Fun with distress inks and stamps

I've always been quite a clean crafter, ie minimal stamping and just colouring with my Spectrum Noirs, however I always wanted to get some distress inks and after buying some in America I seem to be using them a lot around the edges of my card layers. A few weeks ago I found myself bored in the study and just started playing with a brayer, distress inks and some stamps and made the below which are very different to my normal style but loved how they turned out. The oriental stamps were a free gift with a stamping magazine and the 'home' stamps were from the Kirstie Allsopp range at Hobbycraft

Using stamps from the Kirstie Allsopp range at Hobbycraft

Christmas Wreath Making With Women's Weekly and Hobbycraft

On 20th November I went to a workshop arranged by Woman's Weekly and Hobbycraft to make a Christmas Wreath. I'd seen the workshop on Facebook and booked tickets for my Mum and I.

I already have two wreaths but wanted to make my own and thought this sounded a great idea for £10. 

I arrived at Chelmsford Hobbycraft with my Mum and we found the workshop was going on upstairs so we made our way up. We were joined by two ladies from Woman's Weekly, one being Lifestyle Editor Jayne Marsden, two members of Hobbycraft and another 4 people who had booked onto to workshop. 

We were supplied with tea and biscuits while we crafted and each made our own green wreath, being shown how to add the different elements (lots of wire twisting).

We had a lovely time talking about Woman's Weekly and crafts we like and if we would like somewhere to share our makes online. The ladies at the workshop were into lots of different crafts including one lady who was currently doing a jewellery course. I explained that I liked lots of crafts but didn't really like projects where you can't do anything with them once finished, I like papercrafts where you can use them in someway as I don't have anywhere to store them and never know where to put things.

I really enjoyed making my wreath and it smells lovely with dried orange and cinnamon. My Mums was quite full in depth as she mainly used red berries on hers and I suggested she could use it as a ring for a large candle to make it a centre piece for the Christmas table which she thought was a great idea and maybe adding satsumas pierced with cloves 

The great thing about attacking the elements onto the wreath with wire means that we can change it whenever we want to. 

I've never been to a craft demonstration or workshop before but really enjoyed this one as we could do what we wanted and didn't just have to do what they said. 

Once we finished we all posed for a photo with our wreaths (keep a look out for me on the Woman's Weekly Blog.) I then went off to spend my vouchers we got for taking part. I brought a few bits I'd had my eye on but which weren't in my Christmas list - I brought liquid pearls (in a white, silver and gold), corner rounder punch and decoupatch glue. I did want to get glossy accents but they had run out so my Mums going to look for it when she goes shopping in there for my Christmas presents with the 20% voucher we each got. 

After a random morning I'm in the craft room!

This morning Lee told me he was getting up and was going to do some housework.....a little while later I heard a really weird sound but thought I must have dreamt it until Lee came running in and advised me the oven door had exploded! He cleaned the oven, shut the door and BANG the glass shattered and he was left holding the oven door handle! Glass went as far as 2 1/2 metres, it proper went! 

So home insurance people sorting that out tomorrow phew! Although it'll be microwave meals, takeaways and a lot of hob use for a while.

I then took Lee off to his guitar lesson and waiting in the car with two craft magazines and a coffee - Simply Homemade and Creative Stamping (lovely free stamps which was why I got it lol)

This afternoon I've managed to get in the craft room and investigate the DoCrafts Goody Bag I brought yesterday. I've never brought one before but it had lots of things I wanted anyway, Kraft card, tacky glue and loads of embellishments. I love things like this where you get a bundle of stuff you don't have and don't usually buy and you can make things you wouldn't. 

For example this card which I just made - I love the bells and spent a good five minutes playing with them. 

I've still got lots of Hunkydory Christmas kits from their Pick of the Week in the summer but have decided that I'm going to try as keep some of the kits for next year and make more cards with the new stash I have. I'm also going to be making an advent treat jar for my hedgehog with some dreamies in and will post once I've completed it.

Back to crafting and trying to tidy up a bit

Makery Wrist Warmers

After making the key rings from the Makery book, I decided to try the wrist warmers. My husband was out Saturday night so I used some spare wool to check I could make the wrist warmers (as I only started knitting less than a year ago and didn't want to buy new wool and mess up the thumb holes).

I made this pair in one evening (ok I did stay up waiting for my hubby until 12.30am) 

After realising how easy they were to knit I brought some lovely denim wool from Sirdar in 'vintage'. It was just under £6 which I didn't think was bad for one pair of wrist warmers. While in Hobbycraft I did pick up some DoCraft Tilly Daydream and Country Christmas bits which were in the sale bucket (the patterned rolls in the background are adhesive fabric rolls)

Anyway, back to the wrist warmers...I started them on Sunday afternoon and finished the left hand, then did the right hand last night. I was worried Sunday night that one ball of wool wouldn't be enough but I shouldn't have worried as I still had a new metres left after completing both. While doing my right wrist warmer on Monday night I was sat with my hedgehog asleep on my lap and all cosy. I do like knitting when it's cold outside, it's very cosy.

Tonight I did the part I was dreading...sewing the wrist warmers up! I've only sewn up a few knitting projects and I'm not the best but I was very pleased with how I did on these wrist warmers. I then wanted to add some decoration and add a button to each wrist warmer but took a while deciding which buttons to go for. I was deciding between wooden buttons, fabric covered buttons (the ones from earlier in this blog post) or shell buttons which were free with a craft magazine. I went with the shell buttons as they have an iridescence to them and have a good contrast against the dark blue wool.

They are so nice and warm and will definitely be an essential for me I this chilly weather. I really wanted them for this weekend for the dog show so I can sell my dog bandanas while keeping warm and still being able to sort money etc so wrist warmers are more practice than gloves and also much easier with my walking stick as I can still grip it. 

Next Knitting Project

Since finishing my Cath Kidston scarf I've started on a fluffy scarf for my sister. The wool makes one scarf and uses 20mm needles which are huge!

I sent the attached picture to my sister of the beginning of her scarf as thought it looked like a beard!

I brought the wool in the Hobbycraft sale and got a black mix and a brown one so will be making a scarf for my sister and one for my Mum.

Mug hugs!!!

Written on 31st Dec 2012 but an error occured and it didn't go online:

Today I'm mostly staying in the study/craft room as hubby has a new game which may feature my biggest phobia of all...SHARKS! I have such an irrational fear I freak out if I see a picture of one!

So far today I've got excited that I haven't got any duplicate Spectrum Noir pens (won some icy greys then asked for the dark and light sets of colours for Christmas), I then played with some felt, used vellum with my Ultimate Pro and now am chilling with some knitting.

I have two projects on the go, a Cath Kidston scarf and this afternoon I started a mug hug. I got a mug hug book for Christmas and while in Hobbycraft near my work (Chelmsford) I picked up a ball of tweed effect wool for just under £2 so I'm using that to make my mug hug and thb I'm going to use a coconut shell fish button from an old Crafty Creatives box. The mug hug seems to be a bit too tall but its a first attempt and I am using different wool to what the book says (mines chunky knit).

At Hobbycraft I also picked up some fluffy scarf wool and I'm just waiting for my 20mm needles to turn up from eBay although I will finish my Cath Kidston scarf first! I've got to a part in the scarf were I need to make stitches after I made a slot for the scarf to twist into (hard to explain but will post a picture when finished).

I better get back to my knitting....only 9 more cm of knitting to do till I have to start decreasing my stitches (my fav bit!)

Happy New Year all!

Crafting Adhesives - Updated

I've only recently started crafting, starting with my wedding invites which I started making around Christmas time and I started off with using glue sticks, foam pads and doubles-sided tape.

Foam pads are great for sticking card toppers on cards and decoupage but I always end up with the little square of backing paper getting everywhere! Also I've found that if I have just coloured in a die cut, I have to wait for it to completely dry or the tabs don't seem to stick.

Glue sticks are ok (ie like the pritt stick type) but I find that I need to have a bit of paper under so that I can go over the sides if not the paper/card does not stick down properly and also the sticks seem to dry to quick and don't stick down properly onto cards.

Double-sided tape was my favourite but it doesn't seem to permanently hold and also gets stuck to scissors really easily.

I then went onto trying tacky glue from Hobbycraft. I brought this for when I was making cardboard camera stands for our wedding (which we put business cards in asking people to upload their photos to flickr). This glue is good but does take a bit of time to dry or drys really quickly when you don't want it to. I also find that as it's wet, it makes the card/paper curl which can be really annoying.  I suppose it would help if I got a glue spreader, not just squeezing a little on the thing I want to stick.

Recently while watching QVC craft shows and Ideal World Create and Craft, they seem to use roller glue a lot. I have thought about signing up to the Ideal World Create and Craft Club, and saw they did these glue rollers, but I have problems with items coming via couriers rather than Royal Mail as they can't get to our postbox to leave a 'sorry you were out' card, or they can't re-deliver for weeks. I ended up buying a 'Stick It' permanent adhesive roller via eBay for just under £2. It came yesterday and I've used it on a few cards and while packaging up the die cutters I sold on eBay. It is very easy to use and not messy (unless to slip and end up gluing the wrong thing, or the table instead, and then its a bit hard to remove).

I'm looking to possible buy the gel glue tubes next which I've seen on Create and Craft. These look like a great mess-free alternative to the foam pads as they can give a bit of height from what I've seen and would also be easier to use on more intricate cut outs where the foam pads are too big. Until then I think I'll mostly be using my roller for big items and tiny dots of tacky PVA for more fiddly items.

Update...

Have given in and am purchasing silicone glue! I've found 1 Create & Craft tube with nozzle from eBay and will see how it goes before buying more. I've seen many people moan about the smell of these glues and there are odour free ones on the market but will see how this one is (ie if it gives me a migraine it's going in the bin). For £1 it's not bad.

The roller glue worked great for packing up eBay sells and attaching the printable postage (a first time trying that too). It doesn't seem to like my cards much though as I am currently using textured cards, not smooth ones.