Luminary - A Christmas decoration

This is a scheduled post, so hopefully it works, as I am enjoying the delights of the fabulous artist that is Finnabair along with my lovely friend Annie.

I have wanted the Tim Holtz Luminary die since I first saw it on a video from the CHA.  I finally got my hands on a couple of die cuts and set about making a start on some Christmas decorations.

To be honest, it is not the easiest die to use when you have stiff, arthritic hands but it looks great as a finished article so I am going to make more to line up on the window sill at Christmas.

This is how it started.

Those who have this die already will appreciate my next comment, I think.  I made the mistake of painting the pieces before I put them together.  I used Distress Paint in Brushed Pewter and gave each piece two coats, front and back.  The second coat was randomly placed to create a more distressed metallic look, which you can see below.  The paint made the pieces a little stiff and folding them was not so easy.

The 'glass' is made from Wendy Vecchi's Clearly for Art, using a technique that Wendy demoed, which is putting a coat of Glue and Seal on the CfA and then when dry, coating it with Ranger Distress Crackle Paint.  I love that 'Jack Frost' look it creates.

To decorate the top I used Tim's Pinecone and Branch die.  The pinecones have been coated with glue and glittered to resemble a light dusting of snow.

To finish off I added a Tim Word Band saying 'good tidings of peace and joy' which I attached with some thin red ribbon and added a couple of bows.

Now, I really must get cracking with making some Christmas cards.  I did buy a few from Jenny (Buttons) who did a Craft Fair last weekend, the cards are absolutely gorgeous, so I have got a lot to live up to!  I also bought the gorgeous Christmas tree Jenny made which you can find here.  How lucky am I?

The old hip is mending slowly, still have to keep the weight off it for another 4 weeks, which is the most frustrating part, but I am being good (for once) and doing what the Doctor orders.........lol.

Thanks for visiting, hope to see you again soon.  Hugs,  Anne xx

Tim Tag November 2013

My broken hip is a real nuisance and prevents me doing lots of things but I was not going to let it stop me from doing my Tim tag!!  I especially love this chalkboard technique that Tim taught us on Creative Chemistry 102 so I was pleased to see him using it for the November tag.

I don't have the leaf stamp that Tim used on his tag which you can see HERE.  I thought the technique would really suit the snowflake stamp from the Christmas Blueprints set. I thought it might help kick-start me into making some Christmas cards.....

I am not going to go through the whole technique because Tim explains it so well in his tutorial, but I stamped the snowflake onto the base tag and twice more onto black card.  I then fussy cut one whole snowflake and then the centre part of the second one.  I layered them up with silicone glue to give some dimension.

The sentiment was stamped onto black card and given the same chalkboard treatment, cut out and applied to the tag.  For some extra interest I added some of Tim's Remnant Rub snowflakes and to finish off I added an Ideaology 'Jingle' charm, a pearl and some sheer white ribbon.

I scruffed up the rest of the tag with the chalk to give a real chalkboard appearance.  Did I say how much I love this technique!  Here's another look at the finished tag.

Thanks so much for looking and thank you for your continued well wishes, it really does mean a lot and keeps my spirits lifted - you really are a remarkable tonic and a truly wonderful group of crafty friends.  Big hugs to you all,  Anne xxx

Steampunk Tic Tac Toe

Hello everyone, I am here today with my Design Team piece for Our Creative Corner.  My wonderfully talented team mate Claudia chose the theme this month, which is Steampunk Tic Tac Toe.  In Claudia's own words:

'So all you have to do is use three of the ingredients from the diagram that are in a straight line (horizontally, vertically or diagonally) when creating your projects for our challenge and name them in your post!'

I am a little out of my comfort zone with Steampunk but I do like a challenge so I chose the top line - wings, gears and wire and created a card.

The base card is 6" x 6" and I coloured it with Gathered Twigs Distress Ink.  The backing paper is from my stash. The watch is a Tim Holtz die which I cut several times from heavyweight card as I wanted the watch rim to be elevated.  The watch was coloured with several colours of Distress Paint to give a aged look. The wings are from another Tim Holtz die.  The wire on the left hand side is chicken wire from the DIY store and I have rusted it with Rust coloured Alcohol Ink.  The cogs are a mix of wood and metal cogs from my stash (in part a candy win from my blog friend Kath). The key and chain are also from my stash.  

I hope you will go over to Our Creative Corner to see the fantastic projects by my team mates, including our newest member, the amazing Astrid, I promise you will not be disappointed!  If you have not joined in yet, you have until the 28th November, we would really love to have you join in.

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I have not posted much since my accident but I just wanted to let you know that I am making reasonably good progress, I still need to use the crutches for the next six weeks, which is a bit of a pain!  I have been totally overwhelmed by the messages, gifts, flowers and cards that I have received from my fabulous blog friends and I would like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.  You really did lift my spirits when I needed it most.

I have been such a lucky girl!  The picture was taken last week, there are even more this week.  Thank you so much everyone.  Take care everyone and keep well.  Hugs, Anne xx

THANK YOU / UPDATE and Birthday/Halloween Accordion Card

The post below was scheduled but Mr Blogger did not do his duty so it is out of date by more than a week but I still wanted to show it for my friend Sandy and also bring you up to date and say thank you!

I wanted to send emails to everyone but there are just too many of you!  I am home from hospital now, my broken hip is starting to mend although I am under instruction not to put any weight on it or it will be a hip replacement for me .....not a pleasant thought so I am following Doctor's orders to the letter.

THANK YOU for all your messages, your kindness has overwhelmed me, I always knew my blog friends were wonderful but even you, dear friends, have gone above and beyond and I am not sure I will ever be able to repay you......... you will never know how much you all mean to me!

Thank you to Jenny, Mo and Lynn for spreading the word about my horrible accident.  Thank you to Jenny, Rita, Annie, Astrid, Brenda, Nicola, Terry, Sandy, Toni, Diane and Chris for the absolutely stunning flowers which arrived today (with chocolates too!).  Your kindness has warmed my heart and given me a much needed boost.

Thank you to Darnell, Claudia, Alison, Lynne, Mark, Rachel, May, Kelly, Carole, Kath, Patricia, Jennie, Laura, Julia, Linda, Amy and two Elaines, Di, Sue, Dianne, Jo Ann, Donna (and there are more that I have not read yet)........ for your kind and thoughtful words by email and on my blog.  I am so blessed to have such a wonderful group of friends and I treasure you all.  I will show all my beautiful cards when I feel a little better.

I am sorry that I will probably get behind again in looking at your blogs and commenting but as soon as I feel a bit more like myself I will be back stalking you all..........

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Now, below is a post which should have gone out on 26th October.............

It is the birthday of my lovely blog friend Sandy this week.  Sandy also loves Halloween so I took the opportunity to make an accordion card to cover both occasions.  Sandy has received her card and loved it.  I do not normally show cards that I have made for family and friends, but I know that Sandy will love seeing her card again here.

This is one side of the card - the birthday side.

I used mainly Tim Holtz items: the backing paper, the gorgeous Blueprint dragonfly and the wonderful mini Tattered Floral die, the Simple Sayings stamp set and of course his gorgeous paints to colour the flowers and the little square of burlap.

 The base card is made from Karen Burniston's fabulous Accordian base and frame dies (which I love!).

The Halloween side of the card again uses mainly Tim Holtz products: backing paper, the fabulous skull stamp and his Halloween die cuts, chit chat words and the Simple Sayings stamp set.  The orange colour in the background is Ripe Persimmon Distress Paint which is so perfect for Halloween makes.

I just love the way that this Accordion card can be made double sided, it is so versatile!

Thanks so much for looking, I look forward to catching up with you all soon.  Big hugs, Anne xx

Tim Tag October 2013

Firstly, a big welcome to my latest followers, I am so thrilled to have you along on my creative journey! A quick post as I don't want to be on the last minute with my tag this month.

I absolutely love Halloween and I love Tim's tag for October, but sadly I don't have any of the new dies that he has used.......so once again I have had to improvise.  You can see Tim's beautiful tag HERE.

And here is mine:

I created the background with Ripe Persimmon, Seedless Preserves and Scattered Straw Distress Paints, following Tim's instructions.  The edges were distressed and aged with Black Soot Distress Ink.  The tag has been stamped randomly with the script element from the Chemist stamp set - well I had to get that in there somewhere!

The bats and the bottom part of the dome (a Tim die) have been coated with Glossy Accents and then liberally coated with Black Soot Distress Glitter - I am not a huge glitter fan but these distress ones are lovely, not too sparkly and quite chunky, so easy to handle.

The top part of the dome has been done in two parts.  The background has been embossed and lightly coated with Pumice Stone Distress Ink.  The see through element of the dome is one of my latest obsessions - it has been cut using Wendy Vecchi's wonderful Clearly for Art.  I gave it a coat of Glue and Seal, allowed this to dry and then coated it quite thickly with Clear Rock Candy Distress Paint - an idea by Wendy Vecchi that Tim shared with us recently, but with a glass vial.  I thought I would try it out with Clearly for Art and it worked really well.  I waited until it dried and then I gently heated the CfA and shaped the dome slightly so that I could fit the bats underneath.  Sadly, this is one of those pieces that looks much better in real life but hopefully the close-up gives you the general idea.

To finish off I stamped trick or treat from the Simple Sayings stamp set and added some vintage ribbon to the top which has been coloured with Ripe Persimmon Distress Paint and then stenciled with the Burlap stencil.

Thanks so much for looking, I will be missing for a couple of days so will not be able to visit your lovely creations but I hope to catch up with you again soon!  Big hugs, Anne xx

Tim Holtz Configurations Book - a labour of love

I am sharing something today that I have been working on for several weeks.  The very talented Richele Christensen shared a Tim Holtz Configurations Book HERE and invited people to make one along with her.  Since I love Halloween and I loved what she had created I decided to join in and I have had so much fun making this.  As ever, I did not have all of the elements that Richele used so I had to improvise on quite a few things but I am thrilled with the result and will be displaying it in my window on All Hallows Eve.

Richele has been doing the tutorial in stages but has been ill recently so I have taken the liberty of finishing the box off myself by following the photo on her blog.  I needed to get it finished because, as I will not be around much over the next week.

There are quite a few photos but not too much by way of explanation because Richele has gone into great detail, so if you want to make one you can follow her brilliant tutorial.  It does look much better in real life, but to see it better just click on the photos.

This is the front of the closed box.  Tim Holtz very kindly gave Richele permission to scale up the scary house die onto a template which was used to cut the house shape from the box cover - that was the hardest part because the configurations boxes are very strong.  The moon, bats, wrought iron fence and tree are all die cuts, all TH with the exception of the fence.

This is the inside of the whole box, each box has been trimmed with tissue tape.

The skeleton is holding a lighted lamp, the battery pack is threaded through and I'll show you where later.

These are my favourite sections, I love Tim's new Movers and Shapers clock die.  It was hard to photograph the bone dust but this section is actually a working shaker box and is filled with broken up Tim's Idea-ology wishbones.

For the bottom half of the box, my friend Mo helped me out with the owl (a new die that I do not have) and she created a melt pot one which I have coloured.  She also gave me the wonderful dome bottles at the top of the box and the fence on the front - thank you Mo!

This is a view of the back of the box.  The wire from the light has been threaded across the top and down the right side, hidden by Tim's Laboratorie papers and the battery pack is hidden behind that die cut bottle.

This is just a view from the inside of the box, looking out, to give you an idea of the shape of the house.  The box itself is approx 12 inches by 9 inches so there is lots of space to work in.

I hope you have enjoyed the tour of my little spooky house!  I am entering this into Simon Says Stamp/Monday Challenge this week, which is 'Spooky'.

Edited: In my haste to post this I forgot to mention that I would like to enter this into Country View Crafts Challenge which is 'Something Spooky'.

I am also including it in Richele's blogpost linky HERE.


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Finally - NOT FOR THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION - please look away now if you have!



I was so inspired by Lynne's recent spooky skeleton creation (Mr and Mrs Bones) that I created one of my own.  I did this for my soon to be Son-in-Law, who is a History Teacher and loves skulls, a bit like me.  Lynne, these photos are just for you!

Mr and Mrs Skeleton are decked out in Graphic 45 Steampunk papers and Mr Skeleton is sitting in a Tando Creative coffin........... his top hat is handmade.  Mrs S wears a skirt of lace, coloured with Black Soot Distress Paint.  They are ready to go to the Halloween ball.......


I am entering this piece into Anything But a Card Challenge which is Colours of the Season - Orange and Black

Thanks for looking, hope to visit you all soon, but please forgive me if I miss a few posts over the next week or so.  Hugs, Anne xx

It's Halloween - Let's tag it on!

Well, that's the theme over at Our Creative Corner for this month and the wonderful  Julia has given us a Halloween Challenge.  Julia has asked us to create a Halloween tag with some surface texture on it.

I absolutely love using stencils and I am getting better with embossing paste (I won some Wendy Vecchi paste recently and it is wonderful to use) but I chose to use a dry embossed base for my tag.

In fact, a lovely American blog friend sent me this Tim Holtz embossed background and I knew it would be perfect for this tag.  It has a beautiful raised texture which I sanded and then went over it with Pumice Stone Distress Ink to give it even more definition.  The cat and bats are die cuts, as is the fence.  The sentiment is from Tim Holtz Simple Sayings set.

The cobweb in the corner is my new Tim Holtz strip die, I love this one!  On the right side, I wanted to add even more texture to the surface of the tag and I used Frantage - Aged Black Embossing Enamel which has a lovely sheen to it.

The ribbon is vintage seam binding which I coloured with Ripe Persimmon Distress Paint and then stencilled over with a burlap stencil.  The skull and crossbones is Idea-ology and I just glued this to the ribbon, after giving him some orange Ranger Stickles eyes.

I really hope you will pop over to Our Creative Corner to see what my talented teamies have come up with and then I hope you will join in this wonderful challenge.  You never know, you could be our winner and be spotlighted or one of our top three.  We would love to have you join us and you have until the 28th to get your entry in!

I must say a big thank you to my latest followers, it is lovely to have you along.  Thanks so much for visiting, hope to see you soon.  Big hugs, Anne x