All at sea.

I thought today I'd show you a quick card made using two of my stamp sets, Beside the Seaside and Don't be Crabby.

When I was young, my parents nearly always took their holiday at the same place in North Wales, which as a child, I found very tedious and longed to go on exciting holidays like I thought a lot of my friends did. It's funny though how you see things and now looking back on those times it wasn't boring at all. In fact I remember lots of fun times there.

These memories sparked the ideas to design these two stamp sets and it seemed rather appropriate to create this card to send to my Dad for his birthday coming up so he can remember  the good times we had.

The background is a simple watercolour wash and each element was fussy cut out and stuck down on top. It seems a fiddly thing to do but with a small pair of sharp scissors it's not too difficult.

I hope it brings back some memories for you too.

Jaine x

Pom Pom Pets,Crafting with Kids

Hi There!

I've been looking forward to sharing with you today this little Pom Pom pet, going by the name of 'Mr Lovebird' in Sarah's shop, and 'Fluffy' in our home. Sarah's has a range of these Pom Pom Pets as part of her 'World of Imagination' Range of products, 

'where the sky is sky blue pink, the grass is glittery green and gum drops grow among the flowers. In your World of Imagination you can be anything you want to be, just grab your ticket and get ready for a trip to the fantastical world of make believe!'

Continuing on with the theme that saw us celebrate International Children's Day on 1st June, I (Claire N) thought it was an ideal time to show you that these kits are perfect for you and your little ones to craft along with together.

This was very much a joint project, and you can see from the photo's that my youngest (age 7) had a good go at getting this Pom Pom pet started.

I'm sure some of you will be familiar with the fact that the attention span of the youngsters can wane a little, and this is where, as a parent you can step in to offer a helping hand and speed the project along a bit.

I remember making pom-poms at this age too (though to be honest I cannot for the life of me remember why! I think I just made them because I could). These kits of Sarah's offer a much more sophisticated method of making, by supplying (in the kit) a plastic ring, to wind the wool round. I used to use roughly cut cardboard rings made from cereal boxes, did you?

Full instructions are provided in each kit, and once you get going it all comes flooding back. So, for that reason I haven't provided any instructions. I did want to offer you these photos though at key stages in the making process, to act as reminders or prompts along the way as points of reference (especially the newbies to pom-pom making).

The photo below on the left is how the pom poms looks, just as they are made, because you see from the finished photo (very top, and with Stephen below on the right) that it looks much 'neater'. The last job (before gluing on eyes, feet etc) is to give your Pom Pom pet a 'hair cut'. It is much easier to use the sharpest pair of scissors you own and trim the long rogue wool strand initially, before moving on the clipping very tiny amounts all over to even up the shape. It is very easy  to get very enthusiastic, and take too much off - so remember, 'less is definitely best' in this instance.

 I have a 13 (nearly 14) year old son also, and he was intrigued with the process of making this little cutie, and you wouldn't believe how tricky it was to get this little fluffy fella back to photograph for you to see...LOL!

If you have the opportunity to craft with youngsters I would urge you to take it, it is so much fun, and the look on their faces when they have achieved their goal is worth every minute.

Thank you so much for joining me today, I look forward to sharing my next project with you x

Super Hero Dad

Hello how are you?

This week we are celebrating International Children's Day and we will soon be celebrating Fathers Day, so in today's post I thought I'd ( Clare ) cover the two!

It's a quick and easy craft that can be done from age 1 to 101+ lol. 

To create this project all you need to do is print out your poem, some stamps and various colours of ink. I found a tub of 30 for about £10 at Hobbycraft, I thought they were good value and perfect for wee hands.

STEP 1

Print out this poem

FATHERS DAY POEM

I found this one on Pinterest but you could find or make your own poem.

STEP 2

Stamp around the page using these stamps sets.

Clare Brown Sid The Robot

Sarah Hurley Today's 

INKS

TOP TIP!

Try using two colours when stamping the arrow

You could perhaps laminate or frame this poem for that extra special touch.

I hope you have enjoyed today's and be sure to pop by soon for more inspiration from the me, Lewis and the design team.

Clare x

Teacher Gift Bag and Card Set

It's getting close to the end of the summer term for us, so I (Susie) have been thinking about teacher cards and gifts.  I always like to give something handmade as a thank you and, if at least part of it can be made by the bairns, all the better!

The card is fairly simple, but has a little bit of "sewing", which my son thoroughly enjoys doing, and a cute wee Octopus from Clare's Seaside set.  The matching bag is super simple and made from a single A4 sheet of paper.

Sewing panel on card

Cut a 13.5cm x 6.8cm strip of gold card.
Mount a 13.1cm x 6.4cm strip of Sarah's Dotty paper in mint onto it.
Punch holes in the left hand strip of dots.  (I used the 1/8" hole punch of my Big Bite tool.)
Thread rafia through the holes as if sewing running stitch.  (Rafia is a bit stiffer for threading through the holes, but thread and ribbon would also be possible.)
For a neat finish, tape the ends of the rafia on the reverse of the panel.
For a more undone finish, like we decided upon, just cut the ends in line with the edge of the card blank.

We assembled the panel, together with another strip and the cute octopus onto the card, stamped our sentiment in Rich Cocoa Memento Ink and a few shells from Clare's Seaside set and some Stardust Stickles to complete the card.

Gift Bag

Print another sheet of Sarah's Dotty paper in mint and trim off the white border.
Face down, with paper landscape, fold the short sides to meet or overlap slightly and secure with washi tape.

 Fold bottom up approximately 5cm and crease.

Open out your fold and match fold lines to make triangles.

Fold each straight edge to the fold and secure with wash tape.

Turn and repeat the folding and triangle making with the other end.

 Fold up the newly made flap and punch two holes.
Fill your gift bag before threading your rafia through the holes and tying in a bow, with a stamped octopus tag.

We might make shortbread or fudge to include in the gift bag.  Or, if time escapes us, we'll buy some sweet goodies and just package them nicely in our handmade gift bag!!

Thanks for sticking with me to the end of my post.  I would love to see any cards and gift bags you make as a result of this post.  Leave me a comment and I'll come visit you to see!! x

A Girls Best Friend - Pink, Beads and Party Dresses

Hi All, welcome to June, and International Childrens Day!

I'm Claire N, and I'm stepping into Carols shoes, just for the day. Today I have made a card using one of Sarah's Charm  Street Cuties, and a cute notebook that would be a perfect gift for a little girl to give to friend. I will show close up photo's a little further on, but I have taken the idea of an interactive shaker card and adapted it to suit this particular stamp.

To Make the Card

1) To begin, stamp the Cutie onto white stamping card, and colour with Promarker alcohol markers, and cut her out keeping very close to the stamped edge for the majority of the image. To prepare for the interactive, shaker area, increase  the border area around the skirt and legs,to hide the 3D foam and then use a craft knife to cut the skirt from the image.

2) On the reverse of the image, fix a piece of acetate to where the skirt was. Attach 3D foam across the reverse of the image, making sure that there is a completely sealed ring of foam around the skirt area of the image. This is where the small beads (glitter, sequins etc) will be  enclosed. Put the image and the cut out skirt to one side.

3) Prepare the background, by firstly creating a mask of the image, and placing it onto a piece of  13 x 9.5 cm white card. Using the banner stamp from the same set, stamp randomly across the background. Remove the mask of the character and colour the banner and background using alcohol marker pens.

 4) To construct the card,

• Firstly use double sided tape to fix the skirt in position on the coloured background.
• Remove the backing strips from the 3D foam from the top half of the Cutie and fix in place, aligning it over the skirt. making sure at this stage the skirt section does not stick.
• Turn the background over and gently (so as not to crease) reveal the enclosed area and carefully fill the chamber with glitter, seed beads or sequins. 
• Carefully remove the remaining backing strips from the 3D foam and lower the background into place. Ensure a tight deal has been made before turning over.
• Mat the entire image onto silver mirri card, before attaching to the front of a pink card blank (11 x 15 cm).
• Lastly add a sentiment.

To make the Notebook

1)  Cut two 7.5 x 9.5cm pieces of pink card, and two pieces of white card. Attach a pink piece and white piece together , and punch holes evenly along one of the shorter edges. These will form the covers.

2) Cut a 6x8 cm piece of white card, and stamp the Charm Street Cutie off the centre. Using the same mask as before cover the image and stamp the cloud from the same stamp set as a background. Colour the images with alcohol marker pens, and mat onto a layer of blue card. Fix onto one of the covers, and this will be the front of the notebook.

3) Take four sheets of A4 copy paper, and measure out nine notebook pages per sheet, as shown below, the pages are 7 x 9cm each. Using the same method as before, punch holes evenly along one of the short edges of the pages. 

 4) Sandwich the pages with the pink covers, and bind the notebook by lacing a length of ribbon through the punched holes. Tie a double knot at each end of the ribbon to secure. It would be best not to bind the ribbon too tight, so as to allow the pages to turn freely.

I hope you have enjoyed my little tutorial today, we would love your feedback and welcome any feedback and suggestions of what you would like to see us make and blog about for you.

See you all again soon x

 Products Used
Charm Street Cutie Flower Girl Stamp Set
Memento Black Ink (perfect for use with alcohol marker pens)

XOXO

Happy Saturday!

Its Ria here today.

I love clean and simple cards. What makes me more happy is that even with minimal supplies, you can create simple yet will hopefully makes someone happy too to receive.

And here's my basic supply.. not in photo are random patterned papers from Sarah's kits.
Note that you can use whatever you have on hand.

I stamped the heart in two colors, alternatively stamping the two colors on white cardstock.
I want the stamped heart as my focal point so I chose brighter colors of ink than my paper colors.

For my background, I embossed them using my embossing folder while my patterned papers were die cut with square and rectangle shapes.

A closer look at my card today..

You can make use those small stamp shapes in your stamp sets to decorate a simple cut shape. It would also be great  to create your own background.

For now, I used stamping to highlight the heart stamp as my main card design.

And this is the full card

Until then!

Supplies used:

Sentiments stamp set
Ink pads
Embossing folder
Sarah Hurley patterned papers

Masculine Cards

Hi everyone,

It is Nicole here today with a project to share that was made for Fathers Day. It could however be easily adapted for any man in your life, for a birthday, anniversary, or just to say hi! I know a lot of people find cards for men tricky, but I have to say I rather enjoy making them. I enjoy the break from all the girly stuff!

For this project I started with the Instant Photo Frames by Sarah that you can find in the Silhouette store. I cut them from white card on my Silhouette cutting machine.

 I took out the inserts and covered them in the Rose Gold washi tape from the Sarah Hurley store.

 I then placed these inserts back into the frames and kept them in place with tape on the back. To decorate them I cut shapes on the Silhouette from a yellow gold card. On these I stamped words from the Sarah Hurley Curio stamp set. This stamp set is fantastic for these types of inspiring words and it was just perfect for on my little embellishments to really finish them off.

 I cut a mat of brown card stock for my card and edged it with the Woodgrain washi tape again from the Sarah Hurley store. This gave nice detail to the card, rather than plain brown.

 I matted some Sarah Hurley paper over this brown card. This paper has a really fun horse shoe pattern on it.

I adhered this to a card base. I then started to lay out my photo frames on this. I used the washi tape to mark out where I wanted the words for on my card too.

 You can see here why I did this. I cut the words from white card, and when placed directly on the patterned paper, they did not stand out very well.

 However when the word is placed over the washi tape it stands out nicely from the patterned paper.

 You can see the completed card here. The sentiment was cut on the Silhouette. I love how the card is actually quite simple but looks quite involved.

I hope you enjoyed this little process of how I created this card. You could use dies, or just a craft knife to recreate this quite easily also.