Beautiful Friendship

I love the Beautiful Friendship stamp set. Most of the cards you see made with it are understandably in pastel colours, so I felt inspired when I saw the colour combo of Cherry Cobber, Shaded Spruce and Early Espresso over at Global Design Project

This seemed perfect to send as a thank you card for friends who had us over before Christmas, as it still seems quite festive. I added some polka dot tulle ribbon to brighten it up a bit!

Happy crafting! April xx

Lip Balm Gift Set

Merry Christmas! I hope you are enjoying this festive time of year.

This is my snippety make for Pixie's Snippets Playground where the lovely Di very kindly does a massive Christmas event with beautiful, inspirational cards and an amazing prize draw.

This gift set was made to maximise a rather lovely couple of 6 x 6 pieces of paper. I also stamped on the lid of the lip balm that I made. The dinky milk bottle carton tutorial that I used can be found here. The little fold-flat box tutorial can be found here. Both were lots of fun to make!

I hope you manage to get some crafting squeezed in between the celebrations!

April x

Piggy Tag

How is it December already? Every year I think I'm ahead of the game and then suddenly it's all upon us and the time races away.

Here is a piggy wrapped up warmly with his woolly hat on. He is a very cute Hero Arts stamp and is going on a present for my friend's daughter. She is very fond of pigs indeed. The tag is folded so that it has its own integrated chocolate coin :-)

My winter pig was inspired by Day 26 of the 25 Days of Christmas Tags 2019. There were lots of lovely reindeer, penguins, foxes, bears and mice all wearing their hats and scarves! I loved all the tags, but I was particularly inspired by these tags by Eloise Blue!

I'm also sending festive hugs to Di, Dudley and Parsnip over at Pixie's Snippets Playground. Tags are super snippety aren't they? Particularly when they involve chocolate coins...

Happy crafting! April x

More Tags

 

 



Another couple of tags today. These are for Day 12 of The 25 Days of Christmas Tags 2019. They were inspired by this stunning stag tag made by Kim for Stamplorations. I loved the contrast of the paper at the top and the detail of the linen thread tied round the tag. My die-cut is a Marianne one. I am being super-organised and wrapping the present that goes with the tag at the same time (not sure how long that will last!)

 

 

Happy crafting! April x

 

 

 

 



Stencilled Tag

 

 

Hello! I made these Christmas tags to take part in The 25 Days of Christmas Tags 2019.

 

I was inspired by this lovely creation by Liliya for Studio Katia. It is Day 11 and you can find the post here. I love the white stencilling, the slightly off-set die cut sentiment and the little bow at the top. My Falala die is Stampin' Up, the tiny bow is Waffle Flower and the stencil is Tim Holtz.

 

The floral 'accessories' in the background of the photo used to be really nice until the cats decided to bite the plastic stalks off them. Now they balance on very short stubs in their vase and the cats make a point of knocking them out every single time they walk past them. Just why??

 

 



 

 I am also sending my tags off to Di, Dudley and Parsnip at Pixie's Snippets Playground. Di, you will be happy to hear that the horrible old lino floor in the bathroom - scene of my gold embossing paste horror - has finally been replaced. Of course, it goes without saying that I am banned from the careless use of embossing paste whilst wearing slippers...

 

Happy crafting, April xx

 

 

 

 

 



Lil'fishie

Hello! Soap-making has been keeping me away from the cards, but I did make this today. Stamp alignment is everything here. This isn't perfect by any means, but in the first attempt, I managed to make the grumpiest fish ever! I often avoid these multiple step stamps because whether I use blocks or a stamping platform, I do find them a bit tricky.

This card uses a snippet of retired SU paper with a fish that is a combo of Peekaboo Peach and Pumpkin Pie. The cute stamp set is Colour Layering Goldfish from Hero Arts.

It has poured with rain all day here, so the sentiment feels quite apt!

I am snippeting over at Pixie's Snippets Playground.

Much love, April x

Huge Gift Bag

 

 

 

Hello! Once again my blog posting has been woeful... However, today I felt inspired to make this huge gift bag, after finding a great tutorial here.

This bag takes up two pieces of 12" dsp, which is fabulous when you are trying to work your way through a paper mountain like I am. The lovely black and white paper is retired SU, but I have added a tag made with the Merry Moose bundle. It all looked a bit dark and miserable until I dotted the trees with a white Gelly Roll pen. I'm really pleased with the end result and I am determined to not buy gift bags in the future!!

Moose coloured snippets and old cord were deployed, so I am saying a big hello to Di, Parsnip and lovely Dudley over at Pixie's Snippets Playground.

April xx

52CCT Technique Challenge

Hello! Oh my goodness, I mulled over whether to post this! All I can say in its defence is that it is much prettier and very sparkly in real life, but isn't a great photo at all. I saw this interesting technique over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown called the Eraser Technique. It involves a piece of sand paper, a pencil and a rubber. There are a couple of links to show you how! I think Lucinda may have said that success depends on your eraser. I ended up raiding my daughter's exam pencil case because I couldn't really get it white. I'd reconciled myself to a silvery grey reindeer and he is much nicer in real life because he's covered in clear Wink of Stella. The background was made with a Tim Holtz burlap stencil.

There are some stunning examples of this technique. Sadly, this isn't one of them (ha ha!) It's difficult to resist a technique that uses sandpaper and is potentially messy though! Lots of fun!

Happy crafting, April xx

First Christmas Card

Oh dear, I've been awol again! I have made my first Christmas card of the year though! I was inspired by this week's challenge over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown where the colour combo is...

 

There are some lovely design team examples there. Well worth a look!

 

This cute moose wearing his Christmas hat is from SU's Jolly Friends and the dies are Tim Holtz's Garden Greenery. The card is super snippety and the vellum is rescued from a card that went wrong a while back! So that means (of course) a hug and a wave to Di, Parsnip and Dudley over at Pixie's Snippets Playground where there are also wonderful hedgehog photos!

 

Happy crafting! April x

Scavenger Photo Hunt - February

Hello! Time for another scavenger photo hunt over at I Live, I Love, I Craft, I am Me where the words for the month of February are - Sound/hear, Smell/scent, Feel/touch, Taste, Sight/see, my own choice. So here goes!

Sound/hear

Not the greatest photo, but the sounds of KPop pervade our house everyday. I also have a special KPop playlist just for soap-making (bit odd, I know!) We were lucky enough to see BTS in concert in Amsterdam back in October. Holland were playing Germany next door and I had never been in such a massive crowd in my life! Today, after a fitful night of sleep I managed to get tickets for their Wembley concert in the summer. Very excited (and stressed) doesn't begin to cover it!

Smell/scent

Scent from a lovely rose in our garden last summer!

Feel/touch

Another rather 'niche' interest...after many years of supporting Everton I finally got round to touring Goodison Park. We were shown round by ex-captain Mark Higgins and in the changing room, you were allowed to touch all the shirts. You could take them down from their hooks and pose with them for photos. Again, perhaps a bit odd, but it made me very happy!

Taste

Yum! Churros and chocolate sauce consumed at the Chinese New Year celebrations in Liverpool. Highly appropriate for the Year of the Pig which also happens to be my birth year too!

Sight/see

I love this photo of Shabti figures taken at Liverpool Museum. This is just one end of many rows that are beautifully arranged in all their many shades of exquisite colours.

My own choice

I took this photo in the Cat Café in Liverpool. Look at that paw and those ears!! This is usually how I feel at the beginning of the month, but after a short spell of gorgeous sunny weather, I'm feeling much more energetic!

Hope you enjoy my small collection of photos. They were very inspirational words! I'm looking forward to seeing all the other photos that everyone has posted.

April x

A Special Anniversary

 

 

Hello! Today's card is in honour of a very special anniversary! Di and Parsnip have been running Pixie's Snippets Playground for seven years. I think it is the friendliest and most welcoming card bloggy challenge around. We are all thanking Di by posting our cards on a blog hop very kindly arranged by Darnell over at her blog here. Thanks Darnell!

 

From my own limited experience of being on a design team for a few years, card challenge blogs are a feat of organisation and commitment. Many a time here, a last minute card was literally dredged from the craft mountain kicking and screaming to meet the weekly deadline. I also had the benefit of a team, so you could slack off from time to time when you really couldn't face another stamp or foam pad. There is NO slacking from Miss Di and her able deputy is well, you know, a bear. Double-sided tape isn't easy when you have paws...

 

I also know as a blog comment writer and reader that after the eleventy millionth card, comments tend to stray into the generic wilderness of, "Such a lovely card. Thanks for joining us at blah!". Not with Miss Di! She knows her playground inmates and is a wonderful friend to them.

 

Thank you Di (and Parsnip) for keeping the snippety love alive and for all your warmth and generosity! I think that the sentiment on my card sums up the spirit of the Playground quite nicely! (it's a stamp from The Ink Road).

 

April x



A Lard Soap Recipe

 

 

Hello! Today I thought I would share one of my cold process soap recipes. I am not including details of the soap-making method as there are many books and websites out there that go through all the steps, and obviously the all-important safety requirements when working with sodium hydroxide/lye. This is just the recipe and assumes competency in cold process soap making!

 

Lard makes a beautiful, firm, white soap and by adding castor oil you can boost the bubbly lather level. My recipe has 4% castor oil added (it's generally used at 8% or below to avoid tackiness). This isn't a soap that you would want to leave completely unscented, so adding your choice of essential oils is a good idea. For the soap above, I added a combination of Cedarwood, Basil and Bergamot essential oils.

 

 

 

I have found that this is a useful recipe for working with detailed moulds or making embeds. The picture above is a 'Double Happiness' mould - a Chinese symbol of marriage with kissing mandarin ducks!

 

 

 

Here is the soap after the cut, with another mould and some Christmas tree embeds!

 

The recipe makes 750g of soap, but I have also included percentages if you wish to resize your batch. If you do, please do ensure that you re-check your quantities using a lye calculator! Please note that this soap is superfatted at 5%.

 

Lard (pig tallow) 250g (33.33%)

Rice Bran oil 200g (26.67%)

Coconut oil 160g (21.33%)

Olive oil 110g (14.67%)

Castor oil 30g (4%)

 

285g water (distilled or spring)

104g sodium hydroxide

 

5g each of Cedarwood, Basil and Bergamot essential oils, added at trace (2%).

 

 

 

I hope that you enjoy this recipe! It is intended for personal use and gift-giving only, as it is not safety-assessed for sale. If you do make this soap, I would be delighted to hear your comments on it!

 

 



Scavenger Photo Hunt - January

Hello! I thought I would do something very different for me (blog-wise) and take part in a photo scavenger hunt. I found a lovely one at here at I live, I love, I craft, I am me... and I felt inspired by the prompt words, so here goes!

metallic

 

 

This rather lovely and serene metallic lady hangs around on the back wall of our house. I particularly like her worn nose!

 

plate

 

 

 

I took this photo at the Highland Folk Museum in Newtonmore. We visited last summer on a blazingly hot day. It's quite a no-nonsense kind of plate isn't it?

 

made

 

 

 

I made these soaps in January and they are happily curing away now. I was really pleased with how the tiger-stripe technique turned out and I love the contrast between the soda ash top and the inside of the soap. Some people steam off their soda ash, but I love it!

 

aged

 

 

 

 

Another photo from the archives of last year's summer. This is Ruthven Barracks, built in 1719 after the 1715 Jacobite rising. An amazing place that is well worth visiting!

 

modern

 

 

 

I love this photo! I took it outside a hotel in Abcoude, Amsterdam. I really like the juxtaposition of the old and the modern! It was a lucky snap, as the hoover was being used to clean rooms so it probably didn't hang around for long!

 

my own choice

 

 

 

 

Finally, my furry girl Tiger Lily roasting herself on the radiator and cuddling a fox cushion. The red hot temperatures that she can tolerate are amazing. She literally puts her face directly on the radiator. Such a heat leech!

 

I've really enjoyed thinking about this month's words in relation to my photos. I hope very much that you like them too!

 

April x

 

 

 

 





Egg Soap

 

 

A new direction for my blog! I will be writing about my cold process soap-making here. Mainly as a way of recording soapy stuff for myself, but hopefully people will find it interesting too! For the last six years my blog has been filled with card-making and papercraft, specifically as a demonstrator for Stampin' Up, but lots of design team stuff too. However, last year I started my own soap business and have made the decision to leave SU at the end of this month, as I feel it's time to move on to new things. I'll still be blogging about papercrafting too, but that will just be the random stuff that I make for fun. I did think about starting a new blog, but I actually quite like this one!

 

I have a range of safety-assessed soaps that I sell, but this soap was made for a Facebook group challenge where we were asked to make egg soaps. You could use the egg yolk, the white or the whole egg. If you didn't want to use an egg, you could make an egg-shaped soap! :-)

 

There is a long tradition of egg soaps. Generations of Swedish women used egg whites as facial masks for their astringent effect on the skin. The Swedish soap maker Victoria made their egg white soap, 'Lanolin-Agg-Tval' (sorry I can't put the correct accents there!) from the early 1900s. Their soap combined egg white with lanolin and rosewater. The Belgian version 'Eiwit Zeep' from Kala does not contain lanolin, but has chamomile flower oil added. There are currently a number of Korean soaps available that also contain egg white.

 

 

 

I was very keen to devise my own egg white soap! I decided to combine lard with olive pomace, castor, argan and coconut oils with shea butter. At a light trace, I added a mixture of rose water, red French clay and an egg white. You have to be careful with two things. First, I made sure that the lye water and oils had cooled sufficiently because you can scramble the egg (not nice!). Secondly, I carefully weighed the egg white so I could decrease the amount of water accordingly. An average large egg white is apparently 40g, but mine was weighing in at 35g!

 

 

 

I added Rose Geranium fragrance oil which caused quite a bit of acceleration, so it turned out as more of a 'plop & drop' than I would have liked. However, there was just enough time to create a cocoa powder pencil line and I was really delighted with the final result. Only a small 500g batch using my small loaf mould, as it's for personal use. It will be really interesting to see how it feels after curing!

 

Happy soaping! April x

 

 

 

 



Touch of Whimsy

Hello! I have had these cute bunny stamps for years and never used them! They are called 'Touch of Whimsy' from Penny Black. I paper-pieced the daisy and bunnies with snippets, so my card is off to Di, Dudley and Parsnip at Pixie's Snippets Playground.

I was inspired by this sketch over at Sunday Stamps

I really must get around to using all the stamps in this set. There is a great bunny with really long ears holding an umbrella that I've got my eye on! :-)

Happy crafting! April x



Happy Meow Year!

 

 

Happy New Year! As a cat addict, I couldn't resist the 'Nine Lives' stamp set in the new SU Spring catalogue. My colour scheme was inspired by this lovely combo over at Sunday Stamps. I love that cute bird!

 

 

I used SU's Grapefruit Grove, Balmy Blue, So Saffron and Basic Grey for my card. The cat certainly looks a lot happier than our two do when they find themselves near an empty food bowl!

 

Snippets were deployed, so I am sending my card to Di and Parsnip at Pixie's Snippets Playground and also saying a big congratulations to Di on an amazing 7th anniversary!

 

 Here's to a new year of crafting opportunities! April x