Storing Stickles … it works! It actually works!

I found this idea on Pinterest about … oh, I dunno, …  a gazillion years ago? – maybe.  And although I thought it was a good(ish) idea at the time I found it, I put it into that category folder inside my brain of:  “Good looking Pinterest ideas which probably don’t actually work in reality”.

How wrong was I!!!

It really does actually work!
I can’t believe it!

I already had one of the required perspex/acrylic certificate ‘stands’ so all I needed was some velcro.  Do you think I could find this simple thing anywhere?  It was rarer than Gold dust here where I live.  However, a leaflet left in my mail box came at just the right time.  Lidl were having packets of it in their stores, amongst the crafting specials,  the following week.  I couldn’t believe my luck, neither could I believe how cheap it was when I went in to buy it.  They had white or black, and I could have either sticky backed self adhesive, or the unsticky type.  I decided upon the self adhesive and crossed my fingers that it was the ‘self adhesive’ which actually stuck to things!

I cleaned up the certificate holder so that it was sparkling clean (to make sure that I gave the self adhesive Velcro a fighting chance), and then sat working out where I should stick the Velcro for maximum bottle storage.  I’d noticed that the idea I’d seen on Pinterest had only shown three rows of bottles, but when I measured up, three seemed so very far apart, and had such a waste of space in between the rows, so I inserted a sheet of A4 into the certificate holder, but left just a smidgen of the edge sticking out along one side, so that I could make a little dot at the points as I measured them.

I worked out that on an A4 Certificate holder (which mine is – but check the size of yours or check before you buy one, as there are various sizes) – If you measured one centimetre down from the top of the paper and draw a straight line across the paper, then from that line measure 8cm down and drawn another line, and do it a further two times.  You should then have four lines.

Then … cut four lengths of the hooks side of some of your Velcro, in the WIDTH of the perspex stand.  (I used black but you can use any colour you like).  Insert your piece of paper with the lines on it, back into the stand and lay it on your desk.

• It helps to leave the ‘foot’ of the stand hanging over the front edge of your desk so that the stand lays completely flat.

Using your drawn lines on the paper as the centre marker for the middle of the Velcro tape, stick the hooks side of the Velcro to the perspex certificate holder/stand and press down firmly to make sure that it’s adhered in all the places along its strip.

• I would use the hooks side of the velcro on the stand, –  and the eyes side of the velcro on the bottles.  (The eyes side is much softer to the touch, so it will be more comfortable for your fingers, – so put the soft side of the velcro on the bottles.)

Do that four times, so that you’ve got all your lines ready and waiting for your bottles.

Now … get all your bottles of Stickles out and count them.  Cut that amount of little bits of the ‘eye’ side of the Velcro – roughly about one centimetre wide strips –  and when you’ve got them all ready … lay your ruler down on your desk in a comfortable place that you can lean over and look ‘down’ on the rule.  Then taking one bottle of Stickles, lay it next to your rule, with the bottom of the bottle at the 2.5 centimetre measurement.  Where the beginning of the 1cm measurement sits (not quite half way on the bottle), that’s where you’re going to put the bottom of the little Velcro strip you’ve just cut.  Apply it.  Press it down firmly, then hang it on your new Stickles Storage System!  Repeat for the rest of your bottles!

A slightly blurred, but closer up view.

VOILA!  A Pinterest ‘make’ which actually works!

This works SO well for me, as I’m one of those crafters who, if I put things away in boxes or cupboards, ‘out of sight’ means ‘out of mind’,  and I forget them.

• I know that the detailed instructions I’ve given to make this,  might make it sound complicated.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

This is the most simple thing I’ve ever ‘made’ in my life.  It’s so quick and easy that I really don’t feel I should be ‘pleased’ with myself for doing it.  And, I’m not.  I’m more ‘pleased’ to have found something on Pinterest which actually works, and I also wish I’d have had a go at this a long time ago.

Oh … and if you look closely, you’ll see that there are two bottles of Dovecraft Glitter Glue hanging on the stand too … which shows that even with slightly bigger bottles than the Ranger Stickles, the measurements I’ve given still work.  I think that because the stand (and most of these types of stands)  tilts back slightly, it means that the bottles actually hang just a little proud of the stand at the bottoms of the bottles (yes, the bottoms – not the upside down tops, – if you follow me),  and this means that taking a bottle from the stand is easy to do.

Before I go … 

I know my blog has been rather quiet for a couple of weeks … life just kind of gets in the way sometimes.  But I’ve been crafting and do have a few things to share.  I just have to find the time to load the photos and crop/re-size them.

Thank you so much for coming to share a bit of time with me.  I’m so thrilled that you’re here, and I thank you from the heart of my bottom for coming.  It reall does mean so much to me that you pop by for a visit, so: Thank You. xxx

Wishing you a truly blessed rest of your day!

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A Frosty Nights Seasons Greetings

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling:  “How could it be so?”
“It came with out ribbons! It came without tags!”
“It came without packages, boxes or bags!”
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,”   he thought,  “doesn’t come from a store.”
“Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!”

Where I live,  my neighbours and I are surrounded by huge pine trees.  80 feet (plus) tall.  Now I have to admit that I love them, they give my garden some wonderful cool shade in the summer months, and offer protection in the winter.  However there’s a downside to these fabulous trees – because in the autumn and winter months they shed pine needles like crazy and bury all our gardens under a deep carpet of them,  – and they also shed pine cones.

(Which my dog loves!  She sits in the garden, staring up at the trees, waiting for the pine cones to drop, …  and the minute they do, she chases round the garden to collect them and promptly brings them into the house as a present for me.).

I wanted to make Christmas cards for some of my neighbours which had some sort of personal ‘thing’ about them,  so I chose my stamps to include a pine cone  and also a silhouette of a large black cat …  as a representation of one of my cats – who all my neighbours know.

I’m owned by three felines.  One is a very old lady who’s almost 19 years old and the ‘boss’ (and how!) of the trio, and the two others are loveable rascals of two years old who love nothing better than to play Cowboys and Indians at breakneck speed through my cottage!.  One of these youngsters is a beautiful, huge,  luxurious,  black velvet coated beastie, called Alfie.  He’s way too heavy for me to pick up – but not overweight;  long, tall, sleek, powerfully built, adept at walking along the edge of a high fence with such elegance, which makes his muscles ripple like that of a panther.  However, he’s a big softy, who loves a chinny tickle, and who has the teeniest meow you’ve ever heard!

To make this card;  I began by masking off a circle on the card, which was to be the moon, and also masked off where I wanted to put in a snow drift so that it added depth to the card.  I blended three ink pad colours;  two blue Memento Archival Ink pads, and a tiny touch from a black Ranger Archival ink pad.  The photographs haven’t captured the true colours of this card.  The blues are a little darker than they show here, making the whole scene very much like the sky at midnight, on Christmas Eve.

Once the sky and snow drifts were in place I then went straight into stamping:    I Stamped the Pine trees on the snow drift, and then the crescent wreath shape, using the second generation stamping method which I’ve talked previously about in the Christmas cards which I posted about over the past few days.

a section of the card, in close up, to show the second generation stamping method. (click on photograph and it will open up, in a much larger size, but remember to click ‘back’ on your browser window so that you come back to this post to continue reading).

I wanted to add a tiny bit of colour , so stamped some small red flowers to represent Christmas Poinsettia flowers, and stamped the pine cones in a dry brown colour.

Next came the Seasons Greetings sentiment – which I wanted to be in gilding flakes, so I stamped the words using  Cosmic Shimmer Flake and Glitter Glue,  and then used Cosmic Shimmer Gilding Flakes to gild the stamped words.

Following this I added some glitter to the snow drift and the wreath, using a fine nibbed glue pen and Wow glitters;  and then used a Graph It white marker pen to add snow ‘dots’ falling against the dark sky,  and also added  ‘snow’ onto some of the branches of the wreath, where snow would have settled naturally.

And that’s all there is to it! 

I had fun with this card – and I have to admit that I really love the finished article.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing a few minutes of your day with me.  I’ve loved have your company.

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

It’s beginning to feel a bit like Christmas . . . is coming.

I rarely make Christmas cards.  You can buy a box of Christmas cards so cheaply that it kind of feels like it’s a bit wasteful to spend lots of  money (not to mention time) to make them myself.  We crafters know exactly how much it actually costs for our supplies – and believe me it’s not cheap! 

But this year I thought that I could justify making them as I had a plethora of card stock, and I if I used my Card-io stamps then I could make them really cheaply, with very little in the way of adornments or embellishments.  (Watch out for more about Cardio stamps soon.  I’m going to do a write-up in my  ‘Craft Products I recommend’  category on my blog here – so look out for that one.)  Over the next few days I’ll post a card a day of a selection of the Card-io cards which I’ve made for friends and neighbours this year.

Today is the turn of the Christmas Wreath Card.

Pretty, isn’t it!  And yet it’s made SO simply that you probably wouldn’t believe it.  Made using just four tiny little clear stamps.  The only embellishments on this card are some pale pink flat back pearls (used as little berries on the wreath), and a tie of a tiny bit of ribbon for the bow on the top of the wreath – oh, and a little sprinkle of some glitter.

I know that in the photograph the wreath looks as if it has quite some depth – but it’s actually totally flat, apart from the pale pink pearls.  The clever bit is in the stamping.  If you use a second and sometimes third generation of stamping then you’ll ‘build in’ some depth.  If you look around the edge of the card itself, you’ll see what I mean by ‘second generation’.

second generation stamping

You can see a dark stamped image … but between the darker images, you’ll see a second, paler image.  Well – that’s second generation stamping.  I stamped the image once, then without inking up the stamp again, I stamped the image again – this time pressing just a little harder on the stamp to ensure that the image printed out.  This is what gives a depth to a stamped image.  It looks like something is there, in the background.

Because the wreath is a little more heavily stamped, you don’t see the second generation stamping too easily – but it’s there.  It kind of tricks your brain into thinking that what you’re seeing is actually a shadow of the darker stamped image, and so makes the darker images look as if they’re dimensional and stand out proud of the card.  Hence the deception of depth.

Crafty stuff I used to make this card:

• White 6×6 ready scored card stock.
• An assortment (4) of small individual Card-io stamps
• Whisper Archival Ink Pads (a pinky peachy raspberry colour and a dull brown)
• Memento Ink Pad  (in a warm brown)
• Ranger Archival Ink Pad (black)
• Pinflair Glue
• Translucent Glitter Dust
• Anita’s flat back pearls from their Gemstone Wheel.
• Short length of tartan/plaid ribbon.

This was a really quick to make card and it didn’t need any die cutting, measuring, cutting (other than the ribbon) or any great deal of ‘working it out’.  I knew I wanted to make a wreath.  I knew I wanted it to look festive but in colours other than red and green (so over-used at Christmas!) – and I wanted the edges of the card to be coloured to tone with the wreath.

I had such a fun time making this  … but then … I was using Card-io stamps, and I always have a fun craft time with them.  But I’ll do you a write-up about them and then you can make your own decision on whether to buy some for yourself!

Wishing you a blessed and trouble-free Tuesday, love from ~