It's a Creative World

40 Top Tens Mini book

My  brother was recently 40,  I wanted to make him something special but realised I didn't have a lot of time. I decided to make him a mini book full of journaling cards that he could fill in.

I decided to think of 40 top tens for him.

I used some fairly muted papers that were double sided and made lots of pages with pockets and pull outs.

Some of the "top tens" were things like your top 10 favourite foods, singers, christmas presents and funny things the children have said etc.

I then added pictures and embellishments to the basic book.

 

I just had time to make him a card, and he really loved his mini book.

Thanks for stopping by It's a Creative World

 

Debbie x

Altered Tin

I always think it's hard for chidren who have Birthdays very close to Christmas.  My friends' daughters' Birthday is the 27th December so I always try and do something different for her.

 

I stuck a chipboard initial to the top of the tin and then covered the top with self adhesive aluminium foil.  (You can find it on the roll at most DIY or hardware shops).

Using an embossing tool gently press the foil down around the initial. 

Cover with alcohol inks (I used wild plum, stream and a touch of denim)

Dip a cotton bud in blending solution and carefully remove the ink from the initial. ( You can also swipe a Stazon (solvent based) inkpad across the top and achieve a similar effect.)

 

Cover the inside of the tin with patterned paper.

Make an accordian book slightly smaller than the tin and decorate it to suit the recipient  (in this case a 13 year old)  decorate both sides. I added tags to some of the pockets.

Stick some ribbon to the base of the tin, it needs to be long enough to tie the accordian book in place.

Stick the back of the accordian book to the base of the tin and tie with the ribbon.

 

a close up.

 
some pages

Unfortunately I stuck the animal paper on the wrong way round, it was my last piece:(

I'm sure she'll understand. 

Lynne x

Jar of Nothing

Do you ever get frustrated when you ask someone what they would like for a present?

This year I have the perfect solution for you this Christmas, a jar, tin or box of NOTHING. 

While surfing I came across the idea HERE.  The poem can be adapted to suit your needs.

You can use all your oddments to decorate it, you know those odd letters that are left over, flowers, fibres, beads, bling. You could even stamp or alcohol ink the container. Just have fun but remember to leave room for the poem.

If you're anything like me you will have empty embellishment tins or candle jars, here is the perfect thing to make with them.

Once they've received a jar, tin or box of nothing I'm sure you will get an answer other than nothing when they're asked what they would like.

They would make a great fundraiser at a school fair.

Lynne x

Cupcake Stand

Hello Joy here,

a few weeks ago I came across this in my local supermarket.

 

I quickly snapped it up, but put it in the cupboard for a special occasion.  Well, my daughter's best friends are celebrating their 16th birthday at the weeked and we are making cupcakes - Red Velvet ones!  I thought they needed a special stand so I got to work.

 
Putting the stand together is very easy. The pieces all slot into each other and it is very robust.  The girls have chosen a playing card theme for the party. They made very cute invitations themselves from playing cards.  After a quick trip to the 99p Shop, where I got playing cards and a pile of sticky back gems, I began to personalise the stand.

 
I put the sticky back gems on wires and poked them into the corrugated card. I also threaded beads and heart shaped buttons onto wires to place in the centre.

 
I added the 10 & 6 of hearts to the top to represent the 16th birthday. I also stuck gems around the edges to give an added sparkle. I will be filling it with cupcakes on Saturday afternoon and delivering it to the birthday girls.

On my next shopping trip I am getting another stand to do a scary one for our Halloween Party.  Let me know what you do with yours.

Happy crafting

Joy xxxxx

Ruby in Lola Land

Hi everyone, Carmen here :)

This project was inspired by the Copy+Paste birthday celebrations over on their blog. One of the challenges was to download some fabulous free printable sheets designed by Kirsty Neale & Julie Kirk and to come up with any project, using any medium and any of the images. Well, one look at the gorgeous sheets and my first thought was Charlie and Lola. I'm a huge fan of Lauren Child and luckily my youngest daughter Ruby is too. Her favorite doll, Lola, goes everywhere with her.

I browsed the internet and found the perfect image featuring Charlie and Lola around a sofa. There was even an empty seat like they were just waiting for Ruby to come and play.

I found a good photo of Ruby on my PC, it needed to be of her sitting and have no bits of head or legs chopped off. After a couple of attempts at resizing both the cartoon image and the Ruby image I found a scale I was happy with. I am no techie expert and just did this by inserting the two pictures into a Word doc and resizing them up and down till I was happy. I then printed them both onto photo paper making sure I selected the best quality option in my printer settings.

I cut out the picture of Ruby and attached her to the sofa with a couple of small dabs of Glossy Accent. The balloons, speech bubbles (which I turned into balloons), the party hat and the presents all came from the C+P download sheet. I arranged them on the scene until I was happy and attached those with small dabs of Glossy Accent too. I then went around the photo of Ruby and the other elements I had added with a sparkly black gel pen, not forgetting to add strings to the balloons and ribbons to Ruby's hair so that she fitted right into Lola's cartoon world.

Finally I covered the whole thing in a couple of layers of Glossy Accents.
I am so pleased with the end result. I'm thinking of making similar pictures as Christmas presents for my young nieces and nephews. I can see it being easily adapted to suit anyone's favorite character. In fact my two older girls have already demanded their own picture starring themselves too. This one, once spotted by Ruby was nearly squashed in a cuddle and kiss fest. Safe to say I am now looking for a frame so she can hang it in her room.

The copy+paste printable sheets are still available for download here.

Thank you so much for looking :)

Make your own moulds.

My friend Lynne recently spent a couple of hours showing my friends and I how to use a melt pot. I am currently saving my pennies to buy one of my own. When I saw a lady at the NEC who was using aluminium foil tins and a heat gun to melt the utee I realised I could start experimenting while I saved.

After hours of googling, I think what I have is gel flex, (an identical product apparently is vinamold.) I had this product from years and years ago to make plaster moulds. What I like about it is you can re-melt it, if your mould doesn't work out, so there is no waste. 

I melt mine in a jug in the microwave, check on it every 10 seconds, less if it is close to being totally melted as it can quickly go over the temperature and burn.

I have used silicone cupcake moulds to pour the melted gel flex over. It cools down fairly quickly and shows the detail of very delicate things.

Then you are ready to melt your utee and use it to make your own embellishments.I have used old keys, big jewelry from the 80's and little trinkets to make my moulds but the possibilities are endless.

 

I hope you might be inspired to have a go at making your own moulds.

Debbie x

The 30 Project

Hiya Claire here

This year seems to be a year for big projects & documenting & recording life, So I'm setting off on this little journey to see what I discover. The inspiration for this came from Michelle Jackson-Mogford with her Vessel for our Simple Things project... it got me thinking.

So why the 30 Project? Well, I'm 30 later this month so it would be a milestone year to record, I figured why not. So here's the idea...

Find a box or treasure chest....

Fill with mini books & collect your favourite stash (or in my case stuff I've always wanted to use but wasn't brave enough lol) 

And begin! I'm going to use some mini books to record certain events, I've even put a mini canvas in there too.

I've started working on the first book which is the Tim Holtz Grungeboard book on the left in the picture above. This will be the book that is all about me this year,I wanted to make it look a bit like a journal. I painted the front & back covers with gold paint, left to dry then painted with crackle glaze, left it to dry again & then painted over the gold with brown, I then gave it a quick coat with matt Mod Podge

 
I wanted to add some texture to the Grungeboard heart & wings so I glued on some layers of torn tissue paper, then painted the heart red & the wings white, the gold tissue paper shows through under the paint.

I attached the heart & wings with 3d foam pads to the front. The fastening is made with a grungeboard bracket painted gold & attached to the back of the book with brads, it holds the book shut with a very small piece of sticky velcro.

 

The tabs on the inside pages are painted gold, then the pages covered with old book pages (from the Art of Needlework...it was destined for the jumble sale, I rescued it), Then I painted the edges of the pages.

And here is the first page, I actually used Ultra Thick Embossing Powder on the grungeboard numbers too.

 
 So this is where this project starts, I'll be keeping you updated throughout the year & if you want to play along (you don't have to be celebrating a special birthday this year) please do, the more the merrier.

Don't forget to come & see what were doing with the Simple Things project this year... its really very cool

See you soon & thanks for stopping by

Claire

xx

Cup cake bag

I have a friend who loves cupcakes, so decided to make her a customised bag for her birthday.

 

I found the plain bag in the beach section of a large superstore, and it was so cheap I couldn't have bought the material for the same price.

I used felt to cut out a cupcake using a sizzix die on the big shot.

 

Its a good idea to pin the pieces so they dont move while you are sewing.

 

I stitched all the separate parts on using backstitch and blanket stitch.

I finished off the cup cake with buttons and then sewed it onto the bag.

 

I hope you might have a go at transforming something plain, with Christmas coming up you could make a lovely personalised gift.

Debbie x

Make your own stamps.

Debbie here, hoping to inspire you to make your own stamps.

I was recently having a sort out and found a huge pile of funky foam, when I looked at some of the foam stamps I already had I wondered whether it was possible to make my own stamps.

It is surprisingly easy and I was really pleased with the effect I achieved on this birthday card.

I roughly drew a cup cake and case onto the funky foam and cut them out. I added extra detail by cutting out rectangles from the cup cake case, and punching holes in the top with a cropodile.

I attached my stamps to an acrylic block using repositionable adhesive.

 

 

Stamp the cup case and top and then add a tiny circle stamp where the holes are. I have made mine slightly bigger to give two slightly different colours where they overlap.

Add a button and your message.

I hope I have inspired you to make your own funky foam stamps.

Debbie 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