Christmas Wishes - another Christmas gift tag

Hi Everyone,

It's another cold and frosty day here in Ayr today - and it is treacherous underfoot too. The EM has had to dig out the bag of road salt, from last winter, to de-ice the steps at the front and back of the house. I hope you are enjoying warmer conditions where you are.

Unfortunately, I had to venture out to pick up my new glasses ... I'm now trying to get accustomed to them and find myself testing the lenses out constantly.  However, it's great to not have to take them off when I want to read the small print, which is what I was doing with my old ones :)

I've been making good use of my bun tray full of embellishments and made another gift tag.

Same size label as with the one I posted - scroll down to check it out - but this time no stamping. Instead, I covered the label with a couple of snippets of paper from last year, or perhaps it was the year before! More snippets used up means another trip to Di's and her Pixie's Crafty Snippets #50 this week :)

The topper is matted with a scrap of silver mirri card and then edged with crystal Stickles. I've also emphasised the letter C with the Stickles - you can see the effect more in the first photograph. Just a tiny length of cream lace and lots of  cream button twine have been used as embellishment.

Materials: a manila luggage label from WH Smith; scraps of A Silent Night paper from Papermania; scrap of silver mirri card; topper from Cardmaker's Delights; Crystal Stickles; cream cotton lace, cream button twine and narrow green satin ribbon from stash.

I'm off to do a bit more WOYWW blog-hopping until tea time and after that I plan is to spend an hour or two in the craft room this evening working on a scrap page. 

Thanks for popping in and do take care.

Happy Crafting,

WOYWW 180

Hello WOYWWers, Followers, Bloggers and Friends

It's Wednesday again - the day a not inconsiderable number of us reveal our desks. Yes, it is the weekly reveal kindly hosted by the amazing Mrs D (aka Julia Dunnit) at the Stamping Ground. If you haven't joined in the fun before, if you have been lurking and wish you could join in the fun, then what are you waiting for - whatever your craft of choice you will be made welcome - so go on, show us your workdesk.

Photo taken late Tuesday, when I was done for the evening, and I can guarantee it will not have changed this morning - though it will later when I clear this clutter up and get on with the scrapping I really intended to work on today. I kind of got distracted with the bits and pieces leftover after completing a swap card - can't show you that yet, not until the postie has delivered it to the recipient (but you can see the lovely one I received sitting on the box of baby wipes at the back there). However, I can tell you that it features the colour turquoise and spots created with some bubble wrap and paint. I've used some of the leftovers, added a bit of embossed paper, which, if my memory serves me well, came in a box of goodies that our radio star, Jo (Jozart), sent me some time ago now. It's beautiful paper but easily torn and has to be handled with care ... ask me how I know :))

Also amongst the usual stuff you can see some tags, washi tape, card candi, ribbon, rainbow drops, one finished card, two tags just at the beginning phase, a variety of vintage toppers, a peacock feathers ink pad - gorgeous colour. You can see that some punches have sneaked back on to the desk - don't know how they do it!! There's one of my many notebooks - this it the 'to-do' one - sitting on top of a box of seasonal chipboards shapes. It's a clutter but everything, apart from those punches, is there for a reason.

Julia says keep it brief and this week I will do. I'll just leave you with this wonderful photo I took at the garden centre on Saturday.

For the owl lovers among us, he's real. I understand that he is a cross breed and he is so tame, you can stroke him and he loves it. If it wasn't for the £1000 price tag, I would have taken him home in a heartbeat :))

After that, all that remains is for me to wish you all a wonderful WOYWW and I'll do my utmost to pop in and snoop around your desks sometime today, failing that sometime during the week.

Happy crafting,

Find Joy In The Little Things - A Birthday Tag

... and spotted! the first Christmas Tree

I hope your Monday has gone well folks ... and that despite the harsh weather conditions we are experiencing. The weather here is going from one extreme to the other, sunny and bright on Saturday, lashing down with rain all day yesterday, and today we have had fluffy white clouds polishing the blue, blue sky! It would not surprise me if it snowed tomorrow.

I've been working away in the craft space today but nothing to show you yet, so it's just as well that I have another project I made earlier that I can share with you.

I made this ultra feminine and OTT tag for a crafting friend's birthday. The base is another one of my inked, mica covered and embossed experiments - not that you can see much of it in the photo. Lots of trims, pearls and bling, doily and butterflies ... the little jewelled tile came from an old bracelet.

The topper is a Cardmakers Delight Pretty Perfume Bottle, the rose heart is recycled, and the digital sentiment is from Pink Petticoat's New Simple Sentiments.

And here's the Christmas tree - spotted it in the Scottish National Trust shop at Culzean Castle on Saturday - how early is that!!!

And it wasn't the only one ... there was another in the toy shop too, you might just be able to spot it inside.

I'm not sure what the connection is to the castle but the pirate is a permanent feature of the stable yard.

Scary looking too.

That's me lot for this evening. I'm working on another quite different tag and I'm still experimenting with heat embossing and creating my own 'frantage' mixes, so it's back to the craft sheet.

See you soon and in the meantime take care.

Happy crafting,

Tim Holtz August 2012 Tag

Good Evening Friends

It's only taken me from Saturday, but I've finally completed my first Tim Holtz tag!

Of course I didn't have most of the materials as listed by TH himself. I just had to exercise the little grey cells and improvise and, guess what, it was fun :) I didn't even have a tag ... I cut this one out a piece of leftover cream cardstock. I substituted a Cuttlebug embossing folder, Beautiful, for the one used by Tim.  Surprise, surprise, I did have the Adirondack dabber, Juniper, and enough of a selection of distress inks to be able to make a passable job of the inking.

The silhouette stamp is a digital one from Floppy Latte, Ribbon Flair, printed out onto smooth white cardstock and inked before adhering to the back of the frame. The frame, Papermania's white chipboard, has three coats of black embossing powder (Stampendous Midnight Black) and to get the 'carved' effect I stamped into the hot embossed surface before it set with a stamp with an all-over tiny flower pattern from Docrafts, V&A Quilt Posy Background.

Needless to say, I didn't have the right dies but I did have a Marianne Creatable Rose and the Sizzix Country Foliage dies and a really lovely leafy flourish die ... another one of the die-cuts in the package Chris Lee sent me - and it was perfect for the job. The rose die I have is the straight edged one, and of course, I really wanted scalloped edges so that my flowers looked more like the ones on Tim's tag. To get the effect I wanted, I trimmed the edge of the spirals with my fancy edged scissors - fiddly and time-consuming, but it did the job. I've used several snippets of coredinations card and after the flowers were sanded, rolled and shaped, the edges were inked with distress inks and then finished off with a little gold ink from a Papermania ink pad.

The words I chose for the tag are the last lines taken from a poem by F.VERR entitled Silhouette. The poet is a contemporary artist who uses 'colors, sounds, words and motion to adorn and inspire feeling on the blank canvas we perceive as space and time'.

 I won't quote the whole work but here's the last verse.

Where is she?
The one for me has not yet crossed my path
And though my mind's eye sees her
The sight is obstructed
She, only
Fills the silhouette

I thought the lines I've chosen worked well with the theme of the tag.

I don't know why I've resisted joining in with Tim's tag making ... well, I do really ... I didn't think I was up to it and, because I hadn't invested in all the TH materials, thought that I couldn't possibly make anything that looked like the TH original.

However, I did enjoy having a go, overcame the lack of materials, and am happy with the end result, so I won't be put off in the future ... in fact, if I can find the time, I might just have a go at his July tag too.

We had a dry spell today ... it didn't last long, but long enough for me to take the opportunity to trot round the garden collecting flowers and leaves for squishing. I also did a fair bit of dead-heading, especially on the EM's petunias which were looking horrible. He loves them, I loathe them ... it's the bright and gaudy colours that appeal to him. He puts them in planters every year and then neglects them terribly!

I'm thinking of having an early night and snuggling down with a good book. The current book, entitled The Ladies of Low Arvie, is about cows! I know, sounds an odd choice, but it's about an English couple who, wanting to live the farming dream, bought a farm in Galloway, Scotland, and decided to concentrate on rearing cows - the ladies of the title. So far, I'm thoroughly enjoying their story and finding it hard to put the book down.

So I'll bid you all goodnight and happy crafting,

Purple Rose - a vintage-style tent card

Evening Everyone,

I don't know where today has gone, I think I spent too long over the crossword today and wasted a lot of time pottering around!

Anyway, whatever took my time, when I finally got into the craft space to do a bit of crafting, I had no idea what I was going to make :)

After much humming and hawing, fiddling and faffing, etc., here's what I came up with ... a card that just sort of developed as I went along.  The rose organza trim was the starting point - a length has been tucked away in my stash since last year. One of those items I've been itching to use but never quite decided how, though I did think perhaps I might use it in a scrap layout at some point. As it turned out, today was the day to use some of it for sure.

Because it would have been a shame to have to cut through one of the flowers, the card has been made to fit a length three flowers wide.

Materials used:

• Base card: a leftover piece of white cardstock trimmed to form a tent-shaped card measuring 5¾" x 4"
• DPs: Papermania Mono Capsule Collection; snippet of My Mind's Eye, So Sophie "Sweet Chic"
• Topper: My Mind's Eye Graceful "Little Lady" Sticker - matted on to a snippet white card - and mauve rose from Prima
• Embellishments: Magnolia doily; baker's twine; rose organza trim; snippet of purple bling; purple button and self-adhesive gem - all from stash
• Handmade hatpins

I am going to submit this card to the following challenges:

Shelly's Images - Anything Goes
Crafts and Me - Pearls and Lace
Card and Scrap - Vintage
Freshly Brewed Challenges - Tic Tac Toe - Flowers, Patterned Paper, Bling
Hooked on Crafts - Flowers

and, of course, a card that has snippets and leftovers in its makings just has to be submitted to our lovely  Di's challenge, that is:

Pixie's Crafty Snippets Challenge - #21

Right, time to hit the hay - I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend with lots of opportunities for some  crafting time. Oh, and I hope it's warmer wherever you are ... it's downright chilly here!

Happy crafting,

Butterflies and Blooms - A Fat Page Card

Morning Everyone,

Hope you are all well and hopefully enjoying better weather than of late. We had ferocious hailstone showers yesterday but today is not looking too bad ... we have sunshine :)

This will be a quick share with you today because I have a ton of stuff on my desk that's just screaming to be sorted out.

It's some time since I made a fat page card for the Fat Pages and Cards With Attitude challenge so I thought it was time I made another. The current challenge, #13, is for Anything Goes/Butterflies and Blooms and, as you can see, I've opted for vintage style again.

The base is of Kraft notelet trimmed to measure 4"x4" - just as there is a size requirement for ATCs, so this is the one for fat pages.  The DP is from a Webster's Pages - beautiful vintage style papers. The DP and the butterflies are edged with distress ink to further age the look of them. The base of the floral topper is a narrow strip of a DP trimmed to a pennant shape. I've used a variety of trims to decorate the card - wrinkled seam binding in cream for the bow, a lovely peachy flower trim, the white bobble edging and a very pretty cream lace edging. White cherry blossom, yellow satin roses and tiny yellow paper rosebuds form the flower cluster on the bow. The tiny butterflies were punched from what was left from the paper used for the topper.

Materials used:

• Kraft notelet 
• Websters Pages, Petite Papers, Collection Combo Pack, from Simply Cards and Papercrafts
• Peach flower trim from Funky Farm Scrapbook Barn
• White bobble trim and cream seam binding from Ribbon Carousel
• Cream lace - bought from an e-bay trader
• Woodware punch, small butterfly
• Tim Holtz distress ink, Old Paper
• White cherry blossom from Wild Orchid Crafts
• Peach self-adhesive pearls from Handy Hippo
• Yellow satin flowers and tiny rosebuds from stash

I see time has run away from me and it is now afternoon and lunchtime so I'm off. The task I've set myself for the next couple of days is to sort through all the family history stuff I have and hopefully make a few heritage scrapbook pages ... that should keep me busy for a while - I come from a big family :)

Take care all and will see many of you tomorrow for WOYWW.

Keep crafting,

A Thanks With a Kiss - a Scrap Our Stash Challenge project for May I

Afternoon Folks,

I've been having a lovely time in the craft space over the last couple of days. The challenge for May over at Scrap Our Stash is entitled 'May I' and the requirements are to complete a project by finding inspiration from the blog of someone whose work you admire. This has required me to spend a fair bit of time trawling through some of my favourite blogs - and I don't need much encouragement to do that :) The result is this pretty card.

Whilst I admire a number of styles, steampunk, CAS (not that I'm any good at that) Barbara Gray, etc., my all-time favourite is the shabby chic/vintage style and Lenet Mos at To Scrap or Not to Scrap - That's the Question.  is an expert in this style. Here is her piece which I used as inspiration.

Lenet's clever use of gentle pastel shades, seam binding, cotton lace and pretty flowers can be seen in this delicate card. Needless to say, I did not have all, or any, of the same materials so had to trawl around my stash for suitable alternatives ... keeping to my pledge to Use-It-Up ... and all the papers and card used came from the snippet box :)

I especially like how Lenet takes a plain white chipboard frame and completely transforms it with ink, embossing powder and glitter. My frame is covered in a mixture embossing powders and glitters, all mixed together in a pot ... just a pinch of this and a pinch of that ... not very precise at all. It took just two coats of the mix to achieve the effect aimed for.

The seam binding was sprayed with water, crumpled up and left overnight to dry to get the shabby effect. The rose was already tinted with a pale mauve shade but the edges of the petals have also been tipped with Victorian Velvet DI. I didn't have any of those pretty pink petals that Lenet used so I punched some from a snippet of pink card and touched the tips with distress ink too.

The inside is decorated with the leftover half of the circle of DP you can just about see on the front, and for the back, I've just wrapped the main DP over to make a border - something I often do because I think it finishes it off nicely. All the papers, card edges and the doily are edged with Old Paper distress ink to give an aged look.

Materials used:

• A white card base measuring 6" x 3½" 
• Prima Londonerry 6x6 paper stack
• White doily - 5" in diameter
• Woodware punches - large circle, leaf plus the snippet of pink card
• Crafty Individuals Miniatures, People & Places
• Papermania Chipboard Shapes, Frames & Flourishes
• Inks: Tim Holtz Distress Inks, Old Paper, Victorian Velvet and Shabby Shutters; Memento, Tuxedo Black; VersaMark
• Stamp from Stampin' Up's So Happy for You set
• Prima Say It With Pearls, SIIP Swirls - I've been snipping bits of this for years but it's almost finished now, sob
• Wild Orchid Crafts Rose
• Ribbon Girls seam binding, Siam Pink

And the contents of the embossing mix:

• Embossing powders: clear, pink (brands names long forgotten), Papermania Seafoam White, WOW Magenta Twinkle
• Glitters: iridescent white and dark gold (again, brands unknown) 
• Mica powder: Crafty Notions, Champagne

The final requirement of the challenge is to leave a comment on Lenet's blog just say that I've taken inspiration from her blog - this I will do immediately.

If you would like to participate in this fun challenge please submit a picture and brief description of your project along with the a link to the inspiration blog to Kathy at scrappinpsycho@live.com. Sadly, Kathy has, with regret, decided to quit SOS, and is looking for someone to take over the running of this popular challenge ... unfortunately, I am unable to take this on but if you feel that is something you would like to be involved in, please contact Kathy - I'm sure she would be glad to hear from you.

 I would like also to submit this project to the following challenges:

DYSU Challenge Blog - #71 - Use a Flower

Paper Play Challenges - Week 19 - Chipboard - the frame

and of course, having used all those snippets, it has to go into Pixie's Crafty Snippets Challenge - #19 

After a couple of days of rain the sun has got his hat on, hip, hip, hooray :) The Boss has been out in the garden all day, stretched out and basking in the sunshine ... bliss! And after such a hard day, she's now stretched out and resting on the end of my bed - who'd be a cat :)

I think perhaps we can thank Prince Charles, who is currently on a visit to Ayrshire, for this change in the  weather after his fun stint as a weatherman on BBC Scotland yesterday - for those who have yet to see how well he did with as a TV weather forecaster you can see it here.

And even better news is that the the drought in the south of England is over ... not too surprising after the unremitting rain spell down there recently.

Right, I'm done ... time for a cuppa and a bit of idle time before I move on to my next project ... no idea what that's going to be yet :)

Take care all  and happy crafting,

Postcard Notecard - Vintage Style

Good Afternoon to You All,

I made this card last night just to get myself back into the crafting way of things again. Though, to be honest, I did suffer from the occasional withdrawal symptom whilst away. And I did return home refreshed and raring to go so, after all the dreary but necessary chores, unpacking, etc., it wasn't too difficult to get going again.

The postcard topper was one I had, in true Blue Peter style, already prepared. I applied a wash to the watercolour paper with diluted shades of Twilight Blue and Straw Yellow AquaMarkers before stamping the Penny Black's Keepsake stamp. The flowers were water coloured with Twilight Blue too then I distressed the edges with a combination of Tim Holtz's Stormy Sky and Pumice Stone  distress ink pads.

Onto a base of brown card (Stampin' Up's Soft Suede) I've adhered two papers from docrafts V&A Quilts linen paper pack. The yellow card (SU's Saffron) is embossed with docrafts V&A Hanoverian folder and distressed with TH's Pumice Stone and Brushed Corduroy ink pads. The vintage ladies, from Crafty Individuals Miniatures 'People & Places' pad, are matted on to SU's Marina Mist card,  distressed around the edges with Brushed Corduroy and attached using dimensional squares. Card candy in yellow and brown provide the final touch.

The insert is computer generated after scanning the V&A papers. To decorate the back I just folded one of the DPs over from the front.

I must admit I like the look of vintage collage so this card really pleases me. However, after admiring it for a while, the EM did ask me when I was likely to use it, what occasion would it be appropriate for and who would I give it to! Well, I'm not sure - I'll put it away in the box with the rest and maybe one day I'll find a use for it.

According to a certain TV shopping channel Christmas crafting begins today - even though we are still in 'flaming June' and midsummer is still a week or so away!!! Of course, for some of us it started the first week of January and because of my resolution I now have quite a stash of Christmas cards already prepared. However, I've fallen behind by a week because of the holiday so I'll need to get a wriggle on to catch up. So much to do and so little time :)

The EM is at the dentist this afternoon, having a tooth removed, so he'll be needing a bit of TLC afterwards so not sure when I'll be back in my craft space - we'll see how he does.

 Right I'm off to get some lunch now.

Wishing you all a great day.