Hogs and Kisses

I admit this is not the most exciting card or is it elaborate card I have ever posted and I am wondering if it is worthy of a spot on my blog.
I guess I was thinking,   less is more  while working on this one or maybe I 'd just lost my mojo.

I used the new stamp set from S.U. called "This little piggy" to create this card.

I coloured the imaged using Copic Markers and mounted it onto cardstock layer which I had stitched together using a zigzag stitch on my sewing machine.


My next post will be very long,  the project is very elaborate and I will probably bore you all senseless with my drivel on how  long it has taken and the how
project was created  That should make up for this rather under whelming card.

Hubby's Birthday Card.

It was  Hubby's birthday last week and I had left his card to the last possible minute.  Not through lack of time, I had plenty of time for a change. 
I just didn't have  any idea's at all that would fit him.

The night before I suddenly  remembered he used to have a thing about watches. Arh!!!! I have the Dapper dad stamp set and the Well Worn DSP which is a lovely masculine paper.....but what on earth am I going to do with them.


I tried several things but didn't like the results.
 At around midnight on the eve of his birthday I finally came up with this  7 X 5  card.

I stamped and heat embossed the watch in gold embossing powder.
 Stamped it a gain in black craft ink and allowed the craft ink to dry thoroughly then punched out the clock face with the 1" circle punch and stuck it onto of the gold clock face.




I added a  1" resin  bubble/ domed circle thingy... ( what are these things called?????)over the clock face then set about cutting my layers.

Using  oval dies I cut out some layers to mount the watch on. 
I used some thin sticky  foam pads in between the scalloped layer and the card to bring the watch forward a little.











I love this  sheet of designer series paper it's my favourite in  the Well Worn pack.
But it was  to plain for this card.  

 So I dragged out the  retired,  Sense of Time stamp set and used the cog stamp and black ink pad  to add a little more interest to the background.
Besides I really like over stamping on printed paper, heat embossing is even better.


I stamped, punched and sponged  my greeting and glued it in place.

For the inside   I made up an A4 sheet of paper  on the PC  with quotes and sayings that all related to time .  I printed it off then over stamped with the large clock faces  from the Sense of Time  stamp set.
It was then cut to size and stuck into the card with some narrow DS tape ..... All ready for the morning.

Paper Gerberas

Today I resurrected  the daisy die  I bought some years a go  from Stampin up! I have only used it  twice to make brooches from tin cans. (This die has now been retired.)
It was nice to make something a little more colourful with it this time.

Brief instructions as I don't think you will need detailed instructions for these.
 Cut two large and two medium size daisies in the colour of your choice.

 Then cut three smaller daisies for the centre two  in a one  colour and  the third in  another colour.

Here I have used a mix of  two white to one yellow  on one flower,  then two yellow to one white. 

The purple flower I used two white to one pink.

 I layered up and stuck  all the petals together and gently  curved  the two large sets of petals downward with a bone folder and the small petals curved  upwards. 

I also  covered the hole in the centre of the flower with a
1" card circle  punched from green card stock and stuck to the under side of the flower.

For the centre of the flower, I punched a small circle placed it on some firm foam and rolled a large ball tool  round and round until the circle started to form a slight dome. 
 I covered  it in crystal effects and  then smothered it in glitter and left it to dry for a few hours. 
Once dry  I stuck a piece of thick double sided sticky foam in the centre of the flower and placed the glittery centre piece over it.

The stems of the flowers are kebab sticks wound tightly in  old olive  card.
Before winding the card around the sticks I curled them over and over again in all directions until the card started to peel. 
 I peeled the layers apart so I had two thin strip of card to with a little glue I would  the strips around the sticks. 

I poked  a small  hole in the  back of the flower head with  a very sharp paper pricker added a little glue and pushed the  pointed end of the kebab stick into the hole at a slight angle and allowed to dry.

The leaves were cut  by hand with scissors. Lucky for me I had a Gerbera plant sitting on the window sill so I had a reference point for the shape of the leaves. I think my leaves are a little bit broader than on the actual plant. I drew the veins in with a fine ball tool and sponged the edges and attached them to the stems. The final step was add a few drops of crystal effects  to give the appearance of water droplets on the leaves and allowed to dry. 

Envelope Punch Board Cracker.

 Another project for the envelope punch board   which is the latest gadget from Stampin ' Up! is to make crackers. 
I saw this on on an Australian Demonstrators website.  Tanya has a tutorial you can download free of charge for this project. Unfortunately for me  the tutorial  wouldn't download, so I ended up  figuring it out for myself. You may have better luck .


I will leave details of her website at the end of this post so you can view it for yourself.  I don't know how or if her tutorial differs from mine. But for now here's how I made it.
 I used a piece of card stock 8 1/4"  X  6 1/2".  I  having been using whisper white card and the DSP to make these  crackers as I am  not sure if the punch could cope with two thickness of the plain coloured card which is thicker. I am a coward and really don't want to try it just in case I ruin my punch board.

I scored  the card length ways at 1  1/2"  intervals    which leaves you with a  1/2" strip  which is the Flap for the adhesive  Fold  all the score lines.

I folded the card to the first score line and placed the folded edge in the punch lined up to the 2" mark on the rule and punched .
I then opened it up an folded to the second score line and punched  again. I repeated this process until I had punched on every score line and on the edges of the cracker.

Then turned the card round and repeated the whole punching process again until both side matched. 

Taking the cracker back to the score board I scored a line each side of the the punched holes.
Then folded the inside line in towards the centre of the cracker and the outside score line back. ( see the photo) This will help the cracker to keep it's square shape when you tie the ribbons round.

If you intend to stamp your cracker now would be a really good time to do it, While the card stock is relatively flat.

 Here I have used to the Holly wheel wheel stamp to decorate this cracker, then added  red glitter glue over the berries.

One the glitter glue is dry, I will stick the edges together and tie ribbon around the punched lines which will draw the card in to give the cracker it's shape.

These two crackers are now ready for  the finishing touches.
As promised  here is the info to find Tanya's blog

Tanya Bell's Blog Australia

stampingt.com/au/blog 

Tanya has made loads of other amazing things and a visit to her blog is well worth the time.  
Go see for yourself.

Wetlands Card.

Here we have another card I have CASED from the very talented Brenda Keenan.
Brenda  has made a video on the making of this card and you can see it on You Tube.

I stamped a bit more greenery on mine to hide a couple of  ink spots that were not meant  to be there.
I must admit this took me about three attempts  as I kept putting my inky fingers in just the wrong place or I smudged  the greeting and I ruined the whole thing. But I persevered until I ended up with one that was acceptable.

 If you have the Wetlands stamp set from Stampin' Up have a go at this one.
You  need five ink pads:  soft sky,  old olive, pacific point, crumb cake and black Stazon.
Sponge or sponge daubers.
Whisper white, pacific point and crumb cake card stock.
Markers  in crumb cake and soft suede to colour the birds.(Brenda used just the crumb cake marker but I added a few dots of soft suede  in the darker areas.)
The wetland stamp set,
and some linen thread.
Post it notes for masking or a sheet of  paper and the two way glue pen.
I used a white gel pen to add white under carriages  and highlights on the birds.

Mother's day card and box.

Don't you just love this new stippled blossom two step stamp set. ( try saying that after a couple of glasses of your favourite tipple). 

I found a card very similar to this on another blog and fell in love with it so I just had to CASE it. Well,  almost, my card does differ a little.

After completing the card I still had the urge to play with this stamp set so then I made a box and decorated it with a panel created with the same set.

I  just couldn't put this stamp set down so here I tried  it in different colours, Giving some the vintage feel and leaving others  crisp and clean. They kind of remind me of vintage seed packets. I think it has something to do with the Style of the font on Perfectly Penned stamp set. The two sets compliment each other perfectly. I am really looking forward to the Easter holidays perhaps I will get to spend a day in my craft room and really go to town with these two sets.

These have to be my all time favourite stamp sets.

Well  Done  SU.

Kam Snaps

Here I go again raving about the ease and simplicity of the Kam snaps.
They are turning out to be perfect for the job I bought them for.
 Which was for doll clothes and baby clothes.

I ordered a selection of colours and I have not been disappointed with my choices.You may remember I  wasn't too happy with the colours that came with the pliers but funnily enough the cheap, nasty red colour snaps were perfect for the outfit below.

Here is a colour chart I found online so you can see the range of colours.

 (I used the gorgeous Periwinkle snaps on this little number.)

My favourite colours so far are the periwinkle, chocolate, apple green B44, teal B29, dark red B54  and seafoam B19. There are a few more colours I would like to get later on like the Taupe, rust, and grey.                             

 Another use we found was on the flaps of  Hubby's hat. They had been stitched up and he wanted the option to use them. So I unpicked the stitching and replaced it with snaps in a matter of five minutes. they are so easy and with the range of colours available you can find one to go with almost any fabric. 

Here they are in use on this all in one dolls outfit.                  

They stand out like a sore thumb in this  photo but when done up, they are hardly noticeable on this busy fabric.

 I have two pairs of pliers,   a cheapy pair hubby ordered from China which I was a little disappointed with as the build quality  isn't brilliant, they rattle and squeak and feel cheap and nasty, BUT they do the job perfectly.           My second pair  are a much nicer quality and they are silent,   BUT they are more difficult to use, I have found they crush the resin prong too much to one side, which stops the snap from snapping shut properly.

The snaps come in different sizes and the pliers come with the attachments for the different size snap caps, but  it's time consuming changing them over, so I have one pair set up for T16 and the other for T20,  although I am finding I can set the T20 snaps using the cheapy pliers and the attachment for setting  the T16  without a problem.

Candy cane mouse

Some time ago I said I would re photograph and post the gift Sharon sent me..... I have finally got round to it so here it is , A  candy cane mouse Is'nt it gorgeous.
Sharon has the build a blossom punch which punches out several shape petals at a time, (see photo below)  two of which have been used here to create the ears.

The small heart punch and two of the circle punches have been used to create the eyes and nose. I am guessing she cut the oval out body out with scissors. I was delighted to receive this little chap in the post at a time when I was feeling a little down.

Quilt for a baby girl

Well I have finally finished my second baby quilt.  This time in pink and white. I don't think it's as crisp and cool looking as the blue and white one. It is slightly bigger than my first one and I arranged the block in a more symmetrical pattern. The red work on this one are all pictures of little girls doing household chores, Ironing, cooking, sweeping, watering the flowers and playing with a kitten. They are all very cute designs.I hadn't quite finished it when I took this photo which is why you can still see the pins in it. 

This quilt  just needs to have a wash to get rid of the water soluble stabiliser before going to  it's new home.

Baby Quilt for a Boy

This week I have been learning to quilt.  By watching videos on you tube. My first experience of you tube was through my son, who would  view videos of people doing stupid and dangerous things. Which he found highly amusing.
It never occurred to me there would be videos on there that I would find useful  but there are hundreds, if not thousands of videos showing us how to do all sorts of things. It's actually a great learning resource. I have watched many quilting videos over the last week and learnt enough to make this baby quilt without too many mishaps.
If I had been reading the instructions from a pattern or book,  I am sure I would have made a lot of mistakes and spent a lot of time unpicking and re sewing. To be honest I probably would have lost the plot and thrown the  whole project in the bin. (I don't have  huge amount of patience when this sort of thing starts to go wrong.)
So I would just like to say a Big Thank you to all those people that take the time to make the HOW TO  videos especially.... The quilters, the cooks, the card makers and all the contributing  crafters I have learnt so much from .
Anyway this is my first attempt at making a quilt and I am quite pleased with the way it is turning out, I may even make another one in pink when this one is finished.
This was a nice easy project to start me off with. It's a quilt as you go project and being a baby quilt it's not huge so I didn't get bored and abandon it.

Doll's Pram Bedding

 Having just bought a Silver Cross dolls pram for my Grandaughter it seemed only right to make some bedding for it.
I wanted the lace  frill to be seen on this quilt when it's tucked in.

 Many quilts  have the frill stitched into the seam.
 I can't see the point in this as when the doll or baby is tucked in you don't get to see the frill at all.
This quilt tucks in nicely and  the frill sits beautifully on  the top for all to see.
I am quite amazed at how well this came out, considering I haven't done very much sewing in the last 5 years, and the fact I was making it up as I went along.
I still have  more work to do on this, but I am getting a bit forgetful when it comes to taking photos of finished projects, so I have started to take a few as I go along.  Which is just as well, as forgetting to take a photo of the finished project is exactly what happened with this one. 


The pram also needed a mattress,   so I cut  foam to fit the pram base and covered the foam in fabric. I made  a couple of fitted sheets, plus  a top sheet and pillow with matching  embroidery.
A couple of  fleece blankets trimmed with ribbon and lace to complete the bedding bundle.

Here is a photo of the pink fleecy blanket, top sheet and part of the pillow.

This project is the reason I haven't done much paper crafting lately.

I do hope Ellie will like this bundle of bedding along with the pram.

Place Cards

I final got into my craftroom today and had a bit of a tidy up. After  a sewing bout for my grand daughter  ( but that's another post).

This post is just to show  you the place setting cards I made for our Christmas dinner this year.
After printing off the names of the dinner guests, I hot foiled them, then stamped around the names  using the serene snowflakes stamp set and basic grey ink.  Stuck all the layers together  and mounted the fronts onto a piece of black card stock and  added a gemstone for some seasonal sparkle.

R.I.P. YOGI

A friend of our sadly had to have his beloved dog Yogi put to sleep a fortnight ago. I have known Yogi since he was a 100 mile an hour puppy along with his brother Buster ( who is still with us and bares more than a passing resemblance to Stars Wars Chewbacca).

Buster and Yogi would tear around in circles on the field and woe betide anyone that got in the way.

It's been a few years  now since they tore round the place like exorset missiles.

Now they are very  laid back and very Gentlemanly .

Around the age of two they actually sat still long enough for me to take a couple of photos of them so last week I decided to give them to Ron  in a Memory Book. Here are a few pages from the book.

 I left a few spaces for Ron to add a few of his own favourite photos too .

I included quotes and poems about dogs

and lots of spaces for Ron to write up his favourite memories about Yogi in the  little books.

All the papers used in the making of this book were from Stampin' up the neutrals DSP collection

 On this page I cut chipboard tags and covered them with card and decorated them.

Rather than sticking them  onto the page or making a pocket for them, I just put them onto the hinged ring as a small page on their own

Below I made a huge pocket to house the larger of the two books I made.

The Friends Embellishment is a crushed bottle top.

 I stamped friends onto some scrap card with Brown stazon ink,  then using the 1" circle punch, I punched out the word  keeping it as central as possible. daubed it with green ink.

When the ink was dry I dabbed it all over with versamark ink and heat embossed it with clear embossing powder then stuck it into the bottle top with crystal effects. when it had stuck fast, I filled the bottle topup to rim with crystal effect and left it over night to dry on a level surface.

It is important to  heat emboss before you fill the top with crystal effects. If you don't in the morning you will find the ink has run or blurred....even with stazon although it is no where near as bad.

The Book was just one sheet of cream card.  I  stamped the sheet of card  and cut it  in half,   then folded in half and stapled in the fold. I printed off some journaling pages  mounted them onto copper card and stuck them in  the book.

Here I made a corner pocket to hold the smaller of the two books.

There is an awful lot of hot foiling in this book either in copper or gold.

Infact I hot foiled all the text in this memory book.

To make it easier for Ron to cut his photos to the right size for the matts I wrote the measurements for the photos on the matts. I also gave him a few spare  journalling pages  to to practise on. There is nothing worse than writing something and finding you don 't have enough room to get in  everything you need to say.

And  by the way that little corner of paper you see curling up on one page..... I did stick it down properly before I gave  the book to Ron.

Stamping on Icing Experiment.

Once every five years or so I  get a crazy notion in my head  to make a birthday cake for somebody..... I am not the greatest cook in the world  by a long chalk. So my cakes are usually ummm......interesting.   hee hee.
I am always trying to come up with  easy idea s for decorating cake s that will impress with the minimum of work.

 Yesterday I had a wacky idea to stamp the icing to save me the effort of piping. This morning I selected the stamp I thought might work best  gave it a good clean brushed it over with icing sugar  to prevent it clogging up with icing and had a play.  It doesn't look to bad. In the photo  you can see I have brushes some icing sugar into the  pattern to high light it. Not sure how long it will remain visible before the moisture from the icing makes it disappear. Not sure if I am going to use this idea on the cake I am in the process of making. But if I do I will post a photo showing you the result.

Here  I have taken it a step further,  I stamped in colour. I made a make shift ink pad from a square of kitchen roll.  Then mixed food colouring paste and  a pinch of icing sugar with a little vodka until it resembled a syrup then painted the kitchen roll with the mix.                                                            Having stamped the image I dusted it lightly with icing sugar, to absorb the excess food colouring and help prevent any colour bleeding that may occur. I brushed off the icing sugar and this was the result.  Not as too bad for wacky idea. It can be a bit hit and miss and requires practice to get a good result.

Dress Card

 I  woke this morning with a stiff neck and a stinking headache, which was probably the result of spending so much time working on this card. It's for a very special young lady who is my eldest son partners . She does have a passion for fashion  so I hope she likes it.
To make this card, I cut out the dress shape  twice in black card. I then cut about an inch and a half  of the fish tail off  of one of dresses and applied versamark ink  and heat and stick powder all over the top part of the dress. I heated the powder until it began to melt (DO NOT OVER HEAT) then I applied  black glitter and pressed it down into the heat and stick .  You can  used a xyron to apply the glue if you prefer. 
I then added some crystals along the top edge of the dress.

Taking the second dress shape, I cut off the  bottom 2" of the  fish tail and discarded the top part of the dress.
Using some soft, limp lace fabric,  (about 1 1/2" wide and 6 - 8" long )  I ran a line of  small gathering stitches very close to the edge of the fabric and pulled the thread up to gather the lace until it was approximately an inch wider than the card fish tail.
I put a strip of double sided tape across the card fish tail  half an inch down from the top edge to hold the gathered lace edge.
Lining up the bottom edge of the lace with the bottom edge of the card fish tail I pressed the gathered lace edge onto the the double sided tape (arranging the lace as I went along. ) leaving about half an inch of card above the lace.  ( This is to join the two parts of the dress together later.)
 I  folded  the  ends of lace to the back of the fish tail and held them in place with double sided tape.
Apply a little glue  across the width of the card fishtail  ( the bit  that's above your gathered lace)  and place the  glittered  part of the dress on top,  butting up the bottom edge of the dress to the top edge of the lace.
I ran   a very thin line of crystal effects  across the the lace where it meets the glitter and sprinkled with more black glitter. I then layed a kebab stick over the lace gathers and pressed it down to flatten the lace join .
My lace looked a little too matt against the all the sparkle of the glitter so I lightly brushed some crystal effects over the lace with a stiff paint brush and applied  more black glitter.
The last thing was to gather a small length of ribbon to form the flower and stick a diamonte in the centre.

Now you maybe asking why didn't I just use edging lace and and just stick over one  of the dress shapes........ My answer ....edging lace usually has a slightly thicker edges,  which adds bulk and makes it more springy therefore  making it more difficult to stick down.

Joining the two pieces of card at the fish tail created a a slight step in the card which means I have a join between the lace and the card  that is flush and there is no bulk . I have  a stronge dislike for cards with fabric on that look bulky and out of control.

The handbag was made using  a tag punch, 2 circle punches  , and an oval punch from SU.

The crown was created by stamping a crown in versamark ink and heat  embossing in black and apply tiny dots of crystal effects over the embossing and applying black glitter.

Decorated Note Pad

Here I have used a discontinued stamp set to decorate this little note.  It wasn't discontinued when I made this.
I just forgot to post  it. Perhaps I need to use this.
I actually got my sewing machine out to decorate  part of this.
The label on the front of the pad says  "Sew you don't forget".
The box  cover says " for your C.R.A.F.T moments which  stands for .. .C an't   Remember A  F******  T hing."
Which is quite apt for me at the moment.

Tea caddy/Copic marker storage

 I am always looking for good storage  containers. A little while ago I came across this tea caddy  in Lidls.  I thought it would be idea for my Copic markers.                         I know you can buy purpose built copic marker racks but they seem to be rather expensive if you don't have or don't intend to collect the whole range of pens.  

I don't have a huge collection of them but I do have  to many too fit in a standard pencil case and finding the colour you want in a pencil case  is never easy,  the one you want is  always the last one you come across.

There are only five compartments in this caddy so I figured  I could get away with keeping two or three colours in each  section. yellow/ peach and orange in one section, pinks reds and burgundys in another and so on.   On the whole it seems to working for me so far.  Although occassionally I do tend mix them up a bit.

Sharon's little monkey

I have to share this little guy with you. He was sent to me  from Sharon. I thought he was gorgeous and he certainly made me smile when I opened the envelope. Which was Sharon s intention.
I haven't as yet  had a go making him myself as I found I didn't have all the punches needed. But that issue has now been rectified,  I just need to find the time. Half term has been extremely busy for me Sorting out my craft room turned into a mammoth job which has taken me the best part of the week.  I had this idea  that if I moved some  the furniture around  I would have more floor space and easier access to my craft room.......Having moved several large pieces of furniture and many plastic boxes I found I had boxed myself in and couldn't open the door enough to get out.  Now being stuck in my craft room  is not far off my idea of heaven,  the trouble is one needs to eat and use the bathroom from time to time and of course,  one needs to go work to pay for all the new craft stuff that you just can't live without.
Fortunately Hubby was off work that particular day and realizing my plight, he took the door off the hinges  so I didn't have to move everything back to get out..... Bless him.   He has re hung some cupboards  for me so I don't feel so claustrophobic .   I do have a little more floor space...... Gosh ! I may even be able to get two people in there now hee hee.
I still have a few cupboards to sort through and tidy but I am getting there, which is why I haven't done any crafting for a while.
I treated Hubby to  trip to the Cadbury's  World  (chocolate factory)  for his help. He is a bigger chocoholic than  most of the women I know so he enjoyed that.http://sharonscreativemoments.blogspot.co.uk

sale-a-bration fresh vintage

This is certainly not my favourite card but it does show the use of markers on stamps well.
For the novice stamper, this where you use  different coloured markers to ink up your stamp instead of a single colour ink pad.
Once you have coloured all the areas over your stamp with ink you then take a deep breath and huff all over your stamp   to re moisten the inks and print the image onto your card stock.
It does take a little longer  stamping this way but hey,  think of it this way..... there is NO  intricate colouring in to do Whoopie! I am not a love of colouring in.... I can't stay inside the lines. lol.

I used the beautiful Fresh Vintage stamp set for this card. This stamp set was a free set from Stampin' up ,during the Sale-a-bration period. Every customer  spending  £45  got a free set of stamps.
I used the Stamp and Write markers to colour in my stamp. Old olive grosgrain, Razzleberry, Pretty in pink  and Whisper white card stock.

punch art owl card

I think this guy is kind of cute.
He was created using the owl punch and the scallop circle punch for the wings.
I daubed the edges  with chocolate chip ink and then put the owl together. 
I added the leaves and  a flower.
The bark effect was created , by inking up the inside of a bark embossing folder  with a darker ink than my card stock and running it through my Bigshot. This  gives the bark slightly more definition.