Baby Cards

It seems this year everyone is starting or growing their family and having children...so I've been making cards for the people we know who have recently had their baby or are due soon..

 This one was for some friends who recently had their first child, a little girl. The hand prints fitted prefectly into the Top Notes Bigz die with a piece of pink pirouette ribbon to finish it off.

This one's for a little boy due very soon... Love the effect of turning the embossed card over for the background, looks so cool.

This is for my friend and his wife who had their second little girl this week. Love the effect of only embossing halfway up the white cardstock then separating it with a piece of ribbon.

I love the SU Baby Prints stamp set, I think the footprints are better than the hands though both are sweet. 

The girl cards have been made using pink pirouette ribbon and pink pink pirouette ink. All the papers, card and embossing folders used are non SU.

SU Wreath Class

Something  a bit different at last week's card club...wreath making... SU Burlap and Blooms wreath kit.

Here's what the kit looked like before we started, it came with everything we needed, apart from a hot glue gun...

 Not being one to replicate the design given with kits I moved a few flowers around and changed what colour flowers went where. I even managed to wrap the wreath blank with burlap and have a fair bit left over on the reel to use another day!

 Here's a close up of the flowers. Can't believe the fringed flowers all came out different sizes even though they were made using the same papers.

 As always Paula made us a gift for coming to her class... this month we got a little gift bag made using the Tag Topper Punch and Sweet Sorbet Sale-a-bration papers..with a little post it note booklet inside. Each bag and post it note book had the initial of the recipients name on it.

 

Makes a nice change to do something non card making at an SU class :)

Molly Coddles Kitchen Stud Club Review

Rebecca from Molly Coddles Kitchen sent me a 3 month sample pack of her new Stud Club subscription available from her etsy shop. I'm already a fan of Rebecca's earrings and I own a pair of every colour of the lego studs and a set of lego head studs with aviator glasses.

This is what my 3 month package looked like when I opened it. All colourful and labelled up for each month with stickers and tapes on the front.

Inside each pack was a printed letter giving me details of stud club and a discount code for inviting a friend to join up too.

My January pack came with a set of lilac bows on clear plastic stems, great for those who have reactions to certain metals used on earring posts, and a set of small metal spike earrings. There was also a little bonus sheet of stickers to play with too.

I pinched some photos from Rebecca's etsy shop so you could get a better view of some of the earrings I received.

For February I got 3 pairs of lego stud earrings, love them, total fan and as I mentioned already I own a pair of these in every colour. These are now my spares as I'm bound to lose a pair or the odd earring at some point. Rebecca does say in her printouts that you can/should give the earrings as a gift if you already have a pair you receive but I like these ones too much to share lol. There was also a pack of love hearts in the Feb pack as a Valentines gift.

The March pack was a chunky one... Not only were there 2 pairs of earrings there was a button ring too. The turquoise roses were my favourite pair from the 3 mystery packs...so much so I wore them for days and days and sadly lost one, so I'll be ordering another set when they get listed in the etsy shop!

Here's a pic of the cute little teddy studs, I struggled to get a good pic so I've used one from etsy again. Rebecca has a variety of cute little animal studs like these, I also really like the little frogs she has listed in her etsy shop.              I only changed one thing about the earrings from how they were delivered and that was swapping the butterfly backs for tube style backs. That's just my personal preference as I regularly lose butterfly back brushing my hair or at work then I lose the earrings.   I think Stud Club is a great idea for anyone who likes quirky, unusual earrings that you don't pick up in main street shops and would make a wonderful present for someone too. £11 for 6months or £22 for a year really is a bargain!  

Dishawasher Scrabble Magnet

This super simple project has been sat on my Pinterest to do list for so long now, can't believe I never got round to doing something so quick and easy.

   I used some thick cardboard, a magnetic strip off an old, broken fridge magnet, scrabble tiles and a hot glue gun.

 Don't forget to lay the letters out in the correct orientation before you start glueing them down, the words have to be upside down to each other otherwise it won't work properly when u spin the magnet round.
Now there's no excuses for the dishwasher to not get put on when it's full or emptied when the cycles finished as the magnet pretty much says it all.
Got a few more scrabble tile project ideas in the pipeline too, think I'd better start looking for more surplus tiles to play with.    

Handbag Birthday Card Order

I've recently completed and posted an order for a 30th birthday card. The customer asked for something personal that suited their daughter and gave me the following details to work from:

Becky is turning 30, likes shoes and handbags and her birthstone is aquamarine. 

So this is what I came up with...

 I made a handbag shaped card, used aquamarine coloured gems to form a 30 and made a happy birthday using a text die. I used the Stampin Up Top Note Bigz die for the bag flap and a chunky metal button to replicate the bag clasp. To make it personal to Becky I wrote her name on both ends of the bag strap to look like stitching.

Not forgetting the fact the Becky also loves shoes I used the Stampin Up Fabulous You stamp set to stamp this beautiful floral shoe on the card insert. I really love this shoe stamp it's so pretty! 

The customer really liked the card when it arrived with her so lets hope Becky likes it just as much too!

Playing With Wooden Hearts

 I've had a couple hundred of wooden hearts to play with, my in-laws ran me a sheet of wood through their laser cutter and sent them down to me. I gave a few dozen away to mum and a friend for them to play with. Mum's been decopatching hers and my friend paints, stamps and decorates them.

After many hours spent sanding the hearts down I finally got to play with a few of them. I went with a few different techniques just to see what I can actually do with the hearts.

Started off simple and just painted them using some Dulux sample paint pots in colours that will go with my study when I finally get it decorated. Then I strung them on turquoise ribbon to create a hanging decoration from them.

 Just before christmas I picked up a wood burning iron in Lidl on special offer so I had to try it out on one of the wooden hearts. I started by using silver ink and SU Sassy Salutations stamp set to stamp myself an outline of Merry Christmas to draw over. The shapes around the edge are all detachable nibs that came with the iron. Not a perfect piece of wood burning but not bad for my first attempt.

Then I decided the spray can of chalkboard paint had to come out...surely the easiest and most versatile way to use the hearts. This one hangs from the door handle to the study.

 Maybe I'll try some paper or fabric decopatch on my next batch....

Been Baking Bread

I recently went on a bread baking course run by Blackbird Bread, I'd never made bread before so it was a totally new experience for me. Lovely chap, full of enthusiasm for what he does and willing to answer all our questions no matter how daft they were.

 We made a white soda bread just so we could see how quick and easy they really are to make. We even discussed how versatile the soda bread is and how the recipe can be tweaked for wholemeal, brown and flavoured varieties.

 

Then we had a go at making a traditional white loaf...the full 3 hr experience of multiple proving, kneading, shaping and patiently waiting. We experimented with different shapes of loaves and different slashing techniques for our final designs while we waited for the dough to finish proving. Mines the little round in the top left corner of the photo below.

  

Here's my 2 finished loaves..soda bread on the left and white round loaf on the right.

Here's a close up view of the slashing I did on my white loaf, didn't come out quite how I expected but it certainly tasted good!

 I've leanrt enough now to have a go at making my own bread and venture into tweaking recipes to change the grain and flavours too.

More Card Club...

Found more Stampin Up card club photos that I haven't shared yet.. these are from 2 different card clubs..

Card club #1...

Quick simple card for the cyclist in your life, love the colours, not 2 that I would have thought to put together myself but it works well.

Language of Love and Gorgeous Grunge stamp sets. This is the card I gave my boyfriend for valentines day. The Grunge set is really starting to grow on me now.

 

Swallowtail tri-colour stamping. Really need to get my pens and inks out and try this for myself with my swallowtail stamp, not used mine yet so I really need to get going on that one.

More Gorgeous Grunge in a quick simple birthday card, love the three colour layering of the different paint splodges.

Card Club #2...

Petite Petals and Fancy Flourishes card, love the flourishes, they just don't seem to appear on enough cards!

Quirky tea bag/gift card folder to give as a small gift to a friend. Really like the paper used, it's turquoise so of course I love it. Got the Elegant Butterfly punch out again too!

Three layer thank you card. really like the bird stamp set and how the middle layer has been raised to stand out from the rest of the card.

Another little gift box made using my nemesis the Envelope Punch Board. Have I mentioned how much the punch board infuriates me every time I use it? I may have had a lot of practice with it now but I still find the instructions for making things just don't gel in my head for the first few attempts!

Alphabet Photography Presents

For christmas we decided to do a load more alphabet photography as presents for some of the family... sounded a lot easier in our heads than it actually turned out to be.

I refuse to use photos downloaded from the internet or borrowed from others so we had a lot of scouting around to do to find letters and come up with creative ways to make the letters we just couldn't find anywhere out on our travels.

On the back of each photo I write when and where we took the photo so the recipients can trace our travels. 

 The longest name to do... Alderson... made using letters from Windsor, High Wycombe, Amsterdam, Marbella and Peurto de la Duqeusa. Total nightmare with this one after having the frame specially made, had it couriered up at christmas so we didn't have to fly with it and the glass got smashed in transit! How hard is it to find replacement glass at such short notice a few days before christmas, thankfully a little local glazier saved us on that one...never again shall we use a courier for something like that no matter how well we package it they won't respect it!

 Would you believe the shortest word we chose to do was actually the hardest to source letters for?! As you can see we went creative for the 2 N's and made them using books and knives in our house. The A was even local too, so we never had to leave High Wycombe to make this one.

 Smith...made using letters from Amsterdam, Bourne End and Cookham. Nice easy size frame to get hold of too!

 

Ackroyd...made using letters from Windsor, Marbella, Amsterdam, Brooklands museum and High Wycombe.

These all went down a treat and have pride of place hanging in the houses of our family, been sent photos of them all in their new homes.

If anyone wants one of these made please contact me... I'm up for any challenge of words for any occasion.

New Card Club

I recently found an SU demo that lives a few miles down the road from me, after a few facebook messages I booked on to one of her card classes.. turns out it was her first official class too... exciting!

Slightly different set up to the card classes I normally go to, this time we bought a kit of most of the bits we would need for the class and made all the cards from the same colourscheme and stamp sets. Great way to learn to use a small bundle of bits in different ways to suit different styles of card.

  

We used:

• Petite Petals stamp set
• Petite Petals punch
• Pink Pirouette inkpad
• Chocolate Chip inkpad
• Pink Pirouette cardstock
• Whisper White Cardstock
• Pink Pirouette taffeta ribbon
• Apothecary Accents framelit
• Scallop Tag Topper punch
• Basic Pearl Jewels
• Stripes embossing folder
• Blooming With Kindness stamp set

 

I like trying different card classes, gives me the chance to meet new people and get inspired by the different ways people use the same kit. Quite exciting to find another crafty person so near to home too!