Paper flowers- my crafting tool favourite

 Here's a card I made for a friend's 40th birthday this weekend.

If there is a piece that I maintain has been most versatile in my craft stash, it would be a flower punch. I have a Woodware daisy punch in 3 size and all 3 are craft workhorses for me.

You can see from the inside flower, what the basic flower looks like. To achieve the above effect, each flower is made up of three of the basic shapes. To get the 3d effect, you need a large embossing tool and basically, all you do is rub around the outside of the petals in order to make the petals curl outwards.

Apart from some self-adhesive gems (which were a present but you can get hundreds of them for £1 in The Works), the rest of the card was just achieved by punches.  

An edging punch (Martha Stewart Crafts- also a present) and a star-burst punch, for the inside of the flower.

If I look back over many or most of my flower designs, there is a wealth of flower punched cards.

4 flower designs

Sunflower

A flower from circles

Cath Kidston recycled florals

3d flowers

Scrap card punched florals

Tiny flowers wedding card

Music paper flowers

Would you invest in this simple tool?

It's been used for stencilling, wedding decorations and much more!

xx

Linking with Creative Mondays with the lovely Claire. It is soooooooo long since I have linked a craft!

Autumn treasures

So, come on then Autumn, show me your finery!
Take me on a journey of discovery, that we may know each other as dear old friends.
Deck yourself in your most dandiest of threads
And serenade and woo me with your beauty.
Dazzle me, hold aloft your greatest finery.
Pave my paths with gold and my walls with the richest of rubies.
Allow me to tread gently upon your veined-dreams.
Offer me the finest delicacies, enjoyed by the richest of your patrons.
And lead me to places with untold, unimaginable intricacy.
Exhibit shapes in myriad forms and the whole spectrum of shades.
Share your tree-dappled light as a lamp to my feet.
May lace-like ferns adorn my routes.
Like palms in far-off lands.
Show me that life still brims within you.
And that you are echoes of friends past, still near, still loved.
Teach me the ways of older beauty.
That you too, may be long-cherished in my heart.

CBC and I went for a forest walk today after a rather long and protracted detour in which we aborted an attempt to visit a nature reserve in the place of my ancestors, Tollesbury.  Instead, we returned to Danbury, a place I posted about walking in, in January.  I tried to look closely at the colours of the season and appreciate that there still is incredible variety, delicate beauty and not all shades of futile decay. Indeed, comparing it to my January walk, I see a great contrast and realise, that whilst Summer is my true love, that there is still much to rejoice in!

It is a joy to be on holiday for another week in which many joyous plans, dear friends and family to see and adventures will ensue!

I hope all is well with you!

xxx

Linking with Claire Justine at Creative Mondays 

AND, for the first time,

Linking with Photo Friday with Jen from Pierced Wanderings

Decoupage and childish rockets

 Hello, one and all!

I hope all is well with you. I had a bit of a nightmarish start when I reached the station and discovered somebody had been hit by a train again and so there were awful delays meaning I reached school at 10.05am, having left home at 7.45!!! Oh dear.

Just a quick crafty post today.  Here's the last of my August card making.

Now, if you've heard of 3D Decoupage- the art of cutting out and piling up cut outs of the same image to give a 3D effect, then you'll recognise this.

However, I find that I don't do decoupage very much because:
a) I find it unbelievably faffy.
b) I am not the best at delicate cutting.
c) It feels a bit like cheating- all I am doing is cutting around pre-made pictures. I also feel like I am not being creative. I'm essentially assembling a box!
d) often it can feel expensive to buy ready-made sets of decoupaged images.

Anyway, I had a couple of sets of decoupaged images that came free with magazines over the years so I decided for once, to actually finish a decoupage.

 This one is made of quality paper so it was a good freebie. Quite a cute traditional seaside scene.

 You can see from the side, the piling up of the same image (often using a smaller element of the original image) with 3d pads.

This decoupage of the Kingfisher was a cheaper quality paper freebie and not so many layers but layering it on gingham card made it a bit more cheery.

The final one is actually on its side.
I saw a design for a rocket ship in a magazine (not an actual one to follow, just someone exhibiting a piece) and decided I could copy it to make my own template.  Using the funky foam, I made this decidedly ropey-looking rocket.  A fun cheerful boy card perhaps!

Have you made anything recently?  Do share if so!


xx

I'm off to bed!

Linking to Claire Justine, Creative Mondays

Sweet treats

You can tell I had a mammoth card-making sesh over the holidays! It happens when you get several weeks in a row with new cards featuring!

Sometimes, you see a card idea that is JUST GENIUS! You think, "Yes, I must make that!" and then months, years in this case, pass by and you don't do anything about them.

That happened with the amazing biscuit card!

Papercraft Inspirations did this feature with some biscuit designs and I decided to give it a go. Rather than using the templates and tracing them (which would involve photocopying, locating tracing paper and then transferring, I decided to make them free-hand.


This involved finding the suitable coloured papers-

• Custard cream and Jammy dodger come courtesy of a penpal letter envelope.
• Bourbon comes courtesy of the Aldeburgh festival guide-
• Pink Wafer biscuit comes courtesy of the craft stash.

I drew the shapes and then, on the back of them, I drew the designs (freehand) backwards.
Use an embossing tool (rather like an old biro that doesn't work anymore) and embossed all the designs.

Turned them over and in the case of the non-bourbon biscuits, used a white pencil to lightly draw over the lines and then went around the outside of them with a light brown/pink pencil to highlight them a bit more.

Annoyingly, I searched for my paper doilies which I wanted to 'serve' them on, to no avail (until yesterday-grr!) so I just stuck them to a textured lilac card-blank with 3d pads so they stuck out!

And voila, we have the biscuit card!

From one extreme to another, I was looking at the Daring Cardmakers link up from last week with the fruit theme and totally fell in love with Beckie's Clever design which made strawberries out of hearts and flowers. Immediately, I decided to make one! No, I couldn't wait!

To make my strawberries, I used my work-horse 'x-cut heart punch' to punch 9 hearts and used my dragonfly punch to create 9 green dragonflies

Embossing the strawberries, I layered them 3 atop each other to make the strawberries with one upside down dragonflies between each layer and stuck onto some gingham scraps,

Simples!

The last design was made at about 1am when I really should have been in bed.

This came about because I was looking at some honeycomb paper ice-creams on Louise's at Polka dots and freckle spots' blog and suddenly had a vision to make 3d looking ice-cream, so I punched about 6 circles in mint, strawberry and chocolate flavours and folded them in half and glued them down on top of another old envelope. Simple and sweet, I then took the scraps of gingham and scalloped them to make a frame.

SO easy to make (and cheap) but I'm quite proud of it!

So that's your Just desserts!

Any other ideas for sweet-based cards?  I've made quilled boiled sweets before but I fancy making some more!

Linking up to Creative Mondays with Claire Justine!

x

Adventures in card-making: A mannish solution

The age-old perennial dilemma for cardmakers is making cards for men.

Girls can be catered for with a plethora of generic items- flowers, cakes, shoes, dresses, patterns, dogs, cats, pretty patterns, any colour is usually acceptable.

Men are more difficult.  So many generic ideas are too girly for them.  Often, we resort to generic 'Man hobbies' for card-making.  

One solution, I feel, is your colour scheme. 

Using metallics and black and a simple minimalist look is something I think can work.  Not making a card overly fussy.

It was our friend's birthday and I decided to keep it simple and literally personalise the card by using his name and simple colours.

A black base card and 3 colours of metallic cards combined with some alphabet punches I was given one birthday and my hard-working star punch.

It actually looked fine without the stars but I thought to add a bit more detail

 Since I had those colours and the punch out, I decided to make another design just laying out a grid of stars with some outline happy birthday stickers making a border up the edge.

I often feel that whilst I love making cards and it is the act of creation I love, I don't want to spend too much money on expensive card-making elements so I do prefer to make this kind of card.

That said, I've had some more expensive elements like these larger outline stickers for a while, so I figured I would use some up to make this Man card.  Literally, you simply layer the stickers onto your choice background card and cut around them.  stick them on with 3D pads to make them stand out.

So... my key for making a simple man card is:

• A simple colour scheme
• Metallics
• Black background
• Simplicity in terms of details.
• Geometric shapes: Squares, stars, triangles...

Linking up to Creative Mondays with Claire Justine and the Daring Cardmakers Weekly challenge which this week is: "Let's hear it for the boys!"

Craft of the week: More adventures in shrink plastic...

 I've not made anything in shrink plastic for these past few weeks but I can now share something I did make which was this pair of Milk Weed/Monarch butterfly earrings for my Mum.

It was really easy to copy these from a photo of a butterfly from the internet- lines and squares I can manage!   What I found harder was getting the adhesive to keep the earring finding attached to the back. Need to try and use that hot glue gun rather than multipurpose glue. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good glue to use for attaching posts to earrings? Preferably one that doesn't involve scary hot glue? 

Linking to Creative Mondays with Claire Justine.

xxx

Sunflower

Mum's birthday has now been and gone so I can share the latest card I made.  When my sister was about 10 or 12, my Mum made her an incredible purple and orange sunflower birthday cake. My Mum always used to make us the most wonderful cakes based on our interests and favourite things so we always used to look forward to her birthday cake. Thus, when I see sunflowers, I think of my Mum and sister simultaneously.  Thus, having made my sister a quilled sunflower card this year for her birthday, I decided to make my Mum one too but in a different way.

I have said this on various occasions, but the most versatile and recommended craft items include general punches like a flower shape. This daisy one has been used on many, many occasions- you can buy one similar here at Hobbycraft.

To create the 3D effect, I punched around about 6 daisies and then used an embossing tool on a piece of foam to emboss lines to create a texture which made the petals more realistic-looking.  Likewise, rubbing the leaves (also punched) in a circle in the middle of the leaf curls the edge up.

Linking up to Daring cardmakers and Creative Mondays with Claire Justine

"Brave choice, celery, but fair play to you; not a lot of men can carry off a decorative vegetable!"

Good evening my petit chou-fleurs!

I come to you for TARDIS Tuesday on a very hot day!
Lots of Doctor Who cosplay outfits involve a lot of clothing, not so suitable to summer unless I'm doing the TARDIS blue thang.
So today, I am doing a bit of lateral thinking with my TARDIS Tuesday outfit!

Image borrowed from Wiki but copyright belongs to the BBC

Today's cosplay is a nod to the Fifth Doctor- Peter Davidson- he of the Question mark lapels, cricket jumper, panama, stripy trousers and red-piped frockcoat.

Oh and celery..

 

This vintage dress has a definite Cricket-jumper feel to it. In fact, that's what attracted me to it in the first place. I am not sure of the vintage but I picked it up in Oxford a good few years ago. Plus, you know, blue...


The fifth Doctor had a quirky costume but the funniest was the piece of celery he wore on his lapel!

I contemplated wearing a real piece but thought what WOULD be cool would be to have a celery brooch! Someone in Australia on Etsy makes a celery brooch but it seemed more prudent to make my own!

I bought some Shrink plastic and drew my own large lump of celery. On reflection,it would've been better to have made one single stem!

The picture on the left is the first attempt (before cutting out).
Unfortunately, when I put it in the oven, I left it in for too long and it was too hot so it completely shrivelled up on itself and was ruined. I was devastated.
Thus, when redoing it some days later, I took less care in the drawing and colouring and used the wrong shade of green for the leaves- thus is looks rather like swiss chard or pak choi rather than celery.

You can see it before putting it in the oven it is more translucent- it shrinks to seven times less than its starting size.
Disastrously, this one also bent in the oven but I was keeping an eye on it and when it became clear that this wasn't going to unbend, I poked into the oven with two paint brushes to flatten it!



I wore it to school today (Monday) and it got some laughs and admiration from adults and confusion from year 1!


Finally added a sort of panama hat, doffed it in a Doctor-style pose and wore white brogues and ankle socks to add to the cricket look!





So over to you.  If you are wearing some TARDIS blue or a Doctor Who accessory or fancy cosplaying Clara or any other character, do come and link up to TARDIS Tuesday!

Thank you to Denise, Kat, Petite Silver Vixen and Jen who linked up last week!

Linking also to Creative Mondays with Claire Justine

An InLinkz Link-up

Fezzes are cool

Newsflash in my life is my sister-in-law got married!

Ok, so let's launch into TARDIS Tuesday first.  

Simply, my itemage for this week is the humble FEZ hat. As sported by Matt Smith in Series 5 of Doctor Who for about 10 seconds before it was blasted into oblivion by River Song.  Whatevers.  I'm Kezzie. I wear a Fez now. Fezzes are cool.

It was my sister-in-law's wedding on Saturday and a great day was had by all.  The fez was one of the props in the Photobooth.  I immediately pounced on it like my life depended on it. 

The whole day was wonderful.  My sister-in-law and her husband (woop, woop!!!!) put in SUCH a great deal of thought to it and despite the fact I had a whopping-great headache for much of the day, I had a great time.

I haven't really got permission to post photos of the wedding party but here's a lovely shot of the beautiful bride without showing her face. She looked beautiful and considering she does not like having her photo taken, she did SO well and was radiant and cool! Her outfit was beautiful- SO simple and elegant. Under that funky leather jacket, she had on a lovely lacy shrug over the top of her Grecian-looking dress.

The venue was the Amadeus Centre in West London, Warwick Avenue, Little Venice area.  It is an old church (not used for worship now- is used for wedding receptions though not licensed to do weddings- they did that bit the day before!) and it was a lovely blank canvas with beautiful features such as the organ, gallery and pillars.  It is a neo-classical building.

The ceiling was strung with tiny fairy lights in canopies and foliage and flowers ran all round the woodwork.

The couple, esp my sister-in-law didn't want all the attention of walking down the aisle so they sneaked up the aisle whilst everyone was still not seated. I myself was hovering behind them in a panicky way with a glass of water for her best friend who was doing a reading, thinking I was quite possibly ruining the ceremony. Luckily not!

The ceremony was very simple but moving.  I felt a little tear fall out of my eye as her best friend sat sniffing beside me!

After the ceremony, we went downstairs for drinks. You can see the bottom left picture shows that room which had more fairy lights all down the walls and some funky vintage touches such as two battered leather armchairs and a fireplace facade. 

Apparently the groom came home to find the bride drilling into a cardboard box with an electric drill (he described it as "I love coming home to find you doing something weird!". I thinks he was making the card box!  As you walked down the stairs, a gallery of mock-framed decal stickers revealed themselves to be childhood photos of both of them.  Such a clever idea.  Easily stuck, easily removable.

When it was time to eat, we went back upstairs to the main 'church' part which was now decked out with 3 long tables.

Every place had a wedding scratchcard and a Kinder egg! What a fun idea! Bottom right- some clever person on another table discovered you can join up Kinder egg plastic boxes in a ring and made a large necklace! You can guess therefore, that I went around collecting the rest to do the same! I came home with about 50 of them- I intend to make eggs shakers with kids at school!

You can see another photobooth moment top left.

My lovely Father-in-law gave an incredibly touching and downright hilarious speech! Well done WOMOTM, you succeded in making us laugh and cry simultaneously!  The groom AND bestman also did a really good job! It's unfortunate the bride's new name has lots of puns attached to it which he exploited in his speech!  

The food was incredible! For starters, we had these HUGE platters of mezze food- mozarella, proscuitto, salami, asparagus, butternut squash, olives, parmesan, rocket, (f)artichokes, fennel and huge trays of breads. There was enough to feed an army. Sorry,no photos as I had gone off to try and have some air for my headache when it was served. I was sitting next to CBC's aunt who advised me to take double headache pill types (she's qualified!) and I felt much improved from that point onwards.

The next course was chicken in parma ham with 3 types of veg and roasted potatoes.

Finally, the best of all was dessert.

They appeared with martini glasses and bowls full of mini-smarties, chocolate buttons (proper ones), popping candy, roasted nuts, sprinkles 100s and 1000s, flakes, strawberries, jelly tots, banana slices and jugs of hot chocolate sauce. 

We all salivated in glee and then they brought round bowls of Vanilla ice-cream.  Sufficed to say, er, we indulged! Yes, those are both mine.  Lastly, Kinder dog trapped behind glass looked eerily big!

After that, we adjourned downstairs for tea and coffee whilst the caterers cleared out the tables and reset the hall for dancing.   I snaffled all the Kinder egg containers (and a few toys) I could since I knew they'd just end up in the bin (cue mortified rolling of eyes and embarrassment from CBC who HATES it when I go all Eco about stuff going in the bin.

This amazing male singer sang hits for hours from that point onwards, as we had tea and all for dancing.  

We had fun in the photobooth, dancing, chatting (I totally LOVE the bride's best friend. She's also a Primary music teacher and is SO nice. We said we'd stay in touch to share ideas!). There was more food in the evening- mini pies, cheese, crackers and bread and er, I ate my bodyweight in shrimp sweets. 

Eventually, we had to get home, after escorting certain relatives (who shall remain nameless!) back to their hotel!  Even then, beautiful bride was cool, collected and the most charming host.

I wish I could share photos of my lovely family (inlaws) but I haven't asked permission, so I'd better not. It was SO nice to spend time with them and I just wish I saw them more!

So, what did I wear?

I wore the 1970's fluttersleeve (30's inspired according to lovely Curtise-thanks for that!) dress I bought recently.  It has a double layer with a scalloped hem and sleeves.

Here's WOMOTM's picture.CBC wore his wedding suit with a different cravat.  It is very fitted around the waist but I love having such loose sleeves. It felt simple and elegant.

I did contemplate a Stephen Jones lilac Cloche hat to go with it, but instead decided to wear my Jenny Packham 30's inspired beaded feather headdress (this was what I wore for my wedding) since I knew we were in one venue inside largely. I chose it originally so it could be worn as a sort of 'fascinator' for other weddings.

You can see it here

Added an arm party of bracelets that were all presents at some point

A lilac cropped cardie and finally my Irregular Choice Bed of Roses Ponelope (sic) shoes

It was an incredible day, one I was so glad to be part of and I was very happy for me lovely sister-in-law and new husband.

xxx

Linking to Visible Mondays with the lovely Patti.

TARDIS Tuesdays with the fabulous Maricel

Creative Mondays with the gorgeous Claire Justine.

And of course BEDM with Rosalilium (Elizabeth)