Birthday Card - Circles

Birthday Card - Circles 

I had a card request for a 65th birthday card for someone who loves to see the birds come to his garden. I made one card but my husband said it was quite child like so I had to make another and this was the result:

I used stamps from Simply Cards and paper craft and coloured them with Copics. I used some paper from my stash that i think was Hobby craft. Then I used a circle die (which I sorted out on the weekend yay!) to cute the stamped images out and printed a sentiment through my IPad. I want to do more of this so if anyone knows of any apps I can use on the IPad and be able to print please let me know. 

For entry in: 

Cute Cards Thursday

Tracey Hey - little more love

Tracey Hey - little more love

I am a massive fan of Tracey Hey - alpaca pals stamps and she recently brought out a new range......I had to phone the bank manager to apologise in advance!!

When I saw this sentiment I knew I had to have it! Luckily my lovely dad said he would buy me some crafty things as a well done for my show entries so I got two sets of stamps which I love!

I also bought this week my first Tim holtz distress ink spray. One little spray is all it took for this background....definitely going on the wish list for more haha!!

I wanted to keep the card simple because of that sentiment! So here is the result:

Items used:

Background: distress ink spray peacock feathers 
Stamp: Tracey Hey - Alpaca Pals - be fierce

All Dressed up Birthday Card

All Dressed up Birthday Card 

Now that Royal Welsh Show is over and i'm up to date with orders and personal cards I have some time to make cards just for making cards sake!!! 

So I decided to make a card for the All Dressed up Facebook competition "Pearls/ & Or Gems" and I loved it so I thought i would enter it in the All Dressed up blog challenge too! 

The image was one I saw a few weeks ago and loved so knew I wanted to make a card with it. I coloured it with my copics and then added pearl drops. 

A few weeks ago I met a friend in town and she was heading to the haberdashery to give some of her old jewellery but after a conversation I ended up having it off her. In the box was some pearls and heart earrings so I added a few of these to it using a glue gun - which im not a fan of but it is the strongest glue! 

Image: All dressed up Fairy Swing 

Colours: Copic 

Papers: from stash - most likely the Works 

Pearls: from old jewellery 

I would like to enter this in All dressed up Blog 

My Summer Challenge

My Summer Challenge 

If you follow me on Instagram you will guess that I have been buying quite a lot of craft stuff! I am trying to get better at this and really think if I need something. I also buy a lot of magazines and am trying to look at them and see if I will actually use the free gift - as that's all I really buy them for!

I am lucky at the moment to have space to store it but if i need to downsize im going to struggle. Also, my goal this year is to do a craft fair at the end of the year! So to be able to do this I need to build up a stock of made up cards - even though I do like to make cards to fit the recipient. 

All this has led to me setting myself a summer challenge! My challenge this year is to go through my "stash" and make up cards using what I have got in there. This also ties in with another challenge I set myself to go through my magazines and make cards out of those magazines before putting them into storage in the shed! (I will take over the whole house before long haha!) 

I started the challenge this week starting with a "Luxury Glitter decoupage kit" from Papercraft Inspirations magazine issue 189.

The kit had 4 pre printed cards and then decoupage pieces to go with these cards. If i'm being honest these cards are a bit flimsy but they still look nice.

There was more "toppers" than needed for the decoupage cards so I made a few extra ones with some papers I had in my stash (mainly from the works) and was surprised about how many cards can be made out of one little kit.

Polka Doodles - Drummer

Polka Doodles - Drummer 

My brother-in-law is a drummer in a band and so as I like to try and make my cards personal to that person I wanted a drummer or a drum kit. I did have an image in my head of a festival card but I couldn't quite get it onto paper! Then I came across Polka Doodles drummer in one of the work and play sets - perfect! I also now have more digi stamps to play with! 

Image: Polkadoodles 

Music background paper: Polkadoodles 

Die used: Nesting stitched stars - Creative Dies

Topper: Happy Birthday - Express yourself MIP

Pearl dots: hobby craft 

Punch: star punch - hobby Craft
Coloured: Copics

To enter in following competitions: 

Digi Choosday  (I Only published this today 30/07/19 but its showing date of when I drafted it!) 

Polka Doodles - Birthday Card

Polka Doodles - Birthday Card 

This is a recent birthday card using two digi stamps from Polka Doodles. I coloured using my copic pens and used a nesting stitched die to cut out. I then used papers from my stash and plain paper from the Works to create a background. Adding pearl embellishments for that finishing touch.

Materials used:

Digi stamp: Polka Doodles - Hooray! and Horace
Colours: Copic
Pearl Embellishments: Hobbycraft
Paper: the Works

Entering in following competitions:

Digi Choosday 

Lili of the Valley - Birthday Card

Lili of the Valley - Birthday Card 

In the words of my husband - "you like those colour in thingys these days don't you" - That would be a digi stamp dear. Yes, he is right I do like my digi stamps at the moment - and one of my favourite suppliers is Lili of the valley. 

One of my recent makes is a birthday card for my manager. She likes her gardening so I chose the little mouse that comes with the Happy birthday pots stamp.

Digi Stamp: Lili of the Valley Birthday Pots 

Die: Circle frame die from stash (cant find where I got this from)

Papers: The works  

Colours: Copic 

Polka doodles - Doctor

Polka Doodles - Doctor 

One of my closest friends is a doctor and so when I saw this Doctor Digi Stamp on Polkadoodles I couldn't resist using it. I'm really liking layering at the moment often with different shapes so thats why I did the star on top of the circle which is on the square - I quite like the look of it lol! 

Digi Stamp: Lady Doctor, Polkadoodles 

Flower embellishments: Hobbycraft (think discontinued now) 

Papers 

Star Die: Creative dies 

Pearl Gems: Hobby craft

Bunting die 

Colours: Copic 

Happy birthday: Peel off Stickers

For entry in Polkadoodles challenge blog

All dressed up - Fathers day

All dressed up - Fathers day Card 

Another celebratory day has been and gone - fathers day! I didn't make as many fathers day cards as mothers day but I didn't promote it as much due to other crafty commitments!

This was one of my favourite cards I made:

The digi stamp is from All dressed Up  and I kept it simple using a scalloped edge circle and polka dot background from Hunkydory. I actually gave this card away in a Facebook Competition. 

Materials Used: 

Digi Stamp: All Dressed up

Paper: Hunkydory 

Coloured: Copic Markers

Pearls: Hobbycraft 

Die: from stash 

Polka Doodles Horse

Polka Doodles Horse

I recently had a request from a colleague for a birthday card which included a Grey Horse for her neice's birthday. 

I found this beautiful digi stamp by Polka Doodles and used my copics to colour following technique by Kit & Clowder. 

Materials Used: 

Digi Stamp: Polka Doodle Horse riding 

Colours: Copic

Papers: Hunkydory 

Twine and die in stash

All dressed up ~ Wedding

Wedding Cards 

I have recently made two Wedding cards using a free digi stamp. The digi stamp is by All Dressed Up but was free with Simply Cards Magazine on their website.

Both have computer generated sentiments with one being in Welsh.

The papers were free with Die Cutting Essentials special magazine. 

I am really liking using digi stamps as don't have to worry about the ink drying!! 

Splashing Pig

Splashing Pig 

I see a lot of card-maker blogs that write individual posts for cards they make. So i am going to start trying to write a few more blog posts for different cards I make. 

I am a member of many groups on Facebook and a lady called Lisa Macvicar posted a card using this digi stamp and I just had to make it!!! 

I had bought the rainbow die at the beginning of last month from Creative Dies - Stitched Rainbow. So it was an opportunity to use it. Husband has banned me from buying anything in May as apparently I have too much stuff (never!) 

I used paper from a pad I re-found this week which was Rainbow Magic from Hobbycraft and its on offer now if you like it! 

The pig was a digi stamp from Lee Hollard Art which I coloured with my copics. Im really enjoying my colouring after reading Kit & Clowder techniques so it was nice to practice with other colours ( I just want more colours now!) 

Products used: 

Stitched Rainbow die 

Rainbow Magic Paper pad 

Pig in Wellies

Card blank 

Digi Stamps

Digi Stamps 

I have just discovered the joy that is Digi Stamps. I will be honest when I first read about them I thought you might as well just print an image from google! 

It started when I was looking for a stamp/ die or anything for a twin baby card and a lovely lady on Facebook sent me two Lili of the Valley Digi stamps for twins and I loved them.

Then one of my magazines had a free Paper Nest Dolls digi stamp so I thought I would give that a try and loved it. I hadn't actually got any-one to send this Easter Card to but felt the need to make it anyway! There's also Paper Nest Dolls monthly competitions which I will never win as there is some incredible cards out there but its always worth an entry!

I had recently invested in Copic markers and they give a great colour but there's a good technique to learn! I came across Kit and Clowder who has great online courses for colouring with copics and other markers. So you know what I am going to be spending any spare time doing!!!

Mothers Day Cards 2019

Mother’s day 2019

If you are a follower of my Instagram (or just know me!) you will be aware that Mother’s day is always tough for me. I lost my beautiful mum in November 2016 and as she was a big fan of crafting I used to love to make things for her – I was only cross stitching then though and making it into cards. Mum used to like to make cards and so after she passed away I decided to try making some. She would have been totally jealous of my “stash” now and would be wanting to borrow my tools etc.!

This year was made slightly more bearable as I started making cards and advertising them and people actually bought them off me!!! So I have had people to make them for!

My first type of card was a pretty floral one using die cut flowers and some pearl embellishments. The dies were free from die cutting essentials magazine.

The second was an idea that came to mind in work and I had to wait until I got home to make it!! I cut out the word “mum” using my cricut and then used this as a stencil to fill in with my flower stamps from Card-io. This was a lot easier to do than the first type so I pushed this one more than the other.

For my mother-in-law I wanted to make something different to ones I had made to sell so made this one using flowers and a bird from Papercraft Essentials magazine and used their example by Creativeness to put this one together.

Somewhere on social media I had seen a card using flowersoft on a bike basket and so when I got the hunky-dory die from the magazine and found some flowersoft in mums stash I thought I would give it a go. The little flower is using flower foam from the Craft Show I went to – it didn’t quite look as good as they did it!! I was really pleased with the result of this card that I gave to my grandmother in law.

As I said above I used to love to make cards for my mum and so have had to think outside the box to make one for her. In previous years I have cross stitched a pattern and put it in a coaster. This year however, I saw these acrylic blocks from Tracy Hey – alpaca pals. They have so many uses but one of my first thoughts were for mums grave and I think it worked out well with a cute little elephant and “never forget I love you”.

The other cards I made were a request by my best friend’s husband “can you make a card that the kids can colour in a bit of”. I knew straight away the stamps I needed – the mummy stamps by Tracy Hey- Alpaca Pals. Her customer service is 10* as they arrived the day after I ordered them! Perfect for mother’s day and perfect for this request. I mounted white card on to a colour card to add a bit of colour and then left the stamp blank for the kids to colour. I loved the effect and will be using this again! My best friend left a lovely comment on the photo which was Oscar Worthy ;).

So that’s Mother’s day 2019! Hopefully this will be the start of something exciting for Ithon Crafts and with my aim to be a Craft fair at Christmas I need to build up my stock, read up on copyright and get some insurance – oh and the fun bits of a hoodie and maybe a personalised table cloth!!

Crafting Live Malvern

Crafting Live - Malvern

A couple of weekends ago I went to the Crafting Live show at the three Counties Showground, Malvern. It was a weekend where my husband was free and as he is training for a 44 mile walk I suggested he met our friend to go for a walk on the Malvern Hills when I went into the craft fair – which meant I got a driver!!

We parked in the first entrance we came to because our friend had arrived first and this is where he was. From this car park it was very poorly signposted and I followed some people in the hope they were going to the same place as me! I think if we had gone round to the next entrance it may have been better. Even once we got to the building, it wasn’t very clear where to go and you had to go through a café area to enter and made you wonder if you were going right.

However, once inside there was a lot of crafty goodness! I like a craft fair as you can have a good browse and there are some good demonstrations happening – all to tempt you to buy more!! I did find a lot of the stalls had the same brands but then they are the big players in the market so can’t expect much else really. I did find myself trying to remember the best price for some products from different stalls.

It was very busy in there and the stalls seemed to be quite tightly packed. However, I think if you have patience you can find some good products!

My favourite stamp brand Card-io were there though and I did get a good few stamps from there – some of which I have already used. They as always were very popular – their stamps are so versatile and easy to use and you can build up amazing scenes on cards with them.

At 1pm I had booked a Shaun the Sheep Masterclass. This was with one of the animators off the popular TV series. However I did leave feeling a little disappointed as there were three big tables and the man was trying to talk to all three over top of a live broadcast on Create and Craft so I don’t think my sheep looked that great. This could have been improved by putting the workshop at a different area to the TV show and less people in the class. There were other masterclasses during the day which I couldn’t seem to find out what they were beforehand so didn’t do any.

I did find one of my new obsessions though – Lawn Fawn stamps and dies at half price so I picked up a set of them!

I had booked an early bird ticket and so got a free gift – which was a great tattered lace die. You were given an option of a few different dies. This did cause a few queues but I kept coming back to see a smaller queue and was really pleased with my freebie!

Just read the above back and it seems very negative but it really wasn’t that bad – just maybe a few minor changes could improve the show for all.

We never seem to get any craft shows in Wales and have a great venue for it at the Royal Welsh Showground so if any craft show organisers are reading this please consider Mid Wales for a show as there are lots of crafters here ready and waiting for you!

Hunkydory

Hunkydory

If you are a follower of my Instagram you will see my love for Hunkydory. They have “topper” sets which are brilliant for quick makes and also if you are just starting out in card making. The sets have different images and sentiments on them and can be used just as they are or used with other makes. There is also card inserts which I find brilliant for cards that are going around an office with lots of signatures in as it creates more room. They also do “box magazines” which includes free papers, quite often stamp set and die set and a magazine with some designs in and how to make them.

In this blog post I am going to attempt a quick “tutorial” for how easy a card can be made. Although my husband said “you didn’t really make those though – you just stuck some things together!”

I have used Hunkydory Design Collection Box Magazine Issue 7 which includes the Spring Time Meadow Collection Papercraft Kit. All you need is a card blank some glue, some form of cutting equipment, and the Kit from the magazine. Card blanks and glue are available from all craft shops and even some supermarkets now (crafting is definitely becoming more popular), I’ve used the crafter companions double sided tape roller as I find it easier and quicker than normal doubled sided tape but the tape roll would be fine too. I’ve also used some sticky foam pads which are good for making images stand out from your card but again you can just use the double sided tape and it would stay flat on the card.

Firstly pick a piece of the patterned paper from your kit and cut it to just a bit smaller than your card blank. I use a guillotine which has measurements down the side so it makes it a lot easier but you can use pencil to draw lines with a ruler on your piece. Use your double sided tape to stick that to the front of your card blank.

Next select the image you want from your kit, I chose the cute little duckling and the “ribbon band” which I cut to size to go down the one side of the image. Pop it out from the card and put either your glue or your foam pads on the back and put on the card front just to the left of the centre. Then add glue to the back of your ribbon band and stick that to the right of your image.

Then da-dah! You have a card. You can add a sentiment to it but I quite like cards that are for all occasions.

Supplies: Double sided glue 

                Sticky foam squares

                Card blanks

                Hunkydory kit 

Building the dream

Building the dream

I got back into crafting in 2014 with the birth of my beautiful god-daughter and started stitching away and whilst Cross Stitch remains my first love I have started making other things. I completed two crochet courses and as I got asked to be godmother to three others, got a niece and nephew, more friends gave birth and I got more adventurous my crafting “portfolio” expanded as I wanted to create personal gifts. In July 2017 I arranged a girls weekend away and part of that was a baby shower which I made all the things for that. A trip to a craft fair introduced me to paper craft and so my craft stash has expanded and my bank balance decreased! Throughout all of this my friends have said “you need to start an Etsy shop” or “you should sell some of this” or “you should start a business”

Have you ever had that thought – if I won the lottery………I have, many a time!! This dream started as a shop in one of our local towns, the shop would sell crafting supplies and completed crafts by myself and some select others. I would also have space to hold workshops. I work for adult social services and unfortunately see a lot of loneliness, and people who have knitted/ stitched etc. who can no longer fulfil their passion due to ill health. Therefore a key thing for me would be free workshops for the elderly and work in association with Age Cymru, Action on hearing loss, RNIB etc. to develop a way that those people who have lost the ability to carry out their craft to start again! There would of course also be workshops for all other age groups.

I do a lot of miles for work and one day I drove past a caravan site and my mind started developing my dream into perhaps a more sustainable business plan. This would definitely need that lottery win though!!! I would love to have a few lodges and a campsite/ caravan area with a site centre that would house my craft shop and workshop space (as well as conference facilities). By having those lodges in place I would be able to hold “crafting retreats” – a weekend of crafting with guest hosts. I would also like to be able to host crafting fairs.

However, that is the big dream and without a lottery win I can’t see this being possible so we will start out a bit smaller than that!

I started by creating an Instagram page dedicated to my crafting– as I thought that not everybody would be interested in yet another card! For this I needed a name! I wanted a name that was clear what I did but not specific to one craft. Also, I wanted it to be personal to the area I live and so Ithon is the name of the river that runs by where I grew up and by where I live now. Therefore Ithon Crafts was born. From this I received yet more compliments – and yet more “you should start an Etsy shop” comments. The next step was to create this blog. There are some fabulous crafters out there who are very successful just from their blogging – Sarah Froggle at Bella CoCo for starters! So I thought this was another step to getting known! I’m not very confident and so doing things in small steps helps to steadily build that confidence up!

I have taken a deep breath and posted on Instagram yesterday about Mother’s Day cards for sale! So far no purchases but then not many people may have seen it. I have therefore created a Facebook page today but I am yet to publish - far too scared to!

Eventually I think I would like to go to craft fairs with cards and other small items for sale and maybe even create an Etsy shop. My colleague sells her crafts and after a discussion with her I feel like I want to make more and try and sell some but then my anxiety kicks in and I don’t think I am good enough.

I studied business studies at university and a key part of creating a business is knowing your market therefore I created a survey monkey questionnaire that I have circulated to a few friends and so if you are reading this I would appreciate you completing it: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ST6PL3N  

So that’s my dream……………….if you see #buildingthedream its another step towards achieving it x

Make one Christmas card a week Challenge

Make one Christmas card a week challenge

It was a sad week this week as my favourite group on Facebook closed. The make one Christmas card a week group was run by three (or more) admins and there was a few thousand members (shows how popular card making is!!). They released a statement this week to say that due to personal circumstances they were closing the group on Facebook. 

However, I love the challenge so I'm going to keep going with it on Instagram

The admins set a theme for every week at the beginning of the year (which I thankfully printed off) and so got you to make 52 cards ready for Christmas (always best to be prepared for Christmas when you're a crafter haha!! I'm using #makeonechristmascardaweek2019 on instagram

We are currently on week 8 and this week is "sentiments take centre stage" so I had an idea in my head throughout the week. I was speaking with a colleague who uses a cricut this week and I had fell out of love with mine. So I decided to try and give it another go this time for a poinsettia to go on my card (perfect Christmas flower!)

I used a plain background from a paper pack I had and was going to use a merry Christmas paper with a die cut merry Christmas on top but it looked too busy so just put plain paper in the background.

Christmas cards need a bit of glitter - friends mum always puts glitter inside the card too so it's lucky she has recognisable hand written and you're prepared! However I really don't like the red glitter card I've used - I like the colour but the bits keep coming off and make the card look messy! The blue glitter for the sentiment peeled a bit too - maybe I need to invest in better quality card!!

I added the cricut ponisettia and curled the card a bit to make it look more real.....and this is the result.

Next week is bringing home the tree/ gathering the festive foliage so time to get thinking cap on!