More Filofaxing and Fingerprinting

I'll be honest today I haven't had chance for much crafting because I've been clearing out all the surplus charity shop stuff I've been buying over the years  our attic room in the hope that I'll be able to use it as a craft room - yay!  At one time we used to have a lodger living in the room, now you can barely get in the door!

With the sunshine today showing  those early signs of Spring, I couldn't seem to help but get domesticated (its the only time of year I do, lol) and finally decided to make a start on clearing this room.   But Rome wasn't built in a day and despite me slaving for hours, I've only managed to clear one corner (we are talking LOTS of stuff here!)

But I couldn't not do any craft, because that was my New Year's Resolution and so far I have been keeping to it - so I snook downstairs to do a litle work on my filofax pages:

This time I stuck some fun stickers to the pages, but I may decide to ink the edges at a later date.

I love this range, but  never see them anywhere. These ones I got years ago, from Belgrade.

I also cut some scrapbooking paper out and used my Big Bite to punch the holes:

I know its not a lot, but once I get my crafting room sorted they'll be no stopping me!

qwiksave x

PS. I also found this picture in an art book in the attic, isn't it great in its simplicity? Mainly just fingerprints, rubbings and ink dots. (By Clifford Bayly).

Mother's Day and Magazine Snippings

Hope all the mothers reading this (it is Mother's Day in the UK today) have enjoyed been pampered and had a nice relaxing day today.  My day wasn't exactly relaxing as my husband is still in China so I have still had to do the usual routine of cooking and washing up.  It's days like this when I wish my two were a little older so I could have cups of tea made for me, but thats selfish, I love them being small really.  Actually, I did quite well this morning, my boys (aged 10 and 7) attempted to bring me breakfast in bed, made all by themselves!  I was given cereal with milk slopped all around the sides, 2 pieces of toast and a glass of milk! lol.  It was a lovely thing for them to attempt to do though.

Today's craft is a bit of a cheat really. I haven't made anything that is complete, but I'll show you anyway:

They are just things I've cut out from magazines!

I have a massive stash of magazines and newspapers, some that are years old in our attic and cellar and I've been meaning to go through them and cut all the interesting bits out for my crafts.  I do a few at a time but it takes ages, because I end up reading each magazine while I do it. 

There's some great textures here I'll be using in my altered projects!

I also cut out sayings:

..and will save them in my plastic set of drawers until I can think of projects to do with them. 

See you tomorrow!

qwiksave x

Boring Filofax?

Never to pass by a bargain when I see one (as regular readers will know) I couldn't resist snapping up this Real Leather Filofax for £2 in a charity shop recently:

It's in excellent condition and the label states its definately Real Leather:

I HAD to have it, if only for the simple reason that I've seen these selling in places like Paperchase and WHSmiths for nearer the £40 mark.

The problem is, I think the pages in it are really DULL. They don't inspire me to write creative stuff in it or even use the address pages.  So tonight, for my craft I have started altering a few pages:

Ah! That's better!  Only another 200 pages or so to go!...

Magic Piccy

Where does the time go?  I'm in the middle of crafting and before I know it the time runs out! Don't you find that?  Real life gets in the way and you are called out to make dinner, take the kids to school or one million other things that pull us away from the masterpiece we are in the process of creating! 

Well, I wouldn't call what I'm doing tonight a 'masterpiece', in fact its a bit of cartoony fun for the kids again, which is back onto the theme of Easter. Don't know why I have the Easter theme in my head so much these days, we haven't even had Mother's Day yet! (On Sunday for us in the UK).

For tonight's project, I revisited an old site I used to frequent YEARS ago! Neil Buchanan's Art Attack!  I have done this project:

A Magic Frame  (under 'Art Attacks' heading, go to G-M,  Magic Picture Frame)

The instructions are a bit complicated, so if you want to make one yourself, please follow the instructions from the link.  It looks impressive though, the picture appears to be completely Black & White, you pull it out from its frame and it is in full colour!  The type of thing my little boys will like anyway. 

UPDATE:  I made a mistake making this project - I drew this outline freehand and then realised I couldn't colour it in for this project.  Doh! Lesson learned - Follow the instructions!:

So I made another one....

This time I used the Disney Club Penguin Book and a light box to trace these Puffles...

You pull it out of the frame and as if by magic...

....They colour themselves in!

I made one of these a few years ago that I've also dug out to show you:

Enjoy your weekend and I'll see you tomorrow!

qwiksave x

Hoppy Easter

This may look a bit familiar - Helen of It's All Fiddle Fart' (amongst others) makes some brilliant versions of these.  This is my blatant copy variation on  it that I have made for my sons:

..

..and close up:

I used my shaped photo frame to draw around the frame (the same one as I used for my valentine's treats) and folded it in half.  I cut the grass from green paper and I used a copy of a newpaper colouring picture for the image of the rabbits.  The writing and the stitches  were done by hand.  I stapled a plastic card bag with the eggs in it to the bottom

In our household I have to make  two bags exactly the same with EXACTLY the same amount of eggs in, otherwise I'll get one boy complaining!  (These particular eggs came from a corner shop newsagents, 99p).

Wet T-Shirt

I think I like today's project, but it's difficult to tell because the state its in now (wet) isn't showing me how it will look when it dries.  What I am talking about is a fabric painted hippy type of t-shirt.

I was passing Gap today and in the window one of the manikins was wearing a watercoloured efffect t-shirt so I thought that would be a nice idea for a project.  I haven't got any fabric paints but I did have some fabric pens that I could try.  The first set I tried were made by Giotto, and they wouldn't work on the sprayed wet tshirt at all  -so I tried some Pebeo SetaSkrib+'s and they worked great (Charity shop £4):

 I had no idea what the finished effect was going to be like.  I just drew calligraphic scribbles and scrolls, sprayed some more water over and in a short time they all merged into this mass of colour. 

This shows an earlier stage, with the drawn lines starting to blur.

..and these show how the colours have dissolved into each other.

Not sure I'd wear the tshirt out, might just keep it to wear inside when I'm crafting.  I'll see what it's like when it dries!

See you tomorrow...

qwiksave x

Cakes and Camera

Quick post from me tonight, these nights are too cold to sit with freezing hands.  I need to get under a cozy warm blanket!

Yesterday I made another cake plate stand.  When I bought the Royal Doulton plate the other day I was offered 1 for £1.50 or 2 for £2.  I only wanted one but was persuaded!

I managed to get myself two more glass candlesticks, and this time they were the cut crystal type, for £3 (Now, I need to make a THIRD plate stand! and so it goes on....)

I made some cakes to go on this one (although I didn't get as far as icing them) and they rose a bit too much - but take it from me,  they still tasted delicious!

This was a shorter candlestick than the previous one, which worked out better really.

Today, I've also been doing some other photography - photos of decorative iron - flourishes!  :-)

and of textures...

and I got one more bargain from 'The Works' today:

They were BIG, (1") puffy letter stickers. 99p! ...

...and they also had other sets like flowers & butterflies and a zoo animals set.

See you tomorow!

qwiksave x

My Photo meme

Thanks to Lucy from Crafting in the Beach Hut for tagging me to do my first photo meme.

Here's what I was asked to do:

1. Open the first (oldest) photo folder on your computer

2. Scroll to the 10th photo

3. Post the photo and the story behind it

4. Tag 5 or more people to continue the thread

 
Here is mine:

It is of my youngest son being held by his father at a green festival held in Wiltshire (called the Big Green Gathering) in 2002.

The baby, Joshua (who is now nearly 8!) was just 3 months old here.

I had previously copied some pictures of one of our storage discs so I could 'play' with them and make scrapbooks which is why this was on my laptop now. 

It was taken at a festival (that sadly no longer runs) that we used to go to quite often because we always had such a fun and relaxing time.  As well as lots of seminars on environmental issues, they had a fantastic 'Craft Area' where you could go to workshops and learn how to make felt, baskets or digeredoos, amongst other things.  They had tent cafes (where this picture was taken) that sold amazing organic feasts or just coffee and cakes.  And as you dined, live music would just start up by passing musicians with all manner of instruments.  It was lovely.  I'm not a natural camper and festival toilets are not my ideal (!) but after a day or so I would get into it.  It was a place that was awash with colour, people really dressed down (I had to have a set saved for it!) but so cheerfully. They also had an amazing end of festival parade too, where people dressed up in incredible handmade costumes.  I have loads of fantastic photos taken at this event over the years and would love to show you them one day....

At this present time I can't list 5 people to send this to but if you too would like to do this, you are very welcome, say I sent you...

Christmas Time Again Again!!

Some days I like the craft that I've created and other days I think 'I wish I hadn't made that'.  Because I have commited myself to putting a craft on here daily, I do find I am putting things on that 'aren't quite right' or that I'm not terribly keen on - but they 'have to' go on here anyway.  There aren't enough hours in the day to make lots of things so that I can only  put things on here that I am satisfied with and  like, I just have to accept that's the nature of commitment to a daily blog.  Saying that, I am relatively pleased with almost everything I've been putting on the last couple of months and hope that you like them too.

To get to the point, I wasn't that keen on the card I made yesterday so made some alterations today. 

It's difficult to tell on this straight-on photo, but I've added loads of plastic beads all around the snowman and the frame.  It's given it the dimension it was lacking in yesterday.

This shows them a bit better.  I drew around the white beads I put on to match the ones on the stamp design.

I also added holographic glitter all over which is difficult to see in photos.

It is now a framed picture though, rather than a card, but I'm OK with that and will  now use it as a christmas room decoration.

Hope you like it now too! :-) 

Christmas Time Again!

I've made another of my Christmas cards using my Inkadinkadoo snowman stamp.  This one is qute different from the type I made last time.

To make this one, I stamped the image onto the back of some acetate and covered it with distressed stickles.  I then applied some silver ink onto that from a silver inkpad with my finger.  Then I applied holographic glitter and white tissue paper that stuck onto the stickles.

While that was drying, I made the distressed frame by applying an acrylic paint dauber (Sail Boat Blue) roughly around a tri-fold frame card.  I added silver pen and then black around the edge of the frame.
Finally, I added snowflake confetti to the front of the acetate.

To finish off, I thought crafters may like to pick up this page of free Alice in Wonderland 'Stickers' (Printables) from the Disney site (at the time of writing).  Link here

They would be great for altered art projects. There are also a few other 'Alice in Wonderland' crafts there that you may be interested in.