Bean Sidhe

We have taken a tree from our daughter's garden, it had outgrown her small garden.  It had a severe hair cut to get it here but seems to have survived.  I've no idea what it is tho' - have you?

Craft Show

One of my friends from craft club took me to North Hykeham on Sunday to the 'Sincerely Yours' craft show - it was nice to have a show within a reasonable distance.

We were promised free tea/coffee and biscuits on arrival if we had pre bought our tickes.  Unfortunately, the chap doing the teas hadn't bought any biscuits!  He said he'd not been able to get any on the way in (do you not buy these things in advance)?

There was a very long and slow queue to get to the actual hall as the entrance was narrow.

That said, the actual show itself was very good. I didn't buy much (good or what?) but it was really useful to see the lovely demos and samples done by the exhibitors - lots of lovely ideas.

We had lunch upstairs in the cafe.

I did buy a few decoupage sheets, here are the cards I've made with the images.

Crochet and knitting

I've made some more wee crochet hats.  I'm a bit unsure as to sizes - it's a long time since there's been a wee baby in the family - I'm out of touch.

This is my favourite one so far - it's done in cotton yarn to give it body for the rim.

These flowers are loose so's they can be exchanged on the basic hats.

This is a knitted one.

Well, maybe you'd be right in thinking winter's still here if you use the weather as a guide but Mothers' Day is nearly upon us as is Easter so I've had a flurry of card making.

Mothers' Day Card I used a free download sheet from Monica's site for this.

Daughter's birthday card - she likes Salsa dancing.  The colour hasn't photographed too well - it's nicer in real life.

St Patrick's Day

Cards for my family.  The printed background sheets are some left over from scrapbooking my Ireland holiday.  I bought them from here (wealth warning!  Loads of great stuff).  The images were from here.

 Easter Cards - variation on a theme

Another free download from Monica's site.

I think I like the one with the Cuttlebug embossed pieces on the best.  I wish I'd embossed the others now.

 Altered Art - Bottle Cap Swap

I entered the Bottle Cap Swap on Sara's Time for Crafting site.  I wasn't really sure what I was doing and when I got my returns, I realised the ones I'd done were fairly basic but that's one of the good things about swaps, you do learn and see other people's work in the hand which is quire inspiring.

Here are the ones I made.

Backs - I made one into a book mark and one into a brooch.

Fronts - I glazed mine with Glossy Accents.

Here are the ones I received in return - aren't they lovely? You can see all the entries here.  Thank you to Sara for hosting and to Christa, Tigerlilly, Maggie, Sara, Lottie and Fudgebabe - beautiful stuff.

Art Group

Rita did the project this week - thank you Rita.  We had to paint a glass which proved quite difficult but then everything at art group is difficult for me.  I haven't mastered the art of using the paints properly yet and for this we had to do a very light wash of paint and mine were quite strong, despite the fact that I'd tried to follow Rita's advice.  I had a tumbler and a glass - it's amazing how many different shades and colours are in glass when you really look at it.

This doesn't look right at all - the I haven't got the ends of the tumbler as they should be.

A BIT better maybe?

My paint's far too strong here.

The actual glass looks a bit wonky here.

Star Card

We had an all day craft session (with some lovely food) and the project was a Star Card.

Thanks to Lindsey, Dorothy and Melanie for the food and for the beautiful card and papers you chose for us to work with.  The card doesn't show up properly at all, it has a sort of glisten (not like mirri - I can't really describe it).  We had lots of embellishments, papers and ribbons - in fact, all you'd need to make a beautiful card.

On the day I only managed to part make two sections.  It's taken me all week, working every day, to finish it.  I have added some of my own stash as well, although it could have been completed without doing this.

I didn't start off with a theme, which would probably have speeded things up a bit but it sort of developed into a 'techniques' project.

I've included tea bag folding, iris folding (bit dodgy), heat embossing, dry embossing, stamping, paper punching, stitching and beading and lots of gluing and some very technical craft words (when things went wrong!).

Here is the general idea, although the photos don't pick up the colours.

Dry embossing, heat embossing, stamping.

Paper punching, cuttlebug dry embossing.

Tea bag folding, paper punching.

Paper punching, iris folding, embossing.

Paper punching, heat embossing.

Dry embossing, 3D Decoupage

The front cover with the verse on (just matting and layering)

The whole thing view one.

View two.

From the top (you can see why it's called a star card).

I've just updated my birthday calendar and there are 15 birthdays this month. 

Here are some of the cards I've made.  I can't blog them all as some of the intended recipients view the blog.

The template for this can be found here.

I made this gatefold with one of my new Cuttlebug embossing folders. 

The decoupage for this I picked up from Photobucket.  It's by dftunis@yahoo.com.  From the original sheet, using Paint Shop Pro, I made some tea bag tiles and a tiled backing sheet to finish the card.

This is another one using a new Cuttlebug folder.  I have added a greeting to the blank part since I scanned it but forgot to rescan before sending it off.

This cuttlebug patchwork is ideal for using up bits and bobs of cards.  It doesn't have to be all the same colour card of course.  I took the basic idea from a card Sara did on her Time for Crafting site.

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