Time to catch up.

Last weekend I went to a class at the Stamp Attic with Hels Sheridan, I was really looking forward to learning lots of new techniques with the Tim Holtz Distress Stains and I was not disappointed. Hels showed us some great ideas and I came a away with a lovely tag book we made of all the examples we did.

These are two of my favourites.

A while back Alli gave us a link that was posted on ukscrappers to make some snowmen out of socks. I had great fun doing these. A word of warning they can be addictive. Click HERE to see the tutorial. I thought mine looked a little sad with no mouth so I got my beads and thread out and popped one on.

Two happy snowman. LOL

Finally I have been working on my Artistic License CJ page for Sarah, UKS Flo .

Her chosen style was 'Wildstyle Graffiti' this was something completely new to me and led me down the road to some interesting websites.

Here is my completed page.

I hope you like it Sarah.

I found a Wildstyle Graffiti font and use the saying 'It never rains but it pours.' I printed the saying onto Safamat, which seemed to work really well. I had not used Safamat before!

I thought this saying went well with the stencil I made using the Tim Holtz Umbrella Man die and mylar. I then used another technique that I had not tried before, using and airbrush that I have had for a while I sprayed through the stencil with diluted Caudine Helmmuth black acrylic paint.

The raindrops were hand drawn and then filled with glossy accents.

Finally and for a limited time only Bongo has been out and about.

After his busy year last year he has been grabbed out of the cupboard again and will be having a busy lead up to Christmas.

You can see him on his own blog HERE.

I hope you have enjoyed catching on here.

Thanks for looking.

Order out of chaos.

Over the past few days I have been very busy changing the layout of my craft room. Last Wednesday I ordered some new desks and on Friday morning they arrived!

I cleared everything that was stored on the floor of my craft room, which meant emptying out a few cupboards and sets of drawers. This was carefully stored in the spare bedroom which is often called Irene's room. LOL

The old desk looked the clearest it had been in years.

It was dismantled and I built the new desk in its place.

Now I have 5 metres of desk to play on and can craft in a good light gazing out of the window for inspiration.

I wonder how long it will stay this tidy!

Handmade Journals

On the 1st of November UK Scrappers held a bloghop and I spent a lovely few hours visiting all the sponsors who took part. I bookmarked a lot of the lovely projects so that I could revisit them and make some of them in the future. The first project I have had fun with was on "A Sprinkle of Imagination" blog where Vicki made a really gorgeous journal. I will not go into all the details of how to make it as you can see it at first hand if you click HERE.

Below you can see I have made two journals. One I have made for this years Christmas journal, this year it will be all handwritten journalling from me up until Boxing Day. Other years I have always done a scrapbook style journal.

I hope you have enjoyed looking at what I have produced.
Vicki, thank you so much for a really great project and inspiring me to do these journals. I am sure I will be making many more.

The home coming.

A little while ago I showed you my contribution to an Alice in Wonderland jigsaw swap.

You can see the previous post HERE.

Yesterday I received the completed swapped puzzle and it is stunning.

I cut a 12" x 12" piece of mount board and using a hot glue gun stuck all the pieces together creating a lovely piece of wall art for my craft room.

The walls are getting rather full now!

A big thank you to Netty for giving us all a jigsaw to play with and organising the swap.

Also for making sure we did all the pieces facing the correct way.

Not forgetting all my lovely swapee's for their beautiful creations.
From top left to right:
Annette ...... Voodoo Vixen .... Alice/drink me.
Irene ...... irboo .... Mad hatters tea party.
Jeanette ...... nettyb .... Queen of Hearts.
Middle left to right:
Karen .... KJJC .... White Rabbit.
My Mad Hatter.
Louise .... Lou@papermaker .... Eat me.
Bottom left to right:
Francis .... new2this .... Pack of cards.
Lyn .... honeypip .... Flower faces.
Dotty .... dorothyanne .... Alice/off with her head.
I think you will agree this has turned out really great.

A week of catching up!

I have had a bit of a catch up this week and completing some projects for UK scrappers.
Here are a few photos to show you just what I have been up to.

I have been using the Tim Holtz sewing room die again to create a Christmas fairy.

I needed some wings of course, I found a really useful Sizzix Angel wings die and with a little bit of trimming it worked perfectly.

I have used a Spellbinders cut and emboss stencil to cut and emboss a layered Poinsettias.

From this selection of stash I went on to make 9 Christmas Fairies.

I hope that my swappee's like their Fairy.

I am looking forward to getting my 8 different Fairies already to take their place in my home for Christmas.

The next project on my list was for a Take one stamp Maze book using the free crafty notions stamp that was on the front cover of the November Craft Stamper.

I was not sure how I would do this but decided to use the stamp on a mini art journal page.

Using Tim Holtz Distress ink and crafty notions gold creative colours spray I created a background onto water colour paper. I then used a small plastic tube dipped into white Paper Artsy acrylic paint to make some small circles.

I stamped the free stamp onto the background and then using a mask of the free stamp I stamped a background using a selection of my favourite little stamps.

Finally I finished the little pages using Copic markers, Pan pastels, Paper Artsy metallic glaze, distress stickles and Glossy accents to give the lips and eyelid dimension.

My maze book is very simple and ready for all the swapped images to go in.

I have made an elastic closer with Tim Holtz hitch fastner to allow expansion!

My weekly challenge for October week 4 on UK scrappers.

The Challenge was set by Sarah and we had to use 10 embellishments, a freebie and something we had printed ourselves excluding the photos.

All the papers are Basic grey, the printed and freebie element on my layout are form Mary Anne Walters who provided the little circles as a free download for a class I did with Shimelle a while ago.

At the beginning of the week Colin and I went to an International Antique and collectors fair in Newbury. I wanted to find some bits and bobs to use in my altered sewing book. (see previous post) This is a selection of those goodies. Mind you I think the spool might be a bit on the big side. I have another idea planned to use that.

I also kept my eyes open for some things I would be able to use in a Large Tim Holtz configuration box that I have to play with. I was really pleased with all the lovely little things I found and luckily none of it cost me a fortune. I did have fun looking through lots of boxes and finding treasures no one else seemed to want!
Hopefully you have not too bored trawling through this rather long post.

Just about to start another busy week now!

UK Scrappers Swaps

Over the past two months I have taken part in a few swaps on UK Scrappers, here are some photos from them.

I have an Alice in Wonderland book that I plan to alter and I am going to use my Alice Tip in Pages and tags inside of it along with lots of inky painty art. You can find more information about the Tip in pages on an earlier post HERE

I found this book in the specialist children's book shop in Hay on Wye a book collector's dream town to visit.

I did not like to tell the seller what plans I had in store for it!

Six completed Tip in pages.

My page.

Lou@papermakers page.

Netty's page.

Leanie's page.

Irene's page.

Honey Pip's page.

My selection of Alice tags from Roxy52, Vass, Irene, Weaselwise, Scrapnanny, mine, Fatmonica and Cynthia.

Another book on my list to be altered is this Vogue sewing book.

I have two Tip in Pages to help me with this project.

This one is from Irene.

This page is from Karen.....uks Kitty Crafts.

My next swap was for the Affirmation Postcards.

I did an earlier post with my postcards HERE

This postcard was made by Sarah.....uks Smelly

This one was made by Nerlly.

This one was by Cynthia......uks Mistyrat.

The latest swap I have been in is the Halloween home Decoration.

Starting with the H From Susan.

A from Kate T.

L form Topsy.

L from Meg Baby.

O from Irene.

W from Culpepper.

E from Bramble Pie.

E from Linda B

Finally an N from me.

This is the completed banner.

Isn't it great?

Clicking on the banner will give you a better view if you would like to see the banner close up. This has been a mammoth update but I really wanted to show you the fantastic work that the crafters on UK Scrappers do. There are some really talented people there and I would like to thank everyone for the lovely work that I now have to enjoy and draw inspiration from.

These swaps are organised by the wonderful Netty alongside quite a few different people who give up their time to make sure the swaps run smoothly and on time.

A big thank you to them from me.

If you get chance to take part in any of the swaps please do they are great fun and you learn a lot.