Category: Art and crafting styles

Another of my teal and lime pages for a circle journal and this one is for my raggy doll sister Marie.

She created a fab bunting journal from canvas sheets. And that gave me the idea of fabric and sewing. And given how poorly I was meant that I could do some of this crafting whilst in bed.

I started strangely with a piece of felt and sewed each scrap of wool, fabric, ribbon and twine onto it using hand stitching.

Absolutely love this background and must remember to do something similar again as I have so many scraps of twine and ribbons.

Next I took a Jofy stamp and stamped it onto some fabric using Archival ink. Then used Inktense pencils to add some colour to some elements.

Which I then sprayed heavily with water to activate the Inktense.

Once dry I started sewing in some details and added some sequins. I am far from the best embroidery person… but still it was fun, and easy to do in bed!

I cut it out and gave it a reasonable amount of a border so it would stand out on the busy background.

Next to prepare the bunting background which I decided to use Sparks paint in the black to sponge around the outside.

Then I added some black gesso as contrast to the sparkle and break it up a little.

Time to put it all together…

An Art by Marlene sticker for the title… and lots of glue to hold it in place.

I am soooooooooooo happy with this piece and love all the textures I added. Especially considering that I am ordinarily not a sewer!

Hope Marie likes it too. I will share what I made for the other side in a couple of days!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

How on earth has that happened? Our baby girl is now a teenager! Arrrgh!

So proud of our lovely young woman.

We are off out for tea tonight and have the joy of many 12 and 13 year olds coming to our house for a “sleepover” at the weekend to celebrate. Wish me luck!

So here is the card I made for our girl …

Lots of layers and sparkle and shine…

Happy birthday to our darling girl and happy crafting!

Catherine

It seems I rarely remember this stamp set apart from for sympathy cards which is a real shame as it is such a lovely stamp set to use. Ah well.. a small and simple sympathy card made for my husband’s auntie as her husband has passed away.

Had to be simple as I am still struggling with flu … after 10 days… it’s getting ridiculous!

So two colours of distress oxides… Iced Spruce and Peeled Paint for the images and versafine for the sentiment. Done and dusted. I love how easy stamping can make cardmaking.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Twinchies to go with the coins that are swapped are such fun to make. I really enjoy making these little gifts for the participants. And I like doing them in small batches till I have enough for all the people taking part.

This first set I embossed into the thick cardstock one of the Tim Holtz dies. Then coated the whole piece with the pebeo fantasy moon paint.

Next I heat embossed the star (Craft Stamped magazine freebie) with white onto the Tissue wrap.

Then the sentiment is a Kim Dellow one which I stamped in white craft ink onto black shrink plastic and heat up.

This makes such a cute sentiment embellishment.

This time I took a patterned paper and cut it into panels and then heat embossed in glittery gold the patterns from an Emma Godfrey set. I then used the same Kim Dellow sentiment and heat embossed that in gold onto the cream card.

This was a mixed media heavy panel… Dylusions covered with Tim Holtz tissue wrap with copper paint and then heat embossed the Kim Dellow pattern. Then cut it into the panels and added the same shrink plastic sentiment embellishments along with a little bit of a sparkle pen in black… because it needed more shine!

All in all 18 twinchies (all mounted on black card) ready for the swap.

But then… another 9 swaps arrived… so another 9 twinchies were made!

This time I used a die cut scrap as a stencil for adding the background stars using white embossing powder onto twinchies I had added Black Soot distress oxide to. Then the edges I added the black sparks paint using a sponge. Then I chose a Darcy Paperartsy star and embossed it onto the tissue wrap and cut them out to adhere on top.

Then a scrap coloured with the black sparks paint and embossed the word shine using alpha stamps.

Simple but effective little twinchies to finish off the most popular swap so far!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

I have received so many nice gifts when swapping art so it was good to use some bits for this card, that then went straight back out to another friend as part of another swap.

The beautiful panel with the girls face was gifted in one swap and the sari silk in another. I added gold pen to the edge of both the panel and the patterned paper which is from a Making Cards magazine kit and happened to be on my desk at the time I made this. Then I tied a bow and added the ribbon to embellish.

Love how the two swap items work together.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Today on the Back to Basics and Beyond challenge blog there is a bingo card to play with.

I chose to use the middle column… blue, flower, pearls… and made this card.

I chose patterned papers from the stash that had blue within them and mounted a few panels with blue cardstock. I teamed these with a doily to soften the background. Then I added the digital image I had printed and coloured with promarkers.

I added the stamped sentiment and then pearls and a flower so I could fulfil the bingo card.

Fun to make and a pretty card as a result.

Wonder what line you would make for your bingo? Why not join us at the blog?

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Some more coins and more Black ones. This time the background also had the metallic splats from the Gorgeous grunge set.

I then added the embossing from the Handcarved stamp and black powder to add more texture.

Then I stamped and embossed the plane image from a magazine freebie set and added some detail to the images using the sparks paint. Finally I added the sentiment stamped and embossed in white and a bit of gel pen doodling.

Love the shine and the texture on these coins but kept them so they could be quite masculine too… would make a fab coin topper for a male card.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Today I have the inchies I made for the February colour palette swap. This is the colour palette I was working with…

Lots of lovely pinks!

So I cut my inchies and grabbed my pink tones promarkers to add colour.

This gave me lots to go with but I decided to add the same image to each and keep them simple. I love this flower image from Zinski Paperartsy stamps.

I edged each inchies with silver pen and then mounted them onto the three coloured cardstocks.

Think this could make a lovely card front.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

This month the swap over at my UK swap group on Facebook the theme is “Back to Black”. I love the Amy Winehouse song and when I heard it on the radio I knew that it would be an interesting theme for the group.

So I made my coins mainly black with a tiny touch of blue and the white stamped image!

I used the mdf coins and coated it with black gesso. Then I die cut the swirly image from black cardstock and added that. Next I added stamping and embossing first in black and then with the Deep sea Baked Texture embossing powder (This is the touch of blue as it is translucent but blue tinted).

Then I added the main image which is a Paperartsy inage which I stamped in White pigment ink onto shrink plastic.

I finished with the sentiment stamped and heat embossed onto black cardstock and wink of Stella added for shimmer.

Finally I used black puffy paint to add dots around the edge of the coins.

This last photo shows all the shine and the dimension on these coins as the sun caught it perfectly!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

It was one of the princess’ friends birthday this week and so I made a card especially for Lily.

I stamped and coloured the image using promarkers to look a little like Lily… this included researching her eye colour by following her on Instagram! Yes I was thorough in my research! Ha ha ha!

I decided that the phone image was perfect for Lily as I often see her via Snapchat videos on M’s phone!

Once I coloured her I found this patterned paper that colour matched nicely and some grey and tranquil tide cardstock.

I dry embossed the tranquil tide cardstock with an embossing folder and then used the star die to emboss in the grey card. I then also die cut it from a scrap to provide the star embellishments which I added the spectrum noir silver sparkle pen to.

I then did some stamp surgery so I could have the long banner type sentiment using this Eclectic Expressions stamp.

For the envelope I added splodges of Tranquil Tide and some letter stamps to add Lily’s name and more of the star die cuts.

Love how this turned out. Really enjoy creating for the girls in M’s life as I know how important they are to her.

Happy crafting!

Catherine