Beautiful Blooms

This week I was lucky enough to find the new issue of Papercraft Inspirations Magazine. I had been on the lookout for it as it had some handy score boards included and I say lucky as it was the last one on the shelf...buried behind a gardening mag!

It has full instructions included to make lovely little rosettes but, as ever, I decided to see what I could do with it instead ;)

Here's what I did!

First I made the rosettes as per the instructions (top left) , using some lovely 12x12 paper by Maja Designs called 'Coffee in the Arbour. One side was striped and one gingham with a lovely distressed look. I added a button to each centre.

Once I had 6 rosettes I then snipped into each one, just as far as the point (top right).

Then i fired up my trusty glue gun (watch your fingers here) I put a small amount of glue between the snipped sections and squeezed the already scored paper together. This turned the rosette into a pointy flower.

I liked them so much I decided to turn them into a picture!

First I cut a rough vase shape from some brown speckled pearlescent cardstock I had leftover measuring approx 7.5 x 4.5", and as I never throw anything away I had a rummage and found a couple of paper hearts that were left from a die cut I had used ( this is why I hoard).

Now as lovely as the card was I decided it needed a bit more so decided to emboss it.

I used an xcut A4 folder with a lovely swirly butterfly design.

Next I cut two strips of the same paper I had used for the flowers into 1.5 and 1cm pieces and added some double sided tape

I added these to the top and bottom of my vase and trimmed of the excess.

I was lucky enough to have this box frame spare from another project and it was perfect for this!I carefully removed the back and the piece of paper they put in with the size etc on. I used this paper for the background of my picture as its a perfect fit so it seemed silly not to! I just needed to make it a bit more interesting!

I had a lovely silver Dovecraft ink pad that had yet to be used so I went a bit crazy and smeared it all over the paper which was perfect as it had a coating on it almost like photo paper which meant I had a bit more playtime with it. I then dipped some cotton wool into a little water and squeezed out the excess and smoothed over the entire piece softening the ink splodges. Now a quick coffee while it all dried!

Once dry I added a few strips of strong double sided tape to the back board. I did this rather than spray mount as the flowers and buttons had a little weight so wanted something that will hold. I then smoothed the paper onto the board and temporarily arranged my vase and flowers to see if everything fitted.

 Once I was happy I added some foam squares to hold the vase and give it a bit more dimension and hot glued my flowers in place and added the little hearts.

Everything back in the frame and Voila! I replaced my sorry looking keybox with a pretty picture proudly displayed in my hallway.

mmmm now to do something with the keybox!!

Oodles of Doodles!

I have had much fun this week doodling...well ok drawing/sketching...whatever you choose to call it :)

Here is a brief version of what happened.....the internet went down :O

I know I know! How on earth do we manage without it? haha! Actually it was pretty inconvenient as I really do need it for my work but in these tech mad times we are in I could still use my phone for emails so I wasn't too worried (once I had emailed apologies to clients anyway)

So with no immediate work to be done and an 11 year old daughter that was sooooo bored because she couldn't interact with her virtual friends, I invited her into the craft room, much to her delight!

Amber has a very creative streak too so we decided instead of getting messy with scissors and glue we would go really old school and draw ;)

I let her decide what we would doodle and animals was her theme. Away we went drawing bunnies (well easter is around the corner) and owls and ducks, before long we had quite a collection and lots of giggles!

Ambers Bunny!

I had already decided that each one of our new characters needed something quirky, so I decided to give them all huge feet. They looked very cute and we then decided to add a small friend for each, so bunny got a butterfly, duck got a dragonfly, owl got a ladybird...and so on.

My Bunny Sketch

Seeing that they had such big feet we decided to add their little pals to their toes just to add to the cuteness :)

My Big Feet friends collection were then scanned and each redrawn in Illustrator and saved as a graphic. I can now use them as digital stamps and have already had great fun making some quick cards to show them off. I even made matching papers!

Here are just a few of my drawings and cards.

So if there is a moral to this story I guess its this...... technology is all well and good, and yes we need it but once in a while its also good for kids and adults alike to just go back to basics and enjoy being silly and creative...away from the screens! We really enjoyed it and I have a fab new collection to show off thanks to Amber :)

If you would like to have a go at Bunny or Cow they are now available in my Etsy store as a digital stamp kit with matching papers and of course their pals!

 https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/CraftyTiddy

I will be adding them all over the next week or so.

No Mess paper!

So despite it being a Sunday I have spent the morning playing!

I love designing new crafty things and today its been digital paper :)

Perfect for scrapbook and great if you need a paper thats not in your stash. Just download and print....Voila!

I made some pretty baking related papers to start but I can see this becoming quite addictive.

I have added these to my Etsy shop (link above) and shall be adding a few more soon :)

Handbags at dawn!

Ok I admit it! I have a serious handbag obsession going on at the moment!

Mr Tiddy will be glad to hear they are of the paper variety as we have no more room for real ones ;)

I decided I would put my shiny new scan n cut to good use and design something useful and pretty so why not gift box handbags, I don't know any girl (big or small) that wouldn't love to get one of these.

Perfect for a slice of cake or sweets, even a lip gloss or soap maybe.

So after a few hours of designing this is what I came up with! A variety of bags!

Now I would like to say I now have this out of my system but sadly not so watch this space for an ever increasing collection.

The SVG Files for these can be found in my Etsy shop (link up top) and a little tutorial for assembly can be found here.

I hope you have fun making your own collection. You can achieve such different results with different cardstock and patterns :)

A New Crafty Start!

So I have been absent a while now and you may know that I have hung up my apron!

There were many reasons behind this decision of which I won't go into here but a few months down the line and I know it was the correct thing to do :)

I am still in firm contact with the cake world and have so many friends involved with cake that I will always have something to say about it but for now I have other plans.

I am now running a successful graphic design business, and as that means I can still be creative I am having great fun especially as most of my clients are cake business related!

I am as always...crafting.

I have been book folding...........

and papercrafting.................

and am enjoying every minute of it!

As I also love to teach crafty things I have also been designing lots and making templates and cutting files as well as book folding patterns.

I have started a new Facebook Group to help others with their folding and have big things on the horizon....exciting times!

peter rabbit trailer

Eggstatic!

Ok so I will let you into a little ninja secret......I hate cake :O

Ok well obviously I love cake...what I mean is I don't actually like to eat cake :O

Ok Ok...dont shoot me down :)

||What I actually mean is my body really doesn't like cake, gluten, bread, pasta...oh the list is endless...i swell like a pregnant goat haha! So I love cake but it dont love me so I avoid most of the time......however one thing I don't really like and wouldn't care if there was a world shortage is......Chocolate! Yup! You see I am a savoury girl at heart...give me some cheesy biscuits and I will munch my way through the lot without blinking, but the brown stuff......no ta!

So you see when I was asked to make this weeks cake, which not only involved chocolate...lots of chocolate, but also involved the one chocolate that actually makes me go ewwwww....it was quite a challenge, and if there is one thing a ninja likes its a challenge!

This is the result!

It still makes me feel a little ewww if I am honest, especially when one lady asked if it actually ooozed the yellow goo! No it didn't but it was many layers of galaxy chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache, so I am pretty confident that the egg loving birthday girl will love this too :)