Playing with new purchases

I have been trying to find time to play with some of my purchases from the Make-It Show at Farnborough on Friday. Why is it when you have a load of new goodies - you just don't know where to start?

I had a card to do for my niece for this week, and really couldn't decide which of my goodies to use. I eventually opted for something simple using the Lili of the Valley funky images. I also bought some stamps of the images - so I can do different colours, but didn't get around to using them today.

The cardstock is from a pack I bought from the Craftwork Cards stand (Dawn and I went to chat to her old demo-ing buddy Julie Hickey who works for them - and of course had to buy something!). We bought a pack of 50 square scalloped cards each white and cream and then split them.

The images were mounted on a square of matching Lili of the Valley backing paper. The corners of this were punches with a new x-cut corner punch also purchased at the show. This was then mounted on to some of my precious Lakeland blue pearly paper.

Card was finished off with the numbers from a lovely peel-off sheet of numbers also bought at the show - it was fab all different sizes, and some "button" embellishments also bought from Craftwork cards - Apparently they are called "card candy" - and an apt description. (check out their site - scrummy colours!) Do you remember biting a smartie in half and licking out the chocolate and getting left with a shell - well these are just like that, but loads of lovely colours! I adhered mine with mini foam pads, but you could use silicone.

Card finally finished off with some blue organza ribbon, bought from my sugarcraft shop and the card edged with a Marvy felt pen.

Hope you like it.

(note to self: must give the scanner a good clean - can see some marks in scan that are not on the card!

Doesn't it know it is February?

I was admiring the snowdrops in the garden yesterday and decided to take some photos - and what did I discover on my little stroll - this rose bud! Now considering all the snow and frost we have had recently, I was absolutely amazed! Normally I would have pruned all the roses in November, but as I still had rose buds right through to Christmas, I hadn't got around to it.

So here is a picture of the rose, and one of my clumps of snowdrops.

I then decided to play with the images - the first two are results of playing with the images in PaintShopPro:

and then I used the same images again in Kaleidoscope Kreator. I am thinking that these would look lovely just as toppers on a card - or laminated and turned into coasters.

Hope you like them.

Valentine's Day Birthday Cakes

We have two family Birthdays on Valentine's Day - My eldest grandaughter's and my son's fiancee.

I have been unable to decide which image to use on Katharine's cake - so have taken pictures of all three variations. I love the teddybear one, but my son like's the "art deco" heart one, which I also like! I am going to ask Katharine to decide which one she would like!

Very simple cake - professional mix chocolate sponge cake, covered with ivory sugarpaste. The plaques were made from modelling/mexican paste (which is a mixture of sugarpaste & flowerpaste) and embossed with designs from Patchwork cutters, then dusted/painted with various edible dusts.

A

B

C

Whilst writing this blog - Katharine has emailed me and chosen cake B.

...........

Granddaughter's Cake

This is the cake for my granddaughter. The theme for her Birthday party is "High School Musical - Dress to Impress". I decided that High School Musical was too difficult to do - so my daughter came up with the idea of a Nintendo DS cake! Well it is not perfect, but actually looks better in reality than in the photo.
As her Nintendo is pink, I iced the cake in pale pink sugarpaste, and dusted the screens with a mixture of green and silver pearlised dusts, before adding the wording. The cake is the plain professional cake mix.

I hate piping on sponges, as no matter how careful I am I always seem to get a "knuckle" mark on them. Thought I had been very good and not got one this time, but obviously although my elbows were supported, and the cake was tilted as I did the writing I managed to catch the front of the cake! It looks worse on the photograph. because of shadows I suppose - it doesn't actually notice on the cake itself! phew! I don't suppose the children will notice!

DIL's card

Card Front

Close up of decoupage

As well as my eldest granddaughter's birthday on Valentine's Day - it is also my youngest granddaughter's mum's birthday on the same day!

I LOVE this Sandra Kuck image, which I bought last year when attending a demonstration locally by Tina Fallon. It reminded me so much of Bea, and I was going to keep it to use for her 3rd birthday - but decided that she probably wouldn't appreciate it, so I have decided to use it for her mum instead.

Having made up the decoupage I searched through all my stash to find something suitable to mount it on. I finally settled on this bronze card from my Kanban stash, and searching for other pieces to mount it on - I came across a piece of spritzed card that I had made, which I had cut a nestablity shape from - it was perfect, so with a little trimming I created a frame, bringing the decoupage over it slightly. Then triple mounted the frame on to the card. The sentiment was from another sheet in the series, that has smaller versions of the image on it. The ribbon along the bottom was a freebie Laura Ashley ribon with a recent craft magazine. Finally I tied an organza ribbon around it, and stuck on a matching silk rose (both from Joanna Sheen).

Eldest Granddaughter's Birthday Card

Front of card

Front of Card with bow undone

Front of Card showing the pop-up fairy inside.

Whilst my eldest granddaughter Ellie was off sick from school with shingles, we played about with a different "origami" fold. She really loved this fold, and has in fact showed her mum and got her doing it! So with inspiration from an idea Lynn (21Snoopy21) on the JS forum sent me. I have made the above card.

The card is a hammered deckle-edged one from Hobbycraft. Fairies from Lily's diecut fairies made by Lily of the Valley (Moss fairy and Primrose fairy). All the papers, vellum butterfly, etc were from freebie papers and vellums in a Making Cards magazine, designed by Nancy Watt. I found it very hard to use these papers and the vellum, as they are so beautiful, and I really wanted to just keep them and continue stroking them! However Ellie is worth parting with them for.

SIL's card

Last month I posted some pictures of cards my granddaughter and I had done for the January Challenge on the JS Forum.

I had nobody in mind when I made that card - it was just an experiment and for the challenge. However it was my SIL's birthday this week, and as I liked the image so much on that card, I actually took the topper off the card (as the main card was embossed, and I hadn't used to much glue it came off quite easily.) I layered it up some more, re-painted parts of the image and put it back on, added, ribbon, peel-offs and a greeting and did a personalised insert. I was quite pleased with the finished result.

This was the original card for the challenge - think you will agree the one above has turned it into something else entirely.

Playing about!

Today I am posting a creation made by my eldest granddaughter (7 next week).

It comes to something when she can create something better than me!

I have had "shingly" one again today. We spent the morning playing board games, and I suggested crafting this afternoon (as I have some birthday cards to make, and thought I could kill two birds with one stone so to speak) - "nah" was the reply.

After lunch she sat by the computer and said "what is this bit of paper Nanny?" to which I replied that I had been watching Michelle Marsden last night on Create and Craft and she was demonstrating a "fold" and that I had grabbed nearest bit of paper on the computer desk, and tried to follow the instructions to do it.

So Ellie wanted to have a go! I showed her the fold and away she went ! I explained that Michelle was showing a "star card/book". So we started off with plain white copier paper and then I found some old coloured copier paper, and we proceeded to make four more "folds" in different colours.

I didn't see the end of Michelle's demo - so we had to improvise on the cover - but I think Ellie's result is fantastic - far better than mine! Her binding to join the two bits of card that form the book - were some offcuts of a backing paper printed from a Joanna Sheen cd - crafters will understand that you don't throw offcuts away, when you have made a card!

She just decorated it with odds and ends out of my "Kanban" and Toppers Box.

I had nothing to do with the design. She chose her bits and layers them up. The blue flower on the back was a ready-made up one from a bag of floral bits - (can't even remember where they came from - possible Lakeland sale, as Ellie said her mum had a bag the same at home.) The "matching" blue flower on the front she made up herself from the same bag of flowers.

We took the pictures - and Ellie insisted on arranging the ribbons, before I took the photos - so that they "looked right!"

When Dawn arrived to pick her up later this afternoon - she thought it was fantastic! Ellie showed her how to do the folds, and took a template home so that her mum would know how to do it - and they are going to make some more at home.

Here are some more pictures:

The back:

Back and front together:

These two show the inside of the "book" . As we were only playing we used plain copier paper, although the original design was done with double-sided patterned paper. The second picture shows the fold a bit more clearly.

This is my effort - rubbish in comparison to the one that Ellie was making! although insides were same obviously!

a little snow picture

Have been busy with genealogy today, having made contact with a fourth cousin who has just started researching the family tree. Great news is she lives near where the ancestors came from - so hopefully when the better weather comes she will be looking up church records for the "clan".

Anyway I took a break from the family tree and saw that the second lot of snow early this evening had settled, and this is a photo of the tree fern outside my back door. (I normally wrap it in fleece for the winter, but hadn't got round to it this year - but it does look pretty).

I then played about in paintshoppro and created the background paper effect with the image. I love taking photos of plants/flowers in the garden and "mucking about" with them.