May catch-up...Fit the First...

This is starting to become a habit lol... not posting for a few weeks or so. Gonna have to pull my socks up!

First up - May's "Anything Goes" Atc's...a totally free choice for the theme, so I wandered into the town after work one afternoon for some retail inspiration. Ever been into Hawkins Bazaar? It's a great place to pick up all sorts of useful things for all occasions... my brother and sisters usually end up buying loads of silly presents for us all every Christmas lol... but they do have some little odds and sods that are perfect for crafters.

Like the packs of miniature playing cards - just couldn't resist... so here are some of my ATC's this month...

I started with cream cardstock and used one of TH's new Distress Stains (either Fired Brick or Barn Door - can't remember which!) diagonally across the card. The Joker was stamped in black Memories and covered in Glossy Accents. The playing cards were sorted into suits and hole-punched with my CropaDile, then a matching eyelet holds them together. Or should do, the eyelet shank is a little small so had to use some glue on the last card lol...)

Kept it simple this month!

I'm no poker-player at all, much prefer Blackjack (last year I won 114 euros at a casino in Ostend playing Blackjack!) but apparently this is an ace-high straight flush - or Royal Flush, and is the highest ranking standard poker hand.

Wonder if you get extra points for the matching eyelet??

Mays tags will follow in a short while...

April tags...

OK so its nearly May and I'm only just posting pics of my April tags - truth is I didn't read the instructions properly and got carried away with a design that was totally wrong... "On 26 April 1923 the Duke of York married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons more commonly known to us all as Queen Mum. This month we also celebrate the Royal Wedding between William and Kate.

The theme for April is "DIAMONDS ARE A GIRLS BEST FRIEND" Your tags this month must have an image of a woman/women or girl/girls on them, plenty of blingie diamonde/diamante/crystal embellishments and the twist this month to bring in the royal theme - somewhere on each tag you must include a CROWN."

So I went off like a bull in a china shop and dug out a head & shoulders stamp of a rather distinguished man... wrong wrong wrong!!

So, without further ado, here's Betty Boop - who I can distinctly recall singing "Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend" in one of her cartoons... I made a slit across her printed dress and slipped some sparkly fabric thru, wrapping it around the edge of the picture... fiddly but I rather like the effect.

The background was embossed with a Cuttlebug folder and the diamonds were picked out with a silver pen, then further embellished with a diamante blingy dot. The crown was stuck on with Glossy Accents - makes a fine glue...

Out with the TH ticket die and matching stamp set again - mainly because I'd left the first couple of finished tags out overnite on my craft table - and my cat decided to investigate - and put a hole thru one of the tags with his claw...

Looking forward to receiving my April tags back - I've had a sneak peak at one or two on peoples blogs already and they are looking rather lovely - just hope ol' Betty here can hold her own!

Crafty creations

Been a busy bee over the last few weeks beavering away with various craft swaps, and here's what I've achieved so far...

This is my effort for the March/April Anything Goes ATC swap - Spring is most definitely in the air and the bees and butterflies are starting to appear, so I cut & embossed some butterflies out of grungepaper using my Cuttlebug and coloured them with Distress Inks. The bodies are represented by some little bits of bling - they come on the tops of Prima clear stamps and are very handy for jazzing things up. And being free, who could resist? Not me thats for sure!

The flowers are from Polkadoodles, I won them in the raffle at my all day crop this weekend - amazing that the pack was opened and actually used within 24 hours of coming into my possession, must be an all time record for me...

The backing card is embossed with the small embossing folder that came free with DoCrafts Creativity Mag, it's the perfect size for ATC's so I think I may be using it a lot... sorry ladies! 

I also signed up for a bunting swap entitled "Here Come The Girls" (and every time I think or say that I immediately think of the Boots tv ad - ahh the power of advertising lol...). This sounded like a lot of fun so I signed up for 2 sets, on the basis that getting just 6 bits of bunting to play with would only make a short run when I've put them on ribbon... so 12 bits will look much more fun!

My first set had a distinctly Oriental theme, I have the most gorgeous Japanese lady stamp from Rubber Stampede that I've had for yonks and love using on my Oriental projects, so stamped her and coloured her in with some of my new Promarkers... yup I've succumbed to Promarkers altho am not using them to their full potential yet - need to do a class or two with them methinks...

Anyways, here's all 6 together and then a close-up...

After colouring her in I initially cut her out using one of my Nestabilities labels, but decided I didn't like the shape so trimmed her into a squished hexagon so she fitted onto the bunting better. The bunting itself is cut from grungepaper and embossed with a Cuttlebug folder, I've then used Versacolour inks to highlight the flowers altho a bit hard to see...

After cutting my lady out I masked her with a post-it note and over-stamped her with Chinese text using Barn Door Distress Ink - I know she's Japanese and not Chinese but hey it's artistic license in action here guys... I then mounted her onto red cardstock and trimmed around the edge, then inked the edges with a gold pen.

Add a Chinese coin held on with a flower brad and 3 small paper blooms and the bunting is done... well I'm happy with it anyways...

For my second set, look away now if you are of a nervous disposition as nudity is involved... but it's all done in the best possible taste as Kenny Everitt used to say... I have this wonderful stamp designed by Lindsay Mason for Funstamps, initially I stamped and cut 18 of her out on white shrink plastic and stunk the kitchen at the community centre out shrinking them during the crop on Saturday. but then blew it by colouring them in with my Promarkers before the ink had dried fully and of course the Archival Ink bled into the pens and all 18 looked awful... lesson learned...

...so last nite I stamped her again onto plain white cardstock using Memories Artprint Brown dye ink and coloured her in again, and she looks fine...

...if a little naked lol... so it was out with my craft knife and an oak leaf punch and she is now covering her modesty with a couple of well-placed leaves lol... very fiddly but well worth the effort!

I placed her on a couple of skeleton leaves (we had to put some florally embellies on each piece so as she's nekkid I decided my leaves ought to be as well!) then added a couple of flowery brads and a dragonfly for good measure... couldn't resist the piece of lace across the top as it just seemed to finish the bunting off nicely.

So it was off to the post office this afternoon and 2 packages are now winging their way across the country to their respective hosts - hope the recipients like them too!



March tag swap

I've finally gotten around to sorting out pics of my offerings for the March tag swap on UKScrappers - better late than never I guess. I rashly decided to do two groups as the theme this month was travel, and I knew I had a lot of travel-themed stamps that I wanted to use, but I think I'll revert back to just the one set from April onwards, especially as I'll be busy with my first Circle Journal (more about that another time)

Anyways, March's birthstone is aquamarine, and this is what our hostess wrote for us to follow:

"On 2nd March 1969 Concorde made its maiden flight to Paris.

So for March what better theme than "TRAVEL" - using any TRAVEL themed stash you have create six tags - it doesn't have to be necessarily Paris themed any travel/country you wish. It could incorporate your favourite city or a mode of transport. The majority of the background of your tag should be aquamarine coloured - pale blues/pale wishy-washy turquoises. The twist this month is somewhere on your tags your must include some kind of postage stamp, postmark or the word POSTCARD."

Shame my tags have turned out a little dark - they started off as a pale blue but I distressed them with I think Faded Jeans and then crumpled the tags up and swiped over the top with Dusty Concord, then spritzed with water so that the inks bled together. Stamped images are all in Archival Black, except for the month which is embossed in white.

The ticket is cut using Tim's ticket die and stamped with one of his sayings from his Odds and Ends set, the other stamps are from various cheap (and not so cheap!) sets which unfortunately I didn't keep the manufacturers name on... but I love the size of the Eiffel Tower stamp - fits onto a 6 x 3.5 tag perfectly!

The second tag is inked and distressed in the same way, only this time I stamped all the images before adding the Dusty Concord over the top of the crumpled tag. Has still turned out a little darker than I would have liked, but hopefully I can get away with it.

This time the month is stamped/embossed with a blue embossing powder I found knocking around, which for some reason adhered itself to the 'enjoy the journey' stamp - but not all over it, just in selected places. When heat set it actually looks quite interesting - shame 'cos I hadn't planned it at all!

New Year, new set of projects...

Amongst other things craftwise, I'm joining in with a Tag Swap online, making sets of tags which have to abide by certain rules. Colourwise they are following each months birthstones, but our hostess puts a twist to each month with other things to be included.

January's tag was Garnet, so nice deep reds were to be used on each tag. Along with the Garnet we had to use a Black and White colour theme - the twist being somewhere on each tag we had to use a snowflake or two as well.



Here's my tag for January, black base cardstock, deep mottled red patterned paper for the rosette (diecut with Tim Holtz' rosette die) and his large flourish stamp embossed in white underneath. Two snowflake brads, one at the top for the ribbons to go thru and one at the bottom, and the month also stamped/embossed in white.

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The birthstone for February is AMETHYST so nice shades of mauves and purples were to be used on each tag. Along with the Amethyst - we had to use a lacey effect somewhere on the tags whether this was real lace, paper punches, stamped lace effect etc - the twist being somewhere on each tag we should include a LOVE quote as well.

 Here's Februarys tag - and I realised after I'd sent them off that I'd totally forgotten to put the lace on - had a lovely strip pulled out of my ribbon box all ready and waiting to be stuck along the join between the music paper and the tag - and somehow I totally forgot to do it!! Dozy mare or what...

Anyways, base cardstock is pale purple, the Cupid from Tim Holtz' Seasonal Masks set applied to the upper centre and Dusty Concord Distress Ink applied around it. A torn strip of music paper stuck to the bottom couple of inches, and another TH rosette made from some pearlescent lilac paper stuck on top. The ticket is die-cut using Tim Holtz' ticket die and stamped with the Valentines Day stamp from his Odds and Ends stamp set, which were all designed to fit the ticket die. Gotta love that man, designing everything to fit with everything else - very canny! The ticket was threaded onto some thin purple ribbon and tied around the rosette. Lastly, I applied Dusty Concord Distress Stickles over the top of the Cupid and stamped/embossed the month in white along the side of the tag. Shame about the lace - but it was very pretty... :-)

March's tags (I got greedy and put my name down for two sets) went in the post today so I'll sort pics out later. But they're nice - well, at least I think so...

ATC's

To my shame, these are 2 ATC's made a year apart... but I still love 'em both!

Halloween 2009 first,




then November 2010's 'Anything Goes' ATC swap... shame we're still all waiting for our ATC's to come home...

Crafty creations from 2010

Might as well try and bring this blog up to speed with some of the crafting I did last year... better late than never!

Took part in another cybercrop, this one was Monopoly themed, and I was in the Thimbles team. Here's a Thimbles ATC I made,

along with some thimble inchies made by casting some resin thimbles using UTEE and Mold'n'Pour.

The mystery kit had papers from Sassafrass Lass in, not quite my style but I did do this rather wintery (for April!) layout,

 

as well as producing my page for the pre-crop challenge using colour-blocking.

Here's an A4 layout done of my Number 1 Dad, not used paint on a layout before and boy does it show... not sure whethere I'll try that again or not!

Another class, this one using custom hand-cut frames

A trip to Hanningfield Reservoir nature reserve during the summer was the inspiration for another class,

and I think that this night-time shot of our hotel in Ostend goes so well with this 'Black Market' paper!