Brayering and confused blogging...

Hi Everyone!

Before I post my latest card I have to have a bit of a whinge. Blogger has changed all the layout and now I don't know how to use it anymore! I'd only just got used to everything and then they go and change it :( I haven't got a clue what I'm doing or where everything has vanished to. It took me 10 minutes to figure oout how to actually post something! Oh well. I'm sure I'll figure out how to use it again...maybe...eventually.

Anyway onto the card!

Hope you're all well :) I made this card a few days ago but I've been super busy with work and haven't had a chance to post it yet. I'm not too sure I like it. But I'll let you all have a look and see what you think.

Above is the card as a whole, and below is a close up of the main image.

I like how it looks in the close up (for a first go at brayering I think I did pretty well. If I do say so myself haha). But I don't likt the card as a whole. Something doesn't look right to me. Anyway, moving on. I used one of the stamps from the Stampin Up Forever Young set. I adore this image, it's just beautiful. I thought I would try to brayer a sunset background so the stamped image would look like a silhouette.

Stampin Up Elegant Thank You stamp & Forever Young stamp set

Stampin Up cardstock in Whisper White & Chocolate Chip

Stampin Up Ink in Real Red, Peach Parfait, Daffodil Delight & Chocolate Chip

Staz On Black Ink

Brayer

Let me know what you think. Hopefully I'll be able to get some more crafting done next week when I finally get a few days off! So check back for some new ideas :)

Bye for now



Its an Elebration!

Hi everyone!

Hope you all like the new blog layout. I am NEVER re-vamping it ever again! It's so annoying! I do prefer the look of the blog now, but my goodness it was hard work!

Anyway enough about that. You've not come to here me whinge, you've come to see some crafting and so crafting is what you shall see! I've got a card to share with you all that I made with a new stamp I bought from Stampin Up! It's called Elebration and you can find it in the 2011-2012 Stampin Up catalogue. I just love this little elephant. He (I've decided it's a boy) is so cute!

I used a piece of pale blue cardstock for the background, with blue and grey pieces of cardstock to layer. One thing I love about Stampin Up is that the papers, cards, inks and pens are all in the same colours so it's easy to make things match. The spotty patterned paper is the same shade of blue as the card the elephant is layered onto.

The elephant was coloured in using Promarkers, which are my all time favourite pens. They're alcohol based so they don't leave those horrible lines when you're colouring and they blend really well. You just have to make sure you use a good ink to stamp your image as the promarkers can cause the ink to bleed and it ruins your picture. I always use Staz On ink when using Promarkers. I used some Ruby Red Stickles glitter glue on the spots of the balloon so that it matched the background paper. Stickles is, in my opinion, the best glitter glue on the market because unlike some its not all glue and no glitter. It's really packed with glitter so it gives a really good sparkly finish.

Here is a list of all the products used in this card -

Stampin Up Elebration stamp

Stampin Up cardstock in Bashful Blue, Baja Breeze, Basic Grey & Whisper White

Stampin Up paper (part of a pack called Candy Cane Christmas which was a US exclusive)

Staz On Black ink

Promarkers in Basic Grey 2, Basic Grey 3, Basic Grey 4, Cool Aqua, Ruby, Buttercup, Pastel Blue & Honeycomb

Stickles glitter glue in Ruby Red.

Red satin ribbon (from local craft shop)

Hope you all like the card.

Bye for now!

P.S. I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has taken the time to comment. It really does mean a lot to me so thank you very much! :)

Sorry!

Hi everyone!

Just a quick post to say sorry about the state of my blog at the minute. I stupidly decided that revamping my blog would be a good idea. I did not realise how hard it was going to be! I'm kind of regretting my moment of madness. But i'm sure it will look great in the end. I hope.

Anyway, I'm not too sure how long my blog is going to be a mess. Hopefully I will have it sorted soon :)

Good luck to everyone having a bet in the Grand National this afternoon. I've got my bets on!

Bye for now

Easter gifts

Hi everyone!

Hope you all had a nice easter. I never thought I'd say it but I'm actually a bit sick of chocolate now!

Anyways I've been saying for days that I'd post the easter things I've made. I've managed to get some of the pics but I forgot to take photographs of a couple of things (whoops!). I'm sure you'll all forgive me though!

Anyway these are some carrot cakes I made a few days before easter. Originally I was going to make them for easter but because of all the chocolate and the fact it's my brothers birthday on easter day so we would already be having cake, I made them early. Apologies for the state of the surfaces in the pictures. I'd only just finished them and hadn't started clearing up yet but I wanted to get a picture of them all before people start stealing them! Also the pictures aren't the best quality because I took them on my mobile.

This is only the second time I've ever cooked anything that was edible! I'm not the best cook by a long shot but my mum is patiently trying to change that by teaching me to bake :) All 24 cakes have a little fondant carrot on top. Handmade by my fair hands :)  Its only ready-to-roll fondant icing with a little food colouring mixed in but they took FOREVER to make! I had to mix the colouring, roll out little balls of orange icing, then little balls of green icing, then make them look like carrots and then decorate them so they actually look a bit like carrots and leaves. It sounds so simple when I write it but I was stood in my kitchen for the best part of an hour and a half making them and sticking them onto my cakes!

I also made some cute little bird house gift boxes for my family. The yellow/pink ones were for the girls and the blue/green ones were for the boys.  You cant see it very well in the picture but they've got a creme egg inside. The boxes are really small. One creme egg is about all you can fit in them! The bird houses are basically a variation of the 2,4,6,8 box, which is the easiest box to make. I made mine into little bird houses by adding a roof and some little birdies. I'll add a list at the bottom of the items I used to make the bird houses.

As I said earlier I forgot to take pictures some other things I made. I had made some sour cream containers that looked like carrots and an easter bunny, punch art card. I found both on Pinterest (you can follow me on Pinterest, there's a link at the top of the page). If anyone is interested you can find a tutorial for the carrot sour cream containers here. I made mine slightly smaller than they are in this tutorial and I filled them with mini eggs. The bunny card can be found here. I changed the design to suit the items I have and my personal tastes.

Here is a list of the items I used to make the birdhouses -

Stampin Up cardstock in So Saffron, Pretty in Pink, Melon Mambo, Certainly Celery & Marina Mist

The Paper Mill cardstock in light blue

Stampin Up Mini library clips (part of a set)

Green patterned paper from K&Co

Pink patterned paper from My Minds Eye

Papermania rhinestones

Acetate (from local craft shop)

Bye for now!

Happy Easter and a Birthday boy!

Hi everyone!

Hope you are all having a nice relaxing easter. Just a quick post today. As well as being easter it is also my brothers birthday today. This is the card that I made for him.

This card uses the make a monster stamp set from Stampin Up. This is one of my favourite sets for boys cards because I don't have a lot of 'boy' themed stamp sets or accesories. Boys are so hard to make cards for!

Here is a full list of all the products used on this card -

Stampin Up stamp sets, Make a Monster, Queue up (discontinued) Happy Moments (discontinued)
Stampin Up cardstock in Taken with Teal & Green galore
Stampin Up Word Window punch
Spotty background paper (unsure which brand)
Promarkers in Powder Blue, Denim Blue, Leaf Green, Pear Green, Satin, Mint Green, Pink Carnation, Buttercup, Tulip Yellow, Cardinal Red, Peach & Honeycomb
Staz On Black Ink

I've got some pictures of my easter themed cards/goodies to post, which I will do within the next couple of days.

Bye for now!

Haul!

Hi everyone! Hope you're all ok :)

I've been on a little bit of a spending spree at Hobbycraft and eBay. I was really impressed with the delivery times of Hobbycraft's online shop. I ordered at 3pm on Wednesday and my stuff was delivered at 11am the next day! I'd never used it before, I usually just go to one of the shops, but I'll definitely use the online shop again! Here's the stuff I got from Hobbycraft :)

I got some more of the super sticky red double sided tape because I go through loads of the stuff! I also picked up some 3D foam. This foam is different than usual because its black rather than white. I thought it would look better on cards that are using dark colours. I also got a Tim Holtz Sizzix Bigz die. They're designed for the Sizzix Big Shot, but I've got a Cuttlebug and they fit through that fine :) I've not had a chance to usethe die yet but I've already got some ideas for scrapbook pages.

Next up I got a LOT of promarkers! I got 6 sets! I kind of went a little bit overboard but they were half price so I couldn't resist! I got the four seasons sets, spring, summer, autumn and winter. And then a skin tone set and a grey set. I think I've got a good range of colours to start my collection.

I've got a pretty good selection of colours but there's a few more I'd quite like. Mainly a darker purple, a black and maybe a couple of different greens and blues.

I plan to use these for my card making/scrapbooking etc but also for my art. I do a lot of manga style drawings so I thought I'd try colouring them for a change rather than leaving them as a plain, shaded pencil sketch.

I tested out all the pens to see the colours, which you can see below.

I also picked up a couple of the Promarker cases to store my pens in. I got these from eBay along with 2 Promarker blender pens (which aren't pictured). Here's some of the pens in the case. You can fit 24 pens in each case. I've got 32 pens at the minute but rather than squishing as many as I could into one case, I spread them out into the two cases and organised them by colours. So greys and blues are together on one side of the case with pinks, reds and oranges together on the other side. Then nudes, yellows and greens are together in the other case (which isn't pictured) along with my two blender pens.

So that's my little haul :) I'm also ordering a few Stampin Up single stamps sometime in the next week so I'll be sure to post them once I've got them. I'm also working on some easter themed things at the minute so I'll post them within the next few days once they're finished.

Bye for now!