March Templates revisited

Hello
I've a card to share with you today that uses a couple of the March set of Crafty Templates - yes, I know I'm a bit late in posting this one!


After I'd used the "Watering Flowers" template to make this card, the top left area looked a bit bare, so I added a mini garland of flowers and leaves from the "Flower Garland" template to add a little more floral decoration
For a change, I used a tiny snowflake punch to make the pink centres for the flowers on the garland.  The printed leaves were leftovers from a card I shared here a week or two ago.  So glad I saved them "just in case...." ;)

These papers, along with the chunky flocked letters all came from recent Quirky Kits.  From my stash I added the green ribbon for one of the flower stems and a turquoise gems

Find out all you need to know about Crafty Templates and Quirky Kits by clicking HERE!
There's a new Quirky Kit due out soon, so don't miss out on yours - numbers are always limited and they sell out fast!

Thanks for looking in today

Happy Crafting

Kathy xx

Party Shoe

Here's a card using one of the shoe templates from the current "Fashion" themed set of Crafty Templates


The papers, net fabric, and chunky letters are all from a recent Quirky Kit, I just added in some bright pink ribbon and a few bits of bling.

Find out all you need to know about Crafty Templates and Quirky Kit by clicking HERE!
There's a new Quirky Kit due out soon, so don't miss out on yours - numbers are always limited and they sell out fast!

Thanks for looking in today

Happy Crafting

Kathy xx

Squeezing in a Quickie before the new kits are out!

Hello Quirky fans!

I loved the colours so much on my last layout that I did another one to match, plus it was handy having all the supplies out ready on my desk. I'm getting more confidence with my inks and paints now so I thought I'd go to town (well subtley to town maybe!) on this layout of my eldest proudly showing off his new gappy smile

As I said, just a quickie for you to enjoy before all the new loveliness clatters through the letter box, I'm just loving the look of the upcoming kits, are you?!

Nikki xxx

New Kits are going out this week & Now you can grab Extras!

Check your email inbox this week as I've sent the link out to Quirky Kit Subscribers detailing the new way you can customise your kit by adding any kit extras you like to your kit box before they're posted out to you. The new kits will be posted out at the end of this week, (from Friday) and the extras shop will close then once kits are packed up to be sent out. The shipping notification emails will be going out this week so remember to keep a look out for them so you can let me know of any shipping preferences or if you'd like your kit/s to be held for you.

The Candy Floss Cart main Quirky Kit for May/June:
 
The Ice Cream Stall Quirky Kit Lite for May/June:


If you haven't got your email about access to the shop page for kit extras let me know enquiries@craftyprincess.co.uk

x Leo

Dancing in the Rain

Crafty Templates are not just for cards, you know ;) 

Over the years I've been working with Leo's templates I've often found they offer the perfect embellishment for other projects.  This happened again recently when I made a mini book featuring some favourite quotations - how timely that the recent set of Templates had this one in amongst them!

Here's the page I decorated with the Umbrella ad Wellies template from the last Crafty Template collection.
Those little wellies and umbrella shapes made the perfect decorative elements for the quotation!
This book is a sort of Concertina book with "windows" it looks complicated but really isn't.  The book itself is quick and easy to make and gives lads of scope for the fun bit - the embellishing!
 
I hope you like it and will feel inspired to see what other projects you can use you Crafty Templates on. 
Happy Crafting


Quirky Classroom - Making Fabric Flowers

In this months' Lite kit I've added some denim and netting fabrics. The starting point for both the current kits 'Pocket Full of Posies' and 'Roly Poly' were using flowers and florals in a shabby chic style so the idea around including the fabrics was to have a play at making your own floral style embellishments.

Here's a quick and fun way to make floral style embellishments with a modern/shabby chic twist.
You'll need the denim and netting fabrics, (or other scraps of fabric you have) a needle and cotton, glue, (I used Glossy Accents) some leaves from the Lite or the main kit, some small circles of cardstock or paper and a few sequins or gems to use in the centre.

First take your denim fabric and cut out a square of it in the size you'd like your finished embellishment to be. Fold the square into quarters and then cut the corner off the open ends making it into a rounded shape:
 
Cut the denim fabric piece into quarters and cut out a stack of the netting fabric in squares just slightly larger than the size of the quarter shapes put together:
 
 
Cut the squares of netting into circles, some large and some smaller:

 
Collect together your bits for decorating your flower embellishment. I used the silk leaves from the main kit and cut some paper scraps with a Nestabilities die:

 
Now with all the pieces in place you can start to build your flower embellishment. Start off with three of the larger circles of netting folding them into quarters and then using a needle and thread to fix them together at the pointed end. Take another of the large netting circles and stitch the folded quarters onto it keeping the stitches in the centre:

 
Take three of the denim quarters and stitch them as another layer on your embellishment again keeping the stitches in the centre so you're still keeping the 'pop' up of the edges:

 
Use glue to glue on the paper piece and what you're using to decorate the centre, such as gems, beads or sequins finish with another layer of the smaller netting circles:
 
 
To add the silk leaves I first trimmed the stalks down and then added a little glue to the ends then pushed the wired stems into the middle of the embellishment underneath the netting layers to hold them in place:
 
Here's my finished shabby chic floral embellishment:

 
And here are the finished card projects I put together using this embellishment idea:
 

 
What other quirky style flowers could you make using the fabrics in the kit. Or maybe have a go at mixing in more of the papers. It could be a good way of using up paper scraps and the papers would fold nicely in a similar way to the fabrics. Have fun!
 
I've got one last project idea to share with the latest kits and it's an idea for using up those paper off cuts you get left over after cutting into kits so fingers crossed you're at that stage by now as we're almost up to the next kit day! The next kits are pencilled in to down to go out around the end of next week so subscribers look out for your shipping notification emails. :-)
 
x Leo

May/June Kits Peeks

Wow I can't believe it's almost time for the new kits, it's come around so quick right? I've just finished the preview images of the new kits for the site so you can get a good peek at the two new kits. The main kit is 'The Candy Floss Cart' and the lite kit is 'The Ice Cream Stall'.

 
 
In the main kit we've got papers from Kesi-Art, ( Célébration and Flic Flac Floc) Studio Calico, (Atlantic and Sundrifter) LilyBee, (Pinwheel) and Amy Tangerine, (Yes Please). Embellishmetns from Elle’s Studio, (Serendipity) Pretty Little Studio, (Nature Walk), Kesi'art, (Pschhiitt ink spray), Amy Tangerine, (Layered Remarks Stickers), Studio Calico, (Atlantic cork stickers) and custom sequin and droplet embellishment selections.
In the lite kit we've got papers from Echo Park (Here and Now and Perfect Summer) Elle’s Studio (Serendipity) LilyBee, (Sweet Shoppe) and Studio Calico (Snippets). The embellishments are Studio Calico stickers (Sundrifter 12x12 alpha) My Minds Eye Enamel Dots, Lily Bee Sweet Shoppe circle and tag stickers and a custom shaker sequin selection which I tried to make as near to rainbow sherbet looking as I could! lol
 
All the kit colours have been influenced by candy shop and ice cream colours and I've picked up on current trends so you get a good mix up of geometric patterns, paint/colour effects like watercolour and ombre, a little bit of chalkboard in the lite kit and a hint of feather motifs. You've also got the little drop embellishments in the main kit and the enamel dots in the lite to make the 'confetti' effect embellishments style and the spray ink which can be used alongside the dots to embellish spray effects or to compliment the watercolour/ ombre effects by painting with it. I've got lots of fun things planned to try out the spray with ombre paint effects so stay tuned as I'll pop up everything here on the blog so you can play along with me.
x Leo
 
These new kits are due to ship out to subscribers around the end of May. If you want to subscribe you can check out the details here, http://www.craftytemplates.co.uk/quirkykits.html

My little Hair Bear

Hiya!

Nikki here with a layout made using both the current kits, a Pocketful of Posies and Roly Poly...

As you've probably gathered, I'm a big fan of neutral colours right now so it was 'B' side PPs all the way for this layout, I even used the 'B' side of the denim fabric and ribbon, Lol! I love how the aqua, grey and beige tones work together.

I used a very pale wash of ink as a base for the layout, dabbing it about here and there with my fingers too and adding a very small amount of brown in places. Ofcourse I had a practice first, using the offcut white cardstock from the layout. I quite liked what I did so I added it to my layout as you can see here...

You can also see how much I loved Leo's idea to use the tiny tags from the main kit as a base for making layered embellishments, they made perfect accents for my page :)

I matted my pic onto scraps of PP and fabric, cutting into the woodgrain envelope from Webster's Pages as well. I highlighted the words of my title in my journalling with promarker.

As always, I'm so glad you stopped by to look at my layout and I will happily respond to any queries you may have. Here's a final look at my youngest in all his scary, hairy, glory (and he's covered in marmite too...)


Bye for now!

Nikki xxx


Flower Garland

This month there's a lovely template featuring a set of flowery components that you can put together in any way you fancy.
I printed the various shapes directly onto patterned paper then cut them out to make this scrapling card.

Scraplings are made from those strips you have left over when you cut a square card blank from a sheet of A4.  I love this tall, narrow shape and the way it lends itself so well to going "off the page"

Here I've used Kraft card, some black Bazzill and a strip of patterned paper cut from one of the 12x12 sheets in the last Quirky Kit box.  The squiggly design was the perfect corner piece for this card.

 Materials and Tools
Crafty Template used; Flower Garland (March 2013)
Papers from the Quirky Kit, plus a couple of additional sheets from some MME 8x8 pads
"HELLO" cut from a tag in a previous Kit
Black organza ribbon, black Prima gems from my stash
Flower centres made with one of the pieces from the Memory BoxCherry Blossom die set
Quilling Ball Tool used to create shape for the flowers
LO idea from The Sketch File


 A really lovely Crafty Template with a host of possibilities for using it on lots of projects - and maybe even in giant size, with the blossoms cut in tissue or crepe paper to create a special home decor celebratory garland or bunting.

Thanks for visiting
Happy Crafting


Inspired by a card sketch

I was actually tidying up my desk when my eye fell on a sketch that was one of a number of card sketches I had printed up as card making inspiration and thought "hey, that would make a good layout". So I stopped tidying (any excuse) and started scrapping.
Here is the sketch
and here is the layout
If I had another piece of matching card stock it would have been much easier to cut a diagonal strip from that, add all the circles and then cut off the overlapping edges and then stick it down to the bottom sheet. But I didn't. However it proved quite a satisfying play time punching out all the circles and going round them with my black sharpie and then trimming and placing and re-outinling them again. Honestly. The whole thing is pretty bright and in your face but then, so were the late '80s...

Once all that was done everything else came together quite quickly. The ribbon and the birds were more scraps that nearly were thrown away instead. The photos were mounted on foam pad strips to give a bit of dimension and I used some more sequins from stash to add a bit of sparkle. The sequins in a strip are from a Quirky Card kit that must be from about 5 years ago!

I punched a larger circle from some spare cardstock and used that as a frame for my journalling which ended up at least almost circular!
These Quirky Kits have once more proved to be fabulous in the kind of range of pages they have helped me produce and challenged me to use things I normally wouldn't. Thanks again for all the inspiration Leo :)



Trends & Techniques - photo grid & mini tag collages

For this months' Trends & Techniques post I've lent more to the 'technique' side of things and had a go at a couple different techniques you could try out.
First I wanted to tackle multi photo layouts. When I look back through my albums the vast majority of them are single photos and I guess it's because it's so much easier to include just one or two photos on a layout, right? Well I wanted to think of a simple way to include multiple photos on one page and focused on the technique of using a 'grid' pattern. On my layout I used photos of various sizes but there's no reason you couldn't apply this to photos of the same size. It's a simple case of taking a strip of paper or cardstock as your background and fixing down your photos in a 'grid'. It takes the guessing out of where to place photos and I think I like the way it combines the multiple photos into one block so you can treat it like you would making a one photo layout.

Here's the way I started out my layout with the photos on a strip of paper placing them in a grid leaving equal amounts of space between each one:


From then on I went back to building up the layout. I wanted to build up a fun 'messy' background so I started off with pouring white ink on the background and brushing some of it around. The background paper I'm using is the Glitz one from the main kit 'Pocket Full of Posies'.
Once it was dry I glued it to a piece of cardstock to give it extra stability.
Next I used some of the leaves from the main kit a flower from the Lite kit and some of the gold thread from the main kit. Placing them around the layout it what will be the corners when I'm done building up the middle section.
 
I fixed them in place with stitching to work with the 'messy' background.

Next I added patterned paper. Most of everything I used were paper scraps as at this stage of using my kits most of it is cut up into now. It's easier to work with the off cut bits and pieces sometimes and it takes the guess work out of building up your layout, just stick them on and if you end up not liking some part just cover it over with something else. :)

I wanted to add some embellishment details using one of the pegs from the main kit so I added a strip of patterned paper down the edge of the layout fixed down using 3D foam pads to give room for the peg to sit underneath the paper edge.
 
I'm going to use the peg to fix embellishments to the layout, first I've added the paper flower and a leaf.
 
As a final extra layer I added one the woodgrain patterned bag to help pick out the white in the background and the photos and I moved the green paper around a little to accommodate it.
 
As the last paper layer I added the strip of paper with my photos on.
 
 
Another technique I wanted to have a go at was building up some mini collages in the mini tags from the main kit. These are another way you can use up paper scraps from your kits too.

 
I've used the peg to attach the tags down the side of the layout.
 
All that was left to do was add the title. I added extra glue, (Glossy Accents) to help stick down the stickers better.
 Finished layout:

 
If you have a go at using any of the techniques/ideas post a comment to show us what you've made. :)

x Leo