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

Summer Challenge part 2

Summer Challenge part 2

I hope you've seen my previous post about my summer challenge to use up some of my stash and use some things I hadn't used before!

Well part two was from Papercraft essentials magazine and was a cut and emboss folder with stamps and papers.

I only managed to make three cards with this but theres loads of paper left for future projects. I'm not the biggest fan of embossing sothats why I didnt do a lot of them.

I made three....two from examples in magazine and one made up as I went along! I never seem to get a nice card when I'm following a magazine example I don't know why!

So these are the final three....wonder what is next! 

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

Lili of the Valley - Christmas Tree

Lili of the Valley - Christmas Tree

Lili of the Valley has released their first Christmas selection of 2019! So when payday came I treated myself to some! 

This is the first of the Christmas cards I made with one of the images: 

Digi Stamp: Lili of the Valley 

Colours: Copic 

Sentiment and tree: from a magazine
Tartan paper: crafters companion
Other papers: free from magazines 

Lili of the Valley - Under the Weather

Lili of the Valley - Under the Weather 

Yesterday was a complete wash out here so what better to go home and colour in that Lili of the Valley James with his big umbrella!! 

I wanted to make him into a Get Well Card with the sentiment "Under the Weather" so I die cut him out with a nesting die. Found some paper in the stash - the one i chose was a bit dark so I added a light blue cloud paper across the middle to brighten it a bit. Then I added a sun and clouds using Whimsy Stamps die. 

Products used: 

Digi Stamp: Lili Of the Valley - James 

Sun and Clouds Die: Whimsy Stamps

Papers: hobbycraft and Works

Entered in:

Cute Card Thursday 

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!) 

Royal Welsh 2019

Royal Welsh 2019 

Its that time of year again - Royal Welsh Show. We are very lucky to live in such close proximity to this brilliant agriculture show. One section of the show is the Homecraft section. This to me feels a bit like the shows forgotten cousin - its never mentioned in any of the advertising and 

This is my third year of entering (I have also entered the Winter Fair). The first year I think I entered about 5 things and didn't win any prizes but it was fun to enter and when dad said on the day we went - "you're mum always wanted to enter this" I was so glad i had made the effort. One of the classes was a Cross stitch castle and the one I started on is still not finished! Husband said after that year you need to be more prepared and start earlier.........

Year two I entered 9 items and came home with 5 prizes and according to my calculations i was second place for the overall prize. I was so much more prepared this year and had completed everything in plenty of time........the same cannot be said for this year. 

For some silly reason - probably because I was so close to the overall prize last year I entered 10 classes this year and it was only a week before they were due to be handed in that the first piece was completed!! As you can guess husband was not very happy and got a bit stressed himself.

So this last weekend and week i have woke up early and gone to bed late just to try and get things finished before and after work. I was actually aching yesterday from too much crafting! haha

Heres what I entered.......i'll try and link to supplies when I can. 

First piece completed was "framed pebble picture" - the day before I had been to Hobbycraft and bought some lovely new baby paper so used that to back the pebbles and then added flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts to compliment the design. the shadow box frame is from Hobbycraft too. Think once I get some more pebbles i will be making a few more of these, perhaps to sell if anyone thinks they are good enough,.

Second piece was "an item made from driftwood". I was at Hwgga Studios and Katja mentioned that she had been given a load of driftwood. My ears perked up and she was lovely enough to give me whatever pieces I wanted. With a bit of glue from my glue gun I stuck all the pieces together to create the word "home" I then got some screw in hooks and screwed this into the bottom of the driftwood to allow somewhere to hang your keys. 

Third completed piece - "a mosaic". I had seen some beautiful designs on Pinterest for mosaics and had even collected some plates from nans that would have been perfect but I didnt find any other tiles to go with this and then ran out of time. So I entered this coaster from Hobbycraft . I originally got an owl one but it didn't turn out very well - and i gained some injuries - the instructions say use a scissors but don't do this you need something a lot stronger. I used a jewellery tool that I found in mums stash of stuff and put it in between a jacket to soften it and stop it flying off too far! 

The fourth entry was a special one for me. I didn't really care what it looked like as it was just an excuse to make one as I want to give it to my nan after the show is over. Its a "twiddle muff" which are designed to support dementia sufferers as it allows them to "twiddle" and reduce any restfulness and anxieties they have. I looked up patterns for this but in the end kinda did my own thing. The yarn I used was a soft yarn from Aldi which I just double crocheted a block until I thought it was big enough. I then attached a crocheted flower, buttons and some yarn. I also found these beads in Tesco and have never really used them so i spelt out nan and put it on some string which enables it to move up and down. I'm not sure how much nan will actually use it but as she was a big crafter when she was able I want to still give it to her. 

The fifth category was "A 2020 calendar". A lovely lady who i used to work with knew i did a lot of  crafts and cross stitch and one day she turned up to the office with some Winnie the Pooh cross stitches that she had once bought but never used and one of those was a Winnie the Pooh and friends calendar. I therefore decided to stitch this for the category - and as it specifically said 2020 calendar i added a little paper calendar on the bottom. I had bought the frame off Amazon but it was only Saturday night I finished it (with entries to be handed in on Sunday) so hadn't actually looked at how it fitted. So this caused a lot of issues Sunday morning! hubby ironed it for me and as i hadn't had time to wash it the creases were not coming out very easy so we sprayed it with some water and then ironed and the creases were starting to come out - hubby decided just one more little bit and from nowhere appeared a black smudge!!!! Luckily it was right on the side and so it was covered a bit by the frame. I was un-doing the back of the frame and managed to cut my thumb on one of the clips - its still sore today! So i almost got blood over everything. Then we couldn't get it so that it wasn't showing the card behind and as i didn't have a big enough piece of  card we had to bodge some to fit behind. At the last minute I added the felt stars to cover the corners of the mount behind. I love how it has turned out - I think the kit has now been discontinued which is unfortunate as its such a lovely piece. 

The 6th entry was for "a baby blanket" I saw a completed blanket in a Facebook group and I just had to make it. Its made up with a c2c stitch but its a graphgan so there's a lot of colour changes. It was meant to be 9 squares but i ran out of time! then the two out of the six i completed were smaller so i had to leave them out. I really like the finished piece - but the joining and boarder have let it down. I think i'm going to keep this one rather than give it as a present. 

The 7th entry - I finished the blanket at midnight so had all of Sunday morning and early afternoon to complete as much as possible. So I picked a cross stitch card thinking it wouldnt take me long - it took soooooo much longer than expected. I had picked out a new baby card from World of Cross Stitching magazine and then added some paper to back it and then lace and a heart charm from Wild Orchid Crafts

The 8th entry was for card made from paper and card - perfect for me with all my card making. However, I ran out of time!!! so i just found this pig one in my stash and entered that. 

I failed to complete two categories - "Item including pom poms" and "bag for life". Lesson for next year - don't enter so much!! (remind me of that in May next year!!) 

Prizes

Although I entered with the hope to win overall and on entry i didn't expect to win anything I got one red card next to my cross stitch! There was 300 entries in total in the handicraft and I would encourage anyone to enter! I have now got the categories for next year and hubby has said no more than 5! We will see.....

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

Crafters will travel!

Crafters will travel!

As any crafter will know – there is never enough time to complete all the projects you want to complete!!! So when it comes to facing a long car journey my first thought is always – that’s a lot of time I could be crafting! Therefore, since I started Cross Stitching about four years ago I decided to try taking it with me to do in the car! I live in Mid Wales and so the roads are not very straight!! Once we get onto a dual carriage way or a motorway the craft comes out! It also makes the journey go a lot quicker! 

As anyone who knows me could tell you we travel a lot! Between seeing friends in different parts of the country, nights away and a bigger trips we are on the road a lot! So I have worked out the best way to do this and how it is best transported!

I have now found that crocheting is easier than Cross stitch in the car as you aren’t trying to focus on those little squares – it’s easy to lose count as you go over a bump in the road!

In August last year I got a new job which meant I was in the car a lot for visits to people’s homes around the county – so if I have a few visits in the same town away from the office I will ensure I have some form of craft in the car in case I have 10 minutes between appointments!

However, my anxiety does affect this a lot! It sounds so silly as I’m here telling the world about my crafting but when I am on a plane or a train etc. I like to be in the window seat so that my husband will sit between me and other people as a “barrier”. This is until I get the confidence to start and then I can’t stop! One year I was even stitching on the platform waiting for a train and a woman was so intrigued by what I was doing she almost fell over!!!  

For my cross stitch I have found a small storage box which I think was from our local haberdashery – it’s perfect for each project and keeping the bobbins neat, it can store a scissors and a highlighter pen! I have also purchased a thread cutter for plane journeys to avoid taking scissors. However, I would be careful travelling to America as I have heard they take needles off you!!! (Surely more harm can be done with a belt buckle than a little needle!)

Tesco were also selling these cute little bags for life – they are a great size for carrying a project! They sold them for 25p in the end so I think I bought 4!

I have yet to work out how to take my card making stuff with me!!! Haha

Therefore, if you ever receive a cross stitch off me who knows where your gift has been!  

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!!!

Self Care Craft Evening

Self Care Craft Evening

Last night my best friend and I went to a "Self Care Craft Evening" at Hwgga Studios in Llandrindod Wells. The theme for last night was diorama boxes. I am a big crafter yet I had not heard of these before.

It wasn't quite as I expected it but still really enjoyed it. The room was light and well laid out. We arrived and were greeted with refreshments. On the table were empty boxes and on another table was a pile of different items that can be used and also a die cutting machine and some dies. We were told just to let our imagination run away with us!

I chose some grass for the bottom and then decorated the back with hills and clouds. I intend on making a church with a sizzix die but i was rushing a bit and couldn't get it to stick together so Katja found me a little wooden bird house that I painted and hung from the top of the box.

My friend made a super cute Easter tree and the other lady made a cool lit up box - mine was definitely the worst!

During the night it came up about my crafting and Katja asked me if I would do a card making evening - so once I have built up some confidence I may take her up on the offer. I may even do a cross stitch evening as may be easier to teach!

Hwgga Studios is fab for the town and Katja has some brilliant ideas for the town and community. Its available for hire for private parties too and she was telling us that they had a childrens party where they made dinosaur boxes! Just need to find a kid to take now haha!

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!