Don't panic

It was my husbands birthday today so that means I can finally show you the card I made for him. He's been  moaning about getting old (despite the fact he's slightly younger than me!) so I could help gently teasing - thus the 'don't panic' on the front of the card.

I used:
Tim Holtz papers to make the base of the card and the letters for don't panic.
Lots of distress inks (mostly vintage photo, forest moss and crushed olive) - I used the faux enamel technique (see here) for the inner panels and the key and keyhole.
Tim holtz dies  - cogs and gears, steampunk on the edge, and hardware findings
A mixture of clock themed stamps from Tim Holtz, PaperArtsy and Stampattack (free stamp with Craft Stamper magazine).

I borrowed the idea for the style of card from someone's blog, but I can't for the life of me find the link or remember who it was, so apologies to whoever it was and thanks so much for the inspiration.

Thanks for reading

xx

Travels in Northumberland

We've just got back from visiting family and having a little holiday in Northumberland, so no new crafting. However, I thought I'd share a few photos of our trip.

We stayed one night on Lindisfarne Island (also known as Holy Island). This is a tiny island off the Northumberland coast. It is linked to the mainland by a causeway at low tide, but cut off at high tide twice a day - a few tourists every year have to be rescued when they get halfway across and get stuck. It's so lovely and quiet in the evening as most people leave.

We stayed at the Crown and Anchor inn which was really nice and from our window we could see the ruined priory (it was one of the first points of christianity in Britain) and, if we leaned out a bit, the castle too.

We managed to explore the island in between dodging rain showers.

Hubby was keen to get photos of the sunset and sunrise (he got up at quarter to  5am for the sunrise!!). No chance of me getting out of bed voluntarily at that time so I just got a couple of sunset photos.

I found some wonderful rusty metal and worn stone to inspire crafty things.

After Holy Island we spent a few days in a caravan in Berwick-upon-Tweed, and had a fantastic view of the historic walled town (when it stopped raining anyway),

We went to Bamburgh where hubby got into some interesting photography positions on the beach trying to get photos of the castle.

We also visited another castle - Chillingham castle. They like to make a big thing of supposedly being haunted - It'sbeen featured on various TV shows including 'the worlds scariest places' - but I can't say I found it spooky at all. It is a fascinating place though, as the current owners have restored it from virtually ruined and different bits are medieval, tudor or victorian. 

Anyway, hope I haven't bored you too much. I'll leave you with a final photo of one of my parents cats,  Pickles (so cute).

Sarah
xx

British summertime strikes again!

Very disappointed this evening - the Slaley show has been cancelled!

For anyone who didn't see my previous post, the Slaley Show is a tradition in the village where I grew up - a village fete where farmers show off their animals and people compete in everything from photography, and crafts to sloe gin and flower arranging. It should have been on this weekend.

It takes place in a big field on the edge of the village. Unfortunately, this year the weather has been so bad over the last few days that the field is apparently pretty much a mud bath and there's more rain due tomorrow so no chance it'll get better in time for saturday.

Such a pity, but at least there's still my mums sloe gin to look forward to.

Sarah
xx

Wish upon a star!

It seems to have been ages since I entered any challenges and I know I won't have time for anything next week, so I made this tag to go in three challenges at once!

Firstly, it's for Grungy Monday where we have to use the Tim Holtz technique from 12 tags of Christmas 2010 day 10 (see linky here). This also means I can also enter Simon Says Stamp and Show, where the theme is show a Tim technique.

So I started off playing around with a couple of backgrounds and some embossed acetate/plastic packinging . Then I started thinking what I could do with it (working backwards as usual!). I added a few embellishments and realised that the whole thing reminded me a little of celestial charts - probably more to do with the colour than anything else - and so 'wish upon a star' seemed fitting... perfect for Hels Sheridan's Sunday Stampers wish theme this week.

The tag base was roughly painted with baltic blue fresco finish paint and I tried to rub some off before it dried to give it a more grungy texture. I then sprayed it with some blue/turquoise perfect pearls mist which has given it a wonderful petrol sheen (unfortunately it can't really be seen under the acetate, but I'll definitely be using this paint/pearl combination again). The tag and acetate were cut with Tim's large tag die and the acetate was embossed with a the retro circles embossing folder. The clock faces are cut from some Tim paper stash - I really loved how these looked with the circles on the acetate!

I stamped 'wish' and 'a' onto paper and used with bits from a 'make your own brad' set, and although you can't see it too well in the picture, 'upon' and 'star' are stamped around the edge of two of the clock faces.

So my wish for this week is that all the senseless violence spreading around this country ends soon. They were interviewing two teenage girls on the radio last night who hoped the riots would carry on because it was 'good fun'!!! It really makes me angry how mindless it all is, but I'll stop there before I really start ranting.

That's all for now. Stay safe and stay inky :0)

Sarah
xx

An experiment in vintage colours

I recently came across the work of Polish scrapbooker/artist Anna Dabrowska from the Prima design team (see her work here). I absolutely love the sense of colour and texture in her work - it's seriously gorgeous stuff!

Her work inspired me to try making a card using muted vintagey colours and layers of different textures.

The background was coloured with distress stains / inks (antique linen, vintage photo and victorian velvet) and then I built up a few layers of:

• vellum - coloured with antique linen, stamped with the Tim Holtz Papillon background in a brown archival ink, torn into strips and edged with victorian velvet
• Lace - stained with antique linen and swiped through a bit of victorian velvet on the craft sheet
• Lace effect cream paper ribbon edged with victorian velvet

I swiped a few brush fulls of rock candy crackle paint over parts of the whole thing for extra texture.

The butterflies were cut out of fabric using a Tim Holtz movers and shapers die. The fabric I used was some little squares (perfect size for the dies) that were actually samples of suede sofa fabric I kept from ages ago when we were choosing a new sofa (I new they'd come in handy eventually) - I love the feel of them :0)

I mounted the panel onto a book page distressed with vintage photo distress ink, and then onto a card blank. Finally, I stamped Happy Birthday onto some left over scraps of the book page, painted with a little cream acrylic paint first to lighten the text in the background.

It's a different style than other things I've done and about half way through I thought it was a disaster, but I persevered and now I hope you'll agree it's not actually turned out half bad  :0)

Thanks for stopping by.
xx

Shabby chic butterfly box

Just a quick post to show you the box I've decorated for the Slaley Show (see earlier post).

It started off as a wooden box that had chocolate coated gingers in. I painted it with Fresco Finish paints in baltic blue outside and in, then used a layer of crackle glaze on the outside and painted over with snowflake.

The butterfly stamp was one of the Craft Stamper magazine freebies and the other stamped elements are from a magnetic set from Making Memories. All stamped in black archival ink. 

The bookplate is a Tim Holtz ideology one smudged with some more baltic blue paint. The butterfly image in the centre is from the Tim Holtz Papillon stamp set -  I happened to have it stamped on acetate left over from a previous piece. I covered it with diamond glaze for a glassy effect.

I quite like the finished box, although there are definitely things I would change if I was doing it over, including stamping the butterflies inside the box in white, and generally making a neater job of the painting.  Also I think I would have tried to use the papillon stamps for all the butterflies - it's just a bit fiddly to ink up a single butterfly from that set.

That all for now. Thanks for reading  :0)

Sarah
xx

The Slaley Show

Sorry if I've been a bit quiet the last few weeks. I've been a bit like "oh I don't have to worry about X, Y and Z  until August... aaargh it is August!".  Now I have one weekend to make a birthday card for my Dad, redecorate the bathroom, and thoroughly clean the house (or it won't get done until September cos we're so busy for the rest of the month!).

Anyway, enough of that and on to the point of this post...

I grew up in a small village in Northumberland (that's in the north of England for anyone not familiar with the UK) where my parents still live. Every year the village has a show - local farmers show off their sheep and hens, there's alpacas, a pony fancy dress competition for children, and competitions for baking cakes, jam making, wood-turning, flower arranging, photography, art and handicrafts - all sorts of things. There's also a craft tent and craft demonstrations.

My husband and I always go up to stay with my parents for the weekend and go to the show. My mum always enters a bottle of home-made sloe gin (which we get to drink afterwards - yummy!) and my dad and my husband always compete in the photography sections. I usually try to enter a card or two. The same people pretty much win every year and we always rant about the wildlife photography competition being won by someone who is actually a semi-pro wildlife photographer (his pictures are stunning though!)

This year I'm entering a couple of cards (which I still have to finish!) and a decorated box. Not sure how well my card style will go down with the judges and the box is my first attempt at decorating one, so I suspect I'm not going to win anything. The main thing is just to support the show and make sure there are plenty of entries for visitors to see.


If by any chance you happen to be in the area on Saturday 13th August why not drop in (click the logo to see the show website for more info) - apparently there's going to be ferret racing this year!

xx