Eastbourne Makes, Part One.

These lovely butterfly cards were made using the 2-step stamping set from Stampin' Up! Zoe Pierson taught us a fantastic class and there was so much in the kit and so many options of what to do, it really filled the class time-- and then some!! Love it. And her take on the easel card just made things look so much easier. So I'll be making more of those!

Art of Crochet Square 33

This may look familiar to crocheters-- it's V-stitch, but not as I knew it before I did this square... The DC (Treble Crochet in the UK) are two to a stitch, but there isn't a ch space between them. Odd. It still works though! :)

FPC Friday - Flower 2

I do love them, aren't they cute??? They're very dimensional with flat backs. I'm considering mounting these onto a card with cartoony stamped stems. I made two of the sets pictured. They are time consuming but are worth it.

Just in case I haven't linked in a while... Floral Punch Craft. And I'm only a beginner. You should see the beautiful stuff the teachers create!

Art of Crochet Square 32

This square is done in mock cable stitch. I don't think it looks much like cable knit but it was fun to make and it does look different.

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Home and Exhausted!

This is the view from our crafting area at the retreat I was on this weekend. What a weekend it was!

I got a total of 19 cards and 3 scrapbook pages made. I came home with a few new punches for my Floral Punch Craft, a few crafty consumables like adhesive squares, some Ranger Enamel Accents in black and white, some glitter, a bucket full of seaside sweets, a goody bag and the prize for best monochromatic layout. :)

A new week looms. I'll post pictures when I take them! Good night readers!

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FPC Friday - Flower 1

Here's the first flower in the first book, "Floral Punch Craft" by Leone Em. This demonstrates how new I am to this and my fumbling and bumbling on the path of a new craft. I curled up the little middle bits but in the course of sticking them to the stems, I flattened them right down! Oh dear. :) But they're cute, I think. And they were really fun to make and quick. I think they look delicate.

East London is ready....

I didn't even know we were expecting a papal visit! I'm not sure he'd be too safe in that thing... :)

I'm going on the Cardinal Colours Seaside Retreat this weekend. By this time tomorrow, I will be well on my way.

If I can make time between classes on Saturday, I will be your roving reporter.

I will leave you in the capable hands of FPC Friday until then.

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Art of Crochet Square 31

I love Autumn... crisp cool breeze, sun shining... perfect weather for crocheting outside!

Today, I did just that and here's the result. This wavy clockwork square was fun and fast to make and left me wanting to make more in this pattern.

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Crochet Update: Washbag!

I have finished my summer sweater (now that Autumn has truly begun) and I had just enough extra yarn to make this:

It's a large washbag from The Art of Crochet. The pattern library that is building up has so many projects in it that I want to do! There's no point making a list even. They're all pretty much winners. I enjoyed whipping up this bag worked in individual rounds with ribbons sewn in.

There was something at the top called crab stitch. You do the stitch as normal, but you work left to right instead of right to left. It's weird but I got the hang of it in the end. What fun!! And now I have a piece of luggage made specially for my weekend getaway... only a few more days to go!

The Empty Blog Post

I honestly don't have anything to show for today as finished projects go. I've been sitting in my craft space cutting bits for my scrapbook pages. This is a photo of a greatly depleted pile of plain and self-adhesive cardstock.

I've got a sense of accomplishment because I have done the groundwork for many items but alas, no good pictures.

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It's Saturday-- and it's Live!!!

I don't want to spoil the illusion for you all but I will--

I schedule my blog posts.

Yes, you heard it here... if I have a lot to post, I spread it out into the future so you can read a little bit every day. I had blogged so far into the future at one point that I wasn't doing too much to tack onto the end of my queue of scheduled posts and now here I am, with no pictures at the moment.

I'm going to a crafty retreat in Eastbourne next weekend. I don't want to pack loads and loads of stuff, especially since my first day is filled with classes where everything is provided. So I've made up page kits-- just the photos and chosen cardstock with a vague idea of what I'm planning to do with them-- and my most-used embellishments are in my scrap tote. But there's more work to do before the weekend!!

I love a "hand-cut" title using a fantastic font, and I now put the "hand-cut" in quotes because I have a Craft Robo to cut it for me, so it's hardly hand-done now. This requires preparation though. I need to now take out all my kits and cut titles, pack the titles into the kits and put them back. I shall be doing that today and hopefully the job won't run into tomorrow. I don't think it'll really take that long if I have my ducks in a row. We shall see!!

I have been making flowers like crazy. I am loving my floral punch craft so you'll be seeing a lot of that but I'm considering trying to stretch it out over the fridays so my flower-phobic friends can just avoid the area on that particular day of the week. I'll see how far in the future that takes me though... I think I've got months of work to post if I do that. :)

I know that many of my followers are going on this retreat too-- how's the packing going?

FPC Friday - Flower 11

Welcome to FPC Friday and the final part of my deconstruction of the project posted last FPC Friday.

I have lots more flowers to show and more are being made every weekend, just about. Here's the last one for now:

This is the bunch that is second from the top in the arrangement. The top bunch is flower 8. This is another flowermade of stars and teeny flowers as you can see. I used various shades of purple paper for this and tied it all together into a bunch complete with sprays of leaves made of tiny maple leaves. This is flower 11 from book 1 of Floral Punch Craft by Leone Em.

I am the very satisfied owner of books 1, 2 and 5 at the moment and once I have made everything from those books, I will be getting more. I have really enjoyed this voyage of discovery. Here's the whole card again-- see if you can spot the individual flowers I showed you this week!

Flower 10

Welcome back from our Crochet break. We're back to the series deconstructing a project called "A Study in Purple" that I posted here on 3 September. If you're just joining us, take a look. We'll wait... :)

I wish I had made more of these. The original project (3 September) really needs more on the bottom to even things out and these are just the thing.

These have four layers on them but they come together quickly and I think they're pretty effective. There are so many ways to vary this one, but I must point out it's quite important to make sure the "rays" of the sun punched shapes are facing the same way in each layer, otherwise it just looks wrong. Especially if there's only two layers of suns like there are here.

Art of Crochet Square 30

I can't believe I'm up to 30 already.
One thing still remains: I still stink at chain-stitch. Just not as badly as before.

It seems odd that I've had a second chance at this square so soon after the first one. Heigh-ho... a totally different square awaits next week. Stay tuned.

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Flower 8

Here's a little bunch of teeny weeny flowers toward the top of the card. Easy and fast to make, this is flower 8 from book 1, Floral Punch Craft by Leone Em. My speckled purple paper makes another appearance. Hello again.

You're in the middle of a deconstruction of the project shown on 3 September. Scroll down then back up again if you missed it.

It may seem repetitive to regular readers, but if anyone new pops up, I need them to know... :)

Tomorrow is Crochet Wednesday on the blog, so we're going to take a little break for crochet, and we'll be back Thursday. Stay tuned, flower-lovers!

Flower 5

Ah, flower 5. This one's quite large and is great just on its own, but I used it as the corner anchor piece for my arrangement (3 September entry). Colour was added with water-based brush pens. The leaves were shaded with pigment ink direct-to-paper. It makes a big difference.

You're in the middle of a deconstruction of a project shown on 3 September. Scroll down to there and back up if you missed it. :)

Flower 4

This isn't what flower 4 is really supposed to look like. I don't have the right punch for the orange bits. The purple paper is speckled because I wanted to vary the colour a bit and used a pigment ink pad direct to paper to just shade it a bit.

This flower was really fun to make. At first, it was completely flat. Then I followed one little instruction in the book and the flower just sprang to life! This is so much fun...

I know I've mentioned it a lot... Floral Punch Craft, Leone Em. :) Great stuff.

Flower 3

These are flower number 3. They're made with stars of two sizes and a teeny weeny flower. I'm not sure they should look quite as crumply as they do but they're still a good part of the arrangement. Check out 3 September for the finished product.

A Study in Purple, Yellow and Orange

This FPC Friday features a card that will kick off Floral Punch Craft week. I call it "A Study in Purple" and it is made up of flowers 3, 4, 5, 8, 10 and 11 from book 1 of Leone Em's Floral Punch Craft series. I made them all up in purple, yellow and orange because I intended to use them all together.

Here's the card. Also included i this card is a little orange Tiger Lily that I learned in a class. I think similar flowers are in Book 5.

I think the card needs a bit of improvement, the arrangement is top-heavy so I'm going to have to add more to the bottom of it.

Every day this week, I will feature a close-up of each flower used on this card. We take a break for Crochet Wednesday and then we resume, concluding on the next FPC Friday with the final flower used in the card.

I hope you enjoy it!

Stash-busting!

I've been papercrafting for quite some time in one form or another and as with any papercrafter, my "stash" of paper and cardstock tends to pile up and get a bit heavy. It's not just whole sheets of paper or card waiting to be used for a project. Sometimes it's the scraps-- those pieces that are just too big to throw away or recycle, but too small to stay in the new paper pile.

The other thing that tends to build up is kit leftovers. When you buy a whole selection of supplies and use them for a while and then forget about them, the dregs tend to hang around and take up space.

I have combined these two things quite well and made something not only useful, but current with the scraps and kit leftovers.

For the uninitiated, these are seen quite a lot on cards. They're scalloped circle mats. They're also useful for writing on scrapbook pages, etc etc... I took my scraps of card from my box and cut the scalloped circles out on my Craft Robo. They were sized specifically to fit the circles that I already had-- the kit leftovers. I had a bunch of card blanks with apertures in them and I kept the circles and squares that were cut out but left in the pack. I've had them for years and I've only just now done something with them.

Yeah, I'm pleased with myself. It's one of those things, if you're not a crafter you won't understand. Just smile and nod.

Art of Crochet Square 29

Check this out- basketweave pattern! I made a bag with a similar pattern s couple of years ago, but this one seemed to take a long time and use up a lot more yarn. Still fun to make though. :)

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