Happy New Year

 I've been taking advantage of good buys in the run up to Christmas, and finally have had a chance to play!

This is a stitch die from Spellbinders. I do love stitching on paper, and I've liked this one since I first saw it, so getting it in a pre-Christmas sale was a plus. You don't have to stitch - the holes could equally be used as positioners for liquid pearls or similar. I kept the card itself fairly simple.

Another Spellbinders stitch die. There are other bits I haven't used and I'm not sure the leaves work really well with a 'wheel pattern' stitching. I think I may adapt that when I use it again. I've used a paper doiley that I sprayed with dissolved Brushos (very dilute), a Spellbinders circle die and some paper I found in my scraps collection. I'm not sure where it came from, but suspect it may be one I made by tiling a sample of an image.

And another Spellbinders die. I've got a couple more of these background dies, and while I do like them, it's so irritating that they're not standard-sized. They're too wide for A6, not the right shape for 5 by 7, and have to have an addition when you use my most common card size - 6 by 6. In this instance, I finished it with a border die cut. It's a die I've had for years and I suspect it's a Joanna Sheen design, but I'm really not certain.

All the stitching was done in Sulky Blendables. I'm gradually  increasing my range of these, but it seems only a limited selection is available in the UK and I'm not about to get in to importing and being fleeced for postage and customs charges.

Not Spellbinders this time, but Stamps by Chloe. I haven't bought any of her designs before, although I've got a few stamps that came with Creative Stamping magazine a while ago. In fact, I made a lot of Christmas cards using that set recently. She has a very feminine, frilly style and that's very much to my taste (although I'm not remotely frilly in person!) This was made using a stamp and die set. I used Versafine Clair to stamp the corner four times, cut the flowers from two images and coloured with pencil (a mix of Polychromos and Koh-i-Noor Polychrome). I added some Sakura Stardust clear to the swirls and some stitcky gems. The greeting is also from Chloe and it's another stamp and die combination. There are three dies - I've used the largest of them with the stamped image.

Another Stamps by Chloe stamp and die combination, but this one is a panel. I used similar colouring materials. The background is a panel embossed using an Embossalicious folder which I've dabbed with interference ink. I finished the card with some washi tape and a couple of die cut borders - again, I suspect these are Joanna Sheen but I'm not sure.

It's been lovely to spend some time stamping and colouring - I don't seem to have enough time for those these days! Maybe I should try to make more time for it in the coming months. 

Clarity Stamps and Stencils

 I recently took advantage of a 50% sale at Clarity Stamps and got myself a set of stamps and stencils I admired when I last looked. I've used one of the sets to make a card for a friend.

I stamped the central image and the separate butterfly in Versafine Clair (grey rather than black) and coloured using coloured pencils. The outer area uses Distress Ink in Tattered Rose and Victorian Velvet. I added some glitter pen over the two butterflies, and picked out the green stems in fine liner or glitter pen. The flowers were made from die cuts.

It's been a While!

 A few years ago, I took over running a craft group in a local u3a. I'd been a member pre-lockdown, and once we got back to meeting, the organiser felt she no longer wanted to do it, so either someone else had to, or the group would end. I agreed, and as a result, I've had to try out lots of different types of crafting and I rarely seem to be able to do something simply because I want to. It's complicated by the fact that the group is very varied - some have never crafted at all before, some knit but never do anything with paper, but the common feature is that only one has any of what I'd consider to be 'essential tools' - things like stamps, inks, dies, a die cutter, a selection of card and paper, pens, or even a selection of glues and sticky tapes. That causes a problem for me as most of the things I'd like to do with them are impractical, or require me to spend a lot of time in advance, for example, die cutting the bits needed. However, we don't meet in August, and while I've had to think about the projects we have planned for next term (crochet, clay, acrylic paint amongst others), I've managed to get a little time to do some things I really enjoy.

I volunteer in a hospital one day each week, and work with two people there who happen to have the same birthday which is next month, so I decided to do each of them a birthday card.

The first uses one of my favourite techniques - making flowers using dies designed by Susan Tierney Cockburn. I've been collecting her dies since her first company (Sizzix, I think) and have a pretty good collection now. One flower I hadn't spotted in her previous collections was this one;  it's called 'Southern Magnolia'. I did hope I could make it look a little more like the magnolia blossom I love and see around here for just a week or so each week, but that didn't work. (The ones I'm familiar with are more bulb-shaped flowers with magenta at the base rather than the yellow she used.) Anyway, I had a go, and I do like the effect even if any resemblance is small. I used Susan's speciality card - in white for the blossom and coloured with Promarkers for the leaves, and added detail on both with Pan Pastel. I completed the flower with artificial pollen. I've struggled to find that recently, so my use in flowers may be limited! While it may not look much like a familiar magnolia, it's quite a dramatic flower, so I chose to keep the arrangement simple, and just matted and layered. The card was sized to fit the design and isn't standard, but that's not an issue since it needs a box rather than an envelope!

This second card is completely different! I've used a pattern from Stitching Cards . I've bought quite a few of their designs over the years, and I do like the style - especially those, like this one, which 'fill in' areas rather than just providing an outline. In this instance, I've added a sentiment using one of their True Type fonts, and completed with a border created by pricking holes around the rectangle they always use to surround their patterns. The threads are machine embroidery threads which I've collected for a long time and I now have a decent range of colours.

The second card is for a man. I know cards for men is a problem for many cardmakers. It's something I've always struggled with. The top card is for a woman, and I chose to make a pretty flower - something that's pretty universally acceptable among women. When you look at the Stitching Cards website, or designs supplied by pretty much any company, designs for men tend to fall into just a few categories: sport, alcohol or scantily-clad women. The last option isn't one I'd use for anyone, and I struggle with the others. I don't know any men whose life revolves around drinking alcohol to the extent that they'd love to look at a picture of it. And there are many men who aren't interested in sport, or who are so involved in a specific sport that depicting it is actually very difficult because the details would be wrong. And, with both those options, you have to know enough about the individual to decide on 'football' or 'cricket' or 'bowls' or 'rugby' or 'fishing'. There's no universal type of image that works for all men the way flowers and butterflies or 'cute' works for women. So, he's got a geometric stitched design in non-girly colours, and I think it works.

That's it for now. I need to get back to blogging here more regularly, although I do blog regularly on behalf of my craft group here: Crafty Harrow People

Foam Flowers

 It's a long time since I posted anything here: things have been busy, and most of my crafting seems aimed at the u3a craft group I belong to. But here are a couple of independent projects I've completed using flower foam.

My most recent flower project: I bought a metal wreath base from Hobbycraft, covered it in ribbon and then added a variety of flowers and leaves. The greenery was made using Susan Tierney-Cockburn dies and flower foam from a variety of manufacturers. I've used florist's wire and tape, and had to use rather different means of assembling the various flowers compared to paper, but it was an interesting experience, as was relying on hot glue! I've used Sharpies to get extra colour on the flowers and styrofoam balls (from The Works) coloured red to add to the holly..

Very similar to the wreath in most respects, although the roses use a Sizzix Bigz die for the blooms. The 'vase' is made using a Tonic die set I've had just about forever!

And finally, a trial for something I might attempt next year. My mum's favourite flowers were freesia. Susan Tierney-Cockburn's die dies a good job of recreating the shape, and I love that they're so multi-coloured in real life. I don't get the chance to visit the cemetery where my parents are buried very often, so can't really put fresh flowers there, but I'm going to try to put something together to take up for my next visit, and at least, they should last a little while. (The site is on a hillside overlooking the Clyde and a little windswept so a little while is all I can hope for!)