No Angel

I am really enjoying having the time to scrapbook again.

I love these photos of Rob, I was just trying settings out on my camera and captured quite a cheeky glance in one of them.The Grungeboard wings and label were painted in Antiqued Bronze Crackle paint by Tim Holtz, when it was dry I used two shades of ink to add variant colours in the cracks.

For the two smaller photos I made a couple of slidemounts from cardstock, they were embossed through the cuttlebug and then rubbed with coloured wax to highlight in a two-tone fashion, helping to pull all the colours together.

I used sequin waste for some added texture and both patterned papers were handmade. The white one was simply swiped with a little ink and then stamped with script. The blue paper is several layers of inking, firstly with sponges and then using the direct to paper technique, I added some details with some dots using one of my all-time favourite background stamps. Finally I masked off a central square and deepened the colour of the edges to create a faux frame.

This is the paper just before I used the masking technique. It was originally pure white.

This afternoon, after blitzing the house and walking Snowy I decided to have a breather and make a card. I used one of my spare ATC's from last week.

The stamp is one by Crafty Individuals, the text paper is a book page and the wood effect paper is by Bo Bunny, sentiment is one by Stampin' Up.

 The flowers are all a mix from my stash,  the white ones are from Wild Orchid Crafts and the coloured ones are by Hero Arts, leaves are from Hobbycraft.

I am in love with my sewing machine once again, thanks to my wonderful friend Anita who has got it up and running again after a long languish in my wardrobe. So I added a little stitching to this card for some added texture.

Also this week I have been Zentangling, these are the three I have completed so far.

The first two are considerably smaller than my original ones and more like the official Zentangles, ie fitting within a 3.5 inch square and containing a 'string.

This last one is lightly larger and was inspired by an ear of corn I had just seen on a tv advert.

Finally I have a couple of photos of the shop progress to share with my friends and customers - the concrete has all gone in now and the floor is more level than it has ever been, we are just waiting for it to dry thoroughly and then an extra layer of special screed will go down in preparation for the new flooring.

And we also took delivery of the new external door for the back of the shop and the internal doors, also the new kitchen units, it is so good to finally see progress being made.

Meet mojo

Sorry I have been MIA - it is all go at the shop - work has finally begun this week (photos at end of post)

On tuesday Anita, Margaret and I did some crafting, we were all working on this and that and then I found some beer mats/coasters and challenged the girls to do something crafty with them, here is what I made with mine.

The coasters had the usual ugly motif on the front so I covered it with some Bo Bunny patterned paper and then set to work adding some pretties, the frames are Spellbinders, I think they are mainly used sideways to house titles and greetings but I wanted to try something a little different and couldn't resist using the fancy bit at the bottom to hang a dangly. I can't wait to see what the others have made ( don't worry Nicki I saved you some xxx) The flowers are all handmade and the lovely lace at the top was a gift from Margaret - thankyou xxx The hearts are chipboard and have been painted with Tim Holtz crackle paint and then inked ( Frayed Burlap) Greetings are all computer generated.

 Next I have my ATC's for next months Stampman swap ( yes you read that right I am a whole month ahead lol), the theme was birds and I remembered having this Crafty Individuals stamp which is perfect for the theme.

I created the background by blending four shades of Distress ink ( Old Paper, Weathered Wood, Bundled Sage and Scattered Straw) I stamped the image in Black soot, the flowers were all made in the same way, but I used a dotty texture stamp before punching out with a Martha Stewart punch. The centres have a little dot of Distress Stickles and I have coloured the foliage in with my Polychromos pencils.

  Now it is time to meet Mojo, I made this little guy this morning and Amy chose his name. He is my first ever sock monkey and ended up much larger than I planned, and don't look too closely at the handstitching, please be kind because we already love him dearly ( so much so we put him on a pedestal )

I can't decide whether he looks more like a monkey or more like an extra member of the Simpsons !!!

I have been asked by quite a few people to share progress of the shop renovations so here goes, this was at the end of wednesday, just before we left for home I took a couple of photos ( Amy buried her head in her homework to avoid being snapped  - must get the camera out more often !)

The first one is from the back of the shop facing forward and the second is from the opposite end, we have had a massive clearance sale which was a huge success, we managed to halve the stock, making it much easier to empty the shop ( and made lots of room for all the gorgeous new products) You can tell from these photos just how bumpy the floor had got.

And this was at the end of thursday and my little army of helpers had packed up and removed all the stock and shelving - thankyou all sooooo much xxx

And the next two photos were taken at the end of friday, after the builders had removed all of the wooden flooring - what a mess !!!!!! You can see how deep it is -  the wheelbarrow is almost lost !

 At the end of today, all the wiring had been sorted, the rubbish removed, the hardcore laid and the damp course installed.  Massive thanks to the builders who all worked their little butts off and also to my landlord Jaz who has been  fantastic, thankfully none of this part of the repairs was my responsibility, it's so reassuring to know you have a landlord who you can rely on - so thankyou Jaz.

As my customers all know the insurance side has been long winded, we were unfortunate in that it happened in one of the busiest times they have had, all the cold weather at the end of last year caused millions of claims so it has taken longer than usual to sort out but at long last we are on  our way to a new and improved Running With Scissors, thankyou all so much for you patience and support xxx

Hangin' around

All caught up with my tag for March

I used lots of inks, gesso and stickles to create my background which has a lovely gentle touch of sparkle. I used my Distress inks to also dye my lace at the top (Bundled sage) the colours I used for the background were Old Paper, Bundled Sage and Victorian Velvet.

The beautiful butterfly was handmade by my lovely friend Paulien - thankyou hon xxx I added a little silver filigree butterfly over the top. The calendar pages in each of these tags were cheapies form my local garden centre which I have coloured with inks.

You can catch up with my friends tags here :

Paulien

Anita

Nicki

And so on to a project inspired by the supremely talented Laura Dennison, she shared this tutorial over christmas and I switched it up to be a year round wall hanging

I used papers form the Making Memories Je t'adore range.

The border punch is by EK success.

Each piece is a large pocket to hold letters/cards envelopes etc

I am intending to use mine to house cards I have made, so that they are ready to give to someone special.

Not content with just the wall-hanging I decided to make up a mini to go with it to contain a list of important dates, birthdays etc.

I used mini DL envelopes attached to a concertina base, I made the covers from cereal packets.

The envelopes each house a little index of dates, I created the index on my Mac using text edit. The tabs were computer generated too and punched out using a tab punch from Stampin' Up.

And here I have a mini tutorial for you, I received a couple of emails inquiring as to how I had made the corners on a recent mini

So here it is.

I cut my cardstock to the following dimensions, the longer piece is for the actual corners and the square is to make triangles to cover the join on the back side.

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Next I embossed them using my folder of choice, crease and fold your rectangle from centre top down to bottom right and bottom left and cut your square in half diagonally

I love to ink most things and these corners are no exception, I used a combination of Old Paper and Worn Lipstick distress inks for these ones. You can see the folds more clearly now.

Wrap each corner around the piece you are working on, adding the little triangles over the join at the back. 

 On the mini I referred to earlier, I used black cardstock, I embossed and constructed the corners in the same manner but before attaching to my pages I used a Martha Stewart border punch to create a little bit of extra details on the long side, I also rubbed them with gold wax rub, to give a worn aged look.

I hope this little tutorial has helped answer the questions and given a little inspiration into making some fun additions to your corners, these would look equally good on photos for a layout or for your image/patterned paper on your cards.

I would also like to thank everyone for all the lovely comments I have been receiving in my recent blog posts, I know as bloggers we generally like to create posts to document our daily happenings and craftings and we are happy to have a place to record all the little things but it is always so heartwarming to receive a little encouragement along the way, so thankyou all very much.

You lookin' at me ???

I am still playing catch up with my tag a month, here is the one I created for february

The background was inked in three shades of Distress Ink ( Bundled Sage, Victorian Velvet and Scattered Straw), I then stamped text with black archival ink. The chipboard frame was painted in gesso and then smeared with Rock Candy Stickles, the heart was painted in Worn Lipstick crackle paint before being rubbed with Bundled Sage ink.

I then threw on loads of pretties.

These are my ATC's for this months Stampman swap, the theme being Wise Words.  Word Stamp is by Hero Arts, Grassy Stamp is by Stampin' Up, Dragonfly is by Rubber Stampede. Background was created with Old Paper, Weathered Wood and Broken China Distress Inks.

Me being me, I lost concentration halfway through and made one more ATC than I needed, so what is a girl to do ? I made it into a topper and plonked it on a card.

I added liquid pearls to the centre of the flowers, the sentiment was embossed and the dragonfly was embossed with Kaleidoscope embossing powder for a little sparkle before adding a little white Gelly roll pen detailing to the wings.

These next few cards are really really quick and easy ones ( four in less than an hour quick!!!!) They are just some simple samples I made for my shop.

Most of the detailing is from the new Cuttlebug Cut and Emboss folders - genius! so speedy and uber easy.

And this one took just a little while longer, my dear friend Rose was telling me how she had made her frame look much bigger by slicing the corners, so inspired by her idea I enlarged my frame - the flurries of flowers hide the missing pieces.

The pearly swirls are ones I made myself, don't get me wrong I love the Prima ones but I didn't have any left so I made my own with self adhesive pearls.

Finally a layout I made for our sweet little pooch Snowy, who is the grand old age of 12 today - happy birthday Snowy. We have been told that 12 is quite old for a Westie so we feel blessed to still have him and in such good health too, he still has his 'puppy' moments where he runs round the house like a demon and he will always have that stubborness associated with most Westies but we love him all the same.

Snowy has been blessed with a 'teddy bear' coat, which has to be trimmed a lot more regularly otherwise he ends up looking like a huge round ball of cotton wool !!! But it does make him look supercute ! The only downside is that his eyebrows grow and end up giving him a serious looking frown, Neil calls it his 'aura' but  he reminds me of my favourite actor  -  DeNiro in taxi driver hence the layout title !

Papers are all from the Cappella range by Basic Grey, heart border punch is Martha Stewart, blue flowers are handmade by moi, wide cotton twill is by Stampin' Up, other flowers and leaves are a mixture from my stash.