Hope & Chances Creativity: April 2011

Saturday, 30 April 2011

Fabric Flower with Spellbinders™

Today I'm embarking on a whole new experience - I've made a video!

(Actually, without the help of youngest teenager I wouldn't have made this video!)

It is a fabric flower tutorial using the Spellbinders™ Grand Calibur Die Cutting Machine and

Blossom Three Nestabilities Die Template.

I hope you enjoy it, if so please leave a comment.

I'm hoping to do a video every few weeks so in a year or two they should be polished to perfection!

Friday, 29 April 2011

Chicken Soup - Recipe #39

My second blog post today!

This week Chicken Soup has joined in with the Royal Wedding celebrations and provided this wonderful patriotic inspirational picture.

I grabbed the opportunity to show you again one of the little gift bags that I made

complete with chain and charms.

With extra Bank Holidays I hope you get a chance to craft and join in with the challenge.

Have a great weekend.

Red White & Blue

To celebrate today's Royal Wedding I put together a simple layered and embossed card with

Spellbinders™ S4-297 Nested Crowns and LF-001 Creative Book Pages.

I hope you all have a wonderful day and maybe you are partaking in a street party!

Monday, 25 April 2011

Sending Thanks

I've been busy making lots of thank you cards and this is just a small selection of them!

I wanted to send cards to all the cross promotional companies that kindly sent goodies to all of the new Spellbinders™ Paper Arts Design Team.

I received amazing products from lots of famous companies and

of course Spellbinders™ spoiled us all completely!

I made these cards using the Grand Calibur Die Cutting Machine and the following dies -

S4-293 Lacey Circles and S4-058 Daisy Heads.

I will be queuing at the Post Office after Easter to send them on their way with lots of thanks.

Saturday, 23 April 2011

I love Easter!

I love Easter, nearly as much as Christmas!

We spent Good Friday at my sister's lovely home with our traditional

Easter Egg Hunt, started over 10 years ago when our children were small -

they are all teenagers now but they all still love egg hunting!

The masterpiece above was put together as a table centre - I managed to eat quite a lot of it later in the day!

Elliott and I in my sister's gorgeous garden, that's the apple orchard behind - good for scrumping..apparently!!

Just a few of the Spring flowers adorning their home.

I hope you are all enjoying Easter and eating as much chocolate as possible!

Friday, 22 April 2011

Chicken Soup - Recipe #38

It's Chicken Soup time again, this week the inspirational picture is this notepaper.

For my interpretation I chose to go with the lines and incorporated the word 'Love'.

I used My Minds Eye - Be Loved papers and embellishments,

Spellbinders™ Nestabilities Eyelets Circles,

Martha Stewart butterfly punch and some ribbon and pearls from my stash.

Be inspired and have a lovely Easter!

Monday, 18 April 2011

Spellbinders Die Templates - Storage Idea

So I have a little confession to make, before I was super lucky enough to be on the Spellbinders Paper Arts Design Team I did not in fact own any of their die templates (gasp!!) I did tell them - it was a weight of my chest believe me! I am now part of this wonderful team working for an incredible company.

So, being blessed to own many die templates I knew I would have to come up with an idea of storing them effectively, which leads me to this post for my little idea.

When the die templates arrive they are in the plastic packaging, I remove this

(although I keep some of it for other projects, cutting embossing etc).

The die templates are stuck on the back with some sticky tape, after time this obviously loses its stickiness so I remove them from this. I like to keep the die templates with their original card instructions and picture so I can identify instantly which ones I need.

I then purchased some magnetic tape available here in the UK, eBay or electronic stores.

Apply two strips to the inside of the packaging folder, your dies magnetically cling to this perfectly, no movement at all.

Ta dah - I love it!

I store my die templates in a basket so I can flick through them.

It may not be everyone's 'cup of tea' but I find it works for me and thought I would like to share.

Have a good Easter week everyone.

Friday, 15 April 2011

ScrapFIT - Workout #42 - Back in the Day

It's ScrapFIT time again!

This time you are encouraged to dig out an old photo -

it's so important to scrapbook the past as well as the present.

This layout features me when I was so young and holding an ice lolly was as complex as life got back then!

My page features some intricate hand cutting, ruching of ribbon and butterflies (of course!)

This month the sponsors are Sweet Peach Crop Shop and they have kindly donated two of their specialty Anniversary Kits for lucky winners.

You have until April 30th to link up your 'Back In The Day' layout to ScrapFIT.

Have fun going through those photos!

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

All set to start...

Anyone that knows me will tell you that I'm a bit of a neat freak! So, when I travelled home from Arizona with a suitcase full of goodies from Spellbinders and their cross promotional and preferred provider companies I knew I had to buy storage!

Six baskets later I feel organised and raring to go!

I cannot wait to start creating and using all these amazing products,

the Grand Calibur Die Cutting Machine is such a dream to use, I cannot recommend it highly enough :-)

Friday, 8 April 2011

Chicken Soup - Recipe 36

It's Chicken Soup time and I've been looking forward to showing you this lovely picture provided by Annette. The colours are incredible and I was instantly inspired.

Scroll down to see my layout.

I adore Spring - all that newness and fresh start feeling.

I've dug out some old stash to do this layout, it was a chance to seek out some yellow and definitely butterflies!

Pop along to Chicken Soup and join in.

Have a lovely weekend.

Arizona Retreat Swaps

I can finally share with you the details of my Spellbinders Arizona Retreat Swap.

As I'm the only British girlie on the team I wanted to go patriotic

but with a feminine twist.

I was inspired by the wonderful Jane Dean to create bags with Union Jack flags.

I started with the fabrics which were patterned with a slant on the red, white and blue.

Cutting with pinking shears, a rectangle for my 'blue' base and strips of the 'red' and

white' to create little flags.

I know I've not rigidly stuck to traditional flag i.e. widths of the stripes etc but the spirit is all there!

A bit of zig-zag machining.

and more....

I then sewed tiny crocheted flowers into the middles.

Attached the flags to little canvas bags

(these are available from Pickleberry Papercrafts)

I then decided I wanted to adorn each bag with charms, (my jewellery making skills came in handy here!)

I selected four charms that represented me and England, butterfly, teapot, cat and 'handmade with love'. Attached them with headpins to small lengths of chain.

Here are the bags lined up with the chain and charms sewn into place.

They still needed something so I ordered some little MDF hearts from eBay, covered them, painted and distressed the edges. These were a little bigger than I anticipated so they are actually tied inside the bag as an extra surprise!