Stair step card

I love this magnolia stamp, she just seems so elegant and goes with the piano perfectly.
I made a stair step card and covered the back with Llewelyn-Bowen Retro Rose, and the "steps" with a sheet of green paper.

I coloured in the stamped images with promarkers, then fastened the piano and stool to the front step, and tildas legs to the next step.

Simple yet effective me thinks.

Magnetic Tray

This is a simple idea but one that I want to try.
You take a magnetic tray (ones used here are baking trays) and decorate it. It is then used as a noticeboard, or maybe even a childs play board.

I'm keeping my eyes open for a decorative metal tray to use, possibly keeping it simple, using the magnets as decoration.

I think they'd also make wonderful presents.

How to make a Fabric Beaded Necklace

I couldnt find a necklace to suit the dress I'd made, so I decided to use the left over fabric to cover some beads.

Primark has some great large bead necklaces at the moment so I picked one of a similar colour to the material I wanted to use. I snipped the thread near the fastening and took off all the beads. The beads have lovely large holes, making the whole process easier.

I started with the largest and cut a rectangle of material that would cover it.

I then glued a hem on it, and trickled a trail of glue across the material

Then rolled the bead on it, with the glue going along the centre of the bead.

I then snipped the edges as shown in the diagram.

Glue the bead and then tuck the edges into the hole, you can always snip them at this point if they are too long, and a knitting needle or similar helps to tuck them into the hole.

As you can see you dont need to tuck all the edges in, as long as the hole is free, and the bead fairly neat.

Repeat on both sides. Leave to dry. To finish off the beads you can give a coat of varnish or glue to ensure no ends come free or fray.
Finally I choose which beads I wanted to re-thread.

And the necklace was complete.

Icecream cone surprise

On these lovely hot days my children have been asking for lollies and icecreams to cool down (and because they taste lovely). I'm always after ways my children can enjoy fruit, and the usual ways with this kind of food is to make/buy icecream with fruit in, make ice lollies out of fruit juice, smoothies etc, but all these take time to create, so I came up with a simple quick idea.


Fill an icecream cone with their favourite, not too juicy, fruit. Then add ice cream scoops as usual. Obviously this can be modified to hide sweets, chocolate etc.

I've been wanting to make a dress out of my dragon material for ages (Alexander Henrys "Shibuki Dragon" fabric). I used the Sew magazines pattern from issue 4 to make a 1970's style dress. It was too long for me, but I didnt want to shorten it by trimming the hem & cutting off the lovely waves at the bottom of the material. Instead I hitched up the 2 sides and sewed them where they lay, bit like holding your skirt upto paddle, and then sewing it in position.

Creative Writer Blogger Award

The lovely Carmen over at Whoopidoo...ings has bestowed on me this award

what you trying to say Carmen :-O ;-p

So heres the rules
1. Express gratitude to the blogger who bestowed the award unto you.
2. Display the picture on your blog proudly.
3. Be nice and provide a link to the person who gave it to you.
4. Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth, or switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie.
5. Nominate seven creative writers who might be into doing this.
6. Post links to the seven blogs you nominate and let the owners of those blogs know.

Hmmmm, lets see...

1. My brain likes to find patterns in things & as such I found GCSE maths fairly simple (I got an A in my exams)
2. I am very shy & retiring, almost to the point of being a hermit
3. I once saved a baby chincilla from hyperthermia & therefore its life by cleaning it up after it was born as its mother was too tired to.
4. I am a shopoholic
5. I'm a very organised person who hates mess.
6. I am teaching myself to be an optimist
7. I used to be a model

Some blogs I find the work inspirational, others I like to flick through the piccies, these 7 I am nominating because I enjoy READING their fab blogs...

1. Furrypig
2. DebCW
3. Aly
4. MRS JT
5. Choccy
6. Mel
7. Nicky

Anyone worked out the fact from the fiction?

Memories

My memory is awful, I forget so many things that it does get silly. However some things I remember clear as day, so I decided to scrap my earliest memory...

The journalling reads..
"My earliest memory is of my Dad winding me as a very small baby.
Its the feeling I can remember, the feeling of his large, rough hands rubbing and patting my small, soft, stretchy skinned back."

Due to the journalling being about physical feel I wanted to add layers and texture to the page. I ran a blade along the edges to age them some what, and rough them up. I also edged it with walnut ink (I also used this on the chipboard swirls to age them) . I mounted the photo above a frame so that it was the focal point of the "pile". This frame I had already gone over with promarkers to make the patterns stand out a little more, & then glossy accents on the main part of the pattern.

I layered up other pieces which were either chipboard or thin card. I also used different types of sticky pads, all to ensure different heights. On the very top I put the "Memory" chipboard as the title of the page.

I used a green pen for the journalling to match it up with the writing on the background sheet, but different enough so it stood out more.

The background sheet is "Narratives by Karen Russel", part of the creative imaginations range.
The swirl chipboard is "Venaissance" by Llewelyn-Bowen
The "Memory" chipboard is by Dovecrafts
& the rest of the shapes/frames etc are from "Clover, Classic Scrapbook kit"

I would like to enter this page into the Creative Craft World "Fathers Day" challenge.