Thursday 3 March 2016

Peony Paper Craft Collection (Free Download)

Free to download and perfect for Mothering Sunday.
It has been such a long time since I sat down and decided to make a paper collection that you could download for free and I thought what a better time to give you this than in time for Mothering Sunday.

Please abide by my Terms of Use.You are free to use my sheets for personal use and make cards to sell for charity but please do not share, alter, claim my sheets as your own or sell them, instead link back to my blog for people to download them.
They are copyright protected.
Click here or the preview image to start the download (please note if you have a pop up blocker on you may have to either click on the pop up blocker button on your menu bar and tell it that pop ups on my site are allowed or try right clicking on the link and tell it to open in a new window).


Wednesday 2 March 2016

Crochet Wrist Warmers Blog Candy

Would you like the chance to win a set of wrist warmers?
 
I was chatting with Rossella in the green room the other day we were both saying how in the colder weather we are both needing to keep our hands warm and use wrist warmers and fingerless gloves.
I was saying how I use the spandex ones for when my psoriatic arthritis flares up when I am at home but really don't like wearing them out because I have to go through the whole explaination of why I wear them as they look very medical.
So I set to with my Crochet hooks and made a set of wrist warmers, then I set to and made another set and thought is would be nice to give them as blog candy.
If you would like to have a chance of winning these, just leave me a comments and I will draw a winner on Sunday 6th March (Mothering Sunday)

Many of you have asked for the pattern for the gloves, this is a bought pattern from Ravelry and can be found here

Friday 26 February 2016

Beautiful Butterflies Liftables

Hunkydory beautiful butterflies, did you get yours from my last shows?

I hope you managed to get them. I thought I would play a little bit more when I got home, I love colouring and faffing with paper but the beauty of the Liftables is if you don't want to faff you don't have to.

First a bit of cutting, I thought I would just cut and see what happens.

I was pretty pleased with how this one turned out.

The next is from one of my shows.

 

This was another from my shows but I decided to add some colour to the butterflies with the Spectrum Noir Sparkle pens

A close up of the simplicity of this card, let's call it child play.

 

Now while I had the sparkle pens in my hands I thought I would keep going and made this.

 

So very vibrant, just adding water and saturating the background before adding one or two drops from the Sparkle pens.

The next is using Copic pens and pan pastels

 

 

Thursday 18 February 2016

50 Shades of Mirri

New from Hunkydory Crafts 50 shades of Mirri, released today on Create and Craft TV.

Superb for giving your card making that something different.

This card was made using one of the blue shades, it die cuts beautifully.

 

I also used a digital image from Mo's Digi Pencil and coloured her with only the Spectrum Noir Sparkle pens, I was very pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get skin tones and shading with them.

 

 

Tuesday 16 February 2016

Spectrum Noir Sparkle

Wow.... Talk about give it the old razzle dazzle.

There's nothing old about these brushes.

I need to use some colour in next weeks shows on Create and Craft and got my eye on these fabulous Spectrum Noir Sparkle brushes from Crafters Companion.

I love that they come in a handy carry case and they even have a wrist strap attached.

 

I dived straight in and primed the brushes and laid down some colour to test them out. The result just blew my socks off, I wanted to show you the results right away so try to pretend that my colour is on top of a delicate flower, butterfly or some other wonderful imagery and not the sheet of notepad paper that I tested them out on.

I had to angle the pad to show you just how very sparkly they are. I can't wait to get to work with them.

Thank you Crafters Companion, total sparkle with ease of use and no clogging.

 

 

Saturday 13 February 2016

All about Weddings

This weekend has been all about weddings, my Daughter had a dress fitting and sorted out the wedding car for the special day.

So much to do, invite cards to make, wedding favours to make. They are all planned and we know what we want, just need to knuckle down and collate numbers.

Chris came in from work asking me to make a Wedding card for one of their agents so I set too and made this for them all to sign.

Of course I used Hunkydory imagery and topper sets as I wanted a professional finish with the best card stock available.

 

Using foiled acetate as a designer feature to the front of the card. Using the background card to hide the sticking son the inside of the acetate.

And finishing the back with some pretty card to send good wishes and sign their names for the Happy Event.

 

 

Thursday 11 February 2016

It Never Rains but it Pours

I thought it was about time I gave you an update on our home renovations.

Although we thought things were going fine, the room had lovely new plaster and it was drying beautifully.

We soon realised that all was not as it should be on the outer wall.

 

It just wouldn't dry out in parts and we soon came to realise that we had a problem on the outside wall.

Silly I know but for some reason in the back of my mind I was thinking porous bricks, the house is around 108 years old.

Sure enough when we got the builder to look at it he confirmed it was indeed porous bricks and pointing needed.

So although the fire and surround are being fitted today we are at a total stand still until the outside work can be done and unfortunately that is weather depending.

 

 

Monday 1 February 2016

Stenciled Woodland Card

After seeing a Poppy Stencil show it made me want to play, one problem though, my stencil paste was in the loft so I thought I would make do with some tester pots of emulsion paint.
Ok, ok it's not what I should be using but it kept me sane through the workmen noise.


I used an old stencil from Dreamweaver, it is one that I instantly fell in love with.
I matted and layered up with Hunkydory Adorable Scorable and foam pads to create lots of dimension.


Now the good thing about using the paint was it stayed wet long enough for me to add my glitter.


The bad thing however was that the paint seeped underneath the stencil a little on the top left corner, however I can live with that and call it unique ha ha!



Thursday 28 January 2016

The Work Has Started.

We new that updating our Living room would be a mammoth task but as you will see in the images the work has started.

So the above is our old fashioned living room, it was very tired looking and should have been done a couple of years ago but something always got in the way of it being started.

So out came the cupboards and the fire surround.

Then the room was bare ready for the workers.

The fireplace removed and the whole widened ready for the plasterer.

The arrived and everything got rather messy, electrics sorted and moved, chimney breast took back to brick and then boarded.

Skirting boards, Window surround, and windowsill removed, rendered ready for plastering tomorrow.

I'm hoping that this time tomorrow all of the muck and dust is gone.

If you are wondering why the carpet is back down, it's because we are buying a new one so this is being used as a good fitting dust sheet.

 

 

Floral Craft, Bearded Iris

We are busy at home getting our living room updated and whilst the workmen were hammering and banging I retreated to my craft room for some sanctuary.
I cut out a few shapes and started with my Bearded Iris, hard to believe that this flower started life as white copy paper. I used the Sizzix Bearded Iris dies to cut the shapes.






I used Hunkydory Adorable Scorable for all of the matting and layering and all of the foliage and some of my floral craft leaf punches, as you can see the Adorable Scorable embosses beautifully with embossing folders.


I first coloured the copy paper petals and leaves with ink from my inkpads and then used pan pastels for the shading.
I used a ball tool and a scoring tool to shape and add lines to the petals.

The center stamen of the flower after inking yellow was dipped in glue and dipped into some flowersoft.


All in all a lovely morning well spent.


I did make another card so hopefully I’ll get that one wrote up soon.




Tuesday 19 January 2016

Learning to Swim

We have big changes in the home this year, our
living room desperately needs a facelift and because of this we have started to
clear out built in cupboards that has had stuff thrown in them since the back of
beyond.

I found a DVD with no writing on it and last night
we sat for 2 hours looking through this, it was a DVD made out of old family Cine
film, both Chris and I sat, laughed and cried, sometimes in joy and sometimes
missing those who are no longer with us.

I captured part of it, this is my Dad learning me
to swim, I think I am around 3 years old as I was fully swimming by the time I
was 4.





Such happy carefree days

Jak xxx