About Me

My photo
Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom
I have been crafting since May 2008, when in desperation to find an unusual birthday card for my Mum, I gave up looking in the shops and decided to have a go at making my own. I soon realised that crafting is addictive and I haven't brought a card since. In 2011 I completed my certificate in papercrafting as a result of the work I did as part of the course I started entering challenges on line and in magazines. I applied for design teams and also started making samples for Ooh La La Creations for their shows on Create and Craft. I have now completed my Diploma in professional crafting and most recently been runner up in the Papercrafter of the Year 2013 a competition run by Papercraft essentials magazine, I don't have a particular style I like to use elements from lots of styles and techniques, although I do love all things vintage. In 2014 I started to move more towards scrapbooking to take care of the huge family archive of photographs that were stored in my attic. I have continued cardmaking and Scrapbooking through 2015 and 2016 but have also become interested in off the page projects. I hope to be able focus on these in the future.

Monday 21 July 2014

Vintage at Ooh La La Creations

Good Morning and thank you for all the lovely Easel cards you entered into the last challenge you need to check out the Ooh La La Creations Challenge blog to see if you are a winner or in our top three.

This time our theme is Vintage.....

Here is my project.


I found this old photograph in the back of one of my Mum's photo albums and had no idea who the lady in the picture was. Having removed the photograph and turned it over I noticed my mum had written the word grandma on the back so that would make this my Great Grandma. Sadly my Mum is no longer with us to ask about her but my Dad has confirmed this was Mum's Maternal Grandma so meet great Grandma Higginson.

For the layout I used a cream base card and inked the edges with brown ink and I added a rub on to the  bottom left corner. I then printed off several patterned papers from the Yesterday's memories CD. The striped paper was a bit of a happy accident it should have been a vintage green colour which can be seen right along the bottom edge but the yellow in my printer ran out during the process so it ended up predominantly blue. I rather liked the way the green had faded away at the bottom so decided to use it anyway distressing the edges with a pair of scissors and brown ink. I added a smaller rub on to the bottom right corner.

I cut the other papers into different sized panels and distressed the edges in the same way as I did for the blue paper. Having found the vintage tear drop lace in my stash I also found the lovely deep pink coloured velvet ribbon and threaded this through the lace.

The photo of Great Grandma was mounted onto two scraps of card which had also been distressed.
The title panel is one of the CD and I added the text before printing it off,

Finally I went through my embellishments box and found various buttons and some resin and paper clay flowers, which were used to create the cluster effect around the cameo, something I picked up from a beading company along with the metal flowers and leaves. To balance the design I added a lovely metal corner to the top right of the blue paper panel.

Monday 14 July 2014

Sun Sea Sand and Ice Cream

I have recently gotten more and more into scrpabooking and have been enjoying taking part in teh challenges over at Colour Stories Inspiration. Each week we are given a colour scheme, elements to include and Inspiration for the journalling in the form of a case file - The rest is up to us.

For the month of July they have teamed up with Artastic - Inspirational Challenge blog to produce the following case file


I found some old polaroid photos of myself with my parents and family friends on holiday in Italy in 1979. They were somewhat faded and so I scanned them into photo shop and managed to clean them up with colour correction and used them to produce the following page. 



I used all of the five colours required by the scheme, I then made a canopy border by drawing round the outside of two tag dies from a set of nesting dies to form a scalloped edge and hand cut these and layered them up. I included the spots on the smaller of two canopy layers and also on the washi tape stripes. I added some vintage transportation images from Graphic 45. The hot air balloon had the word Italia on it so it seemed really appropriate. I added a banner to this which when pulled concertinas outwards to reveal my journalling about the holiday. I have included various details such as visiting Venice and the Island of Murano to see the glass makers workshops, tasting pizza for the very first time (It wasn't commonly available in England in 1979), also the mind-boggling number of flavours of ice - cream at our favourite cafe which is pictured. i finish on the tale of me bringing the entire main street in Jesselo to a standstill by having full blown hysterics when a wasp crawled down my cleavage - I had discovered 12 months previously that I am highly allergic to wasp stings and swell up alarmingly if stung. Fortunately on this occasion my Mum and her friend Phyllis managed to get rid of the wasp before it could sting me. I was left very shaken by the whole thing and somewhat embarrassed when I realised everyone had been looking at me a situation soon remedied by My Dad and his friend Harold taking me for one of the afore mentioned ice cream sundaes.
I used a art Deco die set to cut the letters for my title as I felt that the inspiration image provided was very Deco in style and wanted to include this element in the page.

I have entered this page into the challenge on the ARTastic blog as well as on the CSI page.

Monday 7 July 2014

Easel Card challenge at Ooh La La Creations

Good Morning every one and thank you so much for entering our last Let them eat Cake Challenge. To find out if you are the winner or in the top three go over to the Ooh La La Creations Challenge Blog.

This time we want to see all your Easel cards so without further ado here's mine


I used papers from the Shawn Jenkins collection CD these are from the Cupcake Cream folder. I matted the papers onto brown card. I also fussy cut one of the cupcakes from a topper to make the stopper inside the card. 

I love using the page curl papers from Ooh La La as they lend their selves so well to lining the base of easel cards and in this instance I used the page curl over another matching patterned paper. Because this card is intended for my grand- daughter who lives the other end of the country I have to post it so to cut down on teh bulk I actually did the layering of the page curl papers on the computer before printing so the base is just one layer of paper but because of the fabulous design of the paper it looks as though there are two layers.


The front of the card folded flat for posting. I added some clear glitter to the frosting on the cupcakes in the topper and a little button in the shape of a cupcake is the finishing touch.