A sneaky peak...part 1

A sneaky peak...part 1

A New Role!

This is very exciting! I have joined Stampin' Up as a new independent demonstrator.  Yes, yes, yes I know it's a bit like Avon,  however I am very excited to start this journey and I hope I can make a success of it.  My Stampin' Up website is:  http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/fis-papercrafts

I hope you will have a look around and join me on this adventure.  I have really enjoyed posting here and getting your feedback.  I will still be posting projects that are independent - because lets face it, like you, I have enough supplies to open my own shop even without Stampin' Up!  So I will be trying to manage two blogs, this one and one on my official Stampin' Up website.

Flamingo's!

I promised I would show you some cards I have made with the new Flamingo Lingo stamp set I got from Stampin' Up.  I have to say I have had enormous fun with them, to be frank I think everyone will be getting a flamingo on their card this year!

Here are a selection of cards I have made recently, some with the Docrafts 'Feeling Fruity' free papers from their website.  So, if you have a birthdays soon, you will have to guess which card could be for you.

On the middle card I used the 'Mustache Framelit' die with the Stampin' Up 'Well Worded' (retired) stamp set.  Again, another love of mine and very easy to make contemporary cards for men with.  Watch out Hubby, with your birthday and Father's day coming up this could be for you!

 Last Saturday I went to the Stampin' Up catalogue launch and these were the 'make and takes', a card, a tag and a chocolate bar wrapper, all with the new colours and products.

The last two cards were made for my Dad's partner's 70th Birthday.  Both cards were made with free stamp sets.  The flower stamp set for the blue card came from issue 117 of Papercraft Essentials. I think this is a very pretty set, and easy to use.  I used three ink colours to get the layering effect.

 The oriental stamp set came from issue 144 of Cardmaking and Papercraft.  Colouring isn't my strong point, but I find using watercolour pens helpful (in this case docrafts artiste watercolour pens - set of 12).

That's all from me at the moment, still have quite a few summer cards to complete, but currently busy with the end of term paperwork for work, so they may need to wait a little bit.  Can you believe it -  all the Christmas goodies will be released soon for the Christmas 2015 cards.  I will have to sit on my hands.

Birthdays

Just a quick post to show you the preparations for Sophie's 4th Birthday.  I made place-mats and thank you bags using craft artist.  I have also prepped pinwheels for the children to make and decorate (along with princess hats) tomorrow - well I had to do something crafty with them.

If we survive the crafty table, party bags and party food there should be another update next month!

Not quite keeping to my New Years Resolutions

Oh dear....not sure how much of this I should write as I know my husband reads and shares these posts...now.

'Gulps'... my resolution not to spend any money on crafty items has gone since I have been going to the Stampin' Up classes (well to be honest it had gone by the end of January).  I've spent roughly £40 on new stamps and bits and pieces and I have only been to two classes. One of the new stamp sets I have purchased is called 'Flamingo Lingo'. It's a really fun set featuring flamingos, I will show you some card examples with my next blog as I haven't had a chance to play with them yet.

I have also purchased the Midnight Blush capsule collection from Papermania (via Create and Craft), from which I made the following 'Thank you' card and box for a colleague.  I stamped and embossed a free flower stamp set from a magazine onto a off-cut from an A3 piece of centura pearl card-stock. I then layered with a strip of paper and lace from the capsule collection.  I covered a tag with contrasting paper and stamped a sentiment on and attached it with a 'big bloom' paper flower.  I made a basic box for the card to fit in, and layered paper from the collection onto plain black card before decorating the box with the layers.  I stamped a large greeting onto black card and embossed with silver powder.  I die-cut several flowers and attached around the greeting, finishing with a gem in the centre of each flower. I thought they both looked very sophisticated.

I was very busy in April as it is the busiest month for birthdays - Dad's, my brother's and my niece's all within 2 weeks.


For Dad's I used a Stamps Away mask (hummingbird) and Phill Martin's texture paste (denim blue) from Creative Expressions.  It worked quite well, although I do need to practice more in ensuring the paste doesn't bleed under the mask.

I also made a pop up box card from the Grandchildren using a Hunkydory at the Seaside kit.

For my niece I used a Santoro Gorjuss card making kit for her card and used the same kit to decorate a notebook and bookmark for her.

There have been other expenditures which I decided had come for Valentine's Day and Mothers' Day...after I had bought them!

Oh well, it should give me an incentive to try and sell my cards at a Craft Fair, although I never seem to have time to build up enough stock to do this.  I must do so as I am just getting swamped with crafting goodies.  My latest purchases I have justified by saying they are for my daughters 4th birthday preparations this month.  They include a W R Memorykeepers pinwheel board and accessories and a laminator and pockets.

Celebrations!

I thought I would do a quick post before Easter to show you a couple of things I have been up to recently.  

Last weekend I went to my first craft class with Stampin' Up.  Esther the demonstrator was very nice and even provided cakes and tea.  There were three other ladies, who were all soooo good. We completed three projects - a notelet set, a teeny weeny basket and a birthday card - as well as having a good natter.  Here is a link to her blog, she has some fantastic ideas there:  Esther's Blog

We also received some goodies, including a set of 12x12 'something borrowed' papers from their designer range.  It's a very stylish set of papers for weddings etc.  However we used them on the birthday card and they would probably be very nice for christenings and anniversaries.  However, these papers came in handy almost immediately as on the Monday my next door neighbour looked a bit worse for wear.  Her son had got married the day before!  That night I made the card below, mixing the papers with a Hunkydory kit and some of the Craftwork card flowers I had left over from the girls wreaths.

On a more personal note, Isabel has started rolling over and we are introducing her to foods.  Her Grandparents don't live very close, therefore I created this page for them using Craft Artist 2 and the Nursery Rhyme digikit.

A quiet month...

Well, this month we have had the builders in remodeling our kitchen, dining room and backroom.  Therefore my craft room/spare room is currently the storage room.  Thankfully, I thought ahead slightly and made my Mothers' Day cards before the work started.

However, I have learnt a rather useful (if basic) lesson.  Do not leave your cards on top of the printer, in front of direct sunlight as all your ink fades.  I got inspiration from Issue 136 of Quick Cards (p60) - triple stamping.  It is were you carefully layer three different sized pieces of card on top of each other and stamp across the borders so that the image is on all three pieces of card.  Once happy, the individual cards are matted on to contrasting paper and layered back together.  The effect is very pretty and is a way of producing your own background papers.  Admittedly, it is not so effective after three weeks in direct sunlight.

However, here are the cards I made for Mum and Mum-in-Law, they are 6x6 gate-fold cards:

Now that the girls are growing up they seem to be invited to birthday parties more and more often. It is lovely to see how excited they get, therefore, I had a couple of cards to get ready this month.

I made this card for a 3yr old using Crafter's Companion Rachelle Anne Miller Kids at Play CD-Rom and the accompanying papercrafting pack.  I used one sheet of the background card and one sentiment from the papercrafting pack to make the front of the card and printed of the decoupage, flowers and backing sheet from the CD-Rom.

I made sure the front panel and back panel were the same size and scored both sheets at 1/2 inch and 1 inch in from both sides and folded the score lines so that it forms a box frame, which would push flat in an envelope (but don't glue yet).  I cut the aperture from the front panel, and kept the square piece that came out.  I then cut the base image for the decoupage from the next sized die down from the the one I cut the aperture with.

I compiled the decoupage on to the base image and glued it onto the square I saved from the aperture I cut from the front panel.   I glued one side of the front panel to the back panel and placed the decoupage in the box frame.  After carefully lining up the image, I glued it in place and then glued the other side of the box frame.

I then decorated freely with the embellishments, adding some cosmic twinkles glitter glue to the centre of the flowers.  I was really pleased with how it came out, although I think in future I would change the colour of the card I printed the decoupage on.

The second card was made with Serif Craft Artist 2 for a 7yr old who is mad about Frozen.  I found the Frozen image on the internet and brought it into Craft Artist as a photo.  The background and materials for the mats and layers are from the Serif Christmas Card 2009 digikit, the embellishments, bow and ribbon were from the 50's Fever digikit.  I used the colour picker tool to colour match the bow to Anna's cape.  I printed it on photo paper to give it a nice glossy finish and glued it onto a A5 card blank.  I added an insert by copying  the main image onto a second page and using the transparency tool to lighten the image before printing off.

Lets just hope I understood my 7yr old's ramblings correctly and her friend really does like Frozen, as she got home made Frozen wrapping paper as well!

That's it for this month.  I am still trying to start the scrapbook for Izzy, however I am struggling to find a way of starting it.  Any suggestions let me know (I am using the Snap Studio, Simple Stories system).

Projects on my Desk

I'm not sure about any other crafty or hobbyist person, however I seem to have an awful lot of projects scattered around my craft room (aka the spare bedroom) that are never completed - or even started in same cases!  I think its a crafty thing, we are attracted to all that glitters and flit too and fro but never stay long enough to see things through.

Well, this time I did.  Several months ago I got the Craftwork Cards Wreath Making kit, which was the members gift from Create and Craft.  There were two circle wreaths and one heart wreath and enough flowers to decorate them.  The idea was to make them into door hangings for my three daughters.  With number three on the way I couldn't sit down long enough to even contemplate starting it at the time.

But inspiration struck me soon after Christmas and I sat down and made the wreaths up.  Part of my problem was that I enjoyed making the first 2 pages of flowers, but got a bit impatient with the last two pages.  This is something I have noticed as I have gotten older, that I don't have the attention span! Maybe that's having three children, job and house to manage - I respond briefly to the item (or person) that shouts the loudest.

Anyway, for some of the flowers I added Hunkydory diamond sparkles glitter, some I left plain and just used the gold and silver candi supplied and some I heat embossed. It should have been clear embossing powder, however Sophie (3yr old) had 'played' with my stash and mixed all my embossing powders up.  So, it was a mixture of clear, sparkly and silver embossing powders.  I may need to invest in some new powders (but will this go against my New Year's resolution not to buy any new crafting stuff apart from essentials???).

I attached the flowers and the ribbons that were supplied with the kit.  I then used my Silhouette Portrait to cut their names out of Create and Craft glitter card stock and black card (from Crafters Companion - very good).  I used the black card as a shadow under the glitter card, and to add some strength as the lettering was fairly fine.  I then attached the names across the center of the wreaths to personalise each one.

I was quite impressed with how they have turned out, and the girls love them on their doors. I was also pleased to have a number of flowers left over that I can use on other projects and cards (in fact I already have).

My next project is to complete the baby book for Isabel - which I am very daunted with.  For my other two girls we just got a shop bought one which you add the information into, this time I got Snap Studio Simple Stories Album and inserts, and not sure where to start....

but that is for another blog.

And one year later......

I guess you could say I had a break for a little while.  In October 2014 I gave birth at home to our third little girl, Isabel.  Everything went well with the planned home birth, but unfortunately she had to stay for a week in neo-natal for a lung infection,  However, she is doing really well now and is growing fast -as any other baby does. As you can see from the photo of the three girls below, they are all fine and not besotted with Frozen at all - Emma as Elsa, Sophie as Arna and as I couldn't find a baby Olaf costume, Isabel is Sven!

During pregnancy I had to concentrate on the aspects of my life that had to get done, such as looking after my other two girls, the house and paid work, so crafting was put to one side for a little bit.

However.... I am back now and hope to keep this blog up and running.

New Year's Resolutions
I don't normally do New Year's Resolutions as I generally forget about them after a month (as most people do), however this year I thought I would plan some crafting resolutions:

1: Try not to buy any new crafting gear (apart from the basics) - a strange one I know, however I do have an awful lot of crafting and card making goodies that I want to try to use up, This includes quite a few Hunkydory card kits.  I do like the Hunkydory quality, but get a bit stuck sometimes on using them creatively rather than just sticking the toppers onto the cards stock - which creates a lovely card if you are short of time or mental capacity!

As you can see from the photo, I have started this trend with my Christmas thank you cards, which are entirely made from my 'bit' bag.  A bag full of scraps of card from other projects or papers and embellishments that I have had for awhile that are left overs from kits or I have got free from magazines.  I am quite pleased as to how they have turned out.

My lovely husband bought me the Silhouette Portrait electronic cutting machine for a joint birthday and Christmas present, which I am thoroughly enjoying even if I have only done a few basic shapes and cards on it.  I feel it will take me a couple of dedicated days to completely understand - which with three young children should be interesting to accomplish .  I am hoping that using the Portrait alongside Craft Artist 2 software will give me endless possibilities without an endless pocket.

2: To sell at a Craft Fair - I have sold cards at my daughters school Christmas Bazaar to the children and the parents, however it wasn't as successful as I had hoped.  Firstly, with the Key Stage One children (ages 4-7) it did feel like I was robbing them slightly as they hadn't a clue what they were buying, they just knew that they had money and they wanted to spend it! Secondly, the parents only came in for a short time when collecting their children after school and were not aware that it was open for them.  Nevertheless I made a small profit.

So I have decided that I need to take the next step and sell at a professional Craft Fair, which I am fairly nervous about as it means having a knowledgeable customers and peers look at my creations.  Family like them, but will the public....

3: To keep this blog going!  Hopefully this year I can manage more than two posts, unlike last year.  It will still be a push, but hopefully I can show you creations I have made using the Portrait and Craft Artist.  As a taster, here are two box cards I made using a cutting file from the Portrait and a Christmas card kit I got from Create and Craft in the autumn of 2013 - I believe it is their own brand item and not from another company.  The cards were for my niece and a my friend's newborn twins.

I hope you all had a nice Christmas and New Year, and I will keep you informed of the antics in this crafting house.

Fiona

Too early to think about Valentines Day....

Well, as most of the shops have already started to display creme eggs and bags of mini eggs, I guess it can't be too early to be thinking of Valentine's Day makes.

Just before Christmas I bought the Crafter's Companion Sweet Treats boards and CD-Rom.  Therefore, at Christmas most people got their presents in a very quickly designed box using the board, but I designed the papers in Craft Artist 2.  I was thrilled with the results, particularly the bow templates that come on the CD-Rom.

So....I wanted to play with the boards a bit more and came up with this small milk carton box.  I designed the papers in Craft Artisit 2 (Cupid digikit) and printed a free patchwork heart digistamp from Handmade Harbour (http://handmadeharbour.blogspot.co.uk/).  I originally imported the stamp into Craft Artist 2 and added it to the papers, however this wasn't very well thought out as when it was printed the hearts were not in the right place on the sheet to be seen on the box.  As this would take copious amounts of calculations and measurements I took them off.

I just printed the heart off and embossed the lines with a versamark pen and gold embossing powders and then coloured the heart with flexmarker - Tea Rose. I add highlights with a Wink of Stella pink pen (I don't have the brush nib ones, just the hard nib pens).  I have to say I love the Wink of Stella pens, they add just the most delicious amount of glint that just makes you look twice at the project.  If you can only get one of these pens go for the clear as you can use it on top of any other pencils or pens that you have and it adds that subtle glitter.

I found some free thickies stickers for the lettering which I coloured with a flexmarker (Sorbet) and added them to the bottom.  With some pink ribbon (I don't buy that much ribbon, I normally use the ribbon you find in ladies tops that should be used to secure the clothes to the hanger).  Over all I think this is a very effective little gift box, just the right size for 6 medium sized cookies or a medium sized bottle of perfume.

I would be interested to hear what you think of it.

New Year

Well I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year.  We did, it was manic as usual as we travelled with the two girls to three or more places to visit various relatives.  We stayed at my Mum's and had Christmas day with my dad, his partner and my brother and his family.  It was a really good to catch up and spend time with my family.

After spending a few days with my family we travelled up to Saddleworth to stay with my husbands family.  Our niece was one on the 31st, and the girls had a great time with all of my nieces friends and relatives.  Unfortunately I had a splendid cold by this time and figured that 6 sets of parents would not appreciate this seasonal 'gift'.  This left hubbie fending for himself amongst the crowd.  But from what I understand, he thoroughly enjoyed himself.  Fortunately, knowing me as well as he does, he came home with cake.  Homemade hedgehog chocolate cake.  Fantastic!

As Christmas has passed, I wanted to show you the cards that I made at the request of my sister-in-law for her family.  In return she sent us two amazingly beautiful hand-stitched cards, one gold Christmas tree and one silver.

Here are the cards I made for her family.  The first two I used a stencil I got free with a magazine and the papers that came with the stencil.  I used versamark inkpad and stamped the image and heat embossed with gold/silver embossing powder.  The sentiment came from another set of stamps.  I then layered on to black and silver card or gold and white card and printed an insert from Craft Artist 2.

Jessica's card was made using papers I got from Create and Craft.  Using the Tonic shape cutter system I cut the oval out and fitted a plastic dome from Hunkydory.  I used a Martha Stewart punch to create the snowflakes and the bits left over I put in the dome along with some glitter.  The lettering came from Craft Artist 2.

The stripy card used papers from My Paperstash and American Crafts card stock and was a simple case of matting and layering the images and sentiments.  The last card was created with papers from Create and Craft and an origami technique I found on the internet.  I was really pleased with the result as it added texture and depth to the card.

Thankfully my sister-in-law was really pleased with the cards .... and nothing fell off!

I also made some small cards for my daughters school friends.  These were very cost effective to do.  I used  Craft Artist 2 and digikits from daisytrail.  The images were small enough to fit four cards on to one A4 page and then I used a kwiki glue pen to add glitter for detail.  In total each card cost 20p to make - including the cost of the digikits, card and paper to make the envelopes.

Lastly I wanted to show you the present we got from my dad for Christmas.  My brother got a similar one.  It is a bird house - a huge bird house (please note the fruit bowl to the side).  Now, I am all for encouraging wild life into our garden and caring for our native birds.  However, with this bird house we will probably need planning permission before we can fix it - that is if we can find a large enough tree and the means to fix it.  As I said to my brother 'I think it is time we started looking for that old peoples' home'.

Recovery

Well I am back, slightly later than I promised, however the house has been manic with recovery and preparation for Christmas. 

The back operation went really well and I noticed a huge improvement in the pain and discomfort I was feeling.  One leg still has a loss of sensation and, after several weeks of limited movement, both legs are feeling weak.  However soon after half term I was up and walking the girls to school and back, taking them swimming and playing in the park.

We are very fortunate where we live in that the walk to school is 15 minutes through the park of an amazing house.  South Hill Park is owned by Bracknell Council and is used as an arts venue, theatre and café.  The grounds that surround it are open all the time and it is lovely to be able to walk the girls through the tees, past the pond and over the bridge during the different seasons.  My youngest is just over two and half and loves kicking the leaves and jumping in puddles.  She is also the speediest toddler going, which is not good after a back operation with weak legs.  Apparently 'stop' is not in here vocabulary yet.

I really want to show you some of the cards I have been making for Christmas, however these may have to wait until the new year as I don't want the recipients to see them too early.

I hope to be back before the New Year, however I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

A short break

Well, I have been trying to catch up with some crafty things at the moment.  My Birthday was last week and I am in the midst of doing thank you cards.  As most people brought me crafty goodies the cards are an experiment as I try out new techniques and supplies.  I have bought myself a heat gun and therefore I am heat embossing everything.- it really is quite exciting watching the dusty powder turn shiny and sparkly.  I have completed all my daughters cards for her friends birthdays over the next few weeks.

On Monday I am having a small operation on my back, therefore I won't be blogging for the next few weeks.   But when I return I promise a full account of the procedure and agony afterwards (lol).

I will see you after the October half term.