Aqua birthday card

Just an quick update on the "misted" card blanks.... here is a completed birthday card using one of them. I should say that the idea of jewels on this tree stamp comes from Helen over at fiddlefart (link in the sidebar)!

I have also covered about 20 blanks with papers from my scrap box and am slowly working my way through completing those - then I will have a sufficient stock so as NOT to have a mad and panicky rush on next time DH remembers a birthday or 4......... LOL.

New cards for old

A few years ago I bought a "bargain" pack of card blanks from a certain shopping channel. The colours were dire to say the least, but it was too much hassle to send them back so they have been in a box for all this time. It occurred to me the other day, whilst looking through my stash mountain(s), that I could change them ..... either by covering with paper or colouring them somehow. Only took me 4 years to think of this ......... :-) I did a few with paper on, then out came the Glimmer Mist. The picture below shows the various effects I achieved, the card on the left is the original horrible grey.




I still have about 50 blanks left, in other horrible colours ......... :-)

Cardmaking marathon

On Tuesday, DH kept remembering various occasions which required a card. Every now and then I would get an email saying "it's my mother's birthday on the 25th" and "maybe we ought to send my sister a get well card" and so on until there were 5 cards needed - four birthdays and a get well one! Oh and he wanted them to post /take to our friends' house the next day.... which meant making 5 cards on Tuesday evening. For me this is a marathon, since I come home from work dead tired and with no brain left!

I made him cook while I got started :-) By the time tea was ready I had the first one finished and had made a good start on the second. After a 45 minute break to eat, I got on again. I used up some old stash (chipboard letters & swirl), christened two old stamps (film strip & happy birthday circle), made the mats and border from left over card rather than cutting into a whole sheet, used two of my Ally Pally buys (the lady stamp and the border punch) and used up some paper from a cardmaking magazine for the MIL birthday card. I finally finished by about 10pm!

I will definitely be using some of these ideas again - especially the film strip and the lady stamp with the punched border.

Decorated Box

I have been working on this box for a while, couldn't post about it as it was Sy's bithday pressie! I gave it to her when we met up at Ally Pally, and she opened it at lunchtime - and I missed seeing the look on her face cos she didn't wait for me to get down to the lunch hall!!!!! Ooh, she's a one that girl ........... :-)

The box started out as plain pale wood. I glimmer misted it to within an inch of its life, it actually started as being much redder, but I felt it was too much so browned it down a bit, then put lots of bronze mist over it. The sides were stamped with stazon in brown for a subtle pattern, and I stamped and embossed some corners and a border on the top. When everything had dried, I coated it with an acrylic varnish. Next I put some self adhesive green suede on the base to stop it scratching furniture. I ran some copper metal sheet through my embossing machine for the top panel, stuck it down and then edged it with the mosaic tiles. Last was the flower. The photo - as always! - doesn't do justice to it, the flower is more pearlescent than it appears here and the flash has given a high shine to everything else, where really it is more gleamy than shiny :-)

Now for the inside. I painted with a copper acrylic craft paint, then lined the base with the same green suede. Then I made up the spring roll recipe cards, which I have been promising her for months now LOL, put them onto a book ring and added a tassel.

She liked it :-)

Ally Pally Trip

It's taken me a few days to recover enough energy to blog this trip! On Sunday I went with some of the other crop girls to the Stamping and Scrapbooking show at Ally Pally. We got there about 10 minutes after it opened and got in almost immediately, no queue to speak of.

I had been saving for a few months for this trip and ended spending about £425 - would have bought a few more things, there were some stamps and punches I was going to go back for and the wonderful Linda E (I met Linda E! Yay!) showed me some new paint which I rather liked the look of............ but by then my back was protesting forcefully and I couldn't carry any more!

So here is the loot! The first picture has most of the 24 clear stamps I bought. The second has the 11 rubber stamps, mounted and unmounted, plus a couple of clear ones I managed to miss off the first photo! Third is the 9 bottles of Glimmer Mist, 3 of cosmic shimmer, plus punches and metal tools. I am racking my brains to try and remember where I got the flower punch from because they had another that I wanted to get, if anyone knows, can they tell me??? The fourth picture is everything else, some gems and pearls, a tray and three frames to decorate, some charms, ribbons and bows and a couple or three inkpads!

I carried all that lot in two bags-for-life, so not really surprising my back went! All in all a great day...... and next year I will be taking a trolley :-)

Rediscovery

After having a good sortout of my stash (and finding so many things I had forgotten about!), I am making a concerted effort to use old stuff before buying more new. This will be somewhat undermined by my trip to Ally Pally in a couple of weeks, but that is a once a year treat after all! So, I have decided that the third Little Girl album will be a "stash buster" album. with as little new stuff bought as I can possibly manage. The same goes for my 2009 album.

Another resolution - to use more stamps, especially old ones! I have so many, all stashed away, that I found several I had forgotten about. The two ATCs below both use old stamps, plus a couple which are less than a year old, but which hadn't yet been "christened" :-) Destination 1/6 uses a text stamp which I think must be about 8 years old at least (never used!) and both the relatively new background and corner flourish were used for the first time. Destination 2/6, background was inked in two colours and crackle stamped, then I used a swirly flourish (more than a year old) in three different colours over the top. Same text, and then the balloons were stamped in Versafine to finish.... the balloons are at least 12 years old and have never been used!!! I am hanging my head in shame as I type :-) The teeny butterflies are new.

Trip to Cardiff

We didn't find a last minute holiday bargain, thanks to the BA strike - no cheap flights to be had! Time for Plan B. We have never really travelled in Britain, so we decided it would be nice to do that on our week off. DH said how about Cardiff and I had thought of Bristol as we lived there 25 years ago and I wanted to see it again. So the two tied together nicely! Two nights in Cardiff and one in Bristol.

Cardiff was lovely and I would like to visit again. It didn't rain all the time, though we got very wet going round the castle! The city centre has these wonderful arcades with lots of tiny shops. Having done my homework beforehand (google: craft shop cardiff), I knew there was a bead shop and a button shop there LOL. Crystals and Ice Bead shop have a website, so I can order anything I didn't manage to pick up, sadly Claire's Buttons does not - so make sure to visit if you are in Cardiff! Here is what I bought, though I haven't included all the findings and some tools in the picture. Among the buttons are also some beads - the brown glass twists and purple glass squares. DH didn't even ask "what are you going to do with those?" !!!

We also went to the Dr Who exhibition, which was very good, and had a wander round the waterside of the bay.

Bristol was much changed, as I had rather expected after 25 years! We found some pubs we recognised :-) Also went to the Clifton suspension bridge and then went to an amazing glass blowing workshop - Bristol Blue Glass, they have a website too. Sorry, I don't have the URLs to hand! I bought some glass earrings.

All in all, a lovely break. We had 4 days away and have spent the rest of the time chilling out - I have even managed to get some crafting done. More on that in the next post!