Just a quicky..

This is a quick card I made this afternoon, I try allsorts of crafts but nothing makes me happier than starting with a blank piece of card, some stamps this is a new Clarity one, inks and in this case a stencil:

I love the challenge of which stamp first? is this in front or behind, using masks to give the illusion... because this is one flat piece of card ... no cutouts stacked on top of a background. I get quite lost in it and get the biggest buzz when it works out.
Oh yes, the craft attic is awful messy .. nothing new there... bin is full of copier paper masks and trial runs :) that is the joy of crafting.

I love the sentiment : 'The best and most beautiful things  cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart', .....beautiful words from Helen Keller, a very inspirational woman who was deaf & almost blind ... she did not let this hold her back ..she was an American political activist and author. I remember seeing a film of her life when I was quite young and being touched by it.

Well my New Year's Resolution is to become a better Blogger in 2014 so that's one down... hopefully plenty more to come
Bye for now xxx Annie

Christmas is coming

Yes Christmas is coming so fast.. it doesn't seem that long ago we were enjoying a beautiful Summer but today we have had wind rain .... and then hail making a deafening noise on the conservatory roof followed by thunder and lightening which brought Jasper down from upstairs where he had been snoozing
Anyway I decided I better get on with decorating the Christmas cake which I made last month, I ended up covered with icing sugar, but here is a photo of the end result:

 

I just hope it tastes good because I totted up how much it cost for ingredients, electricity and (wo)man hours and I reckon it would have been cheaper to go to Harrods and buy one of their top of the range!! But I secretly enjoyed baking again.

 

well that's it for today, short and sweet ... a week to now we will be enjoying Boxing day tea  followed hopefully by some good tv and then Christmas will be as far away as it ever is 364 days to be exact... I'll leave you with that thought ...Bye for now xx Annie

 

Last of my Christmas Cards made

Hi there
what a milestone today I finally finished this year's Christmas cards... fingers crossed. I have promised myself next year I will start much earlier....

Thank goodness for dies because they do almost always give you a result... these dies are Memory box dies very filigree but easy to cut ... but I am now ankle deep in tiny bits of card so I will have to have a deep clean !!! well I'll run the hoover over ... :)

Bye for now xxx Annie

Fussy & Fancy Challenge #104 .... CHOCOLATE

Here it is then... the last F&F challenge of 2013 and what better theme than Chocolate. I thought I would concentrate on packaging this time..I had already made a box and bag and then realised we needed to use  a sponsor's digistamp ... this time it was provided by Freshly Brewed Designs

Well you may be asking what has that brightly coloured box got to do with chocolate... well I tried to go along with the chocolate theme but it didn't work ... I wanted it to be bright for a child so the chocolate .. well it's inside:

a famous little chocolate reindeer (with his little bell) guarding some chocolate coins. The digistamp I used is called 'Snow much Fun' you can see I used the whole digistamp image on the lid and then blew it up slightly and cut it into 4 to use 1 image on each face of the box which I made from craft card and matted up with some pretty Christmas papers from my stash. Here are the four sides of the box:

Back to my original 2 DT pieces I made a gift bag out of chocolate coloured lightweight card and prettied it up with some mint coloured diecut snowflakes. The pink and chocolate box was made using heavyweight brown card again prettied up with some patterned paper and some Christmas Tim Holtz dies, which I really love. Here are a couple of closeups:

Nearer the time I am going to make some homemade chocolate truffles to fill this box as a pressie for one of my neighbours. The snowflakes are cut using spellbinders dies and are actually a very soft mint colour which doesn't show up very well in the photo:

So that's it for today it's been a good day as well as finishing these projects I managed to bake our Christmas cake so the whole house smells of mixed spices. I got a bit nostalgic whilst mixing it because I had found my grandmother's great big mixing bowl, I had forgotten what hard work it is mixing a fruit cake by hand .. so if this one is successful I might have to invest in a kenwood before next year !! Once the cake was in the oven I got to lick the spoon which the boys always used to fight over and then  .... I got to eat the last few remaining glace cherries ...........bliss

So why don't you give our challenge a go ... our sponsors this month  Fresh Brewed Designs are offering a Candy Prize to one lucky person who enters our Chocolate Challenge.

It will be 3 digi's of their choice  along with a fun candy prize...  A stamp case filled with goodies
to create with.
Remember our winner is chosen randomly... so everyone has an equal chance of winning ... Good Luck and most of all have fun with it

Bye for now xxx Annie

Clarity Challenge 10 ... Scene Building

Well I have been bogged down with Christmas card making ... all my own fault for leaving it so late, but when my Clarity NDC stamp and tutorial dropped through the letter box I gave myself some ME time and played ....what did I make.... you guessed it another Christmas card.. here it is:

I had such a relaxing hour or so making it....and I was so pleased with it he is winging his way to someone as I speak...hope they like it.

So I hate to say it ...I am going to kill two birds with one stone,, ( Sorry Bobbin' Robin) and enter him into the Clarity Challenge which is scene building. As always there is a £50 voucher waiting for the winner so off I go

Bye for now Annie xxx

In the Classroom with Barbara Gray

Saturday mornings are usually slow starters ...my weekend starts here, but once a month Barbara Gray has a classroom program and I do like to get a few chores done and then sit down with a coffee and a chocolate biscuit and just watch ( I even record them in case there are any glitches like Jasper & OH coming in from a walk in the middle of it all)

Today's was the last program for this year, I had had a little clear out and found my folder of my efforts done after the shows, as Barbara uses any viewers cards to sell 'Charity with Clarity' I thought I would send some of my better ones, rather than them gather dust in the Crafty Attic. To my amazement some of them got shown:

 

I really was thrilled that Barbara took time to say how she had 'known' me a long time ( well I have been watching the classroom programs since the beginning and sometimes sent my work in) and that she has seen my work improve !! Even OH was impressed because he thinks I just mess about up in the crafty attic !! So thanks Barbara for putting him right.

 

Right now I'm off to carry on making Christmas cards xxx Bye Annie

F&F Challenge #103 .. HEARTS

I really went down to the wire with this challenge ...did I want to make a card, a box, altered art ...? Then suddenly I remembered an MDF frame I had bought in the January Sale, I found it in the Bargain basket ...looking a bit sorry for itself, more shabby than chic.



I saw Ali Reeve do the pva/paint technique to make a surface look weathered, it's good to be reminded of these tried and tested techniques, so I set to .. a layer of acrylic allowed to dry, a layer of cheap pva  and then another coat of acrylic then gentle heat applied with a heat gun until the top surface starts to split, unfortunately it doesn't show up very well in this photo, I just couldn't get the right light. I then brushed the surface with Antique Linen distress ink, to take away the modern bright white look because I knew what I was going to put in the finished frame.

I used Martha Stewart paper clay and silicone moulds to create the lettering, bird, flowers and heart embellishment, again I brushed them with Antique Linen distress ink to age them. The cage is a Marianne die and the poppies were cut with a Memory box die.

The photo was taken on my Great Aunt Maud's wedding day in 1916 when she married William Bowland, months later on 26th March 1917 he was killed in Palestine and buried in Gaza Cemetery. Great Aunt Maud was never the same again, she died in 1953.

As a young child I was always told by my paternal grandmother that I should never go into the parlour ... but seeing the door ajar one day whilst I was there I crept in, the room was dimly lit with heavy drapes on the windows. I could make out a tiny wizened old woman in a bed ..at this point I was discovered and ushered out and given a real telling off. Many years later my Mum told me the sad story about Great Aunty Maud who had been so tragically widowed during the First world War, I asked if the woman in my grandmother's bed was Great Aunt Maud and of course she said it was, it seems she never recovered from the shock of losing her young husband and then she was struck down with Alzheimers Disease and had been cared for by her sister, my grandmother. I often wondered about William Bowland's grave being in such a volatile part of the world but over the recent Remembrance weekend  I saw an item on the Itv news showing Gaza Cemetery ... a very tranquil place that was being cared for by an elderly Arab man and his team of men. Every November 11th my mind goes back to that old lady ..(in fact she was not that old actually) and her sad story.

Well that's enough nostalgia for one evening, I'm off to upload to the Fussy & Fancy Challenge website where the new challenge is 'Hearts' plenty of scope there then, why don't you give it a go, it's easy to enter here:  http://fussyandfancychallenge.blogspot.co.uk/  and Good Luck

Bye for now
xxx Annie