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!! 

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!