Persevering!

I treated myself to a chainmaille kit from Purple Moon Beads at the Bead Show earlier this year.  I started to make it, and got a bit frustrated as it was a tad fiddly, and it got put to one side.  However, over the past two days I have really made the effort and finally finished it.  Took a while as I found I needed to make it in daylight!  It is beautifully light to wear.

 

I have the ingredients to make a necklace - goodness knows how long that will take me. The necklace is in gold and has seed beads instead of the little balls. I think I may slightly rethinj the design and make it a bit easier - or find some larger rings to make it less fiddly to make!

 

 

 

another view

 

To reward myself for my perseverance, I made this bracelet this afternoon, which is very quick to make, and uses my favourite snowflake spacer beads, this time with small cat's eye beads that I  bought when they were on special offer at Beader's Companion.  (I have just ordered one of their scarf kits in blue - so this will match perfectly).   I do love this design and it looks really scrumptious in real life!

 

 

 

 

 

Wrinklies Card

 

I used the new Wrinklies cd for this card for my brother in law (fortunately he does have a good sense of humour and liked it.)

 

I imported the image and one of the backing papers into CAP2 and created a topper, by making faux matting and layering with a red square and "embossing" the various parts of the topper to make it appear in relief.  Added another sentiment from the cd on the topper.  Added my own greeting and the "Dave" which again was faux embossed.   I printed the whole thing onto photopaper.  This really brought out the embossing etc.  (I was surprised by how much - I had originally printed the image out inadvertently on plain card).

 

 

 

I then imported one of the inserts from the cd into CAP2.  The original layout was in landscape, but with a little bit of jiggling and I transformed it to the right layout for the card.



Granddaughter's Card

 

It is my No 2 Granddaughter's birthday today and we have all been out for a lovely family meal at the local Smith and Western, and this the card I made for her in CAP2.    It's a bit busy - but children seem to love that, and of course the fact that it had her name on it went down a storm.  Created using various Daisy Trail kits and the Serif The Good Life kits.  Triple matted in silver and shades of lilac on ivory pearlescent card.  A bit of jewelled ribbon added and flowers which were transformed from white to lilac with H20s and gilding paste.

 

 

 

 

The insert reflected the front using more of the fairy kits.  As she loves her crafting and is just getting to grips with using the computer, I bought her CAP2 for her birthday - and am looking forward to seeing what she produces with it.  Mind you her father is a systems architect (that's a sort of hitech computer programmer/website designer to you and me) I think he will get us much fun from this as her and hopefully will result in some nice father/daughter time.

 

 

 

 

Playing in the Kitchen

I had the urge to do something a bit different with some cakes I made yesterday.

 

 

 

 

 

A single layer sponge, topped with chocolate water icing, and feather iced.  A few swirls of chocolate buttercream added and some daisies dusted with edible gold dust.

 

 

 

 

Sponge cupcakes (made in my cupcake maker).  A touch of buttercream on top to stick the chocolate sugarpaste on - which had been rolled with my very old basket weave rolling pin that my dad made me many moons ago (If you remember the old twisted flex - it was made with that wrapped around a piece of dowelling, about the thickness of a broomhandle).

 

The sugarpaste was then dusted with edible gold lustre, a swirl of chocolate buttercream and some butterflies. dusted with gold lustre.

Friends are the families we choose for ourselves.

Made this card for a very good pal's birthday.  We were cyber friends on a forum many years ago, and now, having met up on many occasions, she has become a very good pal.  (We can be found playing words and other games on fb most evenings and it gets very competative!)

 

The image and the backing paper image were from Joanna Sheen's new House Mouse cd, imported into CAP2 and some faux embelishments, and the wording added.  I chose the image as I am known for my cake making!

Letter Rack

I managed to get to play in the Den at the weekend.  I had this letter rack that I had bought some months ago. 

 

I seem to have so much correspondence and results from all the tests the doc has been doing, and decided I need to keep them tidy instead of just lurking (and falling over) on the shelf of the wall unit!

 

So a bit of free-hand painting was in order!   I was quite pleased with the result, as a while since I have had the acrylic paint out    ....

 

 

 

 

.....  however, later that evening whilst watching the antiques roadshow, inspiration suddenly struck and I grabbed the gilding wax.  Wow - what a diffference - it went from home made looking to shop-bought looking.   Think gilding wax is my new favourite in my craft stash!



with gilding wax finish

Purple Hematite and Snowflake Spacer beads

 

I wish the picture did justice to the colour of the purple beads, which change colour as the light catches them - sometimes purple, sometimes bluey gold, and sometimes all three colours!

 

This was a very simple stretchy bracelet - I love the snowflake spacers too - so effective.

Granddaughter's first kumihino

When we went to Sandown I treated my no.2 granddaughter to a Kumi board  However, time has overtaken us and she hadn't got to use it, as she needed a bit of guidance to get started.  They popped over for an hour or so on Bank Holiday Monday, and I showed her how to start.  By the time she had gone home - she had done the weaving for this bracelet.  After she had gone home, I attached the magnetic clasps from my stash for her, as I thought it would be easier for her to take on and off.

 

Didn't she do well ?  I should add here that she is not 7 years old uintil the end of the month!

Work in Progress

I have been lax in blogging recently - mainly because there was a lot of work to be done in the garden.  I am on top of it for the moment, so can craft without feeling guilty!

Maggie's Den was declared "re-opened" for this year so if the weather stays good, I can get out there and get messy with paint etc.

I did venture out over the past couple of days and the following are projects which are work in progress.

scarf  jewellery

Another leaf - this time painted with pebeo fantasy paints
and a pendant which was filled with pebeo, which just needs some resin on the top to give it a domed finish

The next piece is almost finished.  I won some splodge away masks recently, so have used one of those.  I also tried my hand at creating a stamped embellishment.  (the stamp is painted with acrylic paint and a special gel) left to set and then peeled off the stamp.  I have polished it with gilding waxes in various shades and fixed it to the canvas with modelling past to give it some "movement".  The butterfly since I took this picture has now been painted with pebeo fantasy enamel paints today - so will show finished article when I have taken a photo.

abstract wall art

This next item was an experiment.  Having been on the Paverpol course, and done some "googling" I discovered you could use the technique on canvas.  I am going on another course in June to learn exactly how to do it, but in the meantime I thought I would try and experiment use a pva and water mix.  (OK it won't be weather-proof like Paverpol, but I just wanted to play.  This is definitely work in progress, although having played with it a little more today, and added some more paint and some gilding wax,  it is nearly finished.  An updated photo will be posted in due course.

Another abstract wall art using T-shirt material and dish cloths
soaked in watered down pva  and painted.