Scrapbooked School Photo

Those of you that have been with me a while may remember this post where I said I was going to make scrapbooking photo pages of lots of my relatives to put on display around the house.  This idea came back to me last night so I came up with this:

(My boys count as relatives too!)  

I know, I will do other relatives but I do want pictures of my two little scamps in amongst them.

Speaking of scamps, the reason I did the photo like this with the inkblots and the untidy distressed look is because, like in the way most school photos are taken, my boys look as though 'butter wouldn't melt!'  Well we all know the truth don't we! lol.

For the background I used the title page of a block of an old range of Basic Grey paper:

And originally my letters were purple:

 ..so I coloured them with a black Sharpie.

 I typed the titles with an old typewriter but the ink was so faded that I went over the lines with a fine black pen.  Then I used a school range of rubons for the other random lettering.  As this is to be behind glass I couldn't use thick embellishments.  The inkblots came from a stamp.

(The background used here is an old 1960's school desk complete with a hole for an inkwell)

 

And finally the picture framed:

Enjoy your week, thanks for stopping by and for any comments,

qwiksave

Famous Crafters at Hobbycraft 2011

Well, famous to us in the UK that is, they are featured on our 'Create & Craft' channel.  I went to the NEC Hobbycraft Show (for free today, I won tickets on the 'Craft Stamper' magazine blog).

First up we have  Joanna Sheen:

 (who posed nicely for me when I asked if I could take her photo)

Then we have Stephanie Weightman:

 (Who was lovely, so funny, telling us about how messy she is and reckons she is going to be chucked out of the new office she is working in because she makes too much mess! lol.  She was also telling us how 'She can't wait to get up in the morning because she has so many crafty ideas that she can't wait to get started on...')

And finally we have Barbara Gray from Clarity Stamps:

 (unfortunately this isn't very flattering, she was in the middle of demonstrating.  Clarity stamps stall was ever so busy, they have some great stamps and Barbara is a fantastic demonstrator).

No one else seemed to be taking photos of them - and there was me thinking everybody would be wanting to put them on their blogs.

Onto what I bought, which was a few bits and bobs. I had a long shopping list but very little of it was there. :-(
 
Just this:

..and this:

Here's a close up of the stamps:

I don't normally do Easter cards for people, but I simply couldn't resist these cute chickens from Artemio.

I also had a bit of luck at the show too. At the Craftsuprint stall they had a 'Find Bob' tombola and I won £5, yay!

Good luck for anybody going at the weekend. It was pretty busy today but I hear that is nothing compared to the crowds they get at the weekend!

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Text Bookmarks

This picture is too dark but it is an indication of how the bookmarks look with letters showing through punched holes.

I made two bookmarks yesterday using a picture from a wallpaper magazine:

I cut the lettered wallpaper background into bookmark sized strips 

..and made random holes using my cropadile (both sizes, large and small).

 

At first, I used an old book page and laid the holey bookmark on the top, but despite the fact that this book has a small typeface and no spaces for paragraphs, the holes didn't line up with the letters neatly...

 ...so I had to rip up a page into little pieces and stick them over the holes individually. (This picture shows the back)

So those letters you see through the holes aren't from the page you see in the background.

After the letters were completed I covered the backs and laminated both bookmarks:

 ..and finished them off with embroidery thread:

The completed two text bookmarks:

Hope you are all fine and enjoying the Spring sunshine (I have added a picture of the blossom in our local area on yesterday's post)

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Craft Supply Inventory

My laptop is back from the repair shop with a brand new hard disc but our home pc is still acting up. Computers are so frustrating when they go wrong aren't they?!

The weather has been so lovely and Spring-like here the last couple of days that our family have not only been walking to the local park, but we even had icecream!  Hope its been as nice where you are.

Local street scene showing the blossom on the trees lining the streets

Craftwise lately I've been making up a folder detailing some of my crafting supplies.  This time it was the turn of all my hundreds of coloured pens. I l-o-v-e pens and can spend hours drooling in stationery shops. The trouble is, I forget which ones I already have and buy duplicates - which is why I made up this folder:

 

(These pictures replace the earlier picture I used which I decided wasn't appropriate)

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My eldest son went to school on Friday (for a 'wear a suit' theme) dressed as President Lincoln:

...for Red Nose Day.  I made the ribbon bow tie using a ribbon from my ribbon stash and my hot glue gun and I have the slightly tinged fingertips to show for it!

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Oriental Themed Necklace

I stayed up really late finishing the second of the 'stamped cup of tea tree' cards for my friend's birthday celebration today.  I will show you that in a bit but I thought I'd show you what I also made for my friend [this morning before I saw her at lunchtime! :-O ]

This Tim Holtz Fragment necklace:

The script is a rubber stamp of some (ancient?) oriental lettering, which was part of a Crafty Individuals stamp set I got when I subscribed to 'Craft Stamper' magazine. 

I stamped it with Black Stazon onto red mirror board and when dry glued a Tim Holtz Fragment on top of it with Glossy Accents.  After that was dry I cut around the outline of the shape and added the chain.  

This was the other card I made using my fab new tree stamp:

The card opens where the flowered paper is scalloped.

I coloured the all white flower ribbon with a brown Sharpie to match the flowers on the patterned paper.. 

...and coloured a pale yellow flower embellishment with a blue promarker. 

Its a handy money saving tip that, rather than buying your embellishments in lots of different colours, colour them yourself with your existing stock of pens, paints and alcohol inks.

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Quirky Distressed Birthday Card

I got a fab new stamp yesterday and couldn't wait to use it on a couple of birthday cards I need to make (for tomorrow, eek!).  I thought I'd do them in two different styles, one with an old fashioned, distressed  look and the other one using more up to date, modern papers.  That was the plan and so far I have just done the distressed card:

The background stamps were deliberately done in an incomplete distressed style.

This is the main image though, it is such a fun stamp, very quirky:

Sentiment says 'Meet under the tree for a nice cup of tea'

The stamp is a Crafty Individuals stamp from Aldridge Crafts.

The fake stitching is a rub on, the papers (distressed with sandpaper) were freebies from card magazines and the image and the Happy Birthday sentiment were attached with 3d dots.  The placement design was from an old CPS sketch.  

I would like to enter it into the following challenges:

LITTLE RED WAGON - St Patty's Day - Green 

EASY CRAFT PROJECTS #33 - Green

CRAFT US CRAZY - Nature

Good news for me yesterday! I won a couple of tickets to the Hobbycraft show at the NEC in a couple of weeks.  Yay!

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Bunting Love

Last night's activity was to fill in another page of my version of the 'Smash' book.  I love text and I love bunting so I combined the two on one of my pages.

Here:

I used watercolour crayons for the 'sky effect':

For the coloured bunting I put coloured paper behind the triangles I'd cut out for the other bunting:

What I like about doing this book is that I'm getting to fill it with the things that I personally like. I'm going to end up with a book full of all kinds of things that excite me and that will give me such pleasure to keep looking at.  Maybe you could have a go at doing your own version?  What are the kind of things you would be putting in yours?

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Calligraphic Grafitti

Tonight whilst blog hopping, I decided to take some computer paper out of my printer and doodle.

Here is the result:

You might be able to spot 'Alisa Burke' and her new book 'Sew Wild' in there!  I randomly wrote my trail of thought as I was picking out coloured pens from my desk drawer.  I feel I could easily get back into doing calligraphy again, 'cos I loved it!

Earlier on the day I stumbled across a link with step by step instructions to produce this:

It was from another favourite site of mine, Balzer Designs.  Here is the link to the video.

When I made mine (above) I was sitting at the computer again, so I just used my pens rather than my paints that were all the way upstairs in my craft room in the attic!  I hadn't got my glasses on either so couldn't work out who the quote was by, so I have left it off for now.

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

Have a great weekend,

qwiksave

Sealife Bathroom Plaque

I am having no end of computer problems at the moment. My laptop has given up the ghost completely and needs to go to the repair shop and this computer that I am using at the moment is playing up something rotten.  Not only is it refusing to play any of my recorded videos but now it's even refusing to accept my camera cable! 

To show you what I did last night, I had to use the scanner:

This (above) is the 'artistically altered' (Picnik) version of this:

Originally this was a dull copper coloured plaque (bought from a junk shop ages ago), and last night I decided to give it some colour. First I tried using alcohol inks but to my surprise they wiped away!  So I got out the acrylic paints instead. The fishes, sea horse and the rings & seaweed are all in 3d relief. They were originally beaten out of the metal with some texture tools.  I rubbed gold relief paint on them and then a dry brush of  black paint was used to bring out the details.

Apologies for the quality of the images, the scanner doesn't like 3d elements!

I'm in two minds whether to colour the fishes and seahorses more, as in not keeping them all gold.  I shall live with it for a while and then decide what to do...

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Fun Pages!

Following on from yesterday's post about my version of the 'Smash' Book, I decided to root through my drawers (ooer!) of images to find some interesting bits & pieces that I could stick into the pages of my book.  With an emphasis on 'Fun', I found quite a few cartoons, together with some of my old drawings which I simply had to have to make my first double page spread:

Do you like the cartoons?:

and

(by the artists who have signed these).

These two 'Smash' pages are very 'me' - you might not know this, but when I was little, all I wanted to be when 'I grew up' (not happened yet!) was a cartoonist! Not just an artist, I was going to be a cartoonist!  I spent many a happy hour creating my own characters and stories.   Which is why even today I still have quite a large collection of old comics, comic annuals and not to mention, every single book of 'Calvin & Hobbs' cartoons that Bill Watterson ever wrote.

I did forget one thing when I made these pages though.  You may remember in yesterday's post I said my version of the 'Smash' book was also going to be MESSY!  Just look how neat those pictures have been stuck in!:
 

(OOps! But I can still do messy when I want ;-P )
* * *

For the pages I've done so far I have used this glue...

with its non-permanent option so I can move things around. Believe me, this is very useful! ;-)

 Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

A Doodle Inspirational Journal

There is quite a bit of excitement in Blogland about a 'stick-everything-in-it' book due to come out soon from EK Success/K & Company called a 'SMASH'.  It was promoted at this Winter's Los Angeles CHA show and there is a video about it on youtube here.  Meanwhile, I have made a start at making my own simplified version. 

These are my first two introductory pages:

Created using just my Versafine Stamp Pad, some stamps (Bo Bunny & American Crafts) and my Sharpie pen (plus the odd fingerprint & yogurt pot that I also used for stamping!)

The whole book isn't all going to be Black & White or like this, I just did these two pages in this style so that I would lose that scary 'white page syndrome'and set the book's theme to be 'FUN,''MESSY' and 'RANDOM'. I think I'm going to enjoy filling in this book! 

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave