Gardening Fairy

I've been playing around with lots of card designs lately and this is one that I've wanted to make for a while. It's a scene design and one in which I've combined the flower drawing with calligraphy pens to create a garden of flowers for the fairy to water. I really, really hope that you like it.

The fairy stamp and the sentiment can be bought here.
The pens for drawing the flowers here.
The ribbon here.
The butterfly here.
The pens for colouring the fairy here.

The card is entered in the

Double Dutch Challenge - Make a Scene.

My Time to Craft Challenge 122 - Up in the Air.

Papertake Weekly - Anything goes

Rainbow Lady Challenge - Your Choice from 2010. I chose Make a picture

Babies

Yesterday, rather earlier than expected, a little boy was born. So to celebrate this fantastic event I've made him a card.

The stamp can be bought here.

The ribbon here.

I've entered the card in the Alphabet Challenge, I is for Infants, I found a challenge in the end and it's just perfefect.

Stop Craft challenge, and

Elephantastic Challenge, both of which are, New Beginnings

Sew Many Cards Challenge - New Things

Forgotten Stamps

Sometimes a much loved stamp gets forgotten in the jumble that is my stamp collection and it can emerge in a much needed tidy up. This beautiful glamour girl is one of those lost treasures. I've done somrthing different with her today as I've used lots of elements that I don't usually associate with a glamourous figure, gingham being one of those.


If you really love this stamp you can get the stamp here.
The gingham ribbon here.
As I chose the colours that are in the Colour Create challenge 61 - Pink, red and white it is entered in that today.

Poppy Card for the New Year

Well, Christmas may be over but the year goes on and I thought that I would keep the Christmas colours going for a while with this green, red and cream card. The poppy is always a popular flower and it lends itself so well to this colour theme too.

The stamp is from Stampinback and available here.
The ribbon is available here.
The sentiment is from I Brake for Stamps and is available here.

I've entered this in the Craft Your Passion Challenge 38.

Crafty Ann's Challenge blog anything goes.

City Crafter challenge blog. Stamp it out.

Little Red wagon, Leftovers

Happy crafting

A Very Special Thank You

Post Christmas is the time for thank you cards so here's one to kick off the season.

If you want to make something similar with this fabulous stamp from I Brake for Stamps then you can get the stamp sheet here. It is only £11 for a sheet of 9 stamps of varying sizes.

The willow stitched ribbon is here.

The thank you stamp is here.

The image is stamped in Stazon and coloured with Art and Graphic pens from Kuretake available here.
This card is entered in the

Papertake Weekly challenge Be Thankful

Phindy's Place Challenge, Give Thanks

My First Easel Card

I know that this technique has been around for some time, but, this is the first one that I've ever made. So be gentle with me dear reader as it may not be up to the standard that many of you seem to achieve on the blogs that I've read.

What I like about the easle card is that it allows the recipient to see the front of the card. That, after all is what we've worked on. That's what we've spent hours trying to perfect. So let them see it!!!

If you like what you see and want to make it for yourself you can get the

rubber stamp here

the digital version here for only £1.50

the blooms here

leaves here

I've entered this in the

My Time to Craft Challenge 121, Brand Spanking New

Digital Tuesday Anything Goes

The Shabby Tea Room, Shabby Chic Baby. This requitres some fabric and I have used ribbon.

Fairy or Angel?

Fairy or Angel? I actually think that this fits both categories. I've been waiting to do something with this beautiful stamp for a while and today I came up with this.


Stamp can be bought here.
Ribbon here
I Brake for Stamps sentiment here

This is entered in the Crafty Creations 'Angel 'challenge.
the AiFactory challenge.

Fairy Happy Birthday

How cold is it with you? I bet that it's freezing and that you wish that this awful snow would go away as soon as possible. There is a silver lining to all of this snow: you can stay inside and craft!
I've decided that the best thing to do is to enter as many challenges as I can. So I'm starting with the Stamp with Fun Challenge by Tina.
Cute Card Thursday for 'One for the Kids'
Stamp Fairy challenge. Rather appropriate for a Craft Fairy don't you think?
Digital Tuesday challenge, Let's Celebrate.

I've used the Party Fairy stamp from Craft Fairy natch, and you can get it here.

She is also available as a digital image here. At only £1.50 she is a snip and no postal costs, no waiting, and no worries that the delivery is not going to get to you as the snow has stopped play.

I used some of the craft Fairy flowers, which are here.

I coloured her in with Art and Graphic pens from Kuretake, available here
The ribbon that I used is the rosy mauve 16mm double faced satin availabe here
I hope that you like it as much as I do.
Stay warm.

Calling all gardeners.

I bet that this awful weather has upset a lot of would be gardeners. The cold has frozen the earth and stopped them all from going outside to get on with the winter work. To compensate for that I’ve made this humorous card for the gardeners in your life. Go on, give them a laugh.

To make the card you will need:
Big Daddy stamp from I Brake for Stamps. This can be bought here at Craft Fairy.
Art and Graphic pens to colour up the stamp.
A selection of papers to layer up the card
Foam pads to stick on the layers
Glue
Grosgrain ribbon which is available form Craft Fairy
Eazi-score board for making the perfect crease on your card.

I'm entering this card in the Sketch Saturday challenge. So wish me luck.

Sentimental verse freebie

Over on the Craft Fairy website we have started a freebie section. So far it has mainly been verses or funny quips. So today, I've added a verse, that I wrote, for a sentimental card. I hope that you like it. I've only printed half of the verse on the sample card but you can get the whole verse on the Freebies section of the Craft Fairy web site.
Happily this fits in perfectly with the theme on Allsorts challenge blog which this week is, Free and Easy. To see the challenge pop on over.

To make this card, use a 14cm x 14cm base card.

1 sheet of patterned paper 13cm x 13cm

1 piece of pink satin edged chiffon 9cm

A selection of flowers from Craft Fairy flowers section.

Tan brown leaves

Free sentiment from the freebies section on Craft Fairy

See the tutorial on corsages for a 'how to' on the rose corsage.

One important point.

The card was scored and creased using the Eazi-score board from Diamond craft.

if you want to see how to use it then click here to be taken to a set of video tutorials.

A Birthday Card for my Grandaughter

It's almost birthday time for my youngest grand daughter and I decided to get in early with her birthday card. I chose the gardening fairy for her as my littlest granddaughter may be only three but she really loves gardening. She also loves the flowers that I drew with the Kuretake pens so I decided to make a card that combines the two things that she really loves the most. Except me that is!

What you will need:
1 base card, 140mm x 140mm
Gardening Fairy Unmounted rubber stamp
Zig Kuretake tut pens in colours: 207 (for skin) 50 for stems and a variety for the fairy,
a saying.
Baby pink and pure pink Kuretake calligraphy blending pens
6 mm green gingham ribbon

This card is easy peasy to make.
Draw the flowers (see the 'Quick and Easy guide to drawing flowers with pens)
Put a strip of double sided sticky tape across the base of the card and stick the ribbon on to the card. Add a bow to the ribbon.
Stamp and colour the fairy, cut it out and use some foam pads to stick it to the card.
Add your desired sentiment and doodle around the edge of the card.
Finished.

Knitting is the new aerobics.

1. For all of you knitting mad people out there this card is just perfect.
2. She's made with Knitting Hats Hazel, a stamp from the wonderful I Brake for Stamps and she is available from Craft Fairy.
3. She is coloured in with Art and Graphic pens from Kuretake and
4. the ribbon is 16mm double faced satin from Craft Fairy
5. The saying is also from I brake for stamps.
6. If you make something with this stamp then please let me know.

Calligraphy Daisy Card

Some of you may have already purchased my new Flower drawing book and seen that there is a daisy added to the flowers that you can draw with the wonderful Calligraphy pens from Kuretake.




What I have shown you here is how to use the drawings to create a card.

The daisies are drawn on a piece of card which was 7 cm x 9 cm approx.
I used Butter and Rose to draw the flowers and Olive Green 56 in Art and Graphic pens to draw the stems and the leaves.
The daisy in the middle was drawn first when the second colour was at its strongest and the two others were then drawn. The lighter colour on the two flowers either side give some appearance of recession.
The card was then edged in the gold metalic calligraphy pen to make it look as if it had a border.
Finally I added someof the new 16 mm satin ribbon in willow to give the card some texture and luxury and a saying to finish it off.

Read My Lips Lucille

I just had to make a card out of this fabulous stamp, Read my Lips Lucille. I've had her for a while, but I really wanted a good saying to go with her. I found the one that I've added here and neadless to say, I'm over the moon. The stamp is on sale at my Craft Fairy site and it is made by the wonderful Della from I Brake for Stamps. Her Humerous Senior range is the original and the best too.

What you will need:
1 base card, 140mm x 140mm
Contrasting card for layering
Read my Lips Lucille stamp
Zig Kuretake tut pens in colours: 207 (for skin), 56, 23, 49
A button for the corner
A saying.
Feel free to copy the one that I've used. I printed it out on the computer, cut it out and layered it up.
16mm scarlet satin ribbon for the centre of the card.

I really didn't think that this lady needed my usual pinks so I went for no nonsense colours, but because it is nearly Christmas I added some reds too.

Super fun Christmas

This is a card for the grumpy old ladies in us all.

Are you all getting ready for Christmas? If you are then here’s a rather different card for you to make this month. It’s a funny one for a change.




You will need: 1 base card 140mm x 140mm,
I used white linen card.
1 piece of white card 1 piece of red card
1 piece of doodlebugs jolly holly paper
1 length of 9mm red saddle stitch ribbon
1 sentiment and the package lady stamp from the 'Censorship' sheet of unmounted rubber stamps.
Stazon in Stone Gray
A selection of pens to colour the image.
H2O waterbrush from Kuretake.
paper glue 3d foam pads.

To make the card Stamp the image onto a piece of white linen card. Colour it in and trim the card to leave a fairly generous border around the image. Stick the image card to the red card and trim to leave a thin border. Stamp the sentiment onto another piece of white card and mount onto red card and trim to leave a similar size border. Cut a piece of jolly holly paper to cover about a 1/3rd of the card and stick to the base card. Tie a knot in the ribbon and use it to cover the join. Stick the images to the card with 3d foam pads.

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...

Ribbon Flower Tutorial

As many of you may know, we sell lots of ribbon at Craft Fairy and I have now learnt not to be amazed when customers ask me... What can I do with ribbon? So to help out those who don't know, here is my latest tutorial.


Gingham Ribbon flower:

1. You will need a 10 inch length of ribbon. I used this black and white gingham. You will need at least 23 mm ribbon for this to work. Ribbon available from Craft Fairy.
   
2. Thread in your chosen colour. I used white but red would be quite nice if you have red on your card or page.
3. Two buttons, one slightly bigger than the other.

Now comes the fun part:

Thread your needle and with small stitches, stich along one edge of the ribbon.

When you get to the end of the ribbon, pull the thread to make the ribbon into the sort of cartwheel shape that you can see in the picckie.

Sew the ribbon together at the back... No one wants to see tacking stitches.

Now sew the bigger button on first and then when it's secure sew the smaller button on top.
There we are, ready to be used.

Fairy, but with a twist

Yet more fairies. Well, yes, but with a twist as I made this using more blue and beige. I also wanted to enter the Sketch and Stash challenge with the fab layour that they have this week, and the Spoonful of Sugar challenge that is also running. That one is for lots of layers and I certainly used lots on this card. The card is again made with my soon to be released fairy images so keep on looking and as soon as they are ready you will be the first to know.

Stained Glass window card

Stained Glass window card is my choice for the latest challenge on Our Creative Corner. They have a challenge for blue and green so I thought that this fitted the bill really well. I made it some time ago but I was keeping it for something special and this challenge really is something special.
I wanted to be the first to enter. I really get a kick out of that. So silly, I know but indulge me.

Now, don't be fooled into thinking that I've put on any stitching. It's dots made with the pen. Quick and simple. Makes up for the age that I took to colour in the stamped image.

I know that you are going to want to buy it immediately so go to Craft Fairy now to get it. It's the beautiful Stained Glass Flower stamp.