Roundup of Seven Hills Crafts projects

Hi! How are you? 

I’m really aware that I’d forgotten to post some of my projects on the Seven Hills Crafts blog so thought I’d post a selection with links to the blog post if you want more info about the products and how I achieved them.

Check out the details for these two Mama Elephant projects here

This fun birthday inspired project here

And lastly  

This sticker stamping technique here

Hope you have a lovely weekend ( what’s left of it),

and I’ll see you soon xx 

Stuck Duck & Avery Elle Challenge

 Hi! How are you? 
Today I’m showing you how to create a fun scene just using a set of dies and linking in some stamped images that tell a story!

Let me introduce you to ‘stuck duck’ 

 The characters are

from the Story book set
The die set is another Avery Elle set ‘Snow Caps Ellements’ 

  
 The great thing about the Storybook set is that you can create your own breeds of animals. I wanted to create some mallards as the scene’s main characters. 

One has got stuck in the ice (hence the ‘stuck duck’).

Now obviously his friend had raised the alarm and sent for Air Sea Rescue who ingeniously thought of commandeering the local cable car and simply lowered the rope down whilst ‘stuck duck’ wound it around himself.

The rescuing rabbit simply tucked the rope under his paw, and let the motion of the cable cars winch the shivering duck to safety.

Ha!

 
I’ve added in some acetate over the top for a super quick way of adding falling snow and therefore this card fits perfectly in with the current challenge for the current ‘Winter’ 

Avery Elle i❤️u Challenge  

  
I’ve coloured with mostly Prismacolor pencils which I’m really starting to enjoy using. Do join in too- you have until Jan 26th!

The sentiment set is from ‘Weather It’ 

 Do check out these sets at Seven Hills Crafts– there’s a tonne more to see too! 

See you soon! 

Keren xx

Other Stuff!!

   
Hi! Hope you had a lovely Christmas! 

It’s this weird even twilight time between Christmas and New Year when it’s easy to even forget what day it is!! 

I thought I’d show you these two cards that were created for a very specific commission to celebrate two different women’s Birthdays.

   
This first one was for a lady who loves baking and it seemed like ‘Baked With Love’ from Lawn Fawn would be the perfect set.

I love creating these ‘table top’ scenes. Much more fun to receive than your flat card, altho, yes, the envelope does need a little more attention!!  

 I used alcohol markers and some die-cuts extras from MFT ( some ancient number does), a Technique Tuesday ‘happy’ die and the ‘birthday’ stamp was from Clearly Besotted. 

The second card had to incorporate Cameras and dogs!!

 
Granted- you don’t normally take Polaroids with mini dogs rolling out, but this is art right ?! 😉

I used an Avery Elle camera stamp combined with the same MFT number dies and my 2015 favourite ; ‘Playful Pups’ by Mama Elephant 

 I hope they fitted the brief- the lady who commissioned them seemed pleased with them!

What’s the hardest commission you’ve ever done? Did they like it?!

Righto! I’ll be off. I’ve some lovely new releases to prepare for.

If I don’t get chance to come on before the New Year, can I thank each and every one of you who has visited and commented and generally made me smile on a regular basis. You all mean a lot to me. 

See you soon! xx

An Off-Piste Cable Car experience with Avery Elle!

Hey! How are you?
I know it’s getting chillier and thought I’d use this really fantastic die setI got out the set and stared at it for a while and got a little stuck. I cut out the snow drifts and lay them onto the card base and that’s when, the pre-trimmed elements just looked right. The snow extending past the card looked in proportion and then as I added the cable cars, it grew into the design that it is!

Now, granted, it’s a little bit of fun. By extending past the card I’ve gone ‘off-piste’ (does the title make sense now 😉 )
I’ve also used the gorgeous notecards.

You can see the little animals sticking out of the decorated cable cars. I’ve added acetate to the windows too! I flipped one of the cable cars over so they weren’t all facing the same way.

The cute animals are from the Storybook set, but this set would do just as well

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the trees are in fact mountains. You can really change them all around- it’s a wonderful versatile die set.
I’ll go back to my shivering now!

Keren xx

Coffee Spills on the Coffee Lovers Fall Blog Hop!

    
Hi! Hope you’re all raring to go and bright eyed and bushy tailed? No?

Maybe you need some of this… a coffee fountain! 

 
 Some days, I’m not sure even this would do the trick, although I’d probably have substantial palpitations trying to down such a lot! 

I’m joining in with the Coffee Lovers Fall Blog Hop hosted by the irrepressible Amy Tsurata.

I’m late to the party but it’s on until the 2nd Oct so still time to join and link up your fall/Autumn themed project. 

I’ve used this set from Avery Elle

 

As long as you don’t mind cutting a few coffee cups out- or actually, masking them would work just as well.

The little hearts in the set are perfect for adding a little colour to the scene and if you fancied making them cute, you could add the face that’s in the set too! I’ve used Fall colours for the hearts which links in with the theme! 

The spillage was just using some distress ink with water added onto an acrylic block and then painted using a water brush to keep the ink fluid
I got a little paint-happy and sloshed it everywhere. I wasn’t meaning for it to get quite that spilled, it even ended up in the left hand corner of the card too. 

 It was just like the butterscotch sauce all over my kitchen floor on Sunday.. but that’s another story 😉

At least with papercrafting there are no beautiful china jugs being smashed too 😁
It’s a great set- full of fun images and useful sentiments.

Hope you have a great day, and don’t drink too much coffee, (unless it’s the really good stuff!)
See you in a day or so- lots happening this week 😉

Do think about joining in– it’s loads of fun and there’s always caffeine fuelled inspiration aplenty! 
Keren x

Ta Tara!

Sometimes it’s nice to bring a smile to people.

Some just need one.

This is a mini blog hop in aid of making Tara (the owner of Make The Day Special Stamp Store and our fearless leader) and her ‘superimportanteventhoughhe’salwaysbehindthescenes’ other half Rick.

Kate thought it would be a great idea to say thanks for all their hard work and so ‘Ta Tara’ (a great colloquialism in various parts of England that means Thanks) is just the Design Team all posting something especially for them.

Kate chose the theme’ food’ as Rick and Tara are both super foodies and that caused us all a little head scratching. I don’t have many food themed sets and started one idea, then gave up and subsequently had the random thought of olive curtains drawn aside to show the two martini glass stars (aka Tara and Rick).

Yes, it’s tenuous.

Agreed, it’s totally out there.

Is it rather stupid? You be the judge…

Even the sentiment was a stretch… I used these sets

You can see the olive image and ‘olives’ sentiment that I shortened. The Hugs is obvious on the first set and I just trimmed out an extra u and s from the hugs to make the sentiment.

This hop is from all of us (olive us!) and we want Tara to know that we really appreciate her and all she does. Her customer service is always super speedy, and if you knew even half of the work she puts in to the business, you’d know how much she deserves to succeed.

A strange olive curtain toast to you both. May you go from strength to strength.

You came hopefully by way of the superb Kate and you can now hop over to the sublime Sarah. If you want to go from the beginning, then why not start back at the MTDSSS and go from there!

Start Make The Day Special Stamp Store
Jenny 
Jill 
Julia 
Kate
Keren -you’re here!
Sarah

Avery Elle Cookie Heart Flowers!

Yes- I know. 

Weird title. The thing is, if I don’t explain- you’ll think I’ve not followed the brief.

Which is…Spring.

And spring according to Avery Elle i❤️u Challenge ..you do need to use their stamps!

 

So here’s mine. 

 

Not seen these Avery Elle blooms before? They’re here. 

 

Can you see the flower? 

Stamp the cookie and the heart… 

  

Then go around the cookie- stamping the hearts next to each other and then in the middle of the two you’ve just stamped. 

 

Colour in with alcohol markers of your choice…and ta daah! Add little details with your favourite trusty white gel pen.

I’ve also used Avery Elle’s Caribbean collection folded cards  

 plus the lovely paper from their Everyday Collection 

 If you fancy joining in with the Spring Challenge- go and add your project to the linky here.

There’s not long left…so put a spring in your step! 😉.

It’s half term..so not a lot of time to chat. I went to the tip this morning.

More on that next time. There’s a funny story there!

xx

Add A Little Dazzle Diva Challenge #49

Hi! This week’s Challenge photo is simply an inspirational photo. Do with it what you will! I went a little ‘left field’.

I went with a couple of colours- the gold and the green. I loved the different textures so added them by way of the textured tag. I wanted to make the tag part of the design so die-cut the words out of the tag to make the design more seamless.

The metal is by way of die-cut tiny stars. It’s a real mix of products. The stars are from Mama Elephant. The happy die is from Wplus9 (Trio of Happy dies), the tag die is from Avery Elle (Gift Tag Elle-ments).

First, cut out the word from the base card, add watercolour around the letters, and then stuck the word back into the aperture except securing it with some Sweater Weather paper (Lawn Fawn) & adding some Green Sparkle twine (Lawn Fawn too).

The Golden Glimmer metal can be found here

If you’d like to join in with this week’s challenge just post a link to your blog post here. If you don’t have a blog, just link up via Flickr or other online gallery with the tag DIVA#49. You could win $15 to spend in store. Do check out what the teamies have created- I love how we all go in such varied directions with the same inspiration.

See you soon xx

Repurposed Avery Elle & Sushi!

I was over at Make The Day Special Stamp Store today using a few sets from Avery Elle. I wanted a winter scene but didn’t have one. No fear- just re-purpose your sets!

First I used the sentiment from SmileThe tags are from the Gift Tags Set Elle-ments

The next set- is for the trees.. can you work out how I’ve done the trees and snow?

Just by stamping the arrow fletchings twice on top of each other, it’s easy to create the trees and by cutting the 3 dots into one, it makes great snow.

Yesterday I had to go shopping.

We’d watched an episode of Masterchef where they’d had to make sushi Nygiri etc. Mine were quite captivated.

They asked,pleaded and cajoled ( I kid you not), until I agreed to let them have a go.

We went to the supermarket. and forgot what we needed.

Thankfully, we googled it whilst out, except that the versions and recipes differed wildly.

I put all the items in the basket; wasabi paste, nori seaweed, rice wine vinegar, sushi rice, raw fish, veg.

The total at the till was becoming perilously high.

We got most things and went to pay.

The lady looked at the items and we got chatting.

She raised her eyebrows (not a botoxed lady!) and asked if it was the kids that were making it.

‘Oh, yes,’ I replied. ‘They’re all really looking forward to having a go’.

‘What happened to making cupcakes?’ she wondered.

I’d wondered that too.

You do NOT want to know the final amount. Let’s just say that healthy eating is not always cheap!

We got home and realised we’d forgotten the Mirrin (rice wine). Amazingly, I happened to have some in.

As you do.

My eldest and I began to prepare the rice. Strictly speaking, I read out the instructions, she did them & I cleaned up afterwards!

We possibly slightly overcooked the rice, and one recipe stated that you needed to add Mirrin to the just-cooked rice. It’s alcohol right?

It’s not ‘lite’ either. We ummed and ahhed for a while and I hoped that the residual heat of the rice would somehow burn off the alcohol.

I stood there like a fool, ‘fanning’ the rice to quickly cool it with one of my craft magazines (ha!) & then the kids cut and sliced and filled and rolled and portioned and this is what some of them looked like.I think they did rather well. I got 2. The rest were consumed in dramatically quicker time than it had taken to prepare them.

Well, back tomorrow with some more crafty metal! xx

Add A Little Dazzle & Avery Elle Blog Hop Day #2!

Hi! Welcome to the Add A Little Dazzle & Avery Elle blog hop! It’s a week long affair, full to the brim of craft metal and stampy goodness. Avery Elle are a manufacturer of ‘fun, fresh and modern’ designs & their Design Team & ours have combined to hopefully show you some of the things you can achieve when you combine stamps and metal!

For my project, I’ve combined two Avery Elle sets ‘#Smile’ & ‘Storybook’

Combining the two sets creates something a bit different. I’ve used the aluminium metal and embossed it with a Herringbone folder (XCut) which gives a lovely crisp texture to the metalWhen I was thinking about the design, the phrase ‘watch the birdie’ sprang to mind. This phrase became popular at photography sessions in early photographic history. If you look closely, on the next picture, you’ll see the bird is actually flying (via a piece of acetate!!) at the front of the camera. The ‘flash’ is one of the starbursts from the StoryBook set and the butterfly from the same set is in the middle of the multi layered acetate lens!!

I’ve also used some Avery Elle sequins which just add movement to the card.

Prize Alert!!

Be sure to leave a comment on the Avery Elle Blog, Add a Little Dazzle Blog, and each of the Design Team Member’s Blogs each day for a chance to win a prize pack from both companies! You must leave a comment on all blogs.

You have until Sunday, October 5th to enter. The winners will be announced on Monday October 6th.

During this week’s blog hop, we are offering a special pack of Add a Little Dazzle Craft Metal Sheets.  This pack includes metal sheet colors that the Dazzling Diva Design Team will be using during the Avery Elle Blog Hop. In addition, you will receive the Homemade Gift Ideas and Holiday Spa Recipes CD filled with exclusive gift ideas and recipes for your Holiday Spa Gift Giving needs. Stay tuned, during the blog hop you will receive one AMAZING spa recipe for free.

Order your Avery Elle Blog Hop Pack today and receive exclusive PDF tutorials using Avery Elle Products and Add a Little Dazzle Craft Metal Sheets.  This offer is ONLY available this week.  Order your Avery Elle Blog Hop Pack today!

I hope you get chance to nosey at the other great projects. I’m back tomorrow with another metal inspired project for the Dazzling Diva challenge!

xx

PS- SKY reconnected us! Hurrah.. yahoo. Finally! I’ve a story to tell you about that one 😉