Tiny Haul to share

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! It's been very quiet in my crafty nook lately apart from the odd rustling of papers being put away and the odd crinkle of packaging as I've tidied a few things away. It seems as though my crafty mojo has gone on a sabbatical at the moment - I hope it returns soon! I haven't any cards to share with you just a very small haul that arrived today. Craft Stash had free P&P last week for 24 hours only and no minimum spend and as I had a tiny amount of money still in my bank account I decided to treat myself to a couple of items.

As you can see from the above photos, when I say a couple of items I MEAN a couple of items lol. The first thing that leaped into my basket was the taylored expressions "Summer Nights" 6" x 6" paper pad. I've got some Tatty Twinkles USA stamps and I thought these papers which feature a lot of star patterns would be perfect to team up with them and with the little boy Scruffy Little Kitten stamps in my stash. This is a very gender neutral collection which is brilliant. Unfortunately Craft Stash only had one left in stock or I would have bought a second. The second and final item that jumped into my basket was a Sheena Douglass "Flying Dragonflies" stamp. It's already EZ mounted which is great as it's ready to use straight away. I love dragonflies and they are a good alternative to butterflies on male cards.

Sorry I haven't any cards to share this time, hopefully my craft mojo will come back and I'll start making cards again, in the meantime please be patient and perhaps if you're a crafter too you'd like to share a link to your latest makes so I can get some inspiration from you. As always if you have any questions then please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

HOTP Steampunk Heart Card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook. A while ago I was really excited to get my hands on one of the Hot Off The Press Colorist Steampunk colouring pads from Craft Stash (I think), I'll be honest with you when you add the £2.99 p&p is was rather an expensive buy but I really really wanted it and it was the last one in stock. It's been sitting on my desk for quite a while mainly because I wanted to hoard it a while but also because I've had a bit of a crafty slump the last week or so. Yesterday (the 18th) was the closing date for the National Cardmaker of the Year competition so I thought it was about time that I got my bum in gear and got on with the POTY entry. I didn't have anything in mind so just decided to have a play and go with the flow. The Steampunk pad was 'looking' at me so I decided to get my ProMarkers out and do a bit of colouring of one of the images and the steampunk heart grabbed my attention.

The uncoloured image

I decided to start on the flames, the example given on the pad is done in purple shades but I got some Sheena Douglass stamps a couple of weeks ago and one of them has a Phoenix rising from the flames and this inspired me to have flame wings behind the clockwork heart. I used three Promarkers to colour the wings; Mandarin, Pumpkin and Gold.

Wing coloured with Mandarin, Pumpkin and Gold Promarkers

Once the wings were coloured I started on the clockwork heart which I coloured in using Poppy and Red. The clock face was coloured with Cool Grey 1 Promarker. I wanted the gears and cogs to look metallic but don't like the effect you get using Metallic Promarkers so used a bronze metallic Gelly Roll Pen. The flourishes were coloured in with gold and the background of the central panel was coloured in using Burnt Umber Promarker. The outer background was coloured in using a black Flexmarker. I added Glossy Accents to the clock face and to the keyhole for a bit of shine and dimension. I added Dovecraft 3D Pearl Effects in Gold onto the ends of the flourish.

Finished Steampunk image

I layered my image onto black cardstock even though the background of the outer part of the image was coloured black because when I layered the image onto gold pearlised card it didn't 'pop'. I then layered it onto gold card,black and gold again. I cut a final square of black card to 7.5" square and added faux gold photo corners to it before adhering it to an 8" x 8" white card blank, I added the main image to this black layer using foam tape. I added splat marks to the whole card using Heidi Swapp Color Shine spray in Gold. I dabbed some of the spray off using kitchen paper for a more defused look. Finally I die cut some gears and cogs using a First Editions die set and added them around the raised panel. Some are flat but some are raised on foam pads.

Please excuse there being so many similar pictures of the card, I've actually started with a migraine as I'm writing this (thank goodness for learning how to touch type - but please excuse any typos!) and I've got the visual disturbances which has left me pretty much blind. It's my own fault, I got really excited about how lovely this card turned out and wanted to blog it straight away instead of going to sleep like a sensible person.

I'm not sure if this quite fulfills the criteria of this week's theme over at Passion for Promarkers which is "All the Trimmings" but I'm going to enter it anyway as I've used a lot of different elements and it has a lot of layers and dimension for me (I'm more a CAS kind of crafter). If it's not up to scratch I'm sure one of the design team will let me know and I'll remove it :)

If you have any questions then please leave them in the usual places and as always - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxxx

New Baby Box Card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you all had a great weekend, I'm slightly dazed to find it's already the second week of September, it doesn't seem like five minutes since the Bank Holiday weekend. I've not really been up to much craft wise, just watching the new craft channel HOCHANDA - talking of which I was absolutely thrilled on the 4th of September when HOCHANDA showed two of my box cards during a Hougie Board hour. They'd asked for people who already owned a Hougie to email in with any makes they wanted to share so I did not thinking I'd have a chance of them being shown. But I was thrilled when they put them up during the programme.

Someone I know is having a baby boy soon so I thought I'd get ready for the happy event by making a baby boy box card in shades of blue. As you've probably guessed I love making these pop up box cards and new babies are a perfect occasion to make one for.

Bit blurry - sorry

Close up of handmade toppers

3 Box flaps embossed with Babies Feet embossing folder

Back panel embossed with words from Our Baby embossing folder

Two side panels are embossed with swirls

Interior back panel embossed with Our Baby image

I used three stamp sets altogether. A baby boy sentiment by Tiny Tatty Teddies and two by Clearly Besotted Stamps Child's Play and Little Onesie. I've also used three embossing folders, Our Baby embossing folder by Cuttlebug, Swirl embossing folder and Babies feet embossing folder both by Crafts-Too. The stamped images were coloured in using Flexmarkers, I love Flexmarkers but I'm a bit miffed that they don't seem to be of equal quality to the ProMarkers as I've had to throw my BG1 marker away due to it drying up, I've only had it about 4 months! As far as I know they aren't refillable so I need to replace it, my sea mist marker is running out too :( . I'd like to enter this card to this week's Passion for ProMarkers blog challenge which is sentiments, I've used two - the Precious Little Boy - Congratulations and the embossed panel at the back.

Occasionally I like to mention companies which have outstanding service so I'd like to recommend http://www.craftrange.com. Craft Range is currently running a Christmas card competition with a Craftwell Cut 'n' Emboss machine worth £229.99 as the prize, they had a sponsored link on my home page on Facebook so I decided to check it out. Once I'd taken note of the details I had a look at the sort of stuff they sell and was immediately drawn to their clearance section, I was delighted to discover a couple of Indigo Blu A5 stamp sets that I've been coveting for a while at only £10.49 each and treated myself to both, they have free postage if you spend over £15. My order went through at 2.06pm and at 2.17pm a mere 11 minutes later I got an email saying my stamps had been shipped! That level of service is just mindblowing and I'm very impressed with the site. I can't wait to get my order, obviously as its free shipping it's coming second class so it'll be a few days before it's here but hopefully it'll arrive before the weekend. I hope you all have a visit and pick up a bargain or two and why not enter the Christmas card comp the closing date is 30th November and you can enter it by about half a dozen means (but only one card entry per person, just pick your favourite media - snail mail, email, twitter, FB etc), as I'm probably going to make a pop up box card I'll probably post my entry just because the cards tend to look better in real life rather than still photos. You're only supposed to enter a single photo for the non snail mail route and it's kind of hard for me to get a good photo showing all the detail in one shot so again posting it makes sense for me personally but it's good to have so many options for entering especially if you leave it last minute.

It's our 4th wedding anniversary on Friday so I'll be cosying up with hubby instead of crafting probably listening to cricket or football *snooze*. Bless him, he does enjoy his sports. Hopefully I'll be able to fit in a couple of craft sessions in between the cuddling and have a few more cards to share with you soon. 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