New Year and Christmas Crafting

I know, I am probably the last person to write their New Year's blog post, but it's been quite a busy few weeks getting back into the swing of things.

Over Christmas I was very busy making presents for people.

The main present was a recipe book for my Mum, which I forgot to take pictures of so I can't post anything. I will need to try and take some next time I see her to show you. It featured 10 recipes from my childhood which me and my sister dug out of her recipe box and compiled into a fancy, decorated recipe book. She loved it.

I also made my mum a small cross stitch featuring a country cottage. It was a kit that she bought me to make, but I framed it in one of my Grandma's old embroidery hoops with some co-ordinating ribbon:

I also had to make a special Christmas card for my crafty friend and had seen an idea using Clarity stamps and shrink plastic.

My previous experience with shrink plastic wasn't great but it actually worked first time for this card. I die-cut the shrink plastic before I stamped it and then added a bit of colour. Instead of putting it in the oven, I heated it with my heat tool in a baking tray. This didn't work brilliantly and I think putting it in the oven would have been better.

For the background I had a brainwave as I couldn't find any backing paper that would match.

I stamped my snowflake stamp with versamark and embossed it with tinsel embossing powder. I then coloured the card with purple distress stain, leaving the embossed areas clear and visible.

I then layed purple ribbon across the card, segmenting it into 4. I layered up each bit of plastic onto gold card and stuck one in each segment. On the fourth segment I put a sentiment onto the gold card.

I have also listed all my jewellery on my Etsy shop. None of it has sold so far but lots of people have looked so fingers crossed someone will buy it soon!

That's all for now, time to get on with my projects for January. More posts soon.

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!