The List

This has to be a quick post as it is not on my "to do list".....

I have a few days off work and I am the world's most disorganised, organised person.....so I made myself a list...and I was going to stick to it!!! The craft room called to me several times, I stuck my fingers in my ears and ploughed on regardless, but this one little card mainly created on the PC was the one exception but replying to an invitation was on the top of the list.

As an experiment I printed the wording in grey and I used a floral dingbat font for the decorative elements. I have been having a sneaky peek at the goings on at LIM Towers to see what everyone has been up to (naturally I have only done this whilst having my lunch....oh and breakfast ....oh and coffee breaks!) and inspired by Mandi I decided to bling my wording, but decided to try using a cocktail stick and pva instead of a glue pen....it was tedious...... but worked.

I ploughed on.....the biggest job of them all was to - sort - reorganise & deep clean our bedroom! Several sacks and two days later I am finished, I was feeling quite smug and dare I say it sanctimonious, inspired, I merrily hoovered the landing and horror of horrors, I decided to hoover my craft room. Now as Jenny at "crafting in the country" has agreed it is not a very wise thing to do...mainly as who know what treasures are lurking down there (and yes Jenny this week I am going for gold with "WOYCRF" what's on your craftroom floor),....... but in I bulldozed ..... time was ticking away and I got a little bit more frantic.... something precious rattled up the nozzle.....in horror I snatched the tube up AND........ promptly took out the entire contents of the shelves behind me.......I have shut the door on it...the floor is clean but unfortunately you cant see it, it's covered in peel-offs, stamped images di-cuts, stickers, rub-ons, paper, boxes, you name it, it's there!

This all gave more added poignancy to the little card I had started at the beginning of the week.

Another job on the list was to replace my printer ink cartridges, in the interest of economy I decided to use a refill kit....it went marvelously didn't even get any on my hands (miracle)....that was until I decided to use the little bit left in the refill tanks....I tapped it out, watered it and tinted a sheet of card... great I thought after I had to iron it (ironing was also on list!) I will make a note card. Found this quote a Gingers House loved it and decided to print it on my customised stock

Guess who forgot to replace the black ink .....DOH!

I give in.....!!!

No I don't need another scrolly font...No I don't need another scrolly font...I repeat no I don't need another scrolly font... O.K ...give in ....I do need another scrolly font...thank you Less is More Ladies you have convinced me .....Scriptina is a really lovely font and quite frankly it looked better than all my others and as this design relies heavily on the wording, the font was very important. This week at Less is More the challenge is "a touch of red" and I have an engagement card to make for one of our nephews (congrats Andrew and Eve). Engagement cards can sometimes be tricky, I'm not keen on too much wedding imagery for the event but I love the idea of celebrating being joined together, so a simple scrap of red ribbon joining the wording was all that was required. The wording was printed landscape on A4, trimmed, cut apart, scored and attached on the inside. To cover the fixings inside I added an insert ...just a touch more red! I was pleased with the card but began to think it was too minimalistic? So ..... I pushed the boat out and added a little red heart.....now not sure again....

What do you think ...with or without?????????????????

(don't worry the heart will easily detach, if the verdict is off,

it is attached with blue-tak at the mo)

Book Chrysanths

Working part-time in a Library has the great benefit of having access to damaged books, so when my friend and colleague had her birthday approaching and was kindly cooking us lunch to celebrate, I decide to go armed with flowers.....book flowers.

These are extremely simple to make and can be made on any scale, each flower used approx. 4 pages, but smaller versions use less. I took inspiration from DYSU's challenge of "clear, light pink and mauve" colour theme. Unfortunately I found these extremely difficult to photograph and the very pretty light purple piece of tissue that I had been saving for a project, looks very blue!

After slicing the pages into thin strips these were stuck in star pattern onto a circle of card (the circle wont show so they don't need to be precise, mine were just a bit larger than a 2p piece).

Each flower requires two layers, which once dry are curled (using your thumb, lightly pull fronds over closed scissors). The effect can be varied by alternating the direction of the curls, but for this project I had mine all curling backwards. I created stalks from rolled up paper. Slice an A4 piece of paper corner to corner, then roll up tightly, working diagonally to the smallest point. Using a glue gun, stick this between the two layers.

I created some buds from tissue twisted over some cotton wool, the stalks were created by staining kebab sticks (felt pens or paint works well), these were finished with some looped strips of the page strips and some slivers of green paper cut to form long leaves.

Each flower had centres of smaller petals formed from torn tissue.

I arranged the elements into a bouquet and added extra leaves attached to the stalks of the larger flowers and also onto strips of green card. these were then encased in matching tissue and some clear cellophane.

The bow was a very vibrant pink.....but this actually matches my friends hair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!