Kiss & Makeup Birthday Card!

Hi all,

Just a quick post from me today to share a card I made using the Dovecraft 'Kiss & Makeup' collection from Trimcraft. 

Instructions are below the picture, it might look complicated but it was quite easy to make.

1. Die cut several hearts from patterned paper, in two different sizes. I did 10 of each. Stick the small on top of the large.
2. Cut a 14cm square from patterned paper and turn over. Draw across the diagonals to find the middle and pierce.
3. Cut a circle from scrap paper and pierce the centre of that too, line the holes up and adhere with tack. This will help you get the hearts in a perfect circle.
4. Arrange the hearts in a circle and stick down with glue.
5. When the glue is dry(!) go around the circle a few times using a sewing machine.
6. Mount the square onto coloured cardstock, and then to a square card blank.

Thanks for stopping by!

Emily xx

Mother's Day Cards || Dovecraft Blooming Lovely

Hello crafty friends,

I am back with my final chunk of Mother's Day inspiration, this time using the Dovecraft Blooming Lovely collection from Trimcraft.

This one uses one of the new First Edition 'craft a card' dies. They are so versatile and easy to make a stunning card with.

This card uses the side fold 'card shape of the month' and you can find the tutorial here. (link)

To see my other Mother's Day inspiration, check out my Trimcraft gallery (link)

Emily xx

Mother's Day Cards || Dovecraft Kiss & Make Up

Happy Saturday!

I am back with more Mother's Day inspiration and today's inspiration is a card using the Dovecraft Kiss & Make Up collection from Trimcraft.

This one is for my boyfriend to give to his mum....she's just about the coolest person I know and this collection is just perfect for a card for her.

I'll be back with some final Mother's Day inspiration on Thursday but if you can't wait that long then take a peek at my other Mother's Day cards on my Trimcraft gallery (link).

Emily xx

Mother's Day Cards || Dovecraft Painted Blooms

Hi all,

With Mother's Day around the corner I have three blog posts full of inspiration to make a gorgeous card show your mum how much you appreciate her. I had five cards to make so I've been pretty busy!

These cards use the Dovecraft Painted Blooms collection from Trimcraft.

This one is my favourite and I'm giving it to my mum so shhhhh don't tell her
(Mum, if you're reading this, look away now.... Haha.... love you momma!)

It's so pretty yet it was so easy to make, stamping the flowers and colouring with watercolour pencils and then fussy-cutting them.

This one uses the Painted Blooms embossing folder. I find A6 embossing folders a little restrictive but with this one I covered the un-embossed area with shiny patterned paper.

To find out more about how I made these, head to my Trimcraft gallery (link)

Thanks for stopping by and stay tuned for more Mother's Day inspiration on Saturday!

Emily xx

Introducing Inspired By Paper Magazine!

Happy Saturday!

I have an extra special treat for you today.

I am proud to announce that my new magazine, Inspired By Paper, is now out and available to read, and what's more, it's free! Yes, you did read that correctly. Free!

I created the magazine for my final project of my Digital Media Production course at university and I adored creating it, talking to my contributors, putting the magazine together, sourcing the best new products to feature.
As this is a university project, I would love some feedback (don't just tell me it's good, tell me what you like about it and what you don't). It'd be good to have some quotes to put into my report. I don't submit until the end of April so any feedback will be used to improve the magazine so it is the best it can be for submission!

Here is the link, so grab a cuppa, put your feet up, have a read and be Inspired By Paper!

https://indd.adobe.com/view/2ff83ecb-192c-49ac-9dbd-1ebebdb7f86f

Thanks for stopping by and thank you in advance for the feedback!

Emily xx

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Paper

Hey all,

I have a couple cards to share today using the new First Edition 'Craft A Card' dies by Trimcraft.
They come in 6x6" and 5x7" and there's so many different ways of using them.

The die I used for this has small holes around the edge of the circle in the centre, so I went around it with two colours of embroidery thread. The mandala is from the Simply Creative 'Kraft Keepsake' 12x12" paper pad.

This one uses Simply Creative 'Sweet Dreams' paper.

Thanks for stopping by!
Emily xx

Simply Creative Country Garden Cards

Hi all,

I have some cards to share today using the Simply Creative Country Garden papers from Trimcraft.
The paper pads come in 12x12" and 6x6" and they are pastel colours with some illustrative floral and insect designs in a delicate black line. Very pretty!

Obviously I have to share my favourite first and it's this one where I used floral dies to create a pattern on plain white card and then stuck it onto patterned paper using 3D foam tape.

To find out how I made these cards, head over to my Trimcraft gallery! (LINK)

(I apologise for the Trimcraft spam, they released 8 paper pads at once, and I have to make 5 projects per collection... luckily I don't go back to uni til next week so I've been able to make some headway and as you know I love to be kept busy)

To aid my mission, I created a little reward chart.... I have since completed enough to eat the little Bounty bar!

Thanks for stopping by!

Emily xx

Flamingo Tote Bag!

Hi all,

Something a little different today.

You know I'm obsessed with flamingos, right?

I bought a pack of plain tote bags earlier in the year to make a Star Wars bag for Nathan...
Well I used another for me... (like my hair? :D)

I'm normally the one behind the camera so I felt a bit awkward but my mum kept making me laugh taking the pictures....!

Here's a close up of the bag. I used mostly docrafts fabric paints but I did order a white pearl fabric paint too to make the pink a little lighter in places.

Thanks for stopping by!

Emily xx

Folk Floral Planner

Hi all

Here to share something I've been wanting to make for a while - a flip planner.

When the Papermania Folk Floral collection arrived for me to play with,, courtesy of docrafts, I knew that this project was perfect to use with the collection's decoupage papers and die cut embellishments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To make it, I cut out 6 A5 rectangles from cardboard, covered them in decoupage paper, added a calendar, and finally co-ordinating embellishments.
To find out more head over to the docrafts website where there's a step by step (X)
Until next time...!

21 or something

Hi all.
Just got back from London where we celebrated my 21st birthday! Now a proper adult... LOL right?

The first night we went to the Museum Of London. It was really good, I'd recommend it, lots of archaeology and interesting things to look at. After we came out of there we made out way to the river, climbed over a wall (why the wall was there, is beyond me), crossed the river and had a lovely walk by the Thames in the evening sunshine. We came across a Wagamama, so that was tea sorted...

On Monday we went to the Grant Museum (great name!), a zoology museum. I loved it. Got lots of references for new drawings.

We also went to the British Museum but came out concluding that there wasn't enough dead stuff there. Nathan and I aren't really fans of old pots...

Tuesday was my birthday, we went shopping down Oxford Street and then to dinner with my parents at the Slug & Lettuce just off Regent Street. Really nice food. 

 

Then yesterday we stuck near Ealing because we didn't want to get stranded because of the Tube strike. We went to Wagamama again (different one though) and then had sundaes!

Today we came home, and waiting on the mat was a package addressed to me...

I wasn't expecting anything...

My fellow members of the docrafts PDT had made me birthday cards! They are all so incredibly beautiful, I'm in awe, and they will have pride of place on the windowsill and I am keeping them forever. Never received proper handmade cards before, so to get five at once is amazing!

(Still really excited about this, I need to calm down...)

Anyway, we're having the family round on Saturday for a par-tay, so I'd better get going with the prep...

Until next time!

A Father's Day Card

Hi everyone!

Since Father's Day is coming up I thought I'd better get cracking with a card for my dad.

I picked up a Papermania Mr Mister decoupage pack for this. In The Range they were selling half a pack for half the price - good as I only wanted one sheet of each decoupage design. I also used the XCut Vintage Icons die set. 

I tried following a tutorial in Creativity! magazine for this, but I got fed up after two failed attempts so just made the folds up as I went along..

Sizzix haul!

Had an email to say the Sizzix Mega sale was on...
Had a look and there were a few things I wanted. The postage price of £7 is way too high, but I was saving over £50 on the dies, so I thought, why not?
(Let's just remember that as an eBayer I know that they could have been sent for £2.80. But I digress..)

Here's an unboxing video, and me having a play with the Daylily flower set.

(I found the dies a bit big for my liking, and I'm not sure when I'd use them again, as they're a bit too 3D for use in my scrapbook, so they're up on eBay, if anyone's interested. )

Also, I've been wanting to try out mixed media for a while but haven't because gesso and texture paste is expensive, and if I don't enjoy the technique, it would be a waste of money. So I found a recipe online and made my own gesso. 

I've just bought new shoes (Converse on sale for less than £20!) and they have maps printed all over. Also, at the moment I'm liking a song called (Un)Lost, by The Maine. I thought these two subjects would work well together for a scrapbook page.

I timelapsed making the page (plus making the gesso) so others could see how to make a mixed media layout. 

Products used to make the layout:

My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio cardstock
K&Co border
The Works border
Sizzix Tim Holtz Chevron & Courtyard dies
Bo Bunny pattern stamps
Kaisercraft 36 stamp
Papermania 'All Aboard' 6x6" paper, 'Sew Lovely' border
Prima flowers
American Crafts Thickers
Radiant Rain Mist, blue and red/bronze

Now, I must get back to making some projects for docrafts!

Pastel Anniversary Card

Whipped this up for my auntie and uncle's wedding anniversary, using the Papermania Pastel Craft Collection.

Products used:

Papermania Pastel Craft Collection trims, 6x6" paper pack, die cut sentiment

Xcut hearts embossing folder and scallop nesting dies

Handmade embellishments

Hi everyone! Hope you're well.

News this week - I got into the Docrafts Project Design Team! I'm so pleased with myself, and the team have made me feel so welcome. Look out for my makes on docrafts.com!

I'm also going to try my hand at 'vlogging'. Introducing the basics of scrapbooking, including tutorials, some timelapse stuff, and trying out new products and techniques. I've looked at other scrapbook videos, so I know what NOT to do (not explaining what products are being used, not explaining how to do things, etc). I figured I'd put what I'm learning at university to good use to make some videos.

On Wednesday, I may have spent some money ordering myself supplies online. I hope it'll be here today! But in the meantime, I've been making my own embellishments. I was inspired by what came up on my Pinterest feed and I wanted to have a go. It's a great way of using up any off cuts and bits and bobs that have been sitting unused for a while.

Here's a picture of all the embellishments I made -
I only used papers from my 'scraps' folder, and die cut them into circles, plain and scalloped.
I cut up the cover of the Teresa Collins 'Daily Stories' paper/sticker pack, and used the stickers too to make my designs. I tried to pick colours from my scrap folder that co-ordinated with these.
 The black tassel on the top right is from a clothing label. I really do keep everything!

Here are my favourites, close up

The smaller circle here was made by sticking washi tape onto white card and then die cutting it.

Now, to wait in all day for the postman...!

(Edit: Postman brought me nothing but one of those silly Amazon Prime letters.. pfft.)

Made some glittery baubles...

We found a pack of 3 polystyrene balls in the Christmas drawer. We did not know why we had them. 

So we bought some gold spray paint and some glitter.

The gold spray paint did not work...

So I spent my morning covered in glitter and glue... and ended up with three gorgeous baubles!

....also, my leggings are all sparkly now. Bonus! 

All my Christmas cards are DONE.

 I really enjoyed making these. Hunkydory toppers are my new favourite.

First Christmas card of the year!

Hi everyone,
Been absent because uni has started up again... in 5 days a week... tiring. And they're getting everybody up to the same level so right now it's rather zzzzzz. I'm doing Digital Media Production, which is basically video, photography, design etc.

Anyway, my mum won a docrafts prize draw and a big box of christmas goodies came this week  (I won the creativity club draw and won lots of Roald Dahl stuff but I wasn't keen on it so I gave it to my cousin!) These christmas goodies plus the stuff docrafts sent me to say sorry for the website not working for me... means altogether all I've spent on xmas cards this year is just under £5...!

Today I've got a free day, my parents are on holiday and Nathan's gone to Manchester for a gaming tournament... house to myself... means cover the craft room in so much stuff that I can't actually see the desk... right?!

So, first Christmas card...

Used mainly the Papermania Letter To Santa Collection (papers, bows, ribbon, die cut)
Also used Create Christmas jingle bells and wooden shape, and Bellissima papers.
My hexagon die set also came in handy!

Experimenting...

Hello! Hope everyone's having a good weekend.

Seeing as the memory pockets I made sold on eBay, I wanted to make some more.. but I didn't have enough twine... so I had to order more. Not come yet, though!

I also had the idea of making tags. So I ordered a set of Tim Holtz tag dies and seeing as they arrived yesterday, I had a play and came up with this. 

Gonna make a set of different steampunky designs and put them on ebay and see how it goes :D