A Butterfly Border

 Here's one I made with a Martha Stewart butterfly stamp, stamped with distress ink and then just a tiny bit of scribbled lime zest Promarker added 

I stamped the butterflies close to the right edge of the card, then cut away around the edges - tip, make sure you don't put the antennae facing outwards, impossible to cut around neatly. It took me three tries before I finally learned that lesson.....

The inside of the card is covered with a pretty Prima paper, which of course shows when the card is closed. A few dotted gems and a Hero Arts sentiment, and I was done

Summer in Venice 3

Here's the third card I made with the stamp - now you can scroll down and tell me which card is your favourite... for this one I made a pretty label, more of that later

and this one is the only one I coloured, with ProMarkers,  I used very neutral tones, to me she looks like the type of lady who would always wear soft restrained colours and look totally fabulous. I would dress like this every day if I could, but washing the kitchen floor and getting inky would make me look a bit silly - I can imagine the look on the postman's face if I answered the door in this get-up! I was imagining her going to a fabulous Venetian wedding, or maybe to a rendezvous with her lover.....sigh. There's quite a lot of embossing on the base card, not showing up very well in the photo

I was playing around with punches to make some pretty sentiment labels.....

I just cut strips of cardstock, and inserted one end into one of those corner Martha Stewart punches.....

This strip was a bit wider, but not a problem....

I just snipped off the corner, following the curve.....

an ended up with this. I did use a regular long punch on a couple of them, it works just fine as long as you turn the punch over and position the card very exactly before punching - the one on todays card was made with a long punch, you can see the little notches on the ends, but I quite like that look

That's it for today, I'll be back home tomorrow, probably with a couple of Max and Milo tales to tell, see you then x

Summer in Venice 2

 Here's Summer in Venice 2 - that sounds a bit like the sequel to a film from the Cannes Film Festival! Not at all, just a card made with the same Penny Black stamp as yesterday.......

For this one, I made a background by sponging a panel with distress inks, blending the lines together, then I just stamped the image over that. I love this effect. The sentiment is a stamp by Katysue Designs, and I coloured some white seam binding from The Ribbon Girl with the same distress inks for a bow. The broken line background stamp is by Hero Arts, and the taupe background paper is from the Tea Dance collection by Craftwork Cards

Thanks for all the good wishes about my tooth (or rather, my late lamented tooth and the trouble it caused). I am finally feeling fine again now. 

I'll be back tomorrow with my last elegant lady x

Venice in Summer....

I found this unused Penny Black stamp called Ventian Summer in my drawer, once stamped, I was in love, so expect a couple of cards this week using this, hopefully all looking a bit different. I used papers from Craftwork Cards Paper Floristry and Tea Dance for this one....

and the stamp has very little colouring. I just shaded the buildings a tiny bit with grey and added a slash of red lipstick and a wash of colour on the water. Her clothes were paper pieced. I love how elegant she looks

We are off to London to do a couple of days baby sitting - Max and Milo will be in school, so apart from the mad morning rush and the chaos of after school, it should be a quiet sort of visit

You will have seen my post about the Letraset design team call, if you love colouring, I urge you to have a try, they are a lovely company to work with

See you tomorrow with another elegant lady x

Design Team Call

EXCITING OPPORTUNITY

We are looking for new design team members for the Letraset blog. We are looking for colouring skills to inspire others, so if you love colouring this is your dream team!

We require that you have an active blog, and are prepared to do two projects a month for the blog. We would like these to be in the form of a step by step colouring photo tutorial, and a finished card or project with the coloured image. If you prefer to do a video tutorial, that would be great. Go HERE and HERE to see examples of the type of posts we would like to see. You must be able to photograph the projects well, and write your posts in a professional manner.

In return, Letraset will provide you with the products needed to make your posts – these may include ProMarkers, Flexmarkers, Aquamarkers, limited edition sets and products such as Safmat. You will also be given a Letraset product to give away on your blog each month

Please send your application to Jaccomien Klap at research@letraset.com, attaching three samples of your work, a brief biography, any other design teams you may be on, a link to your blog and tell us why you would love to join us. Applicants don't have to reside in the UK, overseas applications are welcome as well. Closing date for applications is the 31st July 2014

Hydrangea for Letraset

It's my turn to post on the Letraset blog today, here's a peek at what I have been doing for them....

and here is a peek at what you can win this week by leaving a comment on here and on the Letraset blog - go HERE to see my post and leave a comment. Please, please remember that for these Letraset giveaways, you need to comment on both blogs, they are so generous giving these prizes to Going Buggy followers, it's only fair that we send them some traffic - edited to say that there seems to be a problem with the comments on the Letraset site, so the winner will be picked from comments under THIS post

I have a set of twelve ProMarkers to giveaway. This set is called the Manga expansion pack and contains some of my favourite and most used colours. Poppy, Henna, Sandstone, Honeycomb, Saffron, Olive Green, Soft Green, Cool Aqua, Marine Blue, Putty, Cool Grey 2, Cool Crey 4, and a blender pen

I will draw a winner from all those who have left their names on both blogs next Thursday. See you tomorrow x

Paper Floristry for Craftwork Cards

It's my turn to post on the Craftwork Cards blog today, I've been busy playing with the Paper Floristry 2 kit that was a recent pick of the day on Create and Craft and Ideal World TV here in the UK

Go HERE to see the other cards I made

It's a very brief post from me today, I am still suffering from my visit to the dentist last Saturday - it seems I have an infection now. That explains not sleeping for the past four days then..............sigh

It's my turn to post over on Letraset tomorrow, and you know what that means! See you then x

Moldable Plastic - who knew.....

I was sent this really intriguing product to review. As regular visitors will know, I have been having fun with air dried clay and moulds lately, so I was interested to see how this would compare

Firstly, it's easy and rather a lot of fun to use, you just drop some of the little white pellets into a bowl of very hot water, leave it for a couple of minutes....

The plastic granules turn clear and merge together....

Lift the pliable lump of molten plastic out of the water with a spoon or tongs, and start tearing bits off to put into the rubber moulds (which I forgot to photograph). The plastic sets very quickly and turns an opaque milky white, it takes seconds to dry. If the ball of plastic starts to set, just plunge it back into the hot water to make it pliable again...

I wanted to see what colouring mediums would work, for these butterfly key rings I used ProMarkers, and coated them with Stickles glitter glue...

 Then I moulded some of my favourite little garden pots using moulds by KatySue Designs, and coloured these with some acrylic paints, glimmer sprays, gilding wax. You will see the edges of a couple of the pots on the top look a bit bashed around - that was my fault for not pressing the material fully into the moulds, but I didn't recast them because I quite the way they look like chipped stone.....

I had to turn one of them into a card, using Martha Stewart punches for the leaves and flowers...

So after playing around with it, I can give a very positive review for the following reasons:

The material is easy to mould, and is incredibly lightweight, always a plus in these days of expensive postal charges. Each of the little pots doesn't weigh any more than an acrylic button - much lighter than the same pots done in air dry clay

It's very durable, the clay can break quite easily, if you drop them on the floor for instance, they don't survive, but this material doesn't break or chip which must be a good thing if you are sending projects by Royal Mail!

The whole process took a lot less time than with the clay, which of course has to dry slowly. You can have your embellishments in seconds with this material

I liked the way the pots looked when painted with acrylic paints, shimmer mists and gilding wax. All these paints adhered well to the surface, and I was able to add shading and highlights. I wasn't so keen on the look I got with the ProMarkers. 

 I reckon one pot would last a long long time, a little goes a very long way,  Another plus is that any unused material Is just popped back into the container to be re-melted the next time.

Great product for crafting your own embellishments when  moulds and texture plates etc are all the rage at the moment - check out Katy Sue Designs, they mail worldwide, and in the USA, Michaels has a great range of rubber moulds by Martha Stewart

I have a few more ideas - I plan to colour the actual water that the plastic is melted in to see if it absorbs the colour as the granules melt - I feel like a mad scientist trying out all these ideas. I also fancy rolling out a square with a rolling pin onto a craft mat and trying to emboss it, or pressing a stamp into it to take the impression....I'll let you know when I get on with these ideas. It would make great pendants, I wonder if I could use alcohol inks when the plastic was still warm...........playtime!

Read all about it HERE

and buy it HERE Amazon

Hope you've enjoyed reading this review, there's always something new for us crafters to play with! See you tomorrow x

Sissix Stamps and Dies.....and a winner

I forgot I had this die and matching stamp by Sissix, time for an outing......

I was going to keep it to  totally black and white, but at the last minute wrapped some red twine to sit behind the butterfly, and dotted some red gems and sequins around, the sequins are clear, they have caught a reflection and look green in the photo. The die cut sentiment is by Memory Box - I split the sentiment for this card and used just the punched out letters for the word birthday - I'm all for getting value for money from a die!

I have had a pretty miserable sort of weekend, we were supposed to be going down to see family in London, but a trip to the dentist stopped that. I won't go into details, but broken off molar/extraction/gum sutures is probably enough to give you all the shivers. 
Ouch, ouch and ouch again. Before I go and feel sorry for myself, on to the winner of the ProMarker 12 set. This time, the random name drawn was

LISA - Ella's Designs

who said

 Ella's Design said...

So glad you had a wonderful time in Disneyland, Enfys and I bet the children loved it too!
Love the sneak peek, I'm off to the Letraset blog to have a proper look and be leave a comment! Thanks for sharing and for the chance to win some more Letraset goodies! Lisa x

Congrats Lisa, email me with your address and they will be on their way 

See you tomorrow when I have a review of a fascinating new product to share with you x

Pansy Card for magazine...

Here's a retirement card made for Papercraft Inspirations magazine, it's one of four I have on a retirement theme in this month's issue - on sale now

The pansies were made with Sissix dies, I cut the aperture in a 5 x 7 card with a nestability die 

/

Quite happy with the way that turned out....

I get a lot of emails about blogging. Lots of folk would like to start a blog but are afraid to because they think that advanced computer skills are needed. Not so, I am living proof of that. I can only talk about my own experiences, but here are a few of the things I've learned along the way. The type of blog you have depends on what you want out of it - if you want an online diary which outlines your crafting journey/holidays/life, then you can burble away to your hearts content and limit the people who can read your blog to the chosen few, who you can invite as readers. If you want to share your stuff with as many people as possible, then you need to keep your blog updated regularly and put yourself out there - start taking part in some of the many challenges, gradually, and to your delight, people will return your visits and even leave you comments

1. Blogger is easy. I have to use Wordpress for different design team posts, and can't get on with it at all. Probably user incompetence, but if, like me, you aren't that computer savvy, go for blogger. If you choose blogger, open it with Google Chrome, blogger is a Google platform and the two work well together. You can download both for free

2. You can set up a basic blog using standard layout templates, and add a few gadgets and gizmos to it. Just a tip, make your blog as easy to read as possible, and remember that the more gadgets you have, the longer it will take to load, and people aren't going to hang around for ages, they click on to the next blog. This is especially true of music. What may bring back wonderful memories to you of a romantic and blissful honeymoon evening, may remind others of the blazing row they had with their other half when he/she got paralytic at Grandmas birthday party and disappeared for a long walk around the garden with your second cousin.......people would click that little red X faster than you can blink. Safer to do without music, it doesn't always soothe the soul in my experience

3. If you get inspiration from somewhere, put a link to that site, and try to link or name products that you use as well. If you don't, you will get emails and questions about where you bought stuff, it's easier to put it on when you write the post

4. If you want to get fancy, there are loads of people out there who will help you design a blog. Mine was done by Sarah, her link is right at the bottom of this blog, and her prices were very reasonable. Before I used Sarah, I made a blog header myself, I think they were hopping frogs, I can't quite remember now, but it was fun to do

5. Be careful what you call it. What seems quirky and funny, or clever or witty may not be such a good idea when people are saying 'I visited a blog which I loved, but can't remember what the heck it was called. Take my 'Going Buggy'. I chose that off the top of my head because in those days I was very active on the Cricut message board (in its glory days). When you made a certain number of posts, under your name appeared 'Going Buggy' or something else (anyone remember any of the other names?). So as I was 'Going Buggy' on the message board, I pinched it for my blog. However, to register it as a web address I had to put Going-Buggy, and if you miss out that vital little hyphen between the words, up pops a blog called 'For God's Sake'. which is pretty much what I am thinking every time it happens!

6. Don't expect to make any money out of it. Although I work the equivalent of a full time job in crafting/blogging, I don't make any money (I spend quite a lot though!).   I get lots of free products, and I do get paid for magazine commissions If you want to do it, do it for fun, and hobby blogging  is fun. I have made some great friends, and get quite anxious if I don't see a familiar name popping up for a while....I certainly don't regret starting this blog, I occasionally look back, and since I put a lot of little anecdotes in about the children or something that happened on my travels, I remember things that I would otherwise have forgotten. So it's like my diary, which I am happy to share

I hope this helps anyone thinking of taking the plunge, jump in and enjoy, and let me know so that I can link to your new blog here, and come and see you, bringing some of my friends with me. Put the kettle on!

Heidi Swapp Stencils...

 When I was in Florida, I picked up some Heidi Swapp stencils in Michaels, together with a suitcase full of other stuff, most of which I still haven't used. I found the stencil the other day - it's a three part stencil, a background, the bird and branch and a mask. 

So for this card, I put the bird branch mask onto a panel of white cardstock, popped the background stencil over that and used distress inks for the background. When I took that away, there was a crisp white branch, so I positioned the branch stencil carefully over that and dabbed it with black ink - being quite light with the dauber, I wanted a faded look - I rather like it. The chalkboard thank you was in a pack I picked up in the dollar bin. I dotted a few clear sequins around for a bit of sparkle, but the camera hasn't picked those up

Now take a look at my other accomplishment for today. Ta da.........

With the help of you tube videos, a bit of arm wrestling and some brute force, the monster cube has been tamed. I took the photo of the card above 'in the box' (notice I'm getting a bit arty with some background flowers....). I don't have a big enough space to put the monster on a table so I had to lie full length on the floor to take today's photo, quite ridiculous for a woman of my age, and probably risking never being able to get up again....  I do like the seamless look of the background, but I really can't go through that wrestling match with a bit of nylon and some stiff wires every day, so I must have a new work regime - make the cards and have a weekly photography session. Only time will tell if this is a sensible decision

See you tomorrow x

DIY Birthday.....

Here's a pop up card I made with elements from the Work and Play CD by Polkadoodles. The base card was ready cut and folded by Craftwork Cards, and I cut out all the printed elements on the Scan N Cut, so it took no time at all to make....

I added glossy accents to all the tools, and a few metal brads as well. I reckon any handyman would love to get this for his birthday....

So I've been pondering recently about photography. I love the way some people photograph their cards, but after messing about quite unsuccessfully with some photo editing software, I decided that life was really too short to faff around with all that stuff just to photograph a card or two, so I moved on to my next idea. A light box! Yes, a lightbulb moment, I thought about spraying the inside of a cardboard box white, but as I am so messy, decided the clean-up would be too painful, so I Googled a bit, surfed around Amazon a bit, and ordered a little white cube called the photo box. 

It arrived in this little round bag......

and when I unzipped it, out sprang this monster, yes, honestly,  it just jumped out of the bag, unfolded itself and sat there............waiting

You can see the size of it in comparison to the pile of books on the floor (no, I don't normally keep books on the floor, they are waiting to go to the Charity shop). Now the cube was advertised as being easily transportable, ideal for photography on the go...........WHAT? I unwrapped it unleashed it in the kitchen and could barely get it up the stairs to take this photo - it's not heavy, but I was knocking pictures off the wall as I struggled with it. Try as I might, I can't get it to fold up again into a neat little circle, to go into the neat little bag...... I suppose I could get a cat since I have a ready made cat house taking up half a room. It's a pity it's not a tiny bit bigger, we could have gone camping for the weekend....

Watch this space! See you tomorrow x 

New Home Cards

Here's some more new home cards made for a past issue of Papercraft Inspirations magazine. this first one was done with a Woodware stamp - I stamped the image onto a white base card, then cut a panel of peach card and die cut a large heart out of that, then popped the panel on with foam pads.....

 the 'brads' are Craftwork Cards candi.....

I used a Christmas Memory Box die for this next one, it's called Snowy Village, and worked really well for a non-Christmas card.....

and this next one was a 'reject' that I wasn't 100% sure about, so didn't send it in as one of my four commissioned cards, but I do like it - another Woodware stamp. I added some little hearts as 'smoke' from the chimney, and gave the topiary trees some dots of liquid pearls

If you live in the UK, do pop over to my best craft buddy Kath's blog, one of our friends Hina, (who works for Fiskars with Kath), is going to Mount Everest and Kath is doing a charity workshop to raise funds for her. For those who can't get up to Aberdeen, she is having an online raffle, and has the most fabulous prizes to give away, all sorts of companies have succumbed to the famous Kath strong arm tactics charm and donated prizes, including Tim Holtz. So go HERE to find out how you can buy a ticket for the raffle. UK only I'm afraid, because of postage costs

Okey dokey,  I'm staggering down to the post office now, weighed down with all the prizes that need posting, then hopefully back to the desk where Mr Mojo will miraculously reappear I hope,  so that I have something to show you tomorrow. See you then x

Winners - and some Disney....

 First of all, I have quite a few winners to announce today. Some of them are a bit late, sorry about that, life took over!


The lucky winners who will get a Polkadoodles Work and Play CD are

NannaPat

AndreaA

misteejay

The two winners of the Letraset Artists aquamarker sets are

Joanna Mackintosh

Marianne

and the winner of the Craftwork Cards mystery box is

TheKatsWhiskers

Congrats to all of you, email me with your address and they will be on their way to you


I promised to tell you about my trip to Disneyland Paris, here are the children waving goodbye to the white cliffs of Dover.......

When are we getting on the boat? asked Monty when we were about a mile out to sea - he thought it would be small and wooden!

Cuddles in the park.....

and Kiki chose the most stylish mouse ears in the place - I couldn't resist them....

and of course, there were a lot of these photo ops!.....

A couple of little anecdotes, Monty was running around the hotel children's playground, chatting away to some other little boys. He came running up 'Ma, those boys won't talk to me'
They are French Monty, they don't understand you
'Well, I've done the bonjour thing you taught me, and they still won't talk to me! - the universal language of childhood seemed to kick in, as they played happily together until it was time for bed

There was a 65 minute wait to have your photo taken with Mickey, so I opted to stay out in the sunshine while they did this - I've met Mickey a few times, and never find him a great one for conversation. After about five minutes I was bored, so I took it upon myself to act as unofficial photographer for couples - you know the type of thing, boy takes a photo of girl standing in front of a flower bed, swap over, girl takes a photo of boy in front of same flower bed. So I asked if they would like me to take a photo of both of them together. I did this for quite a few people and got quite animated about it. I was complimenting little girls on their princess costumes 'wow, you look JUST like Cinderella, is she your favourite?...and so on. Flushed with my people skills, I made my way back to the bench to sit down and a middle aged woman dressed as Pocahontas (I thought, I'm not an expert on Disney characters these days) sat down beside me. 'Great costume' I enthused
She looked a bit bewildered
'Hindu' she replied
OOPS

So it was a lovely, and very special time to spend a magical few days with two of my beloved grandchildren - scrapbook next I think...

Have a great weekend x

ProMarker Giveaway.....

Time for another Letraset post, and a ProMarker giveaway. Here's a peek at today's project

and here is what is up for grabs this week, a set of  twelve promarkers and a blender pen

You will get Henna, Bright Orange, Canary, Lime Green, Forest Green, Sky Blue, Indigo Blue, Amethyst, rose Pink, Cool Grey 4, Black and a blender pen

All you have to do is leave your name under this post, and go HERE to leave a comment on the Letraset site - only those who visit both blogs will be in the draw.

I am very aware that I have some prizewinners to announce as well, including the winners of the last Letraset draw. I'll tell you who won those tomorrow, and on Friday I will be telling you who won the Polkadoodles CD's and the mystery Craftwork Cards box. 

Yes, Disneyland Paris was great, yes I have photos, yes I have stories to tell, but first I need to regain some energy and stop looking as if I am auditioning for a part as the tin man in the Wizard of Oz - the old joints seized up rather dramatically once I had stopped walking and being swung around at speed on various rides. I will creak my way back here tomorrow with some winners and photos, see you then x

Fiskars Fuse Retirement Card

 Here's one I made for this month's Papercraft Inspirations magazine - on sale now in the UK. I used the Fiskars fuse for a bit of letter press, which I coloured with ProMarkers

The background was done with a Tim Holtz stencil and some Wendy Vecchi white embossing paste, which I sponged lightly with squeezed lemonade and spiced marmalade distress inks. I covered the glass with glossy accents 

As you read this, I will probably be on the cross channel ferry making my way back to good old Blighty, so I'll see you tomorrow x