Three Altered Jigsaw Pieces

I made these a little while ago when I had a “thing” about jigsaw pieces, mermaids, and dragonflies, after finding some wonderful US altered art blogs.
But I never got around to putting some thread and beads through the holes of the first two pieces……

The face is made using a filmo mould, and then sprayed with gold paint when “cooked”.  The leaves and dragonflies are made using punches, with tiny pearls and clear gems scattered liberally over them.

 
The gold seashells came from a charm site on US E-bay.
The mermaid pieces were covered with glossy accents to give a bit of depth and shine, a bit like looking into the sea!

Another End of Term Frippery

If you thought yesterdays end of term idea was cheesy …. you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Before you sits a small slim bar of chocolate ….. (38p for a pack of six, reduced in Somerfield, with a sell by date of Dec’ 10)

I’ve covered it with a map of the world that I have printed off and then added a handwritten sentiment.

…….. There must be times when my friends must dread going to look in their pigeon holes!!!!

Back view – As my sister would say “You’ve got far too much time on your hands!”

An End of Term Frippery

At the end of the school year I like to give my colleagues a very silly little “Happy Holidays” gift…. I’ve been pondering for ages what to do this year ….. then  it suddenly hit me in Poundland …………

Ten watches and ten candy bracelets for £1, brilliant!!!

I know it’s cheesy but what the heck!!!

I’m now going to ponder some more for other way’s and reasons for using “time” as a favour/novelty.

What’s On My Desk Wednesday?

Piles and piles of bracelets – the fruit of my Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening labours ……

Every one is different.  I have used a Primark multi-stranded wooden bead necklace (£4), two bags of wooden beads from The Range (£1.99 each), and a mixture of bronze and cream coloured pearls that I had already.  They are threaded on transparent plastic elastic thread which costs about £1.75 a reel – and is probably enough to make at least twenty bracelets

The larger, more unusual beads come from The Range bags of beads and have proved to be the most popular.

But now all my wooden beads are used up except for a few odds and ends ……. so what’s a girl to do ……………???

………. but start on her collection of glass beads of course!!!! This is a collection gathered from car boot finds, Hobbycrafts and Primark plus odds and ends I’ve had for ages.

I’ve gone for a very random look, no pattern, just what came to hand first, and I am thrilled with the results.

I reckon I will get at least fifty from my collection. I intend to give several as end of term gifts and then put the rest away until nearer Christmas.

Lisa and I are planning on doing a bit of car booting in the summer holiday, but we have agreed to walk on opposite sides of a row and then swap over at the top because we will both be looking for the same things …… especially beads and the sight of two ladies fighting would be unseemly!!

Wedding Card with Church

The lady who asked me to make this card requested that it was “churchy” …..

I downloaded the church design from Quickutz Silhouette because it didn’t look to “Americafied” and decided to use the same colour linen card for the whole idea.

 

I’ve used punches to make the flowers and leaves and small flat backed pearls for the centres. The font I’ve used is Papyrus.

Retirement Card

This is a card I made for a colleague at work whose mum was retiring as a market trader.

I used an ice cream booth Quickutz Silhouette download design for the base of the stall and trimmed bits off to get the right shape, then I cut out random box shapes using Bazzill papers and doodled on them to look like items for sale. The card was finished off with hand written signs and price tags..

Lucy’s Scrapbook

These are pages from the scrapbook I made for my daughter Lucy as one of my “New Years Makes” a couple of years ago – scrapbooking isn't really my thing so I make no apologies for the very basic layouts.

She is now 25 and will probably kill me when she sees this ….. but she was such a cute little thing when she was little.

And she’s still pretty cute now!

We called her Lucy because the moment she was born she opened her beautiful blue eyes and had a really good look around, as if eyeing us up – it was magic.

And I think she spent most of her childhood mixing her Dad’s groundbait for fishing!

When the children were small I wasn’t into crafting that much and I don't thing much scrapbooking was being done then either.


But, if I knew then what I know now …………….. !

Windmill Flower

Remember the windmill picks I got from Sainsbury’s ?  Well I have had a play and this is what I have come up with, I think it needs a little bit more tweaking , but this will do as the prototype should I make it again.

I had to remove part of the “workings” from the windmill as they just stood out too much from the card and the envelope would have looked bulky when the card was sent.  (Hmmm, perhaps I should have  just learnt to fold the windmill part and saved myself £1.99!!!!)

However, not to be defeated and with a disassembled windmill,  I stuck the flower down with a foam pad, coloured the “stem” green and used PVA to stick it down. I made a template for the plant pot, which is made with Bazzill card and then couldn’t resist adding a wooden ladybird to finish it off, along with a flat backed gem to cover the plastic centre of the “flower”

The leaves are made using a Woodware punch bought at NEC Hobbycrafts.

Geisha Girl Patchwork Card

This card used my nine scalloped square template and a mixture of stickers from several Accessorize packs.

All I have added is clear flat gems to the centre of the flowers to complete the design.

Making A Sweetie Bag with Topper.

A couple of people have asked how I make my sweetie bags and toppers so I have done a series of photos that I hope will help.

I use a medium sized die from Nestabilities Label Set 4  for the bag topper cut on my Big Shot

I then score it down the middle on my scoreboard

I use tall card cello bags to put the sweeties in and seal it with my Elitech bag sealer (bought from e-bay)

The bag seals and cuts, so I can usually get two sweetie bags from one cello bag

I apply double sided tape to each side of the bag topper

I then decorate the topper, sometimes using my Stampin Up plain and scalloped edged punches. (see Stampin Up link for more information)

….. and that’s all there is to it!!