Crafting Again

Well that's the first full weekend of 2017 over with.....for us it was a nice relaxed one at home. We have both been a little under with weather with various coughs, colds and sinus problems so it was nice to stay home in the warm and just chill out.

Last week one of the guys I work with asked me to make him a birthday card and exploding/photo box for his girlfriend so this weekend was the perfect time for me to play in my craft room and produce the goods. The theme was pretty and girly and I think I achieved that on both the card and the box. As yet there are no pictures in the box, I will add these at a later date as my colleague wants to let his good lady pick which photos to put in. I am looking forward to hearing what she thinks about it although I am pretty sure she will love it as I know she likes all thinks pretty, girly and sparkly. The flowers that are on the lid are all from Wild Orchid crafts and the two large pink flowers in the box are Prima.

The card is 8x8 and I used a Lilli of the Valley pre coloured card as the image, I layered up some cardstock and paper and then added some ribbon, gems, metal corners and a die cut sentiment to finish it off. I used to have quite a collection of ready made cards but my stash is almost depleted now so I think I may spend the next couple of weekends making some more so that I always have a stock of cards ready to go. If you are a card maker do you make yours as you need them or do you keep a stock that you can dip in to as needed?

I also started trying to organize a travel planner for our USA holiday. I bought a leather binder from the sale in Paperchase and then I bought and downloaded some travel pages from Etsy. The plan yesterday was to sit down and get it all printed, trimmed to size and punched so I could start filling it
in. I managed to print and trim however the portable Filofax A5 hole punch I bought was worse than useless - it only punches one page at a time and because you have to really squeeze the two sides of it together to make it punch it scrunches up your paper around the holes leaving it looking a ragged mess. Thankfully I found a better quality one on Amazon that is currently winging its way to me so hopefully next weekend I can get going again. Feeling frustrated by not being able to set up my planner I plonked myself on the sofa with a cuppa and the laptop and did a little craft shopping with Paper Maze. They had a little sale on so I snapped up some lovely scrapping papers and Heidi Swapp planner bits, looking forward to those arriving now, been a long time since Mr Postie bought me a pizza box.

I went to Weight Watchers last Thursday for the post Christmas and New Year weigh in, I knew there would be a gain which I was expecting to be around 4-5lbs. I was rather pleased and surprised when I found out that it was only 1.5lbs! Am back on track now so that should soon come off and then I can get on with the task of losing that last stone to get me to my goal weight.

Thanks for stopping by my little blog. Leave me a little comment below and a link to your blog and I will pop over, have a read and return the compliment.

Love and hugs, Jane x

A Little Saturday Crafting Session

Afternoon all....what a horrible day it is here, its cold, damp and very windy indeed! The perfect kind of day for staying home and being creative.

Tomorrow hubby and I are off to a surprise 60th birthday afternoon tea. As the birthday girl is a close friend who also loves anything creative and crafty I couldn't let the chance go back to make her a little something special to mark her birthday. I was going to make a mini book but after searching for ideas I decided to make an exploding box, something I haven't made in ages.

I used to make loads of these boxes, in fact I even taught classes at a local shop many years back (please note that I am not claiming the rights to the exploding box - I got my measurements etc off the web and went from there). I opted to make the base layers and lid of the box in neutral colours and then I added a little splash of colour inside with patterned papers and some flowers on the top. You can see below the closed up box....

The next picture is the centre square of the top layer where I put a little card so that I can write a message to my friend.

The flowers on top of the lid of the box are all from Wild Orchid crafts, I gave them a little brush over with some Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist in Antique Lace to kind of 'age' them and give them a bit of a shimmer.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy making these boxes, they are fairly quick and very simple to make but they are so effective. They make such a fab gift for birthdays, new babies, weddings etc. I am sure my friend is going to love hers. If you have a special occasion coming up and would like a box made please do not hesitate to get in touch, my contact details are all here on the blog contact page.

I also managed to complete a layout today, this one is based on Sues January sketch (yes I know its February, I am just a tad behind here!!). You can see the original challenge on Sues blog here. For this layout I again used up the ends of a Basic Grey kit, the pictures are of my niece and I last year before a family party.

Hopefully I will manage to complete the Feb challenge before the end of the month!!

Thanks for stopping by,

Jane x

My First Blog Hop/Blog Tour

Last week I was invited by my friend Sarah to participate in a blog hop tour. You can see Sarah's post and her blog by clicking on her name above. Sarah has asked me to answer the following four questions:-

1. What am I working on?
2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
3. Why do I write/create what I do?
4. How does your writing/creating process work?

1. I am not really working on much at all at the moment, I have been making tags and I have just finished making 2 Exploding Boxes that were made to order for a colleague at work who is getting married soon. Originally she wanted them as gifts for her Bridesmaids but when she saw them she decided that they would be perfect for her and the Groom's Mums instead. I have to say I wasnt overly keen on the colours but once the boxes were made up and embellished I loved them. I had also forgotton just how much I like making these pretty little boxes, think I could be making a few more in the coming months. To ne honest I havent really been scrapping much at home recently, most of my scrapping has been at the Kingshill Crop that I attend once every two months. I have however been keeping upto date with Project Life, its nice and simple and so easy to update. Its my go-to Sunday morning job, I make a coffee and head to my room for an hour or so to update that weeks page and prepare for the next week. Below are some pictures of the boxes and my more recent PL pages...I would love to know what you think of them?

2. I think that I have a certain style of scrapbooking and its a style that I tend to stick with about 90% of the time. Most of my layouts are very simple and clean with fairly straight lines and just a little bit of journalling. I subscribe to the Basic Grey Page of the Month Kits and I love doing these, they always push me out of my comfort zone just a little as there is often a lot of elements to them. I have also been getting inky recently making some vintage/distressed type tags (pics in previous post).....again this is really out of my comfort zone as I dont usually do the inky fingered kind of crafting!! Saying this though I absolutly love, love, love making them and am on a mission to add a mix of colours to my ever growing stash of ink pads. One thing I want to start making more of this year is mini books, below is a Vegas themed one I made up using a kit I got while we were there last year, I just need to print off some pics to add to it (and if I can do that this week the book can be a anniversary pressie for hubbie next weekend). I also want to get on and complete the two items below...not sure yet if I will paint/ink them, or cover them in pretty paper. Think it will probably end up being a combination of the two, but whichever I choose I will make sure that I take some pictures and add them here.

3. I have always been a crafter, even as a child I had 'making' things as Christmas and Birthday gifts. I have tried knitting, rug making, flower arranging, glass painting, decoupage and probably a lot more that I have long forgotton about! I was an avid cross stitcher until I discovered scrapbooking (which I was introduced to by a friend who no longer scraps). I bought a starter kit at a craft show and was literally hooked overnight. Despite the fact that hubby and I have no children I never seem to have a shortage of things to scrap. My main subjects are my nephew and niece.....and they are the ones that I really scrap for, I want to create a whole load of memories for them to share with their children and grandchildren one day. As a family we have inherited from our grandparents and other family members so many old photos of family and friends but we have no idea where they are or who they are with in most of them. I hope that by creating scrapbooks future generations of our family wont have the same problem and they will be able to look back and see what we were doing and where we were going etc.

4. My 'layout creating' process starts with my photos, although as a lover of 12x12 paper I have been known to take (insert the word stage here) pictures that will co-ordinate with the paper. I get my inspiration from all sorts of places...other blogs, sketches, Pinterest and of course UKS. Although most of the time I just tend to follow my instinct and go with flow.

Thanks so much for stopping by and looking at my blog and a big thanks to Sarah for nominating me. For the next part of the blog hop I am going to tag/nominate my fellow blogger Sandra Please stop by her blogs next week to see her post.

Love and hugs, Jane

Pretty and Pink

Thought I would make a quick post tonight to show you all this pretty, pink exploding box that I have made for a very special young lady by the name of April 'Dolly' Townsend.

April was one of Hayley's bestest friends and I wanted to make her something to keep, a little box containing her favourite April and Hayley pictures, something she could look at to remind her of all the good and fun times they had together. I will be handing the box over on Saturday when we all get together for the Hobbnob Cup. I hope April likes what I have done and that she will keep and treasure it and her memories of our beautiful angel forever.

The butterflies and papers I used on the box layers were printed and cut on my Cricut Imagine. I added loads of pearls and crystals and some wild orchid flowers. I have put a little card in the centre of the top layer so that if she wants, April can write a little something.

I hope, that if Hayley can see what I have done, that she approves. We all love and miss you gorgeous girl, your memory will live on forever. X x

More Mothers Day Cards

Just a quick post from me tonight...

Here are a couple more easel cards that I have made....




Below is the link to Crafty Ann's blog where I found the template I used. All of the cards apart from my Mums were done using a 4x8 inch piece of card. Mums card was done with 8x16 cardstock.

http://spiritofcreativitytutorialblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/easel-card-tutorial.html
(sorry cant seem to get it to work where you click on the link to go straight to the blog!).

The next couple of pictures are of the exploding box I made, I really love this one, mainly because its pretty and pink!!




Thanks for stopping by...hopefully I will get some scrapping done soon. Its been ages since I did a layout!

Love and hugs, Jane x