Hunting for Eggs

Easter Bunnies Invade:

We've planned an Easter egg hunt...

I've written the clues as if they were from the Easter bunny himself, and 'weathered' the tags a bit for 'authenticity'. Then I've stamped various spring-y images onto the tags and little boxes I made:

These aren't the eggs... no, they will most definitely be made of chocolate. These are some egg decorations:

Easter Fun

It goes without saying that Easter is an opportunity for crafting. I'm working on the essentials of an Easter egg hunt at the moment, but as a taster I'm uploading the card I have made for my husband-to-be. His ideas about tattoos, designs, logos and artwork have inspired me to use the negative space of an egg shape to act as a frame for my stamp-tastic display (thanks to the Sassafras Lass Head in the Clouds collection).

I love these stamps - I carried on stamping on the envelope:

Push the Button

Robot Boy says 'beep beep beep!'

I borrowed a robot stamp from my fellow creative Odeline, and combined with a robot-themed set of paper I've had for years, came up with a collection of cards. Here is a preview:

A Pot of Luck

What do you do when an unexpected gift comes your way? Go to DaFont.com, download their Lucky Charms font, and stick it all together:

I stamped and embossed the 'Thank You' message to match the colour I used for the money pot:

...and used the wonderful Cuttlebug to emboss the motif along the base of the card:

I Tried to Make a Rose

... And I made a little video. Watch out, it's my first video, so it's not perfect. If you can keep up, send me pics of the roses you make :-)




Thanks go to Tim Holtz, my mum, and Mouse Potato Designs.

Picture Perfect

Probably not one of us enjoys posing for pictures, but the result on my friend's wedding day didn't turn out too bad :-). I tried to stay true to the wedding colours by avoiding pink - even though you can't see from the black and white photo that the dresses were blue! That was my personal challenge - to avoid pink. The real challenge I've entered is to submit a page in Shabby Chic style, here. Fingers crossed! The page in full:


I half-rubbed the rub-on, then lifted it, repositioned it and finished the rubbing, to achieve that imperfect, misaligned look, and then I sanded it with fine sandpaper to age it even more.

I used my amazing script stamp again, with Stazon ink, to achieve an antique-like feel. The butterfly is wooden, and I inked it with a blue and a gold ink before adding the script stamp in black. The flower is made from sugar paper, again with the script stamp, and influenced very heavily by various people's takes on Tim Holtz's grunge roses, like this one from Mouse Potato Designs (thanks, Felicia!). More on this above, very soon.



And I added some other embellishments that made it feel a bit Shabby, and a little bit Chic too. The clock was printed on acetate and fixed to the page with a tiny brad, and the hands I cut - painstakingly - myself. I stained the tag with coffee and chalked the edges, and added a coin embellishment that was actually taken from a pair of earrings.



I also sanded the photo - edges and face - to age it, and weathered the paper behind it by crumpling, inking, sanding and then ironing it flat again.

Finding Dog: The Story of Django

I've finished my D-O-G album - I had just enough photos to fill it.

To give a little homage to who he's named after - Django Reinhardt - I used my new music score stamp and then printed captions over it for the journalling, which I think really works.

St Paddy's Day

... a little late in posting, but the party was so good, I've only just recovered! I dug out all the green materials I could find for these cards:

Peggy Sue

Today I got to hang the washing out in the garden for the first time this year, and I was pleasantly reminded of some presents I got for Christmas:


A pegbag and some cute little peg magnets! So it got me thinking... and I gathered a few things together:



...namely, some plain ol' wooden pegs that I've never used (for lack of warm weather to hang washing out in), some newly acquired but much-waited-for Memento Ink (in Tuxedo Black - more colours to come!), and a not-yet-used script stamp. The script stamp rocks by the way:



I pegged the pegs onto a piece of cardboard, so they all sat in a line, and made sure they were even, so the stamp would cover them uniformly. And here you go:



The Memento Ink should last, apparently, but I just might not risk the elements and use them indoors instead!

Mum's Day

In the UK and Ireland it was Mother's Day this Sunday just gone. While mine was off gallivanting around the West Country, I was wondering how she would like my card for her.



The materials: some new papers I found at a craft fair in Antwerp (Webster's Pages - for me they were quite hard to track down, and I can't find a link online that will go directly to a page that shows you all of them), some ribbon, some flowers and some epoxy stickers from Paperchase. The letters were cut using the Cricut and then chalked to give an aged look.



The reaction? "I NEED that paper!"

Catching Up

Gifts of new paper bring new album pages. I still have many photos to scrapbook... gotta keep on catching up!

Vintage Gentleman

At a craft fair in Antwerp I found a small set of paper with a vintage-style theme. Some of them are feminine, but some are distinctly more masculine, and I jumped at the chance to use them. I post this card safe in the knowledge that my father won't look at my blog between now and Fathers' Day!

Make Like a Tree...

...ahem, I mean, make a tree card. Over the next few weeks I'll be exploring how to achieve masculine looks from what I think are essentially feminine objects (inasmuch as society has deemed them thus) - so, I'll use leaves instead of flowers, for example. Here is a tree card I made:



I cut and scored the leaves by hand and shaded their edges with chalk:

The One with the Waggly Tail

So, we got a dog. He's a rescue - he was found on the streets; how anyone could ever abandon that face is beyond me. We called him Django.



I've made a mini word album for him. I cut the letters with the Cricut.



I added some embellishments like collar tags, and couldn't resist adding some ribbony bits and pieces:



And for the more technical stuff, I punched holes big enough for the rings and ribbon and page-turning to fit, and sanded the edges and shaded them with chalk:


Now I just need to add the photos...

Fill the House with Flowers

To regain a balance of the masculine and feminine aspects in our household, I am making flowers to put around the house. The latest addition is a flower garland strung up in the WC, which I put in in front of the mirrors so its effect is doubled. I cut the flower shapes in various sizes from an unwanted leaflet, and fixed them together with thread and fishing wire.