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Archive for 2013

Yum Yum Raspberry, Chocolate & Cream At FSC

Fashionable Stamping Challenges this fortnight has a colour theme which was picked by the lovely Yvonne. She would love to see Raspberry, Chocolate and Cream on your makes.

Please don’t laugh when you start reading this post … I am deadly serious.

This is the start of one of my New Year’s Resolution which is to get ahead of the game with birthday cards for my family and friends in 2014.

I am always “behind throwing” when it comes to giving cards, so let me show you my first birthday card make of 2014 for my son’s birthday on the 30th October. I can show family cards because none of them look at my blog!!!

Each time I make something I am determined that it will fit in with someone’s birthday for next year (wonder how long this will last). At the moment I am in the process of making a file folder to put them all in.

I am more comfortable with doing collages and fussy cutting when it comes to making cards and this one certainly had loads thrown at it.

Not sure how my son is going to like the colour scheme but this is the way the card went and I carried on with it. To be more truthful the uber talented Dot and I picked the same stamp for our projects so I changed course mid-stream and the other will be shown at a later date (someone else’s birthday).

My son’s name is John-Paul but it has always been shortened to JP. Used another of Tim’s stencils for the initials called Cargo. Recently bought the Darkroom Door stamps, Correspondence which takes up the majority of the card, love them to bits. The men are from Flonzcrafts.

Wow one down, will probably get another one done before the resolution goes **** [CENSORED in the interests of national security] up. Can you tell that I worked at The British Embassy in Kuwait for 6 years??

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Please please pop on over for a peak at what the rest of the Fashionettes have created.

Shirl

Any Winged Creatures At C2CU

December’s main theme at Crafts-Too-Challenge You is The Natural World. Below is my final make for the challenge this year which is Any Winged Creature.

Both background layers of corrugated cardboard were sprayed with dylusions inks called Melted Chocolate and Postbox Red.

The third layer was a piece of material which had molding paste scraped onto it with a Crafts Too stencil. This was then frayed and stitched onto the corrugated cardboard.

I wanted the butterfly as the main focal point of my card. It actually started life as a gold metal charm but this didn’t work too well.

Gold definitely didn’t go with my colour scheme so changed it into this fabulous blue metallic winged delight with white chalk paint and Treasure Gold Sapphire Gilding Wax from PaperArtsy.

Finished everything off with more stitching around the sentiment and a fussy cut G45 lady from the 12 days of Christmas collection.

Handmade flower and ribbon were both dipped very gently into the left over dylusions spray.

Natural 232Natural 22 2

Shirl

Thinking Of Each & Everyone Of You This Christmas

This is what we have all been waiting for … wahoo – it’s Christmas!!!

Wishing You A Very Merry Christmas

Have fun with all those pressies but lets not forget to spare a heartfelt thought to all those who won’t be with their loved ones today.

Christmas Tag #12 – Funkie Junky Style

#1 tag is here with the rules. Linda’s # 12 tag and the Funkie Junkie Boutique is here.

What better way to finish Linda’s 12 tags of Christmas than showing #12 on the actual 12th day. The inspiration for this one came from Linda’s stars and also the colour palette. Lucky me got to use another of Tim’s stencils … no prizes for guessing which one!!

That completes all of my Christmas tags and you can see everyone of them … here

This final tag has had the usual paint, crackle, embossing, frantage, tissue paper, molding paste etc…

Printed all the images onto tissue paper and the sentiment. In GIMP I cut and pasted the Santa image onto the sentiment, which is a digi from Whimsey Designs. I sent Santa to the back and overlapped the sentiment then printed onto white tissue. The boy and girl image is from a Joanna Sheen Victorian Christmas CD which I have had forever. Before printing this image onto tissue I changed it from plain to a canvas effect this gave it a more olde worlde look.

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Shirl

Winged Creatures At C2CU

December’s main theme at Crafts-Too-Challenge You is The Natural World. There are two parts to the monthly challenge and here we are starting twist 2 which is – Any Winged creature. This is sure to be a favourite with everyone

I am still going with the natural tones for my colour palette as it has been a refreshing change from all those reds and greens of Christmas. Wahoo not long now for the little fat man to come a knocking. Can’t wait to see what Santa will be bringing me!!!

Used the flourish die from Crafts Too. Firstly I placed onto the tag and inked over to leave a subtle background impression. The left over die had pieces snipped off which I added to the tag.

The rest of the design team have worked really hard to bring you some amazing inspiration so pop here to have a peek.

Shirl

Simply Spiffing

Stamped and embossed this cheeky chappy from Time Travellers with black E P onto craft card then coloured with Distress Inks. For the background I used white E P with this stamp from Indigo Blu (just the music part). Also used Tim’s Journeyman tissue tape which was added randomly but very sparingly.

Part of the Ephemera 3 collection of stamps from Paperartsy was stamped onto a spare piece of cardstock which was coloured also with DI’s then roughed up the edges a little. For the finishing touches I used a few bits from the G45 Typography papers and a framed die before using my fave Alphabet Stamps for the spiffing and old chap sentiment.

Brrr, well this was a surprise this morning. Winter is well and truly here the fluffy white stuff has started flurrying around in huge swirls. Took a quick photo from inside … I was not going outside for anything.

Fluffy White Stuff1Fluffy White Stuff

Entering for: The Artistic StamperAnything Goes
Simon Says Challenge – Use A Stamp

Shirl

Truly A Gentleman’s World

Can any of you guess what I got for my birthday from hubby … wait for it … all the Tim Holtz stencils, one very happy bunny, hence my playing around with backgrounds. Totally going to bore you in the coming weeks as I just want to use everyone of them. Andrew bought them from Linda at the Funkie Junkie who has a terrific deal going on which you can see here.

Sharing another background piece that I made on Sunday. This was achieved with another of the Tim Holtz stencils, this time I used the Rays.

Everything thrown at it as usual … you know me and collaging. From the word go with my journey into crafting my natural course seemed to gravitate towards collaging. Totally love to take random composition pieces from my bit boxes and make art from them.

Unifying my colours is always so important to me when doing this form of art because if you are not careful it can look a complete mess. But I am learning all the time.

For years I was more into my colouring of very pretty stamped images so I have come fairly late into the world of paints and other mixed media art but I am totally loving where it is taking me.

Elegant Men1Elegant Men21

Shirl

Write Your Story

The little Christmas craft market which I went to on Friday was such fun but it wouldn’t have been so amazing without the girls and men at Elavon who very kindly bought nearly all of my crafty products. I couldn’t believe how much I sold, it was amazing. Wow I now have a little stash of lovely dosh for more crafting goodies.

Thank You Elavon for inviting me – so looking forward to next year already.

It was a real dirty day yesterday with the weather but I had a crafty friend who turned up for a little mucky play which was much more fun. She is experimenting with paint at the moment so we made a couple of backgrounds using paints and crackle.

My first background piece was made with red and black paint, she used the colours of black and green for hers. After making the backgrounds she had to dash off but I carried on playing.

The molding paste came into play with the Tim Holtz Stencil Eye Chart. When all was dry the stamping started, I used a dirty lime green chalk paint to stamp the numbers from Tim Holtz’s Urban Chic collection before dabbing it around the edges. I buy my chalk paints from a beautiful little shop in Camolin where she makes me up little pots of whatever colour I want. The faces are from the PaperArtsy Mini 10 and Mini 05 and both were stamped onto papers from G45 the Typography collection … gorgeous. The Do Not Bend came from another PaperArtsy collection called Ephemera 3.

Story Time 1Story Time 2

Entering for: The Artistic Stamper – Anything Goes

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge – Use A Stamp.

Shirl

The Earth Laughs In Flowers

Sorry girls short and sweet today as I am off to a Christmas craft market, selling this time not buying … I hope lol.

December’s main theme at Crafts-Too-Challenge You is The Natural World. There are two parts to the monthly challenge, today I am showing my second card for the add a flower twist.

“The Earth Laughs In Flowers” is such an apt sentiment for the twist to the Natural World theme.
Flowers have such a magical feel about them and the other sentiment on my card reflects this perfectly.

NaturalNatural 1

Used a Crafts Too stencil with some molding paste and a Crafts Too E F.

The rest of the design team have worked really hard to bring you some amazing inspiration so pop here to have a peek.

Shirl

Funkie Junkie 12 Tags Of Christmas – #11

Christmas Tag #11 – Funkie Junky Style

#1 tag is here with the rules. Linda’s # 11 tag and the Funkie Junkie Boutique is here.

I am going to be so disappointed when Linda posts her final tag as I have enjoyed following along with everyone of them.

Today’s tag on Linda’s blog is probably my favorite to date but we still have the 12th to go so I will wait until she has posted this before I make a definite choice. My inspiration came from the trees, colours and reindeer on her tag.

The tag has been painted, crackled, stamped on (not literally), embossed, frantaged to an inch of it’s life as well as adding the gorgeous napkin reindeer with a layering of Mod Podge.

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Shirl

First Christmas Party

Yesterday was our Crafty Christmas party, we had an absolutely amazing time. All the girls brought some goodies with them.

We had homemade mince tarts and a Toblerone cheesecake which our Phil supplied, yum yum mmmm. Susan brought the home made quiches which were soon devoured. Maria came with the dips and cheese nibbles, melt in the mouth. The lovely Theresa not only supplied the Christmas crackers plus the entertainment in the form of dressing up … but we wont mention the tail shall we Theresa lol … she also gave each of us a goodie bag to take home. Oh, my contribution was the boring ole salad. Kay kept us entertained with jokes. A little about Kay, she has been coming to my class for a good few years now but doesn’t participate anymore because her eyesight has deteriorated so badly. She wanted to contribute with the food but her SIL Phil wouldn’t let her because she said “she would probably only poison us all”. All said very jokingly … even Kay agreed with her. New Phil turned up at the class and was totally in the dark about it all because she was away the week before and we decided it would be a nice surprise for her.

Guess who’s cross because we didn’t take one photo, even forgot to take a photo of the quick and easy make that we did beforehand.

Anyways here’s a man’s version of what I made after the class and I will show the girly version of the class make sometime during this week.

Shirl