Anything Goes Black and White Challenge

I haven't joined in with any challenges before, but I found this gorgeous ribbon in CostCo this week - its for decorating my Christmas present wrapping really, but when I saw that Anything Goes Challenge Blog were doing a black and white theme this week, I knew it would be perfect to make a really quick card.

 

I covered a strip of white card with the ribbon to make sure the black card didn't show through, then mounted it and added some black plastic pearls to areas on the design.  I matched these with some white liquid pearl dots to the right edge, and a CraftWork Cards black and white circular sentiment to finish it off.  Full card in under 5 minutes from start to finish which has to be a record for me!

Kraftin Kimmie Stamps

Kraftin Kimmie is a relatively new range of stamps from Canada - Kimmie recently celebrating her first anniversary - boy what a great range they've produced in just a year!   I love their Moonlight Whispers range - the characters are just gorgeous and colour up amazingly!  I bought a couple to try and had such fun with both of them.   I get mine in the UK from Quixotic Paperie and if you hurry on over to her store, Elaine has 10% off all rubber stamps until 13th October.

My first purchase is Suzette the Can Can girl - isn't she fab?  I stamped and coloured her with a mix of copics and pencils blended with sansoder and blending stumps.  I cut her out and mounted her onto color-core black magic card which I embossed using a "twinkle" crafts too embossing folder in my big kick, and sanded the embossed areas to reveal the color-core card to look like lights twinkling behind her on stage.  I added a co-ordinating strip of paper embossed again with a crafts too folder - this time damask which I adore.  A little card candy and copic colour-co-ordinated sentiment from craft works and a glitter strip finish off the card.

Most of the stamps come with a matching sentiment - I went for Rapunzel here because I could see lots of cards I could make with the sentiment of "let your hair down"  I coloured her with copics and pencils as before, but slightly over blended the hair so it looks a bit flat unfortunately (good excuse to have another go later!)  This time I used a Marianne D Creatables die to cut out the star border, and threaded some silver ribbon through it and mounted it onto black card.  I like the black background with these stamps - it really makes them pop, so I cut her out and half mounted her onto the black borders strip.  I stamped the sentiment in silver to match the ribbon and added another Craft Works sentiment, again, colour matched to the dress with the same copic (they colour so well with copics - the pearly card still shines through)

 

I've just ordered Cinderella from the same range - for her the sentiment is "its all about the shoes" which is very apt for me and many of my girl friends so can't wait to get her!

First Attempts at Scrapbooking

I've got a lot of scrapbooks - 6x6, 8x8, 12x12, mini, shaped - you name it, I've bought them all, but after buying they've sat, pristine in their wrappers, looking sad and lonely at the bottom of my crafting drawers, and some of them, I am ashamed to say, have sat there for nye on 5 or 6 years now.  Why?  Well up to now, I have to admit, they've somewhat scared the hell out of me.....

I can make cards, they're small, simple and for most people, a throw away item once the birthday or event is over.  But a scrapbook is bigger, and a more permanent record for you or whoever the recipient may be, the layouts are more complicated, there are photos to print, journalling to consider, embelishments, titles, double page spreads - not to mention trying to work out if your products are of 'archival' quality - its all just a big scary prospect, so I've just looked longingly at blogs and books and magazines and stroked my beautiful albums thinking "one day" I will be brave and I will take on the scrapbook challenge.

Well my friends - the whole of September was pretty much that "day"!  I did it, I bit the bullet and I did a scrapbook - and not being one to dip my toe in the water with the easy stuff, I went straight for a 12 x 12 book, to be given to someone as a gift! (and it was a boy, just to make it all a bit more complex as it was full of geology and rocks rather than flowers and glitter and manly embelishments are much harder to track down as we all know!)   Oh yes, no pressure then, just produce something beautiful, even if you've never done it before and you only have 3 weeks to do it.

This is why the blog has been pretty quiet of late - every waking non-working hour has been spent in the craft room, fidling with paper, stamps and photos and scratching my head (a lot) and going over and over the same pages trying to make it all "fit".  I have to say a big thanks to Lynne at the Craft Den for responding to my panicked questions and helping me with the last tricky layouts.  But finally I did it - I broke my srapbooking duck as it were, and, although it was very frustrating at times, and even more time consuming than I'd ever imagined, it wasn't nearly as scary as I'd feared, and I loved it, and I even think I ended up with some pretty decent pages for a beginner........

Now I can't share too many pages, as the photos aren't mine, but here's a select few:

My first page - monochrome and simple, with a border using victorian lace punch from martha stewart to add to the vintage effect.

I found gelogical papers hard to find, so printed out some pebble images and overlapped them to create a background, then found an image of rocks on the edge of a canyon, and cut them out to create a foreground - I love the finished effect.

I used a 'create a swirl' stamp to overstamp the printed poem of the glory of the garden and I think this gave a great effect, and I love the look of the "sliced" photo.

The last page was journalling stamps, and stamped tags in individual pockets for people at the retirement party to write their personal messages on.

A Crafty Recipe Solution

I made this cute little recipe tin for a friend who, like me, loves to cook.  Some of the stamps from Magnolia's  A Little Yummy for Your Tummy Collection made the perfect addition to the normal divider cards and they look cute with their faces poking out of the tins.

I love the little oven mit brads and the ginger bread cooker cutter on the outside.  The papers are Die Cuts With a View from the Nana's Kitchen Stack which is a personal favourite of mine, I added a little red gingham to complete the country kitchen look.

October's Craft Class

It was jewellery class day again today at the Craft Den which means a new design to get ready for next months class so everyone knows what we'll be making next time.

The next class is 1.30 - 3.30 pm on Saturday 2nd October and we'll be making this gorgeous charm necklace made from black agate, freshwater pearls and silver rings, beads and chains.  Classic design that would make an excellent homemade Christmas present for anyone looking for ideas......

The class costs £12 and this includes 2 hours of tuition plus all the materials to make the necklace which is yours to take away on the day.  No previous experience is necessary and tools will be provided if you don't have your own - but please bring jewellery pliers if you own some so you don't have to share.   Places are limited so call the Craft Den to reserve a place.

September's Jewellery Class Designs

In the class at Craft Den on Saturday 4th September, we will be making two bracelets:

A simple daisy chain, where the first daisy becomes the fastener for the bracelet.

 
A double-linked chain with Thai-silver melons and rainbow seed-beads.

If you want to join us and learn a new skill - call the Craft Den on 0114 2340732 to book a place.  The class costs just £8 for 2 hours hands-on tuition and this includes all the materials you need to make both bracelets which are yours to keep after the class.

Birthday Diva Two Ways

I needed to make an 18th and 40th Birthday card this week for my cousin's daughter and one of the book club girls respectively and I thought that "Diva" by my favourite digi-stamp artist Mo Manning would be just about perfick for both of them.

I coloured her up in two completely different ways - one pink, one green and blue and to be honest I'm not sure which I like best - the image itself just makes it so easy to colour it right.  Copics, blended pencils and quite a bit of glitter and crystal embelishment and you're good to go Diva-tastic.  I even used a little "smooch" pearl ink to highlight the pearls around her neck, highlighted with glossy accents.

The bracelet was for the 18th Birthday - it's a clubbers bracelet - the round beads glow in the dark :-)

A few card commissions

These are the cards I've made for people to send to friends and relatives recently

A new baby girl - ultra-cute Elzybells special delivery stamp - great to go either pink or blue with.

A tripple Bella card for a special 40th birthday showing how the birthday girl would spend the weekend with cake, cocktails and pressies from her mates.

Another Bella image - this time Eloise Greengrass from the chichiboulie fairy range - I love the way these colour up - lots of opportunities to get the sakura pen and glamour dust out too!

This is a sugar nellie stamp "Guitar Hero" - I used Smooch pearlised accent ink in moonlight colour to paint the guitar which added a touch of realism.

Finally another Bella (I'm becoming a bit of a Bella addict - there are just so many lovely stamps to choose from that there is always one to match the occassion you need an image for!)  This is Golfafella from the Fellabella range.  Rather than going straight to copics - I paper-pieced his jumper to give it a pringle feel and shaded over the top with pencils.  I did the same with the golf back to add a leather look.

A Cheesey Quiche Experiment........

My husband, who usually isn't around on our book group nights, is now at home, and therefore has to be fed along with the girls.  Not a problem normally, but this month I'd decided to make a 5 onion and gruyere quiche and my husband does not eat cheese - food of the devil according to him (he's pretty normal apart from the cheese-issue honest!)  So I was going to make him something or a separate "cheese-less quiche" but I thought I would experiment and see if I couldn't make a cheese-less section in the big quiche.

I lined the tin as normal, but then rolled out a quiche-height strip and stuck it in a V shape to create a separate section within the quiche.  Adding the greaseproof to fill with baking beans around all the sections was a bit trickier than filling the whole circle and I had to make sure there were enough beans to support the V until it firmed up during the blind baking process.  It was trickier still to get them out ;-)

But it seemed to work and after 20 minutes in the oven I had my very own pastry pie-chart!

This is the photo of the different flavours - after this stage I just added the egg and cream mixture carefully so that the cheese didn't leak into the special slice.....

....and hey presto - one husband-friendly slice of quiche without cheese!   The only issue was that the extra pastry in the V didn't crisp up like the edges and base as it was surrounded by the egg mixture, but if you need to keep your flavours separate it does work and you can always throw the slightly soft pastry once it's served its purpose.

New Rubber Stash

I spent all last night EZ-mounting my new rubbers stash - mostly a bitter-sweet haul from Elzybels following her decision to close her shop I just had to buy EVERYTHING I might ever want!  I have very sore fingers today!!!!   However the stash looks good now it's all organised by category in lovely clear binders - how sad am I :-)

All About the Boys

 It's was all male birthdays for me in July and I usually find men's cards hard but I was really pleased with the ones I came up so I thought I'd share a few.  My favourite was this one for my husband's friend who is a video game addict so this Mo Manning digi-stamp is just perfect!  I was very pleased with how well the jeans came out.  I coloured him with copics and pencils blended with sansoder.

Then we had a couple of bikers - one of the pedal power variety which is just a great wire topper mounted with a lot of silicon onto a mount and then onto an embossed happy birthday using my sissix.  The other biker prefers a bit more petrol so I used a kanban pop-up motobike and coloured it copics and metalic markers for all the chrome and added some bubblewrap behind the headlight to provide some texture.

Jewellery Class - This Saturday 1.30 - 3.30 at the Craft Den

Saturn Necklace

This week we will be making a "saturn" necklace, so named because some of the beads are encased in silver cages which look like planetary rings.  We will be learning how to get the beads inside the cage, how to make links from eye pins and practicing threading beads.

As I'm on holiday this week, so am not so rushed, there may even be cake to go with the beading.....

See you all on Saturday - if you haven't booked - call Lynne at the Craft Den asap as there are only a couple of places left.

A Foodies Tour of London (Day 1)

To celebrate our 3rd anniversary, my husband and I have been on a trip to London for a few days this week.

On Sunday we travelled down, dropped off the bags at the hotel and made our way via bus, got off and the wrong stop, tried another bus, and then gave up and jumped in a cab to the Royal Academy of Arts to see the Summer Exhibition. It was an interesting way to spend the afternoon and a few of the pictures really stood out, but as it is supposed to be an "open" exhibition, I was surprised to see how all the submitted works were mostly crushed into two small rooms whereas the major rooms were filled with work from the Royal Academisions. The standout pieces for us were definately the two pieces by David Mach RA, Silver Streak - a very large sculpture of a silver back gorilla made entirely out of coathangers, and my personal favourite, Babel Towers, an enormous collage of photos of buildings and people of clashing styles that come together somehow to make a piece in perfect perspective. Very clever, very beautiful and unfortunately very expensive (not that I have a wall big enough to display it on!) but one of those pictures that you could look at every day for the rest of your life and always see something different in it.

From there we went to Covent Garden to meet my husbands niece and her partner where we briefly watched (through our fingers at certain scary points) an ex cirque du soliel performer, up a large pole held only by rope and four strangers - mad man! We then moved to our first foodie experience of the weekend - dinner in the Real Greek on Long Acre which was, on the whole, disappointing.  The place has a nice feel, if a little Cheers c.1990 with the high chairs and tables (the chairs aren't that comfortable or easy to get in and out of if you're under average height either!), and the menu is good.  That's the good part.

On the negative, the service is abysmal!  It was busy, but not packed out, it was early on a Sunday evening so not peak time, we were given menus straight away but offered no drinks, and then we waited, and waited.  20 minutes later our order was finally taken, 20 minutes later most of it was delivered to table, except for my husbands kofte, which still hadn't arrived when the rest of us had almost finished our souvlaki and there was no waiting staff in sight to even complain to about it.  The souvlaki themselves were not hot enough and were pretty tasteless.  My dessert of Greek Sundae which proported on the menu to be a mix of pistachio and vanilla icecream with nuts, seeds and homemade kataifi was also a big disappointment.  At £5.25 it was quite pricey for what was essentially poor shop bought ice-cream, a couple of pumkin seeds and a bit of honey.  I can only assume that whoever usually made the kataifi had the night off as there was a distinct lack of it in my dessert......  I expected better.  The Real Greek didn't deliver.

A nice walk across Waterloo Bridge in the cool evening breeze followed, a more successful bus journey back to our hotel in the City ready for a mamoth day 2 - details to follow.

St Luke's Hospice Summer Fair Saturday 12th June

I will be volunteering on the jewellery stall at St Luke's Summer Fair this coming Saturday.  The fair starts at 12 noon and as parking is an issue at the hospice there is a free park and ride scheme operating from Tesco's on Abbeydale Road.

I have donated a lot of my handmade jewellery to St Luke's and will be selling that on the stall along with donations from other St Luke's supporters.  I know from personal experience when I lost my Dad three years ago to the big 'C' what a wonderful job all the staff do for the patients and their families at a time when they desperately need support, so am trying to do a little bit to pay them back.  I do hope you will come and support them - they get so little government funding and have to raise millions each year just to stay open.

Keep your fingers crossed that the rain stops by Friday as predicted too please......

Bank Holiday Weekend Beading Project

As I sat to watch our usual slaughtering on the annual Eurovision "we're an island with no friends" contest, I thought I had better have something to distract me from my frustrations at our numerous 'nil points' scores so I decided to have a go at a rather complicated beading project that I've had for a while.

It is a bead weave bracelet, in pretty shades of green, blue and purple made up of 4mm bicones and seed beads.  The pattern looked pretty incomprehensible to begin with, but once I got into the rhythm of the count I only made 3 mistakes.  I wished I'd done it on fireline rather than nymo as I split the thread unpicking one such mistake half way through but I managed to knot in a new piece where the knot shouldn't be noticeable - you need arms about 3ft long with these projects to stop the long lengths of thread from kinking :-)

Anyway, mishaps aside, I think the finished piece turned out pretty well....  (you may need to click the photo to enlarge it to see it properly as it hasn't come out that well once blogger has resized it to fit the page)

Moroccan Girls Night In

I had my girlfriends round the Friday before the jewellery class for a girls night in - we've had a couple of disappointing meals out recently and I pointed out that I thought for a fiver a head I could do a better job than the professionals - and, all modesty aside, I reckon I pretty much did ;-)

 

I went for a Moroccan theme on the whole, a regular favourite of mine and a good cuisine style to try if you want to spend more time with your guests than you do in the kitchen.  We started with a mezze of hot and cold dips, with herby pitta chips.   We had hummus, coriander and lime honeyed yoghurt, roasted beetroot and cumin dip, a spicy walnut and roasted red pepper dip, all cold and my take on Moutabel, served warm, but using small cubes of fried aubergine rather than the pulp from whole roasted ones as I find their texture unpalatable.  I simply fry them in olive oil with cumin and harissa and add finely grated lemon zest (a microplane works wonders here!) and lots of chopped fresh parsley to finish.

For the main course I made my signature lamb feta filo pie, which is essentially a mixture of Moroccan spiced minced lamb with red peppers, apricots and sultanas, with a layer of spinach, feta and pine nuts encased in either filo pastry or fuille de brick.  I served this with harrisa and pumpkin seed oil roasted potatoes tossed with rocket and a refreshing Moroccan carrot salad which is just grated carrot with a dressing of olive oil, cumin, orange juice and zest, honey and/or orange flower water with parsley, coriander and sliced black olives.  We were all eager to tuck in so I forgot to do an untouched close up shot - sorry!

For dessert, I had ambitious plans of finally using my Christmas present - a much hinted at molecular gastronomy kit - but it was a work night and I had been at work all day and having spent 2 hours the night before failing miserably to make rhubarb curls, I just had to admit defeat and scale down my plans....

I served a seasonal, and particularly un-Moroccan rhubarb verrine - apparently that's the de rigueur term for something "layered" in a glass - I know - how did we possibly reach 2010 without a specific word for such a dessert ;-)  This was basically, a layer of rhubarb fool at the bottom, with a layer or orange roasted rhubarb compote, and then a layer of crushed raffia biscuits for a little crunch and texture, topped, thanks to my birthday present of an ISI Espuma a very quick and easy elderflower mousse.  My plan had been to use some of the roasted rhubarb juice and my MSK kit to create rhubarb caviar through spherification - but I just ran out of time - I even asked that lovely man Alex who didn't quite win MasterChef this year if I could do it ahead of time - and thanks to the power of Twitter he graciously replied, but alas, it has to be done at the last minute or the process continues and you get a bowl full of jelly!  So I used what bits of curls I could rescue from the sticky mess that had once been a non-stick baking sheet, topped them off and with a nod to Heston and the 80's I sprinkled them with a packet of strawberry popping candy...

As it turns out - the candy was the bit the girls enjoyed the most - so next time ladies - you're all just getting a pack each!!!!

We finished off the evening with a few games of "just dance" on the wii - which you can see brought a few laughs - and not so visibly, a broken floorboard.............

Now the sun is shining I'm starting to think about this years BBQ party - are you ready girls?

Beaded Jewellery Classes

This coming saturday, I will be teaching my first ever jewellery class, at the Craft Den on Loxley Road from 1.30 - 3.30 pm.  We will be making this triple strand silver foil lined glass bead necklace - if you want to learn how, email sales@craftden.co.uk or contact Lynne on 234 0732 to book a place.

More classes will follow for different beaded jewellery projects so keep having a look at the Craft Den's website or follow my blog to make sure you see the updates.  Please note places are limited and the first class is almost full already.

Yesterday's class seemed to go down really well - great bunch of ladies who were very patient with me while I found my teaching "wings".  Thanks ladies - hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and that you will all enjoy wearing the lovely necklace and earrings we made.

The next scheduled class is 1.30 - 3.30 pm on Saturday 3rd July.  We will be making a set of jewellery along the lines of the pieces pictured below along with a matching bracelet and learning some new techniques.

Bookings can only be made via the Craft Den and not through my blog. 

Handmade Gift Exchange

Today was the day to exchange our gifts in the Handmade Gift Exchange organised by Mains restaurant in Suffolk.

I had been paired with Ann, a lovely lady who is a regular at the "sip and stitch" nights at the restaurant, and a knitter - one of the crafts I have never managed to master, so when discussing in our various emails what to make for each other, I was hopeful of something knitted :-)   I didn't want to know exactly what I would get, but sent a wedding photo to show my favourite colours and Ann mentioned that she liked to add beads to her knitting (beads in knitting, she must be some kind of magician.......)   And when I arrived home from work tonight there was a package sitting, smiling at me on the door mat, and inside was this beautiful creation.....

Teal is my favourite colour and makes up at least 50% of my wardrobe so this is going to go with so many of my outfits.  For once I am hoping for a cold weekend so I get the chance to try it out on Saturday night.  it looks like a lot of work to me and I really appreciate the time and effort it must have taken to make such a lovely handmade gift - thanks Ann!  :-)

For my part, I offered a variety of crafts and Ann was intrigued by the idea of a beaded watch and told me that she wears a lot of brown.  I lucked out and managed to find a lovely watch component with a brown pale face and took my inspiration and colour pallet from that.  The results are below - I decided to add a matching bracelet to make it more of a surprise and added a "surpriseabella" card to go with it.  I am really pleased with the way it turned out - the colours came out great and I got a lovely email from Ann who said she liked it very much which really made my day.

There was a bit of snag along the way though, as the brown pearls I'd bought to match the watch face did not have a wide enough hole for me to cross my beading thread through twice as the design requried, so I had to get out my trusty dremmel with a very fine drill bit, and with the aid of a lump of white-tac I had to re-drill every bead to make the hole a bit wider.......   

....there were a few hairy moments (luckily I bought more bead than I needed ;-)!) but much to my surprise it actually worked - phew - disaster averted and Ann could have a new watch!

This was my first gift exchange, but hopefully it won't be my last - it was a really interesting and worthwhile experience to be involved in - and gave me something to look forward to.  If you see another gift exchange - take part - it's like getting an extra birthday and the giving is great too...........

Floral Fervour

Just a quick post tonight featuring my favourite floral stamps from Elzybels.  I really love these stamps as they are so versatile - here used for birthday, wedding acceptance and even a sympathy card.  In all these cards I've used a multi-coloured stamping technique - either stamping difference dew drop ink pads directly onto the stamp to give a patchwork coloured effect as on the daisy, or with a brayer and a big and juicy multicoloured ink pad on the dandelion clock.  I used Elzybels really useful word stamps, Martha Stewart punches and some simple matting and layering to finish the cards.

 

The Boys

I decided to make a handmade gift for my friends birthday and wanted to use photos of her 3 boys which we took last summer when we went to Magna with them on a summer holiday visit up here.

I found this lovely tripple heart frame in a local gift shop which was perfect for the job but needed a little embelishment to enhance its' shabby-chicness.  There was a floral whitewash design on it which I added dots of liquid pearls to for a bit of shimmer and sparkle.

I then used two flowers from the Wild Asparagus Decoupage Pad from My Minds Eye although sadly I think this product has now been discontinued by them, but it may still be around in the shops somewhere.  I used a simple brown brad to hold them together and added sepia glossy accents to jazz it up a bit.  I also gave the same treatment to a chipboard butterfly, which I coloured with ink pads to match the brad, and then sat on one of the spare leaves from the decoupage page.

I'm really pleased with the results and so was my friend - its almost as cute as the boys themselves :-)