Made a tag calender this evening.

Hi all :)

Tonight i wanted to make something quick and easy, main reason being because my eldest wanted to see me make something before she went to sleep tonight lol. She started the night in my bed as she wanted to chat about a few worries she was having about high school....in a years time! :)

As my bedroom doubles as a craft room, she was able to chat away whilst i made this quick calender tag.
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Real simple to make, i just die-cut a tag and covered it with the "wings" paper from the Prima "Angelique Collection", then blended some distress inks around the edge. Then i backed the distress inked mini calender with lace and stuck it on the tag.
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A few white dots around the edge, one of the small paper flowers that i seem to be using loads of these days and some fibres to finish it off with, and hey presto.....one calender tag.



Thankfully it was to my eldest satisfaction, so she's fast asleep now. All that is left to do is to carry her back into her own bed, they don't get any lighter as they grow up do they!?

Hope you like the tag, I'm going to do another one for my little one, it's such an easy project to do. They can even help do this themselves.

Thanks for looking. :)

A work in progress for my girls.

My two daughters have believed in fairies from a very early age, but thier interest took a real turn for the unexpected the day they woke up to find a tiny wooden fairy door at the top of thier stairs and fairy dust leading into thier bedroom.

What ensued is a story for another time maybe, however since then they have had countless encounters and much fun with thier tiny visitors. So i am making them a little album to put the stories of thier adventures in, so they can look back in years to come and remember.

Very much a work in progress, but i'm pleased with the cover so far....




Lots of use of distress pad blending, with some gorgeous Prima flowers dotted around. All of the stamps are Lavinia stamps, my fave is the toadstool houses. :)

I will report back in as each part of the album gets done.

Black Magic Challenge card.

Over at Crafts By Carolyn, there is a challenge for members to make a card, layout or whatever using a black card as a base.

So heres my attempt. It gave me a chance to use some gorgeous pen themed stamps that i've bought recently, and also the blending techniques i learnt from Dan over at A Crafty Life

I'm quite pleased with the result, especially considering i spent most of the night moaning to my girlfriend that i was rubbish at colouring and layering! Sorry Maddy, at least i did better this time round. :)

More blending practice tonight.

As a wise man once said, "You become a master of what you focus on".

Well although i have a long way to go until i get to that stage, i am REALLY enjoying this blending lark! Tonight i had another go, just to iron out a few difficulties i had the other night really, and it is getting better. Still the usual suspects of the two rogue big sploshes, but I've worked out a solution for that.......



I played with the same colours as i used the other night. First i stamped in black StaZon. Here i used a gorgeous stamp which has a quote from Alice in Wonderland. I bought it from a lovely lady called Nikki who owns DewDrop Craftz , and it is definitely one that will be used a lot!

Colours of distress pad used were, Broken China blue at the top, Fired Brick red at the bottom, and Shabby Shutters green at the right side there. After i had blended them together from the outside inwards, i gave it a dusting of Dusty Concord purple for the edges. This really gives the colours a lovely mystical feel to them.

Then came the water flicking!!! The mistake i made last time was to hold my hand with tons of water on it, over the tag, and i ended up with big blobs when i wanted small flicks. This time i tried it with a toothbrush. I ran the brush under the cold tap, lightly tapped the brush against the sink to get rid of the big bits of water, then flicked the brush at it. Apart from the two big blobs on the left hand side, which occurred because i forgot to tap the brush the rest of the blobs are just how i wanted them.

So from now on it's wet, tap and flick! :)

Apologies for rambling on about this again, but it's more a reminder to myself so i can get the technique down to a fine art.

Night all. :)

"Quotes" tag book.

I have not been feeling too great today for one reason or another, and for a while i thought i'd totaly lost my crafty mojo!

So i decided to look through a book that Maddy gave me called "The Organised Scrapbooker" for inspiration. It's a great book with info on everything to do with storage, scrap room planning, getting yourself out of a crafty rut.....all the important things that normal people don't worry about!

One thing that caught my attraction was a tag book in which you keep your favourite quotes. I love quotes, i have books on them and think it's great that just a few words can change so much if you let them. Heres the front cover......



So i had my first go at blending, using some lovely distress pads that arrived for me today, and i had a play with some of my new stamps. I tried to loosely follow the tutorial that Dan over at A Crafty Life did recently, but as usual, my effort soon went pearshaped!

The blending could be better, but it was my first time so i am still pleased with it. I flicked too much water at the tag too, so there are a few splodges instead of dots on the ink, but hey, i've learnt for next time. What i did wrong was instead of just flicking water at the tag, i also held my hand over the tag and let the water drop onto it, causing big drops to hit and rest on it. Not as subtle. Maddy suggested flicking it with a toothbrush for finer spots.

The flower stamp in the middle was coloured with chalks.




The oval label with the word "Quotes" inside, is actualy a stamp with a different word in it. I just inked the stamp with StaZon, covered the word inside the oval border with a piece of paper to mask the wording, then stamped it onto my tag. This left a stamped oval label, blank inside, in which i could them write the word "Quotes".




I love this saying by Anthony Robbins. It means that your life or what you do in your life, resembles those who you are in the company of most. I like to apply this saying to my crafts. I have always had a great teacher in Maddy when it comes to learning techniques, and if i surround myself with people, blogs and inspiration of a high crafty calibre.....my work can only get better!