Making to give..part 1

I love making things that are going to be given to friends / family as gifts, it means I take extra special care, use my favourite things and dig out parts of my stash that I have been saving as 'special' - why do we crafter's do that? I guess it's a bit like saving shoes for 'best'?

As well as trying out new things this weekend, I also started making some things to give to friends / family - for no particular reason. I am just hooking up with lots of people I haven't seen in a while and I like to give gifts, even more than I like receiving them. Also the bonus of handmaking stuff for people is no matter how much they hate it, they don't have the heart to tell you :)

First up is today's main picture, which is of a set of 6 cards, that I made for my friend Lucy (not my Sister-in-Law). She quite likes earthy tones and so I wanted to make something for her that reflected that. When I was re-arranging the craft room, I stumbled upon a box of embellishments that I had bought about 5 years ago when I started crafting! I love them, but they have always been difficult to work with.

I decided that what the embellishments needed was a bit of a fussy background which I felt would tone them down a bit. I used my Martha Stewart punch around the page loopy border set and some over elaborate V&A papers and I think the results are simple but impressive. Below are a few more photos for you.

Tomorrow, I'll be posting part 2 of my making to give activities - using an old favourite - the Martha Stewart Crab punch - yay!

Cx

Crafting with new tools!

Hi, hope you all had a nice weekend.

I lost my voice and so had a very relaxing and quiet weekend - bar the trip to the local dump and the charity shop!

I have recently acquired a few new bits and bobs and decided I'd spend this weekend trying them all out. Today's main picture is of the masses of tags, that I die cut using my new xcut set of tags and nameplates die set. It's great, I think it makes standard printed wording zing to life. I also cut some plain coloured versions for use with peel offs.

They are actually quite straightforward to use, but I had to develop a little technique, so I can see how the wording looks through the aperture! An hour later, several errors and some sticky tape, I now have a technique that works.

This is a cheap and easy way of creating sentiment tags for cards and gifts.

Previously I had purchased a set of Spellbinders Nestibilities Labels Four and had spent a rainy afternoon die cutting a stack of these. Below is a picture of these combined with one of the tags from the main picture.

So, I had this beautifully layered sentiment, that looks wonderfully professional - what to do with it?! Make a card of course (duh!). I am so over the moon with the card that I made (below) - which was all based around the sentiment, it took me quite awhile, as I was being very fussy about the flowers and the buttons, but I think it was worth it - now who do I give it to?

This weekend was great, I made so many things - started the Lavender sachet project - and I managed to take all the photos, that I should have ample material for blogging this week - yay! Nearly everything I did this weekend involved a new tool or something that I'd forgotten about - you know what the new tools for this post were, but the forgotten element is buttons. Mine had been so hidden away in the previous craft room configuration, I generally couldn't be bothered to get them down. Now that I have relocated them to a handy position, they are being used a lot!

My final card for today uses the blank tags I mentioned earlier - die cut before I started making the card and it fits the colour scheme perfectly. I also used the fave Stampin' Up Bird Builder punch and the new Martha Stewart punch around the page flower.
This card is based on an idea that I saw in Cardmaking and Papercraft this month. I modified it, as I wanted it to be easier to make! All the papers used were free with magazines and are from my scrap bin, the flower is a foam one with a pearl in the middle, sentiment is a coloured peel-off and I whipped out the crop-a-dile to add eyelets. I'd gone off eyelets for a while, but as you will see over the course of this week, they came back with a vengeance over the weekend!

Hope you have had good start to your week too.

Fingers crossed I can get another post out tomorrow - whoo hoo!

Cx

Happy Father's Day!

Today is Father's Day here in the UK, I doubt I'll be seeing my Dad today as he is a busy bee!

I thought I'd dedicate today's post to my Dad (and the beautiful card I made him).

I think my Daddy rocks, he is awesome in so many ways, he has a great sense of humour, he's fun, he can eat me under the table, he's great with the many animals we own as a family, he loves music and sport, he is a pretty sharp dresser too and has always been there for me, no matter how crazy I get!

My love of music and all things sport definitely come from my Dad. His tastes in music cover all genres and there isn't much he won't listen too - he might not like it all, but he gives it all a chance - which is more than I do! My parents refer to Hubby and I as 'old farts' because of our musical tastes. I too love music and I like a pretty broad spectrum of stuff, which most certainly comes from my Dad. Sport is a big deal for him, he loves to watch all kinds of sport. I love Football, Basketball and American Football - I feel that 3 sports is enough for any one girl!

Partly our love of Football stems from the fact that he runs a Sunday League team with some old friends - Kenningwell FC has been a part of their lives for a long time and has been with me my whole life, the team was formed in 1967 and 45 years later they are still going strong. Watching Kenningwell play, has taught me a lot about friendship and team work, but most of all it has taught me how to scream like a banchee when my team are doing good and bad!

Below is a picture of the team in the early 80's - My Dad is 4th from the left in the standing row!

Today's main picture, is the card I have made for my Dad to celebrate Father's Day - I saw the idea in a magazine (Quick Cards I think) and modified it slightly as it had some twine and the 'D' stood for Dad, but as I call mine Daddy, I had to change that. The papers are from Michael's, the 'D' is from Hema in Amsterdam and the eyelets are by Papermania. I think it's a very masculine card. I had fun making it and I'll be trying the idea for other occasions.

Happy Father's Day Daddy - with much love.

Cx

$20 Craft Challenge

I've talked about this a lot, in part because it was my genius idea! But also because it's great to get new craft items that are chosen for you by a fellow crafter.

JT did a great job with the $20 she spent on me.

I got - a Martha Stewart punch anywhere on the page scalloped flower punch - it's wonderfully versatile, as you can see from the main picture and the one below.

I've enjoyed using it with my scalloped circle punch and I'll be trying it in the centre of a card soon!

I also got the wonderful ribbons (shown below), so me in the choice of patterns and the best bit is they were chosen by JT's Dad - how awesome is that.

My final item was a set of hilarious cat stickers, but I'll be turning those into cards for Auntie Connie, so you'll see them then.

No doubt, you'll be seeing more of the ribbons and the punch in future items!

It's a fun idea - I highly recommend doing this with your craft buddy, it makes gift giving even better.

Cx

p.s happy that I can post this today, now my internet has been restored!

New York, New York....

Hello!

Well, Hubby and I had lots of fun in NYC, hanging out, watching bball, eating food, getting drunk, doing a small bit of sight seeing and shopping.

The shopping part was much fun and I particularly enjoyed my visit to Michael's - I bought a lot of new items for my stash. The best part was the purchasing of items for the $20 craft challenge that JT and I did - I will show you later in the week, what I made with her purchases for me.

I thought quite a bit about what would be good for JT and ended up buying her lots of papers (as I knew she had a limited weight allowance), inks, stamps, a Martha Stewart glue pen (the best there is) and a few other random goodies. She was very pleased and I think she'll be blogging about what she has made with them later on in the week too.

I am looking forward to doing the craft challenge again, it was fun and made me focus in the store!

Lots of things have happened upon our return, some good, some bad, but I'll tell you more about that in a couple of weeks.

Today's main picture was taken by me on the Brooklyn Bridge during our walk across it on a very sunny Saturday morning.

Cx