A little touch of...

...Venice.

Hi there bloggers, "Life" seems to be getting in the way of posting/creating at the moment but this week holds an event that had to be catered for...Mum's birthday.

I had been stuggling to come up with an idea for Mum's card but then a visit to Barleylands and 'tah-dah!!!' - there on Andy's desk was a sheet of Kanban card titled "Views of Venice" - Italy & Venice in particular is one of Mum's favourite places.

So with a bit of folding and cutting, I went from this...

...and this...

...to this...

...and finally finished...


The Kanban card is made up from 4 views of the city which are easily trimmed to make toppers with a bit of matt & layering. The detail in the artwork is beautiful and reminds you of the pencil drawings made by many artists in their sketch books.

I have kept the card simple as I know Mum will appreciate the drawings and will not want lots of fussiness detracting from them but I also bought some more of this card as I want to have a play with some colouring - I think just a touch of water colour will give a very different effect.

Anyhoo, that's Mum's card - hope you like it and although I know she doesn't come on here...Happy Birthday Mum...............................................

We all do it...

...just some of us do it to a greater or lesser degree.

"What?" I hear you ask.

Buy stuff because we have read about it or seen it demonstrated...it then becomes a 'must have' and when we get it home it gets put to one side...often because we can't remember how we were shown to use it.

Sound familiar?

That was me with the current craze about "Pan Pastels" - I had heard a lot and seen them demo'd on TV. I had even had a little play (probably a couple of minutes) at a local store - I was hooked and had to have some, and some I got. Did I do anything with them? - did I heck.

So when Andy at Pinnacle Crafts advertised a Saturday morning 'try it' session; I booked.

Now Pan Pastels are not the cheapest product in the world...at £6 per pot they become a considered purchase when you take into consideration that there are 80 colours/shades. However, as Andy showed us - you use so little of the product that they will last an extemely long time (most crafters would probably never have to buy a second pot of a colour unless they used it on absolutely everything and went about it very heavy-handedly).

Andy had lots of lovely samples prepared for us to "Oooo" and "Ahhh" over and he showed us how easy it was to obtain super results using a variety of techniques.

Here are the pieces I produced...

This was my first effort and I have to say I was as 'taken' with playing with the stamps as I was with the pastels (Joanne is trying to obtain supplies). The background was created using four different shades of pastel and a bit of post-it note masking for the moon. The scene was then created using the Stampascene stamps from Stampscapes and black Memento ink. I love how you can use an eraser to take the pastel away from areas you want to. I did this on the rocks and part of the water to give the effect of the moonlight catching those areas.

This was my second piece...

...and probably my favourite of the morning. Using the DL card 'portrait' rather than 'landscape' gave the opportunity to create more depth of field. I used a dark grey, orange, dark red and dark magenta to achieve the background colours and instead of taking colour away...I used the orange to colour the rocks a little more.

We also got to play with stamping in Versamark before using the pastels...

...and embossing.

The pastels really pick up the details of the stamps as can be seen here (I used a script stamp to show the crispness you can achieve).

This piece was created using one of the new Cronology embossing folders, a quick swipe of "Teal zeal" Memento and then some pastel shading.

It was a very enjoyable morning and now perhaps I'll actually get my Pan Pastels out of the bag LOL....................

A quick chuckle...

...to brighten your day.


A man boarded a plane with six kids.

After they got settled in their seats a woman sitting
Across the aisle from him leaned
Over to him and asked, "Are all of those kids yours?"


"No Ma'am, I work for a condom company. These are customer complaints."



I WISH I COULD THINK THAT FAST!

Have a good one.............................................

Re-use...Re-cycle...Re-purpose...

...what ever you call it, it's making use of something you would normally throw away.

Food store cupboard items tend to come in all sorts of packaging. From the simple cello-wrap (as the item is intended to be decanted into your own storage) to the landfill nightmare of multi-layered but sturdy tubs & boxes.

Tubs like this...

...are far too useful to throw out and I have to admit that I do have a bit of a stock of this type of item. They make great gift containers or useful storage in their own right.
Just by covering in something pretty they take on a completely different look.

Anything can be used to cover these containers but the fairly recent trend of sticky-backed fabric in crafting has brought this type of re-purposing into the very quick and easy category.
They can be decorated with all manner of 'stuff' - this one has some double knit cotton that looks a bit like Baker's twine wrapped around...

...and a nice big button stuck on.
I have a variety of the cotton yarns as I've been using them for my Kumihimo braid making and they have been very handy for these pieces.

I also have a selection of the sticky-backed fabric - both of these are from DoCrafts Christmas ranges (Home for Christmas and the Christmas Boofle ranges). The sticky-backed fabric comes in 12x12 and these tubs are just the right size - one strip cut to the right height goes round and meets perfectly. The yarn is applied using DST. A row of tape wrapped around the tub is easily covered by wrapping the yarn around carefully to ensure all the 'sticky' is covered and then it can be knotted, tied in a bow or have an embellie stuck on to hide the ends.
The patchwork one will be for my desk at work to hold instant coffee sachets...

...the Christmas tree one will be filled with sweeties (nearer the time) and given as a Christmas gift - I'll probably add a tag and/or ribbon around the top.

So go on, take a look in those kitchen cupboards. What can you find to play with and make into something much prettier and far mor useful..............................................

A little bit of...

...home decor.

The window in the study does not have a view - it looks out onto the side fence and the brick side of the house next door.

When I bought new 'nets' for the house last year I saw some lovely voile drapes but they were rather expensive so I gave them a miss. However, I really wanted to do something with the study window to make it a bit more interesting so that it didn't matter that there wasn't a fabulous view outside.

Just after Christmas, the local garden centres did their usual clearout of all the decorations and other goodies and I found packs of voile in just the right colour (at very little cost). There were also some large silk roses that rather took my eye.

Yesterday I had a bit of a play and this is what happened...

...my window is now dressed.

I might have a bit of a tweak but the effect is what I was aiming for so I'm very happy with my 'post-Christmas' bargains.......................................

The Snow came...

...and then the ice.

Snow always looks so pretty when it first falls...

The view from the station platform.

The trees along the side of the platform.

A C2C train wearing its snazzy yellow 'nose' cover to try and stop the coupling mechanism freezing.

View from the train.

Oh how colourful London looked during the Summer of 2012 - now look...

The Orbit, all shut up and un-loved for probably another year.

The grey London skyline.

...and the Aquatic Centre is slowly disappearing (slowly being the opperative word here) so that won't see any sporting activity until the seating has been redone.

No flags in bright colours...no crowds of happy, excited people...gosh, is it really less than 6 months since all the excitement?

As I said, snow makes things look very different..................................

Butter fingers - take 2...

...the continuing saga.

I have come to the conclusion that mobile phones don't swim well and don't even like to paddle.

After it behaving for a day the '0' button has now died...do you know how difficult it is to do anything on a mobile without the '0' ?

All numbers to be dialed start with '0'
The '0' button is also the space bar when creating texts - greatfunsending/replyingtoamessagewhenyoucantspacewords
Even more fun when you take the phone to pieces to ensure everything is dry and you then realise your PIN has a '0' in it

Thank you everyone who mentioned about the rice (no Annette you weren't dream LOL) - problem there was I didn't have any...

The upshot is, I had to get a new phone but as I didn't want one of these Smart-thingies or the suchlike, I managed to get one pretty cheap. The fun now starts sorting out what needs to be transferred.........................................