Midnight Crafter

I just took this picture of the moon 5 minutes ago:

..from the window of my attic space craft room.  The room is not tidy yet, I've just cleared enough of a space to craft in it, lol. 

I am definately a late night person though, 'I don't do mornings' (well, apart from the very early ones that start after midnight!)  Most of the crafts you see me do on here are produced very late at night, because that is the time I do them.  It does make it tricky to take photos though as artificial light does not produce very good pictures. Sometimes I will take another picture in daylight the next day to replace the nightime shots.  There you go, a little secret I have let you into about the way I work and blog! ;-)

Tonight I tried a new technique I learned from a blog the other day called artsaveslives.  The technique is called 'inlaid embossing'. 

(Ooh, my crafting light has killed the sparkle on these!)

Anyway, to do this effect I covered a chipboard shape with clear embossing ink and then embossed it with silver embossing powder.  After it had heated and cooled down I stamped the image on top with some more clear embossing ink.  I then put black embossing powder on that and heated that up.  

Think I may use them as embellishments for scrapbooking pages or maybe tags.  Tags seem very popular in crafting these days.

Here is the heart:

..and here is the flower:

(I used just part of the stamp with the girl on - a freebee from a recent 'Craft Stamper' magazine)

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Victorian Times

We had quite an interesting day today, my son's junior school had a Reunion event on.  It's an old Victorian school so they planned a few events to celebrate the fact.

They had a pretend strict teacher from the 'Victorian' times to tell us what life was like in school at that time.  The children from today dressed up in some clothes from the Victorian era and my son wore a cloth hat.  The class were also shown how the pupils learned to write on blackboards:

They also put on a performance of 'Oliver' in the hall:

(My son is 3rd from the left)

...and got the children to play with old fashioned toys in the playground, like Hoop & Sticks.  They also sold some nostaligic sweets.  I bought a bar of 'Old Jamaica' which Cadburys have revived, its a lovely Rum 'n Raisin dark choccy bar, mmmmnn!

As for a craft today?  My mother-in-law has finally fixed the old sewing machine she gave me and all I have done today craftwise is to practice making some straight lines on scrap cloth.  My plan is to (hopefully) use the machine for making cards and scrapbook pages.

Hope this old machine is up for it!

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

First Aid Decoupage

I've done a very quick craft tonight, its been a busy evening as my boys went to a birthday party and then attended Beavers and Cubs. Lots of ferrying was done.  When we got back we watched an old video of 'Apollo 13', the film with Tom Hanks. My older son can't wait to be able to zoom off into space!

My quick craft tonight is a before and after thingamabob:

BEFORE:

It's our First Aid Box made out of an old baby changing container.

Add a few bits of olde decoupage...
AFTER:

(pictures are photocopies of images  from 'Creative Photocopying' book)

Have a great weekend.

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

How do I.....?

On with the drawing theme from yesterday and here is another one of my pictures from a while ago:

This one was drawn and painted with gouache paints.

Today I did a little cartooning.  I decided to make a colouring in picture for my friend's daughter, Megan.  I had a go at colouring it in too, but I desperately need some Promarkers to do the job properly!:

   

These are just made-up characters.  I would love to know how people go about making and selling characters for greetings cards.  How do you put drawings on to pdfs?  Is that how people sell digital stamps?  Hopefully someone will come along and tell me all I need to know!... 

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

I can draw!

I can actually..as these pictures I made (admitedly a long while ago) show:

I can draw, but I don't any more, and that's a bit sad in a way.  I'm one of these crafty people that is dabbling in all sorts of crafts (as you can see!) but not focusing on any one.  There was an athelete who was famous in 'I'm a Celebrity, get me out of here!' for repeatedly saying 'Focus!' (sorry, can't remember his name!) but, should I?  Should I be focusing, working towards a specific target or is it OK to jump from one thing to another?   This is the question I am asking myself today....

My boys don't do a lot of crafting/painting, except what they are 'made to do' at school.  So today I got them something to fire up their creativity:

It's a large piece of canvas that is treated so you can put it in the washing machine - but you must remember to only use washable paints.   I thought it would be fun in the garden in the Summer to just free them from their 'I can't draw/paint' mindset. 

We had a little play today just randomly making marks and taking a print from it:

Hopefully we will have some more fun with it as the weather gets better!

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Scrolls and Script

Recently I splashed out on a few crafty bargains. When people on MSE (moneysavingexpert.com) have mentioned sales at craft shops my ears prick up (kind of anyway!)  I know, its not very money saving, but they are sales after all! lol

Anyway, one of the things I splashed out on was the script cuttlebug folder.  I know its not new, in fact its been out yonks, but I don't mind being a little behind the times with my crafting!

With my new cuttlebug embossing folder, I created this card:

In the middle section I've used the embossed script.  I used a rubber stamp for the pen, the word 'love' and the scrolls.  I also coloured the pen gold on the nib and pocket clip and it is covered in glossy accents to make it look 3-d.  The edge of the card was inked to distress it with a black ink pad. I layered it up using glue dots.

I managed to get one of those old books with a beautiful pattern on the edge of the pages:

It was called a 'Minute' Book:

 This was another one of my charity shop bargains today at £1.75.     

Thanks for visiting my blog,

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

REALLY BIG BLOG HOP

This is a massive blog hop (aiming for 1000!) run by clips-n-cuts who is celebrating 100 posts. Follow the instuctions (Click the frog at the bottom to start) and join in! (If not, just click the pics and enjoy your own blog hop)

With love from us to you

Today's project I may need to warn you is a bit soppy!  As some of you know, my husband is working in China at the moment and only comes back to the UK every few weeks.  Well with all these aeroplane problems, I'm concerned that his next visit may be delayed which will be hard on all of us, we're finding it quite tough going as it is.  He only started this job in January so we hadn't been used to him being away and have had to get used to it! 

So today's project was a digital scrapbooking page (basic elements there, I just added to it) for him from us, his family:

This one uses the (paid) facility on Picnik.

I've had to do a quick craft today because since I visited my sister at the weekend I've been feeling a bit guilty.  Her house is immaculate (her husband runs a cleaning business) and mine is....... well, not! My excuse has always been 'I'm too busy being creative' but there's only so many times you can say that (believe me, I've tried!).  Anyway, to cut a long story short, I've been tackling our house with vigour today, giving it a proper Spring Clean, something which is long overdue.  Gotta be done though (bah!)

See you tomorrow

qwiksave
x

The Lightsabre Gang

As you know, I've been away for a couple of days visiting my sister in Milton Keynes so I haven't been able to craft (I did however spend hours on her computer reading everybody elses blogs - I've been loving Shimelle's scrapbooking party, which was very inspirational!)

The weather has been really sunny, with lovely blue skies but it still has that nip in the air which keeps me indoors.  We did a couple of trips to shops like Toys'r'Us for me to get my little nephew something for his birthday and I had my first ever trip to Costco.  What a place!  It's a giant warehouse with goods packed up to the ceilings and GINORMOUS packets of everyday things.  I saw the biggest can of tuna I have ever seen in my life!  But, amongst all this they also had really expensive jewellery in there too, just across from the washing machine aisle they had a diamond necklace that would cost you, get this, £11,000!!  There were also Prada handbags costing a mere £1,000....  Its another world I tell you.  I did spot some scrapbooking goodies I would have liked to have got, including a nice vintage set for £13 for 300 sheets and a great storage caddy but I was coming home with the kids on the train and was already carrying 4 bags (blast!)

Just took a couple of pics of my kids and their cousin in my sister's big garden.  It has a children's mini fort in it!:

These brave knights didn't have swords,

they had...

..Light sabres!

(Pics modified using Picnik)

Finally today, I can show you a card I received yesterday in the post from kayc, who is from a card swopping group on the internet called craftrak.com.  It's fairly new so not many people are using it yet.  It was a nice card I received, but was very small (7.5 x 10.5cms). 

For details of how you swop, (think you have to register) pop along to the website http://www.craftrak.com/. (I haven't done any swopping  myself on it yet so am not necessarily recommending it).

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

x

Girl's 10th Birthday Card

Stop right there! - but only if you're one of my bestest mates and have a daughter named Megan whos 10th birthday is coming up soon, because I am showcasing the card I have made for her.  Well, OK, you can look if you want, but sssh, don't show Megan....  The rest of you feel free to carry on!....  :-)

Here is the card in its present state:

It's a pop-up card and it took me HOURS to make!  Behind this innocent fascade there are loads of complicated cuts and folds.  You can see more in this side view:

It wasn't my own invention, I got the idea from this fab italian blog called Hobby di Carta (that I always use Google to automatically translate for me) and even though the step by step instructions were pretty good,  it was still a very tricky card to make.  In fact, I can honestly say that this has been the most difficult card (technically) that I've ever made. But even though it was hard, it was fun too and getting myself through that challenge meant that I got to do the bit I like, personalising the card afterwards.

 

(Sorry about the quality of this pic, its a bit too reflective)

To decorate it I used loads of free papers from cardmaking magazines, the daisy designs were from 'Simply Cards & Papercraft'.  The stickers were from my stash and I made use of two recently purchased punches, the dimensional butterfly and the scalloped edge, both from x-cut/docrafts. 

(This photo of Megan isn't the picture I will be putting in the finished card, I'm going to get a more recent one, and one without bubble mixture on her hair and face!)

To finish today's post, I'm just letting you know that I'm going away.  No, not to this fantastic place, (Wow! Read the whole post! - and be a follower too, this lady is SO creative!) I'm just going to visit my sister in Milton Keynes for a couple of days.  So have a great weekend, and I'll see you back here soon....

qwiksave

x