Lucky, Lucky Me!!

I came home from work yesterday to be greeted with one of those little cards from the postie. So after dropping little one off at school this morning I went to the Post Office to pick up my parcel - which I'd already figured was my extra special candy from Hels over at the Sunday Stampers.

So I got home as fast as my little legs could carry me and opened the box and.....

WOW!!

Check this lot out. So many yummy little things to play with - including the smallest, cutest little canvas I've ever laid eyes on!! And a really gorgeous key stamp that I somehow managed to omit from the pic - but I plan on trying it out a few times once I'm done here!!

And now I have to find somewhere to put that beautiful shadowbox - somewhere I can see it from my desk to inspire me.

So a very big, heartfelt thank you to the wonderful Hels!

And if you haven't stumbled across her yet, check out her fabby blog HERE, filled with lovely projects, lots of tips and inspiration and home of the Sunday Stampers blog challenge.

Take care all, and happy crafting,

Charli xx

PS. Hels, I'm keeping that lovely pizzabox that you sent it all in too! lovely and sturdy storage there! Thank you xx

Something New....

.... for me anyway!

The theme over at Tuesday Taggers this week (where I'm featured as a guest designer -YAY!) is to step out of your comfort zone.

Well my project may not seem that 'uncomfortable' to most, but I assure you I was petrified it would go wrong.

Now I've mentioned before about my colleague's birthday (the card for which can be found HERE) and as a gift for her I wanted to put together a little "pamper pack" - some nice bubblebath and stuff, and a scented candle. Well I came up with the idea to match the candle to the card to tie it all in together.

I'd seen the demo done before on Create&Craft and thought I'd give it a go - although I was really worried it would go wrong and wreck the candle that I wish I'd bought more just in case!

For those of you who haven't seen it before, all you need to do is stamp and colour the image onto white tissue paper, lay it on the candle where you want it, cover with greaseproof paper and use your heattool over the area until you see the colour change; but careful not to overheat it otherwise the wax melts too much! See my worries!!

Anyway, it turned out fine; the ribbon was added for decoration and to bring in the turquoise colour, but it also covers a bit of a ripple in the wax lol!

Then I just made a tag to match the card and put it all in a nice giftbag.

And here's a pic of the three items together, not bad if I say so myself lol.

Thinkin' Pink

I needed to make a card for my little cousin who turns 7 next week, and she's a real girlie-girl (like my daughter in that respect).

So I thought I'd use the Sketch and Stash sketch (using papers that are new to my stash as they were also part of my TT candy).

And again I went for the monotone challenge from Crafter's Companion, this time using their own Popcorn Bear stamp too. So this one is all pink (couldn't help the little bits of white) - the gems are also pink although they seem to look red in this pic. Popcorn has been coloured with two shades of pink watercolour pencils and his patches and blanket are paper-pieced.

This card will also be entered into the new Fab'n'Funky challenge, which is to incorporate fancy edges - not sure how easily they can be seen, but I used my scalloped edged scissors around the layers beneath the image and the sentiment and along the bottom edge of the patterned strip. I love all my fancy-edged scissors, but the scallop one is my fave at the moment (I'm sure I'll move on to a different one in a week or so lol; I'm so fickle - but then I have 10 pairs to choose from!)

And shock, horror! No Distress Inks on this one!!

That's all for today.
Take care and happy crafting,

Charli xx

Feelin' Blue

For this card I followed the lovely sketch set by Sweet Pea Stampers, and as I used my witch for my last beermat, I decided to use my fairy (ching-chou kuik) this time.

I swear they won't always appear as blue-eyed brunettes(can't think why I do that lol), in fact I have stamped out a few of each image ready to be coloured - making each one different.

Anyway, back to the card. Over at the Crafter's Companion blog the challenge for this fortnight is monotone, hence all the blue; and I think this stamp looks even more gorgeous in mixed shades of blue.


Again, I coloured her with watercolour pencils, masked her off and covered the background in Weathered Wood DI and edged it with Faded Jeans DI.


The paper in the very background is from the Kate Knight stack; the bright cyan paper is from some candy I won from Tuesday Taggers a fortnight ago; and as always there is a bit of book page (think I'm getting slightly obsessed with using it!), coloured with Weathered Wood.


The blue heart is ready for a greeting, when I find a use for this card; and it was a bit of a personal challenge to myself to make a girlie blue card.

As a finishing touch, as the challenge that started over at Crafty Creations today is 'magical' I added silver glitter glue over her wings for a bit of fairy magic.

Charmed, Enchanted, Bewitched

After going for a couple of drinks at our local for a friend's birthday, I came home to find that a handful of their uniquely shaped beermats had ended up in my pocket! A very odd occurance but hey, now they're here I may as well alter them.

So here is my project for the Darkness Inspiration challenge- Bewitched.

First I spent the better part of an hour trying to get the top layer off of the darned beermat (the others I have peel off easily; not so with this one - in fact there is still a little bit left under where the image is!)

I coloured the background Forest Moss DI (see! a new colour at last!) and then edged it in Faded Jeans. Then I took another torn out book page, coloured it with Weathered Wood (my other new DI) and stuck it down, trimming around the beermat and edging again with Faded Jeans.

Next I stamped out the Tim Holtz ticket block stamp, this time leaving it in tact rather than cutting them apart, to use as another background - tinting it with Weathered Wood (my new fave!) and then using a cottonbud to add Forest Moss around the edges of the tickets; again sticking it down then trimming it down.

The image is one of the gorgeous ching-chou kuik images, made by Sweet Pea stamps and bought from Crafts and Me. I coloured her with watercolour pencils then painstakingly cut out a mask from sticky notes and coloured the background with Weathered Wood, Faded Jeans and Forest Moss.

I used my brass stencils to do the wording with my brown Indian ink marker, using the same ink colours; added an eyelet and a strip of lace(ish) ribbon, some silver gems and finally a bit of silver glitter.

This piece is also being entered into the following challenges:
Crafts and Me - sparkle (the gems and glitter)
Crafty Pad - ribbon (the strip bowed at the top)
Fab'n'Funky - no designer paper
Crafty Creations - make your own backing paper (I did mine with a stamp, book page and planty of Distress Ink!)
and finally, Lexi's Creations - animals (her two adorable kittens)

Take care and happy crafting

Charli xx

Handbag

I was asked by a friend to make a card for his great-niece's 18th birthday - something funky and girlie. Well I think this covers that.

First time I've done a handbag card actually. To get the shape I cut a piece of thick card to the height of the card itself and then made a template that I used on one side of the card, then flipped it over to do the other end - otherwise there is no way it would have turned out symetrical!!

The gorgeous paper came from a Kate Knight stack that came as a free gift with a craft magazine.

This card fits nicely into the C.R.A.F.T. challenge, which this week is shaped cards.

First Altered Beermat

I have sat here since the end of the Easter holidays with a nice pile of circular beermats in front of me, waiting (and waiting, and waiting) to be altered.

Finally I got around to having a little play with one. I was relieved that the top layer of paper (the bit with the advertising on) peeled away neatly, leaving me with a blank canvas.

I have been drooling over all of Hels' beermats over at Ink on My Fingers, so it seemed only fitting that I would enter my first attempt into the Sunday Stamper's big special challenge to celebrate 100 weeks. The theme was FREE, under the song title of Free as a Bird (so I added a little bird to mine). Take a look as there is some SERIOUS candy to be won!!


This was nice and simple to do. I covered the base with Antique Linen DI, a bit of torn book page coloured with Worn Lipstick DI, a distressed paper flower and stamped elements all coloured with the same DIs plus a hint of Tea Dye DI too.


I loved making the masks for the various colours on the Cute Companion and completely love the tickets; they are one of Tim Holtz's stamps and come all joined together in a block but I very patiently cut them all down and went to work with the DIs!


The finishing touch was a gold eyelet and a strip of old-looking lacy stuff (from a bag of lace from the charity shop) which has allowed me to hang it on my notice board.

Will need to do more beermats now! (well I do have 29 left in my pile!!)


Take care and happy crafting

Charli xx

Quickie to Finish

This was just a quickie Spring card I made using paper from a pad of paper that came with a craft mag, probably a year or so ago; and its been sat amongst my stash untouched.

But this week's theme over at Fab 'n' Funky is "Get it all out!" -meaning you need to dig out some old/forgotten/unused stash (be it stamps, papers, embellishments, pretty much anything) - inspired by their success last week with the neglected stamp challenge (the stamp I dug out last week is still being used now - check the card in the last post!)

One of the patterns from this stack was weird looking, just blobs of colour on a white background, and I didn't like it at all; so I took my flower punches and got one flower from each splodge, and I really like the result!

Will try to get more projects underway soon - just a bit hard getting back into routine after those two weeks off!

Take care and happy crafting,
Charli xx

Terracotta and Turquoise

Over at the Play Date Cafe this week the colour scheme is clay(terracotta), turquoise and cream with a hint of silver/grey.

So with that in mind I made this card for a colleague's 50th birthday.

I chose a cream base card to keep it simple; Tea Dye DI is a very terracotta-ish colour when applied to white card so that is used on the layers, numbers, brushed across the paper flower and on the topper (using the masking technique to colour the roses darker). A strip of turquoise-blue mirricard was put through the ribbler (or whatever you want to call it) and lightly sanded to bring out the silver from underneath the colour. Some torn turquoise mulberry paper and a bit of old book page finish it off nicely.

This card also fits into the Crafty Creations challenge of distressing, as well as the Distress Ink, tearing and sanding, I also distressed the edges of the card layers with the blade of my scissors and made a fab distressed paper flower as per the instructions HERE (except I used a 2p coin and scallopped edged scissors instead of a punch). Well worth a look if you haven't seen it already!

St George the Dragon

This is my entry (cutting it fine I know, but I have no idea where the days are going) for the Tuesday Taggers theme of Dragons - in honour of St George's Day.

I had planned to get this project finished and posted by then, but as St George's Day is also my daughter's birthday I just didn't have the time.

Anyway, whilst searching the net for a cute little dragon to use (no idea why, but I wanted a cute cartoony dragon) I found this little guy by Dustin Pike and thought it would be somewhat ironic to colour his shield and standard with the St George's cross and make the dragon INTO St George.


This card is also my entry into Lexi's Creations Recipe challenge (3 papers, 2 embellishments and 1 image).


My embellishments are actually a ringpull from a drinks can (on the paper strip) and the shield, which were cut from the same can and embossed by hand; and these should qualify for this weeks challenge over at the Crafty Pad; to recycle something.

Last One For Today!

All these projects that I uploaded today were the hard work of yesterday - a very pleasing day spent crafting!!

The last one for now is a very girlie card - if you have aversions to pink I suggest you look away now!

This is the birthday card for my beautiful daughter who turns 7 on Friday who is obsessed with all things pink -and has a fondness for fairies too!

The fairies are from the lovely Dovecraft paper stack and the central panel on the top part of the easel is a shaker with lots of irridescent sequins in it!

The flowers are from some old artificial blooms that I picked apart from an old Easter bonnet that I had made my little one. And the large fancy brad that hold up the back panel is from that fab Papermania Make Your Own Brad Kit and is decorated with another little fairy and a shiny number 7.

The top panel is also based on a sketch issued as a challenge on the Trimcraft forum (a lovely place filled with talented, helpful crafters - check it out if you haven't already, just click HERE; its free to sign up.)

The sketch was designed by the very talented Rozzy (check out her blog to see some of her fab work.)

Well thats all for now, hopefully I'll be back in a day or two with some more new stuff (especially as I have a nice stack of circular beer mats to alter! Lucky me!!)

Take care and happy crafting,
Charli xx

And Another One

Next up is a card I made for a good friend of my husband's (luckily he doesn't look at my blog as his birthday isn't until 21st!)

It's my first proper 'distressed' card and I'm really pleased with it as it certainly seems quite masculine, which I usually find quite difficult (I can do girlie and non-gender-specific, but proper blokey cards are a challenge for me).

It uses paper from a fab masculine stack I found made by Paper Cellar. And the base is a white card, coloured with Antique Linen DI (of course!) and edged with Tea Dye DI, as are all the panels. The cake was a gold peel-off coloured with a brown permanent marker and coloured with DI (I promise I will get more colours soon!)

I really like the layout and it's my take on the great C.R.A.F.T. challenge sketch (all I did to it was add the rectangular layer and the greeting)

Also the theme over at Tuesday Taggers this week has been birthday cake/balloons.

A Pair of Challenge Cards

The challenge over at Fab n Funky is to use a neglected stamp. So I dug out my gorgeous champagne and roses stamp that I bought a while (alright, a couple of years ago) for my wedding scrapbook project and has sat untouched for much too long (especially considering that the scrapbook isn't finished.... oooops!)

Anyway, that stamp is featured in both of these cards; the first of which is also eligible for the challenges at Play Date Cafe -black and white with a splash of orange (and I admit this was hard for me as I'm really not a fan of orange!)
and at Crafty Creations who have a 'limited edition' challenge (1 designer paper, 1 image/stamp and 1 embellishment -I went with the ribbon bow).

The next card uses a fab sketch from Sketch and Stash.

And also the colour scheme of pink, brown and yellow from Crafts and Me
(Although I have no idea if its a requirement to use an image bought from them or not as it doesn't specify)


Personally I like this one without the bows, but three embellishments placed around there were on the sketch.

Something Darker

This fortnight is the first time I have entered the fab dark/spooky challenge over at Darkness Inspiration.

The theme this time around is 'On the Graveyard'.

As yet I have no dark themed images or stamps so I kinda had to 'wing it'. (Sorry about the poor quality of the image - very tricky to photograph so much acetate!)

I chose to make an ATC. I started by covering a blank of white card with Antique Linen DI; then punched a circle from the sticky part of a sticky-note (be warned- it doesn't stick well when the inks still damp!) and placed it down for the moon. Then I coloured over it all with Faded Jeans DI; some Tea Dye DI for a cloudy look, black grass stamped across the bottom and some birds drawn on complete the base.

The tombstone was cut (freehand) from a drinks can and embossed with R.I.P. then coloured over with black Staz-On using a cottonbud and added some stamped grass. I shaped it slightly and raised it on foam pads.

On some acetate I stamped more grass across the bottom, a couple of drawn on birds and then the 'dark angel' type silohuette (cannot spell that word lol!) which was hand drawn and coloured with a black permanent marker.

A Couple of Queens

Here are my entries into the Small World of Inchies challenge, which is Royal Ladies.

The inchie is simply covered in a piece of aged text, the Queen cut from a stamp, a small stamp that vaguely resembles a crown and the word 'Queen' cut from a magazine.

The twinchie was a first for me... well two firsts actually. It was first ever twinchie, but also my first collage piece.


The background has multiple layers; I used Distress Ink (Antique Linen) and then stamped the flourishes randomly onto the base. Then covered it with some inked, crumpled tissue paper and stamped more flourishes. One more layer of inked and creased up tissue paper (with Tea Dye Distress Ink around the edges) and more flourishes around the edge.

The queen was cut from an old playing card -her hair, eyes and lips were coloured with markers. The crown was cut from a book page and inked (same DIs there!).


The hand (which due to blurry pic is hard to see) was cut from a magazine and to make the flower that the queen of clubs holds I used the fab Papermania Make Your Own Brad kit. I used the smallest sized punch and cut out the club from the playing card, attached it to one of the gorgeous brads and added the clear dome sticker over the top.

I'm really pleased with how they turned out and appologise for the poor quality image - I had to take it using my phone's camera.


Looking forward to a full days crafting tomorrow so hopefully I will be back with more project photos then.


Take care and happy crafting,

Charli xx

Altered Tag

Here is my latest project.

The tag came from a pair of jeans from a very cheap but popular clothes shop here in the UK. I loved the organza ribbon overlay and the rainbow print background.

First off, its quite flimsy so I backed it with card to give it some strength. I stamped my 'Happiness' stamp (from previous project) over the 'Denim Co' with black ink.

A piece of white tissue paper was coloured with Antique Linen Distress Ink, crumpled and lightly brushed with Tea Dye to emphasise the creases. This was layered over the base to tone down the rainbow, which is still faintly visible.

I used Antique Linen again to tone down the white ribbon (after placing a scrap of paper underneath to protect the rest of the tag) and took my permenant brown marker and  drew the tree onto the organza. Using black ink I stamped the bird (from one of the Cute Companions plates) twice onto the ribbon and twice onto the tag beneath.

The finishing touch was to write the word 'FLY' using the same marker, this time on the ribbon and the tag under it.

This is my entry into the Tag You're It challenge: "On a Bough".

Off to work on another project now....

Take care,

Charli xx

Third and Final

I really have been a busy little bee today, but I think all this variety after so long of making nothing but cards has refreshed my creative muse.

This time around I was inspired by the challenge over at Lexi's Creations which is to alter something.

I have a few of these little tins - from when my hubby tried to quit nicotine by smoking cigars instead of cigarettes - but I thought these little tins were adorable so I kept a handful.

This particular one holds paperclips, ring pulls and such.

I covered it with torn pieces of a book page (a book I have nodesire to read again that was bought as a holiday read from Poundland! I also stained it the old-fashioned way with actual tea!) and plenty of PVA glue, which has the added bonus of a glossy finish. The tree I drew with a lovely brown Indian ink brushtip marker that I have had for years.

The "magpies" are actually a little bird stamp that's more akin to a blackbird but with the beak made longer and more rounded and the tail made much longer - and also the colours - I think they may just about pass for magpies; they're stamped onto aged inchies.

The numbers in the rhyme and the inchies also qualify for the Small World of Inchies challenge with the theme 'Numbers'.

Thats all from me for now. Hopefully I will be back in a day or two with some more new creations.

I shall also blog-hop around to view the other entries to the challenges I've entered.

Take care and happy crafting!

Charli xx

Second Challenge Entry

And here is project number two:

For challenges:
Tuesday Taggers: Give Us a Tag -with a prize on offer from the fabulously talented Georgina
Crafty Creations: paper piecing

Its a tri-fold ATC sized tag. My first play with Distress Inks that arrived today (Antique Linen and Worn Lipstick) and stamped with 'Happiness' and a flourish from a Papermania clear stamp set.

The cute character has been stamped onto three different papers from my fave My Mind's Eye stack, chopped up and paper-pieced back together whilst mixing and matching the papers.


The character himself is from a little set of clear stamps that were a free gift with Cardmaking and Papercraft magazine a few months back, but can I remember the little guy's name?! If anyone knows can they please let me know??


Again I am really happy with the outcome and can see myself playing with Distress Inks alot more in the not-too-distant future!

First Attempt at a Blog Challenge

Well, after weeks of admiring lots of other people's entries to various challenges, and preparing myself by following the blogs of my favourite ones, I have finally made my first attempts. That's right, attempts - with an 's'!

Here is the first one:

(Also my first ever easel card - how behind the times am I?!)

This is my entry to the Fab'n'Funky Challenge: neopolitan icecream (brown, pink and white)

and also the C.R.A.F.T. challenge of using buttons.

I'm really happy with how this card turned out and may well have to use this colour combo again.

Happy Easter!

Hope you are all having a very Happy Easter and not making yourselves sick with too much chocolate! And a HUGE thank you to the lovely ladies who are following me and who have left comments. I'm sorry I've taken so long to post something new, but I honestly don't know what happened to the last week - it feels like the world was on fast forward!

The project I'm showing today is a little book that I made for a dear friend and (now ex-) colleague of mine, when she left us for a new job.

The design is based on that of a mazebook, but I wanted something slightly bigger - the pages measure 4inch square. I cut four 8inch squares from A4 sheets of card, scored them into four and cut along one line from the edge to the middle, folding them to make pages and sticking them back to back to make a whole book.

I cut the covers slightly larger and as I didn't have any mountboard I cut them from the sturdy backing from a paper pad, and covered them with paper, adding the ribbon and attaching them to the book.

To keep a theme throughout I chose the same two colours (blue and purple) and stamped a series of Cute Companions characters (all girlie ones as we are all females that work together), colouring them with watercolour pencils - all stamped onto the off-cuts from the A4 card from the pages.

The idea behind making a little book was to make it a special something that she could keep, and also I like the idea of each person having a nice neat area on which to write their message, rather than squeezing them in between each others.

 So I went into work armed with small squares of coloured and patterned paper for the messages (much more discreet too!) and assembled the book at home.

I'm really pleased with the results - as were the other ladies - and most importantly the receipient LOVED it!!

(Although I shan't bore you with photos of all the pages, you get the idea!)

Thanks for looking.

Take care,

Charli xx

A New Blog Begins....

For a few weeks now I have enjoyed blog-hopping around, enjoying all the fab cards/works of art, tips and amusing ramblings of some very talented crafty ladies. Well, I've finally taken the plunge and started my very own blog - mainly to make it easier to track the blogs I like to look at.

I have no idea whether anyone will ever stumble by this blog, but I will treat it as if there are avid followers out there, and also use it as my own personal crafting diary.

Though I won't have brand new projects to upload daily, I have plenty of things I have created previously that I can upload. And if there is anyone out there reading this, some comments and tips (including on how to do things on blogs) would be greatly appreciated - and I will answer any questions about any of my projects.


Moving on, the first cards I will display are two very similar cards I made this month for Mother's Day. I have always wanted to try a never-ending-card but they look so darn complicated.... turns out they really aren't! I found a lovely video tutorial online, adjusted the sizes to fit my needs and away I went.

The gorgeous set of papers are from My Mind's Eye (actually a freebie with a craft mag I bought), the little flowers are from a really big bag of diecut flowers I bought for a £1 (what a bargain that was!) and I found a couple of nice mother-related quotes on the internet.

I was really pleased with the results - and so were my Mum and mother-in-law, which was the important thing! (and everyone that Mum has shown it off to since has been fascinated by it too!)

Thank you to anyone reading this! If anyone would like to see more pics of these cards just let me know.

Take care,
Charli x