Advent tree project

Hello there

Here's a new type of project for me. A week or so ago I showed you the pack I had bought on a little shopping spree I had in Crabapplecrafts in Frodsham. This is the result of my labours.

It's been quite a learning curve in many respects and it's taken me a, what feels like, long time but that's only because I've only had the opportunity to dedicate short bursts of time to do it. I would love to be able to sell them but since the base unit cost £20 basically and then the time it's taken to make it, I'd have to sell it for about £35 minimum, which I'm not sure would be popular. It wouldn't take me so long next time, as I can learn from the mistakes I made and develop speedier methods of construction. I might put it on my Folksy shop and see if anything happens.

I didn't have the right acrylic paint colours I wanted. I dealt with this issue by over painting the internal shelves in brisk white strokes to try to 'vintagafy' it - crazy word but I like it!
I used a make-up brush which came in a Christmas cracker one year. I don't wear make-up, so I'm glad I decided to actually keep the set and have put it to use.

I used a gorgeous silk art card for the shadow of the numbers, which was a mistake as plain black would've been fine as you can barely see it.

I think I must've closed the sections in together too tightly as I had trouble placing the 'roof' hexagonal piece on whilst letting the drawers close properly. I combatted that issue by glueing 3D foam tape in the exact centre of the top, so as to raise it high enough for the drawers to fit in. The gorgeous bobbly cord I had bought for the project, worked brilliantly to cover the slight gap left between the cone roof and the top tiny drawers.

I've made a video again for you to see a few of the stages of construction. I've found much better/appropriate music for this video, so hopefully you'll enjoy watching it more. Go to here if you want to make Christmas videos and add free from copyright music to go along with it.

 

 

I've been looking at a whole pile of Tando product related projects, so you'll be seeing loads more in the future. Watch this space!

 

Take care out there.



Vellum

Hello there

Can you believe that I had never worked with vellum until this week. Am I completely nuts?!! People who know me, needn't answer that, thank you all the same! :-)

Now to trace this back is a little convoluted but bare with me. Sally is a friend I only met once at a Summer Craft show at Doncaster; gosh, it must be two years ago now?! On her Facebook page just over two weeks ago, she mentioned about liking a Sue Wilson demo with vellum, she'd seen on Create and Craft. Christine Emberson commented on that link by putting her blog link about using the Rose Creations die with vellum.  After reading that, I was further inspired about an offer available on C&C and ordered some bright and some pastel vellum. In that same order, I got some coloured Cosmic Shimmer pearlescent glue; black, gold and white.

I was so excited when the bundle was delivered, I promptly posted a photo on Facebook and got cutting. One reason why I hadn't bought vellum before was because I wasn't convinced I would be able to cut it with my Cricut. I admit it; I was wrong. It cuts really well as long as your mat isn't a mess, as one of mine invariably is since I cut fabric on one.

I even had a go at inking the vellum
to see if it would stick, with
not brilliant results

The card design which inspired me was in the March 2012 Cricut magazine; it's by Shantaie Fowler. Her card uses Elegant Edges and Simply Charmed cartridges, of which I have neither.

The next stage is to do a rough pen/pencil drawing of what I'm aiming for.




Next is card selecting. I went for a white coredinations card as the base, which I wish I hadn't really as I don't find it very strong for card bases. I might have to deal with that issue before giving it to the person it's intended for.

I used Cricut Craftroom and Plantin Schoolbook cartridge to weld two scalloped squares together to create the base shape. I then made a single scalloped square ensuring it was smaller than one of the card base squares. I used a hole punch to get the cut out circles and inked them up with a Spectrum Noir pen.

The smaller scalloped square was glued in place using Pinflair glue, so that it's raised above the base.

I cut the flowers at various sizes from Flower Shoppe; page 14 in the manual - heart. The leaves are Fun5. The button in the smaller flower is from SU- love the colours. The dots around the flowers are the gold cosmic shimmer glue - love them too.

I made the tag from a section of American Crafts Dear Lizzy neapolitan - Cheerful notes.
*An aside - why do they give each sheet such a long name?
Ribbons are from my stash.

I'm rather pleased with it!

 



The little box for it isn't bad either :-)

Aren't we lucky these days, with the technology available for us to get so much crafty inspiration from so many people?

Take care out there.

The journey is often most of the fun

Hello there

Today's card is yet another example of me using some recent papers from the Craftseller magazine. The papers are still sat on my desk, so the plan is to use them all up. I've no idea how long this'll take though, as I'm not the quickest at the best of times. I may well have hit upon a design I'm happy to duplicate, probably with little tweeks on each one to make them feel different.

Firstly I selected which papers I would use together. I placed them on the card blank I made to fit into the envelope I wanted. The card I saw which struck me to get me properly started was on particraft's blog. My card ended up being quite different to that indeed but it sparked my interest and gave me a focus on what elements I needed.

I then went into Word and typed out the sentiment in a colour I thought would match some of the circular images in the bottom patterned paper.

Next I went onto Cricut Craftroom as I knew that Ornamental Iron2 cartridge would have a frame type that I wanted. Sure enough it did. I made sure the frame was the right size to fit around the sentiment; which is one of the joys of CCR. I just happened to have a scrap of card, almost exactly the right size for this cut. I just LOVE it when that happens!

I thought that the sentiment wasn't quite right. So I searched for which leaf cuts I had on my Cricut and used some of the decorative paper (glued onto thicker paper, as the paper itself doesn't cut well at all without the extra support of more paper underneath it) to cut them out.

What you see in this photo is the decorative leaf pattern I inked along the inside bottom of the card. I used dusty concord distress ink on my craft mat, with a few sprinkles of water thrown in. I dabbed a small section of my old bath sponge and used the negative of the leaf die cut as a stencil. I also LOVE doing this!


 

Even more use of leftover die cuts was made on the envelope. I coloured the frame leftovers with dusty concord.

 

 

The final version is totally different to my original inspiration but that's how it is for me usually. I take it along the path which is open to me; which papers I have, which equipment I have, how much time I have. It's a creative process after all.

Take care out there

I'm back at it!

Hello there

Yes, yee hah! I'm back to doing some crafting. I've been in Florida on holiday for two weeks and I've also been to Aviemore in Scotland for a week in August, so it's not been a great crafting time. I did actually make an ipad case in the week between Aviemore and Florida but I can't find the photos anywhere. I suspect that's because they got deleted from the sim card, trying to make room for more holiday pics. I definitely want to make at least one more, so hopefully I'll share the photos before they disappear off the face of the planet.
The only crafting I managed in Florida was a trip to Joanne's in Altamonte. I was in there two hours whilst the family had to look around there too. I had no idea I'd been that long until I left. They had so much fabric in there and so neatly displayed and easy to get it; I loved it.

Alright, enough of embarrasing photos, back to the matter in hand, which is actually meant to be a card I've made for the birthday of a friend of my daughter's. I wanted to use the Indian Summer papers from the latest Craftseller magazine. My daughter looked through the samples and chose one but then I remembered about a card I'd seen over at My Craft Spot blog which uses negative images. So I just went ahead and did the card I wanted to do. I'll probably still have to make the one she chose but I'm hoping she'll prefer the design of the one I've made - fingers crossed!

I started off by cutting out all the papers and embellishments and added bits of Glossy Accents and glitter where I thought would be nice.

I used a 15cm x15cm card blank and then cut the patterned paper a few millimetres smaller than that and then cut the top piece from Neenah super smooth card at about 14cm or smaller; sorry, I'm not much use with measuring as I usually just hand cut the same size pieces down to the size I physically can see I need.

Firstly I stamped 'Happy' up the bottom left hand corner and then I cut 'birthday' out vertically with Plantin School Book using the roly poly button. In my trial cut, I used 1.5cm but I thought it was a bit too tight to the edges, so I changed the setting to m.m's and made the letters 13m.m; real dial size too. Your sample cut will show you whereabouts you need to start cutting the word to make sure it fits on and also so that it's high enough to allow room for the words 'to you' underneath.

 I used Pinflair glue to place that mat on top of the patterned paper, ensuring it was raised slightly; this gives the best result for seeing the paper through the negative letters.

Once that had dried, I cut the balloons from Create a Critter using standard shift. I cut the tails off two of them and replaced them with cherry red Baker's Twine, tied together at the end.

A bit of a tip for new Cricut expression users; to find an image on your cartridges, use the image search facility on Cricut Craft room. It's brilliant as it gives the results in either image order or cartridge order, so you can not only pick the best ones you have but also be able to go straight to that cartridge to get it cut. I'd also suggest you do keep the software of your machine up to date. I had to update mine whilst doing this card; it feels like a real pain at the time but it's important to keep it usable for you.

Since I had cut out the balloon shapes on a practise piece of card, I was left with the stencil of those shapes, so I put it to good use by putting the balloon shapes on the envelope and inside the card. It finishes the whole package off nicely in my opinion.

Let's hope my daughter agrees.

Take care out there.

P.S For those of you paying attention, I'll try to remember to show you how I actually use the embellishments from the magazine in another post, as I didn't actually use any on this card :-)

Congratulations on passing exams

Hello there

Here's a card I made recently for a very clever wise old bird (she's so going to kill me if she reads that 'old' bit :-)) who has recently found out that she's qualified for ACCA, which is an accountant's certifcate. She has worked full time the whole time she's been studying, so she should be extra proud of herself.

I had the basic idea of using the owl from Create a Critter and then the rest just flowed from there. The bunting is from the Carousel cartridge (I hand wrote congratulations on there) and the grass is from Plantin schoolbook cartridge. I like the way the branches go over the edge of the card; thankfully I knew the envelope I was using was bigger than the card blank. The trees are on an icon feature for the 'booklet' on page 38. I drew the eyelashes on the owl myself. The branch the owl is sitting on is from page 25 of Create a Critter; using the accessory function. I used Cricut Craft room to get it all the correct size.

I decorated the inside with a frame from Wild Card cartridge. I cut it out twice so that I could get a different coloured internal section. I used MS Word to write the sentiment in the middle using font Sakkal Majalla.

I used 'real dial size' option on the letters 'ane',
 as they were too small otherwise in comparison
 to the J

I machine stitched around the edges of the front.
This is a cartridge heavy card but I really enjoyed making it and Jane, the world's your oyster now!

Take care out there

Fun and games

Hello there

Here's a birthday card all of my own. I didn't look through books and magazines for inspiration. I haven't seen a card demo which has inspired me. I just used my own inspiration from this:

Yes, that's right; a scrap of paper left over from some tags I've cut out in the past. From this I thought that I could line up three on the left, then go down to two tags and then one large tag with the sentiment on. So off I went to play and practise and loved it.

The photo on the left shows what I ended up when messing around with my Big and Juicy, mountain meadow pad = not good but that pad was tipped every which way during the house moves I had to make in one year, so not sure it's much good for anything now but I'm not throwing it out.

having fun trialling ideas out

I finally decided on Wild Honey distress pad and it all rolled from there. I applied it by stamping onto my craft mat a couple of times, sprinkling a bit of water on and then rubbed my blending tool into it and then rubbed that onto the card covered by my improvised stencil. Easy! I also coloured the large tag that way.

It doesn't look crash hot on it's own

I then decided to make the second layer out of die-cut tags (size 6.5cm from Plantin Schoolbook) and coloured them with brown sugar dabber by Jenni Bowlin and gold Adirondack dabber. I've actually made two of these cards; one lot of tags had a gold base with brown splodges and the other vice versa.
I used Wild Card cartridge to cut the happy birthday sentiment from (page 61 of booklet). Using the Craftroom made it so easy to match up with the large tag and get the size exactly right. You're able to cut layer by layer, so as long as you put the selected icon onto the 'mat' as a separate layer in the first place, it makes cutting just one part of the overall image, extremely easy.

I dabbed around the large tag with the gold dabber.
Outlining the inked tags helps give better definition to them.
The backing paper is from a K&Co paper pad I use alot as it's HUGE!

Let's get this card assembled

 With a bit of help from Baker's Twine:

I had the idea to emboss/deboss a tag image onto the envelope to put the address into; it's from an embossing board which came with my Crafter's Companion Ultimate Pro. Love it!

Not easy to see on white card but click on the image
to get a better view if you're daft like me
 and get kicks from such things :-)



Take care out there

The big four 0

Hello there

 I have a friend who probably wants to remain nameless, as her day of shame is upon us. She turns 40!!! I'm jealous though, as that was quite a few years ago for me.
I had to use the 6x6in Pink Paislee Spring Jubilee pad of course and from there the design came easily after seeing an album on their blog. That was for a wedding but I soon realised how to make it for Viki....oops! :-)

I do have to admit though that the butterfly (cut from Walk in my Garden cartridge) wasn't meant to face down like that. I cut it straight from the machine (not from CricutCraftroom) and did centre point but I had wanted it with the wings left and right; not top and bottom. I had also wanted it larger but I had forgotten what size I did my practise runs on, so it's my own fault for not writing things down. Not the end of the world though as I just had to re-arrange the layout from the numbers being inside the butterfly to them being placed underneath the butterfly.

I cut the numbers on the Cricut from grungeboard and white card too  (Plantin school book font) and glued the white numbers ontop of the grungeboard. See my previous post on how to do that. I then added glitter to make them 'pop'.




I definitely wanted to make more of an issue of the bunting, so I cut little triangles out from another sheet from the pad and used cherry red Baker's Twine to hang it across the top. I used a white Gellyroll pen to put faux stitching.

Before I mounted the main page onto the card blank with foam pads, I put some other paper from the pad under the butterfly space. I used the white pen for stitching marks inside the butterfly space, after mounting. You may notice that I also used the pen to write 'this person's name' onto the existing bunting on the paper.

I used my trimmer to create a scalloped edge on the card blank and then inked it with Stampin' Up's Regal Rose.

Inside the card I created more bunting so that I could put the 'Happy Birthday' message.

For the envelope I used the inner of the butterfly die-cut and glittered that too.

I hope that the card is enjoyed. I'm off out with her and some friends for dinner, so she'll soon tell me if she doesn't like it :-)

Here's another little 'movie' I've made of a few of the steps in making this. I really wish I could add music to this but I don't  have the right to play music I own in a public place which is sad:

Take care out there

A very special lady

Hello there
Quite a few people I know have birthdays in May. My mum is one of them. This year is particularly important for her though as she has a milestone birthday. She'd love for me to be able to say that she's turning 21 but I'm afraid I can't. My mum is turning 70. My two sisters and I have planned a great day for her on May 25th but I can't tell you about that until after the day of course, as it's all still a big secret from my mum. It's also my step-dad George's 80th this year, so it's a joint birthday for them really.

Today I've just been sorting out wrapping the little fun present I've got her for an 'unwrap' on the day; May 10th. It's some Cherry B bottles - I can't possibly tell you why :-)  Maggie also got her a present, so we wrapped that together.



I made some 'tags' for the gift bags using Plantin School book cartridge for the numerals and Walk in my Garden cartridge for the flowers; using the blackout function of daisy2. I think they really 'make' the bags.






























The card I made during a class I went to with Melanie Heaton at Inspirations store in Preston. Please visit Mel's blog to see the full set of instructions on how we made it. It's a gorgeous card and I had fun making it with some lovely ladies in the class and I'm finally getting to give it to mum as I always had wanted to do.

I had to make a box as an envelope as this is very dimensional. I also embossed a flower design onto the lid of the box using a design on the Ultimate Pro. I then embossed a smaller size of the same flower in a coordinating card stock piece and cut it out. I then adhered that inside the embossed flower and it will get used as a place to write my mum's name on the envelope/box.

I've also made another box to put the important documents in for the other special day on May 25th. I used the 'magic ruler' method to make the custom sized box with my Ultimate Pro. I used the 1inch size. I then cut two triangle shaped pieces from some K&Co paper to decorate the lid.                                     



I'm collecting her birthday cake tomorrow night from my friend Viki who has made it - you really should check out her cakes as they're amazing - Viki's Cakes and bakes

Take care out there

Seam binding is an amazing thing

Hello there

This post is all about a baby shower card. I've never been to one before so I had to do a bit of research about them although clearly I knew the basics. The baby won't have been born by the time this card is given, so I can't use any specific colours. Insider information told me that the nursery is going to be a yellow theme with jungle animals and giraffe being the favourite. The card won't necessarily go in the nursery but I tried to create it along those lines. I got the idea from the handbook in with the Paisley Cricut cartridge. Unfortunately I quickly realised that the size of the giraffe was incorrect in the instructions, so changed that; it states make it at 4" but infact it's 3". It's a tiny bit confusing at first when you cut out a load of little shapes in different colours but I just cut what I thought necessary (as I'd lost confidence in the instructions by this time) and went from there. It soon came together though once I'd decided on what colours and papers to use for the whole card.
I printed out the greeting and then cut the circle around it.

I needed green ribbon for the background and the only one I had was a glittery type one, which would not do at all. The weather is pig miserable here (written in the first week of January 2012) and I have to go out enough with the dogs and the nearest decent shop is in Frodsham which is about 30 minutes away and Hobbycraft is closer but there's a new road layout there and the resultant traffic on a Saturday wouldn't have been fun. You get my drift. So I was definitely not in the mood to go out and get some and I'm impatient; I couldn't wait until I ordered some. Then... brainwave! Proof it's not completely dead - seam binding. which I got a while ago and haven't used yet. I quickly opened MyCraftStudio and selected  a green band of colour and then put the glue runner down the printer paper and attached seam binding to it and printed. I even put the band of colour on the right side of the paper to where I'd attached the binding! Result! You can barely see the ribbon but I was so chuffed that I'd thought of it and it worked - everyone in the house was required to be as equally happy with this event but they're used to that. I have some blue sheer ribbon which I can use to attach the sentiment blossom.

Once I had glued all bits together and down, I didn't think it looked complete - it needed grass. I searched online for which cartridge had grass but couldn't find anything, then actually manually looked on the cartridges and would you believe it?! My old faithful; Plantin Schoolbook has a grass image on it, so problem solved.
I'm off to do the envelope now.

Take care out there
p.s the next day I looked at it again and had another proof of brain action, when I was considering how to display the petal sentiment. Ah ha! A branch would hold the sentiment and add good detail to the card as giraffes obviously eat leaves off trees. I chose the branch from Create a Critter cartridge on page 25. There is also one on my Winter Woodland cartridge but shock, horror, that's better suited to winter scenes as the leaves look like holly or the other one on there looks like a mistletoe branch.

Date of writing: January 9th 2012

Mickey Mouse

Hi
Just a quick note as the boys are in bed but I really don't think that they want to be but tough; they have to wait a while which is something they're definitely not used to when everyone is home over the weekend.
Anyway, I've managed to make this Mickey Mouse card for my nephew. The start of it was some Disney stickers I was given in a huge box full of crafty goodies  when I left work. I hadn't known what to do with them really but since my nephew has only just got back from Florida and the Disney park; I thought it was an excellent opportunity to put at least one sticker to use. They're actually meant to be put on windows but I've just added some glue to the backs and it's fine. It doesn't look brilliant but I'm proud of the fact that I designed it all and did it relatively quickly today. I cut it an oval shape to match the decorative shapes of the waves that Mickey is surfing on; I used my Gypsy to help me weld two ovals together from the Plantin schoolbook cartridge (originally they were circles but I just stretched them to size). I then copied one of the ovals and shrunk it a bit and put it inside the left hand side oval in order to create the aperture. I covered the aperture with acetate and then decorated it with the Happy Birthday I created on MCS software and another small sticker. The A5 envelope I made from My Craft Studio 'Fab Glam Fifties', which didn't need any tweeking at all which was great as it was so quick and easy. I cut the stars for the envelope on my Cricut out of the same card as the card base.

Now for the joy of thinking what on earth to get him as a present but at least I had made a mistake with the date for his birthday as it's on June 18th, not May as I had thought earlier on, so I have more time to get something. I've now changed my calendar but every year for some reason I doubt whether it's May or June.
It's been a miserable rainy grey old weekend but the crafting I've done has helped me feel better although I'm always hankering after doing a lot lot more. No pleasing me.

Take care out there.

Pat's card

It's Pat's birthday (Chris's sister) on Tuesday but I forgot to take a photo of the card I sent  her. The photo is of the card I sent her last year. It was made with an image I retrieved on the computer and the border is from a My Craft Studio cd rom from memory. She loves cats, so this year's card was paw shaped with the help of my Cricut and Gypsy (using one large circle with four ovals 'welded' onto the main circle as the toes); I was really pleased with it but without a photo it's very hard to describe. I used a picture of a cat taken from a Jayne Netley Mayhew cd rom from Joanna Sheen and I put glossy accents on it and I used a tiny version of the face on each four of the oval shaped 'toe' sections. Inside I used decorative tags with the letters on to create Happy Birthday. Like I said, too difficult to explain but this just helps remind me about it but not much help for anyone else.