Jane Austen paper Doll

I made this doll for Victoria, my swap partner

for the Advent Swap I participated in.

One of Victoria's likes is Jane Austen so I Googled

some images and her blue dress seems to feature a lot!

I copied it the best I could (oops, should have

ironed it by the looks of it, I'm sure Jane Austen's

dress would have been perfectly pressed and pristine)

Her face is moulded from air dry clay -

 the hair is some sort of dyed wool - 

I can't give more details as I can't get to my cupboard 

where my supply of it is kept at the moment as there's 

Christmas presents blocking the door!

Oooh-la-la - moving swiftly on!

I also made an ATC to accompany the doll,

see, there's that blue dress again - lol.

This is the last of the Advent presents I made for Victoria,

but it's been a lovely swap and I've felt like a little girl

again opening up a present every day

(and of course, there's still one to go!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'd like to take this opportunity of wishing everyone

a very 

Merry Christmas 

and a  

Happy and Healthy

New Year

  

and to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart 

who takes the time to read my blog

and leave me comments, I really appreciate each and every

one of them.

Enjoy your celebrations and hope to see you

here again next year (if not before!)

Cheers

 xxxxxxxxx  

 

Advent Presents .... and there's more!

I'm enjoying opening a present everyday from

 Victoria

my partner for the Advent swap.

 

The photo above shows presents from days 16 to 20,

a photo frame, some Christmas snowflakes, a diary, some

craft papers (in one of my favourite colours) and a

delightful crocheted flower brooch.

 

Days 21 to 22 are below

 

 

Are these gorgeous, or are these gorgeous!

A veritable bouquet of crocheted flowers

and a trio of hearts - I have a last discovered

why the box of presents smelled of lavender - the

red and white heart is filled with it and I love lavender!

 

Thanks again Victoria x

 

Here now are some of the presents I made for Victoria.

 

 

Four blank birthday cards using Laura Ashley papers

for the background and Tim Holtz/Alterations

'Sewing Room' dress maker's die.

 

Here's the inside

 

 

Next is a jar of 'pretty pink and green things'

(Victoria's favourite colours)

 

I decopatched the lid of the jar and  attached

some pink ribbon around it.

 

 

Finally, another Post-It Note holder

(I previously made a more modern one, but this is in a

vintage style)

Using a base fabric, I machine stitched a collage of various scraps 

together. I transferred the image to fabric using the technique

'Inkject Transfer'  

 as described by Leandra on the Paperartsy's blog.

The little rectangle is metal and embossed with

 a Vintaj DecoEmboss by Sizzix. 

There is a small crocheted flower on there too.

Once it was complete, I attached it to the mountboard cover

with Pinflair Bookbinding Glue.

 

Just three more days to go!!

Thanks for looking :)

The Toy Soldier

As I mentioned yesterday this is my current favourite

Sizzix/Alterations Bigz Die called

'Toy Soldier'.

I think I like it so much because it reminds me of

the fairytale 'The Tinder Box' by Hans Christian Anderson.

Not that the soldier in the story was a toy one, and having

just re-read the story as an adult it's a little bit unsavoury - lol.

I thought the soldier was a good guy, but he cut off the witch's

head when she wouldn't tell him why the tinder box was so special -

oh well, never mind, I still love this Bigz Die.

I decided to make some bunting with it and it

became advent present number 19 for my swap partner Victoria.

I cut the soldiers from felt and card,

 painted their legs, boots and faces

and grunged them up with some pencil.

I stitched them with military looking buttons onto some navy ribbon.

Following the tutorial on YouTube

'How to make a box from a single sheet of card'

I did just that and decorated it with some

old sheet music and another of the soldiers.

This is probably my favourite of all the gifts I made

and I think I'll be using the die over and over again.

.... shame I'm now dis-illusioned about that soldier in

The Tinder Box story though -

 next I'll find out that Father Christmas doesn't really exist!!!!

Thanks for looking :)

 

Christmas Cards

I used inspiration from Tim Holtz blog

12 tags of 2012 - December

to create these two Christmas cards.

For the snowman I used the stamp from

Stampers Anonymous 'Christmas Blueprint' set.

For the poinsettia I used the Sizzix/Alterations

Bigz Die 'Tattered Poinsettia' and

Sizzix 'Corners, Flourish #2'

I also made this one in a similar style.

I first die cut from mountboard the 

'Toy Soldier'

Sizzix/Alterations Bigz Die,

then stamped the toy soldier onto it from

the Stampers Anonymous 

'Christmas Blueprint' set.

The rubber stamp is slightly smaller than

the die cut shape, but it was much easier doing it

that way than having to cut around the rubber stamped image.

I think the Toy Soldier is my (latest) favourite

and I'll do another posting using it shortly.

Thanks for looking in at this very busy time :)

More Advent Presents

 

Here are the pressies from days 8 to 15

I received from Victoria.

The photograph isn't very good, but all the

gifts are wonderful - look at the mini pink and green

bunting, it's so delightful as are the handmade

rose stud earrings and the crocheted jar cover. 

 

Thanks again Victoria!

 

Some of the gifts I handmade for Victoria are below.

 

 

 A fabric heart pocket.

 

 

 A Post-It note holder, fabric covered

and the square is a little tile.

The inside looks like this.

 

 

A Shamballa style bracelet.

This is actually the first one I ever made

and I chose two of Victoria's favourite colours - pink and green.

 

 

Finally, one of Victoria's likes is bunting so I made her

some with her name on it - the fabric letters are from

the 'Word Play Alphabet' Tim Holtz/Sizzix Bigz die.

.. also made a pretty box for it to go in.

 

 

I must take this opportunity of showing a wonderful gift

I received from a lovely Blogging friend

Sherry of Createology

It's a felt envelope embellished with some

gorgeous postcard fabric.

Here's the front, and you can see some

postcards Sherry enclosed from her home town.

 

 

I've just realised I didn't photograph it closed

so you can't see the cute little buttons sewn on the flap.

Thanks again Sherry (SSD!), and as you already know,

I absolutely love it!

 

 I hope all your Christmas preparations

are going to plan - I've wrapped most of my presents, although

still several to buy - and I haven't posted my UK cards yet!

Sorry, I haven't visited many blogs recently, but I'll try

to come and see you soon.

 

Thanks for looking x

Christmas is Coming .....

These are the 25 parcels (and Christmas card)

I prepared for my partner

Victoria 

for the Christmas Advent Swap.

I hand made 12, shop bought 10 and found 3

from my craft stash.

I'll only blog about the ones I made.

 

So far, Victoria will have opened from me

an Emery Board Holder

 

 

Details of how I made this are shown here.

A mobile phone charm which I didn't photograph - doh!

A festive bird cage decoration.

 For this I used Tim Holtz/Sizzix 

Caged Bird Bigz die.

 

I covered the bird with music paper, coloured with

some distress inks and added a layer of Sparkle Mod Podge.

The Poinsettia flowers along the bottom

I made some time ago and found the

 blog post describing how I made them here.

 

Now onto the pressies I received from Victoria -

how exciting!!

 

This is the box I received

 

 

and here's the presents for days 1 to 7

 

 

Victoria is a keen crocheter and I love in particular

 the crocheted mug holder

(not to mention the sachets of hot chocolate!).

The heart shaped cookie cutter came with a recipe

for 'Gorgeous Gingerbread' - sounds yummy!

Today's gift was the bar of SeaSalt / Fresh Linen soap -

which smells divine.

 

Thank you Victoria!

Curious Corrin - hanging and card

 

I made this hanger for the lovely Cindy's birthday.

As you can probably see it's made of three mini

canvases linked together with ribbon.

As I decided to use one of Dyan's fun 'dylusions' stamps

'Curious Corrin' I thought I'd try out one of her

wonderful background techniques too - using an

assortment of ink sprays and getting generally messy!

I must admit I didn't find it as easy as Dyan made it look

but liked the results anyway.

I also made a card, which I got a bit carried away with

I got so carried away with it that I thought I'd overdone it

completely and it was heading for the bin.

However, once I held Corrin against it (stamped onto card

and attached with 3D sticky pads) I quite liked it ...

in fact, I liked it better than the hanging - how funny!

The main thing though, is that Cindy liked it,

so all's well that end's well!

Finished Altered Sardine Tins - for Christmas

The three way round robin swap I blogged about here

has been completed and I'll show here the finished

altered sardine tins with a Christmas theme.

My own tin, once I did my bit started off looking like this

 

Lou then added her bit and it looked like this



 The tin arrived back today from Sonja who
finished the tin off and it now looks like this -
I love it!





















I hope Lou and Sonja won't mind me posting these pictures
of their tins too - before and after.

This is how Lou's tin started off

Then onto Sonja

 and finally me

Sonja's tin started off looking like this

  Onto me next and I blogged about what I did here. 

.. and finally finished off by Lou

What a lovely project to work on this was
and I think all three tins look lovely.

Thank you again to Lou and Sonja.

Desert Island Disc - CJ - my page for Donna

This is my first contribution to the circle journal I'm involved

in on the Collabor-ART blog.

This is for Donna's journal.  I say journal, but it is no

ordinary 'journal'!  It is a hand made record box and each contributor

has to decorate these following elements which are in the box.

Donna decided to allocate her songs to each of us,

rather than letting us choose - and for me she chose

'Melancholy' by Louise and the Pins

.... what? / who? ..... Help!!!

Needless to say I'd never heard of them or the song,

but now I love them, the song is really beautiful!

You can hear it by clicking on the link above if you like.

The artists describe their sound as folk / rockability,

so with this in mind I decorated the holder like this -

which seems sooooo naff now, but I thought it was a 

good idea at the time!

For the record sleeve I printed out the words onto

copy paper and machine stitched them on.

 I went a bit mad with spray inks - adding layer after layer

and did a little rubber stamping too.

This is the booklet inside - I used lyrics from the song

Melancholy in my heart - literally!

More of the same for the back cover

Finally, I added a charm to the outside of Donna's record

box - to add to her already jangly collection!

(Mine is the one with the skull and two pink beads)

I loved decorating my part of Donna's journal

and only hope she likes it too!