My mate's birthday

My very good mate, Brenda, had her 65th birthday yesterday and I finally got round to doing some crafting and made her this card.

Bren doesn't 'do' parties and the like so we just had a nice meal and I made her an apple-doughnut sundae!  

She really enjoyed it.

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Getting a bit fed up of not having the time now and have resolved, after this week is over with I WILL start making and blogging again!

If any of you are following my 'Big Fat Journey...!' you will know I tipped the scales this morning at 15st 12lb! That is over five and a half stones gone since February!  I was so poorly last year I actually missed my 60th birthday, to all intents and purposes, so I intend having another this year! LOL!

I feel like I've had a rebirth and I'm actually forty-five not sixty!

Will have more news in a few days when I find out if I fluffed the interview or not! ;)

Hugs Ei x

New Grandbabby! Welcome baby Elvie!

When I looked, I could hardly believe the date of my last post! Such a long time ago!  Needless to say - been very busy with one thing and another. I admin on a couple of crafty groups on Facebook now and it's very addictive!

I also have a new grandbabby!  

Here is the beautiful Elvie Bow Nicholson born 5:45pm Thursday 1st August.
                                            
                                        Day one - in incubator

Is she exquisite or not...?

Day two - all smoothed out

Day three - awake!

Day five - stop talkin' I'z tryin' ta sleep!

I made a card (of course! LOL!) for Mum & Dad.

All though Danielle's pregnancy, the 'bump' was called Elvis - hence the sentiment in the middle! We were all shocked when she turned out to be a girl! We were all convinced it would be a boy - it took them a couple of hours for it to sink in and give her a name - Elvie! Which I think is beautiful.

I've also been making Christmas cards but I haven't photo'd them yet. I may do one day.....!

I've made a box to match this card and it's big enough to take an 8 x 8 journal, so guess what the proud parents are getting for Christmas......! LOL!

Hugs for now

Ei x

Steampunk Junkies - Challenge 4 - Journally Yours

I am up this week, to provide a tutorial for a Steampunk project for Steampunk Junkies but my card-reader and my PC have quarrelled and so I cannot upload any pictures, so I've re blogged a past Steampunk Journal/Folio as it's my favourite one anyway and it can be made in a few different ways.


 It's always a bit of a bugbear with me on the DT's that I make all this stuff which no-one in my family or friends will give house-room to, so I have boxes filled with creations I like too much to chuck away/give to peeps who don't really appreciate it, but storage space is becoming a bit of a problem!


So, it's fab when I can create something that someone (...me in this instance...!) can use!




My Tim Holtz Techniques Folio

Materials needed.


4 x A5 Tim Holtz Grungeboard or plain grey cardboard (...I used the back board from an old cheap sketchpad) 
Tim Holtz 'Gears and Cogs' die cuts in same material
Tim Holtz 'Bookplate' die-cut in gold pearl card
Tim Holtz (or other distress inkpads) Ink/inkpads in various colours to suit including Peeled Paint, Mahogany,  Vintage Photo and/or Walnut Stain.
Tim Holtz Distress clear embossing inkpad.
'Swirl' rubber stamp.
Inkpad Staz-On Black
Clear embossing powder.
Spritz spray
Distress Embossing Powder in Tea-Dye and/or Vintage Photo.
Ranger Metallic inks.( Adirondak Metallic Mixture or Posh Rainbow Metallics)
Heatproof workmat.
Preferred hardware findings, Tim Holtz or otherwise.






Method


Taking one of the A5 cards, spritz generously with water then  ink up with various inks and inkpads until you're happy with it.  Don't heat-set it.

Ink up with clear embossing inkpad and layer of clear embossing powder, leaving some sparsely covered areas, and heat with heat-gun..
The water vapour from the card will cause bubbles and irregularities in the glaze. Heat until there's an uneven pitted grainy finish. You don't want it too perfect.

When cool, you can distress this further with nail-file , pokey-tool etc if you want.


By this stage, your card should feel like leather, pliable and bendy. Now ink over the whole surface with Walnut Stain or Vintage Photo (...or indeed, anything you like..!) , rubbing it well into crevices and wipe off. The ink will sink into the bare areas and wipe off the glazed areas.  Cut the perimeter with deckle-edge scissors (..or tear to make an uneven edge...). I cut the perimeter then tore a corner off.


Ink up the edges if liked.


Ink up your swirl stamp with the Staz-On and stamp to suit.


Take the gears & cogs and ink them up with the metallic inks, applying generously.  

When dry, distress with pokey-tool, wire brush etc. taking care to distress the edges well,  then ink up over with a dark colour so the ink sinks into the scores.

If liked, apply brass collars or rivets with 'Cropadile' or similar to holes in centre.


Distress book-plate in same way.


Apply cogs & gears and bookplate in pleasing positions with silicone glue and finish off as desired.

This is your front cover plate for your technique book (...or greeting card if preferred!).




Now you could stop here and just add this to your folded card or made up book or you can continue to develop this as there are still plenty of things you can do to it! 




To continue, take another piece of the grey-board and cover it with tinted newsprint.


You can use pages out of an old book from a thrift shop for this and you can either use one large page or you can use smaller pages and patchwork them.


Whichever you decide to do, you start the same by inking up your workmat with either your inkpads or drops of re-inker and then spritz. The lay your newsprint face down and 'zhuz' it round the workmat (...if it will go - be careful not to tear it if it sticks a bit...!) until you've sopped up all the ink.

You can speed up the drying with your heat gun, if you want but leave it a bit damp so it 'shrinks'  to fit the board.


Clean up your workmat, then lay your newsprint face down and use pva glue all over the back, starting in the centre and brushing it outwards. Foam brushes are good for this. Make sure the application is even or bubbles will occur.  

Lay your grayboard onto the glued side and fold the edges and ends over, removing any excess bulky paper. It'll tear really easily if it's old newsprint and if you get inconvenient tears, just stick another bit over the tear.


Turn the work over again and I used a brayer on this side to make sure there were no bubbles.


Turn it back and stick another piece of tinted print over the exposed greyboard.

At this point you'll need to decide where and how to attach your bindings/hinges.  I just punched holes and stuck eyelets in for the Tim Holtz 'D' rings to go through.  If you haven't got the right colour eyelets, use your Copics!


You then need to cover another greyboard, this time for your finished plate to be mounted on. You only need to do one side, if your paper is big enough to be folded back on the reverse side as your plate will cover the exposed bit of greyboard this time.  I added some Tim Holtz metal corners too.

The last thing is your fastener. I've used a bit of leather I've had for years and the hinge from Tim's 'Hardware Findings' die, by Sizzix.


The leather was the wrong colour being a rather garish shade of green, so I distressed it with my pokey tool and coloured it with Staz-On and my Copics. Still green but of a shade that is more acceptable! LOL!  You could probably use your greyboard again or some of Tim's Grungeboard if you can't steal your Dad's old leather belt....!



I hope you all like this and I look forward to making sample pages of Tim's techniques to put into it, with their descriptions on the back, of course!


Hugs
Ei
x

So sorry no new posts lately....

....I've not been shirking - made loads of stuff - but my card-reader and my pc have fallen out again and I cannot get them to talk to each other at all.  I bought a new card reader and that's not talking either so I cannot upload any pics in any sensible way.

It's a complete pain as I have a couple of DT projects that need 'upping' but I'm stuffed until I can get pc nerd son to have a look (when the Donna Lee docks...!).

Off to walk the dogs instead.......
Hugs 
Ei x

Steampunk Junkies - Challenge 3 - Cogs 'n Keys.

This month the theme at Steampunk Junkies is Cogs 'n Keys so this is what I did this month.
As luck would have it - it's my OH's birthday on the 8th so it's also his birthday card! LOL!

Please do pop over to the blog and have a little butcher's at the projects my teamies have come up with - they're a talented lot!  You could also consider entering something of your own...?

See ya there!
Hugs 
Ei x

My SIL Marg's birthday card

My SIL Marg is another crafter and looks forward to my cards but she's going to have to wait for this one after the week I've just had...! At least I gave her her present when I saw her last week!

She's a big fan of Deco and my home forum of Trimcraft has a challenge on this month for acetate to be used so I combined the two.

Sorry about the pic - the acetate didn't like the flash at all! Neither did the greeting or the foiled backing card!

The verse is my own but feel free to use it if it fits your sister!
I would normally have a few pics but really didn't have any wherewithall left at the end of this card - anything that could go wrong - did!

Still, it's finished and she may actually get it....some day!

Hugs
Ei x

My Ada's 'Exploding Box'...!

My beautiful granddaughter Ada was five years old yesterday and instead of a card, I made her and exploding box with her gift inside it.

It really wasn't that hard - just a bit long-winded for the time I had to make it in - but that's me - why make it easy on myself...? LOL!

Materials

1 x A3 Centura Pearl card sheet (but you could use a 12 x 12 in a good weight cardstock)
1 x A4 Hunky Dory Adorable Scorable pink and white stripey card
1 x 12 x 12 Pink Pearl Bazzill cardstock
Some scrap pieces of pink dotty paper for covering the white backs of some of the leaves.
Double-sided tape
Good quality paper glue - I used Allene's Fast Grab Tacky glue.
I used a Martha Stewart deep border punch but whatever you have is fine
Fancy edging scissors
Couple of yards of organza ribbon.
Embellishments to taste.


Method
Cut one Centura Pearl A3 down to 12 x 12 and use Martha Stewart punch around the entire edge (I centred it  because the match wasn't quite perfect, so I chose to leave a small gap in the middles).

Then, measure on the wrong side your required space in the middle (I used a 12cm x 12cm central square for mine) and score the sheet into nine squares.

Score the corner squares lightly so you can fold them inwards

At this point you might like to do any stamping or embellishing of the inside of this outer leaf. I used a couple of different heart-shaped stamps.

Repeat this step as many times as you feel happy with, reducing the size of the middle square just a little each time to allow for the leaves 'nesting' inside each other. Also, snip off with either scissors or craft knife, the corner sections.

I had previously made a small box for the centre of the exploding box in which to put Ada's small gifts.   For a boy, or a less girly girl, I think a pirate theme with a treasure chest would be fab but my Ada is into Princesses at the minute!

(You can see in this pic where I've snipped off the little waste 'nib' left by the border punch, with the edge of a round hole die)

The sun was acting up at the time, going in and out by the minute - so sorry for the shadows...!

As you can see, I made three other leaves inside the original by following the same step but just snipping out the corners to reduce bulk. I also used fancy scissors to edge the layers.

When you're happy with your layers, use a little double-sided tape to secure on the bottom in the middle of each square. You can embellish before or after this step - whichever suits!

As you can see, I've added some greetings like 'Happy Birthday', 'FUN' and 'SMILE' on one layer and butterflies (Ada LOVES butterflies) on another layer.

The next thing to do is to make a 'lid' for your leaves, to hold them up.

I used the pink pearl Bazzil for this but , sadly, forgot to photo it as I did it.  It is, however just a simple lid, similar to the original leaf, keeping the centre 12cm x 12cm middle square, but snipping down one side of each 'corner', folding the corner across as you make the box shape and securing it with a good very tacky glue. I used Aleen's Fast Grab Tacky glue which is amazing and dries really fast!

When that is dry (well I did it before actually, to hold it in place) put  little narrow dst in the middle of your ribbon and secure it to the 'back' edge of your lid so you can tie the bow without it sliding down and off the lid (...don't ask how I thought of that...! LOL!)

Last of all is to do the same ribbon trick with the outside leaf, to keep it closed until the reveal.

Treasure....!

This is the little charm bracelet and Hello Kitty necklace I made for Ada and was places in an organza bag in the inner box.

Hope you've enjoyed this project and have a little go yourself!

Hugs 
Ei x