On your Special Day

I had been asked to make a wedding card at very short notice, I didn't want to refuse as this particular friend  has paid me generously in support of my chosen charity ...our Local Hospice at Home which enables terminally ill to spend their last days in their own homes. I was undecided what to make and then I was watching one of my favourite crafters on C&C, Sue Wilson who makes beautiful cards using Spellbinders, she showed one sample and I thought that's it I can adapt that.....so here it is...

So that was on at lunchtime today and by teatime I had come up with twhen his. Sue Wilson was on again at 5pm and I sent in an email with a photo ... my email was selected and the photo was shown on tv I was over the moon that Sue said she loved it!! Just hope my friend likes it too.


Spellbinder dies used were: Enchanted labels 28, labels28 and lattice die, Bitty blossoms and the reverse side of their A4 Garden Lattice Mbossibility folder.

So at least I got an afternoon of craft in tomorrow the builders are back for 3 days so I will be back on Brewing duties, till next time  Bye xxx annie

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's day to all the Dads out there, especially my 2 lovely sons, Mark and David who are both great Dads to their children, Rhiannon & Sion, and Lorna & Kate. I love being a Nana, although having 3 granddaughters after having two boys of my own was an eyeopener and my only grandson Sion, who is so like his dad when he was young , reminds me of happy days as a very young mum.

This is a card I made this afternoon for DH from his boy Jasper (our 4yr old Black Lab) that's him on the front of the card. Kate took this photo when she found him lying on the top of the stairs waiting for us to come home. The lettering was done using Clarity Letterbox set a very useful set.

 

 

This is what I put on the left hand flyleaf, I used Serif craft Artist to put the same photo in a doggy frame and added one of their embellishments, I love being able to use their drop shadow effects to make the picture pop out of the page.

 

Must dash now as I seem to have lost a couple of ours up here in my Craft Attic :) xxx Annie

 

Fussy and Fancy Challenge #91...Button Up

I was really stuck for inspiration with this one and then by chance I saw a post by a dear friend who had done some 'Button Art' to raise money for charity. I researched Button Art on Google and You tube and found it was very popular, this is what I came up with:

there are many tutorials on You Tube to get you started, I found a canvas board amongst my crafty stash and lightly sketched in the letters L,O,V,E, thinking of them as 4 equal squares. Then I started placing buttons over my sketch, I found using bigger buttons for the base and layering up with smaller ones to fill the gaps was most effective. I used a hot glue gun to stick my buttons on, a bit messy, but the cobwebs of glue were easy to remove.

 When it came to frame it I bought a cheap frame with plenty of depth in it, I added thin pieces of wood painted white to set the backboard a bit further away from the glass forming a shadowbox. As I dismanteled the frame I saw the large piece of backing paper, turned it over and using Ali's Stampaway Button mask I stencilled through with red, blue, green & purple distress inks. As the frame was still very large for my canvas board I used the mount that was included with the frame to finish it off.

This was a fun project to do and I am sure one of my three granddaughters will take it off my hands to hang in their girly bedroom.
Hope you have as much fun as I did with this challenge, I look forward to seeing what you come up with and Good Luck .... Bye Annie xxx

Indigoblu Challenge #4 Backgrounds Galore

 

I wanted to use my latest Indigoblu stamp for this challenge, Summer Lovin is such a lovely detailed stamp, I just wanted to highlight the main flowers and the butterflies, but there are also, humming birds, bees and scrolls in there. Again I was  inspired by Jo Rice's card using the same stamp.

 

The title of this challenge is Backgrounds Galore, I used my favourite Itsybitsy background stamp with Cobalt blue Archival ink, I added script stamp and using the Summer Lovin stamp without a block I stamped selected areas, mainly the flowers, butterflies and scrolls.

The topper was stamped using Stormy Sky distress ink and then I coloured the main flowers with promarkers, then I use my perfect medium pen to cover the petals, added clear embossing powder and heated. I then stamped the image again twice coloured and glazed the main flowers and cut out to make embellishments together with some Marianne diecut swirls.

My husband loved the colours I had used so I have 'killed two birds with one stone' as his sister has a birthday in July ...problem solved.

That's all for today, crafting and blogging are having to take a back seat at the moment as we have builders in and I am on call for 'brewing up' and entertaining Jasper (our Lab) so he doesn't get in the way. Hopefully see you soon Bye Annie xxx

Craft Barn Alpha Dictionary Challenge 10 ... K is for ...Kimono

When Craft Barn announced next letter in their Challenge was to be K I didn't realise how few words in the dictionary began with K. So I decided to go with K for Kimono, mainly because I had a few stamps and bits and pieces to illustrate this word. When I began looking through my stash I even found a kit I had bought back in 2006 which had instructions on how to paper fold a Kimono!! also in the pack there were some really beautiful strips of Japanese papers which also came in useful. So here is my offering for K is for Kimono: The backgrounds were made with Pan Pastels and Distress inks

On the left hand page there are 3 kimonos ... the top 2 are embossed vellums which I have coloured from behind with oil pastels, the bottom blue one is the 3D paper folded kimono made with Japanese paper, The right hand page I stamped Clarity's geisha girl then masked her while I used a Sweet Poppy stencil and their paste to create the willow tree, when it was dry I rubbed it over with some Creative Expressions Patina Gilding wax. I then stamped the geisha again onto another piece of Japanese paper and just cut out and paper pieced her Kimono.

 

Here you can see a closeup of the 3 kimonos including the bottom one which is 3D paper folded Japanese paper. The second closeup shows the paper pieced Kimono on the Clarity geisha and the stencilled willow tree.

 

Well that's my entry for this fortnight's challenge as they say 'Better late than never'

 

Bye for now I am off to link up with Craft barn Blog and to comment on some of the wonderful entries I have already spotted on there .. Bye for now... Annie x

Zentangle tree and shell

Well have played for a couple of hours, got completely lost in time what an amazing de-stresser. I just picked up a Zentangle book I had lying around for ages and originally I was just going to flick through it but I had to find a pen and paper and 2 hours later I had made this.

I've never been one for doodling but I think it could get addictive

Well that's just a quick post for today going to be playing catchup all evening now !! :)
Bye .. Annie xx

PS. I started this late last night and finished it it this morning while I was waiting for the boys (DH & Jasper ) to get themselves up & ready to go out for walkies ...

You can see I used Clarity shell stamp for inspiration .... it's nowhere near perfect but it gave me a nice round swirly shape to play with. That's it for now ... I have got a million and one things to do now the boys have gone. I'm trying to keep on top of the dreaded housework before the builders start work .... tara for now ... xxxx Annie

Fussy & Fancy Friday Challenge #89 Lace & Pearls

When I saw this theme for this challenge I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Back in January I had seen Kay Halliwell Sutton from Indigo Blu  do a demo with a papier mache mannequin, she was using an old technique used by Victorian ladies.. she put her own spin on it by stamping images onto 3ply mansize paper hankies with pigment inks and then applying just 1ply to the prepared papier mache dummy using her new product Slap it on. This was  quite exciting because it meant you could transfer stamped images onto awkwardly shaped objects. As always I gave in and I had to try it out for myself ..well I was hooked... it was much easier than you might think working with the flimsy 1 ply paper and the Slap it on made the whole process very forgiving ... any creases or bubbles disappeared as it dried, so I had to resist dabbing and overstretching the paper.  My first effort had been a simple coverup job (it's on one of my earlier posts) .. I knew I would want to try it again so I ordered another couple of dummies so this challenge made me get one of the sad little naked brown cardboard bodies out and dress it up. So here she is all dressed up and ready to go ...

To prepare the papier mache  I coated it with white gesso then when it had dried I used a Cosmic Shimmer Mister to spray it a delicate pearl pink. While it was drying I stamped several different lace stamps onto 3ply mansize tissues with versafine black ink, then I cut through the 3 layers of paper as close to image as possible then removed just the top layer as I needed them. I put some Slap it on just in the area I was going to put my image and placed the stamped image gently into place easing it with my brush, then I put another coat of Slap it on over it ... just kept repeating with each image until I had covered the whole dummy and gave it one final coat.

The dummy comes with a leg and base, I found an old wooden spool that had some ribbon on it so I slid that onto the stick for extra weight. Then the fun bit making the flowers ... I love making them with coredinations card and sanding them back to uncover the inside colour. I added some self adhesive pearl swirls to keep up the theme and there she was ... ready to face the world.

DH said it reminded him of a certain type of ladies boudoir ... when I asked how he would know about such ladies boudoirs he said he'd seen them on tv ...Lol :)  well I just hope he doesn't catch a cold before I do my next shop because I have used up all the paper tissues :)

Well that's all for now ... I hope you enjoy this challenge as much as I have, looking forward to seeing your ideas

Bye Annie xxx