Hello Blog Hoppers!!

Hi, I hope you're enjoying your hop around the 'lilypads' of the Banana Frog Design Team. 

As our theme for this 'hop' is Flowers, and because its Spring (!?) I've created a cute little daisy themed book, measuring 3x3inches.

I used the 'Super Dreamy' set of stamps for the flower motifs and 'willing race' for the words.

I start with a plain white sheet (12x12in) and use a couple of ink colours to create the background  - this involves brayering (horizontally and vertically), stenciling, masking and of course - lots (and lots) of stamping. I really enjoy building up layers like this - the end result is unique - it would be really hard (impossible) to create the exact same design again.  That's the fun of it!  The 12x12 sheet is then scored, cut and folded to create a 'maze' book.

This photo shows that the images are not seperate to each other - they sometimes overlap - and when an image is masked off and another is stamped over the top layers can be achieved to give a sense of depth - like this orange circle and black daisy.

The Super Dreamy images have several variations of the daisy which makes it a great set for layering up and embellishment.


Some of the page spreads:

The book has pages that are glue together creating  little 'pockets' and so I made some tags to go inside - perfect for journaling or notes.

Thanks so much for hopping by - please comment if you'd like (or become a follower):  I love to know who visits my little space on the www!!

Enjoy the rest of the Banana Frog blog hop - your next stop is Michelle and you can find her lilypad HERE! 

Birdhouses....

... seem to be a bit of a 'thing' for me at the moment - I have about 4 (all shapes and sizes) on the hearth waiting to be altered/treated.

These two mini birdhouses have been sitting on the shelf over the fireplace for quite a while - and so I thought I'd post them for you to see... they are part of a themed set I'm working on - there'll be about 8 (hopefully) by the time I'm finished. A sort of street.  They're quite small - about 10/12 cm high and 8cm wide.. nice cute little size.

Each roof has been covered in embossed metal (cuttlebug'd), sanded back to reveal the base metal, and treated with acrylic paints and/or glimmer mists.

So thats 2 down, 6 to go.......

Banana Frog Blog Hop

30th March 2010

Banana Frog Blog Hop

Hop from one DT member's lilypad to another, where each has a project on a theme of 'flowers' created with BF stamps - and somewhere along the hop there will be a prize...... hope to see you there - it 'hops' off at 9.00am

Colour schemes eye candy...

These ads were in the ES magazine on Friday - love the clour schemes...(especially the one of the left)

The picture on the right isn't so much for the colour scheme - though it does have a lovely vintage feel to it - its more for the loviness of displaying items in big jars like that! Nice, very nice!

Something from {almost} nothing...

...is Shimelle's new class.  I like taking her online classes - and on Friday I met her at the Twisted Thread show at Olympia.  I wasn't planning on going to the show (more thread/wool than paper) but as I was in London I thought I might as well...

I knew Shimelle was running a workshop (which I'd like to have done but it clashed with my hospital appointment) and I waiting for the lift and wondering where she'd be so I could swing by and say hello (she's a fellow Banana Frogger afterall- it would've been rude not to) and when the lift doors opened she was standing inside! spooky! (and convenient.. lol)

Really nice to meet her - here she is on her stand where she had some really nice products - I had to resist the papers (I have too much already) but I couldn't resist some of the American Crafts Fabric Alphabets - mmm v nice apple/lime green in a font which is little bit like the 'Captain Howdy' font. Like I say - too nice to resist.. but I have to remember that things aren't too nice to use...

Next to Shimelle's booth was a knitter/ crocheter (card is downstairs so will fill in her name later) who had the hugest knitting and crochet needles - the crochet 'needles' were like spears! lol  If I had time to sit and crochet at the moment I'd have bought one to try it out... (Yvonne P would have loved these.) ...  These would build up crochet pieces lovely and quicky and would create great throws (as displayed on her stand)

Around the corner there was another knitter with great hats and bags - kicking myself for not getting something from her (like the hat on the left hand side of the photo - the wool was lovely.. and my mum and my m-i-l are both good knitters so they could knitted the purchase for me - and look at those lovely wood buttons! Now they're what I call a button - if you're going to have a button have a really big one!  May have to speak nicely to my Dad - he's turned big buttons (on his lathe) before for floor cushions so one for a hat shouldn't be too hard for him.. :o) 10 inches across were the biggest ones this seller had... Lovely

So, like I said way back at the top of this post, I'm doing Shimelle's class which encourages you to attack your stash (eek) rather than buying new (thats how I'm interpreting it)- revisiting all the things you have and may have forgotton about.. so with that in mind I made this quick little card - circles punched from scraps - 'cos we all have those don't we!, and a free stamp (craft stamper, v cute owl) and a greeting stamp - OK that might be relatively new but only because I 'needed' a greeting stamp to go with the little owl... honesty guv ... :o) 
Photo quality's not too good - sorry - the colours are stronger in real life.

OK, so this isn't the most sophisticated card I've made - but I like it - the owl makes me smile!

Taking the 'stress' out of 'distress'....

...with the help of a few Tim Holtz stamps...

I made these for a classI taught  at Card Inspirations last week - Mixed Media...  The stamps came in at the very last minute - well, technically half way through the class (luckily I had a back up plan!)  I don't think I've ever been so pleased to see a set of stamps! lol  and they are very nice stamps lol

The cards were created using distress inks, acrylic paint, perfect pearls, archival inks (the oriental text on the bottom left card is a different stamp make - sorry, don't know which...)

testing testing one two three...

oooh look at the prettiness...

 

My mum has sewn things - dolls, my clothes, furnishings - for as long as I can remember - these are pictures of the drawers she keeps the cotton reels in - how FAB are they!! all the colour groups in seperate drawers - LOVE THEM!! Very inspiring..

(Stored in Ikea Moppe drawers - love them too! - but who is the person(numpty) at Ikea responsible for deciding that Moppe drawers should now be sold flat and we should make them ourselves!! Send them to me 'cos I'd like to have a chat... I don't want to make them... I want to buy the drawers ready made so that I can bring them home and immediately fill them with stuff!

Another day...

... another one of my projects on the Banana Frog blog .....

Today's 'Lesson at the Lilypad' .....

... is mine so please hop on over to the Banana Frog blog for a bit of this:

Banana Frog on TV...

and a couple of my pieces were shown - apologies for dodgy photography - result of photographing the computer screen...

If you'd like to see these pieces with much better image quality (lol) go here...

Finished!!

ArtsyCrafts is taking place in Warrington this weekend - its a weekend of all the best bits (so many to choose from!).
I posted my arch to Leandra'n'Lin yesterday - I reeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaally hope it gets there! lol ... safely, in time, not bashed about! fingers crossed.
Here's a detail shot of my version of the Arch, its such a great project they designed - covers a whole range of techniques: metalwork, stamping, sewing (there's even a bit of cuttlebuging in there!)...   Love it!

I'll post bigger shots when the weekend workshops are over...

Eye candy / Inspiration M&S style

Shopping earlier this week in M&S couldn't help but grab a few photos when I came across lovely colour combos like the above:
Top left - loving the light olive, pink and maroon of these furnishings
Top right - was very tempted to buy a bowl in this crockery design just to have on the desk to keep 'stuff' in and be inspired by....  it was matched with aubergine wine glasses and dark grey chargers - very nice (as discussed with a lady also looking at it - she tried to convince me that it was so lovely I should have 6 of everything!)
Bottom left - very Doris Day - so cute and retro - definitely a colour/ pattern combo to bear in mind... again tempting to buy a piece to put on the desk to tidy and be inspired but at this rate there won't be any space to work on my desk 'cos its full of inspirational crockery! lol
Bottom right - don't these just make you want to carry a handkerchief! lol ... again - nice colour/pattern combo

You see - inspiration can come from anywhere - even Marks & Spencer!

Simple, modern, abstract cards

....are what the 'client' wanted and what they got!

For men:

LOVE the notepad edge punch from Stampin' up, and the star stamps from Banana Frog!  And the barcode stamp ...  oooh, hmmm, can't remember what make that is... but goes with everything! lol

For the girls:

I made this one using a set from Cuttlebug (square frames) -I  think these are going to be really useful -great that you get a frame and a square - bonus!  and even better if the paper is double-sided - it halves the die cutting!
the cute little cupcake is from Banana Frog.
 
All the greetings are Banana Frog.

bits of this'n'that...

When I need to get creative but haven't been in the sudio for a while I have to make an unimportant 'something' just to get the creative wheels turning... so the other week I coloured a page in my big (25x25cm) sketchbook... this is my sketchbook size of choice - its not to big, not too small, not the wrong orientation (I tried a portrait layout sketchbook once (hinge at top) and I couldn't work in at all - it felt completely wrong - I think I only got 2 pages in before I abandoned it! lol) so this one is just right!  :o) 
The page isn't part of something, its not for something.. it just is what it is - a sort of warm up exercise...

And here are Florence and Lawrence - don't know why I've called them that - maybe because they're flowery - who knows...(& its not really important!) lol  They're created with an oh-so-cute Quickutz die - one that I saw and thought I 'need'  that but I have no idea what I'll use it on!  And when I went in a certain craft 'supermarket' on Tuesday (shopping with my Mum) I found a stamp that said 'so tweet'!  Ta da!  Sorted. Cards!?

They're quite big - about 8-10cm, and I'm loving the googly eyes - took a while (and a certain amount of shaking) for Lawrence to stop being cross-eyed...I think he may need a bit more shaking - but its part of his charm.

doing a happy dance...doing a happy dance!

Please cast your eyes to the right hand side of the screen and take a moment to watch the slide shows - working just as I wanted - that have taken me aaaaaaaaaaaaallll day to sort out! (well apart from a few toilet breaks, a lovely 30 minutes spent with my new Tim Holtz dies and a further 45 minutes sorting out req's list for work) - so please:

sit back, relax.. maybe get a glass of wine, and enjoy the shows!

I now have square eyes!

.... because I feel I have been sitting in front of the PC AAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL day trying to make things work on this blog! 

I'm trying to streamline my blog - make it more 'professional'   ie more work and less waffle! 

With that in mind I'm trying to make nice little slide shows of my DT work on the right hand side of the screen.... there was one there already and I wanted to create 2 more - one for my PaperArtsy DT work and one for Banana Frog DT work.... one worked & the other not so much....

What I really want is a gallery page as you get on Typepad (I even went and signed up to see if I could create one and link it across..... I couldn't! lol).

Aaaaanyhooo, watch this space - I will not be beaten!

OK,... maybe I will.... but not just yet......

Card Inspirations....

... is where I spent a lovely couple of days (fri & sat) teaching and getting creative with the ladies - much fun had with shaving foam, inks, stamps and the Cuttlebug! (not all at the same time you understand! lol)

But there was a small hitch in the plan when one of the sample cards I'd made was awol from the shop - so to the ladies from that class who wondered what the card looked like...

...  here it is - its simple but v cute (even if I say so myself! lol) - its only a sneak peak because the class runs again towards the end of the month.... (and by then the card - and another thats m.i.a- will have been found - or I'll have recreated them... I think the latter will be the case! lol)

any questions - please email using the addy under photo top right.  (love the stamps used by the way - the detail inside the petals)

Nice post delivery!

It took a lot of self discipline not to drop everything to sit down with these and a cup of coffee this morning!
They arrived with M's magazine - he gets a big thick car magazine and I get these - I know which I'd rather read! lol

out of my head..

An idea, or chore, can sit naggingly in the back of your mind and so sometimes you  just have to do it - regardless of other pressing matters that should really take priority - to get it out of your head..

I had a little plastic tool roll which was free with a magazine aaaages ago and had definitely seen better days so I wanted to make a bigger/longer nicer one... felt was my fabric of choice and the roll had to have flap that came over the top of the tools to stop them sliding out....  and this is the result of such a 'nag/idea':

Its really simple - grey felt on the outside, pale blue on the inside, sewn with cream thread to coordinate with the cream ribbon which ties everything shut.  Am v please with myself (patting myself on the back! lol)... OK its not rocket science but I like it - and more importantly - it works!

Look at all the lovely tools I can get in there! Even room for a glue stick and a mini mister!  OK the only essential that's missing is a paire of scissors - they have to be just tucked in without being in a pocket - 'cos when they were in a pocket the tool roll didn't 'roll' up as nicely!  :o(   (though look carefully - there's a pair of tiny decopage scissors.... )  (oooh and my small metal will go in there - when I've found it)
please note the label sewn into the side - also coordinating nicely  :o)