1st Birthday Card for Isobel

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you all had a brilliant weekend. Today is my niece's first birthday and I'd like to share the card I made for her.

Teeny Tiny Tatty Teddy Card

This Teeny Tiny Tatty Teddy image is actually supposed to be a boy but I gave him a quick sex change by adding a Papermania spotted ribbon once I'd coloured it in with Flexmarkers. I added some Glossy Accents to the nose to make it shine and stamped a balloon string rising from her hand. The balloon is a sticker from my stash and I coloured a silver 1 with pink Flexmarker so it stands out better. I made a 5.5" square card blank from 300gsm card and added some Dovecraft Basics III 6" x 6" scrapbook paper trimmed down to 5" square. This was stuck to the front of the card blank with double sided tape. I trimmed the topper down to the size shown (I judged it by eye so no measurements - sorry) and adhered it to the centre of the card as shown. I added some solid holographic flower stickers to the front as it looked a tad bare plus I managed to get smudges of pink ink on the front and the flowers covered them up.

Inside of card

For the inside, I coloured the silver sentiment with the pink pen and carefully added it to the centre of the card blank. I added a flower outline sticker and a solid flower to mirror the outside of the card.

Here are a few more photos taken from different angles etc.

Isn't the ribbon bow sweet!

Close up of Teeny Tiny Tatty Teddy

Close up of 1 balloon

For some reason I've had a lot of trouble making a card for Isobel, I had planned on making a pop up box card but it kept going wrong. This is a simpler design but I quite like it.

I haven't made my shadow box frame as planned but hopefully I'll have it to share with you in the next couple of days. 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

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

A Mini Album

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all enjoying your weekend. I'm having a good one so far, my replacement stamp set arrived yesterday (Saturday) from Clearly Besotted Stamps beautifully packaged as always in their signature hot pink tissue paper. My energy levels are quite low at the moment as I'm fighting the dreaded lurgy but I have managed to upload my very first video to YouTube! It was less than 2 minutes long but took about 20 minutes to load so I'm probably not going to put many more up. It wasn't a craft video (shock!) but a short clip of my cat Jinx watching a video for cats featuring birds and other wildlife - his reaction when a squirrel appears made me giggle. I would love to start doing tutorials but don't have the proper equipment, you really need a camera fixed to a tripod above your work surface and my camera doesn't even have a slot/hole for a tripod so isn't any good for tutorials. To be honest I was a bit shocked I was able to record for nearly 2 minutes because every time I've tried it before it's shut down after 20 seconds or so claiming its memory is full. It's nice to finally have a video uploaded onto my channel even if no-one apart from me ever sees it. It's one post down on this blog if you'd like to see it. :)

The other thing I've been up to this weekend is craft related - my first proper mini album! I've made tiny albums out of one sheet of 12" scrapbook paper quite a few times but really just to try the techniques out and I've also made a few envelope minis with tags inside but this is the first time I've made a mini using chipboard panels for the front, back and sides. I followed a tutorial on YouTube by Anna Komenda https://youtu.be/M5Ii1ZL382g please click on the link to view - it's a really good tutorial. Anna made her folding mini in pastel pinks but I used Santoro Mirebelle A4 scrapbook papers which have a more Gothic feel to them without being too gloomy.

Front of my Folding Mini Album tied with cream cord

I've ordered some magnetic fasteners similar to those used in handbags and purses for future projects but they haven't arrived yet, the magnetic tape isn't strong enough to keep the mini album closed on it's own which is why I've wrapped the mini with this cream cord.

Inside of the mini

Out of view on this photo is a strip of magnetic tape covered with washi tape which matches the papers on the right hand panel, my plan was it would attach to the metal butterflies on the inside of the left panel and keep the mini closed but the magnetic strip isn't magnetic enough to hold it closed. I added some glittered enamel dots to the metal butterflies to make more of a feature of them. The ribbon holding the folded pages closed is printed with 'remember'.  The metal heart is a coiled paper clip bought at Boyes a few years ago.

Close up of metallic butterflies

Right hand pages of mini album

Left hand pages of mini album

I haven't decorated the pages of the mini yet but even plain I think they are rather pretty. I chose papers that have either a canvas texture, are glazed in parts or glittered so the album has a lot of texture to it without needing to add a lot of embellishments. I'm not going to add the instructions on how to make this album because Anna Komenda has done a brilliant tutorial and apart from the ribbon holding the pages together and the different way of fastening the album, I haven't done anything different to what she shows. The only real difference is that Anna gives the measurement for the front paper as 30cm in length but as you are probably aware A4 is about 29 cm in length, I don't think the extra cm makes that much of a difference as long as you are careful folding it over the mountboard/chipboard panels. For full details on how to make this mini please click on the link further up.

Pages neatly tied back up with ribbon

Washi tape covered magnetic strip and metal butterflies

I hope you've enjoyed looking at my latest project, I really enjoyed it and I hope to be making one a bit bigger as I'd love a handbag sized mini to display some of my wedding photos. Unfortunately the pages of this mini are too small as I don't want to crop my original photos and we don't have a scanner to put them on the computer and re-print. I know all the scrapbook mags/books say don't use original photos but a lot of ours are pretty much identical - the photographer took and had printed nearly 400 photos! But what is the point of having wedding photos if you don't use them and love them? We don't have children so I doubt they'll be treasured once we're gone so I may as well display them in a creative way while there's someone who cares about them (that would be me btw lol).

This is a very long post I hope you've not got too bored. Please check out the post beneath with my lovely Jinx and my goofy giggle. 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

Jinx watching bird video 001

"Bubble" Card for Charlie

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! Woo hoo! - it's the weekend. Have you got anything exciting planned? I've come down with something icky so I don't think I'll be doing much personally. My replacement stamps didn't arrive today (Friday) but hopefully they'll come tomorrow. I did get a couple of interesting (ish) items in the post though - a metre of magnetic tape (£1.39 and free P&P on ebay) and a set of twelve tiny pots of metallic mica powders (£6.90 with free mini mister bottle and P&P also ebay) I thought the mica powders were Perfect Pearls as that's what I put into the search thing on ebay but they don't appear to be the real deal, I'm not hugely bothered as long as they do what they're supposed to do. One of the reasons I wanted them was to try out a technique by Jennifer McGuire called 'Pearlised Water', you can make mica sprays with most powders as long as they have a binder included in their formulation and basically to make the 'pearlised water' you just add some white mica powder to some water in a spray bottle, give it a really good shake and start spraying. Jennifer recently shared a set of thank you cards which used the pearlised water to stamp an image onto a distress ink background, as the distress inks are water reactive the stamped image became lighter on the card and had a beautiful pearlised finish. I'm planning (doesn't mean I'll actually get round to it though lol) on making a set of notelets as a present for someone this Christmas and I thought this technique would be a perfect design for the cards as it's fairly simple to do and can be done production line style. Assuming I get around to it, I'll be sharing the finished item at a later date.

Today (Friday) is my niece's 17th Birthday so as promised I'd like to share the card that I made for her. I think 17 is one of those awkward ages to craft for, I don't want to make a card using images that are too grown up but on the other hand nothing too babyish either. I decided that this "Dollie" image from Crafter's Companion's Scruffy Little Kitten range was perfect and teamed it up with a Scruffy Little Cat embossing folder which I think is called "Bubbles".

"Dollie" card for my niece

Sentiment from CC Sentimentals 

Bowed embossed acetate over the image

 I coloured the Dollie image in using FlexMarkers and stamped the sentiment on a thin strip of scrap card cut to the desired size, I added three silver glittered enamel dots in a variety of sizes as shown and added it underneath the bath. I then cut a sheet of acetate 3 cm larger than the front of my card and embossed it in the CC embossing folder, it was part of the Scruffy Little Cat range and doesn't appear to still be available on the website (FYI if you sign up to the Every Craft's A Pound newsletter they'll send you updates about new stock and they quite often sell Crafter's Companion embossing folders etc so if you like this folder they may have it in at some point). Once the acetate was embossed. I scored two thin strips at the longest sides and added red liner tape to it before sticking it over my topper. Because the acetate is a little bit wider than the topper it bows over it like a bay window. I added this to the front of the card front using more red liner tape and I stamped a sentiment inside the top folded card. Because of the arched acetate I had to sent the card in a padded envelope but if you make one similar, I would recommend making a box if you are hand delivering it.

I hope you like this fun design, I'm hoping I got the balance right and Charlie doesn't think it's too babyish for a seventeen year old. If I feel a bit better over the weekend then I shall be doing a bit of crafting and will share with you what I come up with. 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

"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

Box with Drawer

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a good weekend. I saw a brilliant tutorial on Youtube to make a box cube with a drawer recently, so decided to give it a go. The tutorial I followed was posted by Linda Parker, it's a really long video (28 mins) but her instructions are very good and she makes and decorates the box in real time as far as I can tell.

Linda used Stampin' Up card stock but I wanted a vintage feel to my box so used dual sided kraft card stock which is kraft on one side and white on the other, I prefer solid kraft card but have quite a lot of this two colour card so need to use it up. The kraft side is rather attractive so if anyone is interested in buying some it's from Every Craft's A Pound website. Linda used ribbon on her drawer to pull it out but I've got a few Tim Holtz Hitch Fasteners which look like drawer handles so I use one on this box. I like the effect so I've ordered a few more packs from Amazon so I can make some more. If you want to make your own box (it's surprisingly roomy) then please check out Linda Parker's channel on YouTube.

Once I've got some more hitch fasteners, I shall be making some more boxes and stacking them together to make a set of storage drawers. Each drawers uses 2 sheets of A4 card but if you had a lot of card the same colour these boxes would be fantastic stacked together to make an Advent calendar and it's one that could be re-used for many years to come, I'm thinking about making one myself but with ribbon pulls instead of the hitch fasteners.

This might not be the most exciting project I've shared but the boxes have a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to making more in the week to come.

As always 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

Christmas is coming...

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and enjoyed World Card Making day over the weekend. I did actually manage to make a card over the weekend but as it's for my niece's 17th birthday next week I'm not going to share it until the day in case she sees it on here or Facebook. I was really pleased to get crafting again as I've had a bad case of craft block! I know inspiration should come from things I already have but in all honesty I tend to be most crafty when I have new stash and apart from getting a couple of items last month I haven't bought anything craft related in ages. All I've found myself doing in the last three weeks or so is tidying up, trying different card folds (I love to experiment) and half colouring in images only to think they are rubbish and throw away. So it was quite a relief to make a card for Charlie which I liked and it's sparked a bit of a crafty spurt as well.

Christmas will be here before we know it and up until yesterday, I hadn't made a single card, present or decoration. Clearly Besotted Stamps brought out a stamp set ages ago called "In Print" which features a fingerprint and a range of doodled creatures that you stamp over the fingerprint. I fell in love with them but (typically of me) hadn't got around to using them. Because I haven't done any card making for quite a while I decided to make a couple of very simple Christmas cards and one of the images on this stamp set was perfect - a deer. The stamp set doesn't have any Christmas sentiments with it but one of my subscription magazines "Creative Stamping" arrived on Saturday and had lots of Christmas and holiday sentiments with it.

Oh Deer - Christmas is coming...

I stamped the fingerprint using Memento Rich Cocoa ink and over stamped it with the deer face using Memento Tuxedo Black ink. I stamped the Merry & Bright sentiment in the black ink and added a red glittered enamel dot over the deer's nose. The cards are 3" x 4" and I made an envelope for each one using some 6" x 6" scrapbook papers and my We Are Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board. I used a second stamp from the Creative Stamping set to add a sentiment to the inside of the cards.

A simple sentiment for a simple card

As I had the stamps out I decided to make a little joke card for my husband, he's been watching (and buying!) a lot of trashy B movies recently and one of his favourites is "Big Ass Spider". He wanted me to make him a big ass spider card for Christmas but as I don't find spiders to be particularly festive I decided to make him a spider card just because... The "In Print" stamp set also has a cute little spider so I made another 3" x 4" card base and stamped the fingerprint in Hickory Smoke Distress ink and the legs and face in black Memento ink. I stamped the boo! sentiment in the same ink. Unfortunately I had a bit of ink on my finger as I stamped the legs over the fingerprint body so got a smudge of ink on the card base, I added some light green sparkly enamel dots on the card front to hide my little boo boo. I also added a silk string for the spider to hang from which is also included in the stamp set.

Big Ass Spider card lol

We don't have any children but it would be a great card to make with children for Halloween. To be honest you could make it without the stamp set just use your own fingerprints and add your own critter features with a fine tipped pen, but this way is less messy lol.

I hope you like my little card share, hopefully it won't be quite as long until my next post. I'm sorry for not posting more often but I try to keep my posts craft related and if I'm not producing anything/buying anything I have nothing to share. If you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting! (Must take my own advice!)

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx