Heavenly Crafts

I love my Tim Holtz dies, oh. how I love them!  And the distress inks?  The papers?  I want them all, every last one of them!  


Whilst I like making crisp, clean and minimal cards, I also really like getting grungey, messing with the distress inks and getting out my dies.  So when it was our youngest son's birthday last month, it was the perfect time to dig out my Big Shot and Tim Holtz dies:

I used some ideology papers as a background, the tag was inked with several distress inks and then stamped, and then I had the chance to use my baker's twine which I bought before Christmas (from a butcher's website as I could get far more twine for my money than buying form a craft shop!).

Oh, the relief now that I have all clients' tax returns in and can finally catch up on my sleep and get the office organised!  January is always a hectic month with me working all hours (literally) and it is not unusual for me to be working until 3,am, 4 am or even 5 am most mornings.  So, as you can well imagine, the first couple of weeks in February are really slow work wise.  It is not that I don't have any work, far from it, it is just that I am too tired to even think about it!


So far this week, I have had a couple of client meetings but the main highlight of the week has been a trip to Ikea to buy a new shelving unit and a matching desk.   Hubbie very kindly built them both up for me and so I am now sitting here thinking about tidying and organising the office....only thinking, mind, because actually dong any of that would involve me:


a) thinking about what to put where; and
b) actually moving and doing something other than just sitting at my computer!


So, instead of actually clearing the decks ready for work, I have instead being playing, and this is what I have made:

These are so easy and straightforward to make.  All you need is a sheet of A6 cardstock scored at 3", 6", 6.75" and 7.5". Stamp on one side, add a calendar tag and voila, one desktop calendar ready to go!


Of course, I couldn't leave it there.  Stamping an image is all very well, and it does look good, but I thought that a flower would look even better..... so naturally, I had to experiment!   This is the first one I made, black card and a bright orange flower:




Isn't that flower gorgeous?  It looks so effective on the black card too :).  






So of course, I then had to have a go with different cardstock, and different flowers:






 The green gingham flower was made using a Woodware punch, and the orangey flower is actually a Tim Holtz/Sizzix tattered florals die.  I used plain white paper and then sprayed the die cut petals with Cosmic shimmer Mist (ancient copper).  


I am so pleased with the results (talk about modest, eh?!!!)!


Whilst January tends to be a very profitable month for me as clients call in to collect their accounts and tax returns (and pay me!), I just don't get chance to do any crafting at all, so as well as the calendars, I have also been playing around with loads of other things.


One kit I have been working with is All Wrapped Up by Snickerdoodle Designs






Well, I had originally intended to use the printables from this kit to make gift tags and jar wraps, but due to work commitments (why, oh why, is the tax return filing deadline in January?  It means most accountants barely have time to think about Christmas, let alone celebrate it) never had the chance to do this.  So then I thought I would use it for my son's birthday (which is in January) but yet again,. work got in the way of that idea.  So, whilst I know this is more of a Christmas kit, I am a great one for making the most use out of all supplies, digital and paper, so decided to use this kit to label the storage jars in the office:

Just a quick update to let you know I will be posting in the next week as I am still in the middle of tax return filing here.  January is always chaotic for me as I struggle to get all my clients' tax returns in by the filing deadline and let me tell you, when HMRC extended the deadline to 2 February, I knew it was the answer to prayer!

Anyhow, I only have one more return to do which, surprise, surprise, is mine!  I'll be tied up all day doing that and will spend Friday sleeping as I am so tired after all the 3/4/5 am finishes I have had this month.  Friday evening sees me off to a conference with friends so I won't be back until late Saturday and then I have plans early next week to post here as I have managed to squeeze in making some gift boxes and cards between all those tax returns.  I just haven't had time to post them.  I also want to add to the "My Life" kit as well as catch up on all my blog reading!  but then I may also have to fit in a bit of work too....

So, watch this space as I will be giving away some freebies too but in the meantime....

......Happy Scrapping!

This month is my absolute busiest month of the year as far as work is concerned.  I end up spending all hours at my computer preparing accounts and tax returns, and the only free time I have is spent sleeping! So if comes as somewhat of a shock to find that I have gone and signed myself up for the design contest at Hummie's world!  Sleep is definitely overrated and I am sure I can squeeze some designing time in, despite having 30 tax returns to do...plus the associated accounts......

I like to make my own Calendars each year to give as gifts and usually, I buy the latest celebrate from Shabby Princess as the templates are really easy to use.  Basically each calendar is pre-formatted, like quick pages, and all you have to do is get each month;s page, add the dates and photographs and you are done. I say that like it is easy (which is it) and doesn't take long.  However, I found that it can take me two or three days (not all day everyday!) to put the calendar together.  I was looking forward to seeing what Shabby Princess came up with this year, as I love her designs, but to my disappointment she just produced calendar dates!


That left me with a real quandary, whether to use an old SO calendar template, and just change the dates, or to create my own calendar form scratch.  Well, since I have been giving the calendars to the same people each year, I didn't want to risk them checking back on earlier year's calendars to find out I re-used it, so decided to create my own calendars from scratch.  Naive as I am, I never realised just how much time it would take to do this!


Anyhow, since I am on the hybrid CT at The Studio, I was able to use loads of their kits and I started with the 2012 calendar dates from Nibbles Skribbles (I had already used these to make my desktop calendar), coupled with the 2011 8x8 calendar and templates form Julie C Designs:

Now I know these were 2011 templates from Julie, but I loved the idea of being able to put notes on the calendar, plus it came with 8x8 templates for the layout as well. How good was that?!!!  I had to squash each page template as my calendar was A4 size and took some poetic licence with each month's layout.


I used a different kit for each month and this is my final calendar.  Please excuse the quality here as I was printing on plain cardstock (I had run out of the heavy weight photo paper) so the colours aren't quite right.  I was really only printing to see how they looked and have actually tweaked several of them since then.



After spending what feels like months making the calendar, I really didn't have the energy to photograph all 12 pages, so this is the digital copy of each month:





I am really pleased with how it has turned out but the only problem now is finding the time to print another 15 of them out and then bind them!  I always have trouble with the binding as this time of year is one of the few occasions when I get my Zutter binding machine out.  Every year without fail I have to check the instruction manual to make sure I am binding everything the right way!


The kits I used were as follows:



All of these can be found at The Studio.


Let me know what you think of the calendar and if you make your own, I'd love to see your calendars.


Happy scrapping!

Life has been hectic here recently, even more so than usual!  Our daughter came back from University last night, and it was so nice to see her again, not having seen her for three whole months.  The longest she had ever been away form home before was for weekends away, so I really missed her.  We do everything together, shopping, walking, going to the pictures, the theatre, you name it, we go together, so she left a bog whole in my life.  It meant I had to drag hubbie along to the pictures to see the Three Musketeers and he was not impressed!


However, because I have been so busy with work (the 31 January tax filing deadline really does have a habit of interfering with Christmas ;), this meant I hadn't got around to finishing my daughter's advent calendar - and don't even mention the calendars for my elder two boys and my eldest's girlfriend.  they are still waiting to be cut out and stuck together......  So yesterday was spent in a combination of making the sleigh (which you will see below), preparing the church notices for today and finishing off our daughter's advent calendar.  I ended up putting the last chocolate into the calendar as hubbie and daughter got back form the station!  Talk about timing!!!!


I have also been playing around with various kits from The Studio recently in an attempt to make more Christmas cards.  After all, there are so many gorgeous Christmas kits around, why not use some of them to make unique personal cards this year?


So, I used the following kits:


Christmas cards - set 1 by Darlene H

Decadent Season kit by Julie C Designs and Paper Capers ~Designs (I fell in love with this kit when I first saw it, it is absolutely gorgeous!)






and one I have previously used, Winter's Delight kit by Lara's Digi World.  This is another gorgeous kit:








I only used a few element from each kit and this is what I came up with:

Well, I get millions of emails in my inbox each day, or at least that is how it often seems, but I had one yesterday offering a free Santa's sleigh template: 

You can get this free "Santa's Magical Sleigh" card making template from Card Carousel.  Just visit www.cardcarousel.co.uk/free/sleigh.html.  How awesome is that?  And just in time for Christmas, too!!!!


I don't know about you, but I definitely want to have a go at making one of these :).

I though I'd better make a start with my Christmas cards so I used the Winter's Delight bundle by Lara's Digi World:

I just love the clusters in this kit and. since I saw elsewhere on the internet some very minimalistic cards, I thought I'd be able to copy the idea to make something similar.