Come fly with me butterfly card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend, it's raining here at the moment but hopefully it'll clear up later but if not maybe they'll be a rainbow to cheer me up. My FB giveaway didn't arrive yesterday so I've been doing some colouring in instead of playing with my new goodies. This week's Passion for ProMarkers blog challenge is called "Come Fly With Me" and can be based around anything that flies. Having quite a few butterfly stamps I decided to make a clean and simple shaped card using mainly blues and blue grey Flexmarkers, the resulting card is quite muted but I think rather classy and I teamed it with a thin strip of silver holographic card that peeks out from underneath the butterflies to give it just a touch of bling.

Shaped butterfly card

Come Fly With Me card

I used a ticket corner punch to remove the corners of the spine side of the card after getting a smudge on the bottom part of the card. I used a combination of butterflies taken from a Hampton Arts 7 Gypsies stamp set and a Kaisercraft stamp set. I stamped them towards the edge of an A4 sheet of 300gsm card stock and cut around them as shown using sharp scissors. The colours used are Blue Grey 1 & 2, Verdigris, Blue Lake, Sea Mist and Storm Blue. I then scored the card using a score board and cut off the excess card. I added a strip of holographic card to the inside of the card as shown. Here are some more photos of the card including some close ups of the butterflies.

Full length of shaped butterfly card

I hope you like my latest creation, I really like how the butterflies hang off the edge of the card and I'm going to make another one at a later date but colour it in shades of red, the only reason I didn't this time is I really wanted to practice using my new flexmarkers and I don't have any reds or pinks yet apart from Tea Rose. As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places. Until next time - keep crafting!

Crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

Clear Acetate Mini Milk Carton

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! Have you got anything crafty planned for this weekend? I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the prize I won the other day on Facebook arrives so I can have a play with some lovely scrapbooking goodies courtesy of Quick Cards Made Easy Magazine's FaceBook Page and their Bank Holiday prize bonanza. I love the Facebook giveaways and this is the second one I've won since I set up my page. If my goodies don't arrive then I'm going to practice my Flexmarker colouring - apologies for my continuous misspelling in earlier posts. My lovely hubby has treated me to another 15 markers and I've chosen ones that are suitable for hair colours and skin tones but still need to get the right tones for black hair and blonde (I have markers that could be used for very light blonde but not mid to dark blonde yet.) My shading and colouring aren't up to the standard of  a lot of the people I see on FB, YouTube or blogs just yet but I have noticed an improvement in the past year or so. The one area that I haven't seen any improvement yet is hair, I am terrible at it. So my mini goal for June will be to watch hair tutorials and practice colouring different shades every day. I've got a lot of hair colour charts saved on Pinterest but I think I need a bit more help than just the colour elements, it's techniques that I need to study - thank goodness for YouTube!

One thing I have "nailed" is making mini milk cartons - I even make them in my dreams lol. I'd like to share one which I made the other day using 200 micron Acetate. I'll be totally honest this milk carton is a sod to make, the acetate does not want to be folded even with the score lines and it's slippy too so I'd recommend sticking it down before you emboss it on the scoreboard, I didn't and I ended up scoring where I didn't want to score. As it's only a practice carton I don't mind the extra score line and to be honest once it's filled with sweeties it's not that noticeable. I won't rehash the instructions on how to make it - please scroll down to find the "Cool Cats like Milk (Cartons)" blog post for more details.

Acetate Milk Carton filled with lemon sherbets

I must confess this carton was filled with mini milk bottle sweeties at one point which looked amazing but I (and hubby) kept having a couple and before I knew it the carton was nearly empty! The lemon sherbets don't look as good but they taste fantastic! I couldn't find a binder clip so I fastened this carton with an elastic band - it's not the best looking fastener but it does the job. As long as the base is well sealed this type of mini milk carton would be great for putting bath salts in or one of those bake a cake kits you normally put in jars to give as gifts. If you had each ingredient layered it could look really pretty but you'd have to find a recipe that doesn't require many ingredients as these cartons are quite small. As I said in the original post I'm planning on making more of these to give as Christmas presents and I'm going to have a go at making fudge (possibly salted caramel fudge as it's my favourite!) to fill them with or maybe cinder toffee as that's really easy to make. Even if I end up buying pre-made sweets I think the clear and patterned milk cartons will be well received or at least I hope so!

If you have any comments or questions please leave them below and as always - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs

Sarah xxxx

Update and a few corrections on the Card for Victoria

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! If you visit me on Facebook you'll probably already know about the disaster of a day I had yesterday and the fact I had to remake the card for Victoria. As a result of remaking the card (as best as I could some of the card stock was in short supply!) I realised that some of the details I gave were inaccurate - I'm really sorry for any confusion this may have caused. The correct details are the backing papers were taken from Dovecraft "Sweet Paris" 6"x 6" paper collection and the diamond embossing folder used to emboss the pink card was actually a Crafter's Companion Scruffy Little Cats folder called "Chic". I think that's covered everything, I only discovered the truth when I went to remake the card and couldn't find the right supplies!  Here is the new card for Victoria, the way it was made remains the same so I won't rehash them now, however I did add panels of card to the inside after smudging the sentiment I had stamped - it really wasn't my day yesterday.

Version number 2 of Victoria's Card 

Inside panel, I went with peel offs after mucking up the stamping!

Close up of  stamped image - slightly bigger than original image

Close up of the flower topper

I almost wish I'd used these cards in a spot the difference competition lol. There are at least 5 differences if you'd like to play along for fun - if anyone leaves a comment listing them, then I will give the answers at a later date, no prizes this time but if I ever have to remake a card again I'll have a little giveaway.

I hope you've enjoyed this post and it hasn't given you a sense of deja vu. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

A Card For Victoria

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and have something crafty planned for this Bank Holiday Monday. I'm going to have a good clear out of my crudy as it's become rather untidy these past few months. I might do some crafting too, I've made some more mini milk cartons and I'm planning on decorating them with gems, pearls and die cut flowers.

I asked my friend Adam to let me know what sort of things his wife Victoria likes a few months ago as I don't know her as well as I'd like to and she's celebrating a significant birthday this week, after quite a few email reminders Adam finally got back to me with his answer - she likes pink! With not a lot to go on I've made the card below for Victoria.

Think Pink card for Victoria

I hope Victoria likes this card, I've used a Crafter's Companion Scruffy Little Cats stamp called "Perry" and I've coloured it using my brand new FlexiMarkers by Letraset. I got them last week from Cowling and Wilcox Ltd priced £1.50 per pen and I got all 5 Blue Greys, a pink called Tea Rose (all pink items on above stamped image coloured using this), a skin tone called Antique White (I used this to colour Perry's skin), 3 browns - Auburn (hair), Cappuccino and Caramel, a purple called Purple Velvet bought purely because I liked the name, 4 blues (used to colour all blue items) in Storm Blue, Verdigris, Blue Lake and Sea Mist. Cowling and Wilcox don't show the colours of the pens so my choices were made based on the names but luckily I love all the ones I chose although had I realised the exact colours of the Cappuccino and Caramel I may have chosen two different ones as I was planning on using them together to colour hair and they seem better suited to be used for blonde hair rather than the brown I was hoping for (and mousy blonde at that!) Since ordering them I've discovered that Letraset have a colour chart on their website and I'll consult that before ordering any more. It's hard to see on photos but the brush end of the pen allows you to get a more realistic shading on clothes but obviously I need a load more practice before I'm any good at it. The pink card was taken from my stash and I embossed a panel of it using a Darice embossing folder that I purchased from Crafter's Companion. I added liquid pearls to the meeting points of the embossed diamonds and allowed them to dry before adding them to a panel of distressed Melissa Frances patterned paper that came free with a magazine. This was mounted on some textured grey card and some polka dotted adhesive ribbon was added as shown (The Works 99p). I made the flower using a die that came free with the Crafter's Companion Inspiration magazine out of scraps of the pink and grey card and I embossed them with a burlap embossing folder that came free with the same magazine. I added a white pearl from an embellishment pack that's free with this month's Papercraft Inspiration magazine. The card blank is 7" square made with hinged pink panel and a 7" square of white card stuck together with red liner tape. The card isn't overwhelmingly pink but has a pleasant pinkness about it without being a Barbie world reject lol or at least I hope that's how it comes across.

I may enter this week's Passion for ProMarkers Blog Challenge and as it's theme is no sentiments I've kept them inside (plus I wanted a flower where the sentiment may have gone). As I mentioned on the card for Winnie post, making cards for people with very little detail of their likes and dislikes is rather difficult so I've got my fingers crossed that Victoria will like this card. I'm rather pleased with how it's turned out, classy and girly without being too pink.

A Close up of Perry

Pearls are a girl's best friend?

As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,


Sarah xxx

Cool Cats like Milk (Cartons)

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and have been up to lots of exciting stuff. It's all quiet here in my crafty nook, I'm slowly getting my craftroom back to normal after Charlie's visit - I keep finding things out of their packaging and stamps back in their packaging but not cleaned of ink *shudders* - this is really challenging my craft OCD! My latest crafting obsession is mini milk cartons. I've only made three so far but I'm loving making them and I expect I'll be making some to fill with sweets nearer to Christmas. I used an embossing/scoring board that came free with issue 136 of Simply Cards and Papercraft magazine that was on sale last month. The instructions in the magazine state cut your paper to 12x16cm but I discovered you could make a taller version using an 8" square sheet of scrapbook paper though the lip to stick the carton together on the longest side is very narrow (it can be done though) and you need to flip the card 90 degrees to carry on the score lines and ignore the final horizontal scoreline and add another one at the (new) top once you've flipped it, if these instructions are unclear please leave a comment below and I'll add a photo tutorial.

Mini Milk Cartons using embossing/scoring board

Cool Cats Milk Carton

Close up of Hobbycrafts Cat stamp coloured with Ice grey ProMarkers

"Stars" milk carton

Extra Tall Milk carton made using Trimcraft Fun Fair paper

Milk Cartons

I shall be experimenting using different sizes of paper/card to see what else can be made using this embossing board. I'm planning on filling these handy containers with bags of sweets and adding red liner tape to the top flap but leaving it unsealed so the recipient can take the sweets out of the bag and pour into the milk carton, seal it using the tape and pour out the sweets using the carton spout like you would milk. Home made bath salts would be good to give in one of these too but you'd need to use plastic coated card so it doesn't warp in the bathroom.

I hope you've enjoyed this project share as much as I did making them, if you'd like to make some yourself then please go to www.moremags.com where you should be able to order issue 136 of Simply Cards & Papercraft Magazine, some issues may still be floating about in newsagents etc because issue 137 has only just come out. I'd love to learn how to make the American style Chinese Takeaway boxes next, I know you can get a die to make one but I'd love to be able to make one using a scoreboard, I'll have to Google it at some point. If you have any questions, comments etc please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs

Sarah xxx

100th Birthday Card for Winnie

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to crafty nook! I'm sure a lot of crafters who are on Facebook will have heard about the appeal by Age UK and BBC Radio Sheffield to make Winnie's 100th birthday very special. Winnie doesn't have any family and rarely has any contact with the outside world so an appeal was sent out on Facebook asking for people to send a card or a letter to brighten up her 100th birthday on the 31st May 2015. The response has been amazing and I'd like to share the card that I will be sending on Tuesday once I've got some money (I have stamps but this card is definitely going to be a small package).

Bookatrix Easel Card

Dufex Foiled decoupage 100 topper stopper for Easel

Card folded flat for envelope

I used my Glitter Girls Bookatrix Embossing board to make the book shaped layers of my card and embellished it with some satin finish decoupage flowers - I made them up quite a while ago so I've no idea what brand they are. I used silver peel offs for the personalised greeting and added the candle peels offs on the bottom of the page which I coloured in using Sakora gelly roll pens (Glaze and metallic mainly). The stopper for the easel was made using Dufex Foiled pansy decoupage age topper and I angled it so the top part was higher than the bottom using foam pads at the top and glue at the bottom. It was surprisingly difficult to come up with a card to make this lady because apart from the fact she's lived in Sheffield all her life and is called Winnie there's very little information provided so the things I normally theme my cards round (hobbies, favourite colours/animals/insects etc) weren't available. I hope this card helps to bring a smile to Winnie's face (and also pray that she isn't totally overwhelmed by the response! One FB user suggested that it would be great if she had a card for every day she's been alive but that would mean she'd have to open 36,525 cards and she'd probably end up with a RSI and have to display them in a warehouse, not her home!)

If you have any questions about this card/appeal then please leave them in the usual places and/or click onto my Facebook badge, the shared post with the details are dated 14th May 2015. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxxx

A Card Share - Instructions on request ;)

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you're all well and enjoying the lovely spring weather. My kitchen is progressing well but we still haven't got round to decorating - to be honest we haven't even bought the paint yet!

My niece is coming to stay on Friday for the weekend  to do a little last minute studying (and crafting) before her exams start on Monday. I've made her a 8" square card to wish her good luck using one of the new Simply Gorjuss stamps I treated myself to last month from Create and Craft. If anyone is interested in how the card was made please email/message me and I'll post a step by step tutorial at a later date. In the meantime I'd like to share a few photos with you.

Good Luck Card for Charlie

Close Up Of  Decoupage Simply Gorjuss Image

Close Up Of Flowers Made With Tim Holtz Tattered Florals Die

Another Close Up

Decoupage Card with Heat Embossed Card Base and Distressed Paper

Yet Another Close Up!

Close up of Decoupage Image (again!)

Another Close up of Tattered Floral Flowers 

I hope you like my latest creation, I'm just hoping it's agreeable to Charlie! I've a couple more cards to make and a couple of internet orders on their way so hopefully I'll be adding a new post soon. As always if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below or contact me on Facebook - just click on the badge in the sidebar. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxxx