If I had a flower....

I had a fab time at Ally Pally last weekend and brought home lots of pretty papers to use with the latest Spellbinders range and Creative Expressions embellishments.

I used the Clarity Stamps "If I had a flower" stamp for the sentiment:

To mat and layer I used several of the Spellbinders dies -
Labels 22

Butterfly Circles

and Grand Circles

To get the flourishes, I used the Bird Flourishes die:

on some lime green card. I cut off the tails (very cruel I know!) and glued them onto pink card and cut out to make them stand out from the patterned background paper.

To decorate the card, I used the 

pink sheer wrinkled edge ribbon

and cream three bead hat pins

I finished the card off with some of the exclusive Crimson Cloud handmade paper roses:

and pink pearls

When I used the Butterfly Circles die, I had a handful of butterflies left over, so I dotted these around the card to give extra dimension.

Hope you like the card!
Mel x

Christmas Roses

We currently have our paper roses packs at an introductory price of £1.40 per pack until 30th September. They are available in a wide range of colours and in 4 sizes - from large to extra small. 

I made the card above using one of the large roses. 

I used the Spellbinders "Holiday Tags" to create the leaves. I also used another shape from the Holiday Tags for the greeting.

The lovely hedgehogs stamp is Penny Black "Here Comes Christmas".

I have mounted the coloured image onto Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels Twenty Three

And layered onto Spellbinders Lattice Rectangles:

We have all the products shown here currently in stock.

We hope you have fun with the roses!

Mel x

Cricut and SVG files

Hi Everyone,
If you don't already know, Cricut have blocked the software programmes Sure Cuts a Lot and Makes the Cut from working on their machines. This means that you can only use cartridges on a Cricut machine and will not be able to import svg files.
But, if you already have a Cricut and one of these programmes, you will still be able to use them together as long as you do not upgrade/update your software or buy a new Cricut.
This is not promoted on the Cricut site - we only discovered it on buying a new Expression and trying to cut our own svg files using SCAL. Very frustrating and expensive!!
You can use svgs still on most other digital die cutting machines.
Mel xxx

Paper Roses

We have just released our own range of beautiful hand made roses. They come in four sizes - Large, Medium, Small, Extra Small. They are available in a range of colours. You can find them here.
Hope you like them!
Mel x

Concertina Folding

With Christmas fast approaching, we decided to release some festive digi-stamps and svgs. This card is made using the new Poinsettia svg. Poinsettias look great in white, cream or red.
I cut these two out using some patterned paper - in sizes ranging from 3.5 inches down to 1.75 inches. I also cut one more out in green at 4.5 inches to give me the leaves.
I thought I would try a new (to me) technique - concertina folding. It is so quick to do. I cut two x 12 inch paper strips, about 2 inches wide. Using a score board, I scored the width of the paper at even spaces along the length of the strips. With a bit of patience I then folded them both up. On each strip, I bent them into semi circles and fixed them with large sticky dots to form one large circle. I mounted them behind the sentiment frame which was cut with Grand Nesties Circles and Nestabilities Labels Twenty. The card was then quickly layered up and decorated.
I love the way these Poinsettias turned out - you may see some more cards with Poinsettias in a starring role!
Mel xxx

Autumn Sunset

I made this card for the October edition of Craft Stamper which is on sale now. The theme was Autumn.
It was hot and sunny when I made this card, but now I can feel the Autumn in the air!
One of my favourite stamps is the Clarity Stamp Birch Trees, which looks beautiful if you repeat stamp it to create a forest effect. In order to brayer the background sunset without turning the Birch trees orange, I coloured the trunks using my clear Versamark pen, then heat embossed them using clear embossing powder. This creates a resist which you can brayer over. The doodled line around the edge of the image creates an effective frame.
Mel xxx