It's a Creative World

Seam Binding fun!

I don't know about you but I NEVER seem to have the right colour ribbon to go with a project- or if the colour is right, it's the wrong shade.

Well now you can make your own custom coloured ribbon by using cream or white Seam Binding and your ink pads or reinkers!

This can get a bit messy so work somewhere that's easy to clean up, or cover your work surface with a plastic bag.

I used my Adirondack Color Wash Sprays :

 First dampen your seam binding, this makes it take the colour easier but you can experiment with it dry:

Now lay your Seam Binding out on your work surface (old chopping board for me!) and start to add your colour:

I like to add the colour gradually and build it up, plus I was goiung for a bluey/green shade so I wanted the colours to mix together, I added a little blue:

When the ribbon was the colour I wanted I squidged the excess off in a paper towel:

and crumpled it for texture and allowed it to dry -you can blast it with a heat gun to speed up the process.

...then add to your project:

 This time I used my Color Wash Sprays but I have used my Distress Ink pads, reinkers and other ink pads- just experiment and see how you go. Here's Distress Inks, Peeled Paint and Walnut Ink:

This is Tattered Rose:

Seam Binding is sold in various craft stores in the UK now but if you don't feel like dyeing your own you can by it in dozens of different colours and you can buy it by the metre, in 5 metre lengths or 25 metre reels.

Just do a Google search and plenty of shops pop up!

Happy crafting everyone!

GlitteryKatie Xxx

 

More Russian Doll Inspiration

 

I painted these blank dolls above. The smallest one is tiny about the size of your thumbnail.

My sewing skills are an acquired taste though I think i'm getting a little better now. I made this out of felt all freehand no Templates just guess work and stuffed them with an Ikea cushion pad (68p), much cheaper than Toy filling and it has all the fire resistant labels etc..

I set the challenge a few Fridays ago to try & inspire you to make something Russian Doll themed. I found these two above in my gallery so thought I would show you them too. I'm recently went to Prague and got lots of photos so I will have something to Scrapbook later too. I also have to carry on with my Boot Camp training on a Tuesday so that will probably be a photo opportunity in itself.

Happy Crafting :)

Jayne

Weekend Workout 20 - HP

 no, not the brown stuff in a bottle, Harry Potter of course.

Eleanor here, with weekend workout number 20. The theme this weekend is anything and everything remotely, vaguely Harry Potter inspired.

I haven't seen the last two Harry Potter films, I'm waiting until I can watch them both, one after the other, in the comfort of my own home, with the kettle on, and on, and on, and home baked goodies to munch.

My children and I have all loved the books, and so I decided to create another artist's canvas embroidery, like my Heidi one, this time printing a page from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, where the sorting hat makes a first appearance, onto artists' canvas, and stitching over it with the image from the title page of every book - the Hogwarts coat of arms. (It takes ages, the canvas is stiff, and my fingers are sore, but I love doing it.)

 Does Harry do it for you?

xx

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Hi, Dolly here.

I am a huge Harry Potter fan. I was one of those people who queued to get the books at midnight and devoured them within the next day. I love them. OK so I started pretending I was reading them for school - just to check they were OK for the children. But I convinced no one!

Both of these pages were made using Dawn Inskip kits from her store at Scrapbookgraphics, especially this one called, appropriately enough, Wizardry

 

and these have to be the two cutest little Hogwarts trainees ever!.

 

Have fun creating wizardry of your own.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi!

Glittery Katie here and I love, love LOVE  the Harry Potter and I couldn't wait to get my hands on the last book of the series:

 

Hope you play along!
Love GlitteryKatie xxxx

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Hiya Claireliz here, I'm another one who is a huge fan of Harry Potter, the books reignited my passion for reading aged 21 & my love of Harry Potter is something I am lucky enough to share with my 5 year old daughter - who happens to be called Hermione :D

As the summer holidays are upon us & the weather has not been fab here by the seaside we put on the Harry Potter dvds (the less scary ones) & got out boxes of lego & here is what we've been making...

                                       
 
 
 

We have 2 Harry Potter legos sets, Dumbledores ofiice & 2 shops from Diagon Alley (I want all the Harry Potter lego sets & to build them all in my attic - a bit like the train sets people have - a full on Harry Potter World but I don't think hubs would let me lol) and we made our own huge Hogwarts...

if you look closely you can see a lego troll in the dungeon...

 

we also found a boat with oars from a Pirate set of Lego...so now they can cross the lake to Hogwarts...

                                      
 

Hermione asked if she could have some more Harry Potter lego for Christmas this year as we had such fun making these, so as long as she's good & I can play with it too I think I'll be collecting Harry Potter lego for her ready for Christmas :D

So show us your Harry Potter magic, looking forward to seeing what you make :D

C xx

Girly Ruffles

Hi Dolly here and a quick post today about making girly pages – you know those pretty pastel pages with the floaty feminine feel.

I scrap little girls a lot –we haven’t got many little boys in the family but we have little girls a plenty.

I want to share a page today which has a couple of techniques which emphasise the feminine feel.

 

 

Obviously the colour is feminine in soft pinks, but looking beyond that there are other things that give the page a softer feel.

The main mats on the page are roughed up at the edges to soften the hard lines.

I find the easiest way to do this without ripping the paper is to damp the edges just with a clean paintbrush and plain old water. Once the edges are softened the paper is easy to bend and roll. The occasional tear doesn’t matter, but you don’t want too many.

I also inked the edges lightly to emphasis the shabbiness.

 

The other thing that I feel really softens a page is the use of stitched ruffles.

To make the ruffles cut strips of patterned paper and beat up the edges first as above. Then you fold it so it looks pleated. Don’t make them too even or regular as you want it to look soft and free flowing.

Once you are happy with how it looks (and you may want to use a couple of dabs of adhesive in places) run it through the sewing machine on a simple running stitch.

Once it is sewn you can then be a little rough with it to give it more of a soft distressed look at the edges and then add it to the page.

The same technique works really well for heritage pages too.

Have fun with creating your ruffles and making those feminine pages.

Bordering on

an obsession.

Hello, Eleanor here.

I've been hooked by the urge to crochet cotton trims on my skirts.

Sometimes a summer skirt is rather more lightweight than advisable, if it's likely a breeze may suddenly pick up. I have several skirts which are lovely and cool to wear when the weather is hot, but which have no substance. One even had a rather odd faux petticoat, which I tacked out of the way

before edging the skirt with a row of blanket stitch.

That gave me a foundation row to work into with pink cotton:

which I followed with green, in a scallop shape. (basically this was a 3 stitch pattern: single, [double treble double all into the same stitch], single, repeated on around the hem until back to start. (You can tell I'm not a real crocheter, my instructions are rubbish, but you get the idea, I hope)

I removed tacking stitch, trimmed off frightful petticoat and wore, perched on a squatted-in rabbit hutch:

And here we go again:

Oh goodness, the lengths some people will go to to make their photo a little bit more interesting.

I'm off to find another skirt to trim...

Cheerio.

 

Quick and easy thank you Cards

Hi Debbie here with a quick and easy way to make thank you cards and use all those scraps of paper that are hanging around.

I was very lucky to received some lovely presents at the end of term and like to make my own cards, however the design has to be simple and easy to mass produce.

I chose two coordinating papers and punched out scalloped circles and squares. I stamped thank you across the square (it goes corner to corner because that's the only way it would fit, but I kind of like it.

The buttons are not real, they were punched from paper and cropodiled to make the button holes.

I stuck a tiny piece of black paper behind, or you could colour in black directly onto your paper.

I have used lots of scraps and managed to make 26 cards in just over an hour. If you can mass produce cards quicker than this please let me know.

Debbie x

Pop-up Cards

Hi Joy here

I recently bought some Promarkers and I have been busy colouring in!  I have used a variety of stamped images and digi-downloads.  As the pile got bigger I decided I had really better do something with them!

I thought my card box was looking a little empty and needed filled up. I found some instructions for a pop-up slider cards and got busy.

• Cut out your pieces of card to the correct size

        
A - Card Base 5 1/2" x 4 1/4"  - cardstock

B - Card Back 5 3/8" x 4"  - cardstock

C - Sliding Wrap - 1 1/2" x 9" - patterned paper

D - Pop-Up front - 1 1/2" x 2 1/2" - cardstock

E - Pop-Up back mechanism - 1" x 2 3/4" - cardstock

F - Pop-Up front mechanism - 1/2" x 1 1/2" - cardstock

Step - By - Step

1. Emboss or stamp the pop-up back and score at 1 1/2" on the long side. I used a scoreboard as this makes it very easy and quick.

 

 
    2.  Score the other pieces as follows;

          D - at 1/2" on long side.

          E - at 1/2" on each end

          F - at 1/2" on each end.

   3.  Stick the sliding wrap along the fold of the pop-up back.

 

  4. Attach the front pop-up mechanism on top of the sliding wrap and against the fold line.

 

  5. Wrap the sliding wrap around both the pop-up back and the base and attach with double-sided tape at one end. Take the base out, then, using a 1" circle punch, punch out a semi-circle as shown.

 

  6. Attach back pop-up mechanism 1" from edge of card base and lay flat.

 
 

  7. Attach the pop-up front mechanism to pop-up front.

 
  8. Attach the pop-up back mechanism to the pop-up back. 

 

 9. The card base will slide in and out of the sliding wrap. Make sure to hold on either side of the wrap and pull the base card gently towards you.

 

  10.  Attach your image to the pop-up front  ( I have used a digi-image from Little Musings )

  11. The finished card will stay popped up until you push it flat.

 

Another example using a Tatty Button Stamp.

 

I am going to make some special Christmas cards like this. They are great fun ad people are always impressed with the mechanism.

Happy Crafting xxxx  

 

 

Weekend Workout 19 - LACE

 Hiya Claireliz here with this weekend's workout.

The challenge is to use some lace.

I love using lace on all kinds of projects, mini books, scrapbook pages, altered items & sewing projects. I decided for this challenge to create something from fabric, so I had a go at making a brooch, but it was larger than planned so I changed into into a fascinator. First I took a strip of lace & hand stitched running stitch along one edge & ruffled it around so it started to form a circle...

 

keep on stitching until you end up with a flower shape like this...

 

I did the same again with a strip of navy blue net which I folded in half lengthways...

 

& with a cream strip of net which was also folded in half lengthways...

 

The cream net is the largest piece so I took a circle of felt & stitched it to the back of the cream net flower...

 

Then I added the next 2 layers, one at a time with just a few stitches to catch them into place (with the felt on what would be the underside of the fascinator) so that it looks like this...

 

I then stitched in a few glass pearl beads...

 

On the underside where the felt is I stitched 2 hair grips...

and taadaa...

 

This was my first attempt at making fascinators & I suspect I may be making more, infact thinking about it this will co-ordinate with my outfit for my friends wedding next week. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dolly here with a little snippet of lace too.

One of the things I love to use lace on is a heritage page or project and I have a heritage page to share which seems to show what I mean.

 
 
The page is of my husband's grandmother and great grandmother and actually his great grandfather too as he is in the photo that the little girl is holding up.

The strip of lace just softened the page a little and added to a heritage feel.

You know me - I like to do things digitally too, and digital lace adds feeling just like real lace.

I wanted a really soft shabby chic feel to this page and the lace helped create that.

 
and finally, an example of using some lovely cotton lace to make something pretty and feminine and just a whole lot of fun.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello, Eleanor here. Like Dolly, I too have used my lace on a notebook, only mine is somewhat tattier.

It's a music notebook, as any musicians may guess by the title :) for my notes about songs, lyrics, and piano pieces, and details of sheet music I want to buy.      I think I will even use Kel's excellent tutorial for 'tipping in' extra pages, using manuscript paper so that I can jot down a tune, or even compose one, lol.

Anyway, here it is, chipboard covers, modpodge base, half of a vintage lace-trimmed hankie on the right, and strips of cotton lace on the left, chippie letters and metal charms. All sponged lightly over with white gesso, and finally, when dry, sprayed with a mist of watered copper acrylic ink.

a closer look:

xx

 

Retirement Survival Kit

Two people recently retired from work after 50 years service between them. I wanted to make them something special so I googled retirement survival kits and got loads of ideas. Some of them were a bit American so I just altered them slightly.

These are the sturdy cardboard boxes. I covered them with watercolour paint and then stencilled over with red using sequin waste

.

A little brown stencilling and stamping gave me a good base. 

I grunged the edges a little with brown paint and then stamped some sentiments on the top and sides. I finished it off by spraying with a pearl mist and sealing with craft varnish.

Thanks for stopping by Its a Creative World.

Debbie x

Mixed Media is Fab...!

Hi folks, Mandy McK here.  Hope it's sunny where you are... I was sunburnt at the Shugborough Country Show on Sunday  (my own fault)... anyway...

Recently, I took a brilliant three week mixed media online course called The She Art Workshop.  I really want to share how good it was.  It's by Christy Tomlinson (click here for her inspirational blog).  Christy also has an online shop called 'The Scarlet Lime'.  that does kits aswell as a variety of amazing online workshops here. 

I love to learn and really enjoy online courses.  Christy's videos are full of tips and all through them she chats about her process and what she's thinking.  I really like the total lack of perfectionism and how she's happy to make mistakes on a project and she just carries on and shows you how she fixes it.  She has a very free and easy style and is entertaining to watch.  On the course I learned to do Christy's Art Girls.  The 6" x 4" canvas below was actually made as a birthday card of sorts for my neice.  It has the Christy style but is a bit less arty as it's a card...

 

Close ups show the textures because there are many layers that go into the background before you even add the girl...

  

 

 

I so enjoyed playing with paint, ink, mists, texture pastes and mediums, not to mention all the stamping, misting and collage that went on.  It really was very liberating!  So, if you're looking for something that is fun and teaches you mixed media techniques in a non-threatening & simple way... why not consider this e-course?  I didn't regret it.  Oh, by the way, my neice did like her unusual card from her Auntie Mandy.  Bless her.

Enjoy the Summer,

Mandy McK