Saturday 30 April 2011

A Trio of Horses


Finished!!!

When I made my challenge card blogged the day before yesterday, I had also stamped and coloured (differently) two other horses. Today, I finished them up. Luckily, I had a nice stack of free papers from magazines with which to cover my card blanks. I used some spare cardstock that wasn't matched up with any patterned paper for the scalloped mats, cut on the Craft Robo. The white ovals were cut on the Robo too, to ensure they matched up nicely with the scalloped ovals. I was considering using my cutting system to make the plain ovals but it's not wise to use two cutting devices for ovals as ovals can have many different ratios of vertical/horizontal diameter. When that goes wrong, it's blindingly obvious.

Half of my box of spare Floral Punch Craft flowers went on this project. I'm glad because I can now make more!! :)

Friday 29 April 2011

FPC Friday - Gerbera Card

This card took a looonnng time to make but it was worth it in the end. I really love it and I will be making it again! This one has already been sent to a friend for her birthday. It got there quite late, but I only see her once a month and I just wasn't organised enough to get a card to her before the day.

I made one alteration to the card that isn't pictured: I punched a border down the right-hand side on the front, and put a white insert into it. It added a little contrast down the side.

Thursday 28 April 2011

Scrapology Card Challenge for April!


For those of you who don't know, Scrapology is now doing card challenges too. I thought, "Why not?" The requirement is to use a charm.

My butterfly charm came from some earrings from Primark. I have been putting off dismantling them but I finally took one butterfly off and used it.

Also appearing, the Carousel horse I got at Ally Pally!

The flowers are... wait for it... yeah, Floral Punch Craft. These are from book 2, flower number 11, called "Spring is here." But it's done in autumn colours.

I'm pleased with this card, so I have prepared two more horses in different colour schemes. I just need to cut another two scalloped ovals and find some nice background paper for the cards that tone with the other horses, which might be a bit of a task in itself!


Wednesday 27 April 2011

Art of Crochet Square 61

What's this? A new pattern! Shortcut bobbles, by alternating taller and shorter stitches. It's a thick, textured square. Very heavy, and taking up a lot of yarn. Great for winter blankets.

Friday 22 April 2011

FPC Friday - Flowering Cherry Plum


It's that time of the week again, and here's your Friday Flower Fix!

This is the Flowering Cherry Plum. The cherry blossoms are in the process of falling off the trees as I write this, and until I made these flowers I wasn't aware of just how many cherry trees we have around here. They really are lovely.

They're not on a card yet. I keep picking twigs off of cherry trees to use but then I lose them. If I can make my twigs stay put, these will end up on a card, finally!!! perhaps with a lovely oriental theme.

Wednesday 20 April 2011

Art of Crochet Square 60

...And we're half way!!! We are over the hump. What you're looking at is the sixtieth square in a 120-square throw. Hooray!!!

I know I've done this pattern before, but have I done this colourway? I feel like I have, but I can't for the life of me find the photo of the square. Odd!

Sunday 17 April 2011

Scrapology Challenge for April

Three months in a row, that's probably a new record!!!

I so rarely do challenges, but I've become attached to the scraplift challenges on Scrapology. This one is B is for Bunting. I've never used bunting before, so I thought I'd give it a go. Another thing I never used before was tickets, or ticket-shaped strips of cardstock, so this was great fun for me.

I used Bloom and Grow paper from My Mind's Eye and some Bazzill cardstock in Java. The border is a Martha Stewart Punch-Around-The-Page set. The triangles are all hand-cut and strung onto a thin ribbon. the tickets were done by folding a strip of paper accordion-style and then using a reverse corner rounder on the stack. The title was stamped directly onto the layout. Flowers in the corner were hand-cut and layered up using foam squares.

Saturday 16 April 2011

Cheap party bags!


My husband, for one, was impressed by this year's effort for my son's birthday.

At his school, the tradition is to bring in sweets on your birthday to hand out to your classmates at home-time. Lately, though, kids who don't have birthday parties tend to give out goodie bags to their classmates instead. Not to buck the trend, I jumped right in and worked my magic.

I kept it mega-simple.

The bags are made of "manilla" C5 envelopes from the pound shop, 50 in a pack for... guess how much? Yeah, I think you got it.

The thing with envelopes is, if you seal them up and then lop one narrow side off, score the other three sides with the same margin left, right, and bottom, add a score line from the bottom corners to where the score lines intersect, you then have something that folds out into a little bag. I was taught this years ago at a Stampin' Up party. Vary the margin width, vary the size of the envelope, you can pretty much make a bag for anything, as long as you don't mind it being a bit thin.

So, taking this information into account, the only other things you have to do to make bags like these is the following:

Choose and stamp your design before scoring and folding the bag.
When the scoring is complete, use a border punch on the cut side to add interest.
When the folding is complete, fold over the top of the bag. from the fold line to the decorative border, ink the surface of the envelope. This gives contrast when the bag is closed.
Punch two different-sized flowers out of different patterned papers and (after filling) staple the bag shut over the flower. These were for the girls. the ones I made for the boys had no flowers on them, just the staple.

The teachers and parents were intrigued. :)

If I had this to do again, I might have made toppers instead, but this is the inexpensive option. Even the papers came free with a magazine. How fortuitous!



Friday 15 April 2011

FPC Friday - Lovely to Look at...


...easy to make. That's what the flower is called in Book 2 of Floral Punch Craft by Leone Em.

And here it is:


This one was quick to make. I think I did the whole thing in about an hour. The thing that took up most of the time was tinting the green paper to look a bit more Olive. I don't yet have a good selection of greens, so I must tint the paper with chalks to make it a bit more interesting.

Here's a heads-up: I may start jumping around a bit, not systematically go through the books in order. I have every Floral Punch Craft book except book 8. There are nine including the DVD, and I've been flipping through them. I'm quite excited to make some flowers that are in the later books, especially since the teachers on the forum are also working on the latest and greatest stuff. I want to join in with them. You'll have to forgive me if I break form. :)


Wednesday 13 April 2011

Art of Crochet Square 59

Good ol' Granny!!! Loving the colour scheme on this one.

Next week marks the official halfway mark!!!! Hopefully my next shipment will contain more assembly instructions for the second quarter of the throw. This is exciting!


Repetition is good for the mind. Repetition is good for the mind. Repetition is good for the mind.


Actually, it's driving me out of mine!!!

Although I am making very similar squares each issue, the wealth of lovely patterns that make up this partwork just gets better and better. I'm still really enjoying it!!

Friday 8 April 2011

FPC Friday - Crimson Delight





I'm motoring through Book 2 and loving every minute! This is flower 12, called Crimson Delight. I love this one. Lots of layers, a bit of inking, and a great colour combo. I don't know what I'm using the card for yet, so I'm leaving the sentiment blank.

Wednesday 6 April 2011

Art of Crochet Square 58

Ok, what happened here??? I swear I started in the middle of the square, but obviously not. Spectacular fail!!!!!

Friday 1 April 2011

FPC Friday - I Quit!!!!!!


Just kidding!!! April Fools! I would never!

Here's flower 13, "Eye Catcher" from Book 2. This one was fun to make. I needed to paint the petals first, but they dried quickly so I didn't have to stop to wait for them to dry. I had 24 pieces to paint, so by the time I was done with them, the first few were dry and ready to work with.