Fashion ATC

Oh my goodness, I haven't written a blog post in YEARS!! But I found myself inspired by the challenge over at Tag-Along and ATCs which is on the theme of 'Fashion', so I made an ATC and here we are!

It is a combination of Distress Inks - Tattered Rose, Tea Dye and Vintage Photo with a Funky Fossil stencil to create the background. The stamp is from a set I've had hanging around for a very long time called 'From Paris with Love' by Jennifer Ellory. The stitched edge is a rub-on, also from Funky Fossil and the tiny stars are from some copper paper repurposed from a old Christmas cracker. The fashion text is torn from an old dictionary.

Love April x

Merry Christmas

 

Hello! I hope you are keeping well. This is my festive snippets card for Pixie's Snippets Playground. I made it using stamps and dies from the Gina K Winter Whimsy kit. The flower stamp in the kit is fabulous, as it can obviously be used as a poinsettia, or as with this card, more of a 'winter bloom'.

Here are the snippets! The glittery silver card is actually an deconstructed cracker. Other old crackers have been turned into tags for presents. This glittery old cracker is really lovely and my photos don't do it justice at all!

Festive card-making has had to take a bit of a back seat unfortunately, but hopefully there will be some time over Christmas to get to my super messy craft table!

Merry Christmas and Happy Crafting!

April xxx

Seashells

 Hello! I'm writing this blog post from my non-Covid sick bed. Normal service has resumed and my traditional October horrible cold/cough virus is back. It has meant that today I spent a long time searching for some very cute stamps I had seen on a Dutch blog. I simply couldn't understand why I couldn't find them. I sent a message to my lovely Dutch friend and it turned out the reason why is because they are from the Netherlands equivalent of the pound shop! She will very kindly look for them for me.

My snippets card was made with snippets left over from the creation of another card -

I had made an inky background with Distress Inks and the remainder became the shells and stars, along with all the rest being from random snippets too. It was made with die-cuts from a Hot off the Press set. I am sending it to Di, the Snippet Queen at Pixie's Snippets Playground!

Happy crafting!

April xxx

Lucky Mushroom

 Hello again! When I saw the theme at Challenge Up Your Life was Good Luck/Mushrooms I just had to enter this last minute card! The leaf shape was made by inking round a leaf from my garden and the mushrooms are from a stamp set called Shroom Forest from That's Crafty. I hope you like it - I love the idea of a lucky mushroom and I hope these bring you good fortune!

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

Washi Deer

 Hello! I was inspired to make this card by the challenge over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown where you are asked to use at least two different designs of washi tape in your Christmas card.

I have a lot of washi tape, but I can be ambivalent about using it. Sometimes I add a bit to a card and then I think oh that looks rubbish, so I take it off again. I must say I prefer this very easy technique where you just apply strips of washi to a base of card and then die cut shapes from it. These deer dies I have used are from Sizzix. I love that the deer look as though they are wearing legwarmers and I deliberately went for clashy colours of washi. The fawn looks quite shocked by what he has ended up wearing, I think!

I'm also entering my deer into the challenge at My Time to Craft Christmas where the theme is Christmas Critters and the Allsorts Challenge where the theme is 'Anything Goes with Option of Nature'.

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

Polar Bear in a Jar

 Hello! This week's challenge over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown is...

I have decided to jam a polar bear in my jar. He is very cute and from a retired SU set called White Christmas. The die cuts are from Beautiful Boughs and I have used them to stencil the edge of the card with Distress Inks.

I'm sending this bear in a jar to Di, Dudley and Parsnip at Pixie's Snippets Playground because the card is super snippety. It's made using a beautiful natural card that SU sold years ago. I really loved it - it had a great texture and I saved two pieces for ages that I eventually used. However, whilst 'tidying' Snippet Mountain, I came across a pile of off-cuts I had hoarded and forgotten about. They were left over from a box making workshop that I think I did in 2014... So I used some for this card, along with another snippet from an old embossed piece of card for the jar lid and yet another snippet of patterned paper that was hanging around in a drawer.

The same off-cuts were perfect for a Facebook Bookmark challenge. I always read books on my Kindle, but I am reading the huge tome that is 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell', so this foxy bookmark made with Lavinia stamps is now residing in its pages...

Our daughter went off to university last week, so I made her a gift box with this cute label...

Finally a Hallowe'en card! Quite apt, as the nights are certainly starting to draw in!

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

Snowflakes

 Hello! This card was inspired by some challenges. 

The first is the As You See It Challenge where the theme is 'In the Air'. I have gone with snowflakes.

The next challenge is Happy Little Stampers 

The dies I have used are from SU's Snowfall Thinlits,

Then there is the challenge from Beyond the Blue where the theme is 'Let it Shimmer'.

Last but not least, over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown there is a colour challenge

My small Christmas card pile is gradually growing! How about yours?

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

Ruby's Memory Card

Hello! Here is my card for the challenge dedicated to the memory of the beautiful Ruby over at Pixie's Snippets Playground,

It didn't start off quite like this...

As you can see, I managed to drop the pen that I was drawing the holly berries on with! A couple of tastefully positioned snippets of Funky Fossil patterned paper came to the rescue. The stamps are the very cute small Pippin from Lavinia, along with Fir Cone Branch and Fir Tree 1. The holly leaves are a Cardio stamp - the Holly and the Ivy. The holly berries are my own...artistic creation. Actually I like it better with the strange improvised snippet corners, so it was all good in the end!

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

 

Christmas Sketch Challenge

 

My Christmas card making is moving on! This latest card is inspired by the sketch challenge at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown 

Stamps: SU Peaceful Boughs, Bohemian Borders

Dies: SU Tasteful Labels, Beautiful Boughs

Inks: Twisted Citron and Ground Espresso Distress Inks, Tea Dye Distress Oxide, Memento New Sprout, Bamboo Leaves, Desert Sand and Rhubarb Stalk. Tarnished Brass Distress Stain spray.

A Clarity sentiment sticker and some Glimmer Paper stars to finish up with.

It was a great sketch for using some older stamps and messing around with inks! Another card to add to the pile.

Happy crafting!

April xxx

Christmas Stencilling

 

Hello! Another long lapse between posting!

First of all, the star in the corner is meant to be a handy 'decorative' item to usefully hold down the edge of a bendy card. In real life it is an attractive sparkly wooden star from some Christmas pot-pourri (so it smells nice too). On my phone, this is what it looks like. Blown up on my laptop it looks like a mouldy old sponge extracted from the sink... so apologies for that!

The card was made using Funky Fossil's Nordic Noel stamp set and a holly leaf stencil that was also from Funky Fossil.

All the pieces of card are snippets and there is a tiny snippet of cork paper that was a snippety gift from a crafty friend. The stencilled background was made with distress inks and I decided to keep the lovely reindeer very simple with just a touch of Copic colouring.

I am sending my card to Di, Dudley and Parsnip at Pixie's Snippets Playground - I have been away for so long and have very much missed 'playgrounding'.

I am also taking part in the current challenge over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown

Happy Crafting!

April xxx

First Christmas Cards

 

Poor neglected blog. I haven't posted this year - where does the time go?? I can't even blame the soap making, as I haven't been able to face re-doing all the paper work to put my soaps on the new UK portal. A herniated disc earlier in the year did make all soap-making and papercrafting out of the question. Since then I haven't really managed to get back into it at all.

I have felt strangely Christmassy the last day or so. I think it is because we had an amazing thunder storm yesterday with very dark skies and heavy downpours of hail. There was another roll of thunder earlier, but it hasn't come to anything.

The card above is snippety as it uses left-over pieces of Whisper White card for the mat and the fussy-cut stocking. It is kind of snippety in spirit as well because I tend to buy stamping magazines and then never use the stamps that come with them... I do like this Christmas stocking though. It is from an old issue of 'Creative Stamping'. I stamped it with a mixture of Distress Inks - Blueprint and Wilted Violet. The branch was stamped in Rustic Wilderness and the little spots are Tumbled Glass. It's a simple card and one I'd like to repeat in different colours.

I am sending it along to Di and Dudley (for a virtual stocking chew) at Pixie's Snippets Playground I very much like the idea of Dudley in his bathtime burrito.

I made two more cards using various bits of old SU kits. This brings my Christmas card total to three!

Happy crafting!

April xxx

Snippets Card

 

Hello! I haven't been blogging here for quite a long while. Although this strange year has dragged in many respects, time seems to dash away too. I seem to take lots of photos, but I don't seem to do anything with them!

 I hope that you are keeping well and happy. Here is my snippets card for Pixie's Snippets Playground

It really is a very snippety card, as you can see! I found an example on Pinterest that uses the old SU word window punch. Such a good idea for tackling Paper Mountain. Some of these bits of paper have been hanging around for a LONG time! 

Here are some other recent makes -

 

 

 

 

I'm pretty pleased with how the house turned out. It's made using Tim Holtz's Paper Village dies - very cute! The base is chopped off the Christmas tree and it has been covered with gesso, True Snow and a fine glitter. The trees were coloured with Speckled Egg Distress Oxide spray. It was a lot of fun to make!

More cards...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 And finally, a soapy make which had its moments, as soap making often does!!

 

If I don't get back here soon, I hope that you have a very Merry Christmas and a better New Year!

Happy crafting, April xxx

Tasteful Touches

 

 

 



Just that really! Saying hello after about two months - I really am hopeless with my blog!

 

I have used Stampin' Up's Tasteful Touches to make this skinny card. All the leaves and flowers are snippets left over from another card. The flowers were colouring failures that needed going over again with the blender pen and the Wink of Stella. They very nearly ended up in the bin in an overdue fit of tidying, but I'm glad I made them into a new card instead.

 

We stayed in a lovely cottage in Lancashire as a welcome change of scenery. It was greatly needed after my husband working from home (he has gone back now)  and my daughter trying to teach herself A' Levels. It felt wonderful to clamber up Pendle Hill and walk along the river. That will be it on the holiday front. I certainly wouldn't want to attempt going abroad!

Here is a rather dark photo of the river that ran alongside our cottage.

Here's a better photo!

And here is a Pendle witch wearing her mask!

I'm sending my skinny card along to Di at Pixie's Snippets Playground where a certain somebody has been a very sweet Birthday Boy recently!

Happy Crafting! April xxx

Botanical Prints

 

 

 

Oh my! Two blog posts in one day!

I am entering this card into the challenge over at Addicted to CAS where the code word is flower. I think it is reasonably minimalist. I stencilled through a laser-cut overlay, so I think that gives it more of an 'airy quality'.

The stamp and repurposed overlay are both from Stampin' Up's Botanical Prints Medley which I love very much. The flower was coloured with Stampin' Blends and the cardstock and stencilling are both Mint Macaron.

Here is a more complicated version with die cuts and sequins added...

I hope you like them!

Happy crafting, April xx





 

Girl with Birds

 

 

Hello! I hope that you are keeping well. I really enjoyed making this card! It is a digital stamp from Vera Lane Studio. I love the birdies!

 

Digi Stamp: Whimsical Gal with Birdhouse and Birds

Cardstock: SU Whisper White and Basic Black

Inks: Distress Inks - Abandoned Coral, Fossilized Amber, Twisted Citron, Mermaid Lagoon.

Stencils: Tim Holtz Speckles and Penny Black Oscillations

Coloured with SU Blends

Snippets of an old SU paper that have been brayered with ink and some torn washi tape

White gel pen

 

 

I also had a good time making this collage from pieces of gelli prints.

 

 

 

Some 'inchies' made from the lovely IndigoBlu magazine...

  

Our daughter had her 17th birthday. Her nickname at school has always been Ladybug, so this card seemed appropriate! She managed to meet up with all her friends virtually via some form of social media or other, so all was not lost fortunately. Young people are coping brilliantly, I think. I can't imagine what it must be like to have your education and future put on hold at that age. I hope that they all bounce back as quickly as possible!

 

 

 

 

 

Soap-making has been going on. This batch is Lavender & Tea Tree and it smells lovely! The recipe has been formulated by my assessor, so it was great to make a soap that is different from my own range. There are lots of regulations around the claims you are allowed to make about soap. This one can be advertised as antimicrobial. Although all soaps are antimicrobial because of their surfactant properties, the addition of the lavender and tea tree essential oils enhance that effect and leave your hands smelling lovely. Once they are cured I want to send some to our local wildlife sanctuary, as they have been tirelessly working to look after hedgehogs, rabbits and all kinds of birds.

 

Finally, I have been working on our pond and this lovely little guy has been keeping me company. After many weeks, he also appeared with a girlfriend.

 

 

 

 My card has some old SU dsp snippets - hope I dig out more as it is very useful indeed! I am sending it along with a socially distanced hug to Di and the gang at Pixie's Snippets Playground.

 

Keep crafting! April xx

 

 

 



Birthday Cat

Hello! I hope you are coping well with lockdown. We had a special birthday to celebrate as Toby was 50 last week. We are very lucky in living two minutes away from Birkenhead Park so we don't feel at all deprived when it comes to walks.

I made this pop-up box card as my husband (like me) is cat-mad. It was super-fiddly and naturally I left it to the last minute which was a bit stressy - fussy cutting a tiny mouse at night is a bit daft!! He liked it very much though and we managed a celebratory, but obviously rather unusual birthday. I used SU's Nine Lives to make the card. I do love the ball of wool and tiny mouse and fish stamps! I was inspired by my friend Too Much Glue Sam. She made a whole bunch of these cats and made a Mother's Day bouquet with them - so cool!

Here is the cake...

And here are a couple of pics from the birthday walk!

 

Here is a rather attractive box of humbugs that came in a hamper. They were red, white and blue. The birthday boy said he wasn't actually that keen on humbugs, so I ate them (always happy to oblige!)

My card used some super snippety tiny snippets for mice, food dishes etc. so I am sending my card to Di, Dudley, Parsnip, Hedgies and Walter Pigeon at Pixie's Snippets Playground.

Happy lockdown crafting! April xx