Gotta be quick

Hello there

Yer, I have to be quick now as it's 23.19 and Chris is in bed asleep and I'm not ready for sleep just yet, as I wanted to finish a layout I started yesterday. I've been doing it whilst tendering my laptop at the same time. My laptop was sick last week but I've had it back this evening, so spent all night re-doing everything as it had a complete restart. That's the second time that's happened in less than six months, so I'm not a happy bunny with technology. I'm three quarters of the way to semi normality with it. I wont start a rant on that because I'm meant to be making this a quick post :-)

Edit: - It took me quite a few tries to get this photo right of the glossy accents on the waves last night. For some reason Blogger kept putting the photo upside when I inserted it but it's done it correct, first time this morning??!! Maybe it's just like me and more awake this morning   :-)

The envelope where I put the journalling was cut at 4.5inch -
it's from the Wild Card cartridge- the doily on page 52.
The word 'Chillin' was created with the same cartridge's alphabet function.

The ripple effects shadowing the shape of the photo mounts was a last minute add on, which really ties it all in, as I wasn't really happy with it before then; hence this late night. It was a happy accident, as I was actually looking for some other embellishments I know I have somewhere or other and then I found the Americana bahama blue paint which I've never used and had forgotten about and KNEW that was my saviour for this layout and then the idea popped up.

Finding the paint and a working
computer ended a good day

That topped off a great crafty day for me as I also had a lovely few hours at the Crabapplecrafts birthday celebration, where several demos were going on all day. I enjoyed them all but Rae Dalal is very good company and showed us some great techniques and some new Dylusions sprays and goodies including the two below;

Right, times up and it's almost 23.45. Let's see if I get grief for brushing my teeth and getting into bed late. Wish me luck :-)

Take care out there and try not to upset 'him indoors'.

Paper cone wreath and.... just read and see!

Hello there

Last Thursday I went to Crabapplecrafts in Frodsham for a workshop. Rosemary Merry is so inspirational and lovely with it. Nigel is her husband and he helps dust the shelves; I hope he laughs if he ever reads this, as Nigel does alot more than that in the company. How on earth they spend so much time together and never have public rows, is testament to their great relationship.I went to one of their retreats a couple of years ago and had such a blast and did so much crafting in one weekend - I loved it. The store is quite local to me, so I do go fairly often. The store is in a small 'out of town' shopping complex, which also has a great quilting store, cake decorating store and a brewery. The brewery means that Chris doesn't mind me going, as he gets me to fill his flagon with whatever they've got on draught at the time. Win, win! :-)

Anyway, I digress; how unusual for me.

We had several packs to chose from to make our wreath with but I chose a very colourful, bright pack. This is how my wreath turned out.

Some other ladies wreaths were far more sophisticated in look but all were made exactly the same way with 6inch squares of double sided papers; it just depended on the colour scheme used. Since there are ladybirds in one of the papers, I just had to cut some out from Walk in my Garden Cricut cartridge. I cut ladybug1 at 3/4 inch in black and then the layer in red and then I cut the main shape again in white at 1/2inch, as I wanted it to have white spots as in the paper; I glued this white patch (with head cut off- ouch!) onto the back of the red layer before glueing that onto the black base. 

I think they look so cute, all wandering across the wreath in the same direction

 I'll definitely be making more of these. Perhaps the next one will be for my mum for mother's day in a more sophisticated colour scheme.

Now as proof of Rosemary's generous nature and her skills of being a teacher, she showed another pretty thing to a few of us at the end of the workshop. She had these lovely 3D flowers on display in the workshop area and said that they were easy enough to make and went about showing us; allowing us to practise it on a piece of paper there and then, so that we could take it home and be able to see how the folds go. I did this but there's one step I couldn't quite remember, so I made it up; so if you don't like these instructions, it's not Rosemary's fault, it's my poor memory of her instructions :-)
Here's my version I made today.

I've made a video to show the instructions for making these. I'm almost tempted to put them on my Folksy store and see how they do but as ever, packaging might be difficult to post them. I'll look in my post office and see what size boxes they have and how much it'll cost to post. If it inspires you to have a go, please do let me know, as that would make me very happy. 

Take care out there and make 3D flowers