A charm pack tote bag

This week it was a friend's 40th birthday and so I thought I would make a bag - we can always use a pretty bag! I found this tutorial via Pinterest and so I modified it a bit to make it a little simpler (although I do love the ruffled strip on the original).

Castles and Layers

More cardboard box castles here, but this time they are on a layout.I created this page for a layers challenge on last week's Cocoa Daisy online crop. It has layers of moulding paste, watercolours, papers, stickers, chipboard and stitching.

I used a Crafter's Workshop Brick stencil with moulding paste to make this background.

I continued the layering theme by layering up Maya Road letter rub-ons for my title.

A journalling challenge

Lisa Saunders set a journalling challenge over on Cocoa Daisy and so here is my page with a thankful theme and lots of journalling. I collected the bits and pieces for this page a little while ago and added the moulding paste but this challenge helped me to bring it all together and with a lot more journalling than I would have included before.

I love this chip board piece from American Crafts and I think it works so well with some papers from Cosmo Cricket's Summer Love collection behind it.

I included journalling around the edge of the page, by the photos, on a ticket and on the wooden hexagons too.

I have really enjoyed following these challenges as it is a great starting point for layouts. The challenges are well worth a look with lots of fantastic inspiration from a very talented design team.

Cardboard box castles - Part 2

My previous post on cardboard box castles has proved very popular and now it's time for another one as the ginger one is learning about castles and had to go into school for a day dressed as a princess. Here's our latest castle. We got a bit carried away and it got bigger and bigger. Luckily we could still fit it through the door! We used the book "See Inside Castles" as our inspiration - even including a flap so we could "see inside".

This was how we started out, with boxes and Pringle tubes. My hot glue gun came in very handy to make sure it was all secure. We gave it a layer of papier mache with watered down PVA glue and tissue paper to add extra strength. It would be awful if it fell apart on the way to school! I didn't glue the castle onto the courtyard, which made it all easier to paint and to transport.

Then we painted it, inside and out with grey acrylic paint (and green for the courtyard). I cut out window frames which were painted separately and glued on when it was all dry.

Here it is completed. The ginger one used a black pen to draw on lots of arrow slits and we used a selection of Lego knights (from the castle set I had when I was little), which we glued on with Copydex so it could be easily peeled off later.

She wanted a dragon on the roof and so she used a packet of green Fimo Air light (with a little bit of white) to make her own dragon.

There was a garden in the castle picture in the book and here's our version with scrunched up green tissue.

In a recent school trip to a local castle they learnt how the knights would pour boiling wee onto their enemies. Here is our bucket of wee!

Luckily our pirate ship has lots of small plastic barrels we could use in the cellar

We used Lego to make chairs, tables , benches and a fireplace for the banqueting hall.

What castle would be complete without a princess and her 4 poster bed?

Sunbathing - a stitching challenge

Here's another page I made for the Cocoa Daisy online crop and this time it was a challenge from Emily Pitts to use sewing on a layout. I sew on my pages quite frequently and so I tried to go with the idea of it being a challenge and I learnt a new decorative stitch.

I started off by adding some colour to the background. I love patterned paper, but I like it even more when I've added a bit of paint or texture to it. This time I used a Studio Calico hexagon stencil and coloured in some of the shaped with my Neocolor watercolour crayons. Then  I blitzed them with a water spray until the colours started to run and left it to dry.

Part of the challenge was to include a stitched title. I used some Thickers alphabet stickers as a stitching guide and made holes around each letter with a pin before putting the letters back into the packet for another day. You can see here that I stitched on some sequins too.

So here's my new decorative stitch. It's called fly stitch and I watched a video on Youtube to learn how to do it. I think it works really well as the sun's rays and definitely adds something to the page.

Wednesday Love: Fireworks Crafting

Tonight at Brownies we are continuing to work on our Bonfire challenge badge. In our last meeting we told the story of Guy Fawkes and then split into groups who learnt the fireworks code, ate S'mores, made scratch art firework magnets and made edible bonfires.

Mmmmm, edible bonfires....

Tonight we are going to be painting firework pictures, including glow in the dark paint and glitter glue. I love this idea with pipecleaner stamping.

From :Juggling with kids

There will also be Glow-in-the-dark Hama beads and making "firework pencils" by twisting glittery pipecleaners and sparkly pompoms onto the end of the a pencil.

A fabric challenge

The pages for the Cocoa Daisy online crop continue with this page for the challenge from Martha Bonneau to use fabric on a layout. I may have one or two pieces of fabric (!!!) in my craft room and so I took a charm pack with me to the crop at the weekend.

If I had been at home then I would have cut the squares neatly with my rotary cutter and stitched them on the sewing machine. However, as I was away from home, I ripped the fabric into squares and hand stitched them onto the page. This took longer but I love how it's turned out. It definitely adds a cosier touch to page about snuggling in sleeping bags.

I was very pleased to find a pack of Cosmo Cricket S'more Love chipboard in a sale recently as I have been thinking about buying some just to have this little tent to go on a camping page.

Cocoa Daisy Crop - A recipe challenge

Last weekend was the Cocoa Daisy online crop. The deadline for the challenges is this Friday and so There is the whole week to play along. You don't have to have a Cocoa Daisy to play along, but I thought it would be a great idea to play along to start using my lovely kits I've already received. I took the kits with me to my local crop on Saturday and found the challenges very inspiring.

This is my first page and it's for Challenge #2 by Mandy Koeppen. Mandy gave us a recipe to work with, which was:
- a splash of colour
- a pinch of sequins
- frills, fluff or feathers
- a spoonful of stamping
- a couple of slices of frames
- vellum or transparency
- wrap it up with twine
- cardstock, title, journalling and layers
- up to two freebies if you like

Here's some twine around a frame.

I combined vellum and a frill by pleating a little and tucking it onto the page. It's tricky including frills and sequins on a boy page, but I'm happy how it turned out.

Here's my splash of colour. It's Neocolour crayons over gesso.

And a spoonful of stamping too.

I think I've followed the recipe and I really like the finished page.