Get Well Soon Sis

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a brilliant weekend, it's been rather quiet in my crafty nook though I have been making a few sneaky purchases on Ebay and similar. I've managed to order the stitched border dies again from a different ebay seller after my first order had to be cancelled due to it being returned back to the seller by the Chinese Customs! (I suspect a porkie or two was put on the declaration which is daft as dies aren't contraband!) It'll be a while before they arrive but the anticipation of getting an order is almost as good for me as actually getting the craft goodies. I've become ever so slightly addicted to a new to me YouTuber called CRaFTiPoTeNTiAL - if anyone checks out my YouTube history they'll stage an intervention and make me join a self help group for cyber stalking lol. Seriously though this woman is amazing, she uses things in an innovative way (my jaw dropped when I saw what she did using the shaving foam technique with her own personal twist!) and more importantly she gets the same magazines as I subscribe to and makes amazing cards with them. To my shame I more often than not look at the free gift and think wow that's great and then it rarely sees the light of day again. Now thanks to CRaFTiPoTeNTiAL and one of my other favourite YouTubers, Christina Griffiths I'm inspired to take a fresh approach to my craft freebies. I hope that wasn't too gushing - I'll admit to having a bit of a craft crush lol. Here is a link to one of her videos where she uses free gifts from a variety of craft magazines in an unexpected way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6FREUaEmWw

Enough of my craft crush - here is my latest card, a split panel Get Well Soon card for my sister Teresa who's recovering from having knee surgery yesterday. Hopefully she'll be home tomorrow and will get my card through the post in a day or two.

I've made these cards quite often so I'm not going to rehash how to make them, unless anyone is interested in more details. I used a Tatty Teddy chipboard embellishment which I got free with a magazine many moons ago, it also came with a 6" x 6" paper pack and I used some blue and pink spotted paper from the pack to decorate the horizontal panels. The vertical panel was originally plain white card stock but I coloured it with a Cool Shadow Copic marker (I now own two Copics!) I added a few layers of the marker until I had a nice smooth coverage and I added dots with a white gel pen and a Stardust gel pen. I also added dots of the stardust to the centre of the flowers and added black glaze gel pen to Tatty's eyes - I think the eyes  look a bit sinister now lol not exactly the look I was going for! I added some silver thread behind the topper before adding the embellishment to the green panel of card. I really like the effect of putting the thread behind things and it's been something I've wanted to try for a while. I added the sentiments to the inside of the card and decorated it with stamped stars which I coloured using the Cool Shadow Copic marker. I added Clear Spectrum Noir Shimmer marker to the stars and glossy accents to the inner ones.

I hope you like my latest creation and I wish my sister a speedy recovery. It's my niece's 18th Birthday in a couple of weeks time so I'm really hoping she'll be on the mend by then. It would be a strange coincidence if Teresa ended up being in a wheelchair post surgery for her daughter's 18th just like our mum was for hers! *cue Outer Limits or similar music*

As always please leave me any questions or comments in the usual places and I'll get back to you if appropriate. I hope you all have a brilliant rest of the week and I'll be back soon. 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

A Few New Cards To Share

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and looking forward to the weekend. I've managed to make a few cards this week even though I'm still not 100% (I'm running at about 45% at the moment lol). This cough/bug is proving very hard to get rid of and I'm not feeling as creative as I would like. I'm just going to do a card share as I'm not really sure if anyone gets anything out of my usual tutorial style blog post - if you like them then leave a comment please!

The cards I'm sharing today are fairly self explanatory with the exception of the Golden Anniversary cards (identical apart from one opens from the left and the other the right) and as I didn't come up with the design I may as well just link the YouTube video I watched rather than explaining how  it's made myself - one thing I would add is to use card that's no more than 250 gsm as the thinlets dies aren't deep enough to go through all the layers for the initial cut with any thicker card stock - you may be able to use 300 gsm card stock if you have a suitable Bigz die but I haven't tried it yet. You can use thicker card for the layers but I'd suggest adding a layer to the inside panel too so it doesn't buckle from the side 'gates'. Here is the link for the YouTube video I watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUyefCETO2Y it's the lovely Dawn from Dawn's Stamping Thoughts. In my early crafting/actually having internet days I found Dawn to be an amazing demonstrator of cards and I learnt a lot from her. One of the best things about watching Stampin' Up! demonstrators like Dawn is that you get to learn loads of new card folds and techniques as well as basic card making skills. Here are the two cards I made inspired by Dawn's video, I don't own any Stampin' Up! dies so used the largest nesting labels dies that I have.

Closed Labels Gatefold Card - folds flat for posting

Gatefold Card fully opened for display

Close up of left hand panel

Close up of right hand panel which slots behind the front panel to close

My second Identical Card but panels reversed

This card opens by pulling the left panel carefully from behind the right (reversed for the first card)

 My mum asked me to make this for her neighbour's parents but didn't have a lot of details to give me which is why it's very simply decorated. The card when folded flat is only 4" x 4" but opens out to make a much bigger impression.

Verity Rose Split Panel Card

Close up of the Verity Rose Character

I made an envelope for the card using scrapbook paper

I made this card for Chris's auntie Margy who celebrates her birthday tomorrow. I had made a card for Margy a couple of months ago but ended up giving it to someone else when I was going through a bit of a creative dry spot and I needed a card in a hurry. I actually think I prefer this one. The backing patterned card is from Crafter's Companion's Kimono collection and the card is Adorable Scoreable in a pale blue colour - this card was from a prize I won years ago but I've been hoarding it for special occasions like this one, the blue is just perfect for this image which was coloured in with Flexmarkers and a little bit of silver Sparkle pen.

I've made a couple of other cards but the birthdays for the people involved haven't happened yet so I don't want to share just in case they see them. As it's Margy's birthday in a few hours I thought it would be okay to put it up a bit early. Hopefully I'll get a bit of crafting done over the weekend but it really depends how I feel - as much as I love crafting a lot of the products I regularly use like glues and alcohol markers have a detrimental effect on my chest and I spend half the night after the crafting session coughing crud up so I'm not crafting as much as I'd like to be doing. Perhaps this is an opportunity to try some different techniques I'd certainly like to improve my pencil colouring and painting with watercolours. I'd love to see what you've all come up with so please leave a link to your blogs in the comments section. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

Mothering Sunday Cards

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a wonderful Mothering Sunday weekend. For those who don't read my Facebook page I had a bit of a disaster with a can of Crafter's Companion Spray and Stick adhesive yesterday and I now have a lot less hair than I did before the weekend started. Before anyone assumes the worst it didn't explode or anything well not in the fire sense anyway but wouldn't stop squirting liquid glue everywhere even with the nozzle off! Unfortunately even though I took the precaution of spraying the stamps I wanted to mount in an old box, the stuff went everywhere as I tried in vain to stop it including in my hair. I ended up holding the can underwater in a bucket until it emptied out. Please don't panic if you have this product in your stash, mine was at least 3 years old and I'm sure it's not something that happens very often. The glue is extremely sticky and it was very hard to get out of my hair, loads came out as I worked on it with a fine toothed comb and I'll confess that after nearly an hour (my head was really sore at this point) I ended up cutting two big clumps of hair out as I couldn't face any more combing. Luckily I am blessed with a generous amount of hair so I'm able to sort of hide the straggly bits left by my scissor work.

Gluey disasters aside I'd like to share a couple of cards I made for my mum this Mothering Sunday. By the way has anyone noticed how hard it is to find a Mothering Sunday sentiment stamp? If anyone is interested 
the third Sunday before Easter is called Mothering Sunday not Mother's Day as it is commonly referred to. Although we celebrate our mums on this day in the UK it's actually a day when you are meant to go back to your mother church - the place where you were baptised - and dates back to the 16th century. Mother's Day in the USA is the 2nd Sunday in May and dates back to the late 1800s and is a secular holiday. Which ever day you celebrate it, honouring your mum is a worth while thing and it's good that we have a day to spoil them. I just wish I could get my hands on a Mothering Sunday sentiment instead of just Mother's Day as I'm a bit pedantic.

The first card I'd like to share is a butterfly A5 card using Crafter's Companion Spectrum Noir Sparkle pens and Flight of Fancy stamps.

I'm sorry the photo isn't very clear but you get the general idea - the sentiment says For a Special MUM. Unfortunately you can't really see the sparkle on the butterflies. According to Leanne from Crafter's Companion the prototype sparkle pens were sent back around 20 times before she was satisfied with the amount of sparkle in the pens but personally I would have send them back a few more times because I don't think they are a patch on Wink of Stella and the purple (shows here black for some reason) was especially poor in the shimmer department. In fact I ended up going over it with my clear Wink of Stella just to get some shimmer to it! They don't blend very well on ordinary card stock so I recommend using a good quality water colour card if you want to blend the colours together and work fast as they dry a lot quicker than I was expecting. On the plus side the pens are a bit cheaper than the Wink of Stella and the colours are vibrant and fresh - I used the Glitz and Glamour collection on this card and for three pens I paid £11.04 BUT that is the Gold Member price not the usual RRP.

My second card is a Split Panel card featuring another Crafter's Companion stamp set but this time one of the new Verity Rose stamps - Starlet. I fell in love with these stamps and I've only got one set so far but intend to own all of them at some point. The images are fun, feisty and fabulous and are 1920s in style. The only downside is the stamps are quite small which really suits the split panel card (it's only 41/4" x 51/2") but would be lost on a 8" square card so I wish they'd come out with a larger version of the stamps. I also added one of the Flights of Fancy butterflies to the card as my mum really loves butterflies.

Starlet Verity Rose Split Panel card

Fun, feisty and fabulous - Verity Rose.

The glitter background is some non shedding glitter card from The Works and it is also FABULOUS!!! It's one of the smoothest glitter cards I've ever worked with and a real pleasure to use. I coloured the entire image in using Flex Markers then went over the clothing etc with the same shimmer pens that I used on the first card as I wanted to see how they compared to the usual clear Wink of Stella I normally use over alcohol ink coloured images. I also added a few highlights on her dress and head piece using a Jelly Roll glitter pen and added the flat back pearl as shown. I made a card for my wonderful mum-in-law very similar to this one but forgot to take a photo of it before I gave it to her yesterday.

Crafter's Companion are now on the Hochanda craft channel and have a week (until this coming Thursday) of special offers so do check them out there on on their website www.crafterscompanion.co.uk . I am really looking forward to the Sheena Douglass release called "Day of the Dead" which features sugar skulls and mock zombie wedding couples as well as some beautiful floral images and is launched tomorrow on Hochanda. I love sugar skulls and zombies so I can't wait to see the collection.

Passion For Promarkers is having a blog challenge over on their site so I may enter this card even though the colouring is pretty basic.

I hope to have a few more cards to share with you soon. 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

I'm on a roll - another masculine card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a brilliant Valentine's Day weekend. It's very cold with wintery showers here on the east coast which makes it perfect crafting weather. I've only got one card to share with you at the moment (there are a few ideas bubbling away in my brain though!). It was my dad-in-law's birthday yesterday and I made him a Split Panel Card inspired by Debbie Henderson's tutorial on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhLD3ZFCWHg - please click the link to see the card that inspired mine.

Birthday Wishes Dad card

To make this card I cut a sheet of A4 black card stock down to 28 cm so it's easier to score exactly in half then cut it into two pieces length wise (cut at 10.5 cm). Although I cut the card down so I could score it at 14 cm it's not actually necessary to do so as you cut most of the front panel off. Just to mix things up a bit I do most of the other cutting in inches (sorry for the confusion). I lined the score line of the card base up to 2 inch mark on my Woodware paper trimmer and cut most of the front of the card off leaving a 2 inch flap. I trimmed the cut off piece down to 2 inches and placed on one side. There wasn't quite enough card left to make the connecting panel so I cut a strip off the spare black card from my first cut so I ended up with a panel 4 1/4 " by 2 ". I cut a panel of white card 13.5 cm x 10 cm (sorry back to metric) and adhered it to the inside of the cut down card blank leaving a small border around the panel. I cut two lots of matching patterned paper down to 4" by 1 3/4" and adhered them on to one of the cut black panels and on the top flap of the card. I cut a piece of white card to the same size and stuck it to the remaining black panel. I used the alphabet die that came with Die Cutting Essentials: Special Edition Kit to die cut the word DAD out of a scrap of the spotted paper and added it to the white and black panel as shown using a glue pen. I lined the patterned paper covered panel with the bottom edge of the card blank and held it in place with a paper clip then added strips of d/s tape to the bottom and top part of the DAD panel making sure that the middle part which goes over the inside of the card was free of tape. I removed all the backing paper from the tape and holding down the top flap, carefully lined the panel over the top and base before sticking it down as shown. I die cut a glittery star using gold glitter paper and a Sizzix Thinlets die "BE THANKFUL" (I think) and adhered it in the centre of the white panel. The gold foiled hearts were left over after using a Crafter's Companion Diesire A6 Create a Card Shining Star Metal Die. I stuck these down using either small foam pads or a dab of glue. I stamped a sentiment in the exposed panel on the right hand side of the card front as shown.

Inside of the card decorated with another diecut star and foiled stars

Card will comfortably stand up on it's own

I really like this new style card and it has a lot of possibilities for decoration, it's my brother-in-law's birthday at the beginning of next week so I shall make him a split panel card too but probably with Steam punk elements to it as I know he likes that sort of thing.

I hope you've enjoyed this card share and tutorial, please check out Debbie Henderson's YouTube to see what inspired me and if you are inspired by my take on it, then I'd love to see what you come up with. Please leave a link or any comments/questions in the usual places and I look forward to sharing another card with you soon. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx