Personalised Items

After the craft show last month, I was asked to make a quilted baby blanket in the style of the cushions that were so popular at the show. I hadn't done this before but I was quite confident that it would look great - and it did!

I cut a piece of the patchwork material and layered it up with some wadding and light pink material, and machine quilted it in the check pattern. This was the easy part!

I bought some silky bias binding to edge it, which I hadn't used before and was a little bit tricky but I got there in the end:

For the corners, I did cheat slightly because I rounded them which made the binding a bit easier. The blanket was received very well and commented that 'it is better than anything you can buy in the shops' which is a great compliment! I'm hoping to get some more of this material so I can make a few more in the new year to sell.

I also had a request for a bespoke Christmas card. This was from someone who really likes my cards and wanted something special to give to her parents.

This card wasn't as easy as I first thought and I sat there on a Saturday for several hours wondering what I could do. I had to play around with the backing paper for ages, making sure it looked good.

The main image is a Christmas tree stamp from Indigo Blu which was heat embossed with white frantage embossing powder, to give the vintage glittery look:

Although I absolutely love embossing, I just can't find a good coloured gold embossing powder, so for the Mum and Dad lettering I had to paint the chipboard letters with gold acrylic paint, which had a similarly dazzling effect.

I did, however, emboss the Happy Christmas with bronze embossing powder - I couldn't resist!

The stars were the perfect finishing touch, embossed with the same white frantage powder which gives a different result every time. Although they turned out mainly white, they do have gold glittery effects mixed in too.

I hope they like it!

Jewellery Making

Jewellery making is something I have wanted to try for a while but I haven't had a clue where to start.

It was my lucky day when, on the way back from the craft and gift show, I stumbled upon a bead shop - right here in Brentwood! (apparently it's been there for several years but I don't often go to that part of the town).

When I walked in there were lots of lovely beads tempting me, so I signed up to a beginners workshop for the following Saturday.

In the workshop, there were two different types of necklace available to make and we had a pick of a large variety of beads. It turned out that the construction of the necklace itself is actually very straight forward, it's the designing of it that takes the most time.

The first necklace we made was this one:

 It was made using a length of tiger tail, folded in half. The majority of the beads are threaded onto one of the strands, but the other strand is used to thread one bead onto, with the design being held in place by a joiner bead threaded onto both strings. It's not as complicated as it looks and can be adapted in many different ways. However, it took us ages to decide on which beads to use - there were just too many on offer.

The next necklace was this one which is designed to be much longer:

Once you got the hang of how this one is constructed, it was very simple to build. Again, this design can be adapted and can be made smaller.

The Brentwood Bead Shop holds regular workshops from beginners to the more advanced. More information can be found on their website: www.brentwood-bead-shop.co.uk

Brentwood Craft and Gift Show

The last few months have been working towards the weekend just gone - to make things in order to sell them at the Brentwood Craft and Gift show.

This was a 2 day show and comprised of several different stalls selling various different crafts, gifts and foods as well. It was advertised as being the biggest of its kind in Essex and even some reindeers popped in on Sunday.

We worked hard to get the stall set up on Saturday and although it started off slowly, we had quite a good day - mainly due to several family members and friends paying the stall a visit and parting with their money.

There were several different items for sale including patchwork cushions, magnets, handmade cards and decorated candles:

 

 On the second day the heavens opened - so the hall was very busy. The stall had a bit of a change around to make some items more visible (and us - there was no hiding behind the card stands on day two.....)

The fleece baby blankets proved a very popular item, probably due to the cute animals printed onto some of them as well as the very soft feel of the snuggle fleece.

Although none of them sold, the mice pin cushions were also a big talking point, with lots of comments that they were cute. However, they are still sat on my shelf until they can find an owner:

I now have time to do more work on the blog. so over the next few weeks there will be several 'How to' guides showing various different techniques - so why not follow the blog so you get regular updates on the information and news.

I will also be putting some of the unsold stock onto my Etsy page shortly, or if you would like anything please leave a comment on this post.

Claire

Black doesn't have to be boring

It was my Mum's birthday at the weekend and I always try and make her a special card using new techniques. The card this year was made trying out a new technique for the first time and luckily it went alright.

I purchased some angelina fibres, also known as fusible fibres, several months ago as part of the Clarity Stamping in the Classroom with Barbara Grey workshop. I made along with the project that she demonstrated but I never tried anything else after that.

One of the techniques that you can do with angelina fibres is the one I've used in the butterfly on the left hand side.

They work with heat and fuse together when heat is applied - normally by using an iron.

For the butterfly, I cut six pieces of the film and stamped the butterfly onto 3 of them using stayzon ink. I then sandwiched the fibres in between the two pieces of film - one stamped and one plain piece, covered it with baking parchment and ironed over the top using the coldest setting.

Once ironed, the harden as well and I cut out the whole butterfly from one piece, the top part of the butterfly (including the body) from another piece and from the last piece I cut the bottom part of the butterfly (including the body). I then stuck the two halves onto the main butterfly using double sided tape on the body only. This gives the butterfly the 3D look.

For the background, I again used the angelina fibres but without sandwiching them. I took a variety of colours and laid them over a sheet of baking paper. I muddled them up a bit so they were quite random and then laid another sheet of baking paper over the top and ironed. They fused together creating a sheet which I stuck to a black piece of card using pritt stick as the background to the card.

The third part of the pack that I bought were some different petal stamps. There are many different designs in the pack but I chose one which had an intricate flower design within the petal:

I used 2 different coloured heat embossing powders on black card to create the flower. I stuck them round in a flower shape and then stuck a piece of card candy as the centre of the flower.

For the sentiment I again used black card, cut out using a spellbinders die, but covered it with perfect pearls as I have tried before when I was experimenting with inchies. Find out how I created this by clicking here.

The card was finished with some pink gems and a peel off butterfly stuck to acetate and the wings bent up to give it dimension.

Although the majority of the card used black card, with the techniques outlines above, black certainly doesn't need to be boring and can be made to sparkle as well as white card. Don't dismiss using black card next time you go to make a card!

The distressed look, heat embossing & acrylic paints

This was a technique that I tried out a few months ago and thought I would share it with you. It involves heat embossing and acrylic paint to achieve an unusual distressed look.

Here is the first card I made:

Here is what you need:

Coloured card, co-ordinating coloured acrylic paint, clear embossing powder, versamark ink pad, stamps of your choice, heat gun, large paint brush, a tissue

1) Choose the coloured card - this will be the colour that shows through your design.

2) Stamp your chosen image with the versamark ink onto the card and emboss with the clear powder.

3) Paint over the image and the surrounding card with the acrylic paint and allow to dry

4) Once the paint has dried, take the tissue and dampen it with water. Lightly rub over the embossed image to remove the paint, revealing the coloured card underneath. Then leave it to dry.

And now you have your image. Here is a close up of the flower on the card:

I applied some turquoise ink to the edges of the flower. On the background, I highlighted some of the features of the stamp, such as the watch and some of the wording, with some gold perfect pearls.

I then had a go at another card, which didn't turn out quite as expected but it can always be worked on:

The background was made using black card. I didn't have any white paint at the time (I have now purchased some so might have to try it again), so I used some picket fence distress stain. It didn't work quite as well as the paint probably would have done, because the black still shows through quite a bit.

The picture in the middle was made using red card and a bronze paint. Again, it didn't stand out as much as I would have liked because the colours were too similar, but it was an experiment and now I know what I need to change next time.

It can be a bit messy and time consuming as you have to wait for it to dry each time, but it can be very effective.

Stamping onto Candles

I first heard about this technique from a friend and when I become stuck what to make my Mum for mothers day I decided to give it a go. The results where brilliant (if I say so myself) so I thought I would try it again and experiment with heat embossing - my favourite!

I also thought I would share a quick tutorial with you as well.

Here is one of the candles that I heat embossed with blue glitter WOW powder. The picture doesn't show the sparkle very well.

What you will need:

A white candle, some white tissue paper, embossing powder, heat gun, talcum powder to stop the static, a large and a small paintbrush, a stamp of your choice and versamark ink.

Instructions:

1) Cut a piece of the tissue paper to the right size to cover the candle. You will be wrapping this around the candle and you don't want any overlap.
2) Brush some of the talcum powder onto the tissue paper using the large paintbrush and tip off any excess.
3) Ink up your stamp with the versamark ink and stamp it onto the tissue paper, pressing fairly hard to make sure all the image comes out. Then carefully take the stamp off being careful not to tear the tissue.
4) Before the ink dries, pour the embossing powder over the stamped image and return the excess to the pot. The heat the image until all the powder is melted. Repeat this as necessary - with the snowflake candle I stamped my image twice which was enough to cover the candle.
5) When you have your image ready, cover the back of it with a small amount of Pritt Stick and wrap around the candle. This keeps the image from moving when heating.
6) Some people prefer to use baking parchment when heating - wrap this around the candle and heat through it, however I didn't use this. Apply the heat gun to the image on the candle, being careful not to heat the wax too much. You can see through the tissue paper and easily identify when it is melted to the candle because it becomes more see through.

The key is not to heat the wax too much and do it in small sections. I heat a bit and then rub it over with my fingers to make sure it's stuck down and it's smooth. This does mean I get covered in wax but once it's dry it easily peels off!

Some of the edges might be harder to stick down, so if you do find they are curling, apply a little bit more of the pritt stick and heat again, smoothing the tissue down with your finger immediately after removing the heat.

Then you have your finished candle. Here are some more that I made now I've got the hang of it:

The two on the outside are both heat embossed and the butterfly ones in the middle are just coloured images using pro markers before the tissue is heated onto the candle. After heating I then applied some stickles glitter glue to the image.

This technique did require a lot of practice so before going for the best one, buy some cheap candles that you can practice with. They make great presents. I have wrapped mine in cellophane and tied with ribbon and added a small tag to them:

Journal of my Life

I was thinking of another book to make and decided to look for some ideas on the Sweet Shoppe Designs website. I had previously downloaded a digital scrapbooking kit from here so I thought I would have another look to see what's new when I came across the Journal of my Life scrapbook kit.

I immediately fell in love with the colours used and downloaded it to use. The kit comprises of a number of papers, elements and alphabets and because it's a downloadable pack you can print off and re-size the pieces you want to use.

I chose an 8x8 book because it leaves enough space to add both photos and embellishments. I bound it using the Zutter Bind it All machine because it makes a very sturdy book and looks professional.

The Love and Life were cut out from the kit and glittered using stickles glitter glue. I stuck a piece of white lace along the bottom with double sided tape and then die cut a heart from chipboard. Then, using the frantage embossing powder in shabby pink and some shaved ice, I embossed the heart and stuck it over the lace.

The circular butterfly element was embossed onto black card using WOW violet pearl powder and mounted onto a scalloped circle coloured with distress ink. The yellow card candy was made using some kraft card candy and embossed with yellow WOW powder.

The inside of the book has individually decorated pages that have enough room to put pictures on them and to add your own embellishments.

 This is the first page and I have made a frame out of ribbon. I cut 4 strips of ribbon to the same length and trimmed the ends diagonally. I then put double sided tape onto each strip and layered them over each other, ready for a picture to be added.

The turquoise paper on the right is my favourite and I felt that I didn't want to add too much to these pages. A journalling element was added to the left hand page to record details of the pictures added.

This one is another of my favourite papers - the journal page. I wasn't sure what I could add to this page so just a butterfly with some glitter added. On the right hand page I die cut another chipboard heart but this time I embossed with blue lagoon WOW powder, punched a hole in it and threaded through some twine.

The paper on the left hand side of the above is a replicate of some newspaper, which I love. I really couldn't  find an element that would go with this paper so I left it blank and complimented it with some purple wood effect paper opposite, finished with a tag.

And the last page I'm going to show you is this one. The left hand page features a tag and a felt circle replicated element that was part of the kit. I have glittered the flower detailing and will put a small silver gem in the middle of it.

On the right hand side I have added another journalling tag as well as some butterflies that were heat embossed with WOW powder in pomegranate.

As you can see, there is still plenty of room to add your own personal touch to this book and I have created the pages so that they all co-ordinate and there is lots of colour.

Part of me doesn't want to sell this book but the good thing about it is that if I do sell it, I can always make another one!

Recipe Book

I had the idea to make a recipe book several months ago and have been collecting some stamps and elements that I could use for the book. I found the 'From the Kitchen' set of stamps by Darkroom Door which I thought would fit my theme perfectly.

My Mum has a box full of scrappy pieces of paper with recipes written on them which I am planning on putting into this book one day. I need to get my hands on them first and choose my favourite 10 to put in here.

I think the book has a vintage feel to it and I have created 10 unique pages in which recipes can be added.

The cover features a glittered kitchen themed topper which has been mounted onto brown glitter paper. The 'recipes' wording has been heat embossed in Pomegranate WOW embossing powder on cream card. The heart was die cut out of chipboard and then embossed with the same powder and hung from under the circle using some pink glittery DMC thread.

The contents page looks a bit bare at the moment but I'm not sure what is needed to make it more exciting. Perhaps it will look better when it's full of lovely recipes.

Each recipe has 2 pages allocated to it - one to write down all the ingredients and the other to write down the directions. Each set of pages has been covered in co-ordinating papers and embellished with kitchen themed elements. There is plenty of space to add more elements if required.

Each page is slightly different and all are a different colour. Here are a selection of the pages in the book:

And then I had a page left over at the back which I wasn't sure what to do with so I used it as a notes page where you can scribble down anything that you might not have had room for, or need to remember about a recipe from that scrappy piece of paper!

I hope Mum will like it when it's full of recipes. I think it looks too nice to write in - must remember to use my best handwriting!

Experimenting with Inchies

Back in July I bought some of the Darkroom Door Garden Inchie stamps and up until last weekend I had only made bookmarks with them.

Inchies are exactly what they say they are - stamps which measure 1 inch square and can have any design in them. This particular set has 24 different stamps which feature butterflies, birds, plants and flowers.

The bookmarks I made are below and are really simple to make:

I took a piece of white card and a craft brush (an old fashioned shaving brush can be used for this as well). I took some co-ordinating distress inks and using the brush, swiped the colour over the card, starting with the lightest colour first.

Then I took the stamp I wanted and inked it up well with a black memento ink pad, making sure the stamp is well covered with the ink. Then stamp onto the coloured card and cut out the image. They were then mounted onto coloured, then black, then coloured card, with a piece of ribbon added under the black card.

There are so many co-ordinating designs in this set that the combinations are endless.

Then, last weekend I realised I hadn't done much with these stamps so had some inspiration to make some cards with them. The first one I made is below, which builds on the bookmark idea:

First of all, I took a piece of white card and swiped over pine needles, broken china and dusty concord distress stains, starting with the broken china as the base. I then spritzed the card with water and dried it. Then, on one half of the card I swiped over picket fence distress stain to lighten the colour. Then I spritzed with water again and dried it with the heat tool.

I chose 9 stamps that went well together and stamped them as above with the memento ink onto the side that hadn't been lightened. I then cut them out and arranged them onto a piece of purple card. I then mounted this onto a piece of black card.

Before sticking to the coloured card I used gold perfect pearls and painted a thin border round the edge of the card. This could also be done with a gold gel pen, but I didn't have one so used the next best thing!

I cut a piece of black card to cover a 6x6 card blank and stuck the whole piece onto it. I stamped the sentiment onto some spare coloured card and mounted it onto black and again edged it with the gold.

Perfect pearls are one of my favourite mediums to use in crafting but I normally use them wet as a paint, so I thought I would experiment with using them dry on the next card:

Again, I cut a piece of black card to fit a 6x6 card blank. I took some bubble wrap, cut it to size and stuck it onto an acrylic block with pritt stick. I then covered the bubble wrap with versamark embossing ink and stamped it onto the black card.

I then brushed over the perfect pearl powder so it stuck to the ink. I did this randomly to create the rainbow effect. I removed any excess powder by rubbing the image with a tissue and sprayed it with hairspray.

Yes you heard right - hairspray acts as a very thin glue covering which stops the powder being rubbed off. Just spray it lightly over the image and leave to dry.

I then took this one step further and swiped the versamark to cover a piece of black card. I then brushed the pearl powder over the stamped area. I did this diagonally, again to create a rainbow.

Using Stayzon ink this time, I stamped 3 of the inchie images over the dusted card. Before cutting out, I sprayed with the hairspray again. This technique is quiet effective because the pearl sheen of the powders shows through the black ink so the whole image shines.

I painted round the edge of the images with the gold perfect pearls, mounted them onto a black card strip and painted round this as well.

For the sentiment, I stamped it onto the brushed card and die cut the shape round it and painted the edge again. This card took a bit longer to make as it was more fiddly but it is worth the extra effort because the effect looks brilliant after it's finished.

I decided I was a bit bored of black by now so the next card is much more colourful and again, fairly simple to make:

I chose 4 co-ordinating distress inks: broken china, tattered rose, victorian velvet and milled lavender. I then chose 8 different inchie stamps and stamped them round in a pattern on a white piece of card, varying the colours. I then cut them out and arranged them round a 6x6 card blank. I made sure that no same design or colour was next to each other.

The butterfly and the sentiment in the middle were stamped using blue pearlescent ink.

I am quite pleased with the three cards and now plan to use the inchie stamps to create some co-ordinating notebooks. The stamps are very versatile and can be used for a large variety of crafting projects.

Notebook Wall Hangings

I came up with the idea for the notebook wall hangings when I came across a project in a magazine. I also used to own one when I was much younger and I think it's always handy to have a notebook on hand. They are also very decorative (and perhaps a little too nice to use?) but they would make great presents.

The first one I made was this 'To do List':

The main notebook is made out of A6 card blanks and scored and taped together. I then covered the front with patterned paper and wrapped some coordinating paper around the top to hide the joins in the layers.

The backing was made from a chipboard album page and covered with patterned paper with the edges inked. I cut out a lace effect border for the bottom strip and used some adhesive white letters for the words. To emphasise them I outlined each letter with a brown fine liner pen.

The roses are made from embossing powder, heated up with some mica powders thrown in, and poured into a mould.

The next one I made was this flowery plain one:

I wanted to make it as girly as possible and I added some vellum heat embossed butterflies.

The notebook on the next one was made using a lacy die. It was quite time consuming as I had to cut each page individually, and then poke the holes out from the decorative edge as they didn't all come out when I took it out the die cutter:

I really like the Wellington Bear range that Papermania have recently brought out and this image was so cute. The letters on this one are chipboard letters which I them heat embossed in blue.

I made another Wellington Bear hanging also in blue but this time I decided it was easier to make the notebooks using the card blanks

And finally another girly one:

I have lots more ideas and things to put on the notebooks so there will be more shortly. I (might) also try and make some more using the die cutter because even though they are quite fiddly I think they look very effective!

Claire

Quilted Hot Water Bottle Covers

Spotty things are 'in' at the moment and I found a bundle of spotty fat quarters in various different colours and just had to have it.

I then found some instructions on how to make quilted hot water bottle covers and decided that the spotty material would make great covers. So I set to work......

Here is the first one I made in blue:

They all have a contrasting handmade binding on the back, with the same colour material used inside. Once I got the hang of it, they are very easy to do.

I created a template on a large piece of card for the three pieces. I then pinned these pieces to the spotty material and cut around the edge.

Then I used a white gel marker (which washes off afterwards with a damp cloth) and a ruler to mark out the lines for sewing. I thought the diagonal quilting would add a quirky touch.

Once the lines had been ruled I then laid each piece onto some wadding a cut around with a 3cm excess around all sides. I then laid this onto a piece of co-ordinating coloured material and cut this to the same size as the wadding.

Then I used the sewing machine to sew the quilted lines. I then trimmed each piece down to the size of the spotty material.

The edging was made using a strip of the co-ordinating material, folding each side into the middle and pressing, then folding it around the edge and sewing in place.

Once this was done, all three pieces were assembled with right sides facing and sewn together. They were then turned into the right way and pressed. The white lines were removed using a damp cloth.

So far I have made three, with a fourth, light blue cover almost ready. I still have another 13 different colours to go so there are plenty more in the making.

Heat embossing and Fran-tage

I recently came across the Fran-tage embossing enamels from Stampendous, and being the avid heat embosser that I am, I had to try them out.

These powders are made up of different fragments or various different sizes, which melt into different shapes when heated. There is also glitter in each pot and the enamels come in a range of colours.

The card below was made using a large chipboard flower which is inked with versamark ink and sprinkled on the powder. (sorry the picture hasn't come out too well). The powder used was shabby pink.

You can just about make out the gold flecks in the flower which creates a slightly aged look, and a finish that would not be achieved with normal embossing powders.

Below is another card that I made in the same way.

Because the chipboard was covered with the versamark ink before sprinkling on the powder, you get a thin coverage over the flower and the gold flecks aren't as prominent. For the centre of this flower I used the shabby white powder and didn't use any versamark ink.

After cutting out the circle, I sprinkled the circle with the powder and laid over some shaved ice flakes. Using tweezers to hold it and being careful not to burn myself, I heated the circle from behind. You need to do this from behind otherwise the powder and flakes just fly off. Once the powder starts melting you can then move to the front if you wish. The flakes use the molten powder to adhere to the card. This gave a contrasting, shiny centre to the flower.

After attending a heat embossing workshop, I learnt about the sprinkling technique and had an idea about using the white powder as snow. The below card illustrates my idea!

For this card I first of all stamped and embossed the snowman in ordinary white powder. I then used my mica powders to add a bit of shimmery colour to him.

Then I swiped my versamark ink pad along the bottom of the card and sprinkled a generous layer of the shabby white frantage powder so it stuck to the powder. I added some of the shaved ice flakes on top of the powder and heated from behind. Because of the amount of powder added, this really goes molten when heated and the flakes adhere nicely.

I then took a pinch of the embossing enamel and scattered it randomly over the top of the picture to create falling snow.

I love the shaved ice flakes with the powders and decided to make a sparkly girly card for a friends birthday:

For this card, I first of all I used my spun sugar distress stain to colour the card and then sponged some tattered rose distress ink around the edges. Then I randomly added pools of the shabby pink embossing powder with shaved ice flakes in each pool to give a nice sparkly background.

The large butterfly was made with fusible fibre and the petals were embossed onto vellum. The two blue butterflies were embossed onto acetate and adhered with clear glue dots.

I am planning on getting more of the frantage powders. I had a play with the aged black powder in the workshop, combining it with some gold mica flakes and this looked very effective. So watch this space for more projects using frantage!