How chuffed am I, I've just had one of my tutorials added to the Inspirational Tipe, Techniques and Tutorials blog.







So please check it out for mine and other great tutorials.

Fennel Seed Head Card

The challenge on Our Creative Corner this week is for something old that's new. Well, like almost everyone else I've got lots of things in my stash that are old and neglected. In my case it's a brayer. I bought one some time ago and I've not been able to master it at all. So this card is for you to see how you can use those bits of card that you practise on and think aren't good enough.

I am often asked for cards for men and it is always difficult to come up with anything for them. So much of the stuff in the shops is covered with beer mugs that I decided to go for something refreshing and natural. Flowers are out for most men but seeds and weeds seem to be fine. This is what you get in this card.

What you will need:


Fennel Seed Head from Stampinback
Pieces of waste card from when you've been learning to use a brayer
or some nice paper
Stazon in Stone Grey
Sentiment stamp from I Brake for Stamps
Light duck egg blue ribbon from Craft Fairy
Toning background paper for the base of the card

Happy crafting

Ribbon Flower Tutorial 2

Well! The response to my last flower tutorial was huge so it's spurred me on to do another one and as we have just added fabulous satin dot ribbons to the Craft Fairy site this was an opportunity to use them too.

So above, is the finished flower and now I'm sure that you all want to see how I made it.

First you will need to assemble your ingredients:

On my table I had:
4 strips of hot pink satin swiss dot ribbon each measuring 15 cm.
A few buttons. I hadn't yet decided which ones to use. You will need one bigger than the other though.
Cotton
A needle. Use a sharp one.
Start your flower by putting some glue on one end of the ribbon:

Fold it to the centre add glue to the other end and fold that to the centre too. Your ribbon should overlap and form a loop that the glue holds together in the centre.



Once you've done this you can layer up the pieces as seen in the picture below and now you're almost ready to sew them together.

I played around with the buttons that I had on the table and I finally chose a pink and a green button as I liked the way that they looked.
You need to be aware that you are sewing a lot of layers of ribbon together so that's why you will need a sharp needle. I started by sewing just two pieces together to get the position right.


Now layer up the pieces and sew together. Add your buttons and sew together and your flower is ready to go...

A necklace for a change

This post is a bit of self indulgence as I made myself a necklace and I wanted to share it so I decided to add it to my blog.

I bought some beads for Sandra's Accessories and she had a similar necklace on show and I decided that it looked easy enough to make. It was and here is the evidence.

It's not the best photograph as it's a scan but the light wasn't good enough to tahe a photograph.