Giveaway - Retro Sweets Box

Unfortunately I've been back in hospital this week after another gallstone attack. I'm not sure if I'd mentioned my original operation date was cancelled. It just means there's been loads of messing around and I haven't managed to get posting as regularly as I'd have liked.

I have been trying to network a bit in the evenings though. It's Body Shop peak nowso there are stacks of offers which I've been sharing n facebook here. I've also arranged a giveaway on my craft page for my most popular Christmas gift- as mall Retro Sweets Box. Pop on over here to enter by liking the page, picture, and leaving a comment to share your favourite childhood memory! This is what you can win:

Dog loving uncle's birthday card

I can not take all the credit for today's card I'm afraid. The hard work was done by my little boy. It's my younger brither's birthday today and I've made a rule that I will not buy any more cards but make them myself. 

The boys love dogs also but I refuse to get one. So they have to settle for going out with my brother while he walks his dogs. The kids love it.

I made this by stamping a clear stamp from hobbycraft with black Stazon and leaving my little boy to colour it in. I stamped the sentiment using blazing red Stazon just to add a bit more colour as it became obvious Toby wasn't in the colouring mood. The picture and sentiment were layered on blue card and a couple of buttons stuck on to fill the blank space. Toby then scribbled his birthday wishes inside the card using great thought, detail and a blue felt tip pen! 

I personally love it! :o)

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Modge Podge and Decopatch

Today I decorated a vase and some tumbler glasses with decopatch papers. This is great fun! 

I bought the vase from hobbycraft in the sale a little while ago for £1.49 and the tumblers are from an asda value box of glasses. My intention is to use the tumblers as tea-light holders. I was a bit apprehensive about whether they would withstand the heat so I have tested them by leaving a candle to burn in them and they didn't crack under the heat (literally). However if you attempt to do the same I should advise that you also check the glass and leave it to cool down before touching it. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR MISHAPS USING GLASSES AS TEA-LIGHT HOLDERS!!!!

To make I simply ripped the decopatch paper up into 50p sized pieces. I turned the vase upside down and started at the top (bottom of the vase). I used a decopatch brush to paint on some modge podge then applied the paper, brushed out any bubbles and applied a thin coat of modge podge over the top. I continued to do this, overlapping each piece of paper slightly. Once covered I left to dry for a couple of hours.  I took a sharp craft knife and ran it closely around the base and top of the vase to cut away the edges leaving it smooth and neat.

I really like it, but you can see the difference between the pink vase and the clear glass. I have 4 other vases which I think I'll just decorate and sell on by itself rather than as a set. I'd be a bit worried to sell the tea-light holders in their new form for health and safety reasons. This lovely little set sit pretty in my girly spare room.

Work in progress

Unfortunately I only have my work in progress to show today as I have been busy painting my wooden shapes from Wood Be Nice:

Free standing blackboard

Right then, I am back and ready to blog. I am expecting to go for surgery on Tuesday but at least if I'm back on the blogging bandwagon I can catch up and write some scheduled blogs while I'm in hospital.

So just a quick one to get back into things. My 6 year old niece is always really interested in what I have made and how I have made it. Today Simon took the boys to Manchester airport to see the aeroplanes so I had a bit of time to rest/tidy up. I'd just finished packing up a box of crafty bits to take upstairs when my brother arrived with my niece and nephew. She asked if I'd been crafting and    Since I've been unwell I've not actually made anything. I did however have a heart shaped chalkboard on the table that I'd finished a little while ago, but needed to drill holes in, so I showed her that. She wanted to k ow how I made so I explained. She seemed AMAZED!! Bless her

I had a scrap piece of MDF on the table which was actually used as a DIY wedge but thought would be good to let her play with. She put 3 layers of chalkboard paint on, covered the sides and back and played around with a handful of embellishments I gave her until she decided on how she best liked them placed. I did help her by doing the dotty border and sticking he bits down (as I use superglue) but it was entirely her design. She, of course, added her name. She left the house with her stick of chalk and wet wipe a very happy little girl. And I waved her off a happy aunty! Here is her creation:

Bad blogger!!!

I have been a very bad blogger this last few weeks....I haven't written one blog!

Unfortunately we've had a rough time of late. My grandmother has become unwell, my little boy has had his cleft palate repair, and I've been unwell with a stinking flu as well as having random gallstones attacks!!

I will be resuming my blogging ASAP with some lovely new makes.

Just arriving at Alder Hey

Keeping busy before the op

The morning after his operation. Brave little monkey x

Decorating wooden shapes

I have somewhat neglected my blog this last week as I had a friend visiting. She and her sister were instrumental in me meeting my partner Simon and we've got lots of great memories together as a group. She adores the boys and it's lovely to see them interact with other people.

We went to West Kirby for the afternoon which brought a very welcomed breeze from the stuffy heat we've been experiencing. Toby really enjoyed watching the water and dipping his toes in. There were lots of dogs about which he loved too. His language has come along brilliantly over the last week. He has started saying so many new words-it amazes me how much he actually knows and understands, and is now communicating. Joseph wasn't in the best of moods which meant the trip was cut short.

Anyway, with Toby in nursery today I had chance to do a bit of crafting. So today I have been busy painting my box of treats from Wood be nice and crafty bugs. Watch this space for completed items...

Personalised plaque / sign new baby

Thought I would share a commissioned personalised door sign and plaque that I made. This was for a friend to send to America for her brother who just had a little baby girl.

I used one of my bulk-bought plaques from ebay without holes drilled. Since I bought my dremel 3000 I wont buy them with the holes pre-drilled as sometimes I make something and decide that I prefer it not to have twine poking through at the front. With baby gifts, for example, I find that it a more eloquent finish can be achieved by attaching ribbon to the back of the sign using double sided tape.

I wanted to create a border on this sign as I wanted it to be quite plain, but eye catching nonetheless. I spray painted the entire plaque in white and left it dry. I then used making tape to section off the border. I was worried that the masking tape would pull up the paint when I took it off so I only placed the masking tape down loosely. When I pulled it up I realised the paint had seeped under the masking tape. Initially I was mortified but after leaving it to dry and them going back to it I decided I actually really liked it. It kind of gave it a a torn paper feel. Anyway, I spray painted my letters and hearts, measured out where I wanted them placed and then glued them down with super glue. To attach the ribbon to hang the sign I placed some double sided tape at either end of the plaque vertically (from top to bottom) and stuck the ribbon in place.

For the details plaque I used my Kobra spray paints again, and wooden bear shape bought off ebay and a heart embellishment bought from Debs cards & crafts (unfortunately now closed down).

Baby boy congratulations card

Just a quick one tonight. Wanted to show you all a card I made for a fellow cleft mum who happens to live around the corner from me.

It's simple blue craft card at layered with silver card. I cut the outer square using my scallop-edged scissors and used a scalloped punch and circle punch for the inner circles. I added small white dots using my soufflé gel pen for a little extra decoration and finally added two little feet painted blue as the main embellishment. Oh, I stamped it using a felt tip pen with 'congratulations. I was really pleased with the layout.....just disappointed with the stamp, again! I have been and got some stazon ink pads today though so fingers crossed for a happier stamping future! :o)

How to decorate a wooden wine box using the tracing technique

Remember that wine box I bought from the car boot sale a couple of weeks ago? Well, I found some time to decorate it. I decided to try decorating by hand using the retro-school tracing technique. I'll show you how....

I started by painting the box using a sample pot of coloured emulsion paint from B&Q (£1.10 a tub) in olive green. I gave it two thin coats, but I think one would have been fine. I decided not to paint the I side of the box as I will fill it with straw to present the wine so it wouldn't be seen anyway. Actually, the truth is I was too keen to crack on with it. If I were to sell this I think i'd paint the inside too. 

Using Microsoft publisher I created a rectangle shape the same size as the lid on the box. This meant I could position the text and resize the font so that it was central and looked good. I messed around with the font until I found one I was happy with and then printed it off and cut it out. I deliberately choose a skinny font. I wanted it to look like handwriting, but neat.

I then coloured over the back of the writing with a pencil. This gave me flashbacks to rainy schools spent tracing ridiculously detailed images from textbooks and transferring them into exercise books.

Once coloured I turned it back around and stuck it in place on the lid using a piece of masking tape.  This ensured the paper stayed in place as I tried to trace it into my box. I then drew around each of the letters using a biro which transferred the pencil markings underneath to the wood.

I  peeled away the paper to reveal the writing in light pencil.

I carefully coloured in the writing with a super fine paintbrush. This was my main mistake. I really do not have a stead enough hand for a paintbrush. Really I should have used my uni posca paint pens, but they don't offer the variety of colours I want to work with. So, I either need to learn to steady my hand, find an super-duper-fine paint brush, or fork out for a bucket load of paint pens from somewhere. Practise makes perfect as they say....

It didn't look great. It looked unfinished. I umm'ed and arr'ed for ages about whether to go Around the letters with a black marker or not. Eventually I decided that since I didn't like it as it was, I couldn't make it worse. So I went ahead. Still, it looked "dodgy" to say the least. I persevered with it as i thought whilst it looked a bit odd, once finished it may add character. I'm glad I did because I actually really like the finished item.

The next decision was the embellishments. It definitely needed something but I couldn't decide what looked best:

Finally I bit the bullet and went for the stars. I painted them in the same colour I'd used for the letters, outlined them using my fine liner too, and then stuck them on using superglue. Voila! 

Day trip, crafty buys and kind words...

I took my mum and granny out on a day trip to Llandudno today with the boys.

For those who haven't been before its a lovely little place on the north wales coastline with an abundance of things to do. There's the beach and promenade, the town centre, the Great Orme tramline and the welsh mountain zoo a stones throw away. We went for..... The craft shop!! 

Tucked away amongst a road full of cheap, seaside-shops is the most amazing craft clearance shop! They've got stacks of fab bits at really really cheap prices. I think I spent about £12 and got this whole pile of goodie:

I even picked these 12x12 Dovecraft Christmas papers up for £1 each!!! Bargain!

I could easily have bought more, but the kids were playing up so I had to be quick. The shop is in the process of developing its websites I when it's up and running I'll post a link.

Despite these bargains the best part of the day was something a stranger said to me. Something which I (do actually) realise every day..... 

I was waiting outside Marks and Spencer's for mum and granny and a man came over and smiled at the boys. He asked how old they are and said how lovely they seemed. There was one or two other small comments made before I spotted my mum, but just before he walked off he told me "you're very wealthy!". I knew instantly he didn't mean financially. He was referring to my boys and their worth. "I am," I replied walking off, "I am VERY wealthy".

Disney Countdown Sign

We are going to Disney World Florida in October as a celebratory treat to mark the end of a year of operations for Joseph. We booked it shortly after we found out that our baby would have a cleft lip and palate while I was pregnant. The most difficult thing to come to terms with was the fact that my poor little baby would have to go through the pain of the operations. We knew feeding was going to be more difficult than it would be with a non-cleft baby and we just felt that we could do with something to look forward to after dealing with all the difficulties we would face.

I was lucky enough to visit twice as a child but my partner Simon has only ever been to EuroDisney. He is Disney crazy and always buying the boys DVDs and popping into the Disney store to buy them little treats. Needless to say he is VERY excited about the holiday. As I've said before he regularly rolls his eyes when I try to talk to him about my ideas or makes so I thought I would test him..... and I made him this countdown plaque:

I actually made two and gave him the choice of which to use. He said he wanted both! :o) so the small one has been made into a magnet and put on the fridge and the larger one is on the kids bedroom door. You can't see it in the picture but there us a stick of chalk attached to the string that holds the sign up.

The plaques were bought from the same seller on ebay - I negotiated the price for buying them in bulk and with the holes pre-drilled. They were painted using my Kobra spray paint. The Mickey Mouse head shape was bought from my trusty LaserSmith and painted with chalk paint bought from hobbycraft. They were glued on using Gorilla superglue and the writing and decorating was completed using my uni posca paint pens.

It took about 30 minutes to make both of them and that included paint drying time. Simples!!

Princess Crown Wooden Sign

A fellow cleft mum has been having a hard time of things lately and her little girl recently went through her palate repair operation. Through all the difficulties she is facing she continues to work for clapa in her fundraising efforts and has applied to become a contact parent for clapa, which means she will act as a point of contact for new/ other cleft parents that may need help with their babies. I thought she could do with a few bits to cheer her up so I made this little Crown Wooden Sign for her daughter.

Both the Crown shape and letters were bought from my favourite craft shape supplier LaserSmith. The heart was bought off ebay as bulk buy of 50, and the small stars were bought as a mixed box of embellishments from hobbycraft.

I started by placing my bits on the plaque to check they fit and see how they looked best. I planned to paint it with my Kobra spray paint in pink.

I always spray both sides of the plaque-even when the back is unlikely to be seen. I think it looks more professional. I ordered some items from some established crafty pages off facebook and was really disappointed when they arrived and were only painted on the embellished side. Especially as it was an item where the back could be seen, I.e. on a freestanding shape! You MUST make sure it is thoroughly dry before attempting to paint the other side though. If you have sprayed a thick coat (as I always end up doing because I'm too inpatient) I recommend waiting a good few hours before turning around to spray the back. However, it is a better recommendation to use the spray paint as instructed on the tin and just do several thin coats as it dries much quicker this way.

I glued the embellishments in place using superglue (I have found this gives a much better finish that a hot glue gun as it doesn't ooze out of the sides and it sticks well without the need to clamp it together for half an hour after gluing - can you tell I am impatient?)And those of you with eagle eyes may have noticed that there have been holes drilled into 2 of the crowns peaks. To do this I used my Dremel 3000 (see, it was an essential buy afterall :o)!)

So that my lovely CLAPA friend knew why the devil she was receiving this gift I also made her a card...

I would like to enter this card into the One Stop Craft Challenge Challenge #238 - Pastel Colours

It was a pig to try to photograph this card. I love the design, but again I am disappointed with the stamped sentiment, which reads 'THINKING OF YOU'..... YOU NEED NEW INK PADS :o)

I did it.....

..... I bought the sizzix big shot!! I can't wait to get using it!

However it'll have to wait until tonight as I'm off to start a new career venture....as a massage therapist :o) whilst my partner rolls his eyes at my idea I am determined to be able to look after my kids without having to ship them off to nursery full time!

Personalised canvas wall art gift

My work in progress is now a work complete, and one I am very pleased with:

I really should have measured the space before I ordered my embellishments as I think it is a little bit too small. Having said that, I have had this out in a spot where I see it daily and the more I see it the more I like it!

After putting the Whale and letters in place it looked like it was missing something:

So I added my trademark dotted border around the outside. I liked it, but still thought it could do with something else. So I carried on with the dots. First around the letter J, then around the smaller letters and finally around the whale. You can't see it very clearly on the main picture so here is a close up:

I love it! Can't wait to make more :o)

Decorating wooden plaques using Decal Paper

So, I've said in a previous blog that my writing on wooden plaques isn't brilliant and that I would be trying different methods to be able to offer a more professional finish.

Cue the decal paper method...

I love my quotes, but I want to be able to present them in an eye catching style. Decal paper is bascially an image transfer paper. It works a little bit like those tattoos you used as a kid. It is perfect for decorating wooden plaques, especially as I would be able to include a picture.... I just needed to master its use...........!

I searched my quotes board on Pinterest and decided to use a quote by Marilyn Monroe. I then search for a black and white image of her on google images. I decided to use my 100mm x 100mm square plaque so using Microsoft publisher I drew a box 100mm x100mm (this was simply to use as a guide for positioning my image and text - I deleted it before printing as I didn't want it to appear on my printed image). I positioned my image, wrote my text, altered the font and size and faffed and fiddled with the layout. When I was happy with how it looked I copied the entire image and pasted it into Paint where I flipped the image so It was back to front (otherwise when the image was transferred the writing would be the wrong way round). Then I printed it according the instructions that came with the decal paper (different brands of decal paper work differently so I won't attempt to give instructions on this). I am reliably informed that I could have just changed my printer settings to print  "mirrored", but my IT skills are a little basic and this was the easiest way for me to do it.

I painted my plaque with my Kobra spray paint in a very pale pink and set about transferring the image. Really I should have photographed the process to explain exactly how the decal transfer worked, but a) I didn't know I'd get it to work, and b) I would rather say I use "x" brand of decal paper and this is how it works.

Incidententally I used dry rub decal paper here. There is also waterslife decal paper which involves wetting the transfer image. I tried the water slide decal paper first (as its cheaper) and failed miserably. It seems like the easier option as you simply print, spray with an acrylic varnish a couple of times, wet, then apply the image. However, when I tried I mustn't have sprayed the image with enough varnish as the ink ran when I placed it in water and it was unusable. It might be worth trying laserjet printed images rather than inkjet-something else to try!

Dry rub decal paper involved a series and sticking and peeling films and rubbing out air bubbles. I found a few bubbles in the final product-but I'm sure ill get better at it and figure out how to avoid the bubbles. I was disappointed in this method as I'd hoped for a flawless transfer, whereby it looked like the image/text had been painted directly on to the wooden plaque, but when you look closely it looks a giant sticker. The other image I have ready to try doesn't go right the edge so it may be that I just need to be more clever about the design.

Anyway, here is the final product. I plan to put my dremel to good use and drill holes to make this a hanging plaque...

Car boot crafty finds

I have just placed a fairly big order with crafty capers for wooden items to decorate. They have a great range of products suitable for painting and decorating and their prices are some of the best I've found so far.

However I found a couple of cracking items at the car boot sale this weekend. I very nearly bought a wooden wine box, but thought I'd leave it until closer to Xmas as I've splurged a fair but lately on crafty bits. However I found a gorgeous box for 50p! I had to use all my energy to stop myself from fist-pumping the air with delight at my find!!

I also rather strangely found that there seemed to be a box a children's wooden dominoes for sale on practically every stall. For any fellow followers of itsallfiddlefart, you'll know she uses these to create fabulous gift tags. I limited myself to two boxes so that I could try this too, but I am hoping to find some of my own inspiration and find something else to do with them too.

Birthday Cards, Body Shop and Cystic Fibrosis

I attended a Mad Hatters Tea Party event today in aid of a little girl called Anya Bentham who is suffering from Neuroblastoma, an awful, very aggressive childhood cancer. Anya is a local girl and the community has pulled together brilliantly to raise money for her treatment. I heard yesterday that £200,000 of the £250,000 target has been raised. This is fantastic but its so sad to know such fundraising is necessary. If you would like more information about her and this terrible illness you can read about it on her just giving page.

I was attending the event as a Body Shop Consultant and have offered to donate all my commission for sales achieved at Anya events. I am a sucker for children and always do what I can for charities. If you are fundraising and would like info on. How I could help please get in touch.

I always over-pack my stall. Today I tried to limit what I put out and I was quite pleased with the final look. Still, room for improvement!

I met a remarkable woman there too. Her little girl had cystic fibrosis and was treated at the same hospital where Joseph had his lip repair, Liverpool's Alder Hey Children's Hospital. If I'm honest I was pretty ignorant about the condition and what it entailed, but she was able to explain how it affected her daughter and the implications for daily life. It made me feel pretty silly having been so concerned about a cleft in Joseph. Despite what she had to deal with, this particular mum had awe and respect for Anya's parents and what they had to go through with their daughter. A couple of days ago I posted a picture of some sentiment plaques I'd made and one of them seemed particularly potent...

I have since been quote hunting and really appreciate these words by Albert Clarke:
“In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy."
On a lighter note, I returned from the event to my creation station :o) It is my partner's sisters' 16th birthday this weekend so I needed to make some cards. Being a beginner my materials are only cheap. I love the linen effect cards used by itsallfiddlefart, but I've got a bulk pack of plain white cards from hobbycraft which need to be used first. 

I used glitter and silver card from a bulk pack bought from home bargains or B&M-I bought them a while back so I can't remember where exactly I bought them from or how much they were but I can't imagine it was much more than a couple of pounds for a 20 sheet pack. I cut the squares by hand but this took forever and I wasn't very accurate, which shows in the quality of the finished product I think. I really need to invest in a guillotine-any recommendations?  The little star embellishment was from The Works-I think it was £1.50 for a pack of 6.

I do like this card (I surprise myself sometimes). I always start with one idea in mind and end up with something that looks completely different which I kind of like. I'm really disappointed with how the sentiment stamp turned out. I had to improvise and use my promarker to colour the stamp as I only had dark coloured ink pads.....more thinks to buy!! :o)

I can't help but think this looks better in the photo than it does in real life. I've printed two  monkeys to represent her two cheeky monkey nephews as she likes to call them. I didn't stamp them very well and some of the finer details bled. I also used the wrong sort of ink pad to colour the stamped image. I'm told I need to use Acid based ink....the shopping list gets bigger and bigger!

Body Shopping and crafting was just about complete when my partner arrived home and I was able to have an amazing snuggle with my big, little boy! :oD