Tesco Christmas Advent House

I know it’s very, very early, but as the weather was so lovely at the weekend, I decided to make a start on one of my Tesco Advent Houses, as I am sure I am about to embark on a labour of love, that will take a long time to complete ……..

My lovely sister made it her mission to find me several houses in the run up to Christmas last year, even imploring young male assistants to have a look in the back of the storeroom “just in case” – well the girl done good, but I didn’t have time to do anything with them until now ……

 

The warm weather gave me the incentive to get started, I chose to spray the body of the house with a white enamel effect paint – and the garden was the ideal place to do it as the process was very fumeified.

…… And while I took advantage of the warm weather, I hand painted the outsides and tops of drawers, twice, sitting at the garden table. I left the fronts unpainted, as I plan to cover them with assorted Christmas papers.

However, after all this painting I found that the drawers aren’t sliding out as easily as they did…… so I now need to sand all the drawers down a little in the hope that it rectifies the problem – roll on the next sunny day……

But, if that doesn’t work and because my fingers are a bit podgy to put in the spaces at the top of the drawers I have made some little knobs (I looked at using dolls house door knobs but they were a bit expensive)…… I may not use them, but I have them as an option.  I used some of the square wooden necklace beads I got from Poundland (see yesterdays post) and have sprayed them with several coats of paint. I intend to stick on a pale blue flat backed gem over one hole and glue the opposite side onto the drawer.  But that is a little while off ….. my next task is the sanding …….

What’s on my Desk Wednesday

I’ve been shopping again ….. and it’s a mixed bag today …

From Poundland – strands of square wooden beads – 100’s of them, I will undo them and make a few children's bracelets with some, and then use others to embellish the ties on tags etc.

These plastic trophies are from the Tesco party section, I think they were £1.00 or £1.50, I have used them for “Office” competitions before and put the winners name or competition theme on the base using dymo tape.

I have a thing for string!  This is beautiful, I had to order it from the Traidcraft catalogue, but I can see it now on brown paper packages ….. with a kraft tag …. plain, simple and classy.

My Erm ……. Naff Holiday Bag!

They say it’s good to get out of your comfort zone craft wise now and again …………….. it can now be said that I have been well and truly out of mine …… I’ve made, what can only be described  loosely as a tote beach bag …… oh my life ….

It all started with an idea on http://dollarstorecrafts.com/  for making bags from tea towels, shortly followed by a shopping trip with Lisa http://craftfairy.blogspot.com/ – I was rabbiting on about the idea and when we were in Poundland I bought a table cover with the idea of adapting it for the tea towel idea.

Needless to say the table cover has been in my cupboard ever since ….. until last weekend, when the sun was shining and my thoughts drifted to the summer …….

I couldn’t find the link on Dollar Store Crafts, so I just carried on regardless, cutting the table cover in half  …… I think I should have done something called boxing at the bottom of the bag (?), but couldn’t remember how to do it ……… so I stuck buttons in the middle of the flowers instead!

Well, I tried and I will use it – but next time I think I will just buy a beach bag from Primark!!!!

The purple handles came from a length of strapping I got from Penkridge market – lovely colour.

Lots and Lots of Robot Birthday Cards

Remember these robot stickers I bought from Poundland in Bristol last week …… well, I’ve used them and have certainly had my moneys worth .

There were two sheets of “bubble” robots and other robot bits in the pack.

So I am dead chuffed to get six cards from one pack, with some bits left over, that I will be able to use on other things.

The checked background paper is part of a pack of double sided green patterned paper from Stampin Up.

And the silver “studs” are Card Candy from Craftwork Cards.

Perhaps not to my taste, but I am trying to add a few more boys and mens cards to my repertoire.

Anyway, I shall put them in my box in the staffroom and see if they go.

Button Jar

I think I have saved myself about £9 here……

My mum was looking at a beautiful but expensive home decor/gift catalogue and showed me a picture of a button jar in it that cost £10 and said “You could make something like that” - well, I am always up for a challenge.

The mini kilner jar in the posh catalogue had a ceramic top but I had bought a box of 10 similar jars from The Range for about £7.99, (about a year ago), I think they are for a spice rack really – so the cost of my jar works out at about 80p

I took the orange rubber seal off the jar as I didn’t think I needed it. I made the  tag using a firm kraft brown card.  I put it through my printer using 2 Peas High Tide Font  for the word ‘buttons’.  All I needed to do then was to add an old wooden button and some twine and attach it to the jar.

I can think of quite a few people who would love this as a little present with a few lovely buttons in.

For font - http://www.twopeasinabucket.com

Red Gingham Mini Baby Book

Well, I have finished Ettie’s book and popped it in a box to match.

She really is a gorgeous baby!

I have steered away from traditional pinks and baby things because Mel, her mum is very modern, and I know part of the nursery decor is red gingham. With that in mind, I chose gingham papers, flowers and butterflies  with the intention, hopefully, of giving it a timeless feel.

All the embellishments are made using punches.

I think it took me about 5 hours in all to complete!

More Pendant Tile Pendant Experiments

I hope you are not getting bored of my glass tile pendant experiments, I am trying out a few ideas to see what works best before I go into production.

I’ve had another go at embellishing the tiles with small brass charms I have had for ages and some flat backed pearls. The papers I have used for the backgrounds are by K & Co.  They have a slight glittery effect that doesn’t show very well in the pictures – but it gives the magical fairy like effect I wanted.

I think that what I have made here is very much my taste – pendants that I would wear myself – so these are mine!

Because the charms are gold in colour I have had find gold coloured bails on e-bay, which I will attach when they arrive from http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/CHARMINGTHEBEADS__W0QQ_armrsZ1

Two More Newspaper Cards - Hope You're Not Sick of Them!

The above card was for my niece’s best friend, my brief was - must be OTT, lots of girly, sparkly, glitzy things, likes trendy bags!

I’ve used a packet of  3D stickers I got from Penkridge Market (Staffordshire). I had the last few packs, but I wish I could find some more as they have been brilliant for similar cards.  I have also added a few stars and extra gems to the bags.

The second card was for a colleague at work. Her daughter had just started modelling and she asked if that could be included in the theme. 

I asked for a photo that I could include and built around it. I made an extra copy of the photo, cut it out and used it  as a very simple decoupage layer. 

The camera is a sizzix die cut I got from e-bay,and the background paper is from “Love Elsie” which I love and again wish I could find some more of.

What’s On My Desk Wednesday

What, no shopping on my desk? This week  I have had to have a big restock on the basics; a mega box of linen card from The Papermill Shop and envelopes from E-bay – not very exciting …..

So, on my desk today is a baby book for a really lovely friend who has just had the most adorable baby. It seems ages since I have made a minibook . Hopefully I will finish it today or tomorrow so I can show you each page properly later on in the week.

Oh …. those aren’t spots on the baby’s face in the top photo, they are tiny nail art gems that I have put where I can see them!

More Experiments with Glass Tile Pendants

I’ve had another play with my glass tile pendants – I found a brilliant shop on Etsy where you can download  lovely collage sheets/files of 1in x 1in designs  that fit the tiles exactly http://www.etsy.com/shop/sparrowgraphic – Daryle was very helpful and answered all my queries.

I downloaded 5 files for about £7- but I can print them off as many times as I like after that. I tweaked each sheet a little bit before I printed them off to make doubly sure that the the design was a tiny bit bigger than the tile itself, thinking I could it trim off when it was dry.

I cut out the designs I wanted to use, stuck the tiles onto them and waited for them to dry.

I am quite pleased with the results, these were done in a rush as I was excited and wanted to try out the design sheets, so next time I will be a bit neater. I wouldn’t embellish them as I did with my first attempts as it just doesn’t  look right. However, I am thinking that a tiny bit of translucent micro glitter might add sparkle to the designs before they are stuck to the tile.   What this space………

I have tried to roughly calculate what each finished pendant will cost me – the glass tile –10p, the bail fastener 20p and square from design sheet 5p plus a bottle of  Anita’s 3D gloss finish – about 35 to 50p?

 I got my tiles as from http://stores.ebay.com/My-Craft-Dream 

I am just experimenting/playing with my new bits and pieces, but if you want to find out more just Google “glass tile pendants”, there is a ton of stuff out there about them.

Two Gardening Birthday Cards

I don’t usually make repeat card orders, but when I was asked to make two cards for the same day, the same age and with the same  interests, it seemed barmy to do two completely different cards …..

The very small pots and leaves on the shed are made using  punches.

 

I used my newspaper template card – the picture below shows how it looked when I printed the fronts on A4 linen card stock. As I was using embellishments on the cards I filled text boxes to use as backgrounds.  On most newspaper cards I put photo images in these spaces and make simple decoupage layers for extra dimension.

I got the ladybird stickers from Morrisons (99p)

I admit to making extra work for myself by cutting the garden sheds out on my Quickutz Silhouette as I just couldn’t find the right image for what I had in mind.

In answer to a couple of questions...
The template is something I have designed myself in Publisher, with every design I have to jiggle about with it, but the headings and basic layout generally stay the same.
When I have finished the card design I save it as a jpeg, and insert it onto a new page in Publisher, set on landscape, so it is roughly A5 in size, this is the base of the car.,   I then copy the image several time to crop the various parts I want to use for simple decoupage layers.  When all this faffing is done, I cut it all out, mounting the main design on a blank A5 card and layer the smaller bits on to it. A bit long winded I know, but it works for me.