My Lovely Followers

Wednesday 30 March 2016

Lee Holland - Teddy Best Friends

Hi everyone! I have a super quick make to share with you today. As you know I usually shy away from CAS, and by shy away I mean run screaming lol, and well animals have not been my forte either. But lately I've been having fun colouring up animals and I decided to have a bit of a play with CAS as well.


I'm pretty happy with this, I think it's starting to make sense to me. It still makes me twitch a little, and I would never abandon my fussy cards, but sometimes it's just nice to make something in an hour or so and be able to send it flat in an envelope.  I used the following:

Langton Hot Pressed Watercolour Paper
Distress Ink Markers
Heavy White Cardstock
A scrap of deep aqua cardstock.

In the UK you can get your Whimsy stamps and dies from Dies to Die for

You get 3 bears in the pack plus sentiments, so I will certainly be making some more cards with these.

That's all from me today, I said it was a super quick share lol!

See you soon! :) xx

Whimsy Craft Retreat

Ok so for those of you without Facebook or who haven't seen, Whimsy is holding it's first annual craft retreat......and guess who's going to be teaching there? 

1st Annual Craft Retreat - DEPOSIT ONLY

Yup you guessed it, little old me. Also teaching will be Faye Wynn Jones, Iris Wiechmann and Deb Routledge...oh it's going to be so much fun, I do hope you can join us.

Places are going fast so make sure you sign up soon if you want to be there. Faye and I will be flying in on the Wednesday, I can't wait!! :) xx

Monday 28 March 2016

Shaped Card Tutorial Video

Hi everyone, I hope you had a great Easter. I'm back to work tomorrow but before that I can finally share with you my video tutorial on how I made my recent card using Bubble Tilda.


The video is below, but first here is a list of materials and equipment you'll need to recreate this.

Equipment

Bone folder
Die cutting machine suitable for cutting large dies.
A blending tool or small sponge.
Scissors
A Bow Easy or similar bow tying tool, (unless you can tie good double bows by hand).
Glue Gun (or you could use a crafters glue).
Pokey tool or toothpick (if you're not using self adhesive pearls)
Large and medium shaped dies.
A fancy 'frame' die.
A leaf die.
Some clips or pegs.


Materials 

Your coloured image, Cut out with a round die.
2 pieces of A4 white cardstock
Small pieces of blue and green cardstock.
Design paper
Cheesecloth
Lace
Satin ribbon
Pearl trim
A fancy embellishment.
An assortment of paper flowers. 
Flat back pearls
Walnut distress ink pad
Button twine
Masking/stencil or washi tape.
Glue
Scor-tape
Adhesive foam tape.

You can see the video here

That's all for now, I will be working on the next part of my Distress Ink Colouring series next weekend, and will be moving onto colouring clothing, so I hope to have that ready for you in a week or two.

Happy crafting! :) xx

Friday 25 March 2016

A year in Crafting - March - let's catch up.

Hi crafty peeps.  A bit of a different post from me today, I don't know about you, but for me my blog isn't just a place to showcase my crafty makes, it's also a place for me to share my journey, to document my growth as an artist and a way to remind myself of my experiences.

So I thought I would make a series of posts called 'A Year of Crafting' and actually document within a set time frame all that happens on a monthly basis. Yes I know....I'm already 3 months into the year lol, so let's start by catching up.



So first of all let's start out with ...


Design Teams.

Since I first started blogging my makes I have been lucky enough to be asked to join some amazing design teams, some of which I wasn't even able to say yes to, because of time constraints, and this has given me the opportunity to both create with some awesome products and work with some amazing artists and crafters. 

Sadly, as I work full time, I am out of the house 11 hours a day Monday to Friday and that combined with some other personal stuff means that the time I have left to craft is very limited, 5 - 6 design teams proved too much in the end and at the end of last year I made the tough decision to prune back on my design teams. It was very hard to choose and there were various reasons I dropped the ones I did. I was particularly sad to leave Dies to Die for, who I had been designing for since 2013, not long after I first started blogging, as the team couldn't be friendlier and  Tracy was the nicest most laid back boss ever, but it was a regular card a week and that did limit me in other things I could take on. I still shop from there as my go to place for stamps and dies and the whole experience was a very happy one.

Sadly not all design teams are as supportive and it's worth putting it out there as a warning, be very sure of your commitment, some DTs don't really make it clear up front exactly what is expected from you. If you are asked to send samples for CHA, check ahead exactly how many that will be. I don't think anyone would object to being asked to send a few, (La-La Land asks for 2 or 4 if  I remember correctly and Irina sends so much product nobody could ever feel that is too much), but being asked to send all your DT makes for the year is really unacceptable, (and yes that has happened to me, with one team, In the end I sent 14 finished projects, even after leaving the design team and not only did I not get my postage paid as was promised, but never even got a thank you or an acknowledgment that they had arrived! I only knew they had got there safely when I saw them on Facebook pictures of the CHA booth!). Please remember that it is NOT a job, you should be committing to a mutually beneficial arrangement and it should be fun! That being said, don't take on something and then hold up your side of the bargain, just go in with your eyes fully open and your mind fully informed.

So now I have settled down with 3 design teams and I no longer feel stressed trying to balance my time.
Whimsy is the new one for me this year (though I guested for Denise a couple of times in the past), and I'm loving it. The girls are friendly, Denise is wonderful and I love 90% of all the releases. There's much less pressure on me and I don't have to think too much about what I'm making, I just let the mojo take me where it will!

So what else is new?


Animals

Does that mean I have a new family pet? No, but colouring animals used to make me run screaming, it flat out scared me lol. But in joining the Whimsy DT,  I was introduced to the artist Lee Hooper and his images are just sooooooooooo cute that I had to try. You know what? I love it. I still wouldn't say I'm in my comfort zone colouring them, but still I'm enjoying and learning. Of course boy cards still make me run screaming, but that's a whole other story.

While we're on the subject of things that make me run screaming, let's talk about ....

CAS

For those of you who are reading this and do not know what CAS stands for, it's Clean and Simple. Meaning cards without lots of embellishments etc. I love CAS, I think there are some amazing makes out there in this theme, but oh boy, CAS did not want to play nice with me. However, in the near future you you will notice a few more CAS projects from me creeping in. I won't say I find them easy, it sometimes takes me twice as long to make one of these as my fanciest card, but I am starting to understand and enjoy them a bit more.

So, change of design teams...check, tackling my nemeses Animals and CAS....check. What else?

Let's talk about .....

Tutorials

I've dabbled in tutorials before, I even made a blog for them way back when and I posted a few step by step tutorials there. But as with everything else I then ran out of time to create them,. My DT commitments took up every spare moment. Now with a bit of spare time to spend, I've re-visited doing them, and this time I did what people have been asking for.....video tutorials.  Oh boy.  I was pretty scared to start, even though I've done some showcase videos for my mini albums before, doing tutorials on video was a first for me, scary stuff.
In all honesty I'm loving it now, but it has meant learning a whole new set of skills (and purchasing some new software), in video editing. Very time consuming, not least because we live a long way from the exchange and our internet is VERY slow. Even after editing it takes me 6 - 10 hours to upload to YouTube, so I'm usually having to do it overnight, so these are really labours of love for me. But I'm enjoying sharing my methods with you, and hopefully you will find them interesting and if you also find them helpful then it certainly was worth my time. They are something I will continue to do and build up, but because they are soooooo time consuming, they aren't something I'm able to do on a weekly basis.

Lastly for now, I'm going to touch upon...

Teaching.

Now truth be told, much as I enjoy my job, if I could afford to buy a little place and run it as a craft retreat and give up my current job I would. Currently I can't see how I can make that happen, and with the retirement age going up all the time, I'm likely to be 70 or more by the time I retire and possibly without the fine control of hands and eyes needed to teach people (though I hope I'm still able to craft!). I don't drive either, so I'm not sure I could run classes by myself all over the country; so for now teaching classes seemed something still out of my reach.

But then something very exciting happened, I was asked, (as those who read my posts will know) to teach at a retreat happening in Orlando in September. I'm still not able to reveal all the details, but they have been confirmed so I'm hoping to be able to by the end of next week, so watch out for that. This really is super exciting for me and literally a dream come true. I did not think, when I started blogging my humble makes back in July of 2013, that 3 years later I would be flying to Orlando to teach some classes, I STILL cannot get over my excitement about this, I'm not sure I will even once its all over.

So that's my year in crafting so far. I hope that you've found it interesting, I'll make another post at the end of April....a MUCH shorter one lol and catch up with what's been going on in my crafty little world.

Thanks for reading and for sticking with me :) xx


Wednesday 23 March 2016

Tilda in Evening Gown - Deep Ocean Challenge

Hi everyone, I hope you are all well. I'm looking forward to Easter and a few days off work to recharge the batteries.

Today we have a new theme over at Deep Ocean Challenge and this time it's 

Favourite Colour Combos

Well, this was very hard for me, because although I do have a yen towards purple tones, I don't really have a favourite colour combo, and when it comes to crafting I really love to change it up as much as possible because it gets boring colouring with the same tones or to match the same papers all the time.
So in the end I thought hey...I'll stay neutral, and plumped for neutral grey/white/black shades.

So now I have a confession.....I bought this Tilda when she was first released.....over a year ago! and I have only just coloured her up. How shameful is that? Worse than that, she isn't the only un-inked stamp in my stash ....sigh...

Oh well at least she's seeing the light of day now lol

So this is Tilda in Evening Gown, and I've given her a bit of a glamorous treatment, I think she deserves it after that long wait don't you? 


I used some older Maja Papers, these are from the Crea Diem collection. I edged all my layers with Walnut Stain distress ink. The 'clock' is cut with the Dewdrop Circle die from LDRS Creative, and I used a stamp from Kaisercraft to stamp the clock with grey ink.I used the same stamp on the edges of my framed image.


She's coloured with distress ink markers. I added lashings of Wink of Stella to her dress and the surrounding sparkles and you can actually see it (kind of) for once in the pic above, though it still doesn't show how shimmery it looks. I thought this was the perfect sentiment for her.


To finish I added some lovely embellishments from the Ribbon Girl and a few from my stash.

From the Ribbon Girl

Charlotte Elizabeth Lace
Ivory White Magnolias
Ivory Wild Roses
Small White Lily
White Chrysanths
Round Medium Diamante Buckle

This card was sold to a colleague to give to her mother on mother's day recently in the UK.

That's all from me today but there's plenty of exciting stuff in the pipeline so stay tuned and don't forget to join in with our challenge for the chance to win a lovely prize :) xx

Sunday 20 March 2016

Magnolia Stamps - Bubble Tilda . New challenge at The Ribbon Girls

Happy Sunday everyone! I hope you are all having a fabulous weekend. I've been crafting a lot and the rest of the time I've been dancing around the house like a demented loon.  Why you ask?
Well I've been THAT excited!. Those of you who know me on Facebook will know that I posted about being excited about something on the 11th March. Well I can't reveal all the details which still have to be finalised, but I can reveal that I'm going to be jetting off to Orlando, Florida for a few days in September, because I've been asked to teach at a Craft Retreat! How exciting is that?!!

Oh my goodness, I just cannot wait, September seems so far away. I'll keep you posted once I know the full details.

But enough of me and my *squeeeee!!* exciting news and on to my card for today which is for the new challenge over at The Ribbon Girls.
Our theme is as always for the 2nd challenge of the month, is Anything Goes with an Image.  So you can make what you like, how you like, but it must use an image.


This is Bubble Tilda and you probably recognise her from a colouring video I did recently. So if you want to know the colours I used to colour her, you can find them on my YouTube video


I also made a video showing you how I construct this card from start to finish and I should be able to share that with you soon. I was hoping to have it ready for you when this card went live, but I have been a little busy and distracted with other things this weekend and so haven't finished editing and uploading, which take a lot longer than making the actual video!


My card is embellished with some beautiful flowers from the Ribbon Girl.


I also made a fab bow from this beautiful ribbon.

I used the following Ribbon Girl items


I do hope you can join in with us, there are some lovely prizes up for grabs.

First prize:  £10 voucher for LOTV
Second prize:  £10 voucher for The Ribbon Girl
Third prize:  Mystery prize from Marianne Designs
.

Well that's it from me today, I have a video to edit!

Happy crafting! :) xx

Friday 18 March 2016

Flower Bouquet Bunny - Whimsy Stamps March Release Day 3

Hey everyone! have you been enjoying all the new March releases from Whimsy Stamps? We're on day 3 and there are just so many fabulous stamps this month, I love them.

Now, those of you who have followed me for a while may have noticed that I don't really colour up animals. That's because I'm not really confident about it, I know where I am when colouring skin and hair, but fur? Oh boy.....that scares me lol. But when I saw the incredibly cute little bunny stamps from Lee Holland....well I just knew I had to try.
So this is Flower Bouquet Bunny, coloured with distress ink markers.

Since I was trying something different, I thought I'd I'd colour him up in an unusual colour, and since to me lilac and yellow is a very spring like colour combo, I thought I'd go for a pretty lilac colour to match this lovely paper from Maja design.


Isn't he sweet? I just want to hug him!

Distress Ink colours:
Shaded Lilac, Spun Sugar, Fossilized Amber, Faded Jeans, Dusty Concord, Picked Raspberry, Crushed Olive, Wilted Violet, Bundled Sage.


I used lots of yummy goodies from The Ribbon Girl to embellish.



I really love the way this came out and now I'm not so scared to colour animals! Which is a good thing because there is an even more adorable bunny from Lee Holland in the April release, so watch out for that one! :) xx

Wednesday 16 March 2016

Whimsy March Release Day 1 - Jillian & Friends - Wee Stamps

Hi everyone.

First of all, thank you so much to those of you who left me lovely feed back on my colouring videos, these take a looooooong time to make, so your support is really appreciated and helps give me that push to keep making them.

Also I have had some super exciting news recently and I can't wait to share it with all of you, but until I have a 100% confirmation and more details, I don't want to jinx anything lol!

So...let's get on with the reason I'm here today and that is Whimsy Stamps' March Release of rubber stamps.



Oh....my...goodness. Well I couldn't believe it when I saw the line up, there are soooooo many great stamps that I found it really hard to choose which ones I wanted to use for my new release blog posts. Finally I settled on Jillian and Friends by Slyvia Zet and Flower Bouquet Bunny by Lee Holland, you'll have to wait till Friday for the bunny, but today I can show you what I did with Jillian and Friends, or should I say Jillian, because the poor friends got left behind! You can find this stamp set and the rest of the new releases here.

This is a great set that comes with 3 smaller images and 3 sentiments. I did mean to use one of the sentiments on my card, but ....shh, don't tell anyone , I forgot!

Anyway, it's a fab set that has all of Sylvia's normal sweet style and oodles of possible uses.

I coloured up Jillian with my usual Distress Ink markers, to match some lovely Maja Design papers from the Summer Crush collection


Distress markers used:
Vintage Photo, Worn Lipstick, Spun Sugar, Tumbled Glass, Scattered Straw, Hickory Smoke, Black Soot


Don't forget to head on over to the blog for the full line up and check out the rest of the DT's makes, they're fabulous!


You could also win a great prize so what are you waiting for? :)


Ribbon Girl embellishments used:


Thanks so much for dropping by, I'll have more to share with you later this week.

Happy crafting! :) xx


Saturday 12 March 2016

Distress Ink Speed Colouring Video - Bubble Tilda


Hi everyone, I'm back with another video for you. This is how I colour Bubble Tilda from start to finish. It's a speed colouring video so no talking, but I've added notes throughout the video on what colours I'm using etc to make it easy to follow.


I hope you like it, I've been working on filming a shaped card tutorial from start to finish, using this coloured image, so I hope to have that ready for you next weekend.

Want to see a sneak peek?


It's not giving much away is it? He he, you'll just have to wait till next weekend to see the finished card.


Thanks for dropping by :) xx

Friday 11 March 2016

Vintage Wedding Card


Hi everyone, I hope you all had a good week. Mine was good but very busy at work so I'm looking forward a relaxing weekend of crafting lol.

Every so often I take on a commission, usually from a friend. I don't do this as a regular thing because I dislike crafting to order in the main, but sometimes they line up with something I want to try/do and then if I have time I take them on. Recently a friend of mine at work asked me for a Wedding card and a Ruby Anniversary card, no rush.  Well I had something in mind and was feeling quite inspired, so I made them both last weekend.

Today I'm sharing the Wedding card with you, and sometime later I'll post the Ruby Wedding one.

It's fairly unusual for me to make a card without an image to colour, but as those who have followed me for a while will know, occasionally I like to dabble in a bit of vintage style with no stamped image. This one today doesn't even have a vintage photo or drawing! But with wedding stamps it can be hard to find something to suit, so a card without an image makes things easier.


I inked all my edges with Walnut Stain distress ink, and sewed my base by hand.


I used some wonderful Pion Papers from the Vintage Wedding collection (I used some 12 x 12 from my stash but the 6 x 6 designs would  work equally as well), 3 dies and some gorgeous embellishments from The Ribbon Girl


The sentiment is also cut from the Pion Papers. 


I really enjoyed making this card and while I will never abandon my colouring, I think I will make a few more of these types of card. I find them fun to make and they are super quick in comparison to my other cards, and it seems there are always weddings and anniversaries to make cards for!

Have a lovely day :) xx


Wednesday 9 March 2016

Wee Stamps - Bonnie

Hi everyone, I hope this week has been treating you well. It's time for a new challenge over at
Deep Ocean, and with Easter fast approaching our theme this time is .....you guessed it....Easter!

I'll admit that I don't usually do Easter cards, but I did think that this Easter stamp from Whimsy by Sylvia Zet,  called Bonnie,  was perfect for many different occasions if you don't pop an Easter sentiment on it. It would be just as lovely for Mother's Day or a Birthday or Thank You card, don't you think?

I've paired her with some lovely papers from Pion Design called Easter Greetings, just to keep the Easter Theme, they are so pretty and are available from The Ribbon Girl.



I coloured my image with Distress Ink markers to match the papers.





I used lots of lovely embellishments from The Ribbon Girl to finish my card.

Cheesecloth
Ophelia Ivory Lace
Purple Grape Sheer Ribbon
Mauve Mist Seam Binding
Pearl and Diamante Embellishment
10 mm FB Pearl Ivory Flower Trim
8 mm FB Pearls
3 - 6 mm Ivory SA Pearls
40 mm White Daisy
White/purple 2 tone roses
20 mm Ivory Open Rose
Sweetheart Blossoms White 

I edged the ivory/white flowers with a little Milled Lavender distress ink.

I do hope you can join in with our challenge this time and don't forget to take a look at the rest of the team's wonderful makes.

Until next time! :) xx


Monday 7 March 2016

Distress Ink Colouring Tutorial 5 - Adding Detail to Hair

Hi everyone, I hope you had a good weekend, and for Mother's in the UK, I hope you had a great Mother's Day.

Today I'm bringing you part 5 of my Distress Ink Colouring Tutorials and this one is about adding detail, texture and definition to hair, using the pen nib end of the distress ink marker.

This is a completely optional step, but one that I often do.

So after we add the detailing your image should look something like this
(apologies for the poor quality of the picture, I didn't have time to take one before scheduling this post, so I just lifted one from the video. I'll add a better quality photo tonight when I get in from work)



 The video will take you through it step by step, or you can visit the YouTube video directly, by clicking on the link here.



I hope you find this video helpful, I have more video tutorials to share with you in the following weeks, including colouring black hair on Canson Montval paper, colouring clothing, and how I make one of my cards (including a speed clolouring of the image), from start to finish.

I also plan on making videos on colouring curly hair, animals and backgrounds.

Thanks for taking the time to visit me today and if you don't already follow me I would love it if you would do so and not miss any of my posts.

See you soon! :) xx


Saturday 5 March 2016

Art by MiRan - Celebrating Your Day

Hi everyone! I hope you're all having a wonderful start to your weekend.
I'm currently editing my next Distress Ink Tutorial, 'Adding Texture and Dimension to Hair' so I should have that ready for you this weekend, but in the meantime I have a new card to share with you today made with some lovely embellishments from The Ribbon Girl.

This cutie is called Celebrating Your Day. She's a digi from Art by MiRan and you can find her here.


I coloured her with my distress ink markers in bright and happy colours to match this lovely paper from Maja Design. Love her with pink hair!



Speaking of Maja Design, have you seen that The Ribbon Girl have started stocking their papers? Oh my goodness, now I can get my papers when I order my flower, ribbon, lace, charms, pearls etc. I just love being able to get all my pretties in one place!

This card actually uses 12 x 12 papers from the Coffee in the Arbour collection, because I still have these in my stash, but you can buy the 6 x 6 papers from the shop, and there's not much difference, except the patterns are a little smaller which actually suits cards a bit better, so I have linked the collection in the shop below for you.



I layered her with a few die cuts and used the left over squares from the view finder die cut to make these little scrabble tiles that read happy. I used some beautiful embellishments (listed below) from The Ribbon Girl to finish off my card.


That's all from me today but I'll be back with you soon.

Happy crafting! :) xx


Tuesday 1 March 2016

Elisabeth Bell - Honey Little Spring Helper

Hi everyone, I can't believe it's the first of March already, can you? This year seems to be whizzing by.
I have a new card to share with you today.

This is Honey - Little Spring Helper from  Whimsy Stamps' February release. She's from Elisabeth Bell's Cottage Cuties collection. Isn't she adorable?

I decided to go with yellow and brown and I had some left over papers from an MME stack which were perfect.  I coloured her with my Distress Ink markers to coordinate.







I used the following items from the Ribbon Girl


Ivory White Magnolia Flower
Apple Blossom Mixed Pastels
Beaded Berries Ivory/Cream

If you would like to know how I colour my images, please check out my tutorials on my
YouTube Channel

That's all for today but I'll be back later in the week :) xx