It's a Creative World

Die cut cardstock

Whilst  doing a bit of stash shop surfing lately I have noticed some more lines of die cut cardstock appearing – I was totally in love with the KI releases of Lace Cardstock when they first came out and now am coveting more in the guise of  Samantha Walker’s Holey Cardstock by Creative Imaginations and the more subtle papers by Making Memories.

 

Anyhoo, I thought that before I got busy buying new sheets I had better use up some of the exisitng ones! I must say it’s quite a wrench cutting into these sheets as they are so pretty but one I got going I realy enjoyed using it.

 

I really loved how the lace cardstock looked layered over patterned paper – the bolder the patterns the better. This worked really well for this layout I created of my son’s first birthday party, it added just the right amount of detail to the page and let the colours of the background papers shine through.

 

This cardstock is surprisingly sturdy and can easily be used as a background paper. I wanted to scrap these snowy pictures without the layout looking too Christmassy (they were taken in April lol!!)  and thought the lacy papers added the delicate touch the layout needed without having to resort to the ice pastels I would normally associate with a snowy layout.

So if you have any lace cardstock lurking in your stash, why not fish it out and have a play?

Happy Scrapping!

Charlotte x

 

Teachers Gift

Well it’s that time of year again when we all start to panic over Teachers gifts.

This is Raena’s last year at primary school and I wanted to give her teacher something special for all her hard work.

I covered a 7Gypsies portfolio with some K&Co Urban Rhapsody paper, added a photo of Raena and asked her to add a few words to make it a more personal gift.

 

I then made a few things to go in her bag as emergency supplies. A mint box covered in paper and finished off with some stickles, a decorated paracetamol box.

I removed the barrels from some pens and rolled some matching paper inside before I put it all back together again, of course there had to be chocolate in there and I was lucky to find some where the foil wrapping matched the papers.

All displayed in an altered prima tin which can be used again.

Thanks for looking and I hope I have given you some ideas.

 

Lemon xx

Quick cards from scraps

Hi - Jakey here with a quick card sketch I thought I'd share as I've been busy making simple cards to sell at our annual fete. These can be made in a snap using all sorts of scraps, and as you can see I've made four different cards from one basic design. My cards are obviously feminine (I was in a pink mood! lol)  but the sketch could easily adapt to a more masculine look or kiddie card depending on the scraps you have available.

jake xx

Garden Time - How They Have Grown

Hi from Lemon.

This is the time of year when you start to see the rewards from all the hard work that you have done.

 

As you can see my tomatoes have benefited from all the watering and feeding that I have given them and hopefully soon I will be able to pick the first one.

  

I have already picked and eaten some of my radishes and they were very nice.

 

We had these strawberries at weekend with some ice cream. They were much nicer than the shop bought ones.

 

I can’t wait for these blackcurrants to ripen off so that we can eat them, fingers crossed that this sunny weather continues.

See you next time

Lemon xx

Hi from Caz!

Wow Lemon you are doing well! I just love going out into the garden and picking fresh fruit and veg to eat and use in my meals.

We've had a crop of radish and I have the next batch of seedlings in the ground. When I plant them out I always pop a few more seeds into a tray so I have a good crop throughout the season.

The carrots are growing well, as are the potatoes and shallotts. Our beans however have never shown up :( but we've planted more so hopefully they will start to grow very soon. My peppers are starting to flower too, and the corgettes were planted out two weeks ago so we should start to see some good growth from them.

There has been remarkable growth in the flower beds too, with lots of last summers plants making an appearance in the last few weeks. I have a few cosmos flowers popping up which must have self seeded. Um, that's as well as about 23 plants i've grown from seed in the greenhouse!

My new favourites are Lupins :) They are so pretty!

 

We'll see you in mid July when the gardens will be full to bursting with lusciousness!!

Ciao
Caz
xx

Going round in circles...

Hi Folks!

 

Firstly the winner of yesterday's lucky draw is  Jane AKA FLUV!!!! Woo hoo email us your address information and your prize will be on its way!!!

 

Today I have a quick and simple sketch for you which I hope will inspire you to try

a circular layout if you haven’t tried one before.

 

My sketch:

 

 

Round Page Maps by

Becky Fleck

 

Anyone who knows me, knows I have a thing about circles! I love adding circles to my pages - either as elements or as part of the design - and making circular layouts adds a fun twist to that.

I combined my love of circles with my fascination for angels on here too, by adding little lace wings to my Granddaughter’s photograph, but the design is easily adaptable to suit any kind of picture.

 

 

 

Obviously, the circular paper used here was shop bought

(Making Memories: Audrey Scallop Circle)

but it’s fun to make your own too!

 

I’ve added a few ideas for tools you can buy to make your task easier – but trust me, you don’t need to spend a lot to get a decent circle cutter. My personal favourite below will cost you a couple of quid from any office supply store – and the best part is you can vary the circle size from teeny tiny, right up to 12” diameter if you want to.

 

 

Fiskers also do a circle cutter

 

EK Success

 

 

And even good old CM!

 

 

Failing that – just use a dinner plate as a template… or a cd, or trace round anything circular that you have handy J

 

Have fun being Creative today!

Jakey x

 

The last Sunday of celebrating our birthday

Hi folks.

The winner of the 2 prizes announced last Sunday will be in this post at about midday. Thanks for all your feedback.

And the winners are:

JerseyScraps wins the beautiful piece of jewelery made by our very own Trish

Lighthouse girl wins a jar of crochet flowers made by Caz!!

Please email us your addresses and the prizes will be on there way!

 

And we have one last prize this week! It is worth 20 pounds sterling!!! Leave us a comment TODAY to be eligible for the prize. No MadDi you are NOT eligible. 

Today we are still show casing some highlights of our first year.

Scrap rooms:

Who can forget the awesome scraprooms which you can see here. When we posted the scrap rooms you left us 91 comments!!!

Here are a few of my favourites!

Use your stash!

Wow we have used loads of stash this year and creating this post I had the opportunity to see some of the great projects we have posted in the past year. See all the posts here. LOL my favourite is one of mine where I had such fun recycling chipboard letters (sorry folks):

Tools:

You can see all our posts related to tools here. Don't you just love the bind it all????

Garden Time with Caz

As novice gardeners it's been a joy to share a few of our tips which we've learnt from experience. Of course we've also learnt from each other. You can see all the Garden Time posts HERE. It's been awesome documenting the vast change of my own veggie patch from a square of soil to planting out and 'watching them grow'.

Little miracles in the greenhouse.

and big miracles in the garden!

Storage.

As crafters we always find we collect ALOT more than we will ever use. So it's really important to have proper storage. As all as storing stash we also need to store our tools.

The IKEA bonde range is FABBO!

 

Some empty glass jars can be transformed into very pretty pen pots.

 

Well folks this is the last Sunday we will be showcasing highlights of our first year so once again thank you all for your support!

I *heart* mini books!

See all the mini books and project instructions HERE :) Some favourites......

Love from the creative girls XXX

Saturday Cookery

Hi everyone
I hope everyone is ready for a lovely weekend!
Today i thought i would post a lovely little recipe for this Vegetarian Chickpea Curry that my husband just adores!
There are over 3 million vegetarians in the UK and ideas for recipes are improving all the time.
Check out these sites for some great recipes:

BBC vege and vegan recipes

Delia Online

UKTV Food

Channel 4

Vegetarian Foundation

So the recipe i have for you today is a Chickpea curry. Now before you all say 'Urgh!', i ask you to try it first! It is very, very easy to make, takes no time at all and can be make in advance and refrigerated or frozen.

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp Sunflower Oil
1 large onion chopped
2 Tbsp Curry Powder
400g can of chopped tomatoes
350g new potatoes, boiled and cut into cubes
400g can of Chickpeas
2 Tbsp lemon Juice
2 Tbsp Mango Chutney

1. Heat the oil in a pan and add the chopped onion. Cook until soft. Add the Curry Powder and stir on a low heat for 1 minute.

2. Add the tomatoes and 50ml of water. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Then add the potatoes, chickpeas and lemon juice. Simmer uncovered for 10 more minutes.

3. Stir in the Mango Chutney and serve.

I serve it with rice and naan bread but you can serve it however you like.

Very simple huh? Go on, try it, even if you're not a vege, you might just be suprised!

Cath xx

Quick Fabric makes

Hi all, today I have a couple of fabric projects, I am trying to get my bedroom coordinated in red and cream, so have had my sewing machine out and been making some little bits and bobs to bring the room together at a relatively cheap price, as at the present we cannot afford to do much in the way of major decorating.  Maria showed her memory boards in this post and I have made one too, I used a 50x50cm canvas covered it in this lovely Toile De Jouy , stapling it to the wooden framework at the back, I then used cream ric rac again stapled at the back and sewed different sizes and styles of red buttons on each cross of the ric rac.

 

To match this I have made a stuffed heart to hang on my bedroom door, I drew round a template, sewed most of the way round on the line leaving a gap in the side to turn it and fill it, then cut round leaving a 1cm seam allowance, turned it the right way out, stuffed it very full, as that helps to keep a good shape, I use the end of a pencil to push the stuffing right into all the awkward bits, then  I carefully hand sewed the gap closed.

 

 

This is just 2 of the items I have done so far, I have also made some cushion covers and a fabric stuffed boot, it has all worked well and has pulled the room together nicely.

Please leave a comment with a link if you make or have made any thing you have seen on the blog, thanks for stopping by

Trish xxx

 

A beginners guide to the QuicKutz Silhouette

Don't forget to leave us a comment any day this week to be eligible for our birthday prize draw!

Don't you just love gadgets.? I am totally IMPULSIVE but have to confess again that I kept my QuicKutz Silhouette in it's box for almost a year before I had the courage to unpack it.  I was not afraid of installing it as I knew that would be easy. But what then? What do I use it for? I was afraid and so it stayed in its box....

Firstly - what is the QuicKutz Silhouette / Craft Robo?

General concensus is that they are same thing in a different package! UKS have a whole debate on which to buy.

However you can read all about them here:

http://www.graphteccorp.com/craftrobo/about.html

http://www.quickutz.com/qk2/silhouette/

 

What are .GSD files:

The craft robo and Quickutz Silhouette creates and processes files with a .gsd extension. .gsd is a file extension associated with GraphTec Vector Graphic Data .

Do NOT worry about this. It is just the same as .doc is the file extension used my MSWord and .xls is the extension used by MSExcel.

 

Installation:

Like every tool you buy, the software installs very easily. Just follow the instructions. Read the getting started guide. I forgot to install the blade so cut NOTHING first time round LOL. 

 

Getting started:

When you install the software, it will load some samples. I started with a simple heart. and opened  it.

 

 

And then just selected output settings on the 'File' menu, selected output to 'craft robo' would you believe and then just followed the instructions. You will get 3 bits to use from this simple sample!

 

 

 

 

 

What else do you need?

• I have found my little xyron quite useful when I have cut little bits.
• You will also need some glue with a lttle nozzle if you are cutting bigger fiddly bits.

What can I cut?

The Silhouette is designed to cut film materials (such as vinyl), paper and cardstock materials (up to 90 lb weight), and can cut up to a thickness of 0.3 mm. The Silhouette will cut patterned paper, most cardstock, vellum, iron-on transfer paper, magnetic paper, vinyl, and sticker paper among other materials. Individual results may vary.

NOTE: Certain materials that are more dense (such as shrink plastic, crafting foam, chipboard) or fibrous in nature (such as fabric) cannot be cut by the Silhouette, even if they fit within the thickness range noted above. You should never attempt to cut multiple layers of material at the same time.

   

Free Downloads:

You can create your ovn .gsd files but there are HEAPS of sources. Try here:

     

http://www.quickutz.com/qk2/viewItems.aspx?cc=229

http://www.thescrapbooklady.co.uk/catalog/gsddownload.php

http://www.graphtecgb.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=104&Itemid=66

 

 

UKS also have lots of downloads for registered members!

 

Some advice from me:

 

• THINK before you buy think very carefully!!! This is a big EXPENSIVE investment! Also, You will have to replace blades and the cutting mat. Think about how you will use it!!!
• PRACTICE, get some cheap (lol) cardstock and cut some of the basic shapes.
• RTFM: (Read the flipping manual. )
• CHECK that you have loaded the paper properly and the right blade.
• FORGET your fear, it is only a tool...

Finally, the silly mistakes I made:

• I forgot to insert the blade!!!
• I did not load the cutting mat and paper properly (Position the cutting mat with your paper stuck on top, and turn the little handle on the left till the mat and paper is in the correct position)!!!
• I did not read the manual!!!

Hope this has helped you with another fantastic tool!

 

Love from MadDi XXX

Patterned paper cards

Hi from Caz!

I have a few cards to share today, again using scraps, and all with at least 2 co-ordinating patterned papers. I've also been rummaging through my embellishments to find a metal charm.

I hope these will give you a little inspiration!
haPPy caRd maKIng!!
Caz
xx