Lots of cogs

This weekend I treated myself to a set of dies I've been promising myself for ages - I reckoned I deserved a treat after my long drive to and from Mum's house and several enforced craft free days while I was there. (Oh, what happened to my New Year spending ban? It didn't even last a week!!!) The set in question is X-cut 9 piece Cogs - I'm going to find it really useful for masculine and steampunk style cards.

For the first outing of the dies, I covered one side of a piece of kraft card with a sheet of double sided adhesive, leaving the other side of the adhesive in place, then die cut all the cogs with the die facing the adhesive covered side of the card. I didn't emboss them, as I wanted to keep the surface fairly smooth for foiling.

Then I removed the backing (fronting, by now) sheet from the adhesive and rubbed each cog with a scrap of metallic foil from Foilplay. I've got lots of part-used sheets and these cogs were great for using up odd corners of the sheets. However because the sheets were already part used, I knew that the cogs would not get 100% covered in foil, and also the edges where the die had been cut would be tricky to get the foil into because of the intricate shapes, so there would be a minuscule line of exposed adhesive around each edge. Normally I would move the die cut to another area of the sheet and rub again to cover the missing areas, and use a fine embossing tool to get into the nooks and crannies, but this time I used the uncovered part of the adhesive to get a different effect - once all the cogs were foiled, I sprinkled them all with green holographic ultra fine glitter and then brushed it off with a soft brush. The glitter only clings to the unfoiled areas and gives an interesting verdigris or corroded effect, perfect for a piece of rusty old machinery.

Then I made my base card from stone coloured cardstock, with inked edges and some stamped cogs, keys and pocket watches. The textured panel to hold the cogs is a snippet from a DCWV textured paper stack - it's actually a snippet left over from a DT card that you won't be seeing on here for a couple of weeks, so it's an interesting piece of time reversal, as it looks as if I've used the leftovers before I used the main part! The dragonfly and ticket are made from snippets, with the ticket stamped using a Studio G mini set, and then - here comes the snark - the ticket sentiment, "over the hill" is stamped  in several places on the card, along with alternative ticket sentiments, "no spring chicken" and "any gray yet?". Now you know why I wanted my cogs to look rusty.

I am sharing this with

Pixies Snippets Playground - week 220
Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers - G is for Gears

and thanks to Sandma's suggestion, I'm also joining in with Industrial at Country View Challenges, a challenge which is completely new to me

Playing with my new toys

Last weekend it was Mothers Day here in the UK and this year my grown up daughters really excelled themselves at choosing wonderful and imaginative presents, even though I wasn't able to see either of them on the day.

My younger daughter lives in France, and she sent me a selection of unmounted stamps from the French company Katzelkraft who make some really wonderful designs.

Here I have used two of the stamps, the water wall and the seahorse silhouette.

First I painted a background wash of mixed blues on to watercolour paper, and added a few green streaks to suggest seaweed and a little sandy bottom. When dry, I stamped the seahorse over it. Then I used Versamark ink and clear embossing powder to stamp and heat-emboss the water wall over the whole area, using the stamp "upside down" to look like bubbles rising up through the water. I matted it on to black card and finished my card with some sea shells stamped in grey - these are very old UMs from my stash, so I don't know the manufacturer.

I am sharing this with the new challenge CAS Mix Up - the compulsory elements are stamping and watercolouring, and my extra element is heat embossing.

Butterflies and Buttons

I've been sorting through a pile of old craft mags, looking to see what I can throw away (the decluttering is still continuing) and came across some photos of finished cards that I rather liked. I took inspiration from them for these two cards, in that they used torn patterned papers, butterflies, buttons and twine, and the general layout is similar.

For the first card, I used papers from a very old magazine freebie booklet, adding a butterfly cut using my old favourite Cuttlebug die, cutting it once using one of the papers from the set and again using a patterned vellum. The body of the butterfly is made with liquid pearls and the bird cage is actually part of a die cut wedding favour that I bought a pack of from The Range - they are meant to be sweet boxes but each one cuts nicely into four separate cages.

 

For my second card, I used papers from a Crafters Companion pad called "A weekend in Seville" which I won in a recent blog challenge. The butterflies were die cut in white and in a printed pink vellum that's been in my stash for years. Again I used liquid pearls for the bodies, although my white ones had been unused for so long that it seems to have gone a bit thin and splodgy.

 

 

I am sharing these at

 

Butterfly Challenge - Butterflies with Buttons and/or Bronze (both cards)

Clear it out challenge - Patterned paper over a year old (only the first card)

Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper challenge - March (both cards)

Use Your Stuff - Lace, Ribbon or Twine (both cards)

And yet more Hunkydory!

A few days ago I lifted out an old Hunkydory kit I'd not used for some time, and there is still masses and masses of stuff left in it so I thought I'd make an extra effort to use more of it over the next few weeks. For this card, I have made an easel card from a sheet of A4 white card, covering it with panels of a roses and lace design card from the kit, embellished with some rose-printed satin ribbon that's been in my "too nice to cut into" bag for years and years. A floral topper from the kit and lots of matting and layering, and the card is finished.

I'm sharing this with

Alphabet Challenge - Pink
Use Your Stuff - Lace, Ribbon or Twine

Spring chickens

OK, I'm no spring chicken - but this little lot are! Now I've finished my 3 months GDT slot at CD Sundays, I'm back to joining in the challenges. and the current challenge is a colour challenge based on this inspiration photo.



I decided to stick with the chicks theme and use a decoupage sheet from The Best of La Pashe 2102 (I wonder how many times I have used that CD? It must be the most often-used one in my collection!) along with some lightweight CS that has been lurking in my stash for years because it's rather too garish for most of the things I make.

The sentiment is from the CD and I've added little wooden Easter Bunnies to "hold" it as if it was a banner.

Crafting again at last - Paris in the spring

Hooray! I've not done any crafting for the best part of a week, and boy have I missed it! I went away to visit my Mum for a few days, and then had to spend yesterday catching up with laundry and admin, so it was only yesterday evening that the papers and glue came out of hiding.

If I make everything that's swimming around in my head at the moment I'm going to need a few 48 hour days! So here is a very quick and simple card I made as a warming up exercise.

I had a good rummage around the snippets box and came up with an assortment of patterned papers - all except the black and white floral, which I think was left over from a CD printout, came from a Craftwork Cards goody bag I got about 5 years ago. I cut the patterned papers into 4cm squares, and a white 8.5 cm square, then stamped the sentiment on the white square and added part of a die cut silhouette of the Paris skyline (I think the die was from Marianne Creatables).

The card I used for the matting is a vicious shocking pink that is far too bright for most purposes, but I think it works well with these papers, probably more so in real life than on the photo.

I would like to share this with:

Addicted to stamps and more - Clean and simple
Clear it Out - Patterned paper over a year old
Pixie's Snippets Playground - week 219
Make my Monday - a square world
House of Cards - Silhouette   

Bacon, broad bean and sweetcorn sauce

I'm home - have you missed me? I've been away visiting my Mum for a few days. She's almost 90 and housebound so I had a very busy time - incidentally I gave her the mixed media box that I recently posted about, crammed with Cadbury's Mini Eggs, it made her VERY happy! Anyway, I got home yesterday evening after a 5 hour drive through some atrocious weather, and as Mark had also been away on business, we came home to an empty fridge and two rumbling tummies. I needed to cobble together something quick, easy, warming and comforting that we could enjoy in front of the TV while catching up with each other's news.

Rummaging around the cupboards and fridge, I found:

1 onion
6 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
100g frozen broad beans
1 tin of creamed sweetcorn
1 pack of potato gnocchi
50g strong cheddar cheese

I also used a pinch of dried chilli flakes, 1 tbs double cream and 1 tsp cornflour, blended with a little water.

To make the sauce, finely chop the bacon and onion then fry together over medium heat until the bacon is cooked and the onions soft and golden- you don't need to add any fat as the fat that runs out of the bacon will cook the onions. Stir in the broad beans, chilli flakes and sweetcorn and simmer gently for a few minutes, while cooking the gnocchi as directed on the pack.

When the gnocchi is ready, add the cream and the cornflour mixture and stir until thickened, then stir in the cheese until melted. Spoon the sauce over the gnocchi and serve

The sauce would also be great with pasta or rice.

I am sharing this with Kitchen Clearout at Madhouse Family Reviews