This blog is a record of my creative journey. I love to share my passion for paper crafting so I design projects and then create tutorials and workshops to show you how to make them. Please feel free to wander around to check out all the things I share both here, in my ETSY shop and over on my You Tube channel. Thank you for popping by!
This month saw the return of the resist technique and an embossed die cut technique and this was Tim's original inspiration:
….and I had the perfect picture and memory to include on the tag for this layout. I love this photo of Callum proudly showing me the Giant Leaf he found!
I decided my Autumnal day was sunny but frosty too and added a little Distress Glitter to my pile of leaves. A bit like it was here today. I remembered to get out there and fed the birds although the blackbirds are having a lovely time munching on the remaining apples that are scattered around our apple tree.
Today Bibi, the lovely owner/designer of Rubber Dance Stamps, and I are launching a brand new collaboration in time for your Christmas crafting! Are you struggling to get started making your cards this year? Then this festive bundle is just what you are looking for.
When you make this purchase first of all you will be receiving a fabulous set of Rubber Dance stamps that give lovely impressions time after time. This set, as you can see, is very versatile with lots of lovely Christmassy images with so many possibilities. Frosty Friends was designed for Rubber Dance by Susanne Rose.
You will also be receiving 10 tutorials from me! I will show you how to create Gift Boxes, Baubles, Birthday Cards, Note Cards, Magical Treat Bags and 7 different Christmas Card Designs! Tons of inspiration and tons of techniques to get you ready for Christmas!
Just a small selection of the lovely projects we will make together. You will also receive a pdf with all the project photos, materials and tools lists and all the dimensions you need to create this bumper bundle of festive creations. I know that each of these projects will inspire you to make other creations too. What better way to make sure that you get the most of of your lovely stamps.
Here is my little advert to really get you in the mood to get started!
As the temperatures plummet outside I was inside making an April page for my Journal! Still playing catch up but still having lots of creative fun and I hope you find lots of inspiration in my tutorial.
This page was inspired by Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of 2016 series. Each month he takes two techniques from pervious years tags and combines them to make a new tag and inspires so many of us to play along. I have so many tags now from many years of playing along I am making art journal pages instead and there is a tag in there too!!!
You can see Tim's tag in this shot but you will see in the tutorial that one of my tags made way back in 2012 inspired this page too! I loved this faux mosaic technique using scraps of patterned paper and I am sure you will too.
Each of my pages has a coordinating tag and each holds a memory. As I was making this page the faux mosaic reminded me of china tea sets and my love of all things afternoon tea. I really like making them and am collecting lovely antique china to serve my celebration teas upon. This photo though is of a cake I would really love to know how to make. I think my skills are a little way off this standard yet though!
This is the finished page and I love how cheery it looks - it perhaps has a hint of frost about it after all! We were forecast a little snow this evening but so far only cold and rain. We even picked up all the leaves and doggy presents in the garden just in case we get to build a snowman! I guess we only have ourselves to blame if it doesn't snow after all ;-)
Here is the tutorial and I really hope it inspires you to try out the techniques and get creative. Thank you for popping by X
Here it is finally managed to get this uploaded. Life suddenly got a bit hectic….better ate than never!
Here is the finished piece and be warned - very messy painty hands can be achieved with this one! Fabulous ;-)!
As I said on my previous post this piece was inspired by the art and yummy products of Finnabair! Hope this tutorial inspires you to get creative. Thank you for popping by X
I hope you are all looking forward to a fabulous weekend. I will be posting another tutorial shortly but I couldn't wait to share what it is I will be showing you how to make!
I can't tell you what my hands looked like at 4 this morning! I did take a minute to peel it and wash it all off before I jumped into bed, promise! This canvas forms part of an audition for Finnabair's Creative Team and I was inspired by some of my lovely Finnabair products and I was so please with how it was going that I couldn't stop! I was so enthralled I didn't even realise the time!!!
As you know Finn has a wonderful way of combining unusual bits and bobs and combining them with art products to make unique and beautiful artworks and this canvas was inspired by her. I combined metal elements with paint and beads and glitter and suddenly a magical flower blooms!
I created my own texture paste by mixing rust mica powder with transparent 3D Matte Gel for lovely sparkly texture accented with Bronze micro beads and Midnight Blue glass glitter - Yum!
On the tutorial you will see how I used lace and pearl trims to make pretty textured borders. I warn you this technique is not for the faint hearted nor those that don't want to get their hands dirty!!! I am still picking off little bits of brown paint ;-)
As you can see I had a wonderful time and I picked a word that sums up this piece to finish the canvas.
So keep an eye out for the tutorial and keep your fingers crossed for me. Wishing you all a wonderful weekend and thank you for popping by X
I hope you have all been having a wonderful summer. I have been busy and seem to have taken a little time off blogging and making videos but don't worry I have still been getting my fix of creativity! So before I get to this:
Just thought I would share what I have been up to as it has been very creative but in a different way! I have been helping Mum! I have been getting all painty and decoraty! It has been fun spending Mum's money ;-) Here is her bedroom all finished and looking lovely (if I do say so myself!!!!) We are now working on her Lounge so I will share that with you when it is all looking gorgeous again.
I have also been up-cycling and have a new chair in my bedroom. Here are the before and after shots:
Remember this one?
Well it now has a matching bedside table!
I loved doing this look and they look fab in Callum's room and help keep it tidy to…..ok well that may be a step to far for now ;-)
I have long been meaning to cover this Ikea sofa……..
……and then inspired by the most perfect fabrics I did this and I have to say even to an amateur like me it was easy peasy and I would recommend it to anyone as the sofa easily comes apart to make covering simple.
I have to say that this will probably be the only time it looks like this as it is mostly used as a cupboard!!!
We also had another trip to the hospital with Callum's knee and he had it stretched which I know sounds painful and it was but thankfully he got to sleep through it. Here he is all recovered and attached to a knee bending machine.
He has definitely been through it this year but he is doing well and is back in the Gym …….not quite up to tumbling yet but every day sees him getting closer. Fingers crossed and thank goodness for the talented surgeon and staff of the NHS!
So that was my summer with a few lovely days in the garden of course so now it is back to sharing the creativity and this one is a catch up page in my 12 Journals of 2016 series all pages inspired by Tim Holz's 12 Tags of 2016.
This was Tim's tag where he mixed two of his previous techniques to achieve this new look and this was the page it inspired:
As you can see it is a little more feminine than Tim's but the techniques are there only my version of them as you will see in this video:
I wish you all a Happy Sunday and hope you are finding time to create. I am hoping to get another page caught up as I am a bit behind this year…..well ok a lot behind lol!
Today I am sharing a tutorial that shows you different ways of using alcohol inks to create backgrounds for your stamping. This quick and easy card features the Something Fishy stamp set from Rubber Dance.
I will guide you through the techniques and pretty soon you will have a card like mine that looks fab inside and out…..if I may say so myself ;-)
So if you want to have the chance of winning these stamps all you have to do is pop over to my channel on YouTube, subscribe if you don't already and then leave me a comment to say you want to join in. If you want to go into the draw twice then just share the tutorial and make sure to tell me in your comment that you have done so. The Giveaway runs from 22 July - 05 August 2016.
This tutorial is all about how easy it is to create interesting mixed media background papers that you can then go on to use in your projects. I show you how and then how to turn that into a pretty flower card.
I have used my paper as a background paper and then I have revealed the design by cutting a stencil design into the white card. I finished off with some punched flowers and voila!!
I really hope you enjoy the tutorial and have lots of fun creating your background papers in a myriad of colours!
The weather has finally turned a little warmer here so I am off out to have tea in the garden - a fabulous end to the weekend. Hope you have all had a wonderful time too.
Thank you for popping by X
PS A Stamp Giveaway coming very soon so watch this space!!!!
As you may know I have been playing along with this challenge for some years now and I have decided to make journal pages rather than tags this year.
Each page also comes with a matching tag as you can see here. I haven't decided what to journal about yet and as I am having printer troubles I will share the finished tag with you later.
In the video you will see how I used the two techniques Tim used on his tag as the inspiration for my journal page. Hope you find something to inspire you to get creative.
If you are new to my blog…….Welcome……….There is a ton of creativity in my archives so please feel free to explore and of course if you like what you see then please subscribe and be sure that you get to hear next time I post.
See you soon with some more creativity. Thank you for popping by X
I am catching up with my 12 Journals of 2016 this month and probably next! I am a bit behind again - I don't know where my time disappears to sometimes. Keeping this post short as I am off to edit June's Page which is all filmed!
I am playing along with Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of 2016 only I am making journal pages instead. The principal is the same I will take his inspiration and give it my own interpretation and will film the journey for you.
I love how this one turned out…..in the end! This was one of those pages that took a while to find its direction as you will see in the video. But when it got there I liked the story it told and I know fellow Art Journalers will appreciate the use of Gesso and a black pen which so often come to my rescue!!!!
As usual I am creating a tag for each month but I am out of ink at the moment so I haven't been able to add my journalling and photo just yet - I will bring that to you in another video once my printer is up and running again!
If you are wondering about those gorgeous stamped images I have use Antique Botanicals by Rubber Dance. I particularly love this flower and have used it over and over. Click on the link if you want to see more of this lovely collection of stamps.
Without further ado here is the tutorial which takes you from Tim's inspiration to my interpretation.
Well it is a bit grey and damp here at the moment so I hope it is sunnier where you are today. Just a quick post with another little tutorial. Sorry about the photos but as I said this was footage from a few years ago!
I used similar papers for both of my designs but even so I think because I used two different sets of flower stamps the photo above has an oriental feel whilst the one below is a little more modern looking.
This is a really easy card idea to replicate and I know you can come up with all sorts of paper combinations using your own flower stamp stash…..!!!!
Hope you have fun with this tutorial. Thank you for popping by X
Over the coming weeks I will be bringing you tutorials I videoed some time ago. Because video files are so large from time to time I have to move them on to an external hard drive and these are the ones I have forgotten!!! So I am dusting them off and editing them and I hope they are useful tutorials with fun ideas for you to try or adapt for your projects.
This first tutorial has a fun rag daisy embellishment that I know you are going to be able to make and use to embellish a whole host of crafting projects.
This card can be made in any colour combination - Navy and white - Cream and Pink…it is up to you all you need is card stock and a matching ink - combine that with a flower background stamp, a fun greeting or two, a butterfly stamp and some die cut foliage, etc. These are all things you will have in your stash I am sure.
Add a strip of fabric and a needle and thread and you too will soon have a lovely summery card like this one. Next to these card photos I found a photo of this little (not so little) beauty. I wonder if the cake inspired the card or the card inspired the cake?
Either way I enjoyed making them both!……..and eating the cake of course ;-)
YUM! Now I am hungry. But off to check out my archives again so I can bring you another tutorial very soon…..but for today here is the tutorial.
Hope you are having sunny weather or are making sunny projects….or both would be perfect. Until next time, thank you for popping by X
Hope you have a fun weekend planned with lots of time for crafting! I have just finished teaching a card class tonight and am looking forward to a crop tomorrow!
Tonight I am sharing a tutorial that has taken me a little while to get posted on to YouTube - a few technical issues. I have no idea how it was cured but it suddenly seems to be working!!!
In this tutorial you will see how to layer up lots of different Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft® products to create mixed media canvas like this one.
You could choose to use some or all of the techniques in this tutorial, it is up to you. It is all about exploring and seeing what works to achieve the look you want. I think I might try bluebells next time round as we have some lovely ones in the garden at the moment.
Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft® Products Used:
Gel Medium
Gesso
Whipped Spackle
Texture Gems
Gelatos®; Buttercream, Kiwi, Caramel
PITT Artist Pen Big Brush: Dark Crome Yellow 109, Cadmium Yellow 107, Chromium Green Opaque 174, Orange Glaze 113, Warm Grey IV 273, White 101
It has been a little while since I last posted but am back again with another tutorial. This is a really easy project to make and is very versatile.
These little boxes can be made in any scrapbooking papers you may have in your collections. I of course have used Graphic 45 here as it was one of the little projects I made during my audition. You can decorate them to suit your style or the style of the person you are going to gift it to.
These little boxes can be used for storage or as a pretty gift box. I first designed this project between 5 and 8 years ago when someone at our crop showed us how to fold origami boxes. I adapted the design a little to make it more decorative and in the tutorial you will see exactly how to make these for yourself.
These were the original boxes and if any of you recognise these Kay and Co papers you may be able to date these boxes more accurately! In the tutorial you will see what I store in them suffice to say they are catch all boxes that I have dotted about my home ;-)
If you decide to make this project as a gift box why not make a matching card as I did here.
What a pretty way to give a gift and to show someone that you care.
Before I go I would like to let you know that I didn't make it through to the Graphic 45 Design Team :-( but I would like to say if luck and good wishes had anything to do with it I would have sailed through! I am so grateful for all your support and good wishes you guys have been awesome and definitely helped me get over the disappointment as did as this little chap……..
You can find out more about him if you stay watching until the end of the tutorial!
I have had a problem this past week with a video uploading to YouTube but this one seems to be ok so I am going to try to upload the other one again tomorrow so two videos in quick succession …..YouTube willing!!!
See you again very soon and thank you for popping by X
