to eat them.

Having researched packaging the cookies, I saw this cute Stampin' Up! packaging idea based on kraft boxes. Sweeeeet!