More Grungepaper - this time a Hair Slide

This was made last Saturday when I was thinking of what coordinated with my favourite skirt (see below) and I was lamenting that I have broken so many hair slides recently. I guess the advantage of crafting is that you can create bespoke pieces of jewellery relatively quickly and cheaply (especially when you have a room full of stash to use up!).

What got me started was that I still had the large Tattered Floral left from the bracelet from the last post, and I had covered it in the Antique Bronze Crackle Paint and it seemed to go. I then selected flowers that picked out the colours in the skirt and layered them up (about 5 layers this time). I covered the silver hair slide with more petals to cover the metal sticking out at either side of the flower, and then scrunched everything up so it is really 3 dimensional. Nothing like getting inky fingers on a lazy Saturday afternoon (when I should really be doing the hoovering!). Oh well, that's crafting for you... and I did need a break.

Here's how it looks with the skirt:



Let me know what you think by leaving a comment if you have time.

Grungepaper Bracelet

This is a bracelet I made using Grungepaper and some paper flowers and embellishments. For the band, the grunge paper has been inked with Milled Lavender and Dusty Concord Distress Inks, and stamped over using a Clarity stamp in the Dusty Concord. The fastening is a Tim Holtz ideology hitch fastener, and the holes were made using the Cropodile (small hole punch for the fitting, and the large hole punch for the end you push over the fastening).

The flower is made using two of the smallest 'Tattered Florals' Tim Holtz dies, cut out in Grungepaper on the Cuttlebug. These have again been inked with the two purple shades to achieve a more 3 dimensional look, and then coated in Crackle Accents and left to dry. I then layered them up with a Prima paper flower and a fancy brad and finally attached the completed flower to the bracelet using Pinflair glue gel (what else - it is brilliant stuff!).

Here's how it looks fastened:


Hope you like it!

More Friendly Plastic

As promised, here are a few of the other things I made with Friendly Plastic. The gold/red and green/gold hearts are made by pushing the friendly plastic through punchinella (or sequin waste), and molding into a heart cookie cutter. However, I think my favourites are the ones that have been stamped into. Now I need to use them...

Simple Birthday Card

Well I'm another year older since the last post! I'd love to put up some pics of the cards that my crafty friends made me as they are all stunning, but I'd best ask their permission first. So this is a simple card that I've made for someone else's birthday, primarily using stock from Craftwork Cards. I love the simplicity of their designs, especially the die cut flowers and card candy. My advice for the 'off the edge' flowers is to use a tiny bit of PVA wet glue rather than tape runners. It holds them in place very securely and they don't drop off after a while, which happened with some tape runners I had. The card base is one of the large elegant squares, scored down the middle on my Eazi-Score board to make a tall card.

Friendly Plastic Scarf Ring

This was made at my lovely craft group meeting on Monday, after some expert demonstrating from our group leader, Karen. She has been showing us how to stamp in friendly plastic and to use molds and cutters to shape them. There may well be a few more examples up here soon, if I can get the camera to behave! What I like about this is that it doesn't look plastic from a distance but is flexible enough to hold the scarf and won't rust or discolour which is fab. Some of the other things I made will never make it on here as they are total disasters - 'lump of toothpaste' has been used to describe one piece of artwork!!

Talking of the group, a group of us ladies meet up 2 or 3 times a month, mainly to do card-making. Most of the time we do our own projects but other times we have Karen show us a new technique. Sometimes (especially around Christmas) we get very little crafting done and we spend a lot of time chatting and drinking tea. I would highly recommend joining a group if there is one close by. Crafters are just the loveliest people, and even though I was terrified about going for the first time they made me so welcome. Now it'd take a lot to keep me away and I've made some lovely friends.

Biscuit

This photo-card was made for my Mum last year to be sent from our beautiful family dog, Biscuit. Sadly Biscuit had to be put to sleep a couple of weeks ago after he had a stroke. Thankfully the end was really quick and he'd been out for a walk that day and had lived each and every day of his 14.5 years with a waggy tail and lots of cuddles. We'll all really miss him, not only the family, but his best-mate Don and all his many friends around the country. He really was the most beautiful dog. I'll miss you Biz. X

Party Favours

My first project post in this blog was to show the post-it note holders I had made using the scalloped square nesties and some beautiful Laura Ashley papers. The picture was pretty rubbish and as I'd given them all away I was pretty stumped. One of the recipients of one of the holders has sent me this picture today (thanks R!). They were really simple and easy to make and something that can easily be customised to the recipients style and tastes. Most of mine were given out to friends at a special afternoon tea for my birthday last year, which reminds me, I must have a think about a little present for this year. Less that 10 days to go...aarrggghhhh....