Still sad but life goes on....

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all been enjoying the recent hot weather, it's freezing in comparison today, in fact it's been on the chilly side all weekend. It makes a pleasant change though, so I'm not really complaining. The cooler temperatures have given me an opportunity to get some crafting done. Our neighbours got married about ten days ago and I made them a gold and black easel card, it was my niece's birthday a couple of weeks ago and my husband's birthday last week so I'll be sharing the cards I made for all three occasions. I'm writing this post on my phone and it won't allow me to add the photos within the text and I can't see in which order the photos come out in until I add the post to the blog (it just has a load of code showing instead of the photos) so the photos will follow the text like the last couple of posts. The wedding card was made using a Sizzix Thinlets die set. The cake was die cut four times out of different card and I added gold details with some thick gold paint, this paint was thinned down to add splatters to the cake and to the black card pieces that make up the easel card and topper layer. The card for my niece was made using a mermaid die set, I diecut the mermaid and coloured it in with Pro-Markers, I gave her red hair because my niece has red hair and I coloured her tail in a variety of Blues as blue is her favourite colour. I coloured the fish in rainbow colours with extra blues to make the fish numbers to nine (she turned nine). The mermaid is mounted on to a circle piece because she actually slides up from the rocks up to the fish using a slider channel. I added a uple of yellow fish to the inside along with a sentiment. The Last card I made was a floating or invisible impossible card featuring a couple of saucy corsets 😉. I made this card using an acetate sheet cut to 5"x7" and scored and folded in the usual way, I was inspired by as recent YouTube tutorial by Sam AKA Mixed Up Craft who made a couple of acetate impossible cards and it reminded me of how much I'd enjoyed making the steampunk one a few months ago. The corsets were diecut out using a couple of dies from my stash, the black layer of the red and black corset has gold speckles on it because I used some of the card I had left from making the wedding card - I try to keep all my scraps of black card no matter how small because it's hard to get a true black card of a decent GSM and I don't have a huge amount of it in my stash. I made the red card layering pieces by stamping a lips pattern in versamark ink and heat embossing them with a crimson embossing powder. The sentiment was one from my stash. I hope you like my latest makes, I'll try to add the last blog challenge which is now severely delayed soon but I really need to get my entry for the Cardmaking of the Year competition finished - I liked the wedding card so much that I've duplicated it as one of the entries, I've also half made a fence box card which I'm planning on turning into a get well card so I need to complete that and make a third card to complete the entry. The closing date is the 7th (I think!) September so I haven't got a great deal of time to complete them. Once that's completed and sent off, I hope to get on track with blogging on a more regular basis, saying that Practical Publishing magazines haven't had their Papercrafter of the Year competition announced yet and usually the two competitions overlap and that requires a project (always my Achilles heel) and two cards so that will take up quite a bit of time assuming they have the competition this year.

That's pretty much everything caught up, 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 xxxxxx

Sad News.

Hello crafty friends, I want to apologise for the blog challenge post not being up as planned. Half of it is written but I haven't added any photos or anything. I'm not sure when it will be added. My beloved cat Jinx passed away this morning and I'm feeling too sad to write about crafting. I'm going to have a short break from crafting/blogging, I need to grieve, I've had Jinx in my life for over 17 years, I watched him take his first breath and I was with him when he took his last. He's been such a huge part of my life and I can't imagine what I'm going to do without him, his passing has ripped my heart in two. I don't even have many photos of him, like a lot of people most of my photos

are in digital form and mine (over 600)were saved on a memory card inside my old phone, when I transferred the card to this phone it automatically reformatted the card erasing all my folders including the one containing all of Jinx's photos. All I have are a few photos I've taken since getting my new phone and I'd like to share a few here.

21st single wiper birthday card.

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook. I hope you've all had a good weekend. Sorry it's been so long since my last blog post, the recent hot weather made it unbearable to craft in my tiny crudy, yesterday was the first time in weeks that I've been able to make anything and even just making one card in the heat gave me a migraine (have you ever tried to colour in when you've got pre-migraine auras - it's next to impossible!) I still have the residue of the migraine so I'll keep this short. The first card I'd like to share is one I made for my God Daughter's anniversary of her Baptism - she's a little angel so what could be more appropriate than an angel card. The image is from my stash and I coloured it in using Spectrum Noir Sparkle brush markers. The second card I'd like to share is one I made for my nephew's 21st birthday. I'm uploading straight from my phone and it's not doing things the way I'm used to so the photos may be after the text not within it as they usually are. I hope you like my latest makes, the Christmas in July 5from5 challenge will be up on the next couple of days - fingers crossed! Until next time - keep crafting! Love and crafty hugs, Sarah xx xx

Starry Impossible Card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook nook! I hope you are all well and looking forward to the weekend. As a rule I'm not particularly superstitious but I do tend to be a bit tense when it's Friday the 13th - it always seems to be a day when the mail contains unexpected bills or unwelcome visitors pop by (can't say I would personally choose to go visiting on Friday the 13th!) or niggling accidents happen - nothing particularly serious just enough to put me in a bad mood. Are you superstitious? Leave a comment below if you are.

Anyway whatever day of the week it is, I  find spending some time in my crudy crafting usually gets me out of my bad mood. As a precaution, I'm planning on having a bit of a craft session if I have the time.

I'd like to share a card I've made for one of my best friends, it's his birthday on Sunday and as I've mentioned before, I find men's cards to be particularly challenging. I've spent quite a few hours in the last couple of days trying to come up with something, I experimented with ink blended backgrounds (which would probably be easier to make if I had more than two distress oxides - as good as they are they still have limitations if you only have two colours lol) and though I like the results, nothing seemed to be the right thing so I decided to save my background s for another day and made an impossible card instead .

Although some of the star elements look red or gold in the photos, all the stars were diecut out using silver foiled cardstock.  Most of the stars were diecut out using unbranded dies from Ebay the exception being the largest star diecut which is a Crafter's Companion edge'ables die. It's actually a Christmas die but stars are great all year round. I teamed the silver stars with a deep blue card for a sophisticated look. I really like the look of this card, stars are great for men's cards and I think the silver and dark blue cardstock really go well together.

It's been pretty difficult to even get this post up because I'm using my phone again and it's now the fourth attempt writing this because everytime I accidentally moved my phone, it would delete the post without saving -- I'm being very careful not to move the phone as I type!

I hope you've enjoyed my latest make,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 xx xx

Christmas in July Blog Challenge

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you have all had a good weekend and that the weather isn't too much for you. It's not actually too bad here on the Yorkshire coast and in fact we've had overcast skies for a couple of days with what my husband calls mizzle (mist/ drizzle) which hangs around in the air but doesn't reach the ground,

It might not be the weather for it but July is good time to start making your Christmas cards etc if you haven't already started. A lot of the craft companies have released their Christmas collections or are about to so there's lots of gorgeous crafty goodies to choose from. Tbh I'm not planning on buying any new Christmas products this time as I have boxes of stuff from previous years and I really need to use some of it up plus it's not going to be long before the craft magazines start churning out Christmas freebies so I need to make space for those.

This month's blog challenge is perfect for anyone with an already overflowing Christmas craft stash like me because I'd like you to shop your stash and make five cards and/or tags using five Christmas craft items. You can either make five cards, five tags or a combination of both - heck if you're really inspired you could make five of each! You can use basic craft items such as card, inks and adhesive but try not to go out and buy new items but instead adapt what you have available. The more you use up, the more space you'll free up for new goodies!

I've already made around twenty cards so to encourage me to stick to the challenge and not be tempted to cheat if life gets in the way (we have to have yet another flat inspection this time the electrics which means the electrician needs access to every single socket - most of ours are covered by furniture which means emptying the crudy again plus stuff in the bedroom - argh!!!) I am going to share them now. Don't worry,  I made the cards in batches so you're not going to have to look at twenty plus photos lol. That's a point, you can either make five batch cards/tags or five bespoke ones, it's entirely up to you.

 Made last year for my great-niece who decided not to make an appearance until after Christmas Day

Although the cards are made in batches, they are still individual cards because I have used different colours of card  etc for each design. This means you can make multiples of the same design quickly while retaining that individual and handcrafted look.

I hope you like my examples of batch and bespoke Christmas cards and I really hope you'll join in this five from five Christmas in July blog challenge. The closing date is the 30th July which gives us a few weeks to get the cards made. I would love it if you joined in, if you'd like your cards etc to be added to the blog then please email me with photos and a few details of your makes by midnight on the 30th July so I can add a new blog post by the 1st August 2018. My email is craftynook@outlook.com.  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 xx