It was my friend's birthday recently, and I decided I wanted to make a special present for her. Her hobby is watercolour painting, and I remembered seeing a blog post from Elaine (Craftshedgirl.blogspot.co.uk) ) one of the Chocolate Baroque design team detailing a very simple water colour palette for Peerless Paints. This was accompanied by a link to a video, by Jane Davenport on Youtube whose  original idea it was.

I checked it out for myself, but decided to elaborate on the scheme somewhat, and the pictures below show the finished palette. I should confess however, that it took me several abortive attempts to make the basic folder, before I got it right.

The Peerless paints. as far as I am aware, can only be purchased from the USA, but buyers beware, the postage and insurance is very expensive and because of the wording on the customs form, I got stung with a hefty customs bill, so all in all it was not an economical purchase. That said, they will last me for a very long time.

I decorated the folder with a  paper line that had been in my stash for ages, embellishing the front fussy cut flowers with stickles and the spine with wide chocolate brown lace. The title was printed on an oval Nestabilities die cut with the edges inked with Vintage photo distress ink

I added a medium tipped water brush before giving my gift and my friend was really pleased with the whole idea.

 All that remains is for me to make another palette for myself, when I have the time.

Hello again!

Well hello again,

I know it's been a long time since I posted to my blog, but I have been out of action since returning from France on the 9th of July.
I underwent cataract surgery on my right eye on the 11th of July followed by similar surgery to my left eye 6 weeks later on the 22nd of August. Obviously my eyesight during this period was somewhat compromised and it is only of late that I have begun proper crafting again. I now don't need glasses for normal everyday living but I do need them for reading. So far I have purchased a cheap pair of readers from the local supermarket, but intend to visit the optician soon for an eye test as I have astigmatism which needs a little correction.

Since beginning to craft again, I have made a nautical themed card for a male friend using the Hobby Art Scene-it stamps coloured with Tombow pens used as watercolours on 300 gsm Daler Rowney watercolour card. I do admit to being pleased with the result, especially as I no way consider myself an artist.

My friend was delighted with his card and says he likes it so much, he is going to frame it.

I have done one or two other projects, but will leave those until another time.

Until then, keep on crafting.

My First Mini Album

For a very long time I have been fascinated by Mini Albums, and have wanted to make one of my own, however I was very nervous about beginning as I felt there was great potential for making a lot of mistakes, which could turn out to be rather expensive, given the cost of cardstock and embellishments. Nevertheless, begin I did, and I have to admit to being very pleased with the outcome. I find these albums so tactile and can't stop stroking mine, turning the pages and generally fiddling with the charms etc.

Front Cover

The base of the album was 6" x 6" chipboard and I used 2" O rings as a binding  not being sure of being able to cope with some of the more sophisticated methods.

In my stash I had an 8" x 8" paper stack called Parisian Nights and being a complete Fracophile I decided that this would be perfect. It was an impulse purchase many years ago and had been languishing in my stash ever since as I couldn't really decide what to do with it. Over the years I had also been collecting  vintage French ephemera so had everything around me that I needed.

The Eiffel Tower die was from Tim Holz, the flowers were  from Prima and the lace from my stash (made up of several e-bay purchases) The large flower I  hand crafted from eyelet and other laces. I used a ribbon closure as this seemed the simplest method for a first attempt. 

Page 1

Page 3

Page 5

Page 8

Page 11

Page 13

These are pictures of some of the inside pages.

As a prototype,  I am pleased with it, however, I did make several  mistakes but thankfully was able to cover them up using strategically place trims and embellishments.

There are plenty of photo mats, and journalling tags so I am looking forward to finding some appropriate photographs to fill it. Probably those from our 30th wedding anniversary trip to Paris 15 years ago!

I really enjoyed making this album and can't wait to get started on my next.

Thanks for dropping by and happy crafting!

Die Storage

Until now, I have been storing my dies on magnetic sheets in a plastic storage box. Naturally, every time I need a die, it is on the bottom sheet and  moving the uppermost sheets to get to it causes all the other dies to fall off, thus ensuring that my valuable crafting time is spent re arranging the loose dies back in their allotted places.

I remember a long while ago, seeing a book that someone had made to house their dies, and in doing so made them easier to access. This book was beautifully embellished and looked very pretty, however, much as I liked it, I felt that the embellishments were not all that practical as storing the book(s) on a shelf would not be possible without damaging them.
I decided to have a go at making my own and this is what I came up with.

The cover was made from heavy weight chipboard: I had to ask my husband to round the corners for me as my corner chomper wouldn't cut through it. The internal pages were cut down stiff Amazon envelopes (waste not want not), covered with single sided card stock. The pockets were also made using the same cardstock but given depth by scoring the edges to make them expandable. These are for storing the packaging/instruction cards that come with the dies. The dies were attached to the pages with either self adhesive magnetic strips or the magnetic sheets on which I originally stored them cut down into smaller sizes and adhered using red double sided adhesive tape. I punched two holes in each cover and sheet using my crop a dile then inserted two large book rings. I wouldn't suggest using more than  5 or 6 pages as the book will not close properly.
The inside of the front cover was covered in a single sheet of card stock, but I covered the outside using the off cut strips from making the pages. I first gave the chipboard a coat of Mod Podge, stuck on the strips by overlapping them slightly ( I found a brayer useful in this instance) and finally coated the outside again in more Mod Podge, to protect it and give it durability. To finish off, I cut a Spellbinders name tag from the packaging and attached it to the top  book ring to make identification easier.
I am now staring on my second book to store my other dies!

MATERIALS USED

A4 size heavy weight chipboard 
Single sided card stock Good Day Sunshine by We are Memory Keepers.
Old Amazon envelopes or other stiff card. (Several sheets of cereal packets stuck together). 
Red double sided adhesive tape
Ordinary double sided adhesive  tape
Mod Podge
2 Book rings
Paper trimmer
Corner rounder
Self adhesive magnetic strips
Score board
Brayer

Belated New Year greetings to everyone!



It seems amazing that today is the last day of January; I really don't know where the time has gone since Christmas. I have been doing some crafting, but not as much play and development time as I would have liked. As always there were the much needed and urgent cards to be made for January and February birthdays, a selection of which are below

Whilst making these, I took time out to make 2 "Quintiles" for the Chocolate Baroque January tag swap. Instead of tags, this year we are using 5" square tiles for mixed media art. The January theme was Winter Wonderland. Unfortunately I am unable to show these as I forgot to photograph them before posting. I was eager to get them finished and into the post because of the disruption of the snow and the fact that I was almost on the deadline. I am really annoyed with myself as I like to keep a record.

In the midst of crafting, I have been trying to come up with a suitable way of displaying the 26 tags I received during the 2012 Tag swap challenge. The tags I received were wonderfully diverse and a credit to their creators, who are a very talented group of ladies. Sadly I have yet to hit on what I think is a good idea so I shall keep working on it. What I did come up with however, was a better way of storing my nestabilities and other dies rather than on magnetic sheets in a box. All will be revealed in my next post.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog, and happy crafting.

Gill

Last project before Christmas........I think!

Because I am giving several theatre /concert tickets or vouchers as gifts this year I was delighted to find a tutorial by Claire Charvill, which details how to make some delightful little gift bags. They are very easy to construct and I think they will be an attractive addition to the gifts. Here are a selection of the ones I made.

Claire has a blog (Mycreativespirit.blogspot.com) and a you tube channel Charliejones2686. she is a design team member for Graphic 45.
Here's wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy and healthy New Year!
Bye for now.
Gillx

A special card for a special person

This is beginning to look like the old joke about buses! You wait ages for one and then three come along together and so it is with my blog posts at the moment.
I wanted to make a card for my OH but a card with a difference and so I came up with the tag card featured below.

The card is constructed from a sheet of fairly weighty A3 card, cut horizontally to give extra width. It doesn't divide into 3 equally, so the remaining few centimetres were folded from the left hand side into  the card to make a narrow pocket for a photo mat tag/journalling tag. The extreme right hand section was folded into the card and adhered at the bottom and central fold areas to create another  tag pocket.

I covered the card with a selection of Bo Bunny rejoice Christmas papers and cut a half circle tag holder to attach on the bottom right hand page. This will hold my Christmas message to my OH. The large tag is a further photomat/journalling spot. 

The front of the card was decorated with a fabscraps chipboard flourish painted in red acrylic paint and some pine cones and spruce made with the Tim Holtz tattered pine cone die and grungepaper. The spruce was coloured with alcohol ink oversprayed with cosmic shimmer in green and the pine cone painted in brown acrylic paint. When dry I used a glue pen on the edges and dipped them in Dazzles prisma glitter.
I thought my OH might like to record the high spots of Christmas along with some photographs as all the family will be together this year.