A LO without pictures

With Mother's Day just around the corner (next Sunday in fact!) I was looking to do a LO that reflected what I had learned in the 33+ years I had been a Mother.  Hysterical's Challenge in UKS to scrap without a photograph seemed the ideal opportunity to have a go.  I must admit to not quite understanding what a LO without a photograph would be like, and I did a bit of research.  There are some amazing LO's scrapping "things" such as letters, invitations and such like but I wanted to scrap my thoughts.

I scraplifted a LO I found and fell in love with on Pinterest, in exactly the same place I found the quote.  I think its so appropriate for where we, as a family are. Tony will be 34 in September and has learned that life is not easy.  He has made his mistakes and is doing his best to be a good father to his children despite all the rubbish he has to put up with.  Beatrice is almost 21 and Freddie is going to be 19.  Both BB and Freddie  are adults but both scare me witless.   I need to learn that they must make their own mistakes, They need the room to grow and fly but they also need to know where they can come if ever they need me.  They need their roots.

I used a pale blue American Crafts cardstock for the background.  Cut the tree and bird using Cricut "Serenade" cartridge.  The Red title was cut using Plantin schoolbook and I printed the brown part of the title directly onto my card stock using Simply Glamorous font.  I then pricked and doodled all the faux stitching.  Flowers were just punched from scrap card stock, doodled and had buttons placed in the centre.

Home Sweet Home

So its CC time over at UKS and I decided to have a go at Di O's class for a Home Wreath.  Unfortunately the powers that be at UKS have decided to make it impossible for me to post it... but hey ho here it is:

It was a real labour of love as I had thrown away several little houses and rubbish card stock the day before I had my eureka moment!!!

Basically,I struggled to get my head around the class as I didn't have a chipboard ring or anything similar.  However,  after a sleepless night I found my most important supply in the loft, amongst the Christmas decorations.  In other words the wreath ring for our annual holly wreath.  (thank you Pinterest).  Meanwhile I had a roll of "stuff" left over from a wedding at work.  Its just a roll of sheer fabric that I thought one day I might  make into roses using my heat gun.  After cutting it into pieces approx 1" by 5.5" I set about knotting it around both parts of the ring.  

Using a svgcuts.com   file I made a cute gingerbread house that was liberally punched to allow a tea light (battery operated of course) to shine through.  I know it's not your usual gingerbread house colours but I was guided by the "stuff" and the fact that I still had some doodlebug glitter paper in my stash! 

Being a bit of a goody two shoes I was a bit worried that my efforts started to look nothing like the example in the class.  Yes it was wreath, and yes I had used a house.  So.... in order to keep things (in my mind) on the straight and narrow I had no choice but to use Tim Holtz's tattered florals.  

I duly cut several florals using the Sir Tim's cutting die but instead of using paper I used old aluminium food dishes.  (How sad is it that I keep these things)  I also bled quite a lot in the process and have several cuts on my hands as a testiment to the benefits of recycling!

After cutting said florals, I set about painting them all with white gesso.  Once dry, I put them through the cuttlebug in an embossing folder.  After embossing and using a file I rubbed off some of the paint to reveal the silver underneath.  

Back to the class..... I layered the florals, not quite in the same way, but bent and curled them to make a lovely 3D effect and 

finished them off with very old marcasite type buttons. VOILA! 

Ghouls Ghosts and Goblins

Once again its been a while before I've posted on here.  In fact I wouldn't be posting at all if it wasn't for the lovely ladies at Crafts4Eternity. There was I playing about with a svg file for a bird house (I thought it might actually work as a Tando house for the UKS CC - more about that later) when C4E posted their R#95 with the above title.  Any project with a Halloween theme.  Hmmmm  I thought..... Tando house? Bird House?  Haunted House!  A quick change of papers and few more cutting files and hey presto!  The roof actually comes off and I did fill it with sweets.  Sadly they were demolished before I took any photographs!

Its been a long time

I can't believe the whole of 2011 passed by without me posting a single thing!  
At a recent visit to the Ally Pally Big Stamp and Scrapbooking Show I bought some cute reels.  I had no idea what I was going to do with them until I managed to buy some measuring tape by the metre at a recent show in Brighton.

I got it into my head that they should go in some kind of frame and I had just the thing sitting at the top of the stairs!  Having recently had my hallway and stairs redecorated all the pictures were in a pile waiting to be sorted before being either rejected or re-hung.  Amongst them was a shadow box I had acquired several years earlier with samples of fabric and textures in the colours of my then decor.

Before

Sadly the depth of the frame was slightly smaller than the reels so I had to shave a little off them.  In the end that was a good call as I had a flat surface to attach them to the background.


Next thing was to cut out a dress form.  SVGcuts.com have some amazing kits on offer.  I used the Sew Crafty Kit that I managed to download during its free period. 


Having used plain brown card stock to cut my shape, I stuck some polyester wadding to front top half, covered it with a piece of old threadbare tea towel and voila! a padded dress form!

Next I stamped a swirly design on the "stand" and covered it in glossy accents to give some depth.  

The reels were covered using a mixture of bakers twine and embroidery silk to match the backing paper and pattern I had downloaded and printed off the web.  A little bit of inking on the body form, added some pins and buttons and a pair of steam punk scissors and my project was finished.

Apologies for the quality of the photographs even using an iphone I'm a rubbish photographer. 


Thank you for looking :)

Therapy Room

Its been a while since I last blogged.... too long in fact - where does the time go?? I have been busy with some paint - but not in the usual way. This isn't exactly crafty but its where I practice my craft! If you get my drift... Yes, I've been painting my Therapy Room. I was given a super dupa running machine and I had nowhere else to keep it but in my room which meant a massive re-organisation. I decided when I started moving things around that a quick lick of paint wouldn't go amiss.

Easter Treats

Happy Easter everyone.Its a long time since I posted on here but I want to share my weekend project. If anyone has small children, they will know how much chocolate turns up in the house over Easter. When Beatrice and Freddie were younger we always organised an Easter Egg hunt and went completely over the top. Mr. Tink and I would be eating chocolate when they were asleep for weeks! Last Easter I made the decision that they were old enough to understand that it wasn't all about chocolate and we agreed that I would buy a token egg and give them some money instead. This went down really well, teenagers never have enough money! Flicking through an old craft magazine (Making Gifts Issue 1) I came across an idea for decorating ring pull cans by Amy White. A perfect way to recycle!

I opened a can of baked beans at the bottom using a safety can opener to remove the whole of the bottom of the tin and washed and dried the tin thoroughly.

Using Papermania Honey and Hugs cardstock I lined the inside of the tin using pva glue to hold it in place. It was quite easy to do, I just cut the paper to size, spread the pva thinly inside the can, rolled up the paper with the pattern on the inside placed it in the tin and when I let go it unravelled to the sides of the can - Voila! All I had to do then was press lightly inside and wait for it to dry!

Next I chose some little gift items (for Beatrice some lip gloss and body spray), some cream eggs and (our favourite!) some Maom Stripes. I popped them inside the can together with some fluffy chicks and the most important part..... a crisp £20 note! Its important to remember to put the treats in upside down! (I did them the other way for the benefit of the photograph but changed them back before the next stage) Next I cut two circles out of cardstock and placed one on the bottom of the can (so that when its glued back on it will be inside the can) and the other on the top of the can under the ring pull. Once dry I glued the bottom of the can back on. The magazine recommended using Pinflair glue but as I didn't have any I found Bostick did the trick. A little messy but it worked reasonably well!

After about an hour the bond had been made so all that was left to do is to decorate the outside of the can. Again I used Honey and Hugs paperstock and decoupaged the main animal character and used ribbon from my stash. TBH I think the paperstock was a little juvenile for soon to be 16 and 18 year olds but hey!... Its Easter. When I presented them this morning they very sweetly humoured me by saying all the right things and its amazing how £20 can light up even the most sullen teenagers face LOL.

I'll definitely use this idea again, there are so many possibilities with it, stocking fillers, birthday treats, teacher gifts etc. It can be as juvenile or as sophiscated as you wish depending on the card and paperstock used. I would however urge caution if giving to young children as obviously the open tin may be a little sharp.

C4E Recipe Challenge

Its been a hectic couple of weeks and I've not had much time for crafting but with 3 birthdays in February it was time to look for inspiration and where better than over at the Crafts4Eternity Challenge Blog. This week's challenge was:
1. Use the Sketch,
2. Use Chipboard
3. Use Polka Dots.
Recipe was ok, polka dots needed to be buttons and chipboard, well that was a bit diffiult but I made the little wellies out of faux chipboard. I stamped the image, cut it out and stuck it on to some cardboard 3 times to give the impression of chipboard. Thats one card down and two to go! Thanks for looking.