Storage Project

Good afternoon,

** warning, this is a picture heavy post, you want want to grab a drink**

On Friday afternoon I was given a wooden seed tray as a gift, it was far too good to use in the garden, and us crafters always need more storage space, so I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.

Here is how it started out, 

Firstly I painted it purple

A few coats of cream next

Next came the really fun bit, I sanded the edges and corners to reveal little touches of the purple paint underneath, grabbed my Rich Razzleberry ink and and couple of stamps (flourish from Everything Eleanor, and butterfly from all a flutter) and got stamping.

Now it looks like this!

Now it take take pride of place on my desk.

Thanks Ruth and Tony!

Distressed Anniversary

Good Morning,

I quite often get asked to make cards by people at work, some are a breeze to make, and others quite tricky. This card, even though it involved quite a lot of input with the distressing techniques was so much fun to make. My style is normally quite clean and straight lines, so it was fun to get messy, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

If you click on the image, you can see all the details better, but I randomly stamped a piece of Vanilla CS with stamps from, Tiny Tags, Vintage Vogue and All a Flutter, in Pretty in Pink, Sahara Sand (fast becoming one of my fav colours to stamp with, Don't know how I got on without it!), Chocolate Chip, and Baja Breeze, I then used my distressing kit to stain the edges, and the tiny tags. Distressed the edges of all the layers of CS, and curled the top left corner. Bfore adding In-colour ribbon and a popped up butterfly.

I hope you like my efforts, I will definitely be using this technique more often!

Happy stampin, xx

Top Note Make and Takes

Hi,

It's dull, raining and miserable here this morning so I thought I'd share my Wednesday night workshop make and takes with you to brighten up a dark morning.

I got my hands on the top note die in May and I'm in love. The shape is just gorgeous, so this had to be the centre of my workshop, there were six fabulous ladies, one of which was completely new to the world of paper crafting, but still got stuck in and made the cards, I hope she loves them as much as I do!

So here is the first

A shaped card, all you have to do is make sure that the folded edge of your card blank doesn't go all the way to the end of your shape and you have yourself a great curvy shaped card. The top note also has a dotted line just inside the edge (which you can see at on the inner part of the card) which makes it easy to cut a perfect fit for layering. I got the ladies to do this with a black layer and then emboss with the vintage wallpaper embossing folder, isn't the pattern fab! I thought that the embossing was so pretty that it only needed a quick bit of ribbon (this ribbon is so great, you can colour tint it with your ink pads)
and a glittered butterfly, and viola!

The second card is a great way of using up those scraps of paper you just can't part with.

Just arrange your paper strips onto a scrap of paper and run it through your big shot with your top note, and you have a great backdrop for your card, I have spritzed the background (not sure if you can see it) with marina mist marker, stamped one of the four frames stamps, I love the bird, but the great thing about craft is that it's individual so some of the ladies went for the polka dots, and some for the roses too. Now onto the bit I don't think they thanked me for, the boho blossoms punched flowers. I made them scrunch them, a couple of faces didn't look happy, but I asked them to trust me, and hopefully they like the finished effect, just topped off with some rhinestones.

Hopefully these make up for my week long absence?

Less vs More

Good Afternoon!

I have been a busy bee today, cleaning up our old house ready for viewings, very hard work! My hands were definitely build for crafting not cleaning. A couple of loads of washing (luckily the sun put in an appearance this afternoon so haven't had to put the tumble dryer on) and the food shopping, not a great experience on a Saturday afternoon but these things have to be done.

So I needed something nice to finish off the afternoon and what better way than the Less is More challenge.

Which this week is a sketch, I do enjoy sketches but I must admit that Less is More does not come naturally to me, here is that sketch that the lovely ladies have asked us to use

I decided to go for a monochrome card using one of the in-colours called Concord Crush, a gorgeous deep purple, one of the best things about Stampin' up! is that every is colour coordinated which makes monochrome cards super easy. I used Concord Crush card stock, ink, and patterned paper, all safe in the knowledge that they would all be a perfect match.
So here it is

I liked it, but I wasn't in love with it and I think it's because it was lacking something so I added just a few details, it's still simple (for me) but just not as simple as maybe the LIM ladies would have liked. Sorry ladies I really did try to keep it clean and simple, but my fingers got carried away, and my card ended up looking like this.

I'm much happier with it now, and I'll just have to accept the consequences of my embellishing actions.
Have a great weekend  xx