Picture frame

Hello and welcome to the last day of July!  Where does time go?

I have another makeover piece to share today.

Kay and Ian's house had a lot of purple accessories  They particularly liked two picture frames they had snaps from their wedding in.  Unfortunately the colour scheme just will not match their new house so again I tried a makeover.

This is how the frames started. 

I took one frame apart and found that the purple was actually painted on the underside of the glass.  I used sandpaper and had a go at removing it.  It worked but was taking a long time.

Next I tried a sharp blade.  This worked much quicker but left faint scratches.  I knew I could cover these but I wasn't too happy at having to.  I then accidentally stumbled on the easiest method of all.

I took some nail polish remover on a cotton wool pad to clean the glass.  It took the paint straight off!!  With this simpler method I stripped all the paint in no time.

As a neutral or green colour scheme had been requested I dug through my stash until I found the perfect blend.  I framed the picture with olive green and cream card, then covered the edge with gold glitter ribbon. 

I while ago Jen and I bought loads of gilding flakes and I thought this would be a good project for them.  I cleaned the glass thoroughly then laid double sided tape along the edges.  I covered with gilding flakes from Clarity Stamps.  This blend is Variegated Green.  Believe me the picture does not do justice to the beautiful colours in this.

I poured the flakes on to the tape and rubbed them down with my fingers.  Once I had the tape covered I used a  scootchy to remove any loose flakes and polish them up.  The end result was lovely.

This is what the frame looked like when I put it all back together again.  Beautiful!!

TTFN Jude xx

Altered Bird Cage

Good morning folks, halfway through the week already. Where is it going? lol. 

Anyway today's post is the second in my little list of altered projects for my daughter. This time a purple birdcage candle holder. 

As she no longer has anywhere purple, she wanted it changing to match somewhere in the new house. So I thought if I did it fairly neutral it would go just about anywhere. Now it's finished though I think it will go in the living room.

I gave the cage a quick rub over with some fine grit sandpaper, and then gave it two coats of white spray paint. It wasn't the easiest of shapes to paint lol, so it's not perfect, but I sort of like it that way as it's a little bit shabby chic.

Once the paint was dry I decided to give the base a bit of further treatment and used some Pebeo Paint in onyx to change the colour. 

Then all I needed to add was a bit of bling and some ribbon and it's all finished.

 K just needs to add a candle now lol.

Hope you like it. Take care and I'll see you soon.

xxx

Key chest

Hello again.  I have a very quick makeover to share with you today. 

You may recall a while ago I distressed a wooden key cabinet for Kay and Ian. Well now they are moving house the cupboard doesn't match the colours in their hallway, so Kay asked if I could do anything with it. 

This is how it looked when she brought it to me. 

I stripped off the green paper and sanded the whole piece. Then I went in search of a suitable paper to recover the door. I left the owls in tact as they still fit in nicely. 

The paper I chose is a grey chevron. I cut strips the width of the door frame and glued them in place. 

When they were dry I took grey and black inks and dirtied the papers.  This is how it turned out. 

Kay and Ian loved it and it is now waiting to be fastened to the wall in the new house. 

TTFN Jude xx

A little bit of altering

Good morning folks hope you are all well. As Jude said yesterday we have been busy helping my daughter and family to decorate their new home so we haven't had much time in the craft room. But I did manage to sneak in for a couple of hours yesterday. I was supposed to be making a card, but my daughter arrived with an armful of items that she wants altering to match her new decor!

So away went my card supplies and out came glue and hundreds of gems, sequins and flowers all in different shades of blue or clear. These are to decorate a mirror for the bathroom that K chipped while moving it.

Of course it had to be round didn't it? lol I'm sure square would have been much easier. But I had a go and it has turned out OK. I started off with the hot glue gun but it was just drying far too quickly for me to get the gems on. 

So I then changed to silicone glue, that was much easier to work with, but it does take much longer to dry. If I had any I would have preferred to use something like E6000 glue, it is really strong and dries much quicker. But in the end I went back to the hot glue gun and stuck the gems one at a time.

I just put the gems on as randomly as I could so it's not a set pattern. I wasn't sure at first whether to go around the whole frame or just cover the area with the chip. But I decided to go around the whole lot in the end, and just make it a bit thicker down one side to give a bit of shape. 

Anyway hope you like it and K too, lol.

See you soon, take care.

xxx

Par avion

Happy Sunday everyone!

We have been busy helping Jen's daughter Kayleigh to paint her new home yesterday and today, so crafting time has been in short supply.  Still I managed to get a little bit done.

When I first saw this Saturated Canary image I kept thinking of travel, so I decided to make something I've never made before - a 'bon voyage' card.  However after I started I decided to change it to an 'across the miles'.

The image is a digi called Beautiful World, which I coloured before we went away.  I used Promarkers to colour her with.

These embellishments are a couple of stamps cut out by hand.

The bird and cage are a Tim Holtz die.  I wanted a globe but we don't have one (yet!)

The sentiment is from a pack we received free on a magazine.

So there she is.  Hope you like her.

TTFN Jude xx

Beret Marci

Good morning all and happy Saturday. Well I have finally made a card. 1st one in 10 days! I know just not like me at all. But even though the will to get crafty has returned, the old Mojo hasn't, so this card has been a bit of an effort lol. 

The image is Beret Marci from La La Land Crafts. I do love these images, they are very cute. 

I have coloured her with my Spectrum's and then cut her out by hand. 

The papers are a mixture of a random piece from the stash combined with a piece of one of the Santoro 12 x 12 pieces. They really are too lovely to cut up but we are making ourselves use them more lol. Then I used a couple of different shades of teal/blue Coredinations card to sit Marci on.

I added the picket fence and lamp post, then the banner die in the corner all cut from DCWV self adhesive border strips. 

Then I finished her off with one of the sentiments that comes with the La La Land digi stamps and a little blue pearl.

Hope you like it, see you soon.

Take care.

xxx

Just a note.......

In spite of the name of this blog, you never see any of the catastrophes (nor cakes - Jen?!) So today I thought I'd share a card that didn't quite turn out as I wanted.  It's not really a catastrophe but it's as close as you're likely to get from us.

The clear embossing in the background is too patchy, the stamped sentiment isn't dark enough and the flower should have been stamped on a pale pink card, not white.

You can just about make out the sentiment here, but it's too close a shade to the card I used.  If you look very closely you can see the peony stamped with a watermark pad and then clear embossed.  I'm not sure what I did wrong but it really hasn't worked very well.

The peony was stamped with Distress markers and I forget how subtle they can be.  Still it is quite a contrast when on the white card.

So there it is.  Not the best card I've ever made but I'm sure it won't be the worst either lol :)

TTFN Jude xx

Shirt and tie cards

Good morning crafty friends. Hope you are all well and enjoying the sunshine. I'm a little under the weather at the moment. I have a rather nasty case of Pharyngitis. Which means I can't speak! great for those around me lol, but not so much for me ;O)) So I haven't been up to any crafting. I have managed to make the grand total of 2 cards in the last 13 days! That is unheard of for me but hopefully I will start to feel better soon. 

So today's cards are a couple more that I made for the boys a few weeks ago. 

I have had this shirt and tie stamp for ages but not really used it. So I dug it out and inked it up with teal Stazon ink for a change. Then I coloured one of the shirts with a lighter teal Spectrum Noir marker, and the tie a little darker.

I used a happy birthday stamp on one card and then a tag stamp on the other. 

I layered them both up with different bits of card from my scrap box just to make them a little different. 

Then I added a Cousin die cut to the one for my my son to send to my nephew. 

They were really easy to make but still quite effective. I think I may make a few more like this to have on hand. As I never have any spare male cards around lol. 

Anyway enjoy the rest of your week and I'll see you soon.

Take care.

xxx

On top of the world

Morning all.  Hope you are enjoying some lovely weather wherever you are. It was about 27C here yesterday and it was not fun having to be in the office all day.  Typically we have rain and storms for Saturday!

My mojo is still missing so I've not been feeling too adventurous with my cards.  I knew I wanted something quite simple and that reminded me of some stamps we bought a while ago in a sale. They have sat on a shelf since we brought them home, so now one has finally made it out of it's packet lol.

This Gorguss stamp is called ....on top of the world. 

Once I had stamped her I didn't want to make her too bright so I went mono-chrome.  What do you think?  Can you spot where I made a mistake and tried to cover it?

(if not, she is wearing gloves in my picture but not on the stamp! I used the wrong pen, doh!! )

Although I wanted to keep the image simple I knew I didn't want grey papers as that would have been to much.  I decided to layer black and pink papers then added a few flowers.  This gave me just the right amount of colour.

I'm really pleased with the end result and may try inking her again very soon.

TTFN Jude xx

Waistcoat Card

Good morning all, hope you are having a good week. Today's card is one I made a few weeks ago when I was making some male cards.

I fancied making something a bit different so I made myself a shirt and waistcoat template and turned it in to a card.

I used a 6 x 4 card blank for the shirt and just cut the top angles to make the shoulders but left the middle section at the front to fold into a collar.

Then I used a couple of pieces of matching card to make the waistcoat. I made one side slightly larger than the other to overlap in the centre.

Then I used a scrap of red card to make a tie, and finished it off with 3 little black and white buttons. 

Hope you like it, take care and I'll see you soon.

xxx