Thursday 29 November 2007

Cards for Babies.








Has it really been three weeks since I last checked in? As you can see, I have been busy. As well as making all of the cards, I have been to lots of baby parties, and held our own for my little one year old. Happy birthday to them all! The last of the parties was today, and although they were fun they were also exhausting! Babies, cake and toys equal noise and grizzly little ones after a couple of hours. And I'm sure it only gets worse as they get older!
As you can see from the photos, I have a couple of new toys. First of all, I have some new stamps, the fairy is from Wendie Rhodes and the boy with the balloon is Magnolia (the other two Magnolia stamps were kindly sent to me by Kym, thanks so much, Kym!). Then my lovely husband bought me a Cuttlebug for Christmas, and said I could have it now, bless him! Other than those, I have used H20s for all of the colouring in, and stamps from Stampendous, Aud Design and Forth Dimension. There's also a little Glossy Accents, Brilliance and Sakura glaze pens thrown in for good measure.
I found it interesting doing these cards. The colouring in was really good fun, but the designs were hard to do! I think grunge is much more my usual style, but I will have to get good at these cutie things too! Wish me luck!
PS I owe a couple of Ladies a RAK over on 2Peas. I haven't forgotten, just didn't make the time to organise it! Will sort this weekend.

Thursday 8 November 2007

Arty-farty peel-off piece!

A lot of crafters love peel-off stickers, but I am afraid I am not one of them, so when Sid challenged us at UK Stampers, I tried to use an excuse so I didn't have to play. Not clever, really, as I am easily swayed by a decent argument, and as soon as you start posting to a thread you are inevitably drawn in. However, I have to say that I am quite pleased with how this turned out, and I am pleased that I took up the challenge.
The background is silver peel-offs on brushed silver mirri-card, dabbed with alcohol inks. It is about 15cms square. What you can't really see from the photo is that there are layers of acetate separated by strips of foam board, so the piece has depth, and each element is floating above the previous one. The first layer is a Paperartsy image, stamped in Brilliance ink and embossed with Chiaro Flo embossing powder from Stamp Galaxy (really clear, really fine detail powder). The next layer is the image of the little girl, stamped onto a piece of text (some sort of computer manual, I think!), also in Brilliance. The first two clocks are also on that layer. The next two are on the top layer, and the piece is sealed with a metal tape, aged with alcohol inks.
Things are incredibly busy at home, even more so than usual since all of the babies I see regularly are one this month! I can't believe a year has passed since all of my friends from my Ante-natal classes started to have their babies. Dan was originally due on November the 11th, so this time last year I was on tenterhooks waiting for my first contraction! He was actually nearly two weeks late, and I spent that fortnight doing anything I could to get things started. I can still barely face fresh pineapple, after eating it daily for a fortnight! We are having a party on Saturday, it'll be so much fun! (Next year they will be crafting...!)