eBay sale

To any fellow crafters who might be interested, I am having an eBay sale. You can find my items listed for sale HERE.

I will only be selling through eBay, and no other means, as I have a lot to list and want to clear these items quickly, so wont be making any alternative payment or delivery arrangements.

CraftyCutting DT project - Heart Shaped Valentine Album

It's good to get inking and creating again, have to make up for lost time now.  This post was meant to be up last week but I couldn't finish it, so had to leave it for a bit - very frustrating.

Glad it's done now and I can show it.

CraftyCutting make various size and shape albums which are great fun to alter and this time I get to do a heart shaped one. It's a nice size and good for passport sized photos or a little bigger perhaps. This album measures 4'' x 4''.

I saw the new release from Nitwit collections, called Lovestruck and bought it straight away, knowing I had to use it on something... love the arrow designs on the papers and that fabric feel to the papers as always draws me in! 

Also trying to do more digital work, as this interests me too - not to replace paper crafting or physical paper itself, but to create my own composition, print it and embellish, ink etc is great fun as well.

I only have basic photoscape software, and one of these days I might give CraftArtist a try when I have some free time.

So I used papers and elements from the main Lovestruck Bundle and layered them for the different 'pages' in the album, printed them after fiddling a bit with size and layout. Mental note - don't try and do this again with an odd shape like a heart - a square album would have been a lot easier LOL!  well it's a challenge then and I did okay........

The easiest way I found to decorate album pages is to open the book ring, lay them on the table and plan your design (I numbered mine as it has a little story from start to finish and adding journal elements on opposite pages - had to keep them in some sort of order).
Use your page die cuts as templates to trace a line on the paper you wish to decorate them with, and then cut out the papers just inside the trace line. You might have to trim a bit more here and there.

I inked the edges of the hearts with antique linen distress ink, and the papers as well before adhering them to the heart shaped pages.
Adhere one sheet at a time, taking care to punch out the book ring hole before covering the other side of the page.

Now I guess this album could tell a little story for a special couple and I intend to make an album for my significant other, adding photos from special times, like a photo from where we met, where he popped the question etc etc

Each open double page I have laid out as a journal page on the left and room for photos and other trinkets to be stuck on the right.

Love the new journalling tags and the usual tags from Mary Fran's designs, they are good for all sorts of projects!

This is the back of the album:

To go along with the rustic fabric feel of the papers, I added little fabric hearts, twine and rustic ribbons.

Hope you liked this project - I am looking forward to making lots more different things this year, and will be back with some more posts later in the week.
Wrap up and keep warm everyone, another frosty night ahead, but it's meant to ease soon by the look of the forecast.

it's been a little while

Sorry it's been a while, but my blogging and crafting was halted after a good start to the year :(  I hurt my right arm (not so handy if you're right handed!) in work and haven't been able to do anything for a while craft wise, but it's a lot better now thank goodness.. I don't make a good patient and can't sit still for long..

So although I have few new projects to share, I will be back with some more posts of goodies made a little while back.

I can't let a post go by without a craft photo, so here's my new ink pad storage - SO much better than routing around in drawers to find colours. I find myself doing more and more stamping and inking so this was a Christmas present I couldn't wait to receive.

And I didn't get all those ink pads in one go - they crept in one by one, as craft stash generally does LOL!!

The distress ink pads take up a little more room than they would normally - this is because I have the foam ink applicators stored with the pads - under the bottom of each ink pad and held by a hair band - it keeps my ink sponges and matching inks together for ease of use - I don't think you need a wooden inking tool for each colour this way, and it means you aren't washing your ink pads repeatedly.

If you want one, you can get them from Craftracks.co.uk

I had mine posted to Parcel Motel head office in Dublin because of the size..

I have managed to finish off a project I had started, so will share that later.