It's a Creative World

Christmas Ornaments

Making your own Christmas ornaments gives a personal touch to your tree, and it is something you can do with children, too.

Here are just a few samples of ornaments from the IACW team:

Andrea

Brown felt, gingerbread coloured fabric, bondaweb or similar, thin ribbon, dimension paint, sharp scissors and very fine black and brown pens, makeup blusher.

Cut a two squares of fabric and iron bondaweb onto the back following the manufacturers instructions. Make a template of a gingerbread man shape on thin card and draw around it onto the reverse of the fabric, directly onto the bondaweb

Cut the two shapes out using sharp scissors to keep the edges sharp and neat

Place one of the shapes bondaweb side down onto the felt and iron to adhere, when you iron his head sandwich the ends of a loop of ribbon between the fabric and felt

Cut out the gingerbread man shape leaving a border of a couple of millimetres

Turn the gingerbread man over so the felt is uppermost and iron on the second fabric shape

Joy

Seaglass ornament

I drilled the sea glass (barely under water) to make a neat hold in the glass. I then stamped it with a Green Pepper Press stamp. I put in in the melting pot, and I sprinkled UTEE on it to make the image pop. I then outlined it with a gold Krylon pen.

Ranger glass slides

I took a pictures of my son stamping and colouring. I then cut the artwork to fit in the slides, and I added his photograph of him making the picture. I put a wire loop in between the pictures. I added gold tape around the edges (a Ranger technique and also demonstrated to me at Magpie Crafts).

Shrink plastic ornament

I stamped onto shrink plastic, puched a hole at the top, and coloured the bear and stars. (The plastic is actually clear, and the bear is coloured white, but it is difficult to tell in the image.) I shrunk it (with a heat gun) and added a white ribbon. This is a great project to do with kids.

Angela

UTEE and Cookie Cutter Ornaments

These Ornaments were made using Christmas themed Cookie cutters and some UTEE. First of all I heated Clear UTEE in a melting pot, then added some Opals Embossing Enamels (an Australian made version of UTEE) in various colours, and a tiny amount of UTEE flex.

Once this was all melted, I poured it out onto a non-stick craft sheet and set the cookie cutter into the UTEE .The cookie cutter should be inked with some versamark or other release agent to remove it from the utee when it has set.

Leave the utee to cool. Be very Careful! This stuff really burns! I left mine for around 10 minutes and then very carefully pressed out the shape. If you are very careful you can have the positive and negative shapes, the negative would make a nice frame.

Now it is ready to be stamped on using Stazon ink, I then doodled around the stamped images using Sakura Souffle pens to make them stand out more.

Love from us at IACW XXX

Hey presto you have a sweet little gingerbread man to hang in your home over the festive period, he takes next to no time to make and he's even low fat and oh so healthy :)Use the very thin black pen to draw a smile and two eyes and the brown pen to dot his freckles. Make rosy cheeks by dabbing a cotton bud into your blusher makeup and then dabbing lightly onto his cheeksUse dimensional white fabric paint to 'ice' wiggly stripes onto his hands and feet and also to add his buttons onto his tummyIngredients:A fabric and felt gingerbread man that requires no sewing.

And Just a reminder from Di!!!

For every 1 pound that you donate to IACW Just Giving page I will donate 1 pound. This challenge is open until Sunday midnight 21st October!!! So come on girls just 1 pound from each of you! And why would I do this? Because cancer took my mum. Here she is....

Because of her I have a mother,I am a daughter, and I am blessed.

Love from Di

Delightful terracotta candle pots

Hey there everyone! A big HI to you all today from Caz!

Today I am bringing you a very quick easy project that has no limits :) but in the spirit of Chistmas.

I found these beautiful church candles at John Lewis for £2 each! Yes that's right £2, and that was for the big ones, the smaller size were only £1 each (Wish I had bought more!). But my problem was I didn't have candle holders for them! That was until I stumbled across these cheap but very cute terracotta pots at my local garden centre and I just knew they would work! All I did was give the pots and wipe down to get rid of any water marks and cob webs (!) and tied some raffia around the rim to give them a country look.

The pots cost 39p and 59p for the larger ones!!!!

It was that easy and they look so pretty!

Now obviously we like to be able to adapt our projects to use for lots of different occasions, so some other ideas:

How about painting the pots orange and having them out in the garden for halloween.

How about using them as a centre piece when you have a fancy dinner party, a bit of black velvet ribbon around the rim would really snazzy them up!

Or you could paint them loads of different bright colours and have them on your outside table when you have a bbq.

And finally give them as a gift, if you buy the teeny weeny pots you could give 3 with a bag of tea lights to someone who enjoys having candles around the house.

The teeny pots cost about 29p each!

I hope todays post has inspired you to add a little light into your life.

Caz xxx

And Hi from Di the MDD (Mad Dear Mother) of Caz. I have a little challenge for you today!!!

For every 1 pound that you donate to IACW Just Giving page I will donate 1 pound. This challenge is open until Sunday midnight 21st October!!! So come on girls just 1 pound from each of you! And why would I do this? Because cancer took my mum. Here she is....

Because of her I have a mother,I am a daughter, and I am blessed.

Love from Di

Beeswax Canvas

Hi Everyone! It’s Angela here again, with an altered art project.

Today I want to show you a canvas that I made using beeswax, stamps, crayons and Tim Holtz distress inks.

To start I took a blank canvas board and rubbed various distress inks over it. I then took a piece of cut and dry foam, damped it with some water and rubbed this over the inks to blend them together.

I then stamped a large Stamper’s Anonymous Vogue stamp onto white tissue paper. I tore around this roughly.

For the beeswax I used a melting pot and some beeswax pellets. I brushed the whole canvas with beeswax and then adhered the tissue paper, and then covered this with more beeswax. Be careful when using beeswax as it is very hot. Once it is applied to the canvas it will cool and harden quite quickly, so you will need to know where you want to put each embellishment before applying the wax. The wax can be melted again on the canvas using a heat gun if you need to.

I then stamped some french postmarks onto tissue paper and adhered them in the same manner, along with a strip of scrapbook paper (measuring tape). The handbag and shoe was also stamped onto tissue.

I then melted a red crayola crayon in the meltpot, and used a brush to put it on the edge of the canvas, and heated this with the heat gun to help it blend in a bit better with the rest of the content.

The manequin was from a collage sheet, again it was adhered using beeswax, and the various embellishments were set into warm wax.

Finally I did a packing tape transfer from a dictionary – definition of “fashion”. Packing Tape Transfers are the most simple way of doing an image transfer. Simply use clear tape or contact film/clear sticky-backed plastic if it is a large image, put this over the image or text you want to transfer, rub with a bone folder to make sure that the tape is well stuck down. Then wet the paper and begin to rub the paper off until you can see the image/text. You can then stick it down on your prepared surface.

Remember not to place a beeswax collage near a heat source, or the elements may fall off!

Hope this inspires you to try something different!

~angela~

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We now have the winner from Yesterday's Heat Gun giveaway, which was kindly donated by Forgetmenot Papercrafts.

SuzyB :)

Can you contact us please so that we can get your lovely pink heat gun sent off to you :) Congratulations!!!

Acetate Cards!

Hello everybody! Joanne here again. As you may have seen acetate cards have become very trendy recently and I for one am no exception to this trend. I love making this type of card as they look so unusual and effective. I've made one for this weeks' card. Very straightforward and quite quick to make. Here goes!

The basic ingredients for this card are an A5 sheet of acetate (I got mine from a pack used for glass painting), cardstock and rub ons (I used Hambly). The bits of embellishment I used were a piece of lace and ric-rac, safety pin, small label and small rhinestones.

Step 1

Fold your acetate in half to form your card. Cut two identical hearts from the red cardstock.

Step 2

Decide where you are going to place your rub ons and heart on the outside. Stick one heart inside the card exactly where the one on the outside will be (this is so you can write your message on it!).

Step 3

Decorate your heart for the outside if desired. I tied round some ric-rac and lace and added a safety pin and small label. Attach to the front of your card directly over the heart which is on the inside.

Step 4

Apply rub on to the front of your card and embellish with rhinestones if desired. I hope you enjoy making this card as much as I did. Look out for more acetate cards in the future!

TFL! Joanne x

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As part of our Breast Cancer awareness month,  today we are giving away a beautiful Pink Heat gun, which has been very kindly donated to us by Stephanie at Forgetmenot Papercrafts in Belfast.  

All you need to do is either: 
donate some money to our Just Giving Page, Scrap your Bosoms or leave a comment.  

Remember if you do all 3, you'll get 3 chances at the prize!!!

Goodluck!

<

Nude words....inside and out!

Ooh doesn't that title sound a bit naughty {lol}

Today we are looking at decorating wooden letters and I want to extend a huge IACW welcome to the lovely SCRAPDOLLY who is sharing her stunning project with us today.

Karen has decorated the word TRAVEL beautifully using themed paper and embellishments.

And a little detail...

My project is a little different...

I have used the Creative Imaginations bare elements word CREATE and have decided to start off decorating the NEGATIVE or OUTSIDE part first. (the insides are still waiting for their turn!!}

Firstly I painted the whole thing blue, including the inside bits for the R and A.

Once dry I used a sanding block to give it a shabby worn out look.

A few bits of ribbon and a clear jewel were the only decoration I wanted.

For the backing I used Cosmo Cricket, Dutch Girl: Audrey paper attached with modge podge.

And a little detail...

A huge thanks to the lovely Scrapdolly for sharing her work with IACW readers

and as always...

haPPy creATing

Caz

xx

Stitch mania

Good morning to you all!! Caz here, with another LO class :) And we are so honoured to have the lovely ~Angie~ as a guest DT member today!!

Stitching on layouts, whether by machine or hand, seems to come into fashion so often and it is one of the most effective ways to add dimension to a LO. In the layout below Angie has even added some hand stitched doodling which looks great and of course you can make up your own designs. She has also stitched around each square of patterned paper which gives the LO a quilt effect and around the photograph which frames Emily beautifully :)

~Angie~ says.....

I have been scrapbooking for nearly 2 years now. My children Emily and Adam are the main things that inspire me to scrap....I love to capture moments in my photos and on my layouts that otherwise may get forgotten. To capture little details of everyday life, to keep to look back on in the years to come. They love it when Mummy has made yet another page about them- I'm not so sure they'll see it the same way when as teenagers they look back at layouts with them having a strop! Currently I'm going through quite an experimental stage with my scrapping. I don't think I really have a style as some scrappers seem to do, but there are various elements and techniques that I use over and over again, and nearly all my layouts have some if not all of these included. What do I like? Chipboard alphabets, inked edges, buttons, ribbons, stitching- mainly by machine (as I'm generally too lazy to hand sew!! lol) I had great fun creating these two layouts, I find stitching adds great extra depth and texture.

Machine sewing around the edges of your cardstock also frames the LO, and I just love how Angie has stitched around each felt flower.

Our own lovely Joy has also contributed to this project with a totally different style of stitching. Joys stitches are randomly placed and hand done, she has also used fabric, ribbon and bits of a real pattern to match the theme of her 'handmade with Love' LO.

Aren't these just the MOST beautiful photographs!!

A massive thanks to both Angie and Joy for sharing their stunning work with IACW today.

And remember we love to see our readers layouts so please leave us a link to your gallery/blog so we can drool, lol.

haPPy creATing

Caz

xx

Crochet update!!

It's mid month Monday and that means I get to tell you how far I am with blanket number 2!!

For new readers to IACW, you can catch up with the CROCHET STORY HERE :)

With only 10 weeks left till Christmas I am just over half way through the 224 squares, which means I need to average 16 squares a week, to leave me enough time to put the blanket together, get all the ends trimmed and washed, dried and beautifully wrapped!!

EASY PEASY!! {lol}

Di {my DMM (dear mad mum)} has taken up the crochet challenge and this is seriously an awesome blanket she's made. It's very different to the girls blankets, as I am using one colour to surround each square, put it together and crochet around the whole blanket.

BUT it just goes to show how totally flexible and imaginative you can be with crochet.

Di says..............10 colours, 224 DIFFERENT {ie 224 unique} squares. It took me 2 weeks to make the squares then another week to crochet them together and crochet round the edges.

If you are an avid crochet'er we would love to see your work, so please pop a link in the comments :)

The lovely CHRIS is supporting out breast cancer fund raising efforts with another CHALLENGE!!! Chris says:

"I am asking you to take part in my little challenge to be included in the draw to win lovely blog candy and I will be making a £10 donation to the Just Giving page for the winner also... who will then be eligible to win some of the goodies IACW are offering too :D"

Please visit CHRIS to see the GREAT challenge she has put together!!!

haPPy creATing!! Caz xx

Christmas bunting

Very warm Sunday greetings to you all from Caz and Angela!!

Today we are bring you a little more Christmas inspiration to get those creative juices flowing :)

Buntings have been around for years, but i've noticed this year that they seem to have been a very popular decoration!

So we are bringing buntings indoors and using up those bits of Christmas fabric to make great decorations for the home :)

Caz

For my bunting I have cut triangle shapes from fat quarters using pinking shears, this meant I didn't have to stitch around each one {lol}.

I folded the tops of each triangle over a length of twine and hand stitched using thick green thread. I didn't want my triangles moving around on the twine so I popped a couple of stitches through the top to hold them in place.

I cut green felt in the shape of holly and stiched it to a couple of the triangles using red buttons and ribbons for the berries.

And on a couple more I again cut green felt into strips {3 different lengths} and attached in the shape of a Christmas tree. Brown velvet ribbon did the trick for the trunk and these gorgeous little yellow star buttons were perfect for the tree tops!

Angela

I have made some Christmas bunting that I would like to share with you.

I made it from 3 different fabrics, 2 Christmas decorative fabrics and gold satin to finish off the back. I cut the fabrics into triangles, using a template I had cut out of paper. I also cut out some Pelmet Vilene triangles to use as a support for the bunting. I sewed 14 triangles, 7 in white and 7 in green to the Pelmet Vilene and then I covered a large piece of cream felt with Versamark ink, and sprinkled gold embossing powder on it.

I then heated this with a heat gun and let the embossing powder melt. I repeated this process twice.

This left a beautiful gold felt :)

I then drew around some Heidi Swapp Ghost Letters onto the embossed felt to read "Merry Christmas" and cut these out. I then cut some gold fibre paper out in squares the same size as the letters and sewed the letters to the bunting.

I used gold cord to join the flags together and sewed these in place, attaching gold satin fabric to the back of the flags.

Finally, I embossed some cream buttons with matching embossing powder and attached these to the cord using ribbon.

Thanks for visiting and don't forget to SCRAP YOUR BOOBIES for a great cause! All entries received at acreativeworld@hotmail.co.uk will be entered into a prize draw at the end of October. The lucky winner will receive a gorgeous collection of PINK embellishments.

There are also spot prizes through the month for anyone who donates through our JUST GIVING page!! Don't forget every penny counts.

haPPy creATing

Caz and Angela

xx

Christmas Sewing

Hi again, today we are bringing you ideas for handmade Christmas fabric items; we hope you get some ideas and inspiration. Trish xxx

I will start with my Christmas pinny. I bought this gorgeous holly fabric from my local fabric shop and got a bit of a bargain, as there was a pattern miss so ended up with more than I had wanted, which was ideal.
I put the fabric on the floor and laid my full length pinny on the top, gave myself a 1 inch allowance and cut round the shape, hemmed it all the way round, cut a medium sized rectangle, hemmed it and stitched it on for a pocket and used ribbon for the ties.
As I had some fabric left I decided to make a hot pad for getting the dinner out of the oven, I just cut 2 squares approx 9x9 inches of the patterned fabric, the same from slightly thicker plain cotton fabric, and the same again from wadding (doubled up), pinned it all together then used my sewing machine to stitch diagonally across to form a criss cross pattern, then edged it with bias binding, very quick and simple to do.

I still had a few scraps of the fabric left over, but not really enough to sew anything, so after hunting round the internet I came up with a great idea, A rag wreath, I made the circle with jewellery wire, it took quite a lot of wire to make it relatively sturdy, but you could always use an embroidery ring instead, I tore the fabric into strips approx 1 inch wide and 3 inches long, and tied it on the wire until it was full, I then tore a plain red fabric into slightly smaller strips, about half and inch wide and 2 and a half inches long and tied them in between, this wreath will hang inside my kitchen door.
Di has done a lovely pinny/sack/shopping bag using fat quarters and calico.

I bought about 5 "Fat quarters " in a little shop in Hitchin. Cut then into 6 inch srips and stiched them together. (about 5 feet of strips) Then backed them with calico so that the whole thing would be lined, turned the whole lot inside out and the top stiched. Almost too late added the smiley face buttons using embroidery cotton . i should have added them before attaching the lining so that the stiching would be concealed. I then made the ties, turned them inside out and attached them to the side of the SACK. VOILA I had a Christmas sack, a pinny with a BIG pocket, and a xmas shopper!!!! It is robust washable and I think quite Joyful.

Yankee Whipped Cream Cake

Hi, it's Joy here, with my all time favourite cake! :) This is a fun one to make for the autumn and winter.

My Nana (from Maine) taught my mother (who has taught me) to make this cake, which she made as often as she could in Texas. (You need to be in a cool climate to whip the cream!)

Whipped cream cake is easy to make - another great project for kids - but the ingredients require some creativity.

You will need graham crackers (try ebay or UK-US online food stores), Hershey's chocolate syrup (ebay or UK-US food distributors), icing sugar, and double cream. You could substitute digestive biscuits for graham crackers, but if you can find them, the graham crackers do make the cake amazing!

The ratio rule of thumb is 1/4 cup (@57 grams) powdered (confectioner's) sugar to 1/2 pint of heavy whipping cream. A medium cake that would serve 16 or more people (sliced lengthwise, then crosswise) would probably require two pints of cream, one cup (@227 grams) of icing sugar (powdered sugar for any US folks) sugar, and maybe two portions of a three portion box of graham crackers. The only other ingredient is Hershey's syrup.

This is a no-bake cake. You whip the cream and syrup and build up layers with the graham crackers.

The secrets are: do not to pack down the sugar when measuring, do not build the cake too high (it will slide sideways), and use plenty of cream between cracker layers . Another tip: too much chocolate syrup will make it too sweet to eat. For a medium bowl of whipped cream, a couple of squirts of Hershey's will do. Taste-test it and adjust as you wish. The colour should be barely beige.

Whip cream and sugar until the mix is fluffy and stiff enough to frost the crackers. This takes about seven minutes for a big bowl. Add Hershey's chocolate syrup and mix a little more. It helps to put a little whipped cream on your platter before placing the graham crackers to build the cake. It helps the crackers stay in place. I usually use a three-cracker base, layer it with the cream, add three more crackers, layer with cream, and continue layering to desired height (probably no more than five inches). Cover sides of the cake with cream. I use a generous amount between layers.

Refrigerate overnight. Easy! Enjoy the next day.

xxx

Joy