Happy May Friday Freebies

Good morning fellow crafters! Can you believe it is May already? Feeling the temperatures here in the last few weeks, it was more like February.....

If the sun is shining where you are, - enjoy!. If it's damp and cold, then I just hope that these freebies will bring a bit of sunshine into your life.

A 4 (8.5/11)Background paper

Matching tags, envelope and ribbon spools

Birthday tag

I needed a birthday tag and decided to use Artistic Stamper blog 's theme of dots and stripes, so that I could use it for their challenge at the same time.

For the stripes I used strips of paper. The dots which are quite hard to see, where stamped with a Waltzing Mouse background stamp, both on the background and the embellishments. The image is one of my DHs relatives, previously used in my vintage scrapbook.

Prize to be won!!

Hello everyone!
This week we are running a challenge over at Snazzys DT blog.
You can win the fabulous Echo Park Springtime collection plus some little matching inkpads. How to do that? Create a project with the theme of Springtime and link it to the post. A random winner will be chosen at the end of the week. Here is my little contibution to hopefully inspire you

For futher inspiration and to see the fabulous projects my teamies have created, head over to Snazzys DT blog

Hope you'll join us!! 

Pink and Brown

Ever since using the new Prima Almanac collection, pink and brown seems to have become my favourite colour combination. Specially when combined with some lace to give it a shabby chic look.

Here is a card using those colours and my new Heartfelt Creations stamp. I stamped it three times, twice on copy paper and once on craft card and then stacked them together so that it really starts to look like a little book. The little bird image was fussy cut from Pink Paislee London Market paper which I also used for the background

This week's freebies

Hello everyone, Friday already and the end of April, how time flies.
I have some labels for you this week. You can either download them as single jpegs or all together on one sheet.
Hope they are useful.

WOYWW 151

Another messy picture, oh no, it must be Wednesday already again and time for the massive weekly bloghop. If you want to know more, go HERE

I'm going to use this chance to say welcome to all my new followers, I so appreciate you all!!!

Just two pictures today, here is the project I have been working on: I know it's way too early for Christmas, but I got this wonderful Santa stamp in return for some design work I did and I just had to give it a try lol

Here is a really messy corner of my workspace that I have not shown before, it looks awful! The plan is to show it again next week all beautifully tidy..... Wish me luck...

Snazzys DT project no 2

Here's a sneakpeek of my second project this month. To see the full thing, please hop over to the Snazzys DT blog. I'd love it if yu leave me a comment there. You also are just in time still to be in with a chance to win a great little stamp set and embellishments that come with the Prima Almanac Collection!

Time for a card

It's been an age since I either made a card or entered a challenge. Well, I had some new stamps from Just Rite and some other new goodies that I really wanted to give a work out and I also love embossing, so decided to enter this card for the Fashionable Stamping Challenge where the theme is embossing. I used 4 different embossing techniques for this card: I embossed the background with a TH embossing folder, I embossed the vocal image and the butterfly with black EP after stamping them with Versamark, The word Imagine was embossed through a Spellbinders die, (the new Donna Salazar word dies), and the backing to the word is a tiny scrap of a paper using embossing powder after it has gone through an embossing folder that has been inked up. There is a cool tutorial on this on Splitcoast stampers, you can find it here: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/fauxpatina/?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_cam. It's called Faux Patina, great fun to do.

I am also entering this for ”Simon Says Stamp “Your Favourite Word”

Snazzys DT project 1

Here is a little sneak peek of my first DT project for this month. We are featuring the stunning Prima Almanac collection. If you head over to http://snazzysdesignteamblog.blogspot.co.uk/ you can see the full project and if you leave a comment on the right post you have a chance to win the stamp and embellishment set that comes with this collection!!!

Vintage scrapbook mini

Beware this is going to be a photo heavy post....

Some of you may remember that I was working on a vintage mini with old family photos. I showed the empty pages in my last WOYWW post, well I finally managed to finish it. It is a socalled "Stack the Deck" mini as designed by Laura Denison. A tutorial can be found on her youtube channel. It's all made out of envelopes, so each page had a pocket for tags. The photos are all from my husband's family. His father was Scottish, as you can tell from the name. His mum was from Germany originally. She moved to the UK shortly after the second WW.

 Here are some of the pages and a few of the tags I made:

cover detail

cover detail

My DH great, grandmother on his fathers side

A great uncle, I just love this photo

Grand parent on father's side

his father as a boy

his father in his 2nd WW uniform

His Great grandmother on his mother's side as a girl

Great grandmother at age 25

Great grandparents. He was an officer in the Prussian army...

Grandmother, she was one of the very first female medical doctors in Germany

Grandfather on mother's side as a boy

His mum as a baby

His mum with her grandparents on her father's side

 These are various tags that fit inside the pockets. They always have a photo on one and a description on the other side. The ornate tops fold over the pocket and form a decorative element on the following page. Another idea from Laura Dennison.

I had great fun making this, but I'm glad it is done lol, as it was a lot of work...

Fridays Freebie

This week something slightly different...

Here are the photos in their original form. Top left was taken in 1880, top right in 1864 and the bottom one is the same girl (my DH's great granny} at age 10 in 1871

Some of you know I was given a bunch of old family photographs by my sister in law. With some of the photos I am in the process of creating a vintage mini scrapbook. For this Friday's freebie I decided to alter some of my favourite of these photographs. I am also letting you have them in their original form as I know many of us love vintage photos and these have never been seen before in blogland, so enjoy....

WOYWW #150

Well, this is the second time I'm participating, and as many of you predicted, it's addictive!!! I had so much fun hopping around the globe and seeing all the amazing craft spaces, loved it! This week as I'm back at work I won't manage to get round as many as last week, but I'll give it my best shot.

Here's my desk this week, working on a big project (big in the sense that it is taking me ages). It's going to be a mini album showing my DH's family history. I got this set of amazing old photos from my SIL, I've scanned them all and they are ready to go as soon as the pages are ready. Papers are Prima Printery altered with stamping, inking and collaging vintage images printed on tissue. (instructions for doing that a few posts below) As you can see, desk is in "work mode"...

If you are visiting and wondering what this post (and it's funny title) is all about, read all about it HERE

My First project for Spellbinders!!

To say that I am super excited about my first post for the Spellbinders International Blog is putting it mildly...

 My theme was "Boxes". Enjoy this little sneakpeek video; I would love it though if you would go over to the Spellbinders blog and leave me a comment.... Just click http://spellbinderspaperarts.com/Community.aspx Thank you!!

Mini book covers

This is a bit of work in progress as I have just done the covers but I wanted to show it anyway as it is an example of one of the things you can do with my freebies. For the front I used this week's freebie. The back will be coming your way next week....

Front cover

Back cover

First of all I printed the images onto tissue paper. The best way to do this is to take a piece of transparency film or acetate (A4 or 8.5/11"). Stick your tissue paper on to it with removable tape cut carefully to size if needed and run it through your printer on its best setting.

I then glued the printed tissue onto chipboard with Mod Podge. I had previously painted the chipboard with titan buff acrylic paint and inked with vintage photo distress. I love how the slight crinkling of the tissue adds a sort of crackle effect. I then inked the front cover further and added some stamping, shading and a butterfly. For the back I just inked a bit more round the edges, I may add more to it later.

This week's freebies

It's Friday already, time just seems to fly when you are having fun.

Here are this week's freebies: 3 ATC backgrounds and a postcard size paper.  Images and graphics are  freebies from the Graphics Fairy and Bumble Button or found via Pinterest.

Sorry I was not terribly inspired this week. If you have any wishes for a particular thing or size, ATC, tag, 8 x 8, 12 x 12 or whatever, just leave me a comment or email me.