Tims tags day 3

Not happy with todays tag, the SU bird (stamped with punch pot pourri hostess set then punched) is a wee bit too small but that could just be because the mirielle image used is too large. Will make a ticket later and swap them then see how I feel about the bird.

Tag inked with forest moss, bundled sage & walnut stain, splattered with water before distressing the edges.

Overstamped with SUs En Francais background (hate to say how often I've used this stamp, love it) branch and white splatters from a retired set.

Cherry cobbler 3d flower distressed with walnut. Then a scrunched up wire edged lime green ribbon, was worried about attaching this as it's sooo springy I thought I'd have to staple it but a nice line of my trusty tombow then held the ribbon in place for 5 mins with an acrylic block and it's stuck tight.


Happier with it now.. the "ticket" is a butterfly kisses sentiment and an inkadinkadoo holly stamped in olympia green versafine (like them too much to risk stazon and the inkadink hates anything other than versa) Red tiara sakura berries and added to the edges of the petals. The bird is now warming his bum in a nest of flowersoft. I loathe flowersoft but on this occasion it works.

BTW this pic was taken with my light from the RNIB and the colours are much more true to life even if my triple embossed bird does look a bit manky.

Tims tags, day 2

Most odd, this is another of bloggers weird and wonderful ways of rotating images.. this one was photoed in landscape orientation!!

Much more my sort of look to todays tag from Tim Holtz and using one of my favourite techniques.. diy custom inkpads. I don't have any cutndry felt so used a dried babywipe.

aged mahogany, frayed burlap, chipped saphire, pumice stone, fired brick, walnut stain, crushed velvet distress inks.

Close to cocoa, glorious green reinker, SU pinecone stamp from Autumn Days, docrafts sentiment, katzelcraft swirl, dim4th music sheet, bottle top and papermania metal snowflake.

Now this was a perfect opportunity to try something I've heard about but not tried...

Docrafts clear stamps are one of the worst there is for not liking ink and they bead terribly with distress inks. Now I always used to just sand them back and hope as it wasnt always sucessful, but I had heard that if you ink them up with stazon, leave to dry and never clean off it will take dye inks better. Soooo seeing as I don't know why I bought these sentiments it didnt really matter if I killed them ;o)

Ok, so inked with timber brown stazon, wafted dry with the heat tool from a distance and.. it worked.. took the distress inks really well. I've wiped the excess distress ink off the stamp and will store it for a few weeks to see if there's been any damaged caused and report back. Word of warning... don't use stazon cleaner with clear stamps.. not all clear stamps are the same, some will rot with just one use of the cleaner.

chalk and cheese

Two totally different styles of projects for today.

This is inspired by Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas and just happens to be a challenge I've started over on the docrafts blog.

Sorry Tim, I just havent got the flair let alone half the tools for the layered grungy looks.

House cut with scal from a google clip art, fence and brick mask drawn in psp cut with scal.

Base tag cut with scal, broken china, dusty concord & weathered wood, su snowflake stamps, silver cosmic shimmer mist.

Memory frame, mica tile, katzelcraft stamp & stickles. SU ribbon

House & fence, frayed burlap, walnut stain, white puffy white embossing powder, stickles. And a bit of twig cut pinched from a dried flower arrangement.

All in all makes a dogs dinner lol.

This is definitely more my normal sort of papercrafting.

Inspired by a tealight holder in the current Tilda magazine.

Tealight holder is my own design created in PSP for scal and was cut on white pearl card before being lightly inked with my favourite combo, antique linen, frayed burlap & walnut stain.

Crafty Individuals partridge in a pear tree stamped with brilliance ink on to white laser printer paper. Coloured with copics before being sponged over with antique linen distress ink. Can't say as it liked the brilliance ink very much as it went a bit smudgy around the branches. This was cut close to the edges and mounted onto my tealight holder. Copics used, E00, 21, 35, 43, 45, 47, 53, bg93, g99, r32, 59

I know I've got the tealight lit for the photo but please make sure you use a battery operated tealight. Card & naked flames arent a good idea.

Birthday card

This is for one of my buddies birthdays, she doesnt read my blog so it's safe to post it a few days early.

Layout is from Truly Scrumptious challenge blog and I've combined it with papertake weeklys challenge of Sparkly & Bright and Cute Card Thursdays challenge of using something transparent.





Long recipe list, sorry.

Miss Anya image coloured with copics r32, 35, 59, yr23, 31, e50, 53, b60, c1 & bg72 Promarkers in ivory & blush.

StampinUp supplies, Baja breeze & soft suede cardstock, Elegant Soiree dsp, soft suede ink, early espresso ribbon, boho blossom punch, and the branch from the bird punch.

Nellie Snellen flower punch and embosser duo, craftynotions Rainbow drops and stickles glue in icicle. I used the same stickles for the branch and the daisy, just goes to show how different they look on different backgrounds.

Hope she likes it, those flowers have taken me hours lol.

SU meets Sheena

Real mixup of things for this one.

Layout comes from Friday Sketchers challenge blog.

Main image is from Sheena Douglass and is coloured with various R20 copic shades going up to r27. Edges were scuffed with the SU distressing tool before adding pumice, frayed burlap and walnut stain distress ink. 2 brown shades of copic were sprayed using the spritzer tool from SU. Flourishes from Sheena stamped in versamark before being dusted with a pearl toned pearlex.

Papers by K&Co and dcwv before they were heavily distressed with walnut stain and stamped with en francais background by StampinUp and SU gold ep. To keep with the distressed theme I deliberately only tipped the embossing powder over the middle and on card that was slightly damp. The sentiment is from Sheena Douglass and stamped on Chocolate Chip cs before being punched with one of the new SU punches. Matching choc chip grosgrain ribbon and twine from SU. Shhhh don't tell hubby but the button is the spare from my best coat. Well it had a lovely pearly sheen and with a few splatters from red & brown copics throu the spritzer it just had to be put to paper ;o)

3 kings box

Inspired by Claudias 3 kings favour box in edition 5 of the Magnolia mag this is a fab shaped box and perfect as a gift holder for a small bottle of perfume/ pair of knickers. Having 2 girls and a maybe one day dil to buy for at xmas I can see me making several of these.

Template from scs, (search the download forum for 3 kings) I cheated and converted to scal and cut with the cricut.

Sugar Nellie coloured with copics, b00, bg10,15 y00, 28, yr20, g21, e71 & r27 and promarker ivory & blush.

Basic grey paper, prima flowers, leone em frond punch, cream lace from ribbon box, organza ribbon, copic spica glitter pen and a few gems.

Challenge card

I havent made a Tilda card for months so it was nice to be able to grab the copics and have a go with this one.


The sketch is from Friday Sketchers and the theme of Oriental from Saturday Challenge




Long copic list, sorry. bv02, 13 b00, 02, bg 10, 15, 23, v12, e71, c1,3, 5. Promarker black, ivory & blush. My first attempt at black hair and I'm not very happy with it, the promarker just didnt want to blend nicely with the copics.

Paper is a thin tissue stamped with a very old um in taken with teal and mounted on taken with teal cs. I'm still gutted that SU discontinued this colour but I've got a few packs stashed away safely lol . Ovals were cut with a creative memories system, tag with scal and edged with twt ink before a few ribbons were threaded through. All mounted on a pale variagated card I've had for years. Not colours you'd normally think of for oriental but I wanted them to go with a few mizhuhiki cords I've had for even longer than I can think. The knot was looking quite tidy until I used some pinflair glue gel to attach. While it's still not quite set I think I'll take it off and tie again. I'll use some tombow to stick it on, not much that wont hold tight.

Ink pad racks for pennies

Thanks to a mishap on a quad bike I've spent the last 8 weeks with my right hand in a cast, oops lol. Wasn't fun really as I could barely brush my teeth left handed let alone stamp. so I decided to tackle a job that I've been sort of tempted to do for a while but had kept putting off.. Sort my ink pads out.

Ok I'll admit I've got rather a few (stop laughing Angie) and my SU inks are all beautifully displayed in a nice wooden rack (not that cheap) but thanks to the new colour renovation I wasnt going to have enough slots to house the inks I'd intended ordering.

Brainwave time, make my own but I havent got the tools let alone ability to make one out of wood so I decided to see if cardstock would be strong enough. Armed with my mates hougie board (she hates it so I have it on a permanent loan, cheers Sara)I did work out that if I shoved an embossing tool into the cast and held it between my index & middle finger I could at least use a scoring board. Out came the rulers, quite a few sheets of strong card and a whopping great roll of strong dst.

It took a few goes but I managed to make my first rack. Woohoo, 1 down another 5 to go!



This is how my desk looks now with my new ink pad racks, it won't stay this tidy for very long.







Here's how I made them.

Take some time, read through and see if you can work out the pics before attempting as there are a few small things that make a massive difference to the end result. You might want to grab a cuppa first as the instructions have seemed to resemble a novel, sorry. Each rack has taken less than an hour to make so please don't be put off. Once you get going it's quite easy.

This is the basic folding & cutting pattern for the shelves. The dashed lines are scores and the solid lines cut. If you look closely you'll see on lines a & b there are cuts both sides with just the section below the letters being scored.

If you've ever made a 3*3 memory book from a single sheet of 12*12 you might recognise the general principle.

I havent added sizes just yet, with there being more than a few common sizes it would get just a wee bit confusing. There are size diagrams at the very end of this post.

Worth pointing out that if you are making sleeves for supersized ink pads like SU you'll only fit 2 sleeves to a sheet of a4.


Here's the first sheet scored, pic is using the 2 panel sleeve for SU inks.








I've cut and folded the card. Doesnt matter which way you go but the horizontal folds have to be in the opposite direction of the vertical ones. Sorry if that doesnt make sense, it will in a minute.








Here's the first tip I found out the hard way. The dst needs to go the full length of the card, not just those two tiddly bits. You'll get a tidier rack if you get the dst as close to the edges as possible.







Sorry, the next step isn't something that worked in the pictures I took so I had to redo them.

I'm using a sheet cut and scored for the versamark size pads as this bit is the one that gets people flustered.

Ignore for now where the sticky is, this is all about how we fold them.

BTW I used a nestie circle in this one to make a finger grove. Bad idea as it really weakens the sleeve.











Bring A & B up and stick B to C. Try and make sure they're straight as you stick them.









Tuck C (along with a & b) underneath d








Bring D up and stick to E.



















Now the bases are stuck together it's just a case of sticking all the sides together. If you feel that you're handling a live octopus, first one is the worst. Now that you're sticking them together you'll notice that one side is very slightly shorter than the other. The shorter side is the one that goes on the inside. Be very careful and make sure the top of the longer side is lined up with the top of the fold on the longer side. You'll get a very lopsided tower if you dont!



That's the first of the stacks made. Now you need to make a couple/few more if you're as bad an inkpadholic as me. I wouldn't have more than 12 sleeves together though as they've surprisingly heavy when filled. That's not a problem when they're on the desk but you don't want to struggle carrying them to crops etc.

For stability it helps if you cut some card into the same height and depth and stick them to each side.

Now you've stabilised the stacks use the trusty dst and stick them together.

I used a1 centura pearl cardstock and made an outer shell with double fold sides. Not fun working with the hougie on my lap and the card dangling all over the place lol Pointless me giving sizes for the outer box as each depends on the thickness of cardstock used. If in doubt you're more than welcome to email me the size of your completed inner and I'll work it out for you.

Total cost of my rack, £1.50 tops and £1 of that was the a1 card stock.

It wasnt until I'd battled with the sheet of a1 card and finished the first rack that I had a 2nd brainwave.... washing (laundry) tablet boxes. They're often sort of the right size.

This was a 48tablet sized box. It didn't really fit 2 pads longwise iykwim but they worked quite nicely being put in sideways. Using the same principle I managed to make a set of really deep sleeves & drawers, perfect size for holding my tim holtz cutndry foam applicator and spare bits of foam.

Since taking the original pics I've turned a 24 tablet size box into a holder for my alchie inks. I did have to trim the sides down but I'm dead chuffed with it. It should be possible to adapt the sleeves to fit lots of craft toys, promarkers, embossing powders, cosmic shimmer mists.. I'd love to see what you can all come up with.


As promised these are the sizes

First one holds the pads with the narrow side showing, the 2nd with the long front showing. Reinkers/Alchie inks need scoring on 1, 2, 3, 4 & 4.74" and to be 2" deep for the shorter alchie inks, 2 .5 for distress reinkers.















One of my lovely docraft buddies Noreen came for monthly playday earlier this week and you can see the ones she's made on her blog Hers are posher than mine as she's taken the time to decorate them.

Making a rosette

There are probably easier ways to make a rosette but this is how I make them.

Apologies for the horrid papers used but daughters bf is staying with us for a few weeks until his new flat is ready and as a consequence I'm having to share my playroom and all of my decent stash hidden away. (Took me over 8 hours to tidy it up yesterday, oops) Like most of the cardweight capable punches my SU border punches don't like thin nasty paper and I would have had a better result if I'd used something thicker than cheap loo paper ;o)

Punch the entire length of 12*12 or a4 card stock and trim to the required width to create a band. In this case I used the SU lacey border and cut the black to 3" wide and the pink & white ( the photo shows the white back) to 2". Using a score board score evenly all the way across at about 1cm apart, for mine I scored at the beginning & middle of the pattern. It's worth pointing out that the entire rosette will be more than twice as large as the width you've chosen and the wider the band the more card you'll need. A 1" wide strip will only require 1 length of 12*12 whereas mine took 2 lengths of 12*12 for each layer.

Once scored fold to create concertinas taking care to fold in the same places of patterns for all the pieces.

Punch or nestie a circle of card, doesnt matter what card you use as it's going to be covered. I used a 1 3/8" SU punch which I then folded in half and marked across the centre with a pencil. If you are making a small rosette you don't need to mark the centre, this is just to help so that I get an even splay of folds. Use a very strong and quick drying glue over the edges of one half. I've gone overboard with my trusty tombow glue, not because I need to but so you can see the glue on the photo.

Start with one of the concertinas and tease into place around half of the circle. This is the time you'll wish you had a dozen fingers on each hand ;o) Hold it firmly in place until the glue dries, it should only be a minute or so if you've used a good strong glue and didnt apply too much. Mine took about 3 minutes! If you're making a small rosette and only need one strip you just need to bend the end to meet the start.

Repeat the glue on the bottom half and add the 2nd concertina, hold in place until dry again. If when you let go it starts to rise in the middle don't panic, this is quite normal and will be sorted out in a while.

If adding a second layer of folds lightly apply some glue to the top of the folds on the base layer. Don't go up to the centre or the edges, a band around the middle is sufficient. Gently ease the folds into place and push down. It can be a bit fiddly if you try to get the centre edges lined up so if need be trim away the centre edge a bit before putting into place. It doesnt matter if the top layers arent the same width because we're going to cover it. Once finished if necessary glue the ends together to neaten.

This is me teasing the folds into place, for once I've managed to hide how ink stained my fat lil puds are lol.

If you want to add a ribbon dangler glue it into place now.

Next step is to cover the centre, I'm looking for a more traditional rosette look so I've used the 2nd largest large circle nestie (black) and the next size down (pink) which has been embossed with a bug folder but any size would have worked provided it was large enough to cover the edge where the 2 layers of rosette meet. Add a strong glue to the back and position on the rosette and press down quite firmly.






As you can see from the pic it's still trying to lift up in the middle. You can hold it down for a while if you want, I prefer to just plonk one of my heavier punches on top and clear off to make a cuppa lol. By the time the tea is made and drunk the rosette will be perfectly flat and ready to decorate or use as an embellie.














Not sure what I'm going to do with this whopper as it measures nearly 6" across but the lil one I made (on the first picture and made from a single inch strip) will no doubt end up on a card at some point.

Happy Birthday Alex

It's my sons girlfriends birthday tomorrow and she loves bathtime and lots of bling so I made this whopper for her using stamps from the Flippin Women series. Made from 2 sheets of acetate it's 8 1/2" by 6 3/4". Going to have to make a box later as it's such an unusual size.

Pale lilac card, dcwv glitter card, prima flowers, MS punch around the page, SU bird punch (branch), crystal stickles & gems

promarker, ivory & blush

copic, r27, rv000, rv21, rv23, rv34, v12 v15, v09, b00, yr23, yr31g02, g05, c1

The greeting is a 3" sqre piece of whisper white and punched around with the greetings stamped with elegant eggplant, rich razzleberry & melon mambo.

Another 3d rose easel card

For those who don't know me in real life tomorrow is one of those mile stone events I never thought I'd see.

My niece was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia at age 5 then again at 11. Thanks to the Anthony Nolan trust a bone marrow donor was found just in the nick of time and although she didnt have an easy time with the transplant tomorrow she's going to be 21. NB, for all the ladies at an old egroup called papercrafts, she still has all the cards and mementoes you all kindly sent her. Thanks once again for keeping her spirits up.

Like my last easel card I've used a MS punch around the page set and have made a super sized easel card. The roses were cut with scal before having some stickles applied to the edge of a few petals and a Leone Em branch with leaves punch. I've used a Clarity flourish stamp to add a border to the base and behind the central panel. I mistakenly used a pearlised card which doesnt like ink so the elegant eggplant ink isnt a true dark purple any more but I liked the effect so I didnt start again as I often do lol. Underneath the ribbon I've added a key and padlock charm, these were made with a spellbinders die on clear shrink plastic which had been inked over with some silver alchie ink and stamped with the same clarity flourish in elegant eggplant. The detail doesnt show on the pic but I'm really pleased with them. Finally the sentiment was stamped before being punched with 2 SU oval punches then 3d'd to give a lip for the easel to sit on. I might have a go later at cutting a 21 charm on some shrink plastic with the cricut but then again I might not lol. If I do I'll let you all know how the cricut liked it.

Card box

I'm having fun making boxes at the mo. This is one made to fit 5 5" sqr cards.

I've used co'rdinations white card to make the box (not great card as it's quite thin) with SU snowflakes stamped in brocade blue (I'm seriously gutted that this colour will no longer be available after Sep 30th) with matching card stock punched with a MS around the page punch set before having a snowflake stamped and embossed with white SU EP.

The lid has some brocade blue ribbon threaded through a white cardstock buckle cut on my cricut with scal before being stickied with a zig 2 way glue pen then dipped into a pot of dazzling diamonds. A few sticky gems have been added.


Here's a very basic guide to making the box. It's suprisingly quick and easy to make and can be made from 1 sheet of 12*12 card. I'm assuming everyone knows how to make a box so I'm not going to waffle, just show the scores and where to stick.

This is the size and scoring lines for the lid. If you're using a decent weight cardstock I'd add an extra 1/8th inch to allow extra room for the base to fit. Because of the irregular size it's easiest to score at 1.5" on a hougie/ms board or normal trimmer with scoring blade before rotating 90 degrees, score again at 1.5" and repeat until the 4 sides are scored otherwise you'd have to score at odd measurements and not all boards are capable of scoring at 2 5/8ths.

Under normal circumstances I'd use my fabby tombow glue to stick the sides together but rather than showing a dozen boring pics showing each flap being glued I've just used some dst and photoed it in place.

For the box it's far easier to decorate before assembling. Don't forget the lid is going to hide the top 1.5" so make allowances while placing any central panels. When assembling tuck the small inner panel in first.














I've added a black & white jpg for the buckle, SCAL users please feel free to copy and use scal to auto trace.








If you're a novice at making boxes or my loose instructions don't make sense please feel free to email me. Please note the folding template is not to scale.

2 birds with 1 stone

I'm sure I'm not the only person that buys cardmaking mags only to put the freebies to one side never to be seen again while the mag is in the recycling box within minutes. After buying the craftstamper this month (only cuz the craftshop was sooo poor

there was nowt else to buy and it's rude to not buy a thing lol) I decided that perhaps I ought to use the freebie stamp. It just so happens that I've got several of my docraft buddies coming up to play on Sunday and I needed to find a project similar to a photobox but not using chipboard. I found a sweet atc case in the mag sooo here's my atc case using the freebie seashell stamp with some seaweed from Lavinia stamps. I used several blue & green distress inks for the background but the seaweed was stamped with taken with teal and garden green inks from SU. The seashell is stamped with versamark before being dusted with perfect pearls. MS punched corners, a brad and some sparkly elastic for the fastener. If I'd used pretty card for the base rather than getting inky it would have been a really quick project.


This is one took a lot of teeth gnashing as you have to be so spot on with measurements when using MS punch around the page punches. 2 sides were out by a teeny amount which gave me a wee bit of bother when it came to lining up the centres. Still I got there :o)

3d rose cut with scal stamped with a clarity flourish & perfect pearls before being assembled. Flourish from accent essentials (2nd time I've used a cart in over 2 years) Raffia bow with white pearls tinted with yr31 copic. Docrafts (I think) sentiment.

Dads Birthday card

It's Dads 65th birthday in a few days time and he's worse than most blokes to make cards for!!

This is the one I made for Tracys challenge, christening those unused stamps we all have lying about in the cupboards. he base card was using about 6 different distress inks in various browns and greens before being stamped with a Rhonna Farr (will double check and amend later if I'm wrong) 2 step flourish stamp. I've used a coppery gold for the outline part of the stamp and SU handsome hunter green for the filled in part of the flourish. The central image is from Clarity stamps and is using sepia versafine with a Penny Black sentiment.

I doubt Dad will get the distressed look or appreciate the work it takes to make a card from nothing but white card & ink but I'm happy enough with it.

NB. Guess who was right lol. Dad held it up portrait style and said yeh that's all right. Then proceeded to read the blank page of the insert hehe I should have said "Should have gone to spec savers" but I wasnt that quick lol just told him I thought he ought to put his specs on. Mum wasnt quite as bad but she preferred the quick cards I'd made as part of a stationary set for her. last birthday. Next year they'll both get dufex diecut decoupage (yuck yuck, blueghhhhh) ;o)