Little monkey

Hello there

Yesterday was my eldest nephew's birthday, so I had wanted to scrap him in a page (that sounds painful and slightly illegal :-) )

First issue was that the layout I was following was Catherine's Moments and memories June layout and I didn't feel inspired to just use the one photo I had in mind at the time, so I got distracted - I know, I hear you; what Diane? Distracted? Never!! :-)

Second issue was that three photos of his younger brother took my attention from the same holiday and I thought they'd fit on the layout well. I was tired after being awake since 3.30 and at work for eight hours from 6am, so I just had to run with it.

I did most of it last night but was called away for our get-together movie watching of Madagascar 3 on Sky premiere. I'm sure it is a great film but I was sat in the most uncomfortable seat (well, the pouffe to be exact) and was falling asleep, so I gave up after half an hour. I finished the page off this morning.

I always have remnants of stuff on my desk and the dark blue card just happened to be one of them, which goes perfectly with Owen's t-shirt and the green polka dot paper was a spare on the top of one of my paper pads. A few die-cuts from Cricut Craftroom basics cartridge and some leaves leftover from some cards I made recently and I was done.

I used the cut-offs from the main photo to hide the
gaps at the top and bottom of the vertical blue panel.
I like this!

I used the negative from the star cuts as a
stencil to improve the backing paper.
I also used that ink on the journalling patch,
which is photo paper that was sitting on my desk

The page, as ever, has much better colour than these photos, so I'm rather happy and I hope that Catherine likes that I've used her layout as inspiration. I'm crafting with her tonight, so I'll soon find out :-)

Take care out there and enjoy your moments and memories, whilst I go off to do some housework and then try this layout with two photos I've now decided to try with my eldest nephew.

I also need to find time to watch Madagascar 3 but I'll have to watch it alone now! :-)

Bill Withers would be pleased

Hello there

 Yes, Bill Withers and his song 'lovely day' says it all. On Saturday I had a lovely time with some ladies whom hopefully I will be able to call friends soon. 

The leaves and the swirls are from the Cricut
Home Accents cartridge

I have only known Polly for less than a week. Polly had mentioned on a local Facebook page that she might consider setting up a sewing group, so I commented that I would be interested. This developed into a Facebook chat when Polly told me about a crafting group that she belongs to and it just happened to be meeting on Saturday. I went along and her and the other ladies made me feel very welcome and I spent a very relaxed time there for a few hours.

I mainly did listening and drinking tea but I also did lots of cutting and taking some die cuts off the Cricut mats. I really shouldn't have done them quickly the night before as I had put paper onto new mats, which is never a good idea, as the new mats are too sticky and make peeling the paper off quite tricky. I made large inroads to three cards though and then finished them off at home that night.

The flowers are from the Everything Eleanor Stampin' Up set
and the centre cream background and sentiment background
 is from the Cricut Craftroom basics set

I got to see Polly's wonderful City and Guild's Design and Craft (embroidery) portfolio and Kate's gorgeous coloured cross stitch and another lady did mosaic and Polly was making these really cute bottle top pin cushions. There was quite a range of things being worked on whilst the chat continued. I am seriously considering doing a City and Guild's course myself but I might try the quilting one. They also mentioned a sewing workshop centre in Thornton, Lancashire which is gorgeous too. I looked online and saw that they're running a two day 'Quilt top in a day' course in July; you do the top on one day and the backing and binding on the second day :-)

The first ever cuts with my mini tattered florals dies

Crafting really has helped me to meet the most lovely of people.

Take care out there and appreciate the good people.

It's not puzzling

Hello there

Last night I went to a craft class run by my friend Helen. I really haven't been in the right mood recently and gave her very late notice that I was going but I'm so glad that I did. She packed 8 of us in her craft room plus herself and still stayed calm, smiley and organised despite quite hefty provocation from the other giggly, talkative ladies :-)

The theme was butterflies and in particular the Stampin' Up swallowtail stamp, as Helen is a demonstrator, as are most of my other crafty friends who attended last night. 

This was the first card we made, which was a great one to quickly get us into the right frame of mind.

Rich razzleberry was the colour of the ink and the
coloured card

We then moved onto one which I have sent off already as a get well soon card for my step-mum, who has unfortunately contracted dvt and definitely deserving of a card to try to lighten up at least a couple of hours, after getting something nice through the post.

Rich razzleberry, island indigo and a
pink colour I can't remember the name of,
 sorry :-)

My favourite of the night was the last one we made due to the intense colours of rich razzleberry, island indigo and tangerine tango. I really loved the way everyone's colouring in of the swallowtail was completely different. It was stamped with craft black Stampin' Up ink and then embossed with black. The background was created by embossing the flower stamp in white first and then brayering over the shiny cardstock. Again everyone's was slightly different dependant on which stamp they chose to emboss and how many times they brayered them.

I don't fuss too much with cutting out the antennae anymore;
I just cut them out as best I can and then quickly run
a matching colour pen over them, so they look perfect.

----------------------------

Those were what we made last night but Helen had given us enough card to make one more card. She put a photo of it up on Facebook for us and blogged about it, so I was able to do that today and I really enjoyed this 'new to me' technique called puzzle piecing. It took me a little while to get my head around it but when I did, it became clear how easy it is and yet effective and millions of possibilities open to you. Have a look at Helen's post for a link to a tutorial on how to achieve this.

Those of you who will look closely, will see that I didn't quite fit my orange layer in brilliantly but I can cope with that. It's my first attempt and I'm happy to put an appropriate sentiment on there when I know what I'm using it for. This is a technique I'll definitely be doing again. 

Take care out there and I hope that you too have friends who can inspire you when you're feeling low.

70th birthday book

Hello there

Here's a 'birthday book' I was asked to make for a friend; so yes, I could call it a commission which makes it sound ever so grand and official. She had the exact colours in mind and we talked about a few options/ideas for such a book for her mum but in the end I was just asked to stick to the black and gold theme album and after asking, I realised that swirls were more her mum's 'thing' than geometric shapes, so off I went a creating.

This may sound simple to many of you but I'm not a fan of either colour, so I don't have a big stock, to say the least. Thankfully I'd had plenty of warning, so I had time for shopping.

The text on the front is from the Winter Woodland cartridge and that mat is from the Mini books cartridge with the holes cut off the ends. I've used that mat shape several times inside the book too, along with some other shapes and sizes but only about 3 different ones or I felt it would be too unconnected. 

There's a swirl on every page too, which is from the Home decor cartridge -'border2'.

 As black and gold aren't reknowned for being good to write on, I decided to add a matt cream coloured fancy shape on each page, which is from the Cricutcraftroom basics digital cartridge (accent); for the journalling to go on. I do hope that they make notes of who each person in the photos are and what their link to her mum is, as they may know now but in the future her kids won't necessarily have a clue as to who they are.

I really hope that she likes it. I'm a tiny bit concerned that the album is so thick now that it doesn't close easily and it hasn't even got photos in it yet but that's why it closes with a ribbon. I also had the idea that it will make a lovely display item. You could stand it up and have about 3 pages ajar at a time, to tempt your attention to it and you could change those pages every now and again. That's much better than it being stuck in a cupboard and never looked at, as it'll be full of people who have played a part in her life.

The presentation bag

Pricing it was hard but I looked on Folksy at some and they ranged from £25 and all that was done was the front was decorated, down to £9.99, so I'm happy I gave her a very competitive price for all the work I did inside it too. I'll see what her reaction is; by the time this is posted, she'll have it, so fingers crossed! It's all part of the learning process I'm going through. I'm glad it doesn't need to be mailed though, as it's quite heavy,  especially with the new Royal Mail charges recently.The postage will make it more expensive for selling albums like it on Folksy but that's the price you pay for internet shopping. Talking of which, you can probably tell that my mind is racing with the idea of selling these on Folksy. We'll see. I'd have to make a range of colours to show what's possible, as people often need leading into these things, as they don't know what can be done.

Take care out there

For my next trick

Hello there

If you read my last post (if you haven't then I can recommend a course of action, which includes clicking here :-)  ) you might remember that I said I wasn't going to blog about the making of my Christmas cards. That is still in theory correct but I've made a box for a pack of Christmas cards I'm making for a raffle at work. So the theme is Christmas but this post is about the box making, not the cards.

Phew! Wonder if I'll get away with that? :-)

The box containing the cards and envelopes I made



At first I just got an A3 sheet of white card and laid it under my set of 10 cards and envelopes. I fiddled and faffed around, trying to picture how to cut the card to make it into a box. I then laid the cards flat on the A3 card and starting drawing and scoring lines and then actually cutting lines.

This is what I ended up with after cutting a window for acetate in the front of the box:


I made two errors with scoring lines and the card isn't the best in the world but I'm extremely pleased with it as my first try. It's for a raffle prize at work, so I think it makes an absolute bargain for a 50p ticket. If it was for a customer, I'd use better card and ensure no mistakes were made.

I do love this 'engineering' type project. Not only do I love crafting for the creative expression it allows me but also because it stimulates my brain and makes me think ideas through to completion.

Then on I went to decorate. I die-cut the same images as I'd used on the cards. I inked up the box's edges and put the acetate in before glueing it together.







The life saver product of this project was the roll of velcro dots I found in my sewing box, which are exactly what I wanted to keep the lid closed, yet openable loads of times.




So, the morale of the post is; if you ever need a box for anything, get in there, mess about, trial and error and you'll be so pleased with yourself for doing so. I know there are templates you can buy and ideas online but when you're making a custom sized box, this is the best way to do it and once you've done one, you've got the ideas for making more.

Take care out there