Another MISTI video

I couldn't resist doing another little MISTI video, and you must be gentle with me - I had so many problems making this!

To watch on YouTube go HERE




Next time, I'm going to go back to doing a practice run first!

Now, you are not going to believe this, but neither of the winners of the Polkadoodles CD or Letraset pens have stepped forward to claim their prize. If you commented on either of these posts, scroll down to yesterdays post to see if you are the winner. I'm getting a bit bored now with people not coming forward to claim. Watch this space, they may be drawn yet again!

See you tomorrow x

A MISTI video - and some winners

So many of you were intrigued by the MISTI, that I wanted to do a quick video to show how easy it is to do repeat stamping with this tool - there is no way that I could have placed this narrow border stamp so perfectly without it.  I hope you enjoy it

To watch the video on YouTube go HERE

Those of you who wanted to know where to buy, I got mine from the manufacturer HERE

Now to some winners. The THIRD time I have drawn a winner for the Polkadoodles Work and Play CD. Third time lucky for

CRAFTYJO

and the winner of the set of Letraset Fineline markers is

LEANNE S

Congrats to you both, please email me so that I can get your goodies in the mail. If I haven't heard by Friday, I will draw again - sigh

See you tomorrow x 

New toy.......

So I gave in after weeks of longing, and got myself a MISTI. What is it? Go HERE to watch a video

So I decided to put it to the test to make a spotlight sort of card, where the flowers on the base are continued onto the circle, normally this would require all sorts of fancy measuring and lining up, but it was a breeze with this tool (apart from a couple of mistakes that you are not supposed to notice.....)

This was just a prototype really so I could get the hang of it, but I thought it was good enough to show you....

I just watched the video link I gave you above, would you believe they make a right hand and left hand version. I'm left handed. Guess which one I ordered? Yes, the right handed one.Sometimes it pays to do a bit of research before ordering, but I think my right hand has got quite nifty after all these years, so it's working fine for me. I also didn't know that the little magnets came as extras, so I have had to source some on Amazon. When my parents went to school parents evenings they were always told 'Enfys has so much potential, if only she could learn to listen before rushing into trouble'. I guess all these years later, they would say the same thing today! 

See you tomorrow x 

Using a die for backgrounds....and a giveaway

Here's another idea I picked up from the Online Card Classes latest class called Stretch your Dies...........

 I die cut this wavy border die by Lawn Fawn out of acetate, then just used it as a guide to blend panels of different distress inks across the cardstock........

My intention was to use to with the 'stripes' going horizontally across the card, but then I stuck on the 'happy' die cut word (from Clearly Besotted) and it was too late...never mind. The stamp is by ???, sorry I can't get to my stamp supplies at the moment, and it's one I coloured ages ago using Prisma pencils and outlining with my Letraset fine liner pen

Talking of which, I have a set of all four black fineliner pens from Letraset to give away to one of you. They really are the bees knees - you can colour in tiny details that haven't stamped properly, outline stamped images to make them crisp, add detail to a stamp and so on. The beauty is that you can colour right over them with alcohol markers and they don't smear. Just leave your name under this post if you would like a chance to win them.  

The winner of the Polkadoodles CD - Glennis - hasn't come forward. I will give her until Saturday to claim her prize, and if I haven't heard from her I will draw (yet another) winner from the original comments, and let you know on Sunday who has won the fineliners and possibly the CD if it hasn't been claimed

A couple of you have noticed that I haven't been making my usual posts on the Letraset blog for a while, yes, I am still on the team, I have just had a bit of a break, I have been on the team since it started, and I think a bit of a sabbatical is good every so often, but I will be back over there very soon

See you tomorrow x

Altering a stamp....and a winner...

My favourite little funky cat from Scrapberrys is back again.......

but this time, I started by inking through a Scrapberrys stencil (forgot to take a photo, but you will see what I mean in the finished card) and realized that, to make sense, the little cat needed to be facing the other way. Too lazy to start again, I stamped him onto a rubber mat, the sort you use for a bigshot or cuttlebug.........

then I quickly and carefully pressed my cardstock onto that stamped image, and voila, here he is, facing the other way!

I then went over the lines with a Letraset 0.1 Fineliner pen........

and coloured him with ProMarkers........I decided I didn't need the boat he was holding, so cut that out, I love stretching my stamps.....

Here's the finished card, now you can see why I needed him to face that way.....

The winner of the Polkadoodles CD is

Glennis

Congrats, email me at enfysc@yahoo.co.uk with your details, and I will get it in the mail

Day Three Stretch your Dies.....

So yesterdays lesson was all about using your basic shape dies. I have made this sort of card before, they are so difficult to photograph! Jennifer McGuire showed a stunning example using a heart die for the aperture, which I don't have, so I made do with a basic circle, and my cute little BasiK For You stamp set from Scrapberry made it's debut as well - I love the way the little cat is looking up, so I gave him some fish dangling tantalizingly just out of his reach..... I've taken lots of photos to try and make it clear what the card looks like closed..............

and open..............

I had a lovely and fun evening with the Fiskars crew, as always we put the world to rights and had a lot of laughs along the way......

the waiter thought that Hina looked like the boss of the little group, so this is how her plate came out....

I said to my son Edward when chatting on the phone 'did you see the photo of me with the kids? I love it, must get it printed out'....so less than 36 hours later, this turned up......yes, the photo I loved, printed out in black and white and professionally framed. He must have been ordering it as I was chatting to him, it arrived so quickly.....Thank you darling xx

Day Two - homework!

So I am being a good student and still playing along with the techniques in the Online Card Classes 'Stretch your Dies' class, here's my homework........

and a simple but fiddly inlaid die cut technique......

So today, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and I am meeting up with my pal Kath and the Fiskars crew for dinner tonight.  All is well with the world. They are at the big consumer craft show at the NEC opening tomorrow, and although it is only ten minutes away, and I have a free pass, I am not going. Such strength of character I am uncharacteristically displaying! I just don't need anything, and if I go I will spend, spend, spend. Feeling smug!

Online Card Classes - dies!

So I've signed up with Online Card Classes to take their new 'Stretch Your Dies' class - if you have never taken any of these classes, do think about it. You can join any time,  get loads of videos, ideas that I wouldn't think of in a million years, and once the class is over, you can keep revisiting the classes for life whenever you need a bit of inspiration. That, plus some of my favourite crafters - Jennifer McGuire, Kristina Werner, Debby Hughes, Shari Carroll........bliss!

So as I have a lot of dies, I thought I really could do with some new ideas on how to use them. So here is my 'homework' for today. Who would have thought you could die cut fun foam? All the elements on this card. including the sentiment, were cut with white fun foam and coloured with ProMarkers.......what a great idea to make lightweight cards! The dies I used are Sissix leaves, and Heartfelt Creations flower dies. All the foam, including the sentiment got a coat of clear Wink of Stella glitter. I handwrote the word 'soon' with a white signo pen

So you will be seeing a lot of die-cutting on my cards this week - I have so many Memory Box and Sissix dies, I am looking forward to some new ideas...

Polkadoodles giveaway....

One of the readers who won this lovely CD didn't come forward to claim her prize, so I am putting it up for grabs again, just leave a comment under this post, and I will draw a winner on Saturday

I had some happy happy mail, a great parcel from ScrapBerrys, who I met at the Stitches trade show last month, so I can't wait to start creating and showing you what I make.....

I fell in love with this little funky cat at the show, and look at all the little fishes!

As for crafting, not a lot has been going on here - after the jet washing episode, I suddenly got into spring cleaning mode and have been waving my feather duster all over the place. It's getting a bit tedious now though, you can have too much of a good thing, so I will be back at my desk tomorrow, unless I spot any more spider webs anywhere. How come you get these trails of grey webs in corners, and never a sight of the spider? Why go to all that trouble if you aren't going to hang around for a bit? 

I make it sound as if I live like a modern day Miss Haversham in a cobweb encrusted house - I do keep it clean, honest, but I think an army of spiders comes out at night, they have a bit of a sewing spinning bee together, discuss how many flies they caught and that sort of thing, then push off into a dark corner when they hear me up and about - if they are regulars here, they know that I have a very good aim with a slipper or rolled up newspaper........

Clearly Besotted....

So I had time to play with some of my new Clearly Besotted stamps. The first one I picked up was this floral set called Just Fabulous, the sentiment is from Friends Forever........

I like the pale shadowy vase in the background on this next one, this sentiment is by Simon Says Stamp...... 

There has been a bit of a blogging hiatus here because my brand new all-singing, all-dancing state of the art computer decided to go on strike. So one expensive visit from the computer guy later, here I am again....

So while I was waiting for him, I decided to pressure wash the back garden, a job I love doing, it comes into the same category as cleaning silver, you get to see a result for all your work. But yesterday, I was working away in an area where moss had grown between the brick pavers, so the moss was flying up into the air with the pressure of the water. I wish I had got Mike to take a photo of me when I had finished - great clumps of dark green moss all over my face and hair, and very dirty clothes - I looked like a troll. Still, job well done and I keep gazing out of the window to admire it. Roll on Spring......

See you tomorrow with a giveaway.... 

Using a die cut as a stencil.....

 So the new stamps were sitting on my desk, but so was that negative space Memory Box die that I used last week, so I cut it out of some vinyl and left the backing on, then used it as a stencil....

I used another Heidi Swapp stencil to do a background with some scattered straw and squeezed lemonade distress inks, then stenciled the flowers with Simon Says Stamps dye inks. I stamped the little vase from the Clearly Besotted Just Fabulous set and then covered it with Wow clear embossing powder. The flowers were given a coat of Wink of Stella clear glitter.....

Thank you all so much for all the lovely comments about the photos of the children, both here and on Facebook. So many commented that Monty looks like me - I had never noticed before, but could see it when I looked objectively at the photo. Fancy that! But James, his daddy is the only one of my three children who looks like a male version of me, and I can see James as a little boy so much when I look at Monty, so it makes sense - the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!

See you tomorrow x

A bit of a social whirl.....

 I've been missing in action this weekend, the past few days have been a bit hectic, a couple of long leisurely lunches with friends - the lovely sort of lunch when you laugh and chat, and laugh some more, and before you know it it's evening!

Then yesterday was a quick dash down to London to have a family lunch, 
such a treat to have us all together, here are cousins Monty and Milo.... funnily enough, these two look EXACTLY like their daddies (my sons) at that age

After lunch we walked to Clapham common, where the kids had a great time....  

Kiki's legs are so long, she could almost touch the ground when on the climbing frame...

and here is a very rare photo of me with all four grandchildren

So that explains my lack of crafting for the past few days, but I did get some happy mail on Saturday which I will be using next week - these gorgeous new stamps from Clearly Besotted

On Saturday we saw what looked like the first day of Spring, it was sunny, clear blue skies and the temperature mid afternoon was around 14C (that's 55F) - so a lovely day, but hardly a heatwave. So how many idiots did I see?
Two teenagers wearing skimpy little sleeveless tops and shorts (!)
One portly old guy wearing baggy navy shorts, long socks, a long sleeve shirt and a woolly hat (!)
One rotund young guy wearing baggy cargo shorts with flip flops and a winter jacket (!)
One sensibly dressed woman, who was pushing her child in a buggy - Mum wearing jacket, jeans etc, child wearing a frilly little summer dress and sun hat (!!!)
We Brits really do have a serious problem with this sunny day thing that we get every so often....

See you tomorrow x 

Clean and Simple

I came across this underused Memory Box die the other day, I think I have only used it once, it was high time I thought of something to do with it.  To tell you the truth, I am not very good at looking at dies and imagining how they will look when cut, so I didn't twig that this was a negative sort of die until it was too late and it had taken up residence in my cupboard. So I die cut a rectangle with a stitched border, then die cut the flower out of that....

I made a couple of very light pencil marks to give me an idea where the die cut panel would sit on the base card, then just sponged some colour onto those spots.....

and here is the finished card......

It's a pity you can't see the pretty Wink of Stella sheen that is on the flowers.....

It was interesting how many of you from North America commented on our school system yesterday, I think it is a bit different from America. Children go to nursery school at three years, usually doing half days,  then move into full time nursery in the year they reach four - so if they are four on the 31st August, they move into full time school in September even though some of their classmates may soon be having their fifth birthday, almost a whole year older than them, Kiki and Monty, both having June birthdays, are young in their school years, but seem to have coped with it

 So they are reading and writing by the time they get to year 1 the following year when they are 5.  They either stay in that school until eleven, or their area may have a middle school system that they move to aged seven, then stay until eleven. Then they go to their secondary schools, where they stay until 16 if they can't wait to leave school, or 18 if they are going on to university or want higher level qualifications. Our public schools are called State Schools and our private schools are called Public Schools! I know, I know, we like to confuse.........I think I read somewhere that in America the children are no longer taught cursive writing (or I may have got that wrong), here, my grandchildren have all been taught to write straightaway in cursive. 

I reckon I understand the USA system pretty well after our years in Florida, but haven't a clue what a sophomore is, or what sorority (is that how you spell it?) is in colleges....one of you will tell me....

See you tomorrow x

A bit of sewing.......

I seem to be straying away from my usual playing with paper route this week, I suddenly decided I would decorate a cushion for Alex, don't ask me why this was suddenly a priority, I don't normally pick up needle and thread unless a hem is hanging down.

I did try cutting fabric with the Cricut, but this was a major fail, I probably wasn't doing some vital step, but this fail didn't bother me as it will probably be years before I feel like sewing again. So I cut out flower shapes by hand and did a bit of applique. She has a great rug in neutral shades of grey, creams and brown with just a tiny touch of teal, so I had this in mind with the colours I chose - and it will look great on her slate grey sofa, better than on my rather formal sofa........but I like it, I hope she does too.....

Then it was back to paper for a quick card I simply had to make yesterday, our granddaughter Kiki is moving up to secondary school (high school) in September and we were waiting with bated breath to see if she got into the school of her choice. She did! So this is for her........I can't believe she is getting to this stage already, she will be 11 in August

See you tomorrow x