Christmas Hangers & Little Books

One of the Christmas style gifts I made for this year were some little hangers. They were made from different shapes of nesties and mounted on top of each other

I also made some little books from the large labels set that I have. Here are a taster of some of the pages

Hope everyone who received something liked theirs

MERRY CHRISTMAS

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Hope you are all having a fab day and have plenty of new stash to play with or money to spend on T!m's new stuff with when it eventually finds its way over here!!!!

Thanks for all your comments throughout the year, it is much appreciated and I'm looking forward to doing it all again with you next year!!!

YAY - We Got Snow!!!!

Not much, but Fraser was having a ball this morning, just look at his chin and beard!!!


Here he is flicking it in the air with his nose!!!!


And the sun is just rising up over the river

Dolls Chair

Way back in the summer my friend Kath aka LazyKay sent me a dolls chair to alter. We decided to do a challenge, I was to make something for her with mine and she was to make me something with hers.

I wanted to make some sort of shrine, but it ended up going way beyond that!!!

This is what I came up with. The chair has been painted in gold dabber. I covered a piece of balsar wood with black and white checks. My mate Claire kindly stamped out some shrine images for me and I made them bigger on the photocopier. I mounted them onto mountboard, coloured them and then cut them out. Kath had previously sent me the clay moulds, so I painted them gold too and added them to 2 of the wall panels. The panels are held up with lollie pop sticks which have been wedged into the wooden base. I was now thinking that it sort of looked like a palace.


And no palace is fit without a queen. Queenie is made from a spoon, bent round to sit on the chair, although I did have to raise her off the seat slightly so her arms would fit!!! The dress is simply layed pieces of paper with a doylie for her neckline. A clay mould for the face, wool for the hair and a metal crown.

Kath and I were hoping to meet as I wanted to give it to her in person, but it just never happened, so I ended up posting it and I'm happy to report it all arrived safely and in tact!!!

Lotstodo Challenge - Free Theme - Calendar

I've been having a play 'digitally' and I got better as the months went along!!!! This one was very basic, I just added the picture.


For this one I used one of our own photos for the background and made the calendar chart transparent


Then I got adventurous and again using a photo of ours I softened the edges and created an oval shape and added the previous and last months and changed all the colours and fonts and the style of the calendar

And things just progressed and I played a bit more....

and a bit more!!

Might carry on with the rest of the year.

Alfie's Anniversary

Couldn't let today pass by without acknowlegding Alfie xxxx

Such a sad day............This post will remain at the top of my blog for a while

This is Alfie, our 14 month old beardie we took in to re-home. Unfortunately we had to let him go tonight (15 December 2008). A few weeks ago he started to limp and after a few trips to the vets we discovered he had a tumour in the bone in his leg, so in effect he had bone cancer. At the very best they gave him a year but that was only with immediate surgery and chemo. So today we took the decision to let him go whilst he was still smiling rather than wait until he gets to a distressed and painful state. It would have been so painful to watch a dog so young not doing what he should be, ie running around the field with Fraz. Hand on heart, I can honestly say that he has been happy with us, well looked after and well cared for, for the last 7 weeks of his short life and he absolutely loved Fraser to bits - he made a great friend there and it's been great to see them together even if it has been short lived. xxxx

Day's 11 & 12

Well sadly these are the last 2 days of my version of T!m's tags. This is only my 2nd attempt at the grungepaper roses and I'm quite pleased at how they've turned out. They are more green than I would have liked, but then that's me all over isn't it - green!!!!


I have to say day 11 was for me, was the least inspiring. I really, really didn't like those home made brads, so I used prestuds for my flower centres instead

Anyway, it's all over now for another year!!!

Make a box

Lotstodo's challenge this week, set by Hilda is to make or alter a box. I decided to have a go at making a box. I used a template from here, they have loads of other designs too


To make up the box is dead easy, you just stick the tabs


You need to make 2, a top and a bottom


Then you fit them together (on its side)

Flat on the table

If you put tissue paper inside you could fill it with something nice!!!!! Just can't make up my mind what yet though!!! Or you could use double sided papers to make it extra special

T!m's day 10 tag - my version

This is my day 10 tag from T!m's inspiration. I used my cricut and big shot machines to cut letters, numbers and shapes from thick card. Silly me used dst to stick them down so that showed through the sticky foil tape, but I actually quite like the effect!!! Don't have any of the adirondak pens either, so used alcohol inks and masked sections off. The colours are actually brighter IRL.

More Improvising!!!!!

T!m's tags - day 9 - home made film strip with acetate and a utee moulded flower!!! Images provided by T!m


T!m's tags - day 8 - Lampost is Paperartsy from the Urban Snapshot range - Key is from Hilda!!!


Day 7 - really enjoyed the techniques for this one. Ended up using lime stickles for the holly and black diamond for the berries!!! Stamp is a Crafty Individuals one - CI-164


Day 2 - finally - as you can see my range of christmas stamps is very limited!!! But I made the shaker from the packaging that T!m's discs come in and found some silver micro beads to fill it with!!!!

At least I'm up to date now - just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings!!!!

Playing Catch Up

This is my version of T!m's day 6 tag. I had to improvise and draw the tree myself, I think it could have done with being a tad bigger!!!! Oh and I didn't have any of the white flufy stuff either so I used white dabber paint


This is my version of day 5's tag. Didn't have any round fragments so have used the square ones instead and the images are from CI. My pine needles are a feather stamp from Paperarsty!!!!


And finally day 2 as I found a greeting stamp that I'd forgotten I had. Didn't have any mustard seed embossing powder though so had to use tea dye and it hasn't quite worked the same. Also didn't have the metal flowers and corners, and the mixing of the perfect pearls and flicking was easier said than done!!!!!

T!m's day 3 tag & a card

This is my version of T!m's day 3 tag. Loved doing the background and I stole the idea of the 'robin' from Alison, but I'm sure she won't mind!!!!


I got carried away and made Martin's birthday card the same way, but exchanged the robin for Fraser!!!

T!m's Day 1 Tag and Lotstodo Challenge - Snow(flake)

Only managed day 1 of T!m's tags, didn't have the stuff for day 2, thought day 3 techniques were fab and day 4, again don't have the stamps for. I don't have many christmas stamps, just a couple of sets of CI ones. Also Hilda has set this weeks Lotstodo theme, which is snow or snowflakes, so this tag fits in perfectly

Fab Weekend

Warning before you start - this is a very, very, very long post!!!!! Get your coffee and settle down

Had a fab weekend at Art from the Heart in Harrogate, Dy is brilliant and there was a great crowd. It all started on Friday evening when we were faced with a wooden sledge, a huge red bauble and a small tag!!!! We spent the evening priming all the pieces and eating pizza!!!

The following day we were ready to get stuck in with the paints


Above is Chris clearing up her mess, I stepped away as she was getting more over me than she was on her sledge!!!


This is the rest of the gang beavering away

We put our sledges to one side to dry off after lots of huffs and puffs and swear words. Dy took all of us well and truely out of our comfort zone by making us paint 'properly' with a brush and then adding shading and hi-lites - not as easy as she makes it look, but great effects were achieved (eventually!!!!)

Next we moved on to our bauble. Everyone, but especially Dy, thought I was mad when I said I wanted to do a 'green' one, with a green nose and green lips. But I think he turned out fab. Quite enjoyed this activity.

Here they are, all drying in the corridor

Then we got into 'proper' crafting. Dy got out some packs which included her own design Blonde Moments christmas papers, ribbons and a flip book to decorate

This is how mine looks at the minute, it's not finished yet

Sunday morning and Dy thought it would be a good time to varnish our sledges and baubles. But there was a problem.............................

The lid wouldn't come of the varnish. But with a knife, spoon, hammer and a lot of brute force, Gill managed to get the lid off - whey-hey, well done Gill

So we proceeded to varnish and here are my finished products

The sledge with the shading and hi-lites

My 'green' snowman from the front

And the back. Even Fraser was impressed!!!

And the next activity was my favourite, because it was the messiest. Instead of painting with a brush, we used our fingers - YAY!!!!! We used Claudines paints to cover a wooden mdf tag and stamped it up. A dress and legs had been stamped onto canvas and we painted that too. Wings and a crown had been drawn onto grungeboard for us, so we painted them too!!!! We were asked to take a headshot of ourselves, but the one I took wasn't big enough, (no comments, thank you!!!), so here is my completed tag, now with a head.

Front

Back

By did she work us hard, because then we were given another pack and a mirror to decorate. By this time most of us were flagging and thinking of the horrid drive home in all that heavy rain.

This is Dy's finished mirror

and this is as far as I got with mine before I had to set off home, but I've got all the bits to finish it, so watch this space................................

One last thing, Dy showed us all how to make a rose from grunge paper

Just want to say a huge thank you to Dy for putting up with us and to everyone else for making the weekend a great experience and most of all a fun one xxxx

Edited - Monday 30 November - 6.45pm

Added some bits to my book today, going to finish it off with some christmas 2009 photos when it gets here!!!!

And this is my finished mirror with a piece of white card in the middle!!!!