2 Cute!

2 Cute Rubber Stamps is hosting a Valentine's challenge at the moment. The idea is to use one of the wonderful 2 Cute images to make a Valentine's theme creation. I love the animal images and was recently the happy recipient of two free images. So I had to make two cards, both shown below. If you want to take part, and there is a lovely prize of a $15 give certificate for the 2 Cute Etsy store, just get yourself a 2 Cute image and give it a go. You can even use one of the freebie images on the 2 Cute blog.

Catch up

I hadn't realised that it had been so long since I posted anything to my blog. With 20 inches of snow to deal with over the last two weeks I guess things got away from me - again.

So what's been happening? Well, lots of Christmas card making so I have added some photos of them here. Then I signed up for an online class with Carla Sonheim. It has been brilliant fun. We are making journals and purses from fabric scraps and I have re-discovered my love of my sewing machine. If you want to find out more you can read about it here. There will be a second presentation of the class in the New Year and I can heartily recommend it. So far I have made two scrap journals and am in the process of making my scrap purse. The final lesson arrived yesterday so pictures of the purse will follow soon but here are a couple of pics of my journals. I have adjusted Carla's instructions just a little when it came to binding them. I used a binding technique using cotton perle thread and beads instead of stitching the page in. That way I can add new pages later if I want to.











I also mastered basic crochet. Now, this has been an issue for me for a long time. I learned to knit when I was little but never really took to it. Crochet, however, was a mysterious hobby. One hook and magnificent forms could be created. Could I figure out how to crochet? Nope! The illustrations in books were always useless but by chance I came across a tip from someone who crochets - the internet. This will sound very obvious to most of us. I use the internet to research nearly everything but it never occurred to me that it would be of any more help than the books I had used. Wrong! I had forgotten we are in the age of video classes. NexStitch is a crochet site that had a number of videos for beginner and it revolutionised the way people learn crochet. Me included. So far I have just played around but I have embarked on what I hope will be a scarf. The plan is to have grey ends that will be embellished and a coloured central panel. So far it is slow going. I might be 60 before I get this finished but I am having fun learning new techniques.


And marbling! I bought a couple of bottles of a marbling paint by Marabu called Easy marble and it actually works! In the past I have bought all the alum, size and inks and produced the ultimate in ugliness. So it was a lovely surprise when this stuff actually worked. It is a solvent based ink that floats on water (if you are using something smaller than A5 paper or wallpaper paste if it's bigger than that. So far I only have the blue and yellow so my colour will be limited but I feel a shopping spree coming on next week.


And, of course, there has been Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas and I have been taking part but I will post the photos of those later.

Other than that, there has been little drawing going on. I had an essay to write for my mythology course which took me longer than I expected. The snow meant much snow shovelling and Christmas shopping has been keeping me away from more productive work. But I hope you have enjoyed this catch up on my creativity. My Challenge Gillian images will be up soon too.

Mini gift cards for Halloween

I am in love with Stampotique Originals' stamps. In particular the ones by Daniel Torrente with their scruffy, detailed, gothic style images. Last week I treated myself to some of the new release Halloween stamps including Halloween Cube 2 and Puss, Puss to go with Mr Stripes, whom I bought last year. They are just so cute and have a slightly forlorn look that is hard to resist. But then I'm a sucker for a sad pumpkin. However, I also came across Sue Roddis' fabulous bookmarks using the same stamps and had to try them myself. These are the results but instead of making them into bookmarks (I couldn't find mini magnets to use as closures) I have kept them as little gift cards. The two little squares at the bottom are made with offcuts of decorated paper, using shiny foils and texture plates. They are yet to find their destiny but would fit on little cards as toppers. They actually came about as I had a couple of stamped images left over and they just demanded to be used - and who am I to refuse a pumpkin!

Birthday biz

There has been a flurry of big birthdays in my family recently with more to come so making birthday cards has been top of the agenda. My Gran was 91 at the end of August and my Uncle and Aunt will both be 70 this month. However, to top off the birthdays this year is my Grandfather's at the end of the year. He will be 100. It is hard for me to imagine what that would be like. He still lives by himself and is fiercely independent so it even more amazing. Anyway, I have added a couple of the birthdays cards here. The first uses K and Co papers but the photo doesn't show it off at its sparkly best. The papers are foiled and I added some glitter and a shiny blue peel off to match the foiling. The other card is made from a kit bought from QVC UK and designed by their resident craft expert, Dawn Bibby. It's a lovely kit, pale and soft but with foiling and lots of butterflies and dragonflies.

The other photos include some of my Halloween themed swaps - a ribbon fairy/witch swap and a recipe card swap. But, not content with paper crafts I have gone back to making some jewellery. The pictures here are some of the pieces I have uploaded to Etsy. I enjoy making jewellery very much but I don't wear jewellery very often. So I figured maybe I could make a little money selling it. We shall see if it works out that way. The final photos are of a couple of Halloween bookmarks made using Cosmo Cricket papers and some of my own zany skulls which were then laminated. One is for a swap buddy and the other is currently in my copy of The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. You can never have too many bookmarks.

Buried treasure 2010

As many of you will know, Seth from The Altered Page is running Buried Treasure again. This is where we get to pick our favourite posts that we have put on our blogs. Last year was pictures from my nature notebook (still my all time favorite post) so what could I pick this year? Well, as it is getting closer to October (yes, I'm looking forward to autumn already) I thought I'd pick my Halloween post from last year. Entitled 'Halloween treats' it is full of the creative goodies I made for last Halloween - my favourite celebration. I hope you will all enjoy looking back with me.

As promised here are some Halloween goodies that I have been working on. Tim Holtz in his 'tricks & treats' blog post gave some great ideas for creating wonderful arty pieces and Ten Two Studios has some instructions on using matchboxes in the 'project' section of the web site. So I took my lead from those ideas and here they are. Some have been swapped out for group or one to one swaps but all of them were fun to do.

Slacking with the blog posts

I know, I've been slacking again. Wish I could say I have been busy creatively speaking but family obligations have been taking alot of time over the last few weeks that I haven't been as creative as I would like. Anyway, I thought I would post a few pictures of the Easter cards I made - just to give you something new to look at. New drawings are in the works - lots of fluffies and not so fluffys (in fact, more feathered than fluffy).

Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day in the UK today so I thought I'd upload the card I made for my Mum. It went down really well. It's just as well my Mum's sense of humour is as daft as mine. The design is inspired by one of Tone Finnanger's bee cards from her latest book Crafting Tilda's Friends.

Merry Christmas!

It looks like we will be getting a white Christmas this year. The first in many years. Yippee!

So, now it is Christmas Eve, and all the cards have been delivered, I can show you some of the Christmas cards I have been making this year. I bought some nice stamps and card so there was very little that could go wrong with them. It made the job much easier. Every year I seem to have fewer and fewer cards to send. A family members pass on and friends leave the fold the need to make as many cards diminishes. It is a sad but natural part of life but this time of year allows me to think of all the fun times I had with those people.

The pictures above are of my final tip in pages for the monthly swap I took part in. The recipient was a fan of pink so I used my snow obsession and pinks and purples as the theme.

The swirly card here is by a company called Hunkydory and the images and stamps by Crafty Individuals. All very rich and Christmassy.

Wishing you all a crafty Christmas and a creative New Year.

Halloween treats

As promised here are some Halloween goodies that I have been working on. Tim Holtz in his 'tricks & treats' blog post gave some great ideas for creating wonderful arty pieces and Ten Two Studios has some instructions on using matchboxes in the 'project' section of the web site. So I took my lead from those ideas and here they are. Some have been swapped out for group or one to one swaps but all of them were fun to do.