My first valentines card!!

Well here I am again!! And I will present to you my first valentines card!!, as I said I have now discovered saturated canary stamps!!! Wahoo!! I'm in love with them!!! I have also ordered some kraftin kimmies, kenny k, mo manning, lili of the valley and some whimsy sylvite zee!! Can't wait to play with them all!! I have also ordered the set of Tim holtz distress pens and I am eagerly waiting there arrival from America!!
Anyway back to my first valentines card for this year....I used little lady bug stamp from saturated canary, I stamped her in black memento and coloured her using copics and then glittered her using Stickles.
I cut her out using spellbinders teardrop circle and then inked over the die using it as a stencil with Tim holtz black soot.
I used cooredinations card stock and may and layered with some patterned card stock, then I sanded the edges to create a distressed look.
I repeated this with other card stock and punched a border.
I then used silicone to mount my topper and used a selection of flowers pearls lace and ribbons to embellish my card.

I also have to share with you all my new love......a splodge mat!!! Now I have read mixed reviews about the splodge mat but I absolutely love it!!! I have always been able to blend successfully without one but it makes it so much easier and such a smooth blend (if that makes sense!!) everyone should try one!!!

My magnolia love coasters!!!!

Hey everybody back again (yes I know twice in one day!!) so anyway here is how I made my very popular love coasters from the magnolia 2013 collection!!!

To make these you will need:
A pack of undecorated MDF coasters.
A selection of your chosen magnolia stamps.
Watercolour paper.
A selection of Tim holtz distress ink pads.
Some vintage looking lace.
Collal decoupage varnish.
Collal glue.
Sanding block.
sheets of 12x12 vintage style papers.
Cut and dry foam.

To start making these gorgeous coasters I drew around each coaster onto my papers with a pencil (I used Melissa Francis papers and picked exactly which part of the paper I wanted to see on the coaster).

I then cut each circle out with scissors and mounted them using collal glue onto my MDF coaster , then leave them to dry for approx 2 hours, after which time you can use a craft knife and trim the edges of the paper round the coaster.

Using your sanding block distress the edges of the paper, use vintage photo and a piece of cut and dry foam and ink the edges of each coaster.

Place a piece of lace over the top of your coaster (I placed mine in the middle) and use your collal decoupage varnish to bind the lace to the coaster. You can coat the whole coaster with the varnish but make sure you place plenty over the edges of the lace.

While these are drying you can start and stamp your images onto your watercolour card and colour them with tim holtz ink. I then cut them out and used Martha Stewart glitter and glittered them in places.

When the coasters and the images are dried you can again use vintage photo to distress the edges of each image.

Now you are ready to mount the images onto each coaster, you do this by using your collal glue and placing them as desired on each coaster, again leave to dry.

When the glue has dried you can now Varnish the rest of the coaster with your collal decoupage varnish. Make sure as you are doing this you pay close attention to the edges of each image make sure you get plenty of varnish around the edges as it will bind the image to the coaster and ensure that the coasters are waterproof!!! I coated mine 3 times with the varnish to make sure the images were binded properly.

Please note the ink from the images and the distressing will move around when you are varnishing them, for this reason I washed my brush several times to ensure the minimum amount of ink was transferred!!!

I hope this helps everyone, and I will do a you tube video as promised but I am going away for. Week on Sunday so it will have to be when I return!!! If you have any questions please ask and I will try and help you xxx

Wow!!! I have finally discovered mobile blogging!!!!

Hi everybody!!! I seem to have finally discovered mobile blogging which now should make it so much easier to keep everyone up to date with all my creative makes!!
I have been so busy lately with the children and making things ready for valentines day. I have also decided that as well as my favourite magnolia stamps I will try others like saturated canary and kraftin kimmies!! I have discovered some beautiful stamps and the colouring you can do is amazing!!!
Anyway back to creating my posts for valentines day and a mini tutorial for my coasters that everyone seemed to love!!!!

Tilda Of Sweden

OH MY GOODNESS.................where has the time gone??? well i have had a very busy few weeks and I still have a very busy few weeks to come!!! I have though been able to make a couple of cards, in the middle of creating for the design team and partying for the jubilee!! I hope you like her Tilda of sweden done in the up and coming scandinavian style (vintage to you and me!!!).

I have stamped her and her wagon onto watercolour card in black stazon I have then coloured her in with my beloved distress inks.

Then I cut out a 6x6 shape on my grand calibur and mat and layered patterned papers over the top.

I embellished the card using lace (my favourite at the minute!!!) several die cuts and my very favourite of all time.............flowers!!!

I attatched a fairytale tag to the top of the card and printed off my own made sentiment which i also distressed. I accented my card with liquid pearls.

I have a new love for colouring in with distress inks and I am totally addicted to them!! I just seem to be able to create much more depth with the inks than with pens.

Tantrums, toddlers and creating!!

Nearly another week gone by... And I can confirm that I have made 4 cards this week- rather well done I think as I have also got a busy eBay business going at the minute and a business page on Facebook to update regular, mix that in with 2 children under 3 and a husband and fondness only knows how I get anything else done!!! Anyway excuses over... I have made four cards this week and I will hopefully get round to posting them on Friday- you never know by then I may have made even more (I can hope cant I not that I hold out much hope as know body bothered to tell me that you don't just have the terrible 2's to get over with children but the tantrummy (if that's a word) 3's or nearly 3's! RANT OFFICIALLY OVER!!!! I'm hoping I receive my next lorry load of crafting goodies very soon I can't wait and as ever I will be using them to create something amazing, till then though my crafting lovelies I will leave you to keep calm and carry on creating!!! (maybe I will use that theory tomorrow when my little monster insists on using my pro markers to colour in her colouring book)!!!!

My princesses invitation!

Nearly another week gone by... And I can confirm that I have made 4 cards this week- rather well done I think as I have also got a busy eBay business going at the minute and a business page on Facebook to update regular, mix that in with 2 children under 3 and a husband and fondness only knows how I get anything else done!!! Anyway excuses over... I have made four cards this week and I will hopefully get round to posting them on Friday- you never know by then I may have made even more (I can hope cant I not that I hold out much hope as know body bothered to tell me that you don't just have the terrible 2's to get over with children but the tantrummy (if that's a word) 3's or nearly 3's! RANT OFFICIALLY OVER!!!! I'm hoping I receive my next lorry load of crafting goodies very soon I can't wait and as ever I will be using them to create something amazing, till then though my crafting lovelies I will leave you to keep calm and carry on creating!!! (maybe I will use that theory tomorrow when my little monster insists on using my pro markers to colour in her colouring book)!!!!

DESIGN TEAM CARDS- MIMIC PICK OF THE WEEK

Hello!!!!! I hope you all like the pick of the week!!! as I said yesterday I was lucky enough to have been given the chance to play with this and design some cards from the show!!! I can now share with you all my cards that I designed!!

Ok, so having read some of peoples thoughts on the create and craft facebook page there is alot of mixed views about this disk!!! All I can say is give it a chance you won't regret it. When I received this kit I thought oh my... what am i going to do with this, but when I started playing with it all my apprehension disappeared!! It isn't my usual kind of card design (as you can see from my other samples!!) but you know what it is sometimes a great thing to give yourself a challenge and think outside of your usual crafty box!! I for one will now be doing this more often as I was so impressed with the art work and all the tools that you can use to make your project unique to you!!!

I am usually a stamper (after spending hundreds and a bit more... on lots of other crafting goodies!!!) I decided that that's what I loved to do. Usually my cd's only now come out when I need to do a quick card, for the men or when you cant get the stamp of the image I want to use, with this cd having line drawn images I could still be as creative as I would usually be using my stamps and colouring with promarkers and my polychromos and best of all I could make the papers to suit my card!!!!

Well done to everyone on the design team, there are some fabulous samples and I am really proud to be part of the team!!!