Poor kitty :-(

Not much crafting going on in the Willis household at the mo.  Poor kitty is still really sick, and has been at the pet hospital since Thurs.   Thursday afternoon was awful, as I went to take him to the vet for his daily check up and couldn't wake him up - nearly had a heart attack on the spot.  After 4 continuous days of vets visits they admitted him and found he had a blood clot in his bladder, poor thing.  He is recovering now and I hope they will let him come home in next day or two.

Had a demo at Hobbycraft on Sunday, but that's pretty much been it for past few days - too busy going to  and fro to vets, or worrying about my baby :-(

For those of you who asked about my samples at the NEC, I won't actually be going, but my samples should be on the WOW Embossing Powders stand. 

Here's a pic of me setting up for my Hobbycraft heat embossing demo, and on the front left of the pic you will see a sneaky peek of the twin of a tissue box that should be on the stand at the NEC - that's if my parcel of samples arrives in time! With all the vet visits, and my poor brother in law in hospital, it's been a pretty stressful week, and the samples only made it to the post on Friday - fingers crossed they make it in time!!

Hope you are all having a good week, and to paraphrase Bruce Forsyth....."Keeeeeeep Crafting!"

Thanks for stopping by

Debs x

Shaving Foam Marbled paper

A few people have asked about the shaving foam technique, so I thought I would show you what we made last night and explain how.

 This is the marbled paper we created -what's left of it! this one got torn while it was still damp.

I saw Ali Reeve demo this on C&C, and there are videos on u-tube if you take a look. It's very easy to do.  Spray a layer of shaving foam (better than gel) in bottom of an A4 plastic box (or in a clean sink so you can wash it away after). Squirt a few sprays of ink onto the foam - I use Stamps Away Colour Mist, but you can use any re-inker or alcohol inks. the only thing that doesn't work well is something like Mica mists, as they are so diluted with water they just make the foam collapse.

Use the end of a paintbrush or pencil to make swirls in the inked foam, and when you are happy with the pattern, press a piece of paper or card gently onto the foam until the underside is covered with foam. Lay it face up on your craft mat and press a clean piece of paper on top of the foam covered side and you get 2 sheets - the first impression will always be darker than the second, but it's quite nice to create different depths of colour.  Then you just wipe away the excess foam with kitchen roll, or if you're being really thrifty, use an old credit card to scrape off the foam and pop it back in the box. This sample only used a little ink, but you can use a lot and create quite a strong colour - it's fun to experiment!

These are some of the embellishments we made with our marbled card and paper, different flowers, feathers and a rosette (we ran out of time on the rosette cos we had so much fun getting messy with the foam lol lol!)  Or you can use it as background paper, or to create an accent on a card with matting and layering.



And I just had to share with you a picture of my ladies from last night's class, we had 3 generations of one family there, isn't that lovely? We all had a great time, and got VERY mucky!

thanks for stopping by

Debs x

WOYWW

So I've fallen a bit behind in the blogging world........last week I was away all week working, thought I would have loads of time for crafting and blogging in the evenings. What happened? WEach evening I returned to my hotel room exhausted and all I did was eat and sleep! All those lovely crafty bits stayed in my bag, no energy and no mojo!

then this week we have had a family emergency and a poorly kitty to look after around the clock.  Have you ever seen a cat so drugged up he walks into walls and falls down? Bless him, now he's confined to the one room so he doesn't hurt himself

Anyhoo.......this is the pic of today's workdesk, with some strategically placed tissue paper to hide my DT projects that are headed off to the NEC next week!  You can just see a sneaky peek to the left and right of the pink tissue paper.

Front and centre we have the most important project right now - a cuppa!!!  In my favourite mug from Margaritaville. Front right are some masking experiments with shaving foam and spray inks, the key ingredients for tonights class!

I'm off to have a quick peek at a few more desks at Julia's before I head out for tonights class.

Happy desk hopping!

Deb x

Hallloween card - who knew tearing paper could be so scary????

I just had to show you the Halloween card we made last night.  The class had a ball making the card, learning how to 'flap' diamond top cards to get them to fold right, and adding scary pumpkins and bats!

 This is the front of the card, complete with haunted house, witch, pumpkin, black cat and or course, those bats I spent ages punching  out lol!!

The main image and wrap were torn rather than cut, to add to that grungy look, but some of the ladies in the class found tearing paper to be sacrilegous!!! It was so funny watching people trying to tear 'neatly' and some decided not to tear at all, and reverted to their scissors, using them to cut out the uneven 'torn looking' edge printed on the paper!

And as promised, this is the inside of the card, complete with 'flying' ghostie! We stuck 2 ghosties back to back, with some thread sandwiched between, and then poked a hole in the top of the card and threaded the ends thru so the ghostie 'floated' when the card was opened.  We covered the ends of the thread on the back of the diamond with another pumpkin head.

This was so much fun to do, and would work equally well for a Christmas card, with hanging snowflakes, and one lady wants to use it as a nativity, because the diamond top looks like a roof - lots of inspiration there!

Thanks for stopping by

Debs x

WOYWW 123-Halloween and Flowers

So this is my work space this morning - if you're not sure why I'm posting a photo of my messy table, hop on over to Julia's blog where she hosts the biggest snoopathon!!  You get to check out the craft desks and workspaces of other crafters. You get to see what other people are making, and feel better about your own messy (in my case) space!  lol lol

Bottom left of pic are the kits I'm getting ready for tonight's class, and just above that you can see my Halloween punch - I've been punching out gazillions of little black bats - guess what tonight's project is?????????? Witches and bats pumpkins and flying (yes, flying!!) ghosties!!

Above the punch is an empty ice cream container - great size for craft storage, so I will just have to keep eating the ice cream! Also a part-finished DT project I'm working on - not quite coming together yet.  Just to the right of centre are a few pink tissue paper carnations I've been experimenting with, I'm quite chuffed at how they turned out and they are a doddle to make, AND they squash flat to go in the post, and it just makes them look better! Will add them to a later post - thinking of dunking them in glitter to bling them up a bit!

On the far right is a bag of K&Co embellishments and a few packs of die cuts and rub on's. I've had a sort out and I'm trying to decide what to do with them, cos I don't think I'll use them. 

Oh yeah, and in the front of the pic, the placemats from last night's dinner, which is, after all, only the secondary purpose of this table lol lol!!

Happy WOYWW everyone

Debs x

Stampscapes, Ink Dusters and the Grand Prix!

I had a lovely afternoon yesterday whilst Hubby watched the Grand Prix - I spent hours with ink and paper and stamps!  I mentioned in an earlier post that I had received some beautiful Stampscapes stamps for my birthday, and I had a ball playing with them.  This was the first design with a brayered background using a Big n juicy ink pad and Funky Hands 'Funky Seasons' backing papers from the beautiful Winter Skating collection.

The second design was using Distress Inks and Inkylicious Ink Dusters (thanks to Shoshi for her U tube tutorial!)  The background was lightly covered with Mustard Seed and Wild Honey and then stamped all over in Wild Honey and Walnut Stain, after stamping off the first generation of ink to give a very soft background.

The tag was inked with Mustard Seed, Wild Honey and Spiced Marmalade, and overstamped with Memento Tuxedo Black, then mounted on black mirri card. The fibres were added to give the card more texture, as it seemed a little flat.

I was really pleased with the INkylicious Ink Dusters - they give a beautiful soft finish and blend so easily. I did find that they take longer to achieve a result than Cut N Dry or the Tim Holtz blending tool, but the end results are much smoother.

Thanks for dropping by!

Deb x

Missing the sunshine :-(

OK, I know it was unseasonal weather last weekend, and everyone's probably heard enough about it already but........I miss the sun! Sat here with grey clouds and cold feet (must put slippers on lol).

I wanted to share just one last pic from the hot weekend - my Barney - big fat ginger cat.  He got so hot outside, he had to come inside for a lie down in the shade, and decided he needed to cool as much of himself as possible as fast as possible lol lol!!

It's been a busy work week, so not much crafting.  I have to make a wedding card (it's tomorrow - eek!!) and I have some new stamps to play with, so I need to get organised.

Debs x

WOW - a clean workspace (aka the dining room table!)

I just had to share this pic today, cos it's not often you can actually SEE that this is a table!! Being a follower of WOWYY with Julia at Stamping Ground I wanted to show you that today, dear blog hopper, I have a clear table.  It's a sad day when there's no crafting :-(

Think I'd better mess this table up soon to make myself feel better :-)





  So I thought I would show you what I was doing during our mini heatwave last weekend, when Hubby was out slaving in the garden............... and I was working hard on my next project for Making Cards!  This is MUCH more normal - you can see how my Crafter's Spread has....ahem....spread...to the chair, the floor and even the kitchen!

This proved to be a bit of a challenge when I needed to stop and make sarnies - nowhere was clear! So being a good crafter I improvised and moved the kettle to the floor so that I had space to make lunch - well, I couldn't move my Cuttlebug - I still needed it!!!

Thanks for stopping by

Debs x

CF Weds Class - Using Decoupage Twisters

Our Weds Class last week was all about using decoupage sheets in a different way. We all have them - sheets of decoupage images with borders, tags and little embellishments - something we fell in love with and then can't think how to use it!

We cut the front of the card on the diagonal and fixed the main image to mirri then on the inside face of the card so it showed over the diagonal (if your decoupage is not square, you could just mount it on a square of mirri or toning card). Front & inside of card was covered in toning paper, and we reserved the smallest layer of decoupage & cut an aperture lower right front to fit - the little swan looks great peeping through the aperture!

On the front of the card are a tag and border from the decoupage sheet, layered onto mirri, and a couple of vellum butterflies (glittered, of course!!) and the rest of the decoupage layers.  Added some card candi on the inside of the card to finish it off and balance it out - we were quite pleased with our finished design!

Debs x