New Year, New Me

Well, it's been over 6 months since my last post and, to quote Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the face of all the world has changed I think. For quite a while now work has been ....... uncomfortable, and this intensified around the middle of last year (seems strange saying that!). This meant that i had very little spare time and when I did have some I wasn't in a very good place so didn't get any crafting done. Anyway, right at the end of the year I was head hunted! I was offered the post of Executive Assistant to the CEO of a group of companies, and so when I returned to work after the Christmas break I handed in my notice. I start my new post mid-February, and it's like a huge cloud has lifted! I am in a much better place now, so much so that I have actually made something this weekend! I used one of my fabby Christmas gifts, the caged bird die from his Holtziness the Tim, and I am blogging about it with my other fantastic prezzie - my iPad :0 so I'm not sure how this will work!


Wishing you all a Happy New Year x - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I'm still alive !

Bet you wondered about that! I haven't had any time, energy or mojo lately which is why I have been MIA. 

My curiousity was piqued by all the smash book talk and then I found this in Paperchase:




The pages inside are lined, plain and graph paper plus these little beauties:

A clear plastic 4 pocket divider

A clear plastic single large pocket

This is quite a useful card pocket

 and a lovely zipped pocket!






My idea was to open the wire binding, take out all the pages, make some of my own pages with PP etc, decorate the covers, then put it  back together again.  So far I have deconstructed it and decorated the front cover

I had some old world map wrapping paper so I stuck that to the inside with glossy accents so it showed through to the front.   The atlas cover was from my stash and I fixed that to the outside of the cover.

Inside the front cover I painted the back of the map with some Honey Dew fresco finishes (love that paint), stamped some Artistic Stamper travel stamps over it then went to town with travel themed bits and bobs from my stash.

Once I've got around to sorting out what I'm using for my inside pages and puting it all back together it will be a travel journal (just in case you hadn't guessed!)

I found these fabby things in Muji:

I love the little hand paper clippy things, and the pen holder will be useful.

Anyway, at least I seem to have got my mojo back.  All I need ow is a  bit more time to get it all done!

Various bits and pieces

I realise my blogging has been sporadic at best lately.  I'm not in a very good place right now due to one thing or another (mainly one thing) but I won't bore you with that.  Suffice to say my mojo is largely missing right now.  I have not been idle though, gentle readers, perish the thought!  I have been doing some bits and bobs of yarnery and stitchery that consists of following designs by other people thereby utilising their mojo while mine is off wandering.
I learned to knit and crochet when I was a child and have done most kinds of both crafts.  One branch of knitting eluded me though... lace. I can crochet lace no problem but have never got around to even trying knitted lace (i.e. shetland/orenburg/estonian).  My first attempt to rectify this lack was made 4 years ago during my chemo/radiotherapy treatments.  Needless to say it did not go well! Trying to focus on new and complicated techiques while your brain is fried by chemical and radiation poisoning is not really a good idea.  So, on clearing out some dark corners of storage cupboards I came across the patterns and yarn and decided to try again.  Here is where I have got so far:

This is one a third pattern repeats of the edging, and there are 49 repeats in total for just the edging.  It's taken me over a week to get this far, so I figure at least a year just to comlete the edge.  I think I'm doing ok, although I think the vine pattern may have gone adrift a couple of times by the look of it! It is intended to be the Magikal Earth Shawl by Sandy Terp and this is how the finished article should look

 
I have a long way to go!  In the meantime I found the level of focus and concentration needed for lace knitting was so high that I needed something simple to fit in between, so I took up the crochet hook and did a simple shrug for DD which I completed just yesterday

Finally I did get around to some papercrafting.  I decided I needed somewhere to keep cards I had made.  I had intended to use an empty cereal packet  but DD had a tidy session and threw them all away! I therefore scoured the net and found a tutorial from Inking Idaho which almost fit the bill. I wanted something a bit bigger though so I started with some 12 x 12 cardstock then covered it with some old K & Co papers from my stash

So, lots of little bits and pieces keeping me out of mischief.  Hopefully my mojo will come home soon and I can get really inky and messy!
Hope everyone is keeping well x

Playing with Art Parts

Inspired by the gorgeous sample THE Linda Elbourne had on her demo station at Ally Pally I bought the Studio 490 Art Parts Cake Stand.  I've finally managed to have a play and made this for my DD

 

Wren is her family nickname, and she loves playing scrabble, so using the tiles was and obvious choice.  The "vase" of flowers was inspired by this genius idea from the wonderful Lin Brown, I just shaped the grungepaper fringe to make the leaves a bit more spiked then added some tiny lilies.  Here is the back view

I needed something to cover the frame at the back of the mini canvas so it looked ok from all angles.  I just coloured up a piece of paper, stuck that on the back then used and image of Peter Rabbit and his cousin Benjamin Bunny (regular visitors may recall DD is a big fan).

Thanks for visiting x

Here he is.......

the fairy elephant in his magical glade in a cage! He's a bit shy, so it's difficult to take photographs, but if you look closely you can see him wandering around in amongst the prima vines and flowers. 
He was a decopatch elephant and I gave him a coat of eco paint in Ocean as a base then blasted him with every glimmer and shimmer mist I owned (that didn't have a clogged valve), then stuck some wings from a butterfly I had in my stash (yes I pulled the wings off a butterfly but, to be fair, one of them had already fallen off anyway).
My DDs bought the cage for my birthday last year and I have been gathering bits for it ever since.
Here is a top view

I found some stuff in a model shop that was for making landscapes for train sets and used that for the base, it started out green and I covered it with flower soft, glitter and some bling and Prima pebbles.  I used some mirror card surrounded by moss as a pond, and then went mad with Prima vines and glimmer misted flowers.

Here's a glimpse inside with the lid open.

and this is the "sun" made with a t!m rosette and a CI image.

Had loads of fun making this :)

Hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine today x

Another DD birthday

Yep, their birthdays are only 2 weeks apart.  In fact, for the past two weeks they have been the same age as there is only 11 and a half months between them (yes, I am mad, are you only just realising this?)  Anyway, here is eldest DDs birthday card

This is taken from THE Wendy Vecchi first book (as that is the only one I own!).  I used some handmade paper I found  in Paperchase and added a second butterfly as the paper was a bit too big.  The matting is horrible I know.  Matting is not in my skill set I'm afraid, but luckily the paper has a ragged edge and I distressed the edges of the mats a bit too so it doesn't look too bad.

I am now off to continue work on my fairy elephant......... all will be revealed in due time my pretties!

Kaisercraft Paperartsy style

DDs got me the Kaisercraft desk organiser for mother's day last week, so I've been putting it together today using my PaperArtsy Thorndon Hall papers

The sheet music isn't Thorndon Hall, it's something random from my stash, and the piece just above the three drawers isn't covered in paper.  That has a coat of the new Fresco Finish in London Midnight, then a thin layer of the crackle glaze followed by a coat of Vintage Lace. It's magic! It's so simple, no worrying about how long to leave between coats or anything, just let the crackle dry (or dry it with a heat gun) then put on the top coat and the crackles appear.  Here's a close up, the crackles really are amazing

 I stamped a  bird from each of the three new PaperArtsy stamp plates I bought yesterday straight on top with  black archival.  It takes the image like a dream. 
Now I just have to get organised enough to put stuff in the organiser!