About Me

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I'm a retired primary school teacher, who started paper crafting in 2008, when I had a fancy to make my own Christmas cards. Since then, I have tried all sorts of techniques and styles - and I kind of like them all. I have been lucky enough to be on blog teams and large design teams and to do a bit of freelance demonstrating - and I love the challenge of working with different products. My crafting style is very varied - from junk journaling and art journaling, bookbinding and journal making, to quilting and patchwork - and of course I still make cards. This variety keeps me interested - and my crafty stash growing!! I'm always seeking inspiration for new projects.

Monday 28 October 2013

CCM #103 - Monochromatic Purple


Our theme this fortnight is Purple. Fiona would like to see projects that are all (or nearly all) purple - skin and hair colours are also allowed.  Our sponsors are Di's Digistamps who are offering a $10 gift voucher, and Hobby Art who are offering some gorgeous stamps. Pop over to the Crafty Cardmakers blog to check them out!

For this challenge I have made a card that was commissioned by a friend for her partner's Mum. I was asked for something floral and purple - so it seemed a perfect card for this challenge.

My base card is an 8" square white card. You can't see it as I totally covered it. The dark purple shimmery card is from a local market - it's really beautiful. I embossed this with Crafter's Companion Embossalicious 8x8 Chantilly Corner folder. I then used it to cover the base card completely.   

The scalloped square is cut from the C&C pastel textured effect card pad, which I then embossed with the Embossalicious 6x6 Swirl Corner folder. From the dark purple, I cut a mat using the largest of the Spellbinders Lace Doily Motif dies. The smaller, lighter mat is also from that set of dies.

I cut the letters for 'MUM' using my XCut Rome Alphabet die, while the numbers came from a very old Brenda Pinnick scrapbooking kit I bought from QVC eons ago. They were both coloured with my Lilac Promarker. 
The large, fabric flowers are something else that has been in my stash for a long time. They might have come from WHSmith, but I wouldn't swear to it. The smaller roses were a bargain from The Range. To finish it off I have used 3 Creative Expressions pearl hat pins, and the tiny pearls are Kanban.

Hopefully they will be happy with the card - I think it turned out quite well.

See you soon!
Cxxx

Monday 14 October 2013

CCM #102 - Shabby Chic!


Time for another challenge from Crafty Cardmakers. This time, Betty has chosen 'Shabby Chic' for her theme. She would like to see any project - scrapbook page, altered art, card - that is 'shabby chic'! Ours sponsors this time are Milk Coffee who are offering a prize of 5 digis from their store. And also Sir Stampalot.

I have chosen an image from Milk Coffee to use this week. I'm still getting used to my Promarkers, so have taken to doing little colour swatches before I start colouring in an image - just so I can check that they work together.
Hopefully you can read my writing and see which colours I ended up using. I cut her out using Spellbinders Marvellous squares. I have to say, this has not been one of my most favourite purchases because I felt you lost the detail on the outside of the largest die as it cut inside it. So, this time, after cutting the image out, and inking with Victorian Velvet DI, I then drew around the edge of the die, cut the decorative edging out, and re-attached it to the image.
I decided to create my own background. I started with a piece of thick card (it came as part of some packaging), and painted it with Eco Green Mulch paint. I covered this over with Orchid - using a very dry brush, which allowed the brown to still show through at the edges.
Using a spatula, I scraped white paint over the top of this making sure the pink showed through.
I then took a craft knife to the edges to distress them a bit, and remove a bit of the white around the edges.
I wrapped wide lace around the side, then added pink satin ribbon, and a thin decorative white one over the top. This was stuck onto a Craftwork Cards base card.  
The finishing touches include a large bow using the same lace, two Creative Expressions hat pins, a pearl and crystal embellishment from my local craft shop, and some pearls from my stash.

Make sure you pop on over to the Crafty Cardmakers blog to check out what they have been up to! Then get busy and post your creations!

I would like to enter this into:
A Creative Romance - Pink
CMC Copic Challenge Group - Anything Goes
Inkspirational - Anything Goes

Cxxx