Hearts and flowers - vintage look wall hanging

This is the finished wall hanging made with hearts, some of you saw the experimental phase on my desk yesterday!

I couldn't achieve the effect I wanted with the acrylic paints, so went back to my trusty Distress Inks! really pleased with the finished effect, made with a Memory Box Butterfly die cut, some punched shapes & rolled rosebuds from K& Co McKenna papers, stamped with a mix of stamps from WOW, Creative Expressions and Dimension Stamps....

this is the full monty, hanging on my wall, and below are close up pics .....

 

Planning to teach this at a future workshop, should be great fun!

Thanks for stopping by

Debs x

WOYWW

Wednesday again, and time to travel the craft desks of the world via Julia's blog!

 My desk, as usual is a bit of a tip lol!! 

 

Centre front on my scratch pad are some hearts I've been experimenting with - still can;t quite get the result I want - I'm stamping with distress Inks over an acrylic painted background, which has been heat set to ensure that it is dry, but the Distress Inks keep smudging :-(  update - if you're interested in seeing the finished heart wall hanging, click here :-)

there's a scattering of stamps, my precious Ink Dusters - always in use! And you can see towards top right my box of Cosmic Shimmer Watercolours, which have also been used on the hearts.

Short and sweet today, as requested by desk-mistress Julia, so I'm off to do a bit of tidying, and crafting, and will visit desks later today

happy crafting 

debs xx

Easter gift (choc!!) box

Hi everyone, and a warm welcome to my new followers - I am always thrilled that people are interested in my projects :-)

This was inspired by a kit I saw at the NEC last week (unfortunately can't remember the name of the company selling the kits, sorry!)

I played with a box template I already had & tweaked it a bit, punched the top edge with a Martha Stewart border punch, decorated with First Edition 'Sweet Owl' paper and a stamped Helz Cuppleditch image coloured with Pro Markers, then cut out & fixed in place.

This isn't what I planned to work on today but, following a visit to the osteopath this morning I needed something quick & easy I could do on my lap tray with an ice pack in place :-)

Thoroughly enjoyed making this one, which I will give filled with choccies for Easter, and can see myself making a few more before the weekend!

Thanks for stopping by

Debs x

It's so cold!

 Finding it hard to work in my craft room at the moment as I have to wear so many layers to keep warm! Still, it's an ideal time to make Christmas cards lol!!

This one came about from trying to be good and use up snippets - the background is made of 1" squares punched from leftovers, and layered on the background card as a patchwork, with faux stitching to add to the effect.  The topper is an upcycled Christmas card (I save them all!) cut with a Spellbinders die, and backed with another snippet to match.  The tiny gingham bow kind of sets off the homespun theme I was going for - but was a **** to tie using such small leftover piece of ribbon - didn't have any more of this one so had to make it work :-)

Any my upcycled topper has 3 geese on, so fits with this week's Crafty Hazelnuts theme which is '3 of anything!' - so this one is entered in the following challenges:

Pixies Snippets Playground
Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge
Sarn's Rudolph Day challenge

And I wanted to say thanks to Shaz in Oz for her advice on how to add watermarks to your photos - super helpful advice, and pointed me in the right direction :-)

Happy crafting

Debs xx

The importance of photographs!

Excited tonight as I'm off to the NEC tomorrow with a friend - I won tickets on Ali Wade's blog - thanks Ali!! Haven't been as a visitor for a couple of years, and wasn't going to go this week as I went to Farnborough a few weeks ago. But having won the tickets it would be rude not to!!

Many of you know that I design for Making Cards magazine, and I wanted to upload photos of my Tea Bag folding projects that are in this months edition. then I realised I forgot to take any!! So here are pics of a couple of the mag pages instead :-)

Must remember the importance of photographing the projects when I'm in that frantic rush to submit them!

Maybe I'll bump into some of you tomorrow at the NEC - happy shopping :-)

Debs x

WOYWW and beer!

Hi fellow world travellers, hope you're enjoying your hop around the world. If you're not sure what's going on pop over to Julia's, where she hosts a weekly snoop into the crafty desks across the planet :-)

This was my desk yesterday afternoon, and nothing has changed since then. The beer in my post title refers to the Guinness cans you can see centre stage! I cut them up and die cut or emboss - great source of thin metal sheets, and Hubby is happy to help me build up my stash lol!! Have used them and loo roll inners on a magazine DT project with cogs and clocks - sorry, had to move that out of shot as not published yet!

Other things you can see are my trusty heat tool -heat embossed some of those cogs to look like rusty aged metal! Also a wedding card using the kanban Jasper Set, a spring card  for a blog challenge (see previous post) my fave fiskars scissors lower right of pic, and my Scotch photo glue (anyone know where I can buy more?? It's fab glue and I have a small stash but can;t find anywhere that sells it any more)

Ok, I'm off to blog hop and check put other creative desks

Happy woyww

Debs x

Happy Tuesday!

Had a lovely weekend in London at the O2 arena. Andy's Xmas pressie was a
Pair of tickets to a country music weekend festival - had a great time but Monday was a washout cos I was exhausted!

Bit more with it today and hit up the orange snippets folder in a big way! Just seemed like the right sort of colours for spring :-)



Used snippets of orange spots & stripes papers - no clue where they were from originally. And snippets of white card for my topper & die cut flourish & punched butterflies - have so many of these cut off pieces of white card, and they're perfect for these little die cuts!

The stamp is a Penny Black one that I love, coloured with Pro Markers - so entering this in the following challenges:
Penny black Saturday challenge
Pixies Playground Snippets
Pro Marker Challenge 
Forever Friends Challenge - flowers

Off to sort the washing :-)

Debs x

WOYWW and the kindness of crafty folk!

Hi everyone, I can't believe that it's Wednesday again (where on earth did that week go?!) and time for another whizz around the globe at Julia's Stamping Ground, to see what other crafters have on their desks.

You probably already know that I don't tidy my desk for your visits, but today is pretty dire! Dies that need the leftovers 'poking out', a part complete project on the left, planned for a future class, and my 'overflow' box on the far left - same place as last week, with much the same stuff in, and an experimental card fold on top!!

And this is what I've been working on with my Inkylicious dusters - the sand dunes image was inspired by one I saw at Farnborough, that was made using Adirondack inks, and I wanted to see if I could make something similar using my Distress Inks. Don't know about you, but I have a lot of Distress Inks, and I love them, (Julia asked about my colour chart on my desk last week - it was for my DI's!) and I can't really justify buying another set of inks (Adirondacks) if the DI's will do the same job - I was quite pleased with the results, and they will be the basis of a future class:-

My class yesterday was such fun, and one of my lovely ladies brought along a gift for me - a fab tartan scrapbooking bag! A friend of hers was throwing it out (!) and as she doesn't scrapbook, and already has a travelling craft bag, she decided to give it to me. Aren't crafters lovely people?



Anyway, Julia asks us to keep these posts relatively short (sorry Julia!) so I'd better stop waffling and start blog-hopping!

Happy WOYWW

Debs x

Tissue box covers

This is what I have planned for classes today and tomorrow. Tissue box covers, tailored to your own colour scheme & design!

The basic box is incredibly quick & easy to make from 2 sheets of A4 - I deconstructed a tissue box to make the template. And all the decoration is using Inkylicious Ink Dusters and stamps - plus a few punched shapes!

Thanks for stopping by

Debs x

Chocolate Birthday card

This card is for a relative who had a bit of a chocolate addiction! The card was inspired by the gorgeous chocolate spotty paper, but I only had a little left.

The snippets are all leftovers from the Hot Diggity Dog kit, so I am entering this in the Snippets challenge. I stamped the letters and cut them out, fixed them on the front of the card and covered them in Glossy Accents.

The little cupcake covers a stamping splodge :-( must take Di's advice and stamp first in case I make a boo boo!

Off to Pixies Playground to see if anyone's planning a snowball fight!

Happy crafting

Debs x

Snippets

This snippets challenge is quite addictive! Only problem is I have tons of snippets - years worth all sorted into folders by colour - plus folders for b&w and mirror card - cant believe how much I've accumulated!

Anyhoo....this card uses snippets of pink & green Core-dinations card - like the linen Texture finish on this so don't always emboss/sand it to show the core. The topper & sentiment are from the Hot Diggity Dog range - made me laugh! Pet owners will relate :-) Entered in the Snippets Challenge.

Scheduling this one again, and will catch up with Pixies Playground chums later :-)

WOYWW - organised chaos

My desk looks a bit chaotic today - working on several projects and bits of all scattered everywhere!


You can see my stamping scratch pad centre stage (old flipchart pads of which I have tons!!). I use this as a stamping base, and to scribble notes - currently planning next weeks class!!  and seems like lots of people in craft land are having a bit of a spring clean/storage sort out - I have posted several storage solutions this week, and I'm still sorting - and I've noticed a definite trend in that direction among crafty blogs!

And this is my desk 10 seconds after I took this pic! No wonder I don't get much done lol!! Barney demanding attention trumps any project - he has the loudest miaow ever!!



Scheduled this as I'm not around today. Will visit your lovely worth desks later via Julia's weekly global desk hop

Happy crafting!

Debs x

Snippets

Had some leftover bright orange textured card that I can't for the life of me remember what it was originally used for! But.....was perfect contrast for these papers and toppers from the Hot Diggity Dog range - love the colours in this pack - all candy & chocolate shades!

Scheduled this post as I can't come & play at the moment - will visit the playground at Pixies later :-)

Entered for Pixies Snippets challenge

Thanks for stopping by

Debs x

Farnborough Make it & Stickles Storage

Had a lovely day out in Friday with a few ladies from my craft class. We went to the Make It craft show at Farnborough. I bought lots of lovely crafty stash, but I am now going on a self-imposed buying ban! This is what I bought.......

Some fab stamps, paper, scrapbooking goodies & my bargain of the day - huge 23metre reels of ribbon at £1.20 each!!

And here's a pic of some of us having lunch & showing off our purchases (sorry to the people who I managed to not get in the pic!!)


So today I've been working on DT projects that I can't show yet, being good & doing housework, and having a bit of a craft room sort out.

I'm always looking for new ideas to maximise space & re-purpose boxes etc for storage. This idea came about because my Stickles are thrown in a box & I have to rummage for the right colour, plus they're not quite ready to use as they're not stored nozzle down.

I couldn't face spending £18-20 on a purpose made carousel, and it's not really practical as I need to be able to transport then to classes - so I took one of my many saved boxes, and a length of foam insulation we had in the garage..

I cut the foam into 1.5" lengths and fixed to base of box. Hey presto! Nozzle down storage for 18 Stickles at a cost of £0 :-)

 

This has turned into a very long post - sorry peeps! Off to cook the dinner now.

Happy crafting!

Debs x