Hobbycrafts at the NEC.

Well, I did go to have a look-see, and yes, I did buy some more stuff! I was very good though, and returned home without a single Christmas themed item! Having looked through all my stash recently, I came to the conclusion that I could make Christmas cards from now till the end of time, and probably still not use all the Christmas stamps I have- and don’t get me started on Christmas paper pads, please.

So, I mainly bought stamps, and embellishments- something I don’t really seem to have much of. I have tried to remember where I bought everything, and link either to the retailer, or someone who has the product if I couldn’t think who it was.

Some u/m Stampscapes stamps, definitely one of my weaknesses, I prefer u/m’s, and not many places seem to carry them, so these were a distinct bonus.I have wanted the Oak Branch and Spooky Branch for a while, but the u/m sheet the Oak is on also contains stamps I  already have as woodmounts. I got these from BJCrafts. 

These clear stamps from Inkylicious were very reasonable,and I thought the multiple types of birds will be very useful. The Face caught my eye too, I have a similar one but smaller.

I liked this when I saw pictures of it a few months ago- nicely dark & gothic. I can’t remember who I got it from, but it is available at Cheddar Stamper.

These two packs from Kaisercraft have lots of useful words and phrases, and were a very reasonable £2.99 each, which I thought was fabulous value. Bought from Ali-craft.

 A Paperartsy set, Clocks 5, and Crafty Individuals CI 305. I love the cogs stamp on the Paperartsy, and the CI stamp has good male/collage images. I bought both from The Artist Trading Post.

These two u/m sets by Papermania really surprised me. Called Urban, they have really nice, usable images for me, not what I would normally associate with their name. Usually, they are too ‘cutesy’ for my tastes. These came from Hotshot Craft– there are 4 available. These two are Bird Print  and Botanical print. The other two are Type print & Travel print.

 These are three u/m plates, two are textures & patterns and one is faces. They were an amazing £2.50 each- hows that for great value. The irritating thing is that a really can’t remember who I got them from, sorry. At the bottom right are three tiny Lavinia Stamps images, small toadstools, a bee and a flying dragon, all £1 each.

Last stamp I bought, Tim  Holtz/Stampers Anonymous Postcard images. I have had my eye on these for a while now, and finally gave in to temptation.

Moving on from stamps, I wanted some metal embellishments for my cards/tags. I found this great company, Riverside Beads, as you can guess from the name, they specialise in beads for jewellery making. However, they have chain, metal charms etc , in a variety of finishes, ideal for adding to your tags and other projects.
You can see one or two price labels there- they are a really good buy- you can have a lot of different embellishments for very little money. For instance, the bag of coins you can see at the top, contains 6 coins- the brass colour cost me £1.20, and the antiqued silver ones £1.35. I think this place was my best find of the day- it shows what you can discover by a visit to a craft show, I doubt I would ever have found them otherwise.

I’ve pictured them against a ruler so you can get an idea of their size.This is just a small selection of what they have, by the way.

 
Paperartsy pen nibs, and some really neat penny farthing bicycles, by Route 52, which I got from The Artist Trading Post.

 Some Tim Holtz game spinners, chains and 7 gypsies cogs.

     
You can see I also bought a Tim Holtz paper pad, the Winter Distress Inks Limited edition, and also Stormy Sky.

4 new embossing folders, a Cuttlebug one featuring cogs & gears, and three generic ones. One of them has what I think will make a good background for Oriental designs.

At the top of this picture is the clear stamp set that came free with Debbie Moores new Stamping Inspirations magazine- a nice set that are all going to be usable. Some black & white spotted organza ribbon, mica flakes, 3new (to me) Stickles a bottle of Black Cosmic Shimmer Pearls, I assume this is like the Liquid Pearls, and a Karantha mould of a face.

Almost at the end, some spray mini-misters.

Two Tim Holtz
dies, Tickets and Rosettes.

Two great storage containers, A4 size, filled with smaller ATC size boxes. These came from Samuel Taylor.

And finally, some Klingon for those u/m’s, and on top of that a selection of acrylic hearts/circles etc from a place called Add Some Sparkle– sold as a pick & mix, you fill the little pot you can see with your selection, for £2! They do this pick’n’mix online too. Not just these stones I bought, they have loads of other styles/colours/designs too.This place was another great find.

WOYWW #104

At last I seem to have Blogger working properly,yay!!!!! I haven’t been able to log in, let alone post for a couple of weeks. This week I updated to the new Firefox4, and Blogger seems to be working fine again.So if you use Firefox as your browser & are still getting Blogger problems, this may help.
I’m on a bit of a mission to use up some of the images that I have stamped in the past, so the last few posts use up stuff you have probably seen on my desk at one time or another.
 So, on my desk this week are a couple of cards:

 I used three versions of the Crafty Individuals Treeline stamp, and the base card was covered with a sheet of Papermania paper from the Simply Elegant pad, which I overstamped with a tree from Crafty Individuals Elements plate CI 209, in Adirondack Espresso. The three versions are: brayered background using Latte & Sandal  (top left), oil pastel in oranges and yellows (centre) and sponged Adirondack ink in Sunset Orange and Red Pepper, with a Post-it mask for the setting sun (bottom right). The sentiment was stamped onto a scrap of brayered card ( Latte &  Hazelnut) in Black Soot then heat embossed. It is all one stamp, I masked off one half of the sentiment with low tack tape, inked the part I wanted, peeled off the tape and stamped. That way I could place them separately.

 I brayered white card with Adirondack Lemonade and Distress ink Wild Honey, with a Post it mask. The Fennel Heads stamp was stamped in Black Versafine, and I added a Dandelion head from Lavinia Stamps, part of a set of three, all slightly different, called Dandelions, lol. I cut the image to a tag shape, added an eyelet & some narrow gold ribbon. From the leftover piece I cut another tag shape, and overstamped this with an Artifacts Stamp, from the Stamp Bug, called Darting Dragonflies. I used Wild Honey again, but stamped off first, to get a paler imprint.The sentiment was stamped over the top in Black Versafine- this is another e-bay buy, so I don’t know the maker, sorry. The base card uses some free paper with Making Cards magazine, a strip of gold vellum run through the D’vine swirls folder, and a strip of Black organza ribbon, then gold  organza ribbon over the top. The tags were mounted with sticky tabs.

For quite a lot of years I worked in the Retail trade, so I know only too well that people are quick to complain, but very rarely praise service they receive. So I try to give praise when its due, and to this end I want to say a big Thank You to Inkylicious. You will have seen I use a lot of Adirondack & Distress inks, and this is where I buy them from. For two VERY good reasons. Firstly, their prices – Adirondacks are £3.79 and Distress inkpads are £3.90- best prices I have found anywhere. Also, their postage is a very reasonable £1.50 for orders under £50, free above that. Secondly, their service is second to none. I ordered four pads last week, on Thursday evening at 5.15. As it was evening, and a Bank Holiday weekend as well, I expected ( and would have been happy) to get them during this week. I was astounded then, when I got home from work at midday on Saturday, to find them lay on the mat waiting for me! This is definitely a retailer who will get my custom time & time again- so Thanks again guys! Oh, they do lots of stuff besides inkpads too!

Talking of inkpads, I thought this might be useful. I downloaded the inkpad labels from Ranger inc, for Adirondack pads & Distress pads, then printed then out onto a label sheet- I used one that has 4 labels on an A4 sheet. I cut them down to size, then before I stuck them on the pads I swiped each label across the inkpad it was meant for.I really recommend wearing gloves to do this bit!  Now I don’t have to unstack them to find the one I want. The two links take you to the respective Ranger pages for the pads- you can click on a link on the page to download the labels template. You can also download the colour charts, and ones for the Alcohol inks too.

Tri-fold in Orange

 An A4 sheet of card was tri-folded, then a triangle cut away from the top of the first two sections, leaving the back section whole. Each of the layers were covered in paper, the front with K & Co from the Hydrangea Stripe pad, the middle from Papermania Antique cream pad and the back from Papermania Earth Tones pad.

 The two tags were cut from brayered card, using Sunshine Yellow and Sunset Orange, with Post-it note masks. Lavinia Stamps ‘Ducks’ were stamped over the masked sun. The larger tag uses a stamp from the Chocolate Baroque Autumn Hedgerow u/m plate, and the smaller one is stamped with Fennel Heads, from The Craft Fairy. All were stamped in Black Versafine. Each tag has an eyelet placed at the top, and threaded with some fancy wool. The tags are mounted with sticky tabs to raise them slightly.

WOYWW #97 – Baptism card

Hi everyone on WOYWW,on my desk this week is this baptism card, which has been ordered by a work colleague, who is Polish, hence the spelling of the name!
I’ve missed the last couple of weeks- life keeps getting in the way, blast it! lol.

The Cross image is from Creative Expressions, Kildare Cross,HH1217L.  There are a number of different crosses on their site, all wood-mounted, although my stamp is an unmounted version.They are medallion images, with means they can be stamped multiple times and then layered. I stamped the image twice in silver, onto silver paper and heat embossed them. It was also stamped once onto white vellum, and onto white silk effect card, in Brilliance Moonlight White , sprinkled with Stamp’n’stuff White Pearl embossing powder. From the two silver images, the whole image was cut out, and from the second stamped image just the centre was cut out.The vellum image was trimmed next, following the curves of the next set of lines, and also including the centre. The white stamped image was cut down to the smaller cross. Each layer was added with silicone glue, and finally an acrylic gem was added to the centre. Diamond Stickles were drawn around the base cross and the central circle.A sheet of A4  white pearl card was scored & folded, and the bottom half covered with white embossed card, and the top half with a glittered vellum.The join was concealed with a strip of ornate sticky back ribbon.
I used Nesties Labels 4 to cut one white & one silver label. The sentiment & name were added with peeloffs in silver. A length of Organza ribbon was wrapped around the spine & tied in a knot.

The rest of my desk looks like this:

The tags on the left have been inked with various Distress inks, and the stamped tags have been cut from the pastel card sheets I made a few weeks ago.

And I have been busily cutting tags of assorted sizes, from a manilla coloured card, and from white.

A4 cards

Although it isn’t obvious from the picture, this card is a full A4 in size. For this I use white A3 card, from Staples. This card is not particularly thick, but I resolve this by attaching a full A4 sheet of card to the back of the folded A3, and when the card front is covered, and whatever images & embellishments are added, it becomes perfectly solid. I found this much easier than other methods, which rely on attaching 2 x A4  sheets together with a fold & DST.
This was made for a lady who I work with, who is retiring, and I use the A4 size as it allows plenty of space for people signing it inside.
 For the main image I used the Penny Black ‘Aspire’ stamp again, onto a brayered A5 background, cut to three panels.This was matted onto grey, then gold embossed card.Before matting onto gold, I wrapped some lilac organza ribbon around the image. A folded bow was added with glue dots. I punched the corners of the gold card with a Southwest punch.The front of the card was covered with a sheet of lilac paper, from a Papermania pad. The same lilac ribbon was wrapped around the spine, and tied in a bow. Two sizes of Nesties Labels 8 were cut from gold card, and one from purple. The sentiment and name of the recipient were added in gold Peeloff letters.

 This is a second card made for a work colleague, also A4, and the image was originally the front for a square card,but I had to do this card in a hurry, so I cannibalised ! The front was covered in a piece of 12 x 12 scrapbook paper, which had words like ‘friend, memories,’ etc on it. The corners were covered with Happy Birthday paper. I cut the numbers from dark brown glittered paper, bought in a pad from Hobbycrafts, then cut ‘shadows’ from gold glittered paper.Peeloff sentiment, name and balloons completed it.

WOYWW #92

 Happy Whats on your Workdesk Wednesday to everyone, if you have found this at random, pop over to the Stamping  Ground to see what its all about, and maybe join in.

 The first of the items on my desk this week is a Mothers Day card, made with an Elusive Images plate, Morning Glory.It was stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black onto an alcohol ink background, then coloured with Promarkers.The base card was covered with paper from the Papermania Antique Cream pad, the image matted onto dark blue card, then layered with foam tabs. Purple dotted organza ribbon tied around the spine. The sentiment was computer printed onto vellum, heat embossed, then
attached to blue card with heart brads.

The second card using the same stamp, this time onto a pink alcohol ink background, matted onto pink pearlescent card. A sheet from The Far East paper pad was used to cover the base card.I used black peel-offs to create the line frame around the panel, and 3 small chinese coins added to the top right corner.

The third card, this time on blue/green alcohol inks. Matted onto dark blue card.The embossed background is a Quickutz embossing folder, Diamonds & Dots, which I embossed to the width of the card by putting the folder through the ‘bug sideways.Dark blue gingham ribbon added, a sentiment stamped and matted onto an offcut of the lattice background, which was cut to a tag shape.I added some narrow blue ribbon tails, and a bow.

                                                                                

This is the card from last week with two of the fibre butterflies added. They were given anthers made from mizhuiki cord, with a tiny bead on the ends. I added a peeloff oriental sentiment, as all the stamps I have were just a little too big for the space.

The last thing I want to share with you, will probably have lots of you rushing off to your nearest branch of The Works!

I found these in there last week- tiny canvases with easel, as you can see, 99p each! The canvas measures 3 1/2 in (9cm)  x1 3/4 in(7cm), and is 1 cm thick. I have a couple of projects in mind for these, for a birthday gift later in the year. Though I shall probably get a few more, ‘just in case’, lol.

WOYWW #89

Two cards on my desk this week, both using Crafty Individuals stamps.The card on the left uses the 4 Birds stamp, CI 184, and Owl Postage, CI 225. Both were stamped onto an oil pastel background made with yellows and browns, using Staz-on black. I cut the four birds into individual images, and trimmed the owl stamp down to the postage stamp edge. I matted this onto gold card, and trimmed down to leave a border, using a stamp edge blade.  I then cut a sheet of gold card to size slightly smaller than the card front, which is an A4 sheet of cream linen card scored & folded, and used landscape format. I cut the gold card into four sections and added some matching paper from the Papermania Earthtones pack. Two panels had very narrow brown ribbon wrapped around, then all the images were put in place, sticky tabs used on the two bird images that overlap the owl. A small greeting was added to the final blank section.
The card on the right  uses CI 001, dragonfly postal stamped onto an oil pastel background made with blues & greens. A sheet from Papermanias ‘ Antique Cream’ paper pack was used to cover the front of the card, then I tore 8 strips from toning mulberry papers, and attached these in a wave across the front of the card. The stamped image was matted onto a scrap of dark blue card, and trimmed down to leave a very narrow border. Two dragonflies were made using Fusible Fibres and the dragonfly on the stamp. These were attached with silicone glue.8 small flowers were punched from pearl paper, in toning colours, and paired up, overlapping the petals, and secured with a yellow brad, again attached with silicone glue.
How to make the oil pastel backgrounds is shown on one of my pages.

I thought this may be of interest to anyone with a Tesco nearby. I went in earlier this week, and in their £1 promotion area, I found this pack of 10 DL size storage wallets, like the sort sold for storing peel-offs. I thought they would be really useful for scraps and offcuts of paper/ spare stamped images/etc, and ten for a quid is a real bargain! So much so, I think I will be getting another couple of packs when I go in again- you can never have too much storage, can you?

And talking of storage, here is how I store my brass stencils- photo albums intended for 7 x5 photos, they cost me around £2.50each, again they came from Tesco, in one of their end of line sales, I think. I have adapted some of the pockets, dividing them down the middle with a row of staples, or in some a row across the centre, then cutting a slot in the side, depending on the size/shape of the stencils.

Friends are Like Angels….

This one uses the Penny Black stamp Aspire, and it was stamped using Forest Moss distress ink on the stems, and Colorbox Cats Eye Terracotta on the flowers.The background was brayered with Adirondack Lemonade/ Sunshine Yellow/Butterscotch. The image was stamped 3 times at various heights, then cut into 3 panels, the centre one wider than the outer ones.They were matted onto a dark orange piece of card.I used the Quickutz embossing folder, Diamonds & Dots to emboss a sheet of white card, cut it to the length of the folder and twice as wide. The phrase, Friends are like angels, Hobby Art GR1353DD, was stamped in Butterscotch onto a similar piece of brayered card as the one I used for the image.This was cut out with a large Nestie Petite scalloped oval, and a matt cut out in dark brown with the largest die.The base of the card was covered in a matching sheet of paper, Papermania Earthtones pack. A butterfly brad was added to the panel before it was stuck in place.

Birthday Wishes

Another card featuring Stampscapes Lakeside Cove. White card brayered with shades of yellow Adirondack dye ink, overstamped in Black Staz-on, then a little brown ink added to the rocks. the sentiment was also stamped in brown, onto a scrap from the main image. The image  and mat were cut out with the two largest dies from Nestabilities Labels 8. The base card was cut to 15 cm square and covered with a sheet from the Papermania  Antique Cream pad then a length of toning ribbon wrapped around, with a folded bow added on top.

Dragonfly, Butterfly, Bee

The stamp is #90349,Dragonfly, Butterfly, Bee, The Tapestry Studio Collection, from Stamps Happen. I stamped the image first on a brayered background, then used fusible fibres to make each of the images.These were cut out and mounted onto the three panels with silicone glue.The base card was covered in paper from the Papermania ‘Simply Elegant’ paper pack. The sentiment is from an Elusive Images themeplate, stamped onto a little of the brayered background and an eyelet added for threading. Eyelash wool was wrapped around the card and crossed on the front, the sentiment threaded on, and also a butterfly charm.