Happy Halloween

The September Card Swap on UKS hosted by the lovely Mags is all about Halloween this month, I don't celebrate halloween as such but I do love the art and crafts surrounding this time of year.  Here's my cards:

The images are from the Octopode Factory. I stamped on purple card using Finnabair's Vintage Vanity stamps and then made some gelli prints using orange, purple and green paints and cut strips for the background.

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Home Sweet Home

The theme for the May Card Swap on UKS on houses! I love houses! We could also optionally colour in our images, something else I love to do. Here's my cards:

I used purple base card then added a mat using mixed media backgrounds I'd previously created, scanned then printed out. The sentiments are all spellbinders dies. The top 3 houses are from Polka Doodles and the bottom two houses are both Dylusions.

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Spring Cards

Spring is the theme for the March Card Swap on UKScrappers. We also had the choice of using a sketch and adding flowers and ribbons. Here's my cards:

Click on the picture for a close up.

I used Stampin' Up cardstock in Pink Pirouette and my new favourite Pistachio Pudding. The border stamps are both Julie Nutting's Mixed Media Border stamps from Prima Marketing. I stamped Stampin' Up! En Francais in pale green onto the pistachio cardstock. The main image is a Suzi Blu stamp, "As Long As I Have You" coloured with promarkers and the sentiment which says Sending You Sunshine is from a Daisy & Dandelion Secret Woodlands set Pumpkin.

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Forever Young

An update on cards - I decided to change them:

I joined in the October Card Swap on a theme of Autumn - Leaves - Silhouette. I knew I wanted to use my Stampin' Up Forever Young stamp set and decided to add the lovely girl on a tree swing to a sprayed background as a silhouette. Here they are:

There's another care with Thinking of You on but it hadn't quite dried when I took the piccies. I used Dylusions sprays on white card that I had put masking tape round the edges of. I lined the sprayed area with black promarker then stamped the image and the sentiments (Stampin' Up! Sassy Salutations) in Onyx Black versafine ink. I'll probably do the outline again tomorrow once they are bone dry, before posting them. 

Travel Cards

The lovely Magali has taken over the UKS Card Swap and set a great theme this month - travel - something I LOVE to do! So here's my cards:

The main image is something I bought from Etsy and I created the sentiment on Craft Artist. The background are from Tim Holtz Destinations papers with distress inks around the edges to match the colours of each card. I matted each sentiment and image/quote on matching mirrorboard.

Dancing and Lighthouses

I've decided to stop hosting the Card Swap on UKS. I've done it for a year and now I feel it's time I passed it over to someone else whilst I get myself sorted and focus on other craft projects I have.

For my last one as soon as I thought of May I thought - Maypoles - so the theme is dancing - as it's a celebration. You could also if you wished use ribbon, as on maypoles, and a rainbow of colours on your card.

I've just been to Happy Stampers show at Port Sunlight and came back with (among other things) some Lavinia stamps and their gorgeous scenescapes. I've also got a lovely sentiment from Darkroom Door that fit the bill. So here are my cards:

I've enjoyed hosting this lovely swap and have received lots of gorgeous cards from lots of lovely people so thank you for having me and I wish the best of luck to whoever takes over :)

Keep Crafting. Sian xxx

EDIT: I looked at the title of this post and realised that I meant to add a piccy of a CJ entry I did for a CJ called 1967. We had to find a news story from 1967, nothing sordid, and create an entry. I was happy find that there was an astronomy related event so here it is:

A Lighthouse in the Sky

The writing says:

The Discovery of the Pulsar!

As a wannabe astronomer I was thrilled to find that 1967 was the year Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered what is known as a pulsar! A what, I hear you ask? 

Well sadly all stars have an expiry date and when huge stars (much bigger than our sun) are on their last legs they undergo a supernova explosion. This means that the star blows up and all of it’s outer layers fly off, leaving behind a beautiful supernova.  (Google for pretty pictures )

What’s left of the star is the core which collapses under gravity so much so that its protons and electrons are pushed together and combine to form neutrons. This gives this type of star it’s name - the Neutron Star.

What has this got to do with Pulsars? Well a pulsar is a neutron star that rotates. And some of these little things rotate so fast it can blow your mind - how does 641 times per SECOND sound to you?! 

Not only do they rotate but they emit powerful beams of light from their magnetic poles (like Earth’s north and south poles) and so when they spin round the light from either pole can be seen intermittently as you would see a lighthouse at sea - but much faster! And that’s how they were discovered by Ms Burnell when she picked up on the constant on and off blinking signal on her radio telescope. She was educated enough to realise it wasn’t aliens sending out morse code as I probably would have thought! :o)

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I've already received the next book in this CJ and it's called numbers... I'm off to have a look :)

Keep Crafting! Sian xxx

Spread your wings

The overall theme of the March card swap over on UKScrappers this month was "The Borrowers". The idea being not to buy anything but to use some of the fab stuff that is out there already. The main remit was to use one or all of the sketches provided by Craft Stamper in their March issue which can be seen here. They are ALL gorgeous but I have to say my favourite was the one in the bottom right hand corner. We could also optionally download any of the free vintage images found at Craft Stamper online and finally we had to only use what we had - no buying new stuff!!!

Here's my take on it:

I used turquoise ribbon on a couple and purple on the rest. I downloaded the music sheet from Craft Stamper, coloured it purple in Craft Artist, printed it out and ripped it. I attached it to Stampin' Up! purple card. I stamped the flying moon king stamp which I bought from Ali-Craft at a craft show one year, and coloured it with turquoise, marine, lilac and orchid promarkers. The quote is another favourite from Dylusions which I stamped on white card and coloured in with turquoise/marine promarkers.

Keep Crafting! Sian :o) xx

I love...

The February card swap on UKScrappers was a slight twist on Valentine's Day in that instead of making a card based on someone you love we had to create cards inspired by someTHING we love. Whatever we are passionate about was to create our cards. I had a few ideas but it kept coming back to the same thing for me... and that's art journaling. I love it! And as I made the cards more passions came out as I'll explain once you've seen the cards.

The two optional ideas were to use red, the colour of passion, and to use an emotive word on the card. I managed to include both these criteria. Here's the first card:

The quote stamp is from Dylusions and the girl is a Suzi Blu stamp. I love quotes, I love stamping, I love using promarkers and I love the colours purple, pink and turquoise. I also love to use scraps and the sentiments were stamped on some scrap paper. The backgrounds were created with Dylusions sprays, various stencils and acrylic paint. 

I chose these particular stamps because I'm also an advocate of complete self acceptance, of people feeling loved and safe and worthy. I thought when it was all put together it would make a nice card to give to a young or teenage girl that may be struggling, or a friend or relative that you wanted to let know that they are loved, perhaps someone is going through a tough time and this card may be to help let them know they can get through it.

Here are the rest of the cards:

They are quite different to the other cards in the swap so I hope they are received well or at least appreciated for the message that I have intended to relay. Keep Crafting. Siân xxx

Tick tock...

The theme for the January Card Swap on UKS is time/clocks with added options of leaving white space and adding steampunk elements. I chose an Octopode digi stamp as my main image incorporating both steampunk and time/clocks. Here's my finished card:

I coloured the clock with Satin, Aubergine and Ice Grey ProMarkers, used aubergine and cream pearl cards to mat and layer, cut grey cogs out with a Stampin' Up! punch, cut purple cogs out with a Tim Holtz die then printed the sentiment from Craft Artist using a weathered background and purple font. Here they are all together:

I enjoyed making these very much and look forward to February's card swap. Keep Crafting - Sian xx

Quick and Easy Christmas Cards

The theme for the UKS December Card Swap is quick and easy cards - the idea being that Christmas can be a very stressful time of year and we don't want to add to it... plus time is short and the post is crazy so the quicker the better! As it happens I attended a class at Art From the Heart called quick and easy cards where we made cards with my favourite stamps... Dylusions. I came home and made 6 cards using what I'd learned and here they are:

I love how miserable the frog loves lol - my favourite thing about the class was learning how to make the backgrounds. We made two huge backgrounds then cut them all down and they all look different. It's something I will be using again and again :) Keep Crafting. Sian xx