The Craft Barn Alpha Challenge - F for football and Fleur

 The Craft Barn Alpha Challenge is F this time, and I choose two words that don't go together relaly Fleur and Football, and I don't even like football (so please forgive me for the two stamped cricket balls - they all looked the same!).

This proves I cannot draw a football.

The Craft Barn Alpha Challenge - V

I only found out about this challenge at The Craft Barn blog yesterday and I have had a lot of fun with it! The challenge is to alter an old dictionary, a redundant one or a charity shop buy. You can also make tags or journal pages without a dictionary but you have to stick to the same thing right the way through this. Now I just hope my book stays in one piece or I will have to add it to pages and make a new book. 

The letter is V, and this is an old French dictionary of no great value as you can see, so I didn't hesitate (much) as I love books and it is hard to vandalise them. So I picked out my first word which is Valiant, meaning brave or courageous (courageux actually), gallant, robuste or hale and hearty or penniless according to the dictionary. I thought of my Rubbadubbadoo knight immediately and after painting the page with white gesso I got stamping. Oh before I started I outlined the word and meaning and then heat embossed them with clear EP, to protect it from the gesso, not sure it was a good idea! I stamped the castle in Memento grey, the knight in Brilliance black and heat embossed with black EP, and the seal with gold Brilliance and copper EP. I found it was not too easy stamping directly onto the book, I need to put a mouse mat or something under the page I think. I stamped the word brave also with Rubbadubbadoo stamps, and stamped an arrow and heat embossed that from an Autumn Leaves set I got in a sale and have never used, all the arrows are from the same set and the You Are Here sentiment. I die cut the V using Sizzix Shadowbox in copper metal sheet and a script paper. I decided the page looked too bare so I stamped the fluer de lis which I got free from Crafty Individuals with some other freebies when I purchased the music stamps. I decided to paint the by now curling edges of the page with Tim Holtz crackle paint in antique photo, this was an unopened pot I bought from someone and it was like thick mud - not sure if that is how it is supposed to be, it was difficult to paint!. Still not happy I sprayed the page with bronze Glimmer mist, this was my first Miranda type mistake - the green fleur de lis's started to run! So sort of happy I had done all I could and after drying the page with my heat gun I started on the word Vacance, holidays, vacation, take a holiday, go on holiday, which was on the other page. I painted the page first with gesso and heat dried it (I was running out of time by now) then painted the sea, beach and sky with acrylics, adding gold glitter to the beach paint. I used a Debbi Moore stamp set to stamp Summer and the shells on the beach, and a recent bargain Warren stamp from Happy Everything set by Craftwork Cards (isn't he the cutest?) onto white card and coloured it with Promarkers and Trias, and cut him out. I also stamped the sun and sheep cloud from a Hero Arts clear set called Sky's the limit. and that is it. Oh my other Miranda moment? I managed to knock the blue paint loaded brush onto my Valiant page and in attempting to clean off blue paint I managed to spread yellow on it too, scream!

So I may have messed this up totally but I had a good time doing it!

Baby Boy word book

As you know I have recently become a Grandmother, and therefore a special card was called for.

I dusted off the ecraft and bought a cutting file from The Cutting Cafe for this baby word book. I cut it in fairly thin card because that was what I had in 12"x12", but now I know how it cuts I will try other card. I cut the letters in Papermania paper. Stamped Grandson using a stamp from a Papermania clear set and Sweet from a Basic Grey set. Ribbons are by Crafty Ribbons, I love the baby washing line ribbon and they have lots of other cute baby ribbons. Lots of embellishments from my stash.

Decorating inside was a challenge, I didn't want it to show through the letters when closed.

Cute stamp from Rubbadubbadoo, I think Celebrate is a Hero Arts stamp, not sure now.

Some more cute stamps from Wordsworth called Clearly Wordsworth, and the greeting in gold is two stamps again from Hero Arts, it was a bit late but they thought it was worth waiting for.

Here is the darling boy (Kenny) with his Uncle Richard (O.K. you are a darling too) and the Queen.

I bought another file that I couldn't get the ecraft to cut, will have to have another play. In between cutting the book and the paper letters the ecraft threw a wobbly and I had to wait for a new blade cap to arrive which seemed to fix the problem and I hope I don't have another problem with it now!

Quirky Crafts Card Challenge 4

Challenge 4 seems to have come round so quickly, it doesn't seem like 4 weeks or 5 weeks since the new Quirky Crafts forum came into being.

I decided to use the English Paper Company papers again this week. The stamped bird is a Hero Arts stamp, the sentiment is a Rubbadubbadoo stamp. Ink is Tim Holtz Distress Ink Faded Jeans colour with matching embossing powder, and I added 3 buttons with blue elastic tied through them.


Tomorrow is the closing date for my blog candy too, so I will be analysing the answers and picking some winners some time this week, hopefully by the weekend so I can send out the goodies.
It has been a busy week, I have been suffering from migraine for a week but am feeling much better now, and it seems that I was reacting to some organic fruit cordial I bought as I felt better when I stopped drinking it! I carried on working apart from Tuesday when things were so bad I couldn't see to drive, and felt so bad I just went back to bed only emerging to take more drugs and some food, though I felt very sick the whole week.
Finally I got my wedding "hat", or fascinator, or is it a cross between? I had an M&S one size doesn't fit all hat to begin with, that had to go back. and as I was in Bath I popped in the posh hat shop. Well it is a shop where there are no prices on anything, so you can tell it was a wee bit expensive especially for something that will only have limited use but I thought what the heck, my son only gets married once (hopefully), can't see the other one getting married, so when she asked if I would like a hat box, oh and that is £5 extra I thought what is £5 after spending so much, I might as well. It is a very nice stripey hat box I must say and will keep the hat safe from being squashed.
While in Bath I visited 5 well established and well known shops and in one of them I had my card details ripped off and the card company spotted it and rang me thankfully.
Today I am aching all over after over doing things yesterday due to feeling better so I have been groaning every time I have to get up out of a chair or sit down.
I had a senior moment this morning - I left the tap running to fill the sink to do the washing up. I needed to dash to the little girl's room (well unisex really) and thought it would be fine as it was not on fully. It would have been fine if I hadn't turned left on leaving the little girl's room into the utility room where (totally forgetting about the tap and washing up) I unloaded the washing machine and reloaded then walked into the kitchen to find the floor flooded! Out with the mop!

Magical birthday card

This was the card that I made for my Father's birthday to go with all the Harry Potter books that I gave him.
The stamp is by Stamptivity, the words are by Rubbadubbadoo.