Having fun with vellum!

Vellum! It's great stuff, the range of things you can do with it are amazing. Yet, as much as love it I still hold back using it, hence why it is one of the last things in my DT kit to be used. I always worry that the glue will show through or it will crease and mark but when I do use it I love the results!! So, get your vellums out and have a play and experiment and see what you can come up with!

Right now vellum is available in the webshop pound stop, you get 10 sheets of patterned vellum for £1 (funny that)! There are some seriously beautiful patterns and designs to be had, so go on over and take a look!

This first card was great to make and simple, I really enjoyed doing it and I love it! I used two different vellums on an aperture card to create the backgrounds, I edged all of it with a lilac felt pen, and made some gathered ribbon flowers, set with a crystal in the middle. I prefer to use organza which came out of a poundstop lucky dip bag, but all ribbons work and give you different results. I drew on the stems and glued a small bow on the bottom.

For this card I followed a parchment pattern, which are pretty easy to locate on the internet, I traced all the design in gold gel pen and pierced and cut the vellum according to the instructions, I added a blossom and mounted it onto a pink greetings card and job done!


My last card is another following a parchment pattern, using embossing and piercing, this time on plain vellum, some of the HOTP paper pads contain sheets of 12x12 vellum which is great for this, and the paper pads are in the sale at the moment for only £4.95!! Plus you get loads of co-ordinating papers as well!! Just read the descriptions to see which hold vellum!!

There's still time ...

to take part in our monthly challenge & win a fabby prize! You have until the end of the month!

just a quickie from me {alix}

Hello crafters!

Life has been a bit hectic for me {and the family} lately, so I've not been around much...but as I have half an hour to myself now...I thought I'd spend it with you! :)


This is my latest project, a repurposed box {which used to contain cotton buds...how did crafters ever cope without these little beauties???}. I've embellished it with pp's, ribbon and a couple of cute charms, so its now a girlie gift box.

The papers I've used are from the lovely Siesta collection, very pretty and perfect for girlie projects. I've die cut a flower {using the Big Shot} from the same papers, and tied a thin ribbon all the way around, suspending one of the lovely heart charms, and tied a bow with a sheer ribbon from which I've suspended another charm, this one reads *glamour girl*. There are lots of gorgeous charms available in the webshop...here, and remember to stop by the Pound Stop for some bargain ribbon selections too!

Ok, that's me for today, but I hope to be back soon...and until then...*happy crafting* :)

I really LOVE These Papers!!!

Have you checked out the Samantha Walker - Day By Day collection yet? They are gorgeous!! They have been sitting here being lovingly stroked for too long and I finally got the nerve to cut into the remaining sheets I had, it was tough but I'm glad I did because I love the resulting LO!!

I wanted to do a page to commemorate my 30th birthday and I how I felt about it! (sheer fear didn't come close to how I was feeling about it!! LOL) But it happened anyway and I had a great time and I love being a 30 year old!

I used Cream Ledger as my base paper and I cut the brown border from the Address Ledger sheet and glued it to my base, I cut a strip of the reverse of the Address Ledger paper which is lined for my journalling. I mounted the photo onto some scraps of the Quadrant paper which still had it's border intact, and with a little creative cutting I managed to transfer the border to a matt for the picture. I used more from the Address Ledger sheet to cut out the big 30 and I mounted it onto the lined side of the same sheet to make it stand out more. I outlined all of the page elements in a heavy black pen, and then wrote all my thoughts and feelings down as they came to me.
The collection also has a sheet of Stickers, Tags and Accents, which I absolutely love and I was itching to use on my page, but I didn't want to overload it so I have saved them for now, I'm sure I will find a project for them so watch this space!!!

Sweet Pea

I am totally in love with these Fancy Pants Sweet Pea papers - they are soooo sweet!

For this layout I used the Emma paper as the background, and it's so pretty I didn't want to cover too much of it up, so I kept the design the the bottom right corner which is quite plain. I layered the photo onto strips of the Noah and and reverse of the Brenna papers, and added a couple of lengths of ribbon and ric rac and some buttons. I finished it off with a few of the die cuts (which are sadly out of stock) - a couple on the photo, and some others layered up to make a larger embellishment.

There are no less than 20 gorgeous paper collections in stock in the webshop and you can find them all HERE.

More Personal Shopper!

Here's another Layout from the HOTP Personal Shopper kits - this time I've used the July 06 kit.

Again, everything on the LO is from the kit, with the exception of the Queen & Co Black Celtic Felt Fusion.

I used 3 of the papers from the Retro designs. For the scalloped circle I used a Marvy punch, then threaded the turquoise grosgrain through the metal book plate and positioned over the top. The "remember" card was attached using this gorgeous little clip, and I attached the plastic tile with black brads and then wrote on it with a permanent marker.

You can find all the Personal Shopper kits, at just £9.50 each HERE.

Storage!!

I love storage, I love seeing all my beautiful stash neatly (yeah right I wish!!!!! LOL) packed away and looking lovely until I get round to using it, and I LOVE making my own storage!!!
SO... first is my offering for Alix's monthly challenge. You know the polysterene boxs that hold denture tablets in the supermarket? Well they are just the right size for storing little bottles of glitter, inks, paints and they look good! So without wrecking the shelves in Tesco, I helped myself to a couple of empties, I used some scraps of paper from my Lucky Dip paper pack, available in the Pound Stop over in the webshop, I tied some Lucky Dip ribbon round it and added some felt shapes, these were Fashion Sense Felt - With Love, I did want to paint it also but I wasn't sure how it would react with the polysterene, but I do intend to find out, so watch this space for the results of my experiment!!!

Second, you may remember my collage house ATC's I made with English Paper Co papers, well they all got swapped out and I recieved a lovely collection back, so I decided to make a nice little storage box for them. Once again I used Lucky Dip papers and adhesive, that's it!

Personal Shopper

Here's a LO I've created entirely from the November 2006 HOTP Personal Shopper kit - that's the beauty of these kits, they contain absolutely everything you need to create tons of great LOs - and cards too for that matter! Even better, they're on offer at just £9.50 each in the webshop! Find them all HERE.

And don't forget to check out Alix's monthly challenge here - take part and you could win a fab prize!

And also, the fab new bargains Beverley has added to the webshop HERE.

Ta Daa...the monthly challenge starts here!!

Well hello again and welcome to the all new Monthy Challenge on Blog til you Drop!

We have decided to abandon the weekly challenges, and instead run single challenge for the whole month, to give people more time to join in! At the end of the month the DT will choose a winner and they will win...actually that is still under negotiation at CTYD HQ...but trust us...it will be good!! :)

Ok, so the first of these challenges is to *repurpose* something for your crafting. In my examples I've repurposed 2 lots of packaging {a wooden draw that contained small screws and a cotton bud pot} but you can use anything you like or have lying around waiting for a new *purpose*. Its a lot like recyling really :) A few suggestions might be bottle tops, magazine pictures, the ribbon from your Easter egg...you get the idea...

As always you can enter a card, LO, home decor item or ATC...whatever you like really...we try to be pretty inclusive to all crafters here at BTYD. Just e-mail a photo over to Beverley and leave a comment in this post so that we all know to go and check out what you've done! You can also click on the gallery icon at the top of the page and comment on other people's entries too which is fun...

To get you started here are my examples. Firstly a wall hanging {what is it with me and wall art atm!!!} that I've made from a wooden draw that contained small screws. I've painted it, lined each section with off-cuts of paper from the Coffee House collection, and then stamped some stars onto the paper using a wooden star as a stamp. Then I've added some photos, charms and buttons, and some of the amazing felt die-cuts which are available here. For my purposes I've roughed them up a bit by finger painting some paint onto the edges :) *i do love to get messy*

Then I've used my Cropadile to make holes for the sheer ribbon, and added another charm hanging at the bottom. I have to say I'm quite pleased with the end result!

My second example is very simple and uses a cardboard pot covered in stips of ribbon, and then embellished with an assortment of felt and paper flowers to give a fun, funky place to store all sorts of crafting bits and bobs!

Righty ho then, I hope I've given you something to think about...and you'll join in with the new style challenges...and I look forward to seeing all your creations!

the all new monthly challenge...

is coming...but it seems my camera is almost as poorly as my MIL atm...and its just unformatted itself...which means i've lost all my photos!!!

i'm off to take some more...but its pretty dark here now...so please bear with me!!

it will be worth the wait...*promise* :)

A family of girls...

I'm guessing you can tell that i love these Crush pp's by Fancy Pants...in fact i'm thinking Fancy Pants just might be my new favourite manufacturer...*gasps from friends and family*...and apologies to *********!!

For this LO {of my Mum and her 4 sisters} I've used the pp and the die cuts from the Crush collection, a few random buttons i had lounging in my sewing tin, and some white acrylic paint to make the raised dots and the antennae. As you can see i cut around some of the flowers to frame the photo, then layered the butterfly on top with foam pads. Do you like how i've made the body out of buttons? i thought that was quite cute!! lol

I've made some striaght horizontal lines with satin ribbon from the Lucky Dip selection, used my offcuts of pp with a large tag punch to make the title. This punch is a bargain reduced to £5!!! And so useful, as you can then make all your own tags to co-ordinate with all your favourite papers yourself...saving you another fortune on die-cut ones!! Good, huh?

Finally, I've double stamped the title to give it depth, and doodled stitching and journalled in a fine pen.

I hope you like my efforts today...and maybe...just maybe...it will inspire you to go off and make the same thing...or something completely different!! :)

TTFN,
Alix

English Paper Company

I've made these 4 cards from just 2 sheets of English Paper Company 12 x 12 paper (along with a few other bits) and as they're just 13p a sheet - that's a real bargain!

I used the Blue Cornflowers paper and the blue dots (now sold out). I also used the white reverse of the paper for matting.

The sincere thanks and congratulations stamps I used are both by A Muse and are just £1.50 each in the sale. The scalloped shapes were cut using Marvy punches, and I added some ribbon from the Lucky Dip satin selection.
The white flowers are these DCWV cardstock ones and are great as they can be used plain or chalked, inked, painted etc. They look great with button centres too! The chipboard butterfly in the first picture is from this Creative Imaginations pack, and you get loads for your money!

Check out the new products as Beverley has added some more fab bargains!