Hello and Happy New Year,
I can't believe that I haven't blogged for 6 months. There have been  some serious things going on in our family since last June and thoughts of blogging have been far from my mind.

I think I am now back on track and want to share with you a set of cards that I made during November last year. These were to go into my stock of birthday cards for the coming year.

These were made using a mixture of Tim Holtz tissue wrap, small doilies and images printed from the   Joanna Sheen Fashion Boutique CD.

I hope you like them.

French Country

Hi there,
 It's been a long time I know, but here is a quick view of one of the many projects I have been working on recently. 
I have made a small journal for a friend who is shortly going on a weeks holiday in rural France. I don't know if she is a regular diarist or travel journaler but as a retired teacher, I thought that she might like this as a memento of her holiday and a place in which to keep any ephemera collected during her trip.

I constructed the cover from Craft card reinforced on the spine with Tyvek before covering it with paper from the Graphic 45 French Country paper collection and sealing it with Ranger multi matte gel medium. The showy feathers of the cockerel were picked out in Stickles. I used aqua, green and candy cane.

Inside the front and back cover, there is a pocket and the body of this single signature journal is made from tea and coffee dyed papers, brown paper bags, Glassine bags and doilies. Some of the pages have been edged with a Martha Stewart lacy edge punch, some pages have stamped images  and some have been made into pockets. Several of the pockets and bags contain cream tags edged with walnut stain distress ink. I have used a small amount of Washi tape here and there. The stamps I used were the ones from Hampton Art to match the paper collection.

I really enjoyed making it and hope my friend enjoys using as much.

Multi Tasking!

As  paper crafter, I find it useful to have several projects running concurrently. This ensures that I have something to work on at all times rather than waiting round for something to dry or set. Recently I have had a prolonged spell of making cards  along side making  two postcards for the Chocolate Baroque postcard swap, an album for my granddaughter's 1st birthday and dabbling in a large and small art journal. The art journal is the most difficult as it takes me right out of my comfort zone and I have yet to produce anything that I am confident enough to share with you. My first attempts are so awful, that I almost ripped them out of the book and started again, however, I decided against this as when I do produce something worthwhile, they will serve as a reminder of how far my art journey has progressed.

Here is  the card I made for the Chinese New Year. A simple easel card using an embossed Chinese symbol, die cut flourishes, a hand  made flower and an old Chinese coin. 

The second card was made for  male friend of my husband. Both he and my husband loved it. They are always sparring with each other in regard to their ages.
The background was stamped in black on to ivory card using a stamp from the Chocolate Baroque Antiquities set and the edges were inked with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in vintage photo. The "ruin" was stamped in Versafine vintage sepia on cream card, embossed and then coloured using distress inks in vintage photo and tea dye. The blue was a Tombow pen used as a watercolour. 
I hope you like them; thanks for stopping by.

Hello again,

 Here is my second post of 2015 and it is of two postcards I made for the Chocolate Baroque postcard swap. The theme I chose from those offered was caramel ( not having any stamps suitable out of the large number I own for the alternative). I really had to think hard about this as I was somewhat out of my comfort zone, however, these are what I came up with.

The one on the left was stamped on to shiny card using vintage sepia Versafine ink coloured with distress inks in tea dye and vintage photo and mounted on to a buff background. The corners were cut from craft card using a Sizzix die. The second card was cut from craft card onto which I sewed a piece of calico that I had dyed with tea. The image was a Chocolate Baroque stamp the name of which escapes me but it resembles a mediaeval plate.The "lace" edging was cut from craft card using a Sizzix die and the circles were stamped using a bottle top and tea dye ink. The word caramel was stamped using buttermilk paper and a tiny alphabet stamp from my stash. Hopefully they will be acceptable, but hey, according to one famous crafter "there can be no mistakes in art."

See you again soon.

Happy New Year!

Here is my first post of 2015 and it is of the album that my daughter asked me to make for her husband's Christmas present. This album is for holding keepsakes of their various skiing holidays. I made the skeleton of the album following a tutorial by Clare Charvill of mycreativespirit.blogspot.co.uk and added Pion Design papers called Wintertime in Swedish Lapland. These double sided papers have beautiful vintage images alongside typically Scandinavian designs and snowflakes. I felt they were very suitable for the snow and skiing theme.

The basic cover before embellishing.

Page 1

Fold out page with hidden pockets.

Small envelope pocket.

Vertical fold out page closed with a magnet.

I won't bore you with more photographs, but you get the  general idea? I really enjoyed making it and the recipient seemed very pleased with his gift.

The finished article.

I hope you enjoyed your visit here. See you again soon.

Christmas Traditions.

Most families have their Christmas traditions; little rituals that are carried out year after year and our family is no exception.

It was a long held tradition  at tea time, when we used to go  to my parents in law for boxing day celebrations, that there would be some extra small gifts for everyone. These were always concealed in either a fairy house or a pretty fairy mushroom that had pride of place on a 
beautifully laid dining table adorned with the very best bone china and glassware. Meals taken here were somewhat formal affairs, and didn't happen that often other than special occasions. Sadly they are no longer alive and it has been up to us as the now senior family members to uphold our own traditions. This year we have the joy of hopefully being joined by our first grandchild Emily (that is if everyone else is cold and bug free). We have to be sensible about infection around her as she has HLHS.

I decided at the last minute to make my own house for her ( I know she is too young to understand this year but it should last for a few years to come). It has been a labour of love but has gone together quite well, with a little help from my husband where mathematical calculations and construction tips were needed. It took 10 sheets of 3mm A4 chipboard, some gold acrylic paint and a selection of  Kaisercraft paper that I had left over from last year. I also used  scraps  of red and yellow cardstock, Scor- tape, hot glue, glossy accents and stickles. The shingles for the roof were made using a Martha Stewart lace edge punch and made to glisten like frost by using crystal embossing powder and a heat gun. Unfortunately, the photographs do not do the house justice as the light wasn't coming from the right direction to enable good photographs. Nevertheless, here is a selection.

I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed making it. I will have another project to show you after the festive season, but need to wait until the recipient has seen it first. Here's wishing you a very happy Christmas and New Year.

MIA.

I guess you all thought that have been missing in action or AWOL. The truth is that I have had a really busy year, and blogging has had to take a back seat for a while. Just before Christmas, we learned that our expected first grandchild had been diagnosed at the 20 week scan with a serious heart defect (HLHS) this means that she would only have half a working heart and that she would need an eight hour operation shortly after birth. This came with no guarantees and all we could do was hope and pray for her survival and recovery. I am pleased to report that Emily was born weighing just 5lb 5ozs on the 23rd April this year and underwent her first surgery at 6 days old. To date she is doing very well,and is awaiting the second of the three operations needed to hand make her a heart. She is very cute and has a very good set of lungs on her which she uses to full advantage to let her parents know when she's not happy about something! 

In February, courtesy of monetary birthday and Christmas gifts from the family, I signed up to do a weekend craft retreat with the very talented and patient Clare Charvill of My Creative Spirit. Claire has a blog and online shop, which can be found at Mycreativespirit.blogspot.com . Her work is amazing and she is an ambassador for Graphic 45. I had never taken a workshop of this nature before, and was amazed at the amount of work some people managed to get through during the weekend. Needless to say I was very slow so didn't manage to complete the project which was an album using the Couture Graphic 45 paper collection. However, I intended to finish it later. This turned out to be much later as the events detailed above rather overtook me.
Here are some photographs of the Couture Album made during the February craft retreat.

I have long been fascinated by the construction of albums and learned a great deal during the retreat. So much so that when my daughter requested me to make an album for her, I was able to oblige and will post the pictures next time.

Thanks you for stopping by.