Mass production

A couple of days of Mr Blogger giving me the run around there - entirely his fault for not posting for over a week I'm sure!

While on hols recently I did pack a few crafty items to play with (always go away optimistically with thoughts of doing many a thing, never quite pans out).

Turns out hiking up some of the highest points in the country isn't conducive to staying awake in the evening but I did manage a couple of evenings of seeing how many sticky pads I could get through and have had another go this week whilst building up to tidying my mess so I can actually make a Christmas card before the big day.

These are all die-cut images - I used to tell people off for cheating but these have been quite popular sellers in between the more time consuming cards - from a selection of Tatty Teddy, Forever Friends & Fizzy Moon. Couldn't believe I have 40 pyramage & 3D images ready to turn in to cards, seems a little optimistic now!

Tip of the day!

Quite literally a 'tip' of the day. Tried to load this post before I went away but our internet was having a bad time!

My tip is -if you have a very sharp craft knife and a steel edged ruler, remember to move your finger from the edge of the ruler when cutting paper - I did indeed cut a nice straight line across the top of my finger, not entirely recommended.

Anyway, healing nicely now and in the meantime I have been to the velodrome to watch Graeme in a spot of cycling and then walked a few miles in the Lake District - a quick holiday snap of me at the top of Scafell Pike here (England's highest point in case anyone not sure!).

Lots more crafty inspiration today too after visiting The Paper Warehouse for their Christmas Craft Demo day which was excellent, particularly getting some tips from Jenny Mayes of Hobby Art.

A shared idea

Didn't realise until 2 days with no internet how much we relied on it!

Anyway, at the recent Shared Ideas day at the Quilling AGM Diane Boden Crane demonstrated some lovely cards that this one is based on.

As Mum came with me for the weekend and it is her birthday today I thought I would try it.

The circles are full strips wound round a random passing bottle! They are edged with some of Diane's famous spirals (1mm strips wound round very fine wire).

The bee, flower & butterfly are made using 2mm paper and seem to stay in rather better than expected given how fragile they look in their exposed circles.

The 3 circles are joined together with a peg and 2 marquise shapes between each and the same at the top & bottom of the piece. An aperture was then cut in the card that was big enough for the design with a bit of overhang for sticking!

Due to the nature of the card I then also stuck a little piece of fancy card on the back of the card with birthday greetings.

It isn't often I get to spend as long making special cards as I would like and know Mum will appreciate it. We're off to the theatre too though so no more crafting today!

Make & Take

Well, several busy days and a trip to Manchester Velodrome later and not much crafting to blog!

Apologies to Janet in advance that October will be a quiet blog month for me - I still live in hope that some Christmas cards might turn up in time though.

Today I did have a quick go at Stevie's Stampin' Up catalogue launch make & take held at Stamp N Craft.

As with all these things I probably wouldn't of thought of using both these colours - must be more adventurous. The stamp set is 'Simply Soft' and is one of the new hostess options.

It is a 2-part stamp so the stems were stamped in 'certainly celery' and the overlay with the help of the lovely stamp-a-ma-jig was stamped in 'baja breeze' (I think).

I stamped the stems a bit high on the card really so it doesn't show the greeting to best effect - probably chatting too much!

The edges were then pricked with the help of the paper piercing template to finish off.