A life/craft updated and an Emoji Teen Card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you all had a brilliant weekend - did you get up to anything crafty? I'm in the middle of a late spring clean of my crudy or is that an early autumn clean of my crudy?? The next few months are going to be very busy for me in a crafty sense so I'm trying to get my crafty nook tidied and organised - I'm only doing it a bit at a time because as you'll know if you're a regular reader of my blog, my crudy is very small and gets very hot and airless in the summer so I try not to spend too much time in it at once. I do a lot of my crafting after midnight (probably why my crudy has craft gremlins "No matter how much they beg - never let them craft after midnight." *winks*) which isn't really the most considerate time to start banging about whilst tidying. In all fairness a lot of my 'organising' is just opening boxes and finally labeling them and I tend to take them into the lounge so I can see better as the light is much brighter in there. The tidying part is finally letting go of most of the boxes that internet orders have come in. I don't know about you but I have a really hard time letting go of  boxes just in case I need them. I think part of this stems from the fact that when I was packing up my flat before I got married I had a real difficulty getting my hands on packing boxes and in the end I had to BUY some from Aldl's which I really resented as I didn't have a lot of money to spare. I'm having to make several mind adjustments to be able to let them go - it's a work in progress. Some boxes I will be keeping though, the smaller packing boxes are perfect for re-purposing and turning into pretty stamp storage. My lovely father-in-law is going to make me a one shelf unit that I can slide over my existing stamp storage on my desk so I can have two tiers of stamps stacked above each other which will be fantastic. I'm very much an out of sight, out of mind sort of person which is one of the reasons I'm labeling my stash and I'm also quite a lazy crafter too - if something isn't to hand I'll use something else instead. The other boxes I'll keep are the ones that DVD's come in quite often, they are only the size of a thick hardback book and have an attached lid, I like to store things like mica powders and pots of glitter and embossing powders in them as they fit perfectly inside and can be stacked on top of each other. I've also got one slowly filling up with goodies for a giveaway (I sometimes order things twice by accident so the duplicate goes in the box) but that's not going to happen until I get a few more followers (so if you're not already one please add yourself and tell your crafty friends too).

I have taken a bit of time out to do some crafting so I'd like to share the card I made for my step-nephew. It's his 19th birthday today! I find making cards for men and teens to be very challenging and I wasn't too sure what to make for Ross. I was hoping he was into Pokemon as I've seen some really cute cards on Pintrest but his mum says he's not into it so I decided to play safe and get out the 'Let's Play' stamp set by Clearly Besotted Stamps which is phone related - let's face it most teenagers are obsessed by their mobiles and I'm sure Ross is no exception! Another reason I wanted to make a card using this theme is because I got an emoji die set from Spellbinders a while ago and wanted to finally use the emojis I die cut out.

Emoji Card for a Teen - sorry it's a bit fuzzy

Slightly less blurry photo of card

Close up of the phone. The emojis have been glossy accented.

I added glossy accents to the sunglasses of the appropriate emoji and also to the phone button and the mini emojis on the screen - they were coloured in using a yellow Flex Marker. I made the background paper by stamping the solid emoji from the stamp set in Fossilised Amber Distress Ink, then went over them with the expression stamps. I stamped the phone stamp first before adding the emojis because I wanted to have a layered look. The raised phone piece was stamped on a separate piece of card, coloured and cut out using my new trimmer and a large corner rounder. The card blank was made using some black Centura Pearl printable cardstock from the Darks collection. I stamped a sentiment from a Crafter's Companion Sentamentals stamp set and added a kissing emoji to the inside of the card and layered the front as shown.

I hope you like my latest make, I really love the emojis and I'm glad that I've finally been able to use the ones I die cut. By changing the colours of the main parts it's very easy to turn this into a card for a girl teen (imagine rainbow coloured emojis!). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Ross likes the card and isn't too disappointed that it's a smaller size than usual - it's just because the phone stamp isn't huge and would be overwhelmed on an A5 size card.

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

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

1st Birthday Card Featuring Tiny Tatty Teddy

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook. I hope you've all had a wonderful weekend, I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that it's already July! I've just the one card to share with you today, a first birthday card for Taio who's celebrating his birthday on Tuesday. I decided to use one of the boy Tiny Tatty Teddy stamps combined with a bunting die by Dovecraft and a 1 today die by Sizzix. I also used one of the Birthday Sentimentals by Crafter's Companion. I decorated an envelope made with the WRMK Envelope Punch Board using the Child's Play stamp set by Clearly Besotted Stamps.

I'm still loving the split panel card design and I thought it worked very well with this image. I stamped it out onto super smooth card stock and coloured it in using ProMarkers, I fussy cut it out and added some CC Sparkle Pen in clear on Tatty's nose and patches. I added foam tape to the back and stuck it to a panel of silver glitter card. I mounted this onto a scrap of blue card stock. The card blank was made by cutting a sheet of A4 card stock at 10.5cm (sorry I'll be mixing my metric with imperial here!) and then scored it at 14cm. I lined the fold crease up to the 2 inch mark on my trimmer and cut off the short front panel (A4 is 29 and a bit cm which is hard to score exactly in half. By scoring at 14cm one side of this card blank was nearly 2cm longer than the other but as it's being cut off it doesn't matter). From this cut off piece I trimmed off a 2" section to form the bottom of the card front. I added blue pieces of card to the 2" panels as shown. I die cut the smallest size of bunting using the Dovecraft die out of some more silver glitter card and carefully glued the top edge of each triangle to a short length of baker's twine. I carefully lined the loose panel of card to the bottom edge of the card blank and held it in place with a paperclip. I added a strip of d/s tape to the top and bottom back side of the decorated panel and stuck it to the top and bottom panels of the card blank as shown. I then removed the paperclip as it was no longer required. I diecut the number 1 and the word today out of more silver glitter card and added it to the bottom panel using dots of wet glue - I'd like to point out that the t is crooked by the die design not by me mucking it up lol. I added tiny foam pads to the underside of the punting and added them to the top of the card. I stamped a sentiment on the left hand side of the card.

The envelope was made using my envelope punch board by WRMK and I decorated the front using a couple of stamps from the Child's Play set by Clearly Besotted Stamps and coloured them in using ProMarkers.

I hope you like my latest card, it's really shimmery so should appeal to a one year old (it appeals to me anyway lol) I'm expecting a delivery tomorrow from Every Craft's A Pound as they've had a load of Tonic Studio Punches available on their website, I've ordered 17 out of the 18 available (the one I didn't order was a holly punch and I have quite a few already) I've only got a couple of Tonic Studio punches in my stash because the craft shop in town and the one I used to go to sell mainly Woodware and Martha Stewart punches. I personally love the Woodware punches but wouldn't recommend the MS ones as I've broken a couple trying to punch through card - for the price of a MS punch you would expect it to be able to punch through more than paper but apparently not! I'm not really sure where exactly I'm going to store 17 border/strip punches as I imagine they'll be quite bulky but at a saving of £10.99 per punch (yes you read that right - I saved £10.99 per punch as they are only a pound each!!) I couldn't pass them up especially as I've wanted some border punches for a while (the ones I have are Martha Stewart!). If Create and Craft are to be believed the Tonic Studio punches are very powerful so hopefully they're not going to break if I punch the edge of my cards (and if they do I only paid a pound for them!)

I'm looking forward to sharing what I come up with once I've had a play with the punches. If you have any questions or comments please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs

Sarah xxx

Get Whale Soon

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and enjoying the wonderful spring weather. I'm still not very well but I've managed to make a card for my nephew Chris who is recovering after having surgery last week.

Close up of the Get Whale Soon card

New stamp for the back of my cards (my pins are at the ready!)

A departure from my usual style, I've not done any colouring on this card. The whale and sentiment are from a Clearly Besotted Stamps set called ' Whale Done!' and the waves were made using a Clearly Besotted Stamps die. The whale and spurt were stamped using Distress Inks and the clouds were die cut using a Poppy Stamps Die called Flying High (I think). I saw the stamp from the back panel on Facebook and had to order it as it made me giggle, it took a while to get here as it's from the USA but it was well worth the wait. I added some clear wink of stella to the clouds and waves and added a googly eye to the whale.

Sorry this is a shorter than usual post, I'm still feeling really ill and want to get back to my sick bed. 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

Perfect Ten

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a crafty weekend and are raring to go for the week ahead. It's been rather quiet here in my crafty nook but I have made a few cards and unpacked a few goodies from a couple of internet orders so it's all good.

The first couple of cards I'd like to share with you are two 10th Birthday cards for my niece who celebrated her birthday on Saturday. My mum isn't very well at the moment so asked me to make a card on her behalf which is why I made two.

10 today card featuring S.W.A.L.K belle of the ball stamp

Close up of the die-cut 10 today

Inside card featuring die-cut sentiment and stamped verse

The Happy Birthday die came free with a magazine ages ago and the numbers and today die-cuts were made using a Sizzix die that I recently purchased from Hochanda. The stamp set is one that was licenced to Crafter's Companion but I don't think they hold it anymore as the stamps aren't available on the website, I seem to recall that I purchased them (I have loads of different ones) from Every Craft's A Pound either last year or the one before but you may be able to pick up the stamp on Ebay (in fact I've just checked and it is available in a set of 4 stamps for £4.99) or similar.

Clearly Besotted Best Birthday balloons with balloon 10 added

Crafter's Companion verse inside card

I combined two stamp sets to make this second card, the first set was the fabulous 'Best Birthday' from one of my favourite stamp companies Clearly Besotted Stamps with a Katy Sue Designs 'Shaggy Dog Tails' stamp set called balloons which is currently out of stock on the Katy Sue Designs website. I coloured both stamps using a combination of Promarkers and Flexmarkers. I really like the squirrel balloon on the second card.

I've also been lucky enough to have a couple of orders arrive this week which I'd like to share with you.

These dies were purchased from Icon UK a fantastic low priced crafting website which has really fast service and free delivery on most orders (I've not had to pay any p&p for any of my Icon UK orders).

I purchased this Sizzix die from the shopping channel Hochanda, it's my first purchase from them and the delivery time is good though at £3.95 for purchases under £20 it's rather pricey and postage goes up the greater the value of your purchase. The die cuts beautifully as you can see from the 10 today card above.

I couldn't resist these Echo Park 'Pirate's Life' papers from Craft Stash, they had nesting dies for only £5 so I also picked up this set of nesting stars to bulk up my die collection (not that it needs bulking up after my Icon UK splurge!) and finally bought this lush Tim Holtz Retro Carnival stamp which is the perfect size for ATC's.

Lastly I took advantage of the final few days of the Crafter's Companion sale to buy some new stamp sets. The Scruffy Little Cats were a huge bargain as they were heavily discounted and I paid £2.55 for all four of the stamps which is less than the current price of a single set on the website. In fact because I'm a Gold Member of Club Inspire my order only came to £5.10 with free priority posting.

It may seem like I've bought lots this week and indeed I have lol but all the items were either low priced to begin with or in the sales so although I got lots of new stuff I've paid a fraction of what it would normally cost.  I hope you've enjoyed looking at my latest cards and value buys - thanks for reading down to the bottom of a huge post! As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places. I've got a couple of men birthday cards to make (eek!) in the next few days so hopefully I'll have some more cards to share with you soon. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs

Sarah xxx

Care share - Sisters.

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! It's not even 6am (on a SATURDAY!!) here in my crafty nook but as my cat has decided I sleep waaay too much - he woke me at 4.30 am *gritted teeth* - I thought I should share a few cards I've made lately.

Both my sister and my sister-in-law have had birthdays in the past two weeks. My sister-in-law Susan loves dolphins so I decided to make her a dolphin pop up box card. I've been planning this card since about July which was when I first saw how to make pop up box cards. I started to order dolphin dies online ready to make this card.

I used about four different die sets for this card but I don't have them to hand at the moment so if you want to know what they are called please leave a comment below this blog post. The wave die was one from Clearly Besotted Stamps and I've had it in my stash unused for quite some time.

My sister Teresa asked for either a fairy card or a Steampunk themed card and I chose SP because the example of a fairy card that she emailed me was way beyond my craft stash - I have some fairy stamps but they tend to be cute and girly not Gothic and a bit slutty (unfortunately lol). I do however have a few dies and stamps in my stash (bought with Teresa in mind) that are SP themed. This is the card I came up with.

The card base is a Pop Up Aperture card that was featured in the QCME card school this month, unfortunately the limitations of my camera means I've not been able to take a photo that does justice to the card (sorry it's a bit blurry etc). This card took a long time to make it and I was actually working on it on and off for three days altogether. The butterfly and linked cog die cuts are very delicate and I had to cut them a few times before I was able to get a perfect cut. My card base wasn't exactly the same as that featured in Quick Cards Made Easy because I managed to misplace the magazine before I made the card. I had a general idea but my measurements are slightly different to the ones shown and unlike the cards in the mag, mine folded flat for postage because I used the floating topper as a fastener to keep the card closed. It just meant I had to make a slightly larger envelope than I was expecting. It wasn't until I found my magazine again that I realised that their versions didn't close. The other difference is the designer used clear fishing wire and I used thin jewellery wire to float my topper, because I used proper wire I was able to shape it slightly forward to make the closure. I don't tend to use a lot of gold in my crafting but I have some sheets of Dovecraft gold mirror card which is brilliant for diecutting and I thought I'd do shiny and new Steampunk instead of grungy Steampunk which I think my sister was expecting. If I were to make this card again I'd probably have black glitter card behind the Steampunk butterfly topper to match the front instead of the plain black cardstock. If you are interested in the products used for this card, then please leave a comment in the usual places.

I hope you like my sister cards, both were fun to make and I think both my sisters liked them. If you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah

Caught a bug card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! Hasn't this weekend come around quickly? It's my birthday tomorrow so hopefully I'll have a nice crafty time this weekend. My husband is off for his flu jab today which I'm hoping he'll be well enough to have as he's come down with man flu - poor thing. Illness is making its rounds at the moment my parents-in-law are both poorly and my youngest nephew got sent home with chicken pox just in time for the half term holiday. To cheer him up I made him a card using the Clearly Besotted "Out Of This World" stamp set, although the images are of aliens or monsters I thought they'd make good germs.

I made this card by die cutting the mason jar out of white cardstock using a Sizzix Bigz die. I edged around it using a small amount of Blueprint Sketch Distress ink and applied it with a blending tool. Blueprint Sketch is quite a bright colour but I started blending on my glass mat so that by the time I reached the jar, the colour was considerably lighter than it started as. Ideally I would have used Tumbled Glass Distress ink but I don't own that colour yet. I die cut the fastenings out of crimped silver card and glued it to the top as shown. I stamped the green 'germ' first then masked it off with a paper mask and stamped the other 'germs' around and above it. I coloured the images in with Kaisercraft Fusion markers and added googly eyes to the centre alien. I hand wrote a sentiment on the mason jar itself and stamped a get well greeting on a strip of white card. The Jack word was made up of individual letter stamps which is why it's a little crooked - I'm pretending it's whimsical! I cut some dark blue textured card to the required size and rounded the bottom corners to mirror the bottom of the mason jar, then stuck all the elements together as shown. I made a top folding card blank and rounded the bottom corners too. As a final touch I dotted a couple of the aliens with colourless blender pen so it removed some of the colour and made the germs look spotty. Jack got his card yesterday and really loved the googly eyes - I have to admit they are my favourite part too! I even made a purple spotted envelope to send the card in.

One of the things I love about this stamp set is that even though they are very simple images the critters have lots of character and personality to them, I think the blue spiky one looks like it can't wait to escape the jar so it can come and bite you lol.

I had a lot of fun making this card and it took me a couple of tries to get it how I'd envisioned it. This stamp set is a really versatile one and is great for birthdays, Halloween and as this card proves - Get Well cards too though you will need an additional sentiment. I'm really glad I've finally got to use the mason jar die too, I've had it for a while but haven't known what to use it for up to now. I've a busy weekend ahead but hopefully I'll get time to do some crafting (definitely need to, it's Isobel's first birthday on Tuesday and I still haven't made her card yet!) so all being well I'll have a new post added in the next couple of days.

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

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

"Out Of This World" Customer Service

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the ever changeable Autumn weather. Autumn is probably my favourite times of the year, I love to see the leaves change colour and find lots of inspiration from the warm oranges, browns and red leaves that carpet the streets. Another reason I'm fond of Autumn is it's my birthday season, my lovely husband is planning on giving me some money for craft stuff so I shall be having a splurge in the next week or two. I've already had a bit of a splurge on my own behalf and ordered the Kuretake Gansai Tambi Japanese Watercolour Paint Set - 36 Colours from Amazon, it's on its way from Japan at the moment which is rather exciting! The seller (Snow Drop, Japan) even sent me an email explaining that as the paints are delicate,they've opened it and put an 'air pocket' inside to protect the paints - isn't that nice of them?

The reason for this post isn't just about boasting about my new paints to be (sorry about boasting) but to highlight the brilliant service I got from Clearly Besotted Stamps. I ordered some stamp sets from the company last week as they've got a sale on at the moment and as regular readers will know I LOVE Clearly Besotted Stamps, there's been a couple of stamp sets I've wanted for a while now including the animal balloon set which is really cute and all over YouTube and a set called "Out Of This World" which is an alien/monster themed set. Neither set were in the sale (not that I expected them to be) but I managed to resist the new release stamps (go check them out - there's a good mixture of cute and more traditional - there's even a really funny set that I was tempted by!) so I decided to get them both as I'm fairly sure I'll get lots of use out of them. I don't tend to use my new stamps straight away so they remained in their packaging until yesterday. I noticed on Facebook that a friend's son is celebrating his birthday soon so decided to make him a card using the alien stamp set. One of the stamps included is a moon surface so I knew I needed to stamp the chosen alien first, mask it off then overstamp with the moon. However when I stamped the alien the side of its 'foot' was missing, I thought it was maybe part of the design as open drawn images were popular for a while (not my 'thing' as I wouldn't know where to colour to) but it turned out that part of the stamp was missing.

Alien with a poorly foot 

I emailed Clearly Besotted Stamps last night and they emailed me back this morning to apologise and to let me know that they're sent a replacement stamp set which hopefully I should get tomorrow! I did manage to save the image by going over it with a black pen but as I don't have a very fine line pen the alien looked really chunky on top of the moonscape so I had to go over that too. My hand slipped while outlining the eye so I covered it up with a wobbly eye. Below is some photos of the finished card including quite a few close ups because the card is A5 and some of the colouring doesn't show well on the long view.

Out of this world card

Close up of birthday alien and sentiment - love the font

Main image with meteor shower starry background

Flying Saucer image - my favourite stamp

Wobbly eyed alien

Please excuse the photo quality, I couldn't take a crisp image for some reason. Originally the background was just white dots but I gave the card to my husband Chris so he could hold it close to his eye which has some sight and he accidentally smudged a couple of the dots which hadn't dried thoroughly (serves me right for not checking!). It turned out to be a happy accident though as I liked the shooting star look so deliberately smeared the rest. The main image is matted onto some silver holographic card which I debossed using a Crafter's Companion 'Angelina and Friends' boy embossing folder called "Starry Eyed". Not much of it shows around the topper but I like the effect of the debossed stars.

I really like the cartoon images and I hope Liam does too. I'm not sure how old he is but I think this card is one that is suitable for all ages. Damaged stamp aside, this is a brilliant stamp set with lots of images and sentiments and it even has a couple of sentiments suitable for Halloween and at £9.00 not a bad price either as the stamps are (usually) of a very high quality.

I hope you like my little card share, I will be sharing the card I made for my niece's birthday in the next day or two (she turns 17 tomorrow). As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx