MIMM - page 1

Hello there

I'm finally getting round to doing page 1 of my Me in My Moleskin journal. You can see what I did with the cover here. I have instructions from Kirsty but I prefer to think of them as pointers/guides/inspiration to get me moving and so far, they're working very well. 

Without further ado, here's the page:

I had a field day using bits which were just lying on my desk, such as the leaves and the ladybird. The flower shapes were sprayed through a piece of die-cut leftover I had in a box of card I found, whilst looking for the card for the sun pieces. I then highlighted them a bit by doodling inside the stencil quickly.

Yet again I love the shimmer that the SU champagne mist adds to sprays- as can be seen on the tag. I used the leftover die-cut sheet for the tag flower shapes again. Kirsty provides prompts for what to write too; hence the first sentence being that Diane means divine but I'm sure you're all aware of my heavenly nature!!! ;-)

I've read today about a lady who is using her journal as a means of 'outlet', as her life is pretty manic and not too happy right now. That is an excellent reason to do a journal but I'm mainly doing mine for a crafty outlet (as if I need yet another project to be working on??!!)  and also as a memory book about me, so that my daughter can see it in years to come and know me a bit better maybe. Scrapbooking records memories too but this is solely about me, so rather daunting in a way yet still important for my daughter to get a fuller picture of who I am/was.

Take care out there

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 

I really should know better

Hello there

 Sometimes inspiration and that 'oh yes, this is a brilliant idea' feeling isn't a good thing in the whole. The card I'm posting about today is an example of that. I obviously got carried away with the fun of making it and didn't think clearly about the process involved. I still enjoyed the project but the slight 'blip' I learnt about at the end of the process put a slight dampner on things.

Sit comfortably and I'll begin this tale.
N.B - A word to the wise - don't follow the instructions for this card until you've read the whole post!

This is a Cricut project - so firstly I cut the basic Scallop card from the Wild Card cartridge at 'fit to page' on a 12 x 12 mat. In the photo above, the top piece is the blackout version of the card, which is glued to the basic card blank on the inside. One of the brilliant things about this card is the lovely corners it has and also the holes it provides to thread the ribbon through. On the shift icon function, you are provided with cute surrounds for those holes, which add to the whole thorough detail.



Those pieces of patterned paper on the front of the card are cut using the liner function. Please make sure that your paper is facing the correct direction BEFORE you cut it, unlike certain crafters who shall remain nameless :-) But hey, I'm sure that nameless crafter will still use that incorrect cut in her scraps box.

My not quite immaculate little box of ribbon off cuts

In your doubtlessly immaculate ribbon box, collect a suitable coloured ribbon/twine/cord and make sure it is long enough to allow the card to be opened, without the ribbon coming out of either hole on both sides of the card's opening sides.  I found one just the right colour and the right width, so I was a happy girl.

Now follows the bit which threw me off whack. The next sentence explains where it all went slightly awry. I cut the envelope AFTER finishing decorating the card. Uh uh! Not good! Not bright, Diane! I cut it at fit to page but just as I was cutting it, I knew it was going to be the wrong size. Whenever doing these card and envelope cuts from a Cricut cartridge, you ALWAYS cut the envelope first, so then you know what size to cut the card  and all it's accompanying decorative pieces. Since it was cut at fit to page, I couldn't make it any bigger to fit my card, as I only have a 12 x 12 cutting mat.
It's a really pretty little envelope but I can still use that for another card or in a mini album or on a scrapbook page or..... well, sufficive to say, I won't be throwing it away.

I cut another envelope out of the same patterned paper as I had used on the card, using my Ultimate Pro to provide the correct size. I also added a frame from the same scallop card page 32 of the Wild Card booklet; that frame was necessary, to allow me space to write the address legibly for the postal system, as this card is winging it's way to Australia to my lovely step mum.

I love this card as it was so easy and yet gives such a pretty appearance. The frame on the front is the same as the frame I used on the envelope but without the centre piece. The butterflies are leftovers from another card I made this week; they were cut from the Walk in my Garden cartridge from page 116 in the booklet- it's btfly2.

So the morale of this post is that it is totally advisable to cut your envelope FIRST and then make your card cut, at the same size as it sets the envelope (it displays the size on the little monitor of my Expression machine).


Take care out there and learn from my mistakes! :-)

Using up scraps

Hello there

This week on my blog I've been writing about using scraps off my desk. These are the scraps I've used up today.

I used the flower shape, which is a residue die-cut from something or other, as a template to cut out two more of that shape and then I used my Cricut to cut out varyingly smaller versions of the daisy2 from the Walk in my Garden cartridge. The die-cut will have been about 7cm, so my other daisies were cut at sizes like 6 and 4.5.

All I did then was lay the pink chequered paper down, put a strip of coordinating card down as a bar to put my flowers onto and then layered my flowers up, put self-adhesive gems in the middle and I was almost finished.

All I added to it was a die-cut from Wild Card cartridge; cut from the same card as I used as a band for the flowers. I'm sending it to my daughter, sister, nephews, mum and step-dad as they're all together on holiday. I am definitely thinking of them and hoping that they have lovely sunshine all week, to enjoy family time.
I perhaps should've chosen a darker pink as a band for the flowers but other than that, I'm very happy with how I used those scraps up. There's still a small amount of the chequered paper left but enough is enough, I chucked those in the bin.

Take care out there