Well look at me, two tutorials in a row. This time its pen storage, so all you penholics this is for you. It's another make for Studio 12 so you'll have to hop over to the Studio12 Blog for the instructions on how to make it. Its a great little box, you can fix several together this way up or lay it on it's side and stack more on top, perfect for your desk and making it easy to select and use your pens.

I used papers from the Polkadoodles Studio12 Picnix collection 1 CD and Studio12 Stamps

Have you visited the Polkadoodles shop recently, there is a fab new collection of cute characters, Work and Play collection 1.  There will be more to follow too so eventually there will be something for everyone and every occasion.  What more could you ask for?

If you like entering challenges don't forget the Polkadoodles Challenge Blog with a new challenge every Friday, and the Digi Choosday blog with a new challenge every Tuesday. 

Here are a couple of Cards I've made recently using papers from Heartfelt Creations. The pads are so beautiful you really don't want to use them unless you have a duplicate you can keep and stroke. It brought tears to eyes just pulling the sheets out the pad, and when I started cutting them .......... well you can imagine how I felt if you like me are a paper hoarder. Still it's done now, there really isn't any point in buying them if I'm never going to use them, right?

That's it for now. I shall return at some point in the not too distant with more papercraft makes for you to see.

Hello everyone, I'm here at last with plenty of pics for you to see.  I really don't know what happened to March, so much work and it flashed past before I knew it.  April has been a little bit calmer, but only a bit. 

This last week I've been doing some artwork with paints and inks and having a whale of a time with it.  I do love paints and inks, maybe that's why I took to Faux painting/effects.  It's a real shame I don't have more time to do it more often, I do miss it.  I would have loved to work for National Heritage/Trust restoring the old big houses, but alas I needed a degree which entailed being at Uni 5 days a week and with a morgage to pay I just couldn't do it.  If only I'd found it when I was younger.  Our careers advisers at school never gave us any information on jobs like that, all they ever banged on about was shop, office and bank work, none of which was I the slightest bit interested in.  Had I known about restoration of faux painting it may have been a different story.

I had a 50th birthday pressie to make for our friend Jez, it took me a while to decide what to do for him as it had to be something special that he could keep.  Inspiration hit when I was sat in the Dr's surgery, not quite as strange as it seems.  They have a few shelves of second hand books that they sell for charity, so that was what got me thinking.  Below is what I made, I was quite pleased with it, but flip me did it take a long time to do, even after ripping out about a quarter of the pages.  I don't think I'll be doing another one anytime soon.

 

 

 

 

I've also done a couple of projects for the Polka Doodles Studio 12 blog since my last post, both use Studio 12 stamps.  Nikky has loads of new goodies added to the shop website, it's well worth having a gander.  The first project is a wooden sign I picked up in Wilkinson's for £3, it's about 14" long so it was a real bargain.

 

A bit late now, but here are the Clarity samples from the April shows.

 

 

 

 

 

That's it for now. Have fun creating till I'm back again.

Phew got here at last, better late than never eh.  And what a week, snow snow and more snow. Well that depends where you are, we got rain for a couple of days too.  The snow did scupper my trip up to Peterborough last Friday, it came down so hard and fast the grit and salt didn't have a chance to work and the roads down here turned into a complete nightmare, Colin got as far as Emsworth and turned back after taking an hour and a half to get about 15 miles. There wasn't much point in me trying to attempt 180 odd miles. That meant getting up at silly o'clock on Saturday to be in Peterborough by 1pm. Not knowing what the roads would be like I had to leave a lot of extra time to get up there.  As it turned out I actually made quite good time considering.  The A3 had snow on the road and I did a little bit of graceful skating, but pretty much all the other roads were snow free.  Coming home was a tad dodgy on the A1 and A1M, snow on the road and really stupid drivers thinking they were immune to the conditions.  It snowed all the way home which did make for pretty scenery but it wasn't really much fun to drive in. Despite all that I still love the snow and I'd rather have snow than wind and rain any day.

Thank you to everyone who watched the show last Saturday If there's anything you'd like shown or explained better in the next show let me know.  If I can do it I will.

I made a little canvas for Polkadoodles Studio 12 blog this week. Canvasses are fun and quick to do if you have all your ingredients to hand, it makes a change from making cards and scrapbook layouts. You can keep them simple or really go to town on them, plus it gives me an excuse to get the paints out. I really don't use them as much as I would like to. All the paper elements are from the Studio 12 Heavenly Garden collection, you will also find buttons and bakers twine on the Polkadoodles webshop.

Here are the samples and some odds and sods form the deColourant show last Saturday.  Spritzing the decolourant and d-plus misters onto cut and dry foam makes an excellent stamp pad and gives really good detail.

 

Fabric and inked card.  the top images are stamped with the misters and the bottom images are stamped with the cream

 

 Arashi Shibori technique on these. It does give beautiful pleats and patternation