A cautionary tale....

Well here I am, back from Berlin, having had a good time .... except for the incident below....

We were walking through a park in Berlin when a girl with a clipboard holding what appeared to be a petition approached me. I said No, walked on, but she kept shoving this clipboard at me. I kept walking, said No four times and she gave up.
At least that's what I thought had happened.
When we got to the café, I discovered my purse was missing. That clipboard had been shoved over the top of my bag - a messenger bag, mind you, hard to get into - and in those few seconds whilst the bag was obscured from view, she had lifted my purse right out of it. I didn't feel a thing, didn't realise what was happening, neither did the others walking with me, we all just thought she was just being really persistent with the "Sign, sign". They are professional thieves, these people, which doesn't make me feel any less stupid.
So that was 350 euros gone, and all my cards. We cancelled the cards whilst at the cafe, but I had a card which is linked with DH's, and they wouldn't cancel just mine, no they had to do his too, which left us with not much cash and no usable credit cards. Good job we were with friends.
The police were sympathetic and helpful, but obviously nothing they could do. It's a known organised theft problem, apparently, we were told it's young Romanian girls stealing from tourists. I don't suppose it's unique to Berlin, these things go on everywhere. All I can say is don't let anyone make physical contact with you which results in your bag being out of sight, even for a few seconds.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing .....

Back to scrapping - Hot Stuff

I worked out that last year I only blogged three new layouts.  Not because I hadn't done any, but because I hadn't finished any of the pages I had started!  So I went off to the ATDML retreat determined to finish off as many as I could.  I ended up with a total of ten pages started from scratch and fully completed, and also finished off fourteen others, most of which just needed titles and journalling.  I had pre-cut the titles on my Silhouette and taken them with me.  It was a very productive weekend, and I thoroughly enjoyed it :-)

Here is the first, hopefully I will have time to schedule some others before I head off to Berlin tomorrow!

The story is that we were talking to FIL about how the small tins of mustard powder don't really last us very long.  So he found us a big one ..... 1lb of mustard powder as opposed to the tiny 2oz tins LOL.  That's 454g and 57g for those of you who are imperially challenged :-)

The papers are Basic Grey Little Black Dress, which is quite an old range now but there may be a few sheets lurking around somewhere.  I chose to use Mini Owner's April sketch for this one and it worked out really well.  The punched shapes are a small circle and Stampin' Up Mosaic Madness.  The letters are Thickers.

I took the photos of my pages at the retreat rather than waiting to get home, as DS1 has temporarily moved back in with us and I have nowhere to set up my photo booth amongst the mountains of boxes!!  I am going to have to find a flat surface to photograph all the pocket pages on though, as standing the finished page up in the protector just results in a photo of reflections!

Purple and green cards

Here are some more of the cards I made a couple of weekends ago.  I decided to play with stamping and masking, using a mix of old and new stamps, and went with a combination of purple and green inks.

The first card is done with Stampin' Up stamps and punches - Gorgeous Grunge, Papillon and the sentiment from the Lotus Blossom set.  I used the matching butterfly punch to mask off the butterfly before stamping the background.  The mats are Nesties.
The second card was a little tricky as the flourish is an old Hero Arts (?) stamp, which is wood mounted, so placing it over the masked butterfly needs a bit of guesswork and luck!  I then used the splotches from Glorious Grunge and a Hobby Art sentiment.
The third card uses the same stamps, but I mis-stamped the flourish, so punched a circle from the whole image and placed it in the centre of a die-cut lattice mat (Tonic), with two scalloped circle mats (also Tonic). This still left a wider border than I liked, so at Sy's suggestion I over-stamped the whole central circle with the GG splotches and it works perfectly.  I decided not to have a sentiment on this one.

Very pleased with these cards :-)

BiTi Monday

This weekend Sy came down, to bring the new tote she had picked up for me - We R Memory Keepers rolling tote, she ordered three, for herself, Karen and me!
So we had a lovely craft day, I got eight cards made, would have been nine if my Herma dispenser hadn't broken mid-use :-(
For the thank you cards below, I used a new stamp, a new die and some new card blanks, so they definitely qualify for my Buy it - Try it this week :-)

The stamp is from Stampin Up, a three stage stamping process to get the different layers and colours on the lotus blossom, the sentiment is from the same set.  I had been a bit hesitant about using it, as I didn't quite 'get' how it worked, but Sy has a great example here, so she talked me through it, it's not actually difficult once you try it LOL.  I used a Tonic Studios scalloped circle die, this is a great set, 14 dies I think, and they don't have too much of a border if you use the next size up for a mat.  Not that I could have fitted a mat on these tiny cards - they are 3" square, just right for little thank you cards.

Update on The Wedding Card - she loved it :-)

Wedding card

One of my colleagues is getting married in a couple of weeks' time and so we had planned to go on a girlie night out beforehand.  Foolishly I said "Shall I make a card.....?" LOL.

The timing got a bit precarious as I ordered some 8" square card blanks, in plenty of time so I thought, then they took THREE WEEKS to arrive!! They came two days before our trip to Venice and I only had a couple of days after our return to get the card finished.  So I asked everyone to sign the card blank whilst I was away, before I started work on it.  This did have the advantage of their being able to write on the inside left side of the card, which wouldn't have been possible after I had made it "lumpy" LOL.

The whole card is made using Centura Pearl in Fresh White.  I embossed two pieces of card with an embossing folder from Couture Creations, called 'Tied Together', I think.  It's a 5 x 7 folder, so I had to make a square out of two pieces and join them .... the pearl strip covers the join :-)  I had bought the flowers from Meiflower and the Ribbon Box at the Make It Show, especially for this card.  The ribbon buckle was also from Meiflower.

I found the Apache Wedding Blessing online - though apparently it isn't actually Apache at all, but from a Hollywood movie (Broken Arrow)!  But it's a nice verse, I didn't want anything too sloppy :-)  I printed it out and die cut with an arch die from Go Kreate.  I also cut a smaller arch to place underneath so that it is slightly raised, but without lots of foam pads being visible.  Assembly was a bit tricky, as my normal Herma repo adhesive doesn't perform too well on this card.  So I had to use 'red' tape .... once it's down, it's down, no room for error - scary stuff!

After assembly, the last thing was to stick a pearl onto each intersection of the embossed mat.  I don't think I have missed one ........ fingers crossed!

The girlie night out is this evening, but sadly I can't go, so I will have to wait until Monday to hear if she likes it!

BiTi and OotD - Mother's Day cards

A combined Buy it - Try it and Out of the Drawer post :-) 
BiTi - I used three new dies, the Boudoir Square and rococo heart from Tonic Studios and a tag from the Spellbinders Victorian tags set.  Oh, and some linen textured cardstock which I bought at the Make It show.
OotD - I used a Memory Box diamond background die and some old freebie magazine papers.

Quite simple cards, but I am pleased with them and I think the recipients will be too :-).

BiTi Monday - tall narrow steampunk-ish drawers

Hmmm .... so much for a week of Buy it - Try it .... just didn't happen last week!  A combination of real life and a new DVD, season 6 of The Mentalist :-)
I have at least finished the UFO mentioned in the last post - the 'new' part of it being the crackle glaze!  It's a narrow chest of drawers, made of wood and bought originally from the Craft Barn, I think, it was several years ago.

I had primed it a while ago and got DH to laser cut some cogs to go around the drawer knobs.  The main body was painted with a pale cream, the drawers and cogs were painted bronze.  I applied the crackle glaze to the drawers and when it was dry, applied some Paperartsy paint in Hyde Park over the top.  The bronze crackles come through like magic!  At that point, it became obvious that the cream was too light and bright against the drawers, so I re-painted the body with Paperartsy Irish Cream.

I then cut some Venetian paper for the top and sides - bought a few years ago on our first trip to Venice, I have been hoarding it!  But it's time to start using it as we are going back next week for our 30th wedding anniversary and DH will raise an eyebrow if I buy any more without using at least some :-)

Here are the side and top views, I did hesitate about putting an extra decoration on top, but I am happy with it as it is.  Another UFO conquered!