living on the crafty side of life

easter

Easter is just around the corner, well about a month away, so thought I'd list some of my favourite Easter ideas I've made over the last few years.

I've also been adding lots of Easter ideas to my Easter board at Pinterest, if you'd like to see more gorgeous ideas.

Anyway, here's some old favourites.....

Pom pom chicks: (with tutorial) 

Bubble corduroy easter bags (with tutorial):

Little felt easter bags (with tutorial):

EASTER SOFTIES TO MAKE:

eggIE softie: (with pattern and tutorial)

Colourful bunnies:

Soft bunny:

Easter bunny packaging:

Decorating easter eggs:

I'd like to thank the EveryEtsy blog for featuring my pom pom chicks above in their 101 Handmade Easter Craft ideas post. As the name suggests there's 101 crafty ideas for Easter project, well worth taking a look at all the lovely ideas listed.

 

Thanks for visiting. Happy crafting.

Cheers

Fiona

maya road projects

Just wanted to share my last Maya Road projects which went to CHA recently.

This is a tabbed chipboard binder mini book, covered with some of my favourite fabric, Park Slope by Erin McMorris:

Some new cute stamps which I used for some card making:

This was a small coaster chipboard album coloured with some Maya Mist. This book contained some photos of Phoebe's fundraising efforts recently:

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona x

Day 1 of the Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza

Mel and I are sharing card and tag making ideas today. Mel has created gorgeous bunny cards today on her blog, take a peek HERE.

I've made an Easter bunny tag using one of my favourite little rubber stamps. Stamps are a great addition to your craft collection. You only need a few favourites and you can re-use them over and over again. I've made a larger tag so there is room to write a message to your tag recipient.

 

Here's a some steps to creating the tag.

Stamp the images onto smooth cardstock. I used StazOn ink this time as I didn't want to heat emboss my images. The StazOn dries quickly and I was able to colour the images without smudging.

 

Cut the images from the sheet. I will be framing my images, so I cut them slightly larger that the inner shape of my chosen frame.

 

Colour your stamped images:

 

Paint the chipboard frames:

 

Stick the stamped images behind the chipboard frames:

 

Cut a piece of felt slightly larger than the framed image (no need to attach at this point, I'll be stitching it to the card in a couple of steps):

 

Draw some lines across the tag. There are many journaling or ledger themed stamps available which you could also use. Drawing your own lines is very quick and easy:

 

Sew the framed bunny image to the corner of the tag. I sewed around the frame to hold this in place on the tag. I finished the felt piece off with a running stitch of embroidery thread:

 

Finish the tag with a big ribbon bow at the top.

This framed stamped image idea could be used on the front of little gift cards and on larger cards or added to the front of some packaging, like below. I have glued the frame onto the front of a pillow box which can then be filled with little chocolate Easter eggs.

   

Hope you enjoyed day 1 of our Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza. If you make an Easter card or tag, leave a comment here on the blog with a link to your project. We'd love to share your creations as well.

Thanks for visiting. Until next Monday for our next Easter craft idea installment. Have a great weekend.

Cheers

Fiona x

long time...no blog...

...but it is summer and school holidays.

It's been about a month since my last post. We've been enjoying the laziness of school holidays. I love having my girls home.

Christmas was nice and relaxing.

New Year was... nice and relaxing. We were at Hawks Nest for about a week... nice and relaxing. We packed a picnic and headed for Jimmy's Beach for New Years eve to watch the fireworks over at Nelson Bay. There were hundreds of people on Jimmy's Beach (busiest I've ever seen it!), many bonfires were blazing. It was a great night.

January has been nice and relaxing. Many trips to the beach, catching up with friends, movies, shopping, staying cool during our hot weather.

Here's a photo taken at Balmoral Beach. There have been several days spent sitting under the trees chatting with friends while we watch the kids enjoy themselves.

 

I have created a few projects during January. CHA-W 09 is just around the corner, and I have sent a few projects off to the US for the Maya Road stand. Here's one of the my mini albums... using a new chipboard suitcase book. You can view the new Maya Road catalog HERE.

 

I still have lots of photos on my camera which I haven't checked yet, once I have I'll post more project photos very soon.

These little cupcake cards {below} were made for the Maya Road Design Team blog. We, the design team members, are now writing posts on the blog. Every few days a new post is published over there. So far there have been lots of great ideas, so make sure you bookmark it and visit regularly.

I've used the Maya Road Cupcakes stamp set. Instructions are on the MR DT blog.

 

 

 

I LOVE this set of stamps, and I actually have ONE SPARE. So I'm going to start the new year off with a RAK. If you leave me a comment here on this post by January 31, your name will be included in the draw for this set of MAYA ROAD CUPCAKES STAMPS. I'll post anywhere in the world! edited: thanks for all your lovely comments, I now have a winner.

Good luck, have fun and thanks for visiting my blog.

Cheers

Fiona x

Robot love and other things

I recently bought a set of Darkroom Door's Robot stamps. When I first saw them I thought they were some of the cutest robots I'd seen. And they didn't disappoint when they arrived.

The girls and I had a quick stamping session last weekend and made some cards. The quality of these red rubber stamps is fantastic, the detail in the design is so clear when stamped. We loved the images and colouring them with the bruch pens. Here's one of Phoebe's cards...

 

 

I made some quick gift cards...

   

I'm loving the idea of using embroidery hoops as frames. There are many, manygreat examples on flikr, here are just a few - here, here, here and here. I bought these little hoops a while back, and the little robot stamped image was a perfect size for these. I've stamped the image onto Japanese linen with a permanent fabric/card ink (I think it was VersaCraft ?) and then embroidered and beaded around the image.

 

 

Love these little robots. My girls then pointed out that the other robot set from Darkroom Door has a little drummer robot. With a drummer in our family, I guess we'll be off for some more shopping!

In other news...

This project has been keeping me busy for the last few weeks (one day it will be our new bathroom)...

 

And this has cost us more money than expected (gotta love old houses)...

 

And this is the first glimpse of Phoebe's summer tomato crop...

 

Phoebe and I are working on a Christmas sewing project. We're not quite finished, and will post our finished project very soon. Here's Phoebe sewing away at the machine yesterday.

 

There are a couple of new pencil cases for sale over at Ribbons Galore... these pencil cases feature the gorgeous Goldilocks ribbon.

   

Make sure you visit Mel's blog for a wonderful series of Christmas craft ideas. She's written a fantastic blog post about the Christmas baubles I was selling at Ribbons Galore (which are now sold out).

Also, for everyone who was interested in the cupcake pincushion Kylie made for me. She's now popped a tutorial on how to create these little pincushions. 

Finally, two lovely ladies have mentioned me on their blogs, and I'm very late is responding to these. Ruth Clarke and Lee Mills have both sent me blog awards. Thank you ladies, very, very kind of you both.

Well that's about all for now. My blog has been slightly neglected lately, with Ribbons Galore being so busy and end of school activities starting for my gorgeous girls, my time at the computer has been limited. I will be back with some Christmas projects very soon.

Thanks for visiting. Have a great week.

Cheers

Fiona x

maya road projects for CHA-S 2008

Maya Road is making some gorgeous stamps, both in sets and single stamps (which are called singletons). You can see the stamp sets (including new CHA releases) in the Maya Road CHA-S Catalog.

A couple of my favourites have features in some of my projects which have gone to CHA.

I've used owl stamp (below) on a few little projects.

The tiny owl stamp and the 'what a hoot' have been used below, with Pink Paisley paper on the background.

The owl stamped on acetate and coloured and mounted on a round tag with Scenic Route paper:

These owls were stamped on linen fabric then embroidered:

And while I was making little fabric hanging ornaments, I used the new Maya Road cupcake singleton stamp for these:

I love cupcakes. And now Maya Road have several new cupcake themed products. There's the stamp (which I mentioned above), but also there's

• a cupcake stamp set (with six cupcake stamps plus more),
• a cupcake chipboard album,
• cupcake rubons sheets,
• a cupcake sheer ribbon,
• a cupcakes chipboard set and
• a cupcake coaster album.

Below I've used a chipboard cupcake shape from the cupcake coaster album as the base for the felt cupcake below. This book is a Maya Road sheer tab binder book, which I covered with fabric slip cover which I sewed.

And a few pages from inside my cupcake book. This book holds most of my cupcake secrets, the recipes, the frostings, the fun stuff. Being the binder style book, I'll be able to add more pages as I go along, with more fun ideas.

This book was lots of fun to make.

That's all for today, I'll gather some more photos of my Maya Road projects and post very soon.

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona x

Easter craft project #3 and a DCM challenge card

The mid week challenge over at the Daring Cardmakers blog is "These are a few of my favourite things" set by Mel. We had to use one of Mel's favourite things on our card (embroidery cotton/thread, buttons, felt or fabric) and combine it with one of our own favourite things.

This is the card I made.

I thought it would make another good Easter project, so here we go...

Materials: Urban Lily Secret Keeper Cards, pattern paper (I've used new Paper Salon KN Easter Sorbet paper), cardstock, embellishments (felt ribbon, buttons, flowers, brads, etc) and greetings stamp for the inside of the card (I've used some new Paper Salon Easter stamps which I've just received).

Just case you haven't seen them, this is what an Urban Lily Secret Keeper card looks like when it's open. They are very versatile, but I find they make fun interactive cards.

1.  Cut an oval/egg shape from pattern paper. Make sure it will cover the UL Secret Keeper card if you are using one, or that it covers whatever base card you will be putting this on. If you are using pattern paper, you may wish to back it with some cardstock to make the card a little more sturdy. I've cut another egg shape from yellow cardstock. Glue the paper and cardstock together.

2. Cut the egg in half. I've used a zig-zag line to {hopefully} resemble a cracked egg on my finished card. See my other sample below where I've just cut straight across the egg.

3.  Embellish the egg. I've used felt ribbon which I've attached to the egg by sewing buttons onto the egg and have used brads through the felt flowers.

Make sure your cracked egg can still 're-join' when the card is closed. I actually removed the larger green flowers (third row from the top) and left the smaller ones, as my egg wasn't closing properly.

4.  Stamp your greeting to the inside of the UL Secret Keeper Card. As the surface of the card is shiny, use StazOn ink. I've just received this gorgeous little Easter stamp set from Paper Salon, so was very keen to use it.

Add some colour with doodling. I've used Sharpie pens for this, again they are a permanent marker suitable for shiny surfaces.

5.  Turn your egg over, matching the two sides. Position the closed Urban Lily Secret Keeper card and glue in place. Leave the glue to dry before opening and closing the card.

And it's finished. Here it is closed...

and opened.

This is another Easter egg card which I made. This was a bit simpler. I cut the egg in half and added flowers around the edge before gluing to the Urban Lily Secret Keeper card.

And this one open.

Thanks for visiting. Hope you're having a great week.

Tamar has suggested I make Easter bonnets next... mmm will have to see if I have enough time before Easter.

Till next time.

Cheers

Fiona

A few cards to share...

Over the last couple of weeks I've received a few good things in the mail (that is, they were not bills).

First to arrive was the PaperCrafts "Paper Crafting with Photos" magazine from the US. I was so excited to have two projects included this edition {extra excited in fact as this is my first time published overseas}.

Here's one of my projects from Paper Crafting with Photos with our gorgeous little bunnies.

Last week Stamping and Papercraft magazine arrived in the post. I have a set of cards/tag in this edition (vol 13 no 6). This is another first for me, first time published in this magazine (and my tag is on the cover). Here is the set, there are how-to instructions in the magazine for each card. 

So with Easter just around the corner {yes, the chocolate Easter eggs have taken over the supermarkets}, I'll be sharing a few Easter projects here on my blog very soon, so stay tuned.

And my Easter loving buddy, Mel, has already sent me an Easter goodie bag. I haven't taken photos of it yet, but I will and share the very cute things that she sent me. Thanks Mel :-)

That's all for today. Thanks for visiting. Hope you have a great week.

Cheers

Fiona

more Maya Road projects and some new CHA products

Just thought I'd share a few more Maya Road projects with some of the new products being released at CHA.

Following is a birthday/anniversary reminder book created with a Maya Road Scalloped Chipboard book. I've used a combination of stamps from the Make A Date Clear Stamp set and the Sealed with a Kiss Clear Stamp set both from Maya Road. The cover of this book has three Textured Cord Blossoms from the new Trinkets Collection. All these products can be seen in the Maya Road CHA-W 2008 catalog.

Close ups of those gorgeous new Textured Cord Blossoms....

An inside page of the book...

Next book uses the Maya Road Rectangle Chipboard Banner Book as its base. Its covered with felt and decorated with Velvet Blossoms and gathered Ric Rac. The title is created with the Noah Alphabet Clear Stamps.

New Trinkets Ribbon, from, you guessed it, the Maya Road Trinkets Collection (can you tell I love this new collection).

This book documents my soft toy making. Starting with Bunny which I made sometime during my primary school days, there is a little story of some of my favourite toys I've created.

And finally, the Maya Road Design Team girls created a canvas to display at the MR Booth. Mine follows. All the DT girls canvases can be seen at the MR DT Blog.

Some new Sheer Ribbon:

Maya Road Microchip Foundations Buttons:

And looking around at some new things being released at CHA, these are some of the things I'm loving...

• Scenic Route: Grafton, Providence and Lynden collections.
• Luxe Designs: Cashmere Sweater II,  Classic Black II, Capris and Flip Flop collections, as well as some gorgeous stamps.
• Sassafras Lass: view the whole release HERE. Love the Serendipity "Sunshine Lollipop" and the new buttons and blossoms.
• Piggy Tales: new products can be seen HERE. Piggy Tales is now using recycled paper for their paper collections.
• Paper Salon: new products are appearing on the DT Blog. A couple of favourites of mine are the GRAB BAGS (full of coordinating embellishments) and the Designer Labels.

That's about all to share today. Hope you have a great week. Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona

RAK winners and some Christmas projects

Thank you ladies for sharing your Christmas traditions in my last post. I've loved reading what everyone does for Christmas... there are lots of different festive activities, but we all seem to enjoy this time with family and friends.

I had a couple of projects in the latest Scrapbooking Memories. First one is the layout below using Piggy Tales papers, Maya Road sheer letters and Autumn Leaves stamps.

The second project in SM was a card using Urban Lily Oh So Merry paper and a stamp from Autumn Leaves.

 

The gingerbread for the gingerbread houses has been made. I did share my recipe last year... Robyn S who left me a comment reminded me of this fact. Thanks Robyn. The recipe can be found HERE, along with the icing to hold the house together. The Nordicware Gingerbread House Mold which I use to make the pieces for the house can be found at Alfresco Emporium.

Now, onto the RAK winners of the little Maya Road people keychains (drawn randomly, in no particular order)....

Trace G: "My favorite tradition is driving an hour and a half to go find the perfect Christmas tree and then cut it down ourselves. The day also includes a sleigh ride, hot chocolate, and some cookies. Those reindeer are beyond adorable.
Happy holidays"

Julia: "My favourite tradition is decorating our Christmas tree while watching Carols by Candlelight and all singing along at the top of our voices."

Robyn S: "I love everything about Christmas. I now make gingerbread thanks to your gingerbread recipe you posted last year. This is a tradition I am starting. Thank you, love you blog."

Yvette: "Our favourite tradition is having the kid's photo taken with Santa. Not such a big deal, except the *children* involved are now 23, 20 and nearly 17! We are off to see the big fella tomorrow night and the kids are so excited!"

Thanks again to everyone who left me a comment.

Hope you're all having a festive week.

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona

x