(Lawn Fawn) Easter Cards...

I looove making Easter cards! Not that I make that many, but I just love the excuse to play with cute Easter eggs, bunny stamps etc. Lawn Fawn has a really nice little Easter stamp set out now which I couldn't resist (of course!)  and which I used for this set of cards.

I also used the Polaroid frame from one of their other stamp set and an alphabet stamp set too. I managed to "fake" a circle with a Memento black marker (matching the Memento black ink I stamped the greeting in) to create the Swedish letter "å" too. Yay! And for those who have not guessed already "Glad Påsk" means "Happy Easter". :)

The background is made using some blue shades of Tim Holtz Distress ink pads and the images are (of course!) coloured using Copics (see image for shades used).

Off out to get these in the post now :)

My Christmas Album...

I realised that I have totally forgotten to put my finished Christmas Album on here!! I always finish my Christmas album after December. Usually I scrap about half way and then, due to often not having access to my supplies, and I leave the rest until the next year. My album this year was finished very early in February. I normally finish late February some time.

I made my album from scratch and my covers from scratch. I can't remember the exact size of the covers right now but I made it so the pages inside will hold 2 landscape 15x10 cm (6x4 inches) photos above each other.

The covers are made by chipboard and covered in Echo Park papers both inside and out. Then I added some Distress Stickles to some of the pattern in the paper.

My album is bound with the largest O-Wire and the Bind-It-All machine. Red wire. I kept my pages as non-bulky as I could and bound it as all the pages were finished.

The reason that I didn't bind it when I made the covers is that I was unsure how many pages I wanted for each day (depending on how many photos I wanted to feature) and what order I wanted my pages in (I have lots of varied sizes of pages).

I ended up using one page for most days but I also have days that have 5-7 (!) pages. I love, love, love working with the format of different sized pages and have done so for several of my Christmas albums in the past too. I know this won't be the last time either :)

Just like it's super nice to have finished the album from last Christmas, it's super exciting to get to start the album for *next* Christmas. Come December, I'll be so ready again and I already have plans for an album that I might use... :)))

Copic Bargain...

I'm a happy girl! Got myself a mad Copic bargain earlier in the week which arrived late on Wednesday evening. I swatched them on my chart yesterday and hoping to get some colouring time in later today perhaps...

And why do I call it a bargain...? Copics are not really exactly cheap? Because I got them at HALF price. AND it was a good price to start with ---> £4.80 making them £2.40 each :))) Unfortunately they only had so many colours so I grabbed the ones that I didn't have and was very grateful to be able to add a few more colours to my collection :)

I've made some more cards but I haven't had the time to take photos of them yet, so that is something to come... But that will have to be done another day as I'm starving! Better go and make some lunch!

Have a great weekend :)

Birthday Star...

Hope you all had a great Valentine's Day yesterday! Mine was even better than I could have hoped for - we had a fantastic day and were even (unexpectedly) able to spend most of it together. :)

The Clean & Simple 2 card class has already ended but I'm still getting ideas from it. And going back through some of the materials a second time too. I desperately needed a male birthday card and - as usual for me - I get really, really stuck when it comes to male cards (though only if the recipient is over 10 years old or so!)

One card from the class, by Jennifer McGuire, with some fun techniques kept sticking in my head. But it had the idea of a sun, all the "wrong" colours and hearts. After some thinking I realised that I could easily convert it to a more male card if I let go of the sun idea completely.

For the card I used some round Nestabilities dies, stamping/embossing, stamping (various star stamps from various sets) and Inktense pencils + water. There's also some dry embossing on there, lines in between the "star lines", though I'm not sure that is so visible in the photos...

Rainbow Animal Card...

Last week I mentioned the card class that I'm taking at the moment. I made a second card last week too but never got the chance to photograph it and get it on the blog. So here I am with it today instead :)

The challenge for "day 2" of the class was to make a one layer card. As in NO extra layers of patterned paper, cardstock etc. Just working straight onto the card blank.

At first I was a bit stuck. I nearly always have other layers on my cards. Then my eyes fell on my Christmas present. My Inktense pencils (I might just write more about these one day as I L-O-V-E them!) and since I needed to make a birthday card for my little niece Agnes, I put the two together and with the help of lots of Lawn Fawn stamps I came up with the card above. Colouring this made me soooo happy! :)

Hello Again...

Um... it's been... a while... And I'm not going to make "excuses" as to why I have not blogged as usual (because that's boring to write & read!) but there has been various reasons and that's enough said on that matter :)

So crafting. Have I still been crafting? Yes! Though maybe not quite as much as I'd like to. We moved in the autumn. Can't even remember if I mentioned it here or not. Anyway the good news is that I have a much bigger room for my scrapping/card making/crafting, but it's still not completely unpacked... so I have been doing what I can.

Right now I'm taking the Online Card Classes current class by Jennifer McGuire, Kristina Werner and Julie Ebersole to get some card inspiration and it's proving a lot of fun! :)

It's only a 2 week class and I realise that I won't be making cards every day, but I love going through the lessons and getting inspired. Also I will be working behind, regardless, as I prefer to do my crafting in the daytime and the lessons arrive about mid afternoon here as they are scheduled in the morning in the US....

Anyway this is the card I made inspired by Monday's class. I started off using a sketch by Jennifer McGuire but ended up doing something quite different to her card as I did not have the same supplies... so I'm not even sure it's too easy to tell it's based on the sketch...?

I used several different Hero Arts shadow inks and some Hero Arts stamps from two sets to make up the card design. Plus some foam adhesive, a heart punch, Glossy Accents and some Liquid Pearls. It was fun, and different, to do a card that relied so much on inks and very little additional paper :)

I already have an idea for my next card so hopefully I will be back on here again soon... ;)

Christmas Album... Preparation Time...

Well it's that time of year again. Time to get ready to do my yearly December album, or my "Christmas Album" as I call it :) I'm doing my usual thing of 31 days from Dec 1st-31st. Works for me :)

(That's what's been happening on my desk this week)

I had a quick look at my previous albums. And there's quite a few. I have six already! Which kinda surprised me :) I spent some time thinking about what size and shape I preferred through the years. I have squares and rectangles, bigger and smaller ones...

I quickly came to the conclusion that I'm not too keen on square albums and this year I fancied making a portrait style one. I like it when I can fit 2 15x10 cm (6x4 inch) photos to a page, so I decided to make my covers a bit bigger than that. And yes I made my album completely from scratch, just like many I have done before. It just makes me happy :)

I think my album cover ended up being about 23x16 cm. But I'm not totally sticking to that format at all! Something that I have really learnt over the years is that I L-O-V-E working with the mixed page sizes. Totally love having the freedom for larger pages when I have lots of photos (or lots to say) and smaller on the less significant days. So a mix of page sizes it is.

I have not done too much preparation when it comes to the inside pages. Purely because I want to be able to have the flexibility of grabbing a larger or smaller page on the day. So it's pretty much a pile of patterned paper pages cut to different sizes at the moment.

Oh and for those who have done some clever spotting work in the photo above, yes I've decided to bind my album with the biggest o-wire and my Bind-It-All at the end. I did that another year and it works well as long as I keep in mind that I can't do too bulky pages as I work on them.

Bring on December :)

Birthday Copics (Part 2)...

This is a post that follows on from yesterday. And now I have finally taken the time to sort photos of the rest... So onto the second birthday parcel of Copics that arrived on Tuesday...

These really do a good job of complimenting my already existing E-shades etc. And good to have some more oranges. Something I was quite lacking. The odd very pale R-shade is included too.

I mentioned in my post yesterday that I didn't have too many greys. Constantly when I colour I notice that I could really have done with some more greys so this will be really handy. Plus some more blues and BG colours. And two missing greens - of course! Happiness :)

And a mixed photo of all of them just because. I feel so, so lucky to have such a big addition to my Copic collection in such a short time. I think everyone who love Copics hope to some day in the future have them all. Whether this will happen or not... who knows. But this has made a nice little dent in the missing colours part for me :) Birthdays are great!

Finally a photo of my Copic chart from a few weeks ago, and below one with the updated colours added.

Right my back is killing me so I'm going to get off this computer and let these colours make me happy instead while I have a little rest :)

Wishing you all a great, great weekend :)

Birthday Copics...

On Tuesday it was my birthday! I got totally spoilt with some great presents. But the day in general was pretty rubbish. I got severe back pain on the sides of my back. After getting medical advice there was a worry that it could be kidney related and I needed to see the doctor THAT day. Oh fun! So I spent most of the day on the phone to various places and waiting at the doctor's. That and being in pain. Good news? Turns out they think kidneys are ok and it's nothing acute. Backs can be "funny things" the doctor said. Bad news is that I was sent home with a load of pain killers that doesn't really seem to help and here I am 2 days later hurting just as much...

Oh well... Let's get onto something fun instead. Like... Let me think... Copics?! Yes I love Copic markers and on my birthday two big parcels with Copics arrived.This is the first lot...

The fluorescent shades which I have been sooo close to getting many times but never have done. I have always prioritised something a bit more "sensible", like some more very useful E-shades or something. But they are finally mine and just looking at the colours make me so, so happy! :)

Some more greys. I have been lacking in this department so they are a few to compliment the greys I already had. Plus some blues and I l-o-v-e the BG shades. Yum!

Then, because I always tend to buy/wish for greens, one has to sometimes think it IS useful to have some other colours too so a bit of red and yellow etc.

And finally this photo of all of them just because... Well, just because it makes me so happy to see them all in one fun colour mix :)

I'm off to take some photos of the second batch of Copic (yes I got TWO parcels, lucky me!) and will get back with them very soon. Probably tomorrow. See you then :)

Lawn Fawn Winter Card...

Oooh how I have had my eye on Lawn Fawn stamp sets...! For a long, long time! I bought the snowmen set last year and since then I have been wanting more and more.

And I have finally got my hands on 3 new (to me) stamp sets by Lawn Fawn which are just super, super cute :) So I'm a very happy girl.

"Critters In The Forest" (that little hedgehog is soooo sweet!), "Critters In The Sea" (can't resist the happy whale!) and "Critters In the Snow" (mmm that bear, so cuddly... polar bear? brown bear? or even a panda? The possibilities!)

I have been scrapbooking, card making, stamping etc for a long time now yet I have never really ventured into paper piecing. I have seen some really cute Lawn Fawn cards done this way so I thought I would give it a try... I decided to start playing with "Critters In The Snow"...

This is actually my second bear on the card. The first one went in the bin as I picked a paper with a pattern that was far, far too busy and soon realised that I needed something more tone on tone. In hindsight I might still have tried the bear in a less busy pattern, but there's always next time... I'm really pleased with the paper for the igloo as I think that worked well.

The snowy ground/hills I actually drew/cut by hand as I didn't have a suitable stamp for this. The reindeer is stamped on a left over piece of a Basic Grey pattern from a long time ago and I used a yellow Copic marker just to give the antlers a slightly different shade of brown.

I had soooo much fun doing this and I can totally see myself doing this again. Especially with the Lawn Fawn stamps that work so well with this technique. :)