I made this album over the christmas period for a lady who lost her mother before christmas. I wanted to make her something special that she could work at slowly to get her back into scrapping & this is what I came up with.

I started off with plain chipboard for the covers, made a small frame for one (the front) & covered them with lots of layers of tissuepaper & PVA glue. I then painted the covers with Polished Pigments & when they were dry, distressed them with white lumiere paint which makes it look silver.

I then made the embellishments, the heart & bird were cut from chipboard & painted with lumiere paint & the heart had crackle medium applied to it. I made the wings & the heart in the middle of the flower using Delight & a mould, painted them white & sprayed them with silver Glimmer Mist & painted the heart shaped beads with my silver krylon pen. Lastly I used the krylon pen to colour the letters for "my" & freehand embossed (with my cruddy handwriting LOL) the word "Mum" into some metal shim I had & trimmed it down to fit on the heart. Added rubons to both edges.

Next I made the title page using Basic Grey Periphery paper, blue & cream flowers, jewel brads, velvet ribbon, a Kaisercraft Heart & some card that I cut into shape, distressed with Distress ink & printed one of my favourite verses onto.

All it needed then was to be bound which I did with my Bind It All & ribbons tied on the binding.

I was very pleased with the way it turned out, hope you enjoy looking at it.

Christmas tags

OK so I am a bit addicted to making tags this year, so I joined in a challenge over at Allcraftz today, the rules were that there had to be at least 3 tags, they had to be in the same colour scheme & there had to be at least 1 christmas tree, 1 dove & some stars. These are what I came up with, the background I made a few weeks ago with Glimmer Mist & my own home made Glimmer Mist (a concoction of PearlEx, gum arabic & water, see my post back at the beginning of November) & these ones I masked using a flourish design I cut on my PI on cardstock (disposable! :) ). I stamped the backgrounds with various stamps (including a music stamp from my new set from Stamp-It!), embossed them with versamark & distress embossing powder in Fired Brick & distressed the edges & inked them with Vintage Photo Distress ink & then embossed them as well. The christmas tree & dove were both stamped with Versamark & embossed with Peeled Paint embossing powder & then inked & edged with a krylon gold leafing pen. I also added various metal embellishments, some beaded trim & some Prima christmas flowers & a button push through by 7 Gypsies. I think they turned out really well, I love them!

2 more cards ..

I know it's christmas time & most people are doing christmas cards, but hey, I always like to be different, so here are 2 cards I made yesterday that aren't christmas related.

The first one (well I hope its the first one, I always seem to upload them in the wrong order)I created the background by using black gloss cardstock & swirling copper alchol ink mixative onto it which gave it a rather gorgeous effect. The black square frame is just cardstock & black opals which have been stamped to give the texture. The cameo is a mould done with Delight & it, along with the photo corners & little plaque with the word on it have been coloured with a Krylon Copper pen.

The second one I decided to do because I had seen a card somewhere months ago with similar colours (but I have NO idea where now, in reality the colours are probably completely different, but this is what I remember LOL) & I really liked the colour scheme so I decided to give it a go. I used one of my Paper Artsy stamps as the central design, coloured it with a waterbrush & my Marvy markers & then sponged distress inks on around it in different directions to create the textured effect. I think it looks great & love the effect, I will be trying another one with different colours soon!

Christmas cheer

I made these few things as a Wishing Well wish on a forum I post on, the notebook cover has been embossed on the cuttlebug on C'oredinations cardstock which I sanded & then inked with my distress ink (Vintage Photo) to give the crocodile skin effect (I got the handbag shape idea from someone on a Yahoo group I am a member of). Both it & the christmas album have been bound on my BIA, the christmas album has been painted with polished pigments in that beautiful green colour & finished with Maya Road felt flowers.

The christmas baubles were also made using polished pigments, Myléne (from Mill Lane Studio) did a class on these last christmas which sadly I missed, but I did get told about it, so being the inquisitive & ingenious person I am, I checked out google & found some instructions on doing it, & here they are.

The card is white cardstock embossed on the cuttlebug & then coloured with Twinkling H2Os & PearlEx for the background & highlighted with a Krylon Gold leafing pen & bling.

I do hope the recipient likes them & they make her christmas a little brighter :) .

I've won an award ...

One of my blogging friends has given me an award - the Spreader of Love. The rules are you must post the award on your blog, name your bestower, then bestow the award upon 6 other bloggers and leave a message on their blog that they've received the award.

Thank you Myléne Mill Lane Studio for honouring me with this award. :)

It is now my privilege to pass it on to some other wonderful bloggers so that they too can spread the love, they are :

Dan from My Crafty Life - for always having useful hints, tips & videos on techniques plus being generous enough each week to share a freebie cutting file with everyone.

Pam from Yorkie Mom's Creative Corner for always creating such beautiful cards.

Bec from Proof of our Existance for always encouraging me & being so supportive when I wasn't sure where my scrapping was going. Plus her work is absolutely fantastic! :)

Jay from Indigo Inklings for her cuttlebug techniques & tutorials, they are always inspiring!

Liz at Red Crystal Star who's a great mate & I love her work.

And lastly Marnie at Marnie's Alter Ego because she is the most lovely lady & I love keeping up to date what's going on with her :) .

I wish I could give it to more people (& back to Myléne) but I can't so those are the ones I have chosen. Hope you enjoy being recipients! :)

As the end of the school year draws near & christmas gets closer everyone gets busier & busier & our family is no exception. But I did find time to participate in an online class called "Stories in Hand" by Jessica Sprague. One of the first things we had to do in class was create a binder to store our notes & whilst she supplied some downloadable paper & other stuff to simply stick on a specific pre-bought binder, I (of course LOL) had to be different ;) . The original binder was supposed to be 6"x6" but I bought a 7"x9" one & decorated it myself. All of the internal pages also had to be altered & I am still working on some of those, but here are the pics of the outside anyway. Its just a plastic folder, so I gessoed it, then painted it & attached the paper I chose (Bo Bunny Beautiful Life) & put on the ribbon & title etc. It looks really lovely & Im very happy with the way it turned out.

It's been a while now since I updated, we have been very busy with school stuff & then we had the boy's Halloween party last weekend. Since then I luckily have had some time to create, so using a method of making my own Glimmer Mist sent to me by my friend Irma, I made some christmas tags. Sadly as with previous posts you can't see the glimmer & sparkle that these tags have but they still look pretty anyway. They are just done on some card that has been coloured with Distress Inks & some stamped images. Anyway I hope you like them, I loved them so much I have started making some using different colours & combinations, so look out for those over the next few days.