Spring Bluebells

Good Morning from the dull, misty, cold and basically pretty miserable Fens, but I am keeping positive and hoping for a glimmer of sunshine if for no other reason so I can take some photos of my latest makes. And I keep reminding myself Spring is not so far away, judging by the garden the bulbs certainly think so.

So just a quick couple of shares before I head off for my routine bloods, I'm still pretty immobile and the pain is as fierce as ever at times, in fact I reckon I could move backwards quicker then forwards, so needless to say I can't even contemplate driving and hubby is taking me.

But all is positive on the crafty front.......a girl has to do something to pass the time and I do find like so many of you that it helps absorb the mind and the pain seem less evident. Both my cards are made with Ruth's wonderful artwork which you can grab for yourself at A Passion for Stamps. Ruth has drawn some lovely new Spring crocuses which I will be sharing with you shortly and also some very sweet love birds which I need to put to use this week.

My card up top uses the beautiful bluebells, printed onto Fabriano watercolour card, heat embossed with detail clear.....you know my method of throwing the powder on as it comes through the printer and coloured with Aquamarkers. The DP is Nitwits, the roses cut with a Marianne die and the swirl is a Memory Box die, aren't they just so delicate.

My second card is Ruth's columbine printed onto acetate, then placed on one side of a piece of double sided sticky sheet. The reverse is a piece of white tissue paper scrunched up and inked with TH broken china, old paper and stormy sky, then stuck to the reverse side of the sticky sheet. The flower is then coloured with Copics from the reverse through the tissue, this technique never fails to fascinate me. The sentiment is a really old PB wood mounted stamp. I picked a couple of laurel leaves to place in front of my card when I did the photo, but they do look like they have measles in the picture don't they ?

Have a good Tuesday everyone, thanks for popping in and I hope you see a bit of sunshine today.

Love is in the air

Helene is our host at Allsorts this week and preparing us for Valentines day as she would like us to use one or more hears on our work. I do hope you will be able to join in, just pop over the the challenge blog to find out more and see what's on offer for this weeks prize.

My first DT make is using one of the new stamps from Hero Arts S5601 Newspaper Background, it's quite a biggie but stamps out beautifully.......I used Versafine black to pick up all the fine detail. I stamped it twice, once for the background piece which I tore down one side and mounted onto a piece of heat embossed red satin cardstock and from the second piece and more of the red, I cut out four hearts with Nestabilites and matted them up. I tied some red cord and bakers twice down the side and added a heart button.

My second make is an engagement card I made for some friends earlier this month using the prospective brides favourite colours. Unusually for me there is no stamping involved and the card was quite a quick and easy one to make. I cut the hears from bazzil and Kasier DP, tied some ribbon across the centre and added three rosebuds. I embossed the background cardstock with a Sizzix harlequin folder and added tiny pearls. The sentiment is computer generated. 

Have a good weekend everyone and thanks for popping by.

A walk in the Country

So how's everyone doing today ?

I'm a happy camper this morning, last night my boys in red made it through to the Wembley final and now I can't want for February 26th when Stevie lead the lads out onto the pitch. They all did a great job and played with real belief and conviction and Craig Bellamy, the best 'free' ever, got a well deserved Man of the Match award. Well done boys.

I know, how sad am I that I love footie almost as much as crafting, but I think the brayer's still got the edge. Although I sponged all the colour onto this one which I made recently for Sir Stampalot using a mixture of Art Impression stamps, Stampscapes plus a few others thrown in for good measure, a masked sun and Adirondack dye inks. The fences are part stamped and part hard drawn.

Thought I would enter another one into Create a Scene challenge as it's so my kind of thing.

Have a god Thursday and thank for visiting.

A pretty little box and tutorial

Good Morning one and all, I thought I would share a little box I made following the inspirational idea of Maria Simms demonstration on C&C a few days ago when as well as lots of lovely card, she made a very pretty box which I just has to try.

Maria was using Spellbinders and took one of them as her template to create a five sided box, but as I don't have any that shape I used my scoreboard...................just a cheap and cheerful one, not one of these fancy ones that have instructions for all sorts................to create a eight sided box as I thought this shape would be easier to work with. As well as Spellbinders to decorate I cut some little panels with Ruth's new Lily of the Valley Image at A Passion for Stamps.

And I thought I would get a step ahead of you before I get the inevitable questions about sizes etc., and do a little tutorial on how I made my version of Maria's box.

Here's what I used:

1 sheet A3 cardstock  (but you could use all A4 and join the lengths for the sides)

1 sheets A4 cardstock

Black cardstock to decorate
Dries clear glue

I cut two lengths  from the A3 sheet to 9cm x 34cm. I scored one at 4cm intervals to create 8 panels plus a 2" one at the end to fix into a octagon shape. I did exactly the same for the bottom of the box, but scored the sections a fraction smaller to allow the lid to fit over.

I used the assembled shapes as a template to cut two pieces slightly smaller than the assembled boxes to use as inner bases to give the box more rigidity and two further pieces 1cm larger to act as the top and base of my box.

I snipped a 1cm cut into each scored edge on one end of both pieces, then folded the little flaps inwards and glued the smaller pieces inside both pieces onto the flaps.

Next the top and bottom larger pieces can be glued into place.

You are now ready to decorate you box as you like.

I used Spellbinder Parisien and Fleur de Lis accents and the flowers mentioned above. And you can of course adjust the box to other sizes, I have done a second one cutting the two main section to 11cm high.

You now have an assembled box to 

I hope all of this makes sense and do let me know how you get on as I would love to see your boxes. Also thanks to Maria for the inspiration.

Artwork theft and Royal Mail updates

Were' watching................

Well it pouring with rain so all I am going to say is Morning to you all and miss out the good.

A few things to say and share, first of all I am so grateful to everyone for their message of support over the 'incident' in my last post, so many of you left comments and I received lots of many mails as well. I think we are all pretty united in our views over this one. 

I did mail the culprit on Monday to offer her the opportunity to explain herself but am not too surprised that she has not bothered to reply to me, although I do detect a slight 'tidy up' of her blog and a few posts have gone missing. 

I know the majority of you have asked me to name and shame so you can protect your own work and of course I also believe this is the best policy, but checking on all the implications I'm afraid this is not really an option due to...........and I am really sad to say this..............I design for one of the same companies as her and the fallout could be unpleasant. For avoidance of doubt, I don't mean any of the challenges I am on, all my teamies on those are lovely peeps.

I am awaiting further developments to decide on any action required going forward, but I will of course keep you all posted in due course.

Now on to my other burning issue, one wonders if I will get time to craft this week, the Royal Mail and postal service.

Needless to say because I am unable to send them the packets in question.............all explained here rather that go over it all again..............they can't help me any further. But and this speaks multitudes, they have assured me they have requested the scales at our local PO are checked for accuracy as it does appear there is a problem. They said it, I knew it.

And.......................my lost October package of Stamp Addict samples for TV has now been found. No coincidence there, but I bet it would have been lost forever if I'd not kicked up a fuss. Mind you they could not even get that bit right, despite having Stamps Addicts address clearly on the  front in large bold type, they returned it to me.......my addy being in small print at the bottom of the label. 

I'll bring them along to Stamperama Sarah, better late than never as they say.

What sort of person steals the work of others ?

Good Morning Peeps, I hope you all had a good weekend.

Mine was soured somewhat by a Blogger who seems unable to conduct herself in a fair and honest way and is part of a teeny tiny minority faction that makes us all sad. I refer to a person who not only copies but also uses the work of others.

An incident happened with this person in September and I really hoped it had been sorted then and she would refrain from doing it ever again. Apparently not, as it's happened again at least twice in the last ten days and when it's the girls on one of my Design Teams being directly targeted I take great offence.

Having spent some time reading this persons blog I have little doubt the incidents I know about are not isolated ones as she has several posts where she claims to be posting very old work and for this reason is unable to give any details of the products used. Yeh, right....could it be because she never made the piece ?

And to add insult to injury she consistently sings her own praises on her blog about her quality of work and high profile in the crafting industry. I guess if you are small minded and devious enough to post other peoples work on your own blog you eventually believe all you write.

I thought long and hard about doing this post and initially was all for naming and shaming, but I know this person will see this post and I truly hope that she does have a concience and will see the error of her ways and quit blogland, as there is no place for her in a genuine and friendly environment.

I know the issue of watermarks on work will be raised, well some of the work did have them and has been cleverly concealed.........it's apparently possible if you know how. And other recognisable publicly displayed pieces have I believe, been photographed  and then used. I will add at this point, this is NOT the person who did something identical to a friends work a couple of years ago. 

Not a nice way to kick start the week and for that I apologise, but it has to be said.

Needles and Pins

This week at Allsorts the lovely Jo is hosting her very first challenge with the theme "Needles and Pins".

I thought this card which I made for Ruth a while ago but never blogged was ideal for this theme, using her mannequin image which you will find here at A Passion for Stamps. I printed the image onto Fabriano card and coloured lightly with Copics, used some Cosmo Cricket DP and added some lace ribbons and pins to embellish.

A bit of a quick post I'm afraid as struggling with the dysfunctional body a bit, but will hopefully be back with some more work again in the next few days.

Have a lovely weekend and my appreciation for your visits, they always mean so much.