Chicken Soup 12 Days of Christmas - Day #3

We've made it to day 3 over on the Chicken Soup blog, and today I am joining in!

Today's inspiration is Christmas trees!:

And here's my Christmas Tree themed card:

What will you come up with?

Chicken Soup 12 Days of Christmas

The 12 days of Christmas kicked off yesterday at the Chicken Soup blog - 12 days of inspiration for your crafting, perfect for whilst we're all snowed in!

Check it out here

Chicken Soup Recipe #20

The latest recipe went live last night, pop over to the blog to check out all the other inspirations - and your chance to win a prize from this month's sponsor; Sarah's cards.

The inspiration:

My interpretation

TFL

Lou x

Chicken Soup Recipe #16

OK, so I'm a terrible blogger and DT member as I totally forgot to share last week's recipe - doh!

But, here is this week's, this was the inspiration

and here is the canvas it inspired me to make.

I painted it with 3 colours of Blonde Moments shimmer paints, and added some silver to the edges.

The quote is a Tim Holtz stamp, stamped onto a patterned paper covered chipboard panel. The chipboard swirl was painted with crackle paint, then I put some silver over the top. The butterflies were painted then sprayed with silver shimmer mist.

TFL

Lou x

I'm back! With good news and some not so good...

Firstly for the not so good news, and the reason I've not posted for 2 months!

Sadly my lovely Father in law passed away on 9th August. Needless to say the last couple of months have been horrendous and any creative I may have had disappeared completely.

However, a couple of weeks ago I went to the midnight crop at Pickleberry and MADE myself work through it and I made myself apply for the Chicken Soup Design Team call - and I got in!! I still can't quite believe it! The recipes go live every Friday night so make sure you check it out!!

I'll leave you with some pics of what I submitted for the DT call:

bye for now!!

Louxx

Using up the stash!

I am on a major use up mission at the moment, in the past couple of weeks I've made several layouts and tons of cards, Create 10 really kicked started my mojo!

As I'd ordered the new "She's Creative" quirky kit, I thought I better use up the old ones to make some space, so on Saturday I whipped up this layout with the last of my "What's the story" kit and what better subject for these papers than my cameras - another page for my book of me!

Weirdly enough just as I'd finished it I saw this blog post from Leo about using up leftovers - spooky eh?!

TFL

Lou xx

UKS July Card challenge

It's been ages since I took part in any sort of challenge blog or anything, so when I saw the card challenge on UKS I thought I'd join in.

There was a choice of 3 sketches so I decided to do a card for each one, I've recently subscribed to Crafty Templates so I used the cupcake and heart tree templates. Will share some more template cards later.

TFL

Lou xx

WOYWW - a confession

Firstly, thank you to everyone for all the lovely welcomes and comments last week.

Now I have a confession to make and it's the reason I haven't joined in with WOYWW before:

"My name is Lou and I am a tidy scrapper"

there I said it!

This is what my workdesk normally looks like:

I can't help it, honestly it's an illness!

Anyway, now I have confessed, I thought I'd share some pics of the rest of my room as it's newly decorated and I LOVE it! *WARNING - PIC OVERLOAD COMING UP*!

My room is what estate agents would call "bijou" i.e. tiny, but it suits me fine as everything is within reach!

Just inside the door is a tall DVD unit with die cutting at the bottom

and stamps at the top (in A5 folders)
Then on the wall above my desk I have these cute shelves with buttons, mists, stickles etc
Then above that these cute ikea units with stuff I don't use quite as often
Every inch of space is used - even the windowsill which houses my ribbons and my cricut expression
Under the desk hides my bin *must buy a pink one* and my ickle fridge
Then to the right of my desk a 4x2 expedit with minibooks, alterables etc at the top (boring stuff at the bottom so haven't shown it!) and my DVD player sits on top
The wall behind my desk has 2 big expedit units on their side on top of each other, along the top is my "gallery" *cue cheesy Tony Hart music*
The top row houses my tools; sewing machine, bigshot, BIA etc
Next row down is sewing stuff, laminator and heat tool then buckets with adhesives etc. Under that are my alphas, stickers, chipboard etc

These trays hold my kits and scraps and the pink rack holds 8x8 and 6x6 pads
Papers are stored by manufacturer, with bazzill below and my trimmers etc

Then the bottom row (no pic) has my completed albums mini books etc.

Apologies for the lengthy post, but I hope you've enjoyed the tour!

TFL

Lou xx

Create 10 - Project #10

And so here is my final project of this round of Create 10, a fab little mini book made from just 2 sheets of bazzill. I haven't got round to adding pics yet, but as you can see it's going to be pics of my newly decorated craft room.

I've used up yet more stash for this, namely Cosmo delovely, ancient love elsie stuff (zoe I think?!) and some my little shoebox too.

Huge thank you to Leo for putting on another fabulous set of classes, I've been inspired, had fun, used up lots of stash, chatted to some lovely ladies and seen all their wonderful work - all for just £5 - absolute bargain!

Create 10 - Project#9

Day 9 was all about using up our leftover ribbons with the option of making a cushion or a layout (or both!) unfortunately I didn't have a cushion to decorate (but having seen the finished article think I'll be buying one to have a go!) so went for the layout option.

I went through my vast ribbon stash and pulled out all the short lengths to use up. For the main circle I used this gathered ribbon that I've had knocking around for ages not knowing what to do with it, so pleased to have finally used it!

TFL

Lou xx

Create 10 - Project#8

Project 8 was to do a layout focusing on a special date (a good opportunity to use up all those number stickers you end up left with when you've used the letters!)

I chose 7th March 2000 as my special date as that is when Ash and I shared our first kiss (aww! lol) we never had a proper "first date" or anything so count this as our anniversary. The journalling slides out from under the picture.

The picture was taken at a friend's wedding in May this year - and I'm very impressed just how well the Cosmo Delovely papers match Ash's shirt!

TFL
Lou xx

Create 10 - Project#7

Project 7 was a fab layout using up yet more scraps of paper (woohoo!) clustered embellishments, and a paper cut embellishment - this really took me back to my childhood as I used to love making these, and regularly used to churn out lots of "snowflakes" lol

We also had the option of an extra special prize challenge to make a card using the same techniques, so I whipped up this quick card using up the last of my October Afternoon Detours papers.

TFL

Lou xx

Create 10 - Project#6

For project 6 we had the option of doing a wall hanging made from picture frames or a layout featuring machine stitching.

I opted for the layout as 1) I had no frames and also my craft room is getting a bit full of decorative stuff! and 2) I've never used machine stitching on a layout before so thought I'd give it a go.

Leo's example layout consisted of a large circle made up of small paper circles which was stitched over, but as I was doing a Disney layout (and just to make things difficult for myself!) I decided to make a Mickey mouse head shape!

I first stitched a square of paper to my base card with zig zag stitch, that was fine as it was straight lines!

Then I made a mickey template using a large circle and 2 smaller ones, drew round it onto my layout, positioned my small circles, then drew round it again with pencil and went over it with machine stitching to define the shape.

As you can see it went a wee bit wrong here - curved lines not so easy! lol so mickey has a bit of a pointy ear, but not bad for a first attempt

TFL

Lou xx

Create 10 - Project#5

I have to say I think this is my favourite project so far, was great fun to make and I got to use my all time favourite paper - it's from the Sassafras Nerdy Bird range, could it be any cuter?!

I decided to stick with a crafty theme for my "loves" and "hates", really pleased with the finished result, think this might have to be displayed rather than going in an album!

TFL

Lou xx

Create 10 - Project#4

Yet another lovely project! I adapted this one slightly as I wanted to do a 12x12 layout and also didn't have any fibres so use some trims instead. Not my usual colour scheme by far! But actually really pleased with the finished result

TFL

Lou xx

WOYWW

I've been meaning to join in with What's on your workdesk? Wednesday (look here if you don't know what it is!) for some time now, but have only just got round to it, not saying it will be a weekly occurrence, but I'll try!

So here is my desk, with my latest Create 10 project that I started last night.

As you can see I don't tend to keep a lot of stuff on my desk - no need really as my room is so small I can reach virtually everything I need without getting up! lol

Just the essentials are kept on here; cutting mat, MM desktop carousel with tools in, cute little pink wire baskets with inkpads and MOST importantly - my telly!!

TFL

Lou xx

Create 10 - Project#3

Today's fabulous project was making layered embellies from our left over papers etc, we then had the option to make a wreath or a layout, and me being a glutton for punishment (or just having lots of scraps to use up!) made both!

I've nearly finished day 4 too, so hopefully I'll be caught up soon!

TFL

Lou xx

Create 10 - Project#2

And here's the second one - the idea of this was to use lots of strips with different edges and kind of ruffle them up, but I kept mine flat as I did a 12x12 page, so not much room for ruffling!

This was the perfect opportunity to use up the ton of Sassafras borders I have been hoarding for ages, as well as a few other random strips of paper to break it up a bit and I just love the randomness of all the colours.

TFL

Lou xx

Create 10 - Project#1

So here's my take on the first fabby project - a great layout using up all those little scraps of paper that are far too nice to throw away!
There's a fair mix on here from Sassafras, October Afternoon and My Little Shoebox collections and some other bits from old quirky kits.

TFL

Lou xx

Very bad blogger!

I can't believe it has been so long since my last post! *slaps wrists*

Anyway, so what have I been up to?

Well I've been enjoying the wonderful weather we have been having, have done a couple of craft fairs and have been having a bit of a reorganisation!

You may have noticed that all my Looby Crafts stuff has gone from the side bar, well I've decided to separate it all out and keep this as my personal blog, so I now have a new blog for Looby Crafts!

On the crafting front, I have been making stuff but haven't photographed any of it yet *slaps wrists again* But I do have some stuff to share as I'm taking part in the latest Create 10 workshop from Crafty Templates, it started Friday but we were away at the weekend so I started yesterday and have managed the first 2 projects - will share them in a bit!

Lou xx

And the giveaway winner is............

HENNIE!!

Congratulations!! Email me your address hunny and I'll get them in the post

Thanks to everyone who took part
Lou xx

Looby Crafts Giveaway!!

I thought it was about time we had a little free giveaway here at Looby Crafts, so here is your chance to win a pack of 15 handmade cards!

All you have to do is visit my shop and leave a comment here telling me which is your favourite product - easy eh?!

But that's not all, if you promote my giveaway on your blog, facebook, twitter etc you'll get an extra entry into the draw for every place you put it (just let me know in the comments)

And if that wasn't enough, anyone who makes a purchase from my shop will get an extra entry for each item they buy!

The lucky winner will be drawn on Monday 17th May.

Good luck!

Lou xx

Looby Crafts May offer

May's offer is free postage on all accessories (brooches, hair bands, hair clips etc)

Lou x

Create 10 - Project #10

So here is my final project of Create 10 - this ingenious little minibook, unfortunately I haven't added any pics yet as my printer is being naughty. This was a great project to use up loads of odds and ends and I love the way it look so intricate but is so easy to make!

Bigs thanks for Leo for all the fabulous projects!

Lou xx