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 I have been off line while changing Internet provider so not posted for nearly a month!! I have been very busy decorating my house ready for a sale when the spring arrives - I hope! I was not planning for 'decorating' to include the craft room but then .....I spotted this lovely shelf unit and Si made me some cubes to match underneath and the paper partitions to measure with a little drawer for my framelit and thinlit dies and space for ink bottles under ....and then I moved the old shelves out and discovered the wallpaper ripped behind ...soooo needed to wallpaper and then it looked so shabby it all needed painting! So I ended up with a complete craft room refurb and boy did I chuck a lot out! I am now a very much slimmed down version of the craft room - so much so I can get my rocking chair in and Aggi - my mums old dressmaking model. (fondly known as Agatha - Aggi for short). Its great having such a clever man to make made to measure cabinets and paint them to match!

I love square cards and I had such a lot of fun creating the backgrounds using the Brusho powders that I had some spare pieces of watercolour backgrounds so I have used them to make some more cards. Very much along the lines of the A4 picture I created on Saturdays blog post. They are all slightly different these two I have folded a piece of A4 size card in half to obtain two large portrait cards. It was so lovely to have my sewing machine back in working order. It is very old and was my mums so sentimental value and it now (thanks to my very talented other half) running like a dream. I can't wait to start sewing again, but first my craft room is being decorated..... it was not intentional to decorate but I moved some bookcases and the wallpaper had torn and then when I replaced the paper the walls looked really tatty so they needed a paint and then I decided it would be nice to turn the whole room around so my desk is in front of the window looking out into the garden

I recently undertook a class online using paint effects and I have adapted this technique to use with my stampin up inks and dies. These cards I made as a batch and I did all of the backgrounds in one go, and then sewed them all on my sewing machine using white or black cotton. I do like the layered look with certain images and butterflies and this stamp set lend themselves well to the technique as they provide backgrounds and lovely text as well as images and then there are the butterfly thinlits that match the set and provide a focus. I can't wait to get some 12x12 watercolour paper and start doing this type of background with my photos/scrapbooking! I chose 3 colours of inks and took a piece of plastic and pushed onto my ink pad then spritzed the plastic to make the ink run and then pressed parts of the inked plastic onto the watercolour paper. This works better if the watercolour paper is already a little bit wet. Then have a paper towel handy to  pat off the excess. Be

I made some cards with these lovely watercolour backgrounds and I liked them so much that I made one in A4 size to hang on the wall. The background is made by sprinkling some Brusho powders in blue and yellow onto the watercolour paper and then spritzing with water and they sort of spread out and blend  - the more water the more they spread out. Then you can mop up a little with kitchen towel or dry naturally or with a heat gun. I use the paper towel method! Then when dry I used my sewing machine to sew in black onto black card in A4 size I glued the middle of the watercolour paper first onto the card so it will stay in one place but not the edges as they may make the sewing needle sticky. Every now and again I switched the sewing needle to zigzag - you need to ensure your sewing needle is raised above the paper when you do this as the change to zigzag can move the needle and may rip your paper. Then I cut two of the butterfly images using the dies from stampin up called 'Bu

I made this long box using the Floral romance speciality paper in the Spring /Summer 2019 catalogue. I used my Stampin trimmer which has a scoring blade to score the sides of the vellum box, these are 7cm wide and if you are using the 12x12 vellum paper - it is 30cm and so you have 2cm left over for the overlap. I recommend using double side tape to attach the box as PVA types of glue may slip about a bit on the vellum. Then the bottom and lid of the box are made using the same measurements except you stick the bottom on and leave the lid so you can open the box!. For this you need a square piece of card that is 13cm x 13cm and you score around all four sides at 3cm. Then fold the score lines and cut into the side pieces to make a flat that you can glue back to make the sides . For the frill on top of the box I folded a strip of paper that was 30cm long and 8cm wide in half lengthways and the cut from the folded edge towards the raw edge just stopping short in small increments aro

If you have ordered or received my January Big Shot box of goodies to go along with the Wonderful Romance bundle then your wait for instructions for the projects is now over! In todays blog I am going to show the 3 cards and bookmark projects that you have the additional bits and pieces of card to make in your box and tomorrow's blog I am going to show some other projects that I made using this wonderful bundle and the speciality designer series paper and seals and flower embellishments that are also in this Suite. The whole suite along with the embossing folder and cardstock pack is on pages 10 to 11 of the 2019 Spring Summer catalogue. Before I go into details of the three cards and bookmark I would like to divulge my creative process when making these so you too can enjoy using this method: When I received this stamp set I first took some whisper white card and stamped all of the images in the stamp set and some images more than once so I had a whole A4 sheet of imag

I had the best weekend with my open house and showing those who came along the new products from the Spring/Summer catalogue. If you were not able to come along and would like a copy of the catalogue posted with the sale-a-bration leaflet then contact me and I will pop a copy in the post for you.... In my hallway are boxes ready for my guests  One of the make and take stations  One of the displays - see Saturday 12th January's post for how to make and blog hop with the Pootlers group!! Maps for the make and take tables with special offers on the day! More displays - see later blog post for how to get the box kit to make this lovely card and 3 others as well!! Sweeties and post it notes and pens to go into the boxes and one of the displays showing the wooden butterfly elements free with sale-a-bration. More info on this at end of this post! Invitations to past customers made with some of the new products. So what was the open house all about? W