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!

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!

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!