My contribution to the day was to create a seating plan guide and corresponding table flags in addition to a posting box for the guests to deposit their cards for the happy couple in.

Knowing the feel that my sister was looking for I suggested a traditional red letter box might be an idea. Fabulous idea I thought, until I started thinking about how on earth I was going to actually make this. It was a challenge, but I got there and here is how.

Creating the top I lined my stir fry pan with cling film and lined it with probably 8 – 10 layers of paper maché, strips of paper layered on with a mix of PVA glue and water.

Making the domed top - 1

Domed top - 2

The base of the box and the base of the domed lid were made from a pre bought paper maché hatbox. The dome was glued and pegged in place then additional card band added around the inside and outside of the bottom edge.

Attaching dome to lid

Attaching dome to lid

The main part of the hatbox was painted in black gloss paint to create the base and the body of the box was created with strips of card joined together and painted. The hole was then cut for posting and the domed top was glued to the top of the box. The base was not glued on so that the post box could be lifted out to retrieve the post.

Shell form

Coming together

The final step was to paint the box and add a posting times notice to the front. It was a serious challenge and took up most of the kitchen for most of the week, however, it was well worth all that effort.

Finished

And finally, in situ on the big day.

The Big Day

The table plan and flags was a much simpler task, matting and layering the table details and adding some paper bunting.

Table Plan

Table flags

And finally a picture of me and my boys on the day and another with my lovely baby sister Liza.

Me and my boys

Sisters

In something of a first for me though, I designed and completed a piece of lace well in advance of the event it was required for. Anyone who knows me well will know that this is nothing short of miraculous. I usually get things done in time for deadlines but it is usually very very much by the skin of my teeth.

I am pleased with this piece of lace and judging by the reaction of said sister, she was pretty thrilled with it too. The lace is 4 inches wide and 30 inches long, worked in Finca 50 thread in blue and ivory with accent thread of fine Finca silver. It also has tiny silver lined clear seed beads worked into the lace to add a delicate sparkle. The lace took approx 60 pairs of bobbins and at a  rate of about 1 hour for every 2 square inches or thereabouts it probably was a good 60 hours work. That’s one valuable piece of lace.

It was finished with a silver covered elastic and thankfully stayed up for as long as it needed to which is always a relief.

And now. The obligatory pictures.

Close to Finishing

Close up

FInished lace before gathering

It has been a lot of work as it is a solid design with a huge amount of backstitching. It was put to one side many times in favour of something else but finally it is done and I am really pleased with the finished piece.

But of course, if you are still reading this post, you will want to see some pictures. Well enjoy. I have included some close ups to see a bit more of the detail.

handmade Houses of Provence

Cafe Des Arts

Grocers and Arch

Hotel and Arch

Archway

Archway close up

The completed piece is approx 12 x 24 inches in size and is probably well over a hundred hours of solid stitching.

Tim’s birthday

Snap Happy

I am pretty pleased with how this card came out, and Tim was thrilled with it too. It’s a double easel card using Owl images created by the talented Dustin Pike and a wall digi stamp (sorry, can’t recall where from – if it’s yours let me know and I’ll be happy to credit) Both owls are coloured with Promarkers then mounted on backgrounds using various Kanban card and elements.

Tim’s birthday 2

Quack Snapper

A very simple card made for William to give to Tim for his birthday, a simple image sourced from the web (if he’s yours let me know and I’ll happily credit) matted and layered on co-ordinating cardstock then simply mounted. Very simple but effective I thought.

And last but not least a Spa card for cousin Joanne’s friend.

Spa day

This card was for someone who was being treated to a Spa day for her 40th birthday. The image is a digi stamp from here  coloured with my faithful Promarkers. I used imaginisce backing papers with princess tiaras, added hand drawn stitch details, a grosgrain ribbon trim and card candi and greeting from craftworkcards The edges of the card and image were inked with a chalk finish ink pad and layered using textured cardstock.

Hope you like. Next up, a bit of stitching.

It took all of a couple of seconds to say yes. I absolutely love Brugge, having been there once before with friends. We had a wonderful time in beautiful weather strolling through the streets looking at the sights, soaking in the atmosphere and being together. Blissful.

Here are some of my pictures from the weekend.

Aww

Night time at Belfort

Classic Brugge

I'd like this one

Chocolate shop

On the river

There was a big gap sadly as we grew up, went our separate ways and all but lost touch, but with the advent of Facebook I get to speak to her regularly and see her more often. While I have spent the years crafting, Nancy has been singing her little heart out and is now quite rightly very well respected in the folk scene now.

Anyhow, I digress. On the 21st of May my boy William and I joined other family and friends to celebrate Nancy’s birthday, so of course a card must be made. Here I shall share not only the card I made for Nancy but the lovely one the boy made for her too. Nancy has a love of owls and as well as her solo work she sings with the fab band The Owl Service. There was only one theme for her birthday cards.

Here is mine.

Twit twoo

I made a girly pretty owl using the lovely fruit scoop range from Craftwork Cards. This is an easel card, which is a style I love as it’s a little bit different.

And here is William’s

Concertina Owl

Nancy is not only a fab singer but a fine musician too. I reckon she could play just about any instrument. She also plays the concertina and this is what William chose to capture in his card.

He drew this great cartoon and I mounted it simply on grey and black layering mats to give his card the finish it deserves. I love this card and think William has a real talent for cartooning. Nancy was thrilled and all her guests were shown William’s artwork.

Well Cuz. Here we both are. The other side of the hill. Here’s to us celebrating many more occasions together.

In this post I thought I would share a few cards I have made with a technique that I have not really used before of using rubber stamps and patterned papers. I have avoided rubber stamping for many years as I never had a great deal of success with the technique. I never really got on very well with using embossing powders and heat guns and I found the selection and prices of available stamps to be fairly unattractive.

However, in recent times the wide choice of stamps and the emergence of clear acrylic stamps have encouraged me to have another go. I like the acrylic stamps and the fact that you can better see what you are stamping and rather than a huge stock of coloured ink pads and embossing powders I have gone down the simple route, stamping in plain black or brown ink then either colouring with Pro markers or stamping directly onto patterned papers for different effects.

Here are some of my favourites.

Cupcake

This first one was for a colleague at work the stamp is a woodware clear stamp and the papers used were DoCrafts Forever Friends paper packs and some pink gingham I also had in my stash. By stamping the image on each patterned paper and cutting out the different parts of the design I created a layered decoupage with the pieces then added pearl gems to the icing on the cake.

Flowers

This one was inspired by a card seen at The Glitter Pot, a fab shop in Burgess Hill. The flowers are Hero Arts I think and the components are stamped onto papers from Basic Grey’s Kioshi range. The base card is covered with DoCrafts version of Bazzill card and the other mats are also from the Basic Grey papers. The card and mats are inked around the edges and the flower components shaped with an embossing tool to give dimension to them and finished with Card Candi pressed into an ink pad to give a mottled finish. The final finish was a peel off greeting and a pretty lilac organza ribbon.

Coffee and Cake

Again this card uses the large cupcake stamp  but a different look achieved by using the Spring Feast paper pad from First Edition Paper. The mug is a shaped card from Craftwork cards covered with more paper from the same set and the steam swirls are die cut with a swirls Sizzix sizzlets cutting die in my cuttlebug.

I have uploaded a number of other recently cards. Click on the flickr link at the side of this page to go and have a peek.

For Uni I made a dozen plain cupcakes with royal icing and sweets to decorate plus a dozen chocolate cupcakes with chocolate fudge frosting and mini marshmallows. Then on my birthday in readiness to take to work I baked a second batch of the chocolate cakes plus a dozen Lemon Meringue cupcakes (fast becoming my signature bake) and a new recipe to me of a rather lovely Almond, Cherry and Coconut meringue slice. As you will see from the pictures I had a fair old mountain of cake which went down very well with my work colleagues. Indeed there were enough left over to pay a visit to hubby’s office on the way home and deliver some there away.

Here are the pictures.

Birthday baking

cupcakes

Cherry, Almond and coconut meringue slice

Going back to the beginning of April for this one and the time that I hit the big four zero. Did I go out and get drunk? No. Did I throw a huge party? No. What about go out and buy a mid life crisis car? No. What did I do? I bought a food mixer. I say I, in fact I paid for some of it but numerous people kindly chipped into it for my birthday present.

This is not just any food mixer though, I should think not, considering what it cost. This has been the object of my baking desires for a number of years now, it has been paraded before my eyes in it’s many colours on more cooking shows than I care to count, taunting me every time with it’s stylish retro looks and fabulous baking performance. This, my friends is none other than a Kichenaid food mixer. And I am so very happy it is finally mine.

The hardest decision was which colour to choose, they come in so very many gorgeous colour-ways. Common sense however, prevailed and I finally plumped for the classic Almond Cream variety. It fits in with my kitchen and the classic colour-way means that if our kitchen changes it will still fit in.

So how to celebrate and welcome my new arrival? Well I had to bake of course. I love my new toy and indeed spent the whole day on my birthday in the kitchen cooking up a storm.

Here she is then. My new baby and the first lot of cakes. I was such a happy birthday girl.

My Birthday Toy

Cupcakes

For anyone outside the UK St George is the patron saint of England. Not that you would know quite often, as far more attention is given to St Patrick’s Day instead. This is fine, and of course anyone of Irish Heritage, myself included in part is more than entitled to celebrate this day, however, it is disappointing to me that St George is largely ignored in the UK.

Anyhow. I wanted to share this card with you so I shall get back to the point. Friends of mine do celebrate St George’s Day and I was asked by Mrs friend if I would make a card for her hubby. I was more than happy to oblige.

I stumbled across this freebie on Dustin Pike’s website. I don’t know if he is still available but Dustin always has plenty of other designs to choose from in his digi stamp shop. Have a look here at his blog and here at his digi site.

You’re bored now aren’t you? You want to see the card I am waffling on about. Well, here you go.

George

And a little more information about my card. He is coloured with Pro markers and his mottly skin is achieved by dotting all over with the blender pen, after I had completed the shading on the image. His shield and Pennant were plain so I used a black fineliner pen to add the cross of St George to them before colouring.

Once coloured I cut him out with a small white edge and mounted him on the background with foam squares. The background image is by Kanban, a UK based company and part of a range of scenic background images, matted on a piece of red bazzill type card from Papermania, to reflect the St George cross red.

To finish off the card I added some bunting pennants (Hero Arts stamps) stamped onto white card with cross added with fineline pen. And Finally, the words at the bottom were peel off letter stickers from my frighteningly large stash.

Hope you like my card and thank you for looking.

Edit: I sent Dustin a picture of my card and he has very kindly spotlighted it on his blog today. I was really thrilled when he asked if he could. Thank you Dustin.