Chocolate!

My niece was raving about something incredibly "chocolatey" she had eaten the other day on FB - which inspired this simple chocolate card for her.

Ivory hammered card stock, chocolate and gold ribbon.  Image and chocolates from MCS.  Image is mounted on some gorgeous craftwork cards papers in ivory and chocolate, and mounted on foam tape, as are the chocolates.   The photo doesn't do the chocolates justice - they look good enough to eat!



I am a Happy Bunny!

No card today, but just wanted to share some good news!  Got back from weekly visit to nurse for IMindoors, followed by the fortnightly food shop to find a letter from Surrey Police in reply to one I sent to them about my fixed penalty parking fine.  (you may recall I mentioned the unfair fine in an earlier post)  You can imagine I was opening the letter before I got the shopping in from the car!  Well result - they have cancelled my fine - so I have an extra £30 in my craft stash pot!

Happy, Happy Bunny here!

Male Birthday Card

Made this card for a very dear old school friend of mine, whose Birthday it is today.  He spent a lot of his life at sea, so thought this Thomas Kincaide image would be most apt.

I am also showing the matching insert for this card - as I have just discovered today that he has moved house and I sent the card to his old address!  duh!  If he doesn't receive the original - he can catch up with what I made for him here!  Hope you like the sentiment Michael (- you can click on the image to make it larger)!

Paint Fusion - Berries

Well I have done it - produced my first Paint Fusion Effort - actually using acrylics (yes I know I did a couple of practise attempts with icing but this is the real thing!)

Whilst in town during the week I treated myself to some paint brushes from The Works, and some acrylic paints from Wilkinson's - yup that's me - last of the big spenders!   I got 7 large tubes of paint at 99p each and a box of 12 small tubes for £2.50 - so under a tenner!   I thought I would have a practise just to see if I could do it and I can always invest in the proper paints at a later date.   The downside was that I had to mix my shades first, but it wasn't too much of a problem.  I also bought a cheap larger set of paint brushes from Wilkinson's but they weren't brilliant - but sufficed - shall look for a better set.

So I am secretly quite chuffed at my first venture into painting - I have never been good at art, although I like the relaxation of colouring stamps with promarkers, and am getting some results now with water-coouring, but I always wanted to learn "barge painting"/folk art.  (My family will tell you that the only think I can paint is emulstion on the walls - although I prefer wall-papering, and for heaven's sake don't let me loose with gloss paint! - undercoat yes - gloss NO!) so this really is an achievement for me.  Have even amazed my kids - and my son and his wife are both brilliant artists!

Finally I will own up to a couple of "happy accidents".  I didn't quite achieve the transparent centres to the flowers as per Sheena's DVD.  However, having obliterated the stamens on the stamp, and painted the yellow centre - I had a brainwave - I re-inked the stamp and wiped off the petals and just stamped the stamen part over the paint!  result!   Also when I came to stress emboss the edge and the swirls - I didn't think the versamark had stamped for the swirls - so I redid them - seems I now have swirls of ribbon!  - have I discovered a new technique quite by chance?  bet I couldn't get the same result again!



Flowers in my life!

My youngest granddaughters came to visit today for about an hour - and needless to say they wanted to do craft - well the eldest nearly five year old did - and of course the nearly two year old has to do everything her sister does!  I showed them some of the flowers I had been making - and they wanted to make some .....

so here is what they produced:

They did need a little help with the balling of the flowers though eldest one gradually realised that you needed a lot of pressure to do it, but they loved the flowersoft - and I now have a lot more bowls of colours decanted, as they wanted to see how many colours I had!  plus one bowl which I fear has two colours in it courtesy of the nearly 2 year old!    We had to take a picture of the finished flowers, which ended up on some of my best pearlescent cardstock (as I it was first piece I found!) and littlest one designed where the flowers had to be glued!

As you will see we also had to take a photo of the two of them together holding their finished card.  I must add here that the chair they are sitting in is a family heirloom, and was my mother's when she was a child (albeit it has been recovered many years ago - but the original material is still there underneath).  My mum would have been 100 years old next month and the chair was second hand when she owned it - so heaven knows how old it is,

and here are some more flowers in my life today - I received the plant pot and also the bulbs for my Ruby Wedding (separate pressies) and they looked so beautiful today I had to take some photos!

 

Tactile Card

Made this today for my mum's cousin, who is now blind, who will be 89 this month.   A little bit busy perhaps, but I wanted to make it as tactile as possible.  Do you think it is ok?

Ivory hammered card stock, folded to A5 size.  The backing paper, ribbon. bow, buttons and name letters are from Papermania Lemon Sorbet collection.  Matting layer is green mirri.   Martha Stewart punch and an X-cut dimension butterfly punch hopefully will also add a bit of touchy feely, as well as the little heart-shaped buckle.  Flowers were created from a Woodware punch, and the swirls were sizix die.  Flowersoft in the cente of the flowers - so another texture to feel.

Another attempt at Icing Fusion!

Having worked my socks off in the garden this afternoon I decided to have another play today.  Whilst at a sugarcraft exhibition yesterday I came across some un-inked stamp pads for use with liquid cake colouring.  I dithered about getting one as they were £5 and obviously you could only use one colour on them!  I then forgot to go back to the stand and buy one!   However, googling for un-inked stamp pads I came across a tip for making your own with cut and dry foam! ..........   well I have some of that and thought ooo - can just cut a small piece for the colours I want to use!

So I decided to try out the Cherry Blossom today - I stamped the branch with brown liquid icing - it wasn't a perfect image - so I filled in some of the gaps with a brown food pen.   I then added the dots of pink and white royal icing and scribbled them together with a cocktail stick!  I still haven't got the consistency of the icing quite right yet!  However, I am pleased that I have learned how to stamp on icing now! - so count a day lost you don't learn something!

I am just going to have to save up for the proper paints - unfortunately the craft pot is going to be diminished by a fixed penalty notice I received yesterday whilst at the Exhibition!   Bit miffed about it - as the car park attendant had shown me where to park as there were no spaces left in the car park, but said he had been told to let disabled drivers park on the double yellow lines!    I parked carefully well up against a wall to make sure the car was well tucked in  (displaying my disabled permit) - as further up the road past a sign that said "no cars or motorbikes except for access" cars had parked on both sides of the road (no yellow lines - and yes they all got tickets too!)   My notice said it was because I was double parked - well I wasn't when I left the car and wasn't when I returned to the car - it would appear that somebody parked opposite me during that time thus causing me to get a ticket!    I was more than a little miffed to say the least, as I had made every effort to park tidily and legally - the car park chappie had originally wanted me to park further up and I refused!   It rather spoilt a nice day out!   I have appealed - so shall await the outcome - if it is not rescinded £30 of my craft cash will be going on the fine!

Paint Fusion - or should that be Icing Fusion! - 1st attempt

Well it has been a day of problems with the internet today - think BT are mucking about with the phone lines!  So having had another fix of Sheena's DVD and getting eldest granddaughter hooked - I decided to abandon cyberspace, and try my hand at some paint fusion!  Only ONE big problem - don't have any paints, and only bristle brushes!   and I was itching to have a go!

Anyway undaunted I decided to have a bash at practising with icing as I had a tub of it mixed up and going to waste!   Was a bit diffiicult to gauge what consistency I needed the icing.

I covered a board with ivory regal ice and then pressed the daisy stamps lightly to get a rough outline.  I didn't want to make the first blue coat too dark, but think I could have been a bit bolder adding the colour - but hey ho this was a first practise.  If I did it with icing again - think I would coat the board first with Royal icing rather than sugarpaste and then with my food colour pens stamp the image - although as this would never be eaten - could use ordinary inkpad I suppose.

So here are a couple of views of my first attempt (different lighting!) - bit "el crappo", and the leaves need a lot more practise and alteration of the consistency, and I also did them free-hand!

No doubt about it - got to order some proper paints and get the synthetic brushes!

Male birthday card (tongue in cheek!)

Made this card for husband of very good pal - think he may kill me when he gets it!   As the "chop chop" quote is a standing joke between us!  Hope he has got a sense of humour!

Cardstock - hammered ivory card.  Image is from Joanna Sheen Vintage Hollywood, mounted on to cream and chocolate paper from craftwork cards.  Same chocolate paper used at base with the cream paper threaded through it and ivory candi added, and also a craftwork cards sentiment.

Simple Fairy

Look what I won at sugarcraft club tonight!  Isn't she sweet.  She was one of two demo'ed by Frances McNaughton of Frankly Sweet.  Can see I am going to have fun making some more of these.   Can you guess what her legs and arms are made from? ..........

...... they are candy sticks or, as those of us who are old enough to remember sweet cigarettes - which of course are no longer sold, as children apparently can get hooked on real cigarettes by eating the candy ones!

Christening Cake

You may recall the sugar trainers I made earlier for this cake (as well as the paper ones I made for the exploding box that I have made for his parents), well I thought I would share the finished cake with you.  Top tier is sponge/madeira cake and the bottom tier is rich fruit cake - both marzipanned and coated with sugarpaste.  I was asked to do the name in little blocks.  I had to create an extra block to accommodate the two names of the same length and the spare block has a little elephant on it.

As you can see I added a little teddy leaning against the top tier

with a bit of luck if you click on this picture you will see that the writing says - On your Christening Day and the Date.

close up of the blocks

another view of the cake.