Fancy a cup of tea?

When my sister sent me a lovely teacup card for my birthday I was itching to make one myself. I loved it so much! Anyway a friends' birthday is coming up so I thought that was the perfect opportunity to have a go. So here is mine:

 

The chocolate from the Hotel Chocolat was just the right size to fit in the box and my friend told me today this was the best chocolate she'd ever eaten... All this advertising and I'm not even on commission!! ...

April ATC exchange

 

This is the ATC I received from Scrapgala during our ATC exchange from les Ateliers du Scrap.  Our theme was "couture" I posted the one I sent in another post on the blog. Cute isn't it?

Vintage birthday card

Here is a large vintage birthday card for a friend of mine. I know she's very fashion conscious so I am hoping she will like it! I printed the background paper from a label I downloaded off the Graphics Fairy website and I think the mannequin is also from her site.  I printed it on normal printer paper and then aged it with antique linen distressed ink from Ranger. The mannequin is a Tim holtz die cut and so is the bobin.  The border at the bottom is a Cheery Lynn border die cut which I inked with vintage photo ink again by Ranger.  I used the ame ink to distress the edges of the card too.  The top right corner was stamped in vintage photo ink with a WOW stamp called "Vintage Wallpaper" (stock code: STAMPSET12). The flowers are Dovecraft "Paper Blossoms" in natural colour.  The butterfly was given to me during an ATC exchange with the girls from Les Ateliers du Scrap. So that's it really, I hope you like it!

 

Look who's been busy....

During the Easter break I decided I needed to sort out the dining room. The room was last decorated 6 or 7 years ago (doesn't time fly...) and was frankly looking shabby and not in a "chic" way!! We'd had a leak two years ago from the kids encounter with an angry shower hose... and the ceiling had never been repainted since. Recently the guttering broke and water starting to leak on the outside wall leaving the wall so wet that the paint started to peel inside.  Anyway as you can see it was sorry state of affairs!

The children were allowed to rip the paper off the wall - which they felt was a great priviledge since I have been telling them to keep dirty hands OFF my wallpaper for the last 6 years... They thought it was great fun so I let them carry on and in no time I had a clear canvas!

Table before and after...

It took me 5 days of hard work to change the room from this (above) to this ( below). Everything in reach got a few coats of paint including table and chairs. The only problem is that after having had such a vibrant room for so long I am finding my new room a bit bland! I need pictures and decorations but at the moment I am too busy to see to it so it will have to wait.. Maybe you can give me some ideas?

18th birthday mini album

I hope you have a few minutes to spare as I am afraid this is a bit of a large post, mostly due to the considerable amount of photos! I worked on this album for a full 6 days as I was commissioned for an 18th birthday. I did have to scan and re-print virtually all the photos which took quite a bit of time. 

   

For this album I have used papers called Lime Twist from My Mind's eye collection.  I love their stuff and since I only just acquired this pad it was a perfect opportunity to put the papers to good use.  Actually saying that the front cover and back cover papers are from the same designer but from the 29thStreet Market pad.

You will have recognised the Tim Holtz Hardware Finding die cuts which were heat embossed first with silver powder then gold. I sanded them to make them look old and rustic and inked with crushed olive and walnut distressed inks.
The numbers are wooden which I tinted with walnut distress ink and then added ModPodge for shine. The metal letters for the name are from Making Memories - I think - but the label is no longer present so I can't be sure.
The wired word "Happy" is my own creation and the metal coggs, chains, keys and pin are charms which I had in my jewellery stash!

There are a lot of tags added for the owner to put their own comments so some of them were left blank or with little decoration. The boys' mother wanted some places were she could write dates etc and I think I gave her plenty of that.

 

This booklet actually opens up and  has a pocket which contains tags left blank.

 

 

The lad is crazy on apple computers so I created his own mini Macbook which closes with velcro and has a picture of him when he was small.

  

These last two pages were left blank so he could add photos from his 18th birthday party. His mother loved the album so much that she made me add two further pages as she hadn't given me pictures of herself with the baby and she felt left out!

Unfortunately I forgot to photograph them...

I did have a major nightmare when it came to binding because with all these pages I didn't have a bind it all wire big enough! Luckily I had those metal rings left over from another project and since they were quite large they fitted perfectly. The added advantage is that they open so when the mum wanted to add pages it wasn't a problem!

Anyway that's all folks so I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed creating it. Thanks to all of you who gave me ideas for the embellishments which in the end I kept fairly minimal since the papers were so vibrant.

Thank you

Here is a quick thank you card for these days when you are in a bit of a rush. This was made in a workshop at the Hobbycraft show. I was hoping for something a bit more challenging but I guess the whole point is to make you want their stamps...and it worked since I purchase 4 from their stand as well as 6 embossing powders. Sucker me?!