Satin – The Art of Cobwebs

I have the following quote printed it out and keep it below my computer screen in my craft room… …

We are all cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick, is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the Beautiful Stuff out.”

isn’t it lovely? . . . It’s by a gentleman called Ray Bradbury, an American author and screen writer, and I just love it. And today came the perfect chance to share it with you because …

I’m forever inviting you to come and have a coffee with me, so when I saw last week that ‘Kanban Cards’ had brought out a fabulous new collection of die- cuts, papers and cardstock, I had to have some of it. It would have been so rude not to!

To be honest, I fell in love with it. The colours are just beautiful. The quality is really great and it gives you such scope to play around with.

I made a card today using some of it and as I was making it I thought … “it’s AGES since I’ve done a ‘giveaway’, so perhaps this would make an ideal card for that very thing!”

I made the card as a 12″x 6″ – so quite a long card. On a base card of white, scored and folded, and then topped with a sheet of Kanban foiled heavy weight paper. I added some wide, Satin, pale coffee coloured ribbon, topped with some deep brown seam binding.

On top of the ribbons, I used two toppers and a sentiment from the kit. The coffee cup topper I layered on top of a vintage looking doily, made from cotton, with cotton crochet lace all around the edge. I bought a pack of these little doilies from a pound shop about 8 years ago and originally bought them to make little pouches of dried lavender. I still have a few unused ones left.

The duo coloured bow (to the right hand) has a dazzler fixed to the centre to bring a touch of sparkle and colour to the card. If you look carefully under the bow, but above the satin/seam binding ribbons, you can just see a golden circle of leaves and vines. This is a chipboard die cut, which I coloured up with gold embossing pad and then a combination of gold emboss. powder and gold glittery embossing powder.

The spoon … well that began life as one of those plastic spoons they give you in coffee shops or Mc.Donalds. I never use the spoons, but keep them with the thought that they might come in useful. And look! One did! 🙂

Finally … inside. One of my sheep (craft room buddies) wanted to show you what was inside… I told him: “No, absolutely not. Get out of there you rascal!”. . .

He seemed determined, as he backed himself into the middle of the card. I knew what he was up to. He was going to give one great big JUMP and open the card to show you what was inside, but I wanted to keep it a secret known only to the person who won the give-away . . . so I chased him around the craft room, caught him, and he’s now safely back where he belongs … under my craft room computer monitor, with the rest of the flock. tsk, tsk!

So anyhoo …. If you’re a follower of The Cobweborium Emporium blog, and would like to have your name ‘thrown into the hat’ and be in with a chance of receiving this card then please just leave a comment below with the word: ‘GIVEAWAY’ – either at the start or the end of your comment.

To make sure that all is fair, I’ll get the Random Number Generator to choose the number.

If you’re the winner then you have a choice:- You can choose to have the card for yourself, in which case I’ll write the card to you, sign it and send it with love. Or … you can choose to receive the card un-written, so that you can write it and send it to someone else.

But … If you don’t want to enter but still want to leave a comment or have a chat, then that’s fine too. You really don’t have to get involved in a give-away. Any comment which doesn’t have the word ‘GIVEAWAY’ won’t be entered.

NB: Please DON’T put your real name or address in the comments box. I need to look after your privacy and security.

Happy Thursday, by the way!

We’re heading to the end of October now, after this it’s just a walk to Christmas, and although I have got a few Christmas Presents tucked away … it’s only a few and I really do need to get a wiggle on with the buying. I don’t want to be left with only the stuff the shops have left over!

I also have to get a very BIG wiggle on with making Christmas Cards! Maybe I’ll start in a couple of weeks time and cross my fingers. It worked last year. And the year before. And the year before that too. Need I go on or are you getting the idea? lol.

Right … I really must stop yacking and let you get on with your day.

I wish you a blessed, calm, comfortable, happy Thursday!

(I saved that last photo from this card, just so I could use that right there … ) 😀 Toodles!

EDIT on 30th October 2017 to add:

THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. NO FURTHER ENTRIES ARE BEING TAKEN. Please see the post on 30th October 2017 to find out the winner.

Thank you to all who entered. Watch out for the next giveaway soon. ~ Cobs. x

Save

I have a ‘bought for the purpose’ scrapbook which, although it has a (sort of) ‘padded’ binder (cover) – in the centre of the cover it has a little cut out section where you’re supposed to slide a photograph into the ‘hole’ (from a little slit on the inside cover) so that it shows you what the scrapbook is about. Problem was that even though I loved the cover of the scrapbook, I felt that the ‘photograph’ section on the front was, well, a little too twee. A bit (kind of) predictable. I didn’t want a photograph on the front, I wanted something better than just a photo.

So I cut out that bit on the inside cover, and so got a ‘hole’ right through the front cover. (Think of a serving hatch into the dining room from the kitchen). I then cut up a scrapbook page saver, (one of those plastic page holders which you put your ‘made’ pages into to protect them) and carefully glued a square of that soft, pliable plastic to the front of the cover and then hid the glue with some pretty pleated ribbon.

Then … I made something which I was far happier with which would show through that window. I made … Page One of my scrapbook.

Such a simple idea. I kept the page white, but draped bakers twine across the page and attached it to little gold brads, which were to be the ‘drawing pins’ (thumb tacks) which held the bakers twine in place. Once I was happy with where the bakers twine was place on the page, I then glued it in place with some Anita’s crafting glue. (It’s white when you put it on, but dries clear).

I then cut out some little white ‘flags’ – from some thin cotton sheeting – basically the same weight as light weight shirt cotton, – which I then glued to the bakers twine and made Bunting!

I glued a little white doily to the centre of the page and while that was drying I made a little dream ‘diorama’ out of an old tin which I’d got when I purchased some ink powder. I’d saved the tin, not knowing what for, but knowing that it would come in useful one day. (I am SUCH a ‘crafter’). 😀

A couple of years ago I’d seen a picture of a little tin which was a tree ornament. It looked so pretty that it had stuck in my memory. When I decided what I wanted to use to fill that central space on page one – but something which would also ‘begin’ my scrapbook and give a taste of what was to come – the word ‘dream’ came to mind and so did the ornament. And that’s where the basic idea began.

The cover of the album is basically a mix of greens with a contrast of pink and white polka dot all put together in a (kind of) patchwork, – and with butterflies flying in various places on top of it all.

So the tin had to be complimentary to the cover, and since butterflies were going to be putting in an appearance further into the scrapbook then it was natural that they should be on the first page too! So I began with a scrap of pink polka dot paper, which I hand cut into a round to fit into the base of the tin. I then used some white glue, and glued some flower soft, in a mix of pink, green and white, into the bottom quarter of the tin. I wrote ‘dream’ on some paper and distressed it a little, then cut it into a banner and back it with some green card.

Thankfully I have a selection of butterfly stamps, some of them are really teeny tiny – so they worked perfectly with the tin and it’s lid. Just the right size in fact. The one inside the tin I stamped in an emerald green colour, but then coloured it in with a lovely fresh spring green.

But the butterflies which are outside of the tin, flying free (so to speak) I stamped using a grey memento ink (I think I used ‘silver’ actually) – and didn’t colour those, because I wanted them to look delicate, and pale to match the white of the whole page. I added some glue ‘squiggles’ and sprinkled some ultra fine glitter onto it – to sort of represent the flight path of the butterflies as they flew.

I glued down the lid using a little hot glue, and covering two of the pale butterflies, so that they looked liked they’d flown under the lid.

But I did have one slight worry. If the album, at some point in the future, had something heavy put on top of it, then I worried that the metal rim of the open tin might just puncture the plastic cover I’d put on the front of the album. If it didn’t puncture it – it might mark it permanently and it would then spoil the look. So I had to come up with an idea to solve that problem – just in case it ever did happen! (That’s me. I have to have a plan for everything in case something bad happens. If it does, then I have a plan. If it doesn’t then that’s great – but at least I had a plan! lol).

I got out the trusty hot glue gun again, and sorted through my white buttons to find some which had a vintage feel about them. I knew I needed to be careful about choosing the right ones – because the wrong buttons could spoil the whole thing.

Buttons found – I squidged a generous (but not a huge glob!) amount of glue onto the back of a button and carefully placed it on the rim on the tin, holding it there for a few seconds while the glue began to set. Then I did the next one. Then the next. Then … and so on until I’d glue four buttons, in descending sizes, on one side, and one further button on the opposite side of the rim of the tin. I left them over-night to see if they would do what I wanted them to do.

The following day I put my hand flat palm down, on top of the rim to see if, when I pressed, they stayed in place. They did. I then knew that these buttons would spread the weight of anything pressing down on the top of the album and so wouldn’t damage the plastic on the cover. Yay! I love it when a plan comes together!

I wrapped some rayon seam binding around the outside of the tin, in a fabulous warm olive-green colour, and then finally added a little rich, royal purple polka-dot bow to one side. The finishing touch. I loved the scrapbook already – and I’d only just began!

Page One was ‘finished’. I stood back and looked at it. It was perfect. It looked vintage. It had a friendly feel about it. It spoke of a promise which I knew was to follow in the pages, so far unmade, but I knew the plans I had for those pages.

Yes, this was going to be a scrapbook I loved. I could feel it.

I know that Scrapbooking is a fairly new type of photograph/memory saving way of doing things to the UK. Here in the UK we’re more used to photograph albums which we buy and pop our photographs into. But in the last few years Scrapbooking has taken off and it’s becoming more popular.

So .. do you scrapbook? And if you do … do you blog about your pages? If so, please leave me a comment and put a link to your scrapbooking page or to your blog in general, because I’d love to come and see your scrapbooks, and I’ve no doubt that others who visit this page would love to visit your blog too!

Have a truly lovely rest of your day!