Giveaway Winner

Thank you to everyone who left me a comment on my blogaversary giveaway post, 68 in total which is AMAZING. I have used Random Org to choose the winner and it is comment 44 -

and that is....................


you..........................................................................................................................................................

NEIL

at Neelz Expressionz

Well done Neil. I have started to parcel the bits up, so if you email me your snail addy I can get it off to you.
My email address is on the side bar.

Thankyou to everyone for taking part, I am overwhelmed at the interest there has been and the fabulous things that people have had to say. It is really lovely to connect with so many wonderful crafters all over the world.

Just to let you know it's my birthday in March, so I might be able to find a few more crafty things for that, so keep watching.

If you read my last post - Maddie is home safely and it was a good job I checked the flight details before I left home as she came into Gatwick not Heathrow. The only problem was I got stuck in the traffic on the M3,  which was closed Northbound due to a horrific multi-vehicle accident. So delays meant I was an hour late picking her up, but we are both home and safe and that's all that matters. My prayers are for the poor people involved in that accident. We came back southbound on the M3 and it still looked a horrible mess with yellow lights everywhere including a crane trying to clear up the vehicles and debris. I do hope there were no fatalities.

Take care of yourselves - have a great Valentine's evening.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Changes in form and dress forms - a children's story.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

I hope you have the most wonderful day today whatever you are doing and receive lots of lurve from your beloveds. Ken had to go off to work early this morning but he left me a card and has sent me a text - ahhhhh.

So onto blogging business I have been wanting to enter the Altered Alice challenge since it started but haven't had the inspiration until yesterday and I decided to partner it with June's challenge at Dezinaworld where the theme is children's story, book, nursery rhyme or song. So Alice fits for both - yey.

I have used 3 main images and altered them to produce my changes and I have included a dress form too.

The first two images are from Digital 2 for Tuesday and the last one from the Graphic Fairy. I have used PE to put elements together to change and merge the images so that there has been a metamorphosis to this.

The image was printed and coloured with promarkers, inked and splattered, sakura glitter pen used to highlight areas then the whole thing embossed with clear embossing powder. The piece it is mounted on is from a Kath Kidston note book sprayed with glimmer mists, inked and stamped in fired brick DI. The backing has been made from text and music papers, stamps and tissue tape, painted with gesso and some vintage photo ink added. The bottom left hand corner was stamped and clear embossed and inked over with fired brick and the top right hand corner stamped with antique linen and walnut stain. The queen of hearts in the metal frame was cut from a playing card, flowers made by me and the turquoise heart is an invoke stamp and covered with 2 layers of clear embossing powder. The butterfly is one of my downloaded ones and other bits from my die cuts box.

Having moaned about the weather yesterday, we have woken up to a beautiful bright blue sky and sunshine today and although the cats have now gone out, this was Tinder just basking in the sun on the landing this morning.

I am going off to Heathrow airport in a little while to pick up Maddie, she has been away for just over a week to India, working at the Bangalore airshow, so I will be really pleased to see her and I know she is shattered and will be pleased to get home and in her own bed. When I spoke to her last night she had been up 23 hours, poor thing and that was before her 2 flights to get her home.

My blog candy is now closed and I will be doing the draw later this afternoon once I have got Maddie home.

Take care and lots of love from me on this special day. Thanks for reading and hello to some more new followers.
luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Shabby Sunday

Happy Sunday everyone

Just a quick post from me today with a quick card I made last night to join in with the Sketch Saturday layout, Dutch Dare - to use red, pink and white, Paper Pretties - to use valentine colours and to use some new papers I bought this week in the Shabby Chic style.

First though I want to say a big welcome to all my new followers who have joined me recently, I am so surprised and honoured that so many of you are following my creative journey and have left me such wonderful comments. I hope I can live up to your expectations and I hope to get round to visiting you too soon.

I am also playing with backgrounds for my photos but I am not sure this one works too well. All the papers on this card are from Tilda Papercraft classic paper stack and I added some lace, white gems, glitter and vintage photo DI. This is probably more vintage shabby than shabby chic and I haven't put a sentiment on yet as I am not sure what I will use it for.

I am so glad I got in the garden yesterday because today it is really wet and miserable outside. I hope it is better wherever you are.

Enjoy the rest of your day whatever you might be doing and thanks for taking the time to visit me.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Rosette heart card

I thought I would make a card using the rosette heart that so many of you liked on my heart box post. Hope you liked the tuitorial too (see last post or page at the top of the blog).

This card has been inspired by several challenges -
Simon Says Stamp and Show - Embossing (there is both dry and heat embossing on this one)
Flourishes Timeless Tuesday - Button Up
Cute Card Thursday - Hearts and Flowers
Daring Cardmakers - Reeling in the ribbon   Sponsored by the Ribbon Reel
Mojo Monday - Sketch

White backing has been run through a Cuttlebug embossing folder and edged with stickles.
The long panel is a piece from my box, stamped and heat embossed with Sheena's pepper embossing powder, lace sewn to the side and two different ribbon flowers added at the bottom.
The brown piece has been stamped with a music image in white acrylic paint.
The heart made as my tutorial (see last post) and button and paper ribbon added.
Sentiment is a rub-on and the banner shape edged with stickles.

Have a great weekend and thankyou for stopping by today.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Pleated Heart Tutorial

Thank you for all the fabulous comments about my pleated heart and as requested by some of you here is a tutorial for making it.

Supplies -
Tim Holtz Rosette strip die
paper
small heart punch
glue
sellotape

                                                            Die cut a strip from the rosette die    
                                                            We won't be using the circle cut out.

        I made a template for cutting out.






       Notice you need to fold the rosette strip in half.
       Draw round the template.
   

        Cut round the shape you have drawn.
        At this point I put a very thin piece of sellotape
        over the fold to give it some strength,
        otherwise it comes apart very easily.





      
       Pleat the strip and put the whole thing together
       as shown in Tim's video on Youtube.

       Glue the ends together.

       Once you have pushed it together and glued
       little hearts on both the front and back, it will
       look like this and is ready to use.










Once you have seen Tim's video and then made your own template to cut round it is as easy as pie.

If you make the heart, please link your creation back to me so that I can see it and I would also appreciate you linking my tutorial on your post and not recreate it as your own. Please ask others to do the same.

Have fun.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

The Stamp Man Challenge # 16 - Hearts

Hi Everyone

UPDATE FRIDAY EVENING
I emailed the link for this post to Tim H himself and guess what??????  I got a reply from him - he thanked me and thinks the heart is BEAUTIFUL. Woo Hoo, Tim has visited my blog, how cool is that?

It's Friday again and the weekend starts here - yay. Hope you have got some nice things planned. Hopefully I will get in the garden tomorrow and start the spring clear up.

This week the challenge at the Stamp Man is to see hearts. I really had to rack my brains as to what I could make. I had recently bought some of those sweet little boxes for altering and yay I had a heart shaped one, so there was my starting point. I got out my TH rosette die to make the top embellishment but knew it would probably be too big and thought it would look better if it was a heart shape, so I set about altering the strip to make this fabulous heart rosette, I am just sooooo pleased with it. So much so, I made lots of them and they fit perfectly into the box.

Don't you just love it when something comes together like this? Real satisfaction. But I also wanted to link this to the CoC challenge at the amazing Linda's blog at Studio L3. I just can't believe that we only have 4 more challenges left to finish all the ideas in TH's fab book. So this week it is to use the rusted enamel technique and I have created lots of little hearts (as seen on the box and the pic below) and other embellishments that are going to be part of the goodies in the box to be given away.

So having papered, painted and stuck things on this is the finished thing. Must be careful what I say now, cos this is destined to become a birthday present soon, so shhhh.

Supplies

Paper made by Jill at The Stamp Man using Moonglow sprays and webbing spray. (Thanks Jill it is perfect for this box)

Trim given to me by my sister.
TH Rosette die
DI worn lipstick and vintage photo
Clear embossing powder
Eco-friendly acrylic paint in gold

Have fun today.

luv and hugs{brenda} xoxox

Challenges to have fun with -
Crafty Emmas - Red and Romance
Whoopsi Daisy - Hearts
Crafty Cardmakers - Hearts
Stampalicious - Hearts
Papertake Weekly - Have a heart
For Fun Challenges - Hearts
Penny's Paper-Crafty - Hearts a flutter
Stampin Royalty - Hearts
Simon Says Stamp - Anything but a card  (Tim Holtz rossette strip die used and DIs)

Clean Collage and Recent Wins

I love looking through blogs for inspiration and recently I had popped over to see Juls at The Glitter Chick and was totally inspired to have a go at clean collage, which is also in last months Craft Stamper mag.

This is my version and gives me more cards for my pressie tins. A completely different style for me again - but you know I just love to experiment with nearly anything. I don't think I have ever glued straight onto the card, but it is quite a nice effect. Do you think I will ever settle at one particular style? No, I don't.

The stamp is Elusive Images, papers and embellishments from my boxes of bits.

I hope you don't mind I just had to post my recent wins and top spots as well.

Stampotique New Year card won Pile It On #1 - a Fancy Folds CD and a 1 year subscription to the Technique Junkie Newsletter
Stampotique Again was a Top 3 at Stampin for the weekend
Misting Mask - was a winner at Shelly's Images with a digi image to add to my collection and I was also awarded a Ginger Gem at Gingersnaps Creations for my coffee filter flower. Woo hoo, a Ginger gem, I can't believe it.
Shabby Birthday was a Top 3 at Paperplay
Childhood Memories was also a Shining Star (Top 3) at Stampin Sisters in Christ

Hope you have a good crafty day.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Challenges to have fun with -
Sew Many Cards - Anything Goes
Craft Your Passion - Anything Goes
Fab 'n' Funky - Texture

Hybrid card

Digital crafting and is on the up an up where all the crafting is done via your computer with digital images printed out to use.  Well, hybrid crafting is just a combination of creating digital layouts and images with the physical making of something, (I don't think this refers to digi stamps).

As you know I love to play with digital images, combining them and layering them and this is what I have done with this card, layering a flowered frame with a postmark, butterflies and part of an address. I printed it out with extra butterflies that I cut, covered in distress stickles and added to it. I distressed the edges and added stickles, mounted it, stamped the sentiment and added some gems. Eh voila, a hybrid card.

Two of them to go in my pressie tins - they are mounting up now.

Hope you enjoy.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Crafty Creations - Red Rose
Flutterby Wednesdays - Open challenge to include a butterfly, angel or fairy.
Do You Stack Up - Red Hot
Craft Your Days Away - Photo Inspiration (Roses)
Cupcake Craft - Red

CAS - where are the dividing lines?

Some of you will know that I am making some cards to go in tins as presents with a birthday coming up and a thankyou present that is needed soon. My cards are a mixture of vintage, shabby chic and now CAS - well is it CAS? Because I don't know where the dividing line is?

Less is More is a new challenge blog and the whole idea of this has got me thinking. Their theme this week is pink, black and white - so it fits that.

The glossary on the LIM blog says

Clean & Simple -

A design of card with clean lines, minimal elements, areas of white space and few or no embellishments.

White Space -
An area of the card which has no image, layer or embellishment.
This can be any colour dependent upon the colour of the card blank.

OLC One Layer Card
One piece of card folded in half with no additional layers and minimal embellishments, where the image is stamped directly onto the cardstock.

So my card has been made by using a cuttlebug folder frame and I brushed over it with DI. I cut out the white inserts, stamped, inked and added gems. The outside layer and the frame have got some stickles round them. There is space, there are minimal embellishments, but there is more than one layer.

Now is this CAS or have I gone too far?????? I think it's overdone - but I will enter it just in case.

Have a fabulous week, wherever you are. I hope the weather is being kind(er) to you and if you are tied up in any of the thick snow, floods or fires that are around the world at the moment, my heart goes out to you. I wish you a safe journey through it all and hope that you will be back to normal very soon.

Take care.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Challenges to have fun with -

Phindy's Place - Emboss

Compendium of Curiosities week 30 - Altered metal

Oh I can't believe there are only 5 more CoC challenges left before we have completed all the techniques in the wonderful bible of TH. Linda however hasn't let the full cat out of the bag, but she has said that this won't be the end - so what is she up to? Can't wait to find out.

This week as the title suggests we are altering metal at Studio L3 and I have been itching to get started on my configurations box that DH bought me for Christmas. I knew I had some lovely little metal things I want to use and had to go searching in the shed to find them.

The little boxes are going to reflect across the ages and times of the lives of our close family. So the first box represents our grandparents days when life was much harder with none of the technology we know of today. The mangle symbolizes the way the wife and mother had to work in the home to keep the family washed and clothes and everything clean. Not like today is it? I can remember my Nana doing the washing in the scullery in a huge sink, pulling the sheets out, giving them a wring as best she could by hand and then putting everything through the mangle before hanging it on the line. Even though I had an electric washing machine when I first got married, I still had one with the rollers, (and they were electric too), that you put the washing through to get the water out, spinners were around but I didn't have one for some reason. Oh boy I am showing my age aren't I?

So turn to P.48 in the compendium to find out how to do the technique and I am sure you will be altering all sorts of bits and pieces made of metal. It's so easy and great fun.

I have already altered a few more bits ready to make the next boxes, which I am sure you will see in the weeks to come. I just seem to have so many projects on the go.

Have a lovely crafty weekend and pop back if you have time. I am going to make something with hearts and wings on next to support my friend Zoe's new challenge blog called Just For Fun. Go take a look if you haven't seen it already.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Challenges to have fun with -
Allsorts - Saving Nature -  these little ornaments had once been stood on display in a printers tray, now they find themselves with a new lease of life rather than being thrown away.
Creative Friday - Vintage