What No Video???!

Hi Everyone

It is unusual for me to post without a video these days but I had an idea of a scrapbook page when I was cropping with my friends at the weekend and I thought you might like to see what I did….

…Firstly please let me apologise for the really mucky craft mat!  No posh videoing mat for me ;-)

I had a whole length of ribbon I had coloured with Mustard Seed Distress ink.  I intended to use it on another project but the colour wasn't quite right.  Whilst packing up ready to crop on Saturday I had an idea to use it on a layout.  I started out by cutting 3 circles that were just the right size for the photo's I intended to use.  Then using a pencil I marked out a trail I wanted my ribbon to follow around the appertures.  I then pierced along the line ready for stitching to take place.  As you can see here I also added some splatter using a Black Soot and Mustard Seed Distress Paint and distressed the edges of the grey card stock with more Black Soot Distress Paint.

I gathered up a length of my ribbon along the centre using a running stitch and then added double sided tape around the line of my first apperture.  I used the running stitch to pull the ribbon into gathers as I arranged it around the aperture.  I added more pieces of DST where the ribbon overlapped itself on the way to the next circle.

I used black embroidery thread and the holes (now only visible on the back of the card stock to stitch the ribbon into place.  I worked one aperture at a time and made sure there was no grey card stock visible on the inside of the ribbon frames.

You can see the stitching now follows the line that I drew previously.

Next I drew a looping line with a pencil coming in from the top left of the card stock and pierced the stitching holes along the line.

I added the DST to hold the ribbon in position ready for stitching.

That was the main part of the page layout finished so on to the photos the title and the journalling …….

See how that lovely yellow ribbon draws your eye from one photo to the next.  These are photos of my eldest son in 1985.  I am gradually scrapbooking his photos and I managed to do a couple of layouts at the crop in-between chatting and eating cake of course!  I still need to add titles and journalling to them so I will share them later.

Before I go though I thought this might make you smile.

Do you think Comet is wondering why he doesn't get to join in our TV dinner night?!!!!  I remember three years ago Comet could sit on that stool…..now he leans on it ;-)

Soooo cute!

Still with the same please feed me look in his eye though!

Have a fab week and thank you for popping by X

National Scrapbook Day!

Did you know?  I got to know via Facebook and have had a lovely evening scrapbooking along with Big Picture Classes.  They are trying to get 10000 layout pictures on Instagram and are getting everyone to post photos of their layouts as they finish them.

I have done three tonight which is pretty good for me as I usually would only manage one!  I thought I would share this one before I hop into bed.

First I gutted a 12" x 12" page leaving a 1" border.

Next I trimmed the sun sheet to 11 3/4" and adhered it to the grey frame.

Next I cut a 2" strip of the striped paper and edged it with strips of grey and then attached a strip of washi tape that I thought coordinated with my papers.

I attached the strip down the right hand edge of the layout - straighter than in the photo!! ;-)

Next I popped out a couple of tickets and a journalling tag from the die cut sheet.  I found a fabric brad to match my colour scheme.  I mounted my two 5 1/2" x 3 1/2" photos on orange then grey card stock.  I cut a 1 " strip of the hexagon paper and edged it with an orange die cut boarder strip.

I made the strip into a rosette using the fabric brad as a centre.  I attached a tab to the Journaling tag and joined the two tickets together with a gem brad.  I added journalling and cut out my title using Zooballoo lettering at 1" for the word Breakfast and 1 1/4" for the word BBQ.

And here is my finished layout with everything attached.  I created a pocket for my journalling tickets and tag by leaving the top of the photo mat open.  I did add a line of glue so the tags don't slide down too far behind the photos. A touch of bling around the sun and a couple of photo tabs and that was layout 3 complete.

The papers I used were My Mind's Eye Oh La La which I have had for ages!  You could use this layout as a sketch and substitute your coordinating papers and photos.  Hope you are having a fab National Scrapbooking Day.  I am off to bed….Thank you for Popping By x

Pinterest Buttons and A Valuable Lesson Learnt!!!

Hi there - just a quick, but I hope useful post, to my fellow bloggers!  I love Pinterest and have lost many a happy hour exploring a beautiful pin trail!  For anyone that doesn't know what Pinterest is it is an internet pin board.  It is fabulous for collecting gorgeous crafting ideas, inspirational photographs or quotes and a whole host of other things.  The beauty of each pin you make is that when you click on it much later it takes you back to the internet site you found the image.

This is really really useful for tutorials you want to try out, crochet or knitting patterns, recipies, etc.  You may know I am redecorating my son's room and I have been collecting ideas on a mood pin board I set up.  When we made the final choice of wall paper I clicked on the photo of the wall paper and was transported to Amazon ready to make my purchase.  It is so useful.

If you blog then there may be crafters who pop by who want to pin your tutorials or project photos to inspire them or to try out later.  You can make it really easy for them by adding a pin button to the images on your blog you are happy for them to pin.  It was a bit scary to be working with the html code of your blog but I have to say the tutorial I found was very clear and easy to follow so I am sharing the link with you.

This link is for the instructions on how to add a pin button to your images and how to take it off the photos you don't wish to be pinned.  It also shows you how to take the button off photographs you don't want the button on.

This link lets you add a Pinterest widget to your sidebar so people can follow your pin boards if they would like too.  I follow lots of boards of people who like me love Halloween and Christmas decorating.

Now I need to show you that I followed the tutorials and they worked for me so if you scroll down my right hand bar you will find the pin button to take you to my boards which you are welcome to follow and I am adding a photo of my Surprise Package Workshop and if you hover over the photo you will be able to pin it to your boards if you already have them.  Then one day in the future when you want to make this project you will be able to click on the photograph and it will take you back here to my blog where you will be able to click on the link below the photograph and it will take you to my ETSY shop where you can purchase the workshop!  Genius don't you think and I definitely didn't need to be a genius to do it!!!

Click on this link to visit my Etsy shop to purchase the workshop that will show you how to make The Surprise Package!

I am so glad I decided to share this Pinterest knowledge as if I hadn't I wouldn't have learnt a very valuable lesson!!!  I had no idea that ETSY shop items have an expiry date and that you need to renew the items on your virtual shelves!!!!  So I have just renewed this workshop!!!!  I could have ended up with an empty shop :-O.

Here is a video to show you what the Surprise is!  This is a fun project to make and to give.  I hope you like it enough to Pin it and then one day when you need a special card for a special occasion..........

Here is the video of the version I made for my Graphic 45 Audition - I love the oriental style of this version!!!

I hope this post is useful to you if you have been thinking about adding Pinterest to your Blog.  And I certainly hope it proves useful to me and that I can persuade you to pin this project and one day follow the links to my blog or shop to purchase this workshop!!! ;-)

Have a great week and thank you for popping by X

Announcing the Daisy Projects

The Daisy Projects is the latest (third) item to arrive on my virtual shelves!  Learn how to make a fabulous Daisy Embellishment (Video Tutorial 1), Gift Box (Video Tutorial 2) and Matching card (Video Tutorial 3) and if that wasn't enough the photo instructions that come with the tutorials show you how to change the Daisy into a Gerbera!  All this for the bargain price of £3.50.  You do need to have or have access to being able to use the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals and Tattered Leaves die to make this Daisy.

I hope you like the projects enough to buy my tutorials and join me in my virtual classroom.  The beauty of my lessons are you can take them any time, in any country and you can pause me anytime you like to take a coffee and cake break!  Oh and I will not mind one bit if you make me repeat myself over and over again! ;-)

I am trying to get PayPal buttons to work on my blog but they are still on trial at the moment.  I hope to be able to try them at the weekend on a different computer to make sure they work so in the meantime if you want to buy this tutorial click on this link to my ETSY shop!

More fabulous flower projects coming soon.

Thank you for popping by x

Trash to Treasure - No 3

I really wanted to start this post by thanking everyone that has left me such lovely comments over the past week.  You have really confirmed to me how much I love to craft and how wonderful this blogging malarky is.  Who knew a year ago when I started blogging how addictive it was and that is really down to you, all my fellow crafters out there in what I think of as a virtual community.  Everyone has been so willing to help when I didn't know how to do so many things but best of all is the sharing.  I know it might sound a bit soppy but I think you will agree with me there is such a generous sharing of ideas and knowledge, sharing of art and inspiration and a willingness to encourage and support out there and that spurs me on to try harder to make beautiful things.  I might not always manage it but I really enjoy the trying!  Thank you to everyone that has liked what I have been doing here on my blog enough to follow me.  I still check out my statistic page and colour in my map each time a visitor from a new country pops up.  How cool it is to have coloured in 68 countries to date.  I have been brushing up on my Geography and thank goodness for the internet or I would still be searching the atlas for the whereabouts of Kazakhstan.......ok ....... and lots of other countries I only vaguely knew where to look for!!!  I have just spotted Moldova on my list of visitors and I will have to look that one up too!!!  I still need a visitor or two from Alaska though as that is a major colouring job!!! ;-)

Now as I suspected when I decided to do a regular Trash to Treasure post it is going to be two weekly!!!  So without further ado my trash this week was old jeans and this is what I did with them.

The jeans have been torn into strips, frayed and fashioned into flowers and ribbons!  As I wondered how to use the flowers I had a huge pile of very large flowers that were in need of a storage solution sitting on my desk and I had this box (actually it was a set of 3 nested boxes I bought some time ago) and decided to make a pretty home for my pretty flowers kindly gifted to me by my friend Barbara.

I white washed my wooden box with acrylic paint liberally thinned with water.  Just to make sure that the wood colour was toned down a bit as I wanted to try out an image transfer technique on a 3D object rather than the flat ones I have done this on before.  That is when the Trash to Treasure ethos popped in to my head and I decided to print my images on to unused instruction sheets that I have left over from previous classes I have taught.

So I found a lovely blue and white Toile image on the internet and I  printed out several sheets (ink jet printer) on my recycled instructions!!

Then working on a side at a time I trimmed pieces of my toile print roughly to size and then you need to work fairly quickly for step one of this technique.  Liberally coat the piece with acrylic paint - I am using white as my print has a white background.  Work quickly and evenly coat the side with a thick coat of paint.

 Next press the printed image onto the side into the wet paint.  Have a piece of kitchen roll handy for mop up of excess paint and an old plastic card (gift card or similar) to gently at first press the paper over the piece and then being careful not to tear the paper smooth it out and against the side making sure you have good adhesion.  Then it is time to have a coffee and let it all dry.  You can use a heat gun if you want to speed up this process.

 When it is totally dry it is time to wet it again!!!!!  I use a paint brush to coat the back of the paper with water and leave it a minute or two to soak into the paper.  Then use your finger to rub the paper and gradually remove the top layer of paper to reveal the image below.  If you have not done this before then be careful.  If you rub too hard you will remove the image entirely.  Gently does it.  There will be bits that don't work but don't worry as this adds to the shabby chic look and the over all charm of the image transfer.  There was a slight problem using the recycled paper in that the black ink did start to bleed.  I manage to avert disaster by rubbing away from the revealed print so as not to transfer the ink back on to the transferred image.

Let your image dry out again and then take a piece of kitchen towel and gently buff off any large stray bits of paper peelings.  Then carry on working to cover the entire box.  This technique is messy but I think it is worth it.

Here is the outside finished.

And then I used more of the printed paper cut to size and glued into position to cover the inside of the box as you can see here.  

I inked all my edges with Chipped Sapphire Distress ink.

Including the inside edges  and then gently sanded the whole piece to shabby it up some more.

And here is my finished Trash to Treasure piece with its recycled denim embellishments.

and here it is filled with pretty flowers - perfect!  Gotta love a bit of gorgeous storage!!! (I am soooooo modest!!!! ;-))  I love this image transfer technique.

I am in the middle of making a video of this technique and using it on the card I am going to give away this on my next Trash to Treasure post.  I wanted to get this post up first as it is a bit long and I will post the card with video later today or early tomorrow dependent on You Tube upload times.  So if you want to win the as yet unseen card then please comment on this post.  Have you tried this technique?  It is a bit messy to do but I think it gives a lovely result and I hope you like it too.

I have done the draw for the Trash to Treasure No 2 card and the winner is.........

Eliza!!!!

Thank you Eliza and to everyone that took the time to comment I really do appreciate it.

That's it for this post.  Pop back later to see the card you could win if you leave a comment on this post.
Hope you enjoyed this Trash to Treasure project and try it out for yourself.

Thanks for popping by x

Ever After Challenge

Tinkerbell Card - Make a Wish!

Guess what I was doing yesterday!!!???  When I saw this weeks Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge I knew immediately which fairytale character I wanted to put on my card.  I love the idea of fairies and there is one fairy in particular who is cute and sassy and here she is!  Bonus point that she wears green which is my favourite colour.  I made my challenge piece at our crop and I was asked a few times who my card is for and I said .......well actually I think it is for me!  I am going to put it on my wall ;-)  I thought you might like to see how I put this one together.

I made a card 5 3/4" square with black card stock.  Quite a heavy weight card stock as my intended embellishments are heavy.  I cut some Tinkerbell green card stock at 5" square and then stamped it with flowers using Tinkerbell green Ink.....are you sensing a theme here :-)  Ok it was Peeled Paint distress ink and the stamp was a flowery background stamp from Hampton Arts.

I inked the edges of my card and then mounted it on my card front and then got to work with this little pearl maker.  I have had this for a while in my stash and it was the first time I tried it.  I have to say it was quite easy to use and the pearls looked just like the real thing when they had dried.

Next I cut a square of white card at 4" followed by a square of black 4 1/4" which I layered on to my card.  That's not a white square I hear you say!  I cut an inch strip off the side of the square and here is what I did with the rest of it after I trimmed an 1/8 off the long edge....

I have a very lovely book that I treated myself to that teaches you step by step how to draw fairies!

Here is my step 1

Step 2

 Step 3

I then added the colour with my Peeled Paint distress ink and outlined her with a black pen (forgot to photo this bit)....too busy chatting!

Then I took 3 little bottles - Why are tiny things so darn cute??  I filled them with fairy dust (glitter to us mere mortals) and added labels and ribbon.  I stuck the wishes to my card with Pinflair glue gel, made a 'Make a Wish' label and added a Making Memories enamel charm in that fabulous green colour!!!  A couple of touches of glitter in Tink's hair and here is the finished result

Tinkerbell!

I am off to my crop again now - how lucky am I two days to ....well...... mostly chat, drink coffee and eat cake with my pals but now and again we do do a bit of crafting as you can see.  I am going to work on a layout today.

But before I head out I would like to say a really big thank you to everyone for their lovely comments on my last last weeks Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge.  I  was bowled over especially this morning when I logged on to make this post and found lots more lovely emails and the fab news of making the top three!!!!!  So cool  -  a big big thank you everyone.

If you are just happening by this way and want to see what wonderful things a good challenge inspires then follow this link to see more Ever After inspired works of art at the Simon Says Stamp Show Challenge Blog.

Hmmmm I suppose I had better get dressed before I head out to my crop ;-)

Thank you for popping by X

Trash to Treasure No 2

I was really excited to get going with this Trash to Treasure project once I had decided what to use as trash.  I have to say that this trash is not my own but belongs to someone in my class who kindly gave me a rather large bag full of this trash.  I am not going to mention any names on the grounds that it will definitely incriminate!!!!!  It was a bag full of empty Spellbinders acetate containers..... you can see why my lips are sealed ;-)

 As you can see the Spellbinder dies have been very carefully removed from the tops of their packaging.  I normally use these as paint pallets in my classes but today I am going to try to turn them into treasure.  I used 2 packages for this project.

I also used my carefully stored G45 scraps in fact I used the back of one of the paper pads for the harlequin card below.  I am feeling very virtuous right now!

I cut the hanger from the packaging and cut a piece of the harlequin card to the same size.  I then used one of the very first tools I bought to put holes in things and punched holes all the way around the sealed edge of the packing.  I am going to stitch my card to my acetate with the holes.  I used brads to keep things in place as I bashed away with my hammer.

Next I removed the lip from the second Spellbinder packaging (be careful as it is a bit sharp).  That gave me two lovely thick pieces of acetate which I put through my cuttlebug and embossed.

I have always wanted to try this and was so pleased with the results I had a play with some different textures.  The heavier the pattern the more white the acetate becomes.  It is very pleasing and I am definitely going to be doing this more often!

I then use my Tim Holtz Tattered Floral die to cut the embossed acetate into flower shapes.  I also cut some flowers from coordinating G45 papers.

After mixing and matching for a while I decided on the daisies and shaped the card and the acetate petals before hot glueing the layers together.  I had the perfect flower centres in my stash.  I love these Creative Expressions Dazzlers as they look like liquorice all sort sweets!!  I have to add here I don't like to eat liquorice all sorts but I have always liked the look of the pink and blue ones!!!

 Next I cut a panel for the centre of my plaque and mounted it on a blue patterned paper leaving a fine border showing.  I fussy cut out two coordinating butterflies from one of the G45 papers too.  Not too fussy with the cutting as I snipped off their antenna - poor butterflies :-(

 I blinged my butterflies with tiny gems and stickles and then let them dry before I coated them with glossy accents.  I cut out the first two words of my quote using the Opposites Attract Cricut Cartridge and layered them up ready to glue to the centre panel once I decide on positioning.

I adhered the centre panel in the middle of the harlequin paper and glued on the words TRUE BEAUTY.  I made some fine wire antenna for my butterflies and glued one under the word TRUE.

Then I was ready to take a fine ribbon and stitch the harlequin card to the acetate packaging.  I think I might try to make a giant shaker panel with this packaging - that would be fun.  I used a blanket stitch (at least that is what I think it is called).

I made a further small plaque with the rest of the wording of the quote which I hand wrote and attached in position with strong tape.  Then I hot glued my acetate and paper flowers in place and added my second butterfly.

I was really pleased with these acetate flowers and would like to try them without the paper layer in the future.  Sorry about the differences in the colour of the photographs - the final result was pictured in daylight!  I think using flower and butterfly embellishments for this quote is perfect as both flowers and butterflies spend their time as buds and caterpillars before revealing their inner beauty.

Thank you so much to everyone that commented on my first ever Trash to Treasure post last week.  As promised I put all the names into a hat and Elizabeth is the winner of my card made from cracker debris!

I had another idea when I was working on this Trash to Treasure post and I used the same kind of shaped acetate packaging - this time from some Basic Grey magnets and I came up with this alternative shaker card.

I will share the photo tutorial for this one tomorrow.  This is my give-away for this week's Trash to Treasure so please leave a comment on this post and I will put everyones' name in a hat again next week.  I'd love to know what your favourite trash to treasure projects are.

I am pretty sure I can do more with this acetate packaging so watch this space!!!