Look What I Woke Up To Today

These earrings now live in the USA.  This morning I woke up to find this lovely message waiting for me.  I LOVE it when my creations bring so much pleasure to their new owners.

This was the message -

 I just wanted you to know that these lovely little drops have been my go-to baubles 

the entire holiday season. They mix nicely with everything from pearls to silver to diamonds,

 dressing up jeans and leather or velvet and lace. 

I just LOVE them -  Lorien Shaw

Balanced Heart Project

I seemed to have lost the will to write any blog posts since March.  I guess sometimes you just have to leave things alone and not get too stressed.  This doesn't mean that I've not been creative.  I have carried on with a couple of art projects and handmade card orders.   

Jewellery making has been put on hold since April/May after an accident at work which caused an inflamed tendon and using any of my tools is very painful.  The ultra-sound hasn't helped so I am now waiting on having a cortisone injection which I am NOT looking forward to as I don't like needles.

Anyway like I said earlier I have been creating artwork and since May I have been involved in a project that has been started by my friend Ang West over on The Balanced Heart Project .  Every month myself and 4 other artists create 2 pieces of artwork which incorporates "hearts" as the main feature.  The inspiration for this Project, is Ang's little boy, Andrew who passed away on 22nd of October 2001-please pop over to the blog for the full details.  My involvement came about after Ang posted on facebook asking for artist to collaborate in a heart project.  At the time I didn't know what it was about only that "hearts" were involved and as I have a rather lovely collection of "heart Art" I thought this would be a great way of collecting more original artwork.  It was only after hearing Ang's story that I remembered how art and the support from my artist friends had helped me through a very dark time a few years ago and I wanted even more to "help" Ang with her healing.  I am honoured to be part of this project and hope that my "hearts" help her in her journey.


Here are the hearts I sent to Ang for May and June.

 

Hearts for May

Airdry clay hearts for June

These are the hearts I have received from Ang -

 To see all the hearts that have been created for May and June by all the artist involved please pop on over to The Balanced Heart Project blog.  You can also read Ang's full story there.

  

I hope to be back on a regular basis with more updates of the last few months.  


Thank you for visiting and please do leave your comments - they are really appreciated.


Anita

CupCake Greetings Card Tutorial

Well here I am again apologising for the lack of posts.  I've not been in the mood to post about anything recently I'm blaming the weather - it's cold, damp and dark and I don't like the cold one little bit.

Anyway, here I am raring to go and post a tutorial on how to make one of my cupcake cards.  The stamps are from Kanban  - called Fairy Cakes (they don't seem to be on the website - I bought mine from Hobby Craft). I made the card to add to my small collection of greetings cards and posted it on the Kanban facebook page.  One of the members asked if I would show how to make the card - which is quite flattering - and because I'm nice and like to share I made up a simple step by step tutorial.  

Here goes - 

Step 1.  Gather your ingredients, Rubber stamps, ink pads, glossy accent, gems, glue, coloured pencils (colouring medium of your choice), smooth water colour paper or card stock and foam pads.

Start by stamping your image onto your card/watercolour paper (300gsm)

   

Step 2 - Paint your images with your chosen medium.  I've used Derwent Inktense watercolour pencils - I added the colour very roughly then blended it all in with a damp (not wet) paintbrush.

Step 3 - Paint your background let dry and then randomly stamp the background.  I've used 2 different flower stamps from the Fairy Cake stamp collection.  If you don't want to create your own background you can use scrap-book or patterned paper instead.

Step 4 - Before glueing the background to the base card add a line along the edge or mount onto contrasting paper.  Once you've glued down the background glue one of the cupcakes to the middle of the card then add foam pads to the remaining cupcakes and place on either side of the centre cake.  

With the glossy accents - add a pea sized drop to the cupcakes and smooth over with your finger to give a glazed look.  While the glue is still tacky add your gems carefully to the cupcake and the bow.

To finish add glitter to the middle of the background flowers and to the edge of the background.

Here is the finished card - 

This is the original card (before it was personalised) - 

A different design from the same collection - this time I've added foam pads to the bows and made them more dimensional.

This one I made for my niece for her 7th birthday.

I'm sharing this as part of Handmade Monday #53 which is hosted by Wendy from 1stUniqueGifts .  If you've enjoyed reading through my tutorial why not pop on over to Wendy's and have a look at what everyone else has been up to.

Before I sign off I must apologise for the added security on the comments - I've had a couple of spam posts which have led to a not so nice website  so until I feel confident that its not going to happen again I'm going to have to leave the moderations on the comments - I know its a pain but I wouldn't want anyone to click onto that site.

Anita