But that's not all folks... Matchbox Shrine the second...

Being a glutton for punishment I signed up for two entries in the Matchbox Shrine Swap - so here's the second shrine I made for scrappyyo/Yolanda. She had also asked for an open theme, but with "no pink fluffy cuteness" - not specifically being a pink person myself I can go for that!

So I went with purple... and lime...

This time it was a Swan Vesta matchbox, and I kinda went with the style of *the* matchbox I got from Kate Crane with the little handle do-hickey at one end... the cover was painted with purple acrylic paint and then various letters were mod podge'd on top. I then cut the letters A B C together with their shadows using my Cricut Mini and stuck them on top.

Following on with the alphabet theme there's a sheet of alphabet primer cards in one of TH's paper stacks which are almost the perfect size to fit in a Swan Vesta matchbox, so I cut them out, trimmed them a little and then coloured them in using my Pro-markers.

I then divided them into 2 piles, A-M and N-Z, and glued them back to back in order, sandwiching a piece of ribbon between them.

The ribbon was then glued into the base of the matchbox tray and covered with a piece of card which I had coloured using TH's wrinkle-free ink method (sweep 2 colours of distress ink across your craft sheet, spritz with water and drag your card thru it...) I'd been having a play and made a whole batch of pieces of cardstock approx 6"x4", just perfect for cutting up and using on other projects!

The other end of the ribbon was sandwiched between another two pieces of the same cardstock and one of TH's phrases stamped on top - I love this saying, it can be applied to almost everything I do lol...

I liked it, Yolanda liked it - so job done xx

UKS Screen Swap

Amidst all the mayhem of the UKS Matchbox Shrine Swap was the equally mad thread for the Screen Swap - this was based on Linda Elbourne's screen which was on the cover of Craft Stamper March 2012 - and very pretty it was too!

Again it was to be a direct swap and my partner was Viv1 who specified an open theme - which is actually harder than it sounds because you have no idea whether they will like or 'get' whatever it is you have made for them if it's for a theme they have not specified...

...so I played it safe... amidst all the thread chatter it was becoming apparent that there is a definite hatred towards one particular member of The Beatles by various members of the swap... so using the anonymous guise of "The Swap Fairy" I checked to see if she had any specific dislikes - and got the answer "anything goes" back...

Right sez I... what have I got to hand... the screen is made from 4 chipboard panels measuring 8"x4" with a curved top... cut them out no problem... ahh there's a roll of music manuscript, thats a good start, so cut and stuck that onto each panel, and just because it was my favourite colour combination at the time, I used Spiced Marmalade and Dried Marigold distress inks on the panels, which were then backed with papers from one of TH's paper stacks.

So music is obviously the base theme here - what to do next?

Running this past my fella (who does come up with some great ideas or even great jumping-off points) he said I could do with something where the number 4 (for the 4 panels) merged with music... and about 30 minutes later we'd come up with the idea of using the artwork from the cover of The Beatles "Abbey Road" album - where they are crossing the road using the zebra crossing? One Beatle per screen, in silhouette, in the correct order, and even the zebra crossing kinda lines up too....

The figures are layered onto plain cardstock which was again coloured with distress inks, and the stars, music notes and treble clefs were cut from black card using my Cricut Mini. The 4 panels were then laced together using brown organza ribbon thru holes punched with my Bind-It-All.

Here's close-ups of each panel - just don't ask me to name each Beatle - I'm far too young!

Thankfully Viv liked the screen so I was able to breathe a big sigh of relief - must admit I did enjoy doing it and may do one for myself at some point - I mean, I still have several sets of hand-cut Beatles silhouettes knocking around...

UKS Matchbox Shrine Swap...

I think one of the projects I have had most fun with recently was this one... take a matchbox (any size) and decorate it to turn it into a shrine... the thread on UKScrappers got rapidly out of hand (alongside the thread for the screen swap which I'll come to later)...

I hadn't really had any bright ideas for what to do, I had been kicking a few thoughts around but nothing was floating my boat, when the thread plunged headlong into the madness that concerned tortoises hibernating in Hannah's fridge... I kid you not, she said it was the perfect temperature for them and that altho it seemed a bit weird it worked... well that was it... the thread disintergrated into total mayhem and general depravity and the most brilliant of ideas began to skulk across my mind...

I'd been paired up with Rebecca (our hostess) whether by luck or judgement I'll never know... but as she seemed most tickled by the whole tortoise concept (altho by that stage we'd mentally tucked them into coolboxes I think!) it became obvious what I had to do - turn a cooks matchbox into a wooden crate and stick a toy tortoise inside it... and pray that French Customs can take a joke and not destroy it en route...

So... a wooden crate needs thin balsa wood sheeting to cover the top and sides with thin strips to represent the batoning... balsa wood supports inside for a framework, grungepaper strap and a magnetic closure and a coat of stain...

Not forgetting the jump-ring chains to hold the lid open - didn't have any ready-made chain so had to fiddle around with a couple of pairs of tiny-nosed pliers and make my own lengths of chain!

Give it all a coat of brown paint inside to hide the wobbly edges and then fill with chopped up beige raffia, which looks a lot like straw... and nestle your toy tortoise inside...

Rebecca loved it!

Catching up again...

Yeah I know - where does the time go... I'm sure it was still February just yesterday... well the weather seemed very much like February - wind and rain - just ready for today being Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK...

Right - where do I start? Having now sold my original Cricut Personal because I now have the all-singing-all-dancing Cricut Mini, I'm finding that it is not quite as wonderful as I first thought. Sure, using Cricut Craft Room to design everything I want to cut exactly how I want it is great - BUT you have to be online to do so - so I can't take it to a crop 'cos my laptop doesn't have a roaming internet connection. And whilst that isn't so much of a problem, it is a little frustrating... having said that I'm still having fun cutting things on it!

One of the first things I made was a cute little basket  - don't ask me which cartridge its from, George and Basic Shapes I think - but it looked so cute that I decided to play and managed to centre a heart shape onto one of the large panels to cut out...

I'd used a double-sided cardstock with a darker shade on the reverse taken from the Cricut cardstock pads that are ready cut 6x12 - I know my Mini mat can take wider but for playing around I thought the pad would be perfect.

It looked great when assembled and the cut-out heart glued into place onto the other large panel... Yeah I know, twee... but it's a start in working out how to use CCR...

Then I got cocky and decided that a 'word book' was next on the agenda... having been to Scotland twice last year I have loads of pics so decided that the word would be 'Scotland' and that I'd print out lots of the photos quite small and stick 'em in... that was before my wireless printer decided to disconnect itself from my home network - AGAIN - so I can neither print nor scan... I'll get round to sorting it eventually!

So after a lot of trial and error I finally came up with the letters for the word 'Scotland' - all nicely welded onto rectangles to give the right spacing between the letter pages, base pages cut from either white or grey cardstock, then just the letters cut from sheets of tartan paper I'd bought in a craft shop in Oban in July (ye gods - do I get a prize for actually using something I've bought within a year of its purchase???)

As you can see its over 12" long when finished - I actually cheated and glued the cut letter-strips onto strips of acetate having made sure I'd added on about half an inch to allow for binding. That didn't figure in my initial workings, but I think I've gotten away with it - especially as I can maintain that I'd planned on using a strip of black'n'white spotted Washi Tape on the bound edges!

The backs of each page are covered in some rather fetching tartan wrapping paper that I'd also bought on holiday, it was actually the reverse of an aerial photo of Inverrary which is why in the picture above you might be able to see bits of trees and grass in the centres of the letters... I'd thought ahead and bought 2 sheets of the same, thinking I could certainly make use of both sides lol...

Ever the crafter - even on holiday...