Magical Unicorns Pop Up Box Card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a brilliant weekend, although the weather's now cloudy the heat is unrelenting - it was 76.6 F in my crudy during the early hours of this morning and completely airless. It's officially the summer holidays in Bridlington now so I'm hoping for a good thunderstorm to clear the air and freshen things up! Obviously I don't want it to rain the entire 6 weeks but a shower or two soon would be most welcome. Enough weather talk - let's talk crafting!

I really should have made this card a couple of weeks ago as it's a thank you card for Quick Card Made Easy magazine. As you'll know if you read the previous post, I won a couple of giveaways on Facebook (don't hate me but I've actually won another prize but from Orangina (not on FB) this time!). The second prize came last week (finally!) and when I've made stuff with my nieces I'll post a couple of photos (pending their mum's permission of course!) so you can see what we make - it's a pirate themed fun box so it should be quite good. Obviously my favourite prize is the MFT Magical Unicorns because they're unicorns! I've had an idea buzzing around my head for a few weeks about what sort of thank you card to make and finally settled on a pop up box card because let's face it a pop up box card has a lot of wow factor and isn't that difficult to make (usually - not sure if it's the weather but I kept mucking the card base up and this card has taken me nearly 3 days - on and off - to make!). It isn't quite what I'd imagined but I'm pleased with how it's turned out.

MFT Magical Unicorns Pop Up Box Card

Close up of Pop Up Elements

The Clouds are made using a CC Die'sire Die

Every Cloud should have a silver lining especially when saying Thank You

Rainbow Unicorn on one of the side flaps

Back Panel with die cut clouds

I don't have the matching dies yet so I've had to fussy cut all the stamped images which is why the castle in the clouds is without it's flags. I coloured all the images using Flex Markers and I added a layer of Spectrum Noir Clear Glitter brush marker over the castle and unicorns, the clouds were cut out using a CC set of dies and I added a layer of glossy accents to the top cloud on the back panel. I really like how this card turned out and I'm thinking of making a similar one for my niece's birthday next month (though I have kind of promised her a cheer leader card so I'll see what her mum thinks). I shall be posting this card to QCME magazine in the next few days along with a letter of thanks, hopefully they'll like it too and know how much I appreciate my fantastic prize. As the second prize is for the girls, I thought we could make a card together to say thank you at a later date.

I'll be making a couple of cards tonight but as they are for rather sad occasions I'm not sure it's appropriate to share, hopefully I'll have some cheery cards to share soon. As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual place and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

Unicorns and Heatwaves

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a brilliant weekend and if you are in the UK - how's the heatwave for you?? I'm finding it a bit hot to do much apart from laying around gasping like a fish out of water lol. My crudy is probably the worst room because it's so small and packed to the gills and it tends to be a degree or so warmer than the rest of the flat except in winter when it's a few degrees colder! This hasn't stopped me from crafting though, I've just done it in spurts rather than having a long crafting sesh. Ideally I'd quite like to craft outdoors but having a shared garden and extremely nosy neighbours prevents this so I'd just have to grin and bear it :) - knowing typical British summers I doubt it'll last too long in any case especially as a lot of kids break up for the summer holidays at the end of this week. Enough weather talk, it's time for the important things in life -crafting! I was very lucky a few weeks ago to win two Facebook giveaways within 48 hours of each other. One of them still hasn't arrived but the second one came within two days of being notified of my win. I've not really had a lot of time to have a play with my lovely new stamps and deco-patch papers but I really love my gorgeous prize from Quick Cards Made Easy.

Close up of the unicorns

 The stamps are the Rainbow Greetings and Magical Unicorns by MFT (My Favorite Things) which I absolutely love!!! I really want the matching dies for the Magical Unicorns but they are £23.25 at the moment so I'll have to keep my fingers crossed that they'll come down in price after a while. I was inspired by AmyR on YouTube (Prairie Paper & Ink) who made some beautiful Unicorn fridge magnets using the Magical Unicorns stamp set, matching dies and Xyron creative station's magnet cartridge. I only own the stamps so made my own version by fussy cutting the unicorns and adding magnetic tape to the backs - obviously mine aren't as sturdy as they aren't laminated or have the magnetic backing but I was still pretty pleased with the result.

I made these to give to my sister-in-law so added small pieces of the magnetic tape to a pre-made box (I made this ages ago using my envelope punch board) and stuck the magnets to these so they don't move about in the box. As you can see from the second photo I added lots of Spectrum Noir Sparkle pen over the images. These unicorns are super sweet and with a bit of masking you can turn them into ordinary horses (though why would you want to do that!) you just need to add a thin line of pen at the top of the horse's fringe where it's covered by the mask. I'm in the middle of making a cloud/unicorn floating box card to send to QCME magazine as a thank you for my lovely prize and I'll share it with you once I've completed it. I hope you like my latest project, please check out AmyR on YouTube to see what inspired me and 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

Happy News

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and looking forward to the weekend. It's rather chilly here on the east coast but that just means it's perfect crafting weather. I don't actually have a card or project to share today, I'm still poorly so haven't been in my crudy much the past week. However, I do have some crafty news to share. The first thing I want to share is I've won a giveaway on Facebook! My prize of a paper crimper hasn't arrived yet but I'm really looking forward to having a play, as you probably know my husband is sight impaired so I try to add a lot of texture to the cards I make him so if he can't see the card (his sight isn't constant) then at least he's be able to feel the different layers and textures to it. This tool will be perfect for adding some texture in a different way so I'm thrilled to be one of the winners.

My second piece of news is even better! A few posts ago I hinted that I'd have some exciting news to share and now I can. I uploaded a Verity Rose Mother's Day card last month on the Crafter's Companion's Facebook page and the following day I got a private message from the Media Manager for Crafter's Companion who'd seen my card and wanted to feature it in the next issue of Crafter's Inspiration Magazine, she asked me to send a photo of the card via email to the magazine which I did. Unfortunately because I only have a Mini Kodak digital camera which only takes small file photos it wasn't suitable for publication (don't really understand the ins and outs of digital camera files - I've never had a problem uploading photos on my blog - apart from blurry images of course - or on Facebook) so I arranged for my mum to give me the card back so I could get my dad-in-law to scan it and email it to me. That didn't work though so my lovely sis-in-law Sue took a photo with her iPhone and emailed that to me. Luckily that was big enough and I've been waiting for the magazine to come out so I could order a copy. I managed to get it ordered on Wednesday and it came yesterday in the post. The card is in the letter page (they cobbled a letter together from my emails!) and it looks really good. Here's a couple of photos of it.

I really love the sweet comments Sara Davies wrote and I'm looking forward to receiving my £10 gift voucher. I've only got Cupcake to buy in the Verity Rose sets (there are some additional dies and a paper pad too) and as they are no longer available to buy as a collection, I might put this voucher towards it or there are some fantastic stamps and dies in the new Men's collection that I might get instead. I've had cards published in magazines before (I've even won a comp or two!) but this is the first time I've been approached via Facebook so I feel very honoured to have the card appear in such a brilliant magazine.

I hope you've enjoyed sharing my bits of good news, hopefully I'll have some cards to share soon, as I said at the beginning of the post I am still suffering from the bug/infection/dreaded lurgy I got nearly three weeks ago though thankfully I'm not as bad as I have been. I'm really lacking in energy and motivation as a result so it's a bit of a struggle to get my bum off the sofa and into the crudy but I will try to get some cards made over the weekend.  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

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

Facebook Goodies and a few haul items

Hello crafty peeps - welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a wonderful week. I've not been feeling very well which is why this is the first time I've blogged in a week, I hope you haven't missed me too much! I've decided not to bother entering the Passion for ProMarkers challenge this week, the theme was For A Special Lady and I made both my Mother's Day cards and the birthday card for my Mum-in-law during the last few weeks and didn't fancy making yet another card that'll just languish in a box and the rules do state that you're not allowed to back link cards so I can't even enter the Mother's Day cards that I've already made. I'm not sure if I'll bother entering next week's challenge either though I may follow the theme. It seems a bit pointless entering a challenge if half the people who enter don't bother to abide by the rules but I do enjoy most of the challenges and it usually motivates me to make a card so I'll probably just blog it instead of linking my posts to the PFP blog. I hope that makes sense.

Bookazines element of the QCME Friday Giveaway

Sweet Paris Collection

Lush papers. So lush....

That they came already opened and used lol including a third of a sheet

Rosette Flowers - my favourite is the small red polka dot

Sequins, buttons and bows 

Foam pads and Stampin' Up! Cherry Cobbler seam binding ribbon - lush!

I was really pleased to get my Facebook prize from Quick Cards Made Easy last Wednesday, love everything! I had to giggle when I discovered that the 72 pages of 6" x 6" papers only contained 53 and 1/3! Someone else obviously liked them too, just wish they'd left me more than two of the red polka dotted paper as that's my favourite. I shall be returning to QCME mag via a thank you card (photos to follow another time, my camera needs charging) the third of a sheet of the pink and cream paper. The card is already made but I can't blog it yet as my camera needs a few hours to charge. The bookazines were great to get because they aren't something I'd usually buy, priced at £7.99 each I'd want a substantial cardmaking kit to go with each one if I were to buy them myself so it was good to be able to see what they contain before purchasing (tbh I still wouldn't buy them - too expensive for what you get.) I'm hoping that in a few months ECAP will have the Sweet Paris Collection to buy at a reduced price as I'd certainly like to get more of the papers - a full set next time lol. I have a couple of French style stamps so it's nice to have a themed collection to go with them.

Prima Dolls - Taylor stamp

C.C. Designs Rain stamp (Tiny!)

I'd also like to share a small haul I got from My Mum's Craft Shop and this may very well be my last haul from this online shop (unless I change my mind lol). This is the 4th time I've made a purchase from MMCS and it's the third time I've had to change my order after placing it because the stock isn't up to date. I need an online craft shop to be reliable and I think that you'd agree that 3 out of 4 orders having to be altered proves it isn't. Admittedly I've always been happy with my replacement stamps but they weren't my first choices and it's rather vexing having to chop and change my orders plus they take longer to arrive! The first stamp shown is the replacement stamp as I'd originally ordered the innocence "Gone Fishin'" stamp, this Taylor stamp is the fourth Prima Dolls stamp in my collection and it's huge! I think the blurb online said it was 7 inches long. To begin with the Dolls lack of facial details freaked me out a bit but it makes them great for paper piecing esp with newspaper print either coloured with distress inks or with flesh coloured ProMarkers. I haven't tried it yet myself but I've seen some fantastic examples online.  The second stamp - Rain - is a lot smaller than I was expecting. considering so many crafters like making 8" x 8" cards you'd think they'd be a lot more larger sized stamps out there but small stamps seem to be easier to find. Perhaps it's just me looking in the wrong places, because I have relatively less money to spend on craft stuff, I tend to go for clearance or sales items and perhaps the big stamps haven't been reduced yet. Also I know most crafters like to embellish more than I do, if I've spent an hour colouring in an image I want it to be the focus of the card not have it hiding amidst layers of patterned paper and embellishments, this probably why I tend to make smaller cards.

I'm hoping to share the french themed thank you card I've made for Quick Cards Made Easy Magazine once my camera's charged so look for a new post tomorrow. As always if you have any questions please leave them in the usually places and I'll get back to you, until then - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx