I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’d been making some cards which were being sent to the USA, and I was a bit worried that none of them would get there before Christmas. Well … I had an email a couple of days ago telling me that the one card had arrived at its destination! So I’m thrilled to pieces to finally be able to share one of them.
This particular card was made especially for Beverly of More Ink Please. Beverly is a fellow crafter. She makes the most incredible cards – some of them are amazingly intricate and so, so pretty. She is also a very talented hand-made book maker. But … she has but one fault. She never finds time to blog about them! She will chat with me about some things that she’s making, but even though I push her to take a photo and pop it onto her blog …. she’s a proper rascal and never does! tsk tsk.
I decided back at the beginning of November what sort of card I wanted to make for Beverly. I wanted to make a card with a very Victorian feel, with lots of layers.
The Poinsettia flowers are all handmade and although I cut the centre (black) stamens from cardstock, I gave the flowers their yellow centres by adding some tiny glass beads.
The tiny pine cones you see on the card (covered in [fake] snow) are actually from my garden. I put Little Cobs to work during the summer, and asked him to collect me some fallen pine cones, but, I told him, “I want the teeny, weeny, baby ones, because Grammy wants to craft with them and put them on cards”, and, Bless his little heart, he took his bucket and went around my garden, picking up pine cones and either putting them in his bucket or, after doing a spot check, declaring them “Too Big!” and discarding them.
He then helped me to put all the baby Pine Cones inside a plastic bag, and zipped it up for me, so that I could force out any insects and part company with them.
I’ve put him on the payroll, and he now gets paid weekly, in cash.
Well look …. a week before Christmas and I’m only just posting a Christmas Card. Sorry about that … making them all is taking time and by the time I’ve finished making one, I’m onto the next ‘making’ and … well, time just runs away from me. It’s that things fault. Time. It’s times fault. Awww, let’s not get into Time and it’s horrors. grrrr.
Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee with me while I chatted away. I love seeing you. Especially on a Monday morning before Christmas. 😀
Have a blessed rest of your day my fabulous friend ~
I mentioned in yesterdays post, a card I made for Beverly of More Ink Please which I couldn’t post yesterday because I hadn’t re-sized the photos .. well I have now, and I’m here to share.
I previously made just one leaf like these some time ago after I saw one on Pinterest, and fell in love with it. The leaf I made that time, I made using the Ranger Melting Pot, however these leaves I made using a regular heat gun, to see if I could make them in the same sort of way, as I know that not everyone has a Melt Pot, and this was the result:
I stamped leaves in various sizes then cut them out, and using ink I coloured the leaves so that they had those wonderful autumnal colours. I then shaped them and manipulated them gently so that they had ‘groves’ and bends where the should be. Then smoothed an embossing pad over them and using extra thick embossing powders I heated the leaves using a regular heat gun. I found that roughly three layers was enough to make the leaves have that deep, thick glow which suggested that they were made of porcelain or glass and precious.
Once cool I dragged a gold ink pen around the outside of the leaf, and finally I wrapped some gold wire around the leaves.
Then using a hot glue gun I attached them to a card which I’d prior to this, embossed the background in a tree bark look, and framed that background with a cut out, – but I’d embossed around the edges of that cut out in a random way using two colours of embossing powders and carefully melting them into each other.
I added a sentiment, and a bow and that was it. Finished! It was ready to be sent to Beverly.
And that was all there was to it! 😊
I’m still taking part in the InkTober challenge, but I ran out of time today to finish my drawing, so I’ll hopefully finish it tomorrow and post a blog post about it then.
Thank you so much for coming and sharing a coffee with me. It’s so lovely of you to visit, and I just love seeing you.
Oh … and before you go … Let’s all wish Britt Ekland a Happy Birthday for today. She was born on this day, in 1942. This fabulous fact about this lovely lady leaves me feeling wonderful and very young. If she looks that good (I Googled to find an up to date photo of her) at her age today, then there is hope for me. (I was born a good maaany years after 1942!).
I’m off now to put on a full face of cosmetics, find my favourite outfit out of the wardrobe and go somewhere where my glamour will be appreciated. Somehow, Tesco’s just won’t cut it today.
As for you … I wish you a truly blessed day. Please do something to make someone else smile. It doesn’t have to cost you anything. You can simply say a bright ‘good morning’ to them, but just try to make someone smile today. It costs nothing, and you’ll never run out of them.
Sending buckets of squidges through my computer screen, along the cables and bursting through your computer screen. Wait for the moment they hit you … get ready … …. NOW! Feel that warm little wiggle inside? You’ve just had a download of Cobs Squidges. You should now be smiling a little smile. Just a turn upwards of the corners of your mouth. YES… THERE IT IS! Aw my goodness, you look so fabulous when you smile like that. Your eyes twinkle like little diamonds!
Looking through my photos on my camera I found these photos which I took ages ago and totally forgot to share them. What a dope!
These fairy shoes belonged to Lady Lillie Fairy. She’s rather a big deal in The Land of the Fae. She’s the Fairy equivalent of our Dame (a title bestowed only by the Queen (or who ever is the Monarch at the time) in the UK). She’s well-respected and treated as a high-ranking Fairy among those who reside in the Land of the Fae.
She has her clothes made by Fairyland Designers, and shoes made by a Cobbler called Cobwebs. (Yes, I know, how incredible is that? Me=Cobwebs; Cobwebs=Cobbler! Who woulda thunk?!).
Possibly made from the petals of a Lily which one can find only in Fairy Land. (or they might have been made from Polymer. [cough]) Can you see the teeny tiny stamens – which don’t leave any stains on your clothes – peeping out from the insides of the inner petals of the Lily? They’re made from the same stuff.
The decoration which you see to the front of the shoes are teeny tiny green glass beads, which are hung on copper wire. These beads give the most delightful tinkling noise as the shoes are moved, which makes every step taken ring out in an ethereal, magical, almost imagined sound, – but it’s not imagined, for you really can hear it – as you would expect from a Fairy!
The copper Penny sat next to the shoes in the photographs is there for reference, so that you can get an idea of the size of the shoes.
Of course, no shoes were stolen in order to share these shoes with you. These shoes were left under a Fairy toadstool, in a place which is clearly labelled “Sharing the Shoes” – so that a passing Fairy might stumble upon them and try them for size, or a human, with an eye for Fairies, might find them and either add them to a collection (as I do) or might begin a collection.
These Fairy Lillie Shoes were brought to you by Cobwebs.
Have a spiffing Saturday! Be good to yourself, and be lovely to anyone you come into contact with. The Fairies would approve. 😉
Regular readers of my blog will remember that I have already blogged a Recommendation on Anita’s 3D Clear Gloss many moons ago. However a fellow blogging buddy [the wonderful and immensely talented] Astrid, wrote and asked me how well Anita’s Gloss stuck things. I couldn’t answer this truthfully as I hadn’t tested the Gloss for ‘stickability’ so we’ve been testing it (via emails – as she lives at one end of the UK and I live at the other) – and I’m back here sharing the results with everyone – so that you all know too, – and I’m Recommending this product againas Craft Product of the Week, simply because of the great results I got from this ‘costs way less than that other particular brandof Glossy stuff which you can buy from the hobby retail outlets‘.
I’ve taken before and after photo’s … but … they aren’t brilliant in standard. It’s dark and dingy weather here, and no matter what lights I had on or off, I couldn’t get a decent photo. So … my apologies for the rubbish photos, but they’re the best out of a bad bunch of over 40.
The ‘before’ photo – so that you can see what types of things I chose to stick with the Anita’s 3D Clear Gloss:
Combination of items I experimented with to test out the ‘stickability’ of Anita’s 3D Clear Gloss
You can click on all of these photographs in order to make them load bigger – but remember to click ‘back’ in your browser so that you come back to this page to continue reading.
I scribbled on the scrap card so that I could show you what I stuck and where I stuck it.
The Glass Beads selection of 7 types, are (as you’re looking at the photo) bottom left and bottom centre.
All the 8 various different metal charms are top left and then trailing down into the middle of the card.
Top right are a mixture of flat back plastic (pink) pearl. Flat back glass Dew Drop (in clear pink), and a little mix of plastic gem type stones.
Bottom right is a green plastic button
The metal charms: Some are flat, but others are undulated or are more of a rounded back, and the Angel (in the top left corner) is hollow back – but I wanted something larger so that I could pour liquid all over it to see what happened – so this seemed like a great one for that test as it was all bumpy.
The Angel you can see close up in this ↑ photograph, and you can see how I totally smothered it – just so that I could see what happened. The two ‘Made with Love’ little heart charms – I put a smaller dot of medium on the uppermost one, and a large blob of the medium to stick the lower positioned heart – just so that I could test one against the other for stickability. The ‘doughnut’ or ‘polo mint’ embelli just had three tiny little dots of medium on it.
The glass beads: I chose two different sets to squeeze a little (and it was only a little) of the gloss over them, to see how it behaved and so that I could compare it to the to the other glass beads which I simply lay on top of some of the 3D Gloss which I’d squeezed out a tiny bead, and spread it slightly, then popped the glass beads on top of it and with my finger, I gently pressed to make sure that the beads were in contact with the medium. I then left them all over-night.
The following day, everything was stuck firmly. I turned it upside down and gave it a darngoodshaking. Nothing fell off. I set it flat and holding on to the card, I pushed each of the items very firmly. Nothing moved. I took my index finger and flicked each one repeatedly with a good flick, over and over, and I know that with some other glues this action would have been enough to send some of those things flying across the room – but nothing moved.
The Glass Dew Drop was a real surprise to me, as I’d not found anything (up till now) which would stick those little b*ggers securely – but this 3D Gloss had done the job.
But the real test was to try some really rough handling. So since I hadn’t been able to move any of these things by the type of basic rough handling (which I would say they might possibly encounter on a postal journey) … now I wanted to really tug on them. I wanted to force them to part company with the card:-
The smothered Angel… she really was very well stuck and I broke a fingernail getting her off – but she didn’t come off the card, the card came off the card with her. She was still stuck to it.
The little metal heartwhich was stuck on more lightly than the other – also stuck fast. The metal hand– again so well stuck that it pulled the card off rather than it was pulled off the card. The metal charm I thought would be the easy one was the irregular shaped open heart with the arrow through it – but again – it pulled the card off with it.
The Dew Drop was probably the easiest – but that didn’t part with the card, it again took the card with it.
I couldn’t get the plastic gems off at all. (and didn’t want to risk another fingernail).
The glass beads… the only ones I got off ‘easily’ (but not really) were the big charcoal coloured round ones – but again – they brought the card off with them.
If you click on the ‘after’ photo above it will open up much larger so that you can see the results for yourself. (remember to click back in your browser again though so that you come back here).
All in all – I was stunned and amazed at what a great job it did of this ‘stickability’ test, and because of that I’m repeating my Craft Product Recommendation so that you can see for yourself the results of this test which Astrid and I decided needed to be done!
Thank you so much for sharing a little of your time with me, here today. I really appreciate your company, and if you’d like to leave a comment, please do – even if it’s only to say hello! I so love to hear from folks who come for a read.
Have a truly fabulous Tuesday. Do something today which makes you happy!
The Art of Cobwebs 