Blog Award

I want to thank Elke at Elke's Creative Corner for giving me this award and for saying some very nice things about my work on her blog, she is very kind.

So apparently I now have to disclose 7 facts about myself, oh well, here goes.

1.  I have been doing paper crafting for about 15 years although I have been doing other crafting things for much longer.

2. Apart from paper crafting I also enjoy embroidery and I trained at the Royal School of Needlework   which is located in Hampton Court Palace

3. I used to do a lot of dressmaking and even made my own Wedding Dress. I made most of my Daughters dresses until she was old enough to worry about 'Labels'. I once made 15 Bridesmaid Dresses and 5 pageboy outfits for the same Wedding.

4. I hate cooking unless it is something fancy.

5. I used to breed and show Fancy Rats

6. My Husband and I share our home with a small menagerie of animals, we have a Springer Spaniel, a Maine Coon cat, Fancy Rats, Chinchillas, a Budgie, a Tortoise, Tropical Fish, Chickens and Ducks.

7. What else can I tell you that might be interesting. Oh yes, I used to be a Police Officer!

and now the best bit is that I get to pass the blog award on to 7 other people, so here is my list

Karen at Krafty Karens Blogspot.
Becky at Becky's Craft Adventures
Wendy at Purple Crazy Crafting
Linda at Linda's Cards and Scrapbook Pages
Lez at Hungry Heffy Crafts
Charlie-Louise at Crafty Little Moos
and last but not least
Lesley at Crafty Love n Hugs

All these people have fab blogs and I hope you will hop over to their sites and have a look at their work.

100th Birthday

I was very honored when a friend from church asked me to make a Birthday card for her mother who was going to be celebrating her 100th Birthday. I have not been doing much crafting lately because of poor health but how often do you get the opportunity to make a 100th Birthday card! I suggested a Bookatrix card and my friend was very taken with that idea. She picked out a patterned paper and the colour of the flowers and left the rest to me.

The base layer is Silver Miri card. the next one is the flowered paper my friend choose, the third is a pale lavender glitter card and the last layer is a patterned vellum. The first and third layer have a rope effect peel off along the edge and the second layer has a plain peel off along the edge. I made a flower spray out of the flowers and mounted it on an oval of silver miri cut with a Spellbinders Die. I then separated a large crystal gem swirl and fixed one half to each side of the flower spray. I  also used single lavender gems in the corners of the first two layers and a lavender ribbon down the center.

On the other side I put the above poem, I found the original on the web and changed the words a bit to make it suitable for the occasion. I printed it onto velum and fixed it onto the velum layer and edged with these corners that I had in my stash for some time.

I added this extra 'booklet' under the verse for my friend to write on. I edged it with the same rope peel off and the peel off at the top came from the same set as the ones around the verse. This extra booklet also added the weight needed to balance the card.

I made a box for the card to go into and I also made a stand for the card to be displayed on. I edged the stand with the same peel offs as the card to make it match and I added a sentiment above the flowers. My friend was really pleased with the finished card which made my day. Her Mother had a wonderful Birthday and got her card from the Queen but it was not as individual as the one I had made for her lol.

A Most Generous Gift

I just wanted to share with you the beautiful flowers my friend and her family sent me for rescuing her daughters dress. She had wanted to pay me for my work but I had told them that it was my gift to her daughter for her Communion, which made my friend cry and was not my intention at all. I am sure these flowers cost far too much, they even came with the vase tied round with a matching ribbon. I hope that with care they will last a long time but I have taken photo's and they will last long after the flowers themselves have gone. I have some nice photo's of the Communion Service and I plan on making a little Scrap Book for the family as a surprise so maybe I will include a picture of these flowers as well now.

The Continuing Saga of the Communion Dress

All I can say is Arrrgh! As I took the dress apart I found more and more things that had been done badly or not at all and where the alterations had been made the dress was filthy! I don't know how anyone can claim to be a professional doing work like that and have the audacity to charge money for it.

Still, I deconstructed the dress and put it back together again, at each stage trying it on the little girl to make sure that it was fitting properly. Thank goodness it was half term and she could come over at short notice. Another thing that the lady spoilt was the matching headdress. My friend had asked her to make it smaller by half an inch and as it was a soft plaited head band with a veil attached that should have been a simple job. The  lady herself admitted that she had made it smaller by one inch by mistake an so it now did not fit. When I looked to see if I could undo it I found that it had been glued with great globs of yellow glue, the excess had been cut off and part of the decoration was missing. Rather than upset my friend anymore I sat down with some beads and wire and came up with this

I was very pleased with it especially as it was my first real attempt at making a Tiara, I also made a veil to go with it .

So, I am pleased to say that I managed to fix the Communion Dress so that most people would not know that anything had been wrong with it. It was not perfect but we knew that it would not be because of the damage done to it by the person who did the alterations. The little girl made her First Communion this past Sunday and she looked lovely, her big smiles made all the hard work worth while. There was a Parish Bar-B-Que after the service which was good fun even though it rained. It seems the way to cure our drought situation is to make it official! We have some lovely photo's so I will be scrapping those in the very near future but that is as close as I want to come to a Communion Dress for while lol. It really would have been easier to make a dress from scratch and probably quicker too but never mind, it is done now and I can get back to papercrafting.

No Time For Papercrafting

No, I haven't lost my Mojo; I just don't have time to make any cards or do any other type of papercrafting at the moment and all because I did not volunteer earlier. Sorry, I'm ranting, let me explain what happened.

A friend has 2 Daughters the younger is making her First Communion on June 12th and she is going to wear the dress her older Sister wore for her First Communion. The only problem is that the dress was far to big for her and needed alterations. When my friend said that she was going to take the dress to the local Wedding Dress shop and they were going to carry out the alterations I breathed a sigh of relief because it was a major job and, being lazy, I just didn't want to commit myself to it. My friend was quoted 20 pounds and 2 weeks for the work which I thought an appropriate amount of time but very cheap for the work.

3 weeks later my friend is calling the shop daily asking when the dress will be ready and getting strange reasons for  it not being finished. e.g.. they needed to find 2 new buttons, the zip was too long and, more worryingly, that dressmaker had not been given enough time to work on it! So 5 weeks later they finally get a call to say that the dressmaker had the dress in the shop and could they come in. My friend and her daughter went to the shop expecting to have to try the dress on to make sure the alterations were correct. But no, the dress was apparently finished and was packed up ready for them to pay for and take away. My friend was taken aback but not being one for confrontations she paid up and walk out with the dress. When she got home and unpacked the dress she could not believe her eyes. She knew she would be seeing me that afternoon so she brought the dress with her to ask my opinion, which in one word was 'Appaled'.

Originally it had been a lovely dress but now the catalog of things that were wrong with it made me furious. So now I am trying to put right what the dressmaker did to this dress and kicking mysef that I did not offer to alter the dress from the begining as it would have been so much easier! Oh well, that's my rant over, now back to the sewing machine,lol.

Whiff of Joy Challenge 104

The Whiff of Joy Challenge104 is the colour theme of Aqua, Pink and Cream. I needed to make a card for a friend who recently gave birth to a Baby Girl and I thought the colours would make a lovely baby card.

The image is of course from Whiff of Joy and is called 'Willow Holding Baby'. It is coloured with Promarkers and it and its mount have been cut with a spellbinder die. The background paper is from Prima 'Sweet Fairy' 6x6 pad. The swirl and butterfly's have been cut from Aqua glitter paper using a die from Little Claire and the roses are from Wild Orchid Crafts. The sentiment is from a stamp set by Lili of the Valley stamped in Pink ink and embossed with pearl WOW! Embossing Powder. The pink ribbon is from my stash.

Passion for Promarkers

The Passion for Promarkers challenge for Week 100 is Red, White and Blue plus a Charm and so I came up with the above card. I really enjoyed putting this card together, whatever did we do before Promarkers!

The image is 'Uptown Angel' by Kenny K and it is of course coloured with Promarkers. I cut the image and the mount using Little Claire dies 'Pointy Frames'. The backing paper is from the Papermania Capsule 'Blueberry Pie' Paper Pack and the doily is cut from some stock card using a Marianne Designs die. The flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts and the leaves are cut using another Little Claire die 'Leaves 1'. The  ribbons and charms are from my stash.

If you stop by and take the time to comment I just want to say how much I appreciate it.