Penguins!

Woodware stamp and promarkers with a touch of stickles.

Fiddly bits

The November issue of Cardmaking and Papercraft has an article about Christmas decorations, and I loved this one.  It's made with six 4.5 cm squares of double-sided paper.  You can make six of them from a sheet of 12x12, and they're great if you're camped out in front of the TV as the nights close in. 

The paper I used was 7gypsies gypsy market paper, brixton.  The green side has oriental patterns on it, but the paper is cut into such thin ribbons you can't really tell.

Thanks Simonne Clay for a great design!

Art of Crochet... Beginners throw finished!

I don't think I ever posted the finished project!  Well here it is now!

Sorry for the delay.  It's actually been done for a while.  I hung it out on the line to air it out and thought this was the best way to photograph it.

I'm a short way into making the advanced techniques throw now.  I have many squares to show you!

Space is filling up...

My stash is coming home to roost!  I have a few things to sort out on my desk and some bags in the lounge.  I think the remaining contents will need to be stored for now.  But there's no time for that, I'm going back into the fray (my old house) to liberate some more prisoners!

I dearly wish I could sit for awhile and play, but the mundane world beckons.

Little Home Notebook

I'm finally going to do some crafting in my workspace today... Only a bit of simple cardmaking but it will be nice to get used to working here.

This is a photo of one of my hand painted notebooks.  This one is quite detailed, but if you'd like one to use as a starting point to make your own, why not visit my Folksy shop and get one?

New craft space.

Here is my new crafty corner.  Not all my stash is here yet but there's lots to work with.  I just can't seem to get started...

Ooh, colours!

This is a sneaky peek of some painted bits I'm selling at my stall at the school's summer fete.  More to follow.

Altered book, stage 2.

There's color in there now... But it's too clean.  Needs roughing up.  Stay tuned...

A few painted bits

I've been painting today.  I keep saying that I'll make backgrounds with paint and masks and I finally did a little bit.  I covered a memo pad and made two other pieces by painting on book text. Plenty of paper left to do more!

Altered book, phase 1.

I want to qualify as a Floral Punchcraft teacher, but my qualification project needs to be sent to Australia.  I think a hollowed-out book would be a great presentation and packing medium.  That's what I intend to do with this altered book.

For now, I will make this book into a beautiful frame to house my work.

The work itself is still in progress.  I am perfecting my techniques all the time.  Or trying to, anyway.

Happy Birthday Vixie!

Sorry for the glare, readers.  It's my little Vixie's birthday and I finally booked her a party!  This means that I finally have the details to put on the back of these invitations, which I made aaaaaaaaages ago, with Vixie's help.  The entry's here somewhere, trust me... scroll down, it's probably not far.

Anyhoo... her invitations are now complete.  I will be delivering them tomorrow.

What does Vixie want for her birthday?  Well, we will be going shopping at Lakeside (more kids shops than Westfield) and then on Sunday, otherwise known as Father's Day, Daddy's Girl will be off to yet another birthday party and then having some girlie time with Mummy!  She saw me doing some kind of painty, altery thing which will be blogged soon-ish...  and she wants to make one  too, so that's Sunday all sorted.

Oh yeah, the crafty stuff:

I cut some tags out on my robo using a template kindly uploaded to UK Scrappers.  Vixie and I tinted them with Victorian Velvet Distress Stain and added blobs of Picket Fence Distress Stain on top.    The flowers and  banner were also done this way, and the banner and "Time to Celebrate" were stamped in Sepia Versafine ink.  The flowers were made in a similar way to the popular Tim Holtz "Tattered Florals" projects you find online.  The middles were filled with white glue and sprinkled with Cosmic Shimmer Mica Flakes in Silver.   The Invitation ribbon was stamped using a Papermania ribbons and sentiments set and then curled a little and adhered with Pinflair gel.  To finish, a little double-sided chocolate brown and pink ribbon.

Art of Crochet: still going!

It's been quiet here, but I must say there's been no crafty let-up.  I have been keeping up with my crochet squares, but they've all been repeats so I didn't bother to blog them.

I am currently up to Issue 118!   Two more squares to make and 1/4 of my throw left to assemble.  I should receive my shipment in two weeks or so.

But what's in the picture?  Ah, my good readers, I thought my partwork was finishing, but oh no... With issue 118 they included instructions and yarn for an Advanced Techniques throw, with a whole new colour palette!

Yeah, I'm continuing.  I need a challenge and this throw is going to be so cool.

I think good old Blogger has rotated my photo, but hopefully you can still see this new pattern, the thistle square.  I likey!

An adventure begins...

Our family is preparing to move house, and the majority of my craft stuff needs to be packed up and put in storage while the house is repaired and dressed for sale.

I am taking this as an opportunity to take a full inventory of my craft supplies and attempt to calculate the amount and type of storage I will need to organise it after the move.

My first quandary is this:  What do I keep with me for the few months between now and the move?

I attend a monthly crop, so I'll need some papercrafting supplies, and I'm working on soft furnishings for my little girl's bedroom.  I suppose those two things and some crochet will fit into the storage pouffe I bought to conceal my craftiness while people decide whether or not to buy my boring beige box...

Victoria Crafts!

Today, Vix and I got splodgy with Distress Stain.  The tags we are making will be her birthday party invitations.

Just what I need!

Another addiction.  This weekend, I began making Yo-yos, otherwise known as Suffolk Puffs, with the aid of a Clover Yo-yo maker.

If you like it and want to do it, it's a great way of using up fabric scraps.  These work best if the fabric drapes well, like the thin satiny chintz I used.

My yo-yo maker came from John Lewis.  The haberdashery department in their Westfield Stratford City location has two sizes.  At a fiver, it was a cheap way to get started making these little bundles of joy!

A couple of medallions...

I had a go at colouring in some medallions with ProMarkers.  I was hoping for better-looking results on the pink and purple one.  I'm more pleased with the orange, yellow and green one.

I made these on Saturday, when Wendy and I managed to stay out of the shops and actually get some crafting done.

Much crafting was had by all last weekend.  More to come!

Happy Birthday Jessie!

I'm on the ball today.  Managed to make a card for my niece's birthday.

I got to use my recently-unearthed Smirks stamps.  Hooray!

Copic and ProMarker Matchup!

I started my solvent-based marker collection with Copics and when my preferred retailer started selling ProMarkers, I made the switch.

Not to be wasteful, I decided to go about matching my existing Copics up with their nearest ProMarker counterpart and fill in the square on the colour chart so I don't double up when buying ProMarkers.

I tried to look online for a list of matches but I didn't have much luck. So as a service, I will list my own Copics and the ProMarker colours that are close enough to them.

Please note: If you have colour OCD, this may not be good enough for you. ;) Yes, you know who you are... ;)

I only have 13 copics plus a blender pen, so this will be a short list.

E0000 is closest to Almond.
E00 is closest to Blush.
R11 is closest to Soft Peach.
YG11 is closest to Meadow Green. Thanks to Lili of the Valley for this one.
G14 is closest to Grass.
G05 is closest to Emerald.
BG10 is closest to Pastel Green.
BG49 is closest to Petrol Blue, although Marine is also a good match.
B97 is closest to Midnight Blue.
BV00 is closest to Lavender.


There are three more in my collection I am attempting to match:
E02 - I think this one may be Peach or Apricot.
BV04 - Search me. I thought it was Prussian Blue but it just isn't...
B93 - Blue Pearl is too purple, Duck Egg is too green. It's right in the middle of those. It would make a really gorgeous gradient though. It's a skotche darker than Denim blue and less purple than cornflower. Hmm...

My work is not quite done. Any ideas or suggestions? Please comment. Perhaps we could build up a Copic/Promarker matching database with our combined experiences. Please click the title of this post and send the link to anyone you think might be interested. We could be helping the greater craft community here.

Stuffed Butternut Squash

I was doing the shopping yesterday and saw a spice packet for stuffed butternut squash.  I had to have it.  It's lunchtime, baby!

Matryoshka Card

I made six cards today at the crop.  I had a great time playing with my ProMarkers.

Neapolitan Blues

I've been playing with my Marianne Designs Creatables flower dies today.  I love making these little beauties, and I'm using up my scraps.  Loving it!

Not sure why the photo is upside down, but it doesn't matter much. ;)

Pound shop find!

It's rare that I find something this good at the pound shop.  Here it is!  A pair of earrings made of eight ultra-light metal flowers suspended from a larger rosette.  I bought the three pairs I could find on the shelf.  I will be taking my pliers to them and separating the pieces.  I'll show you what I use them for soon... Here's hoping anyway!

Cards from the Scraps

There was a later class in the Pretty Paper Party about paper weaving. I incorporated this into my stash dive when making some cards out of the smaller scraps when I was done making pages. First, I wove the papers on straight, and for the second one, I wove them separately and stuck them on at an angle. I like them both. :)

Art of Crochet Square 91

This one went quickly. I forgot how "holey" designs take so much less time!

Short and sweet-- less talking, more crafting!

Debden 2009

This page is the last one I did with my stash dive. I have smaller pieces now to make cards with. I think I have filed them in my scraps only section.

I'm a lot happier with this one than I was with the previous one. This one uses strips of paper, anchoring the paper to the top and the bottom of the layout. I punctuated it with flowers punched with EK Success retro flowers and button middles.

Shimelle's Pretty Paper Party is still on in this house! I'm going to go through each class slowly as and when I have time. I'm really enjoying it.

Art of Crochet Square 90

Could I finally be getting the hang of putting the designs in the middle where they belong?? Looks like it...

M&M World

Another page from my creative stash dive. You may have noticed the letter blocks on the previous two pages. These are most of the rest of them. I'm not very good at clustering embellishments yet, and I did intend to make a cluster but the photos sort of took over and I didn't really have any room for anything else. I still have a lot to learn as a scrapper.

Art of Crochet Square 89

This was not the square I was looking forward to doing right after I'd made those sofa cushions for my Mother-In-Law. This pattern was the one I used on the cushions, and after making two large ones, this basketweave was the last thing I wanted to make! But I soldiered on.

Debden 2010...

In 2008, 2009 and 2010, a group of us would hire out the conference room at Debden House in Loughton and stay there for the weekend. We would arrive on a Friday afternoon, set up all our crafty stuff, have dinner, craft into the night, trundle up to bed, come down for breakfast and a full day of free-form craft time (no classes scheduled, just do what you like), lunch, dinner, some tv (there was a huge plasma on one wall of the conference room), and late-night belly laughing and just a little bit of drinking... some more than most... followed by Sunday breakfast, more crafting, Sunday lunch and packing up and going home at about 4pm. Usually sometime before the lunch we would all pile outside to set up some photos. This is the group shot that we took in 2010.

This is another layout made with my "stash dive" from Shimelle's Pretty Paper Party (see link). Pleating is the order of the day here. I did some box pleats on a border-punched piece at the top, and I fanned out some bits along the side with the striped paper. Fun!!

Art of Crochet Square 88

Happy New Year to my readers!! This is my first post of the year.

I have been otherwise engaged since late November. I decided to develop and teach beginners' cardmaking course. If you know anyone in the East London (UK) area who would like to start at square one and see what it's all about, send them to my website. I teach at set venues or in students' homes, party-style.

Shameless plugs aside, I have been crocheting a bit. I had laid my crochet squares aside so I could make two sofa cushions for my mother-in-law for Christmas as I did last year. I worked like mad on them and finished them in record time, then went back to the squares after about a week off.

This one was fun to re-visit in a different colour combination. I love colourwork. This one requires that I carry the most-used colour up the side of the work and I don't think I quite have the hang of keeping it neat. I may have to hide it when I sew it all together.

Getting back on the partwork horse lit a fire under me so I've been churning out squares like mad! I still have a few to make before I catch up with deliveries, but what is more exciting for me is that I have the instructions to assemble the third quarter of the throw! I will be doing that in the next few days, I hope. Then I can get back to the crochet.