Herman

Hello there

Last week my friend sent me a text asking if I wanted to take part in a sour dough cake sharing exercise. My first thought was "is this a joke?" as she often sends me funny jokes by text. I was rather busy so I thought it best not to answer straight away, so as to give myself a chance to figure out whether she was being serious or not. Of course, I forgot and then Mel asked me again and I saw her that evening and she gave me Herman. That's right, the mixture is even given a name. When I had first seen the words sour dough, I had imagined a bread mixture as I remember seeing a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall programme where his dough chef was teaching a local lady how to make it for the kids in her nursery school where she worked. This isn't bread though, it's made into a cake. Mel gave me a taste of hers and it was lovely; a bit like fruit loaf.It takes 10 days to prepare but only a tiny bit of effort as the mixture itself does most of the work by filling itself with air basically.

That's Herman after his first day with me - pretty good going.
These are the instructions you get along with your bowl of goop.

'Hello my name is Herman. I am a sourdough cake. I'm supposed to sit on your worktop for 10 days without a lid on. You cannot put me in the fridge or I will die. If I stop bubbling I am dead.
Day 1 - After receiving Herman put him in a mixing bowl and cover with a loose tea towel.
Day 2- Stir well
Day 3- Stir well
Day 4- I am hungry. Add 5oz plain flour, 8oz sugar and a cup of milk and stir well.
Day 5- Stir well
Day 6- Stir well
Day 7- Stir well
Day 8- Stir well
Day 9- I'm hungry again. Add the same as you did on day 4, stir well and then divide into 4 portions and give 3 away to friends. You keep the 4th portion. Copy these instructions for them.
Day 10- I'm now very hungry. Stir well and add the following:
8oz sugar
1/2 tsp salt
10oz plain flour
2/3rd's of a cup of cooking oil
2 eggs
2tsp vanilla essence
2 cooking apples cut into chunks
1 cup raisins
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder

Mix it all up and put into a large greased baking tin. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup of brown sugar and a 1/4 cup of melted butter.
Bake for 45 minutes at 180c.
When cold, cut into pieces. The cake freezes well and is good served with ice cream or cream ..... I prefer it just with some spread on it, helped down with a cup of tea.'

I'm only up to day 7 at the minute with mine, so I'll let you know what my one actually tastes like and if I managed to get three friends to take up the challenge.




Take care out there

I've got an award!

Hello there

My lovely friend Helen has deemed fit to award me a Liebster Blog award

This is my very first award and Helen made me a very happy girl with her comments, so thanks alot Helen and please all do go to http://helending.blogspot.com/ to see what she had to say and to see all her creative work. Helen used to do Stampin' Up products, so you'll see loads of ideas with their stuff.

Liebster is German for Dearest, but can also mean Beloved or Favourite.

Now with all blog awards there are 'rules', and Liebster is no different:1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog - done
2. Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you - done
3. Copy and paste the blog award on your blog - done
4. Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed (see below)
5. Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment at their blog.

I'm having trouble finding blogs suitable as the under 200 figure, really narrows things down. Some blogs I follow also don't show the amount of subscribers. Another issue I've found is that people I want to award it to, have already had it.

I'll hold onto it for a while as I don't want to just hand it out for the sake of it; I want it to be given with meaning :-)  So watch out; you might be getting one soon.

If I ever reach 200 followers I'll be absolutely amazed and very happy, although then there's a slight pressure to 'perform', which I don't do very well. I'm just me. Doing my do. Enjoying my crafty stuff but if more people want to watch from the sidelines, then that's fine by me.

Take care out there

Mother's day

Hello there

Quite a quick post today. I've made my Mother's Day card. It was simple to make with some papers I got from Crafter's Companion free downloads but I liked the colours; turqoise/light blue and brown are my favourite colours together for this year. I just copied a design virtually from one of their samples. The flowers, tag and topper are all raised for dimension. I put glossy accents on the gold band of the badge on the ribbon. I'm wondering if I should've added some glitter to the wet glossy accents too but since the papers have been distressed, I'm not sure that glitter would be suitable. There is a strip of lace down the left hand side which this photo doesn't reveal clearly. You may think this is not a great deal of effort for my mum but believe you me, this year she celebrates her 70th birthday and she will be getting spoilt 'big style'! I did have to buy the right colour Baker's Twine but that's no hardship :-)

I do love in many respects that there are so many facilities available for us crafters for free. If you're 'canny'  (money smart) then you could do very well. You do need a good printer and the right paper/card though or it's false economy. I have a HP Photosmart C4480. It's not much use to be honest, especially now since I've lost the disc for it so haven't been able to install the software on my new laptop, so now I can't scan or re-size. Yet May Flaum has one and says it's fine, as this issue was discussed recently on the BPC class message board. Epson seem to be popular in America, especially the 810. Some people use an online printing service but I'm never organised enough for that, so I want the photos there and then; not when I get time to order them and then wait a few days for them to arrive. I'm also very impatient. I sometimes need unusual sizes, so that hinders me from going to places like Asda to get them printed on those self-service machines - perhaps should look into what sizes those machines will actually print at though, rather than assuming.

Don't forget that Mother's Day is only 9 days off now! - I do hope that my daughter reads this! :-)

Take care out there

Feedjit isn't doing it's job

Hello there
I've just been to check the stats for this blog and seen that my audience is far greater than feedjit states. You can all see what is shown on my Feedjit bar, which isn't exciting but this is what is shown on my stats:

Sorry about the poor quality of the video but it was the only way I could think of showing the information and I enjoyed using the webcam as I so rarely do.

Take care out there

First grid layout

Hello there
Today's posting is all about a layout I've done for the BPC class this week. We're in week 4 now, which is scary as that seems like such a long time yet I never get enough time to do as much with it as I'd like/need. This week's topic is pen and paper. Whingeing aside, I did enjoy the:

• Four Techniques video showcasing four different fast tutorials on four techniques
• Step-by-Step video
• Pen video showing how to make the most of  plain journaling pens
• Project handout with this week's project images, step-by-step instructions and supply lists
• Sketch handout with three hand-drawn sketches that feature lots of opportunity to utilize paper and pen work
• Bonus handout with tips, tricks, and ideas for using papers and pens

You do get an awful lot of help each week and on top of that we also get an inspiration email from a well known 'crafter' or artist. This week's was from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, which I've only just realised that I hadn't even seen - there's just so much stuff, it is easy to miss things. I'll read that once I've completed this post; although it might have to wait until tonight as we're off to the hairdresser at 4 and it's 15.43 now, so I'd better get a wriggle on :-) We get a new topic tomorrow, so I like to ensure that I've done at least one project to 'hand-in' before the end of the week. And I've done it!

It's taken way longer than it should've done but hey, you've heard me say that before. Last week's layout was about the dog's first birthday, so this week I decided to scrap photos of their first day with us. Just finding the photos was bad enough as they're on several computers but Chris's are the best but he's away in Morocco at the minute, so I can't get them, which caused delays of course. I found some on Maggie's computer but then the printer didn't print one out properly and I'm not convinced with one of the photos I've actually had to use.
It started life like this:

That clearly is not good enough. I soon got to thinking about the neatness of it, so thought it best to put the individual 3" squares in a skewiff manner. I also thought that I need to 'dirty' it, so I got my vintage photo inkpad out and got to work on the edges. Come on Diane; you need rougher, tougher action to represent the impact the dogs had on the house and us, so off I went to get my scissors and roughened the edges; tore a bit and made a 'dog-ear'. I was on a roll, so I continued with the blending tool all over the paper - this was fun and 'freeing'. I had contemplated putting a paper background but it would've been far too busy in my opinion and I would've had to matt the photos and that just didn't work for me at all.

May had shown a video about dampening the edges of your paper after inking it and rolling it to give a vintage/aged effect. Off I went to put water in a little bowl, got a paintbrush (yes, I have those in my room now, waiting eagerly for a friend's painting class I've been invited to) and had a great time doing that and then re-inking over it where some white appeared from the back - good fun!

I cut the dog house from Create a Critter at 3". I used the same papers as I had already to try to calm down the pattern influence.

I used my gold Dabber in three places to try to form the triangle 'linking' effect I have heard people like Melanie Heaton talk about. If you have items creating the triangle, it is meant to connect all the pieces into a uniform appearance.

I drew some paw prints, as that links in with this week's theme of pen/pencil and with my layout of course. Once I'd done the title in pencil, I didn't think it was clear enough, so I stamped my vintage photo pad onto my craft mat, sprinkled some water onto it and then put my paintbrush into it and painted round the letters to help highlight them more. I enjoyed that, so off I went writing different associated words all around the layout - good times!

I decided to write the journalling freehand on the page as anything else just didn't feel right.               

 That was it. Done.

I enjoyed it and I've been to chat with some crafty friends tonight, so I'm happy. It was meant to be craft and chat but chat basically took over as we hadn't had a get together for a while. I also had a very productive chat yesterday with Linda, who is running The Crafty Network, to support craft businesses



 

All these things help keep me happy and knowing that the world isn't all full of negative, horrible people; there are lovely, creative, friendly people too. I need to keep being reminded of that for my well being.

Take care out there.

Mini-album for an expected baby

Hello there
I've finally finished the mini-album which I've been working on for about a week now. I've thoroughly enjoyed it, other than the post I did about how to put the basic structure together. The theme for their nursery is going to be yellow and safari animals; particularly giraffe's, so that's helped give me a focus.

The papers I've used mainly to decorate it are Best of K&Co too but also coredinations and some from the Tim Holtz/Ranger distress coredinations pack.

I die-cut most things on the front; the giraffe is from Create-a-Critter Cricut cartridge (c,c,c and more c's); the Love cut is from the Heritage cartridge word function and the title was cut from the shadow function of Plantin Schoolbook font. The loveheart stamp is from a Debbi Moore pack.

I've just stamped four hearts in each corner of the first page. I've left some pages more open like that to give the couple more freedom in how and what they put on those pages. On the right hand side, I've created a pocket which they can put a photo on and inside I've created a journalling tab- I made it in CraftArtist with the Bambino Thoughts kit. I made the giraffe with shrink plastic - it was my very first one and I'm totally hooked with the stuff now. It's also my very first handmade album too, so I've been introduced to a few things and loved all of them. I just printed a giraffe from the internet to fit the size of the shrink plastic sheet, coloured it in with some of Maggie's felt pens as I don't have any fancy markers and then heated it- job done yet it's so so cute and perfect for this project. I do love the effect the lace has on this page. I've tried to make the album suitable for either girl or boy, so fingers crossed they agree.

The next page is basically blank other than the 'BABY' cut from Heritage. Then there's the page which I used my home made giraffe stamp on. I put a photo of this on the BPC class gallery and I had positive feedback, so that spurred me on. Of course I didn't own a stamp with a giraffe on, so I made one with Cricut Cuttables. I only have Distress ink pads in green, but I love the look it's created. The black giraffes were created with Archival Black. The tag inside the pocket was created in the same way as the previous one but I created a different tab and used the word 'cute' this time.

More adventures on these pages as I used my giraffe stamp on some seam binding. The distress ink I have is clearly not correct but then the whole album is distressy in nature, so that kind of fits. I loved doing it anyway. Just the word Child from Heritage again and some of the Debbi Moore corner stamps on the other side.

Fun and games with  the same ribbon just across the page, with the journalling tag hanging from it. The tag is one of the elements from the Cosmo Cricket Togetherness collection, which I distressed the edges with 'Shabby shutters' as I did most things.

The final page has another Cosmo Cricket journalling tag with a giraffe cut from Paisley cartridge and just a patterned paper on which to place the photo/s on the right hand side.The back just has some patterned paper on it.

The box I made and embossed with the help of my Ultimate Pro, then I sanded it all. I decorated it with the help of Craft Artist with the At the Zoo digikit. I ripped around it and then inked it with Dusty Concord. For the record, I wouldn't recommend buying that kit really, as it cost £3.49 and you don't get the brushes or the layouts. It's a generic kit for any software, so you have to add the items to CA yourself; it doesn't install it automatically as with normal CA kits. Having said that it suits my purposes down to the ground as that frame is brilliant for the box or any zoo themed item- there's a leopard striped one too.

What fun that adventure was. I want to make plenty more of these; so I've bought some 'proper' 8x8 chipboard pieces. Watch this space.

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