Time is not measured by clocks, but by Moments.

I have a fascination of/with time.  It’s not an obsession, but it’s been something to which I became more aware of about ten to fifteen years ago.  I can’t quite explain it…  well, no, actually that’s a bit of a porky pie.  I could try to explain it, but to do so would unfortunately give away something in my book – which I’ve been writing inside my head for .. oh – heaven knows how long!   And a girl has to have some secrets, so I don’t want to divulge them yet  … at least, not until I write my book first!

Because I have this ‘time thing’ going on, I thought last week,  that I should make a time card.  I had a sentiment in mind and had recently bought some new stamps which would fit perfectly with that sentiment … so I went to work.

I began by making a sort of ‘explosion’ of colour happen on a ready scored 6″x 6″ card…

I stamped four different coloured ink pads in a (sort of) circle onto my glass mat, then spritzed them with water so that they bled into each other and ran a little.  I stamped the ‘spoldge’ stamp into that watery mess and then stamped it straight away onto my card.  There was a little section which didn’t quite pick up enough colour, so I just used a paint brush to fill in.  You can see in the photo where that was – but I knew it wouldn’t matter as this was just to be the (kind of) background to what was to come …

After the ink dried thoroughly, I stamped the image of a Fob Watch which had exploded …

..  and embossed it part in silver and part in gold embossing powder.

Then on another scrap piece of white card I stamped the same image again…

This time though I didn’t do the explosion of colours behind it.

This was because I wanted to cut some parts of that image out and needed those particular parts to be crisp white . . .

The white arrows in the above photo point out which parts I wanted to ‘fussy cut’ out.  This was so I could coat those pieces with Anita’s 3D Clear Gloss – because the parts I’ve pointed out in the photo above, would be the face of the clock…  and would have had the glass over them too – so I wanted to give those parts a clear glassy type finish.

By half way through I have to admit that I was beginning to wonder if it was such a great idea,  but I plodded on telling myself it would look fine and groovy once I’d finished.

Once cut out, I used the Anita’s 3D Clear Gloss on those pieces and put them on one side to dry overnight.

The following day they were dry and ready to go  . . .  so I fixed those pieces in place using Pinflair Glue Gel (what would we do without that gel, eh crafters?!).  But I put the pieces in a sort of ‘wiggly woggly’ way.  Some were tilted one way.  Some another way.  Some this way, some that.

You can’t quite see it here in this photo (above) but you’ll see it better in the final photo in a minute.

The sentiment I found some time ago and don’t know who it’s supposed to be credited to – even though I’ve searched the internet.  I think it’s just something which happened one day and there it is.  It belongs to us all (maybe).

It reads:  Time is not measured by clocks but by Moments.  I printed this out using my computer and Photoshop.  I knew how I wanted it to look, and had a font in mind … so built it then printed it out onto card, then matted it onto gold Mirri board.

Finally … I added a short length of Ivy  (Ivy is so timeless that I felt it married well into the card)  and some paper flowers …

I made the flowers from music sheet paper which I ‘vintaged’ with an ink pad and a duster brush.  The die used to cut them out was a large die of different flowers by Heartfelt Creations.  The added bits,  of cogs and parts of the clock explosions, were also cut from a Heartfelt Creations die, which I die cut using my Ebosser and three colours of Mirri Board, Silver Shiney Gold and Matt Gold,  and then the resulting die cuts I cut into to make the effect I was after.

And that’s all there was to it.  😊

This card, well ….  I very nearly opened my bin and plonked the whole lot in.  It took me sooo long to make.  Doesn’t look as if it did – but oh boy, it was all  Start.  Stop.  Start.  Stop.  I had to wait for glue gel to dry.  Ink to dry.  Work out the size I wanted the sentiment to print out – I only had a certain amount of space – so it needed to feel balanced.  Even when I finally said “Ahhhh.  Finished!”  I still had to wait till the next day to photograph it because the centres of the flowers have gold and silver Tonic Drops as their centre and they had to lay flat in order to keep them where they should be.

So yes..  I’ll admit that I was kind of glad this card was finally finished.  But … I’d still make it again. (I know… glutton for punishment.  lol).

I trust your Monday went well and that now you’re home (or when you eventually get home) that you feel that wonderful “Ahhhhh” feeling when you shut the door and kick off your shoes”.

Oh I remember that moment so well,  and will freely admit that I don’t miss it.  Although I’m not of retirement age,  (YAY) …  naturally – because as you well know,  I’m “Ooooonly 27“,  I am truly blessed to be ‘living the retired way‘ – even if very early on in life.  And no, it’s not because I won the lottery or have pots of money – sadly.  But if I ever do …. I promise you’ll be the first to know. 

I’m glad to not have that horrible Monday morning feeling – which actually happens sometime during Sunday afternoon.  See …. not so old that I don’t remember that feeling.

I hope your Monday has ended with you having a smile on your face.  And remember … Tomorrows Tuesday … already on the way to Friday!  YAAAY for Fridays!

BUT . . .   For anyone who needs an extra smile today …  I’ve come complete with a joke.  It’s the tiniest bit naughty … but not really, because it’s your mind which will make it naughty.

A Joke For the Day

The Mole Family
A papa mole, a mama mole, and a baby mole all live together in a little mole hole.

One day, papa mole sticks his head out of the hole, sniffs the air and said,
“Yum! I smell maple syrup!”

The mama mole sticks her head out of the hole, sniffs the air and said,
“Oh, Yum! I smell honey!”

Now baby mole is trying to stick his head out of the hole to sniff the air, but can’t because the bigger moles are in the way.
This makes him whine,
“Geez, all I can smell is….

.…. Molasses!!!!!   😆

Have a truly fabulous rest of your day,  and a blessed rest of your week.

Squidges and love,

Putting the Boot in! (That’s the Wellington Boot Card of course!)

I love shaped cards, but rarely make them and I don’t know why!  They’re such fun and can bring a different sort of look to the line up on the mantel shelf or windowsill.  So when I saw some card blanks shaped as Wellington boots (and flower pots – but those are still to come) I couldn’t help but make the instant decision of buying them and a pad of fabulous garden potting shed papers.

However – I’ve never been comfortable in making  ‘quick’ cards  (as I call them).  You know what I mean?  – cut and stick, and finished!  I need to make cards which have stretched my creativity in some way.  I need to put my own unique bit of art on a card in order to make it ‘Hand made by Cobwebs’.  So on this card I decided I’d like to put some hand painted plant pots.

All the plant pots you see in the above photograph of the Wellington Boot Card, were stamped out using stamps I’ve had for donkey’s years, and after stamping, they are all hand painted by me, onto some cream cardstock, then each one was cut out, manipulated so that each one curved like a real plant pot would,  and then added to the card individually – using Pinflair glue gel – to help the pots keep their dimension,  and Anita’s Tacky glue.

I know that I could talk you through the steps for making a card like this, but I thought it might be more entertaining to simply show you how to make a card like this by taking photographs.  So I took a gazillion and have chosen the best.

I haven’t taken a photograph of the blank card (you’ll see the back of the card in a photograph so that you can see what they look like without anything on – so it seemed a waste of space to put a ‘blank card’ photograph!),  so I’m going to explain the first step:

The cards start out life as a blank, ready-made and scored card made from Kraft Card.  I chose a paper which I liked, then drew around the boot shape directly onto the paper, and carefully cut it out then fixed it to the front of the boot.  It was at this point that I added the garden string – and this was so I could gauge where to place the plant pots.  From here I then went on to stamp the plant pots onto a scrap of cream, high gsm cardstock from my scrap draw,  . . . .   and from here, dear reader, I’ll let the photographs take over the story of how I made this card  . . . . .

It was at this point that I then ‘assembled’ the front of the card.  I used the one large pot with the lavender/lilac (Memento  Grape Jelly)  coloured flowers for the front of the card – which you see stamped above.  I’d already added stalks to the flowers using a rich, green, fine tipped pen, and I then carefully cut around the pot and the flowers as one, and shaped them then fixed them to the card.  The other pots were also fixed to the card at this point.   I then hand painted the shadows of the pots which you can see on the card below (but I also added a little shadow to some of the pots on the cream card so that you could see this shadow clearly – see above photo, number 7)

I wanted to do something with the envelope as it looked so boring in comparison to the card – so I thought some more pots might look cute  . . . .

Of course … me being me,  I couldn’t just leave it to look plain inside the card.  You know me – I have to give a little something more for the inside a card so . . .

And that’s all there was to it!

Oh … I nearly forgot …   I added a sentiment to the front, curved over the string, and made it look like it was riveted in place,  (so that it looked like it had some sort of garden potting shed function), and used a little bit of brown grosgrain ribbon for a bow.  Finally – I added a little, metal,  vintage bird house which I tied with a bow of bakers twine and fixed it beneath the brown ribbon.

Ta dah!  One Wellington boot card, which would be suitable for either a lady or gentleman who likes to garden, grow, or maybe even has an allotment!

Thank you so much for coming and visiting the potting shed today, I’ve really enjoyed your company.  I have a couple of other potting shed cards to share with you, but we’ll leave that for another day, because I’ve no doubt that you’ve got plenty to do and I really shouldn’t keep you.  (Although I’d love to, you understand!)

If you’ve already clicked to ‘Follow Me’,then you’ll get an email from the website here to let you know when I published the next visit to the potting shed, and if you’ve like this one then I think you might like what’s coming next time.  {winks a cheeky wink}.   But for now – take very good care of yourself and I’ll see you next visit!

Have a blessed rest of your day.   Sending love ~