Something old, something new, something metal, something blue

I always love the submissions to The Shabby Tea Room challenges as shabby is my favourite card style. Though shabby isn't mandatory I do enjoy the beautiful creations in that style!

A very interesting and different Shabby Tea Room challenge this week has generated equally talented responses.

This week's challenge was a photo of a bracelet for inspiration and to use some metal.

Mine ended up a wedding card!

I picked out the turquoise colour from the bracelet to use as the colour scheme for the card.

There are actually two lots of metal on the card. There's the obvious one you can see which is picture wire which I thought looked nice against the tulle frill.

The heart is also metal. It was originally gun metal grey and was in fact a button until I snipped the eyelet off the back of it. However, its original colour dominated the card too much so I painted it white and buffed it with some gold ink. I also added a bit of gold ink to the rose and its leaf. I want to cover the world in gold ink and glitter!

Here's a close up of the heart and rose embellishment...

The image of the bride I got from here. I cut her away from the rest of the picture using my art software and changed the colour of the trimmings on her dress to blue.

A load of crepe

Oh how I love crepe paper. Which is a very different story to my memories of it from decades ago back in my childhood. We used it in a not very creative way just to cover boxes in. I can still only find it locally in a variety of garish or neon colours ...so I have white paper and add a little colour to it with ink pads.

Now I love to use it to make frills on things.

Here's a couple of simple flowers I made with some scraps.. which I think turned out quite sweet.

A crepe rose..

I made them from a strip of crepe leftover from making the frill on this card...


I was trying to make a background paper with a damask type pattern ...but the stamp I used (perhaps a little too much!) made it look like a bunch of old skool space invaders... remember these little fellas.

I put the sentiment inside like so...


Also here's a simple card I made while just trying out stamps. The stamp is a type of flower but for some reason it reminded me of a shamrock ...especially as I had stamped it on green paper so I made it into a good luck card.
I just added a little bit of glitter to it.

Tea for One

The title of this post was going to be 'tea for two' because there were so many elements to inspire different cards/projects in this absolutely gorgeous image...

...which The Shabby Tea Room chose for this week's challenge that I was going to make two cards.

There is the almost 'folk art' style motif from the bodice of the dress hanging on the dress form which could produce a very different card design. There are the fashion elements within the photo as well as the furniture. And not least those delicate roses. My other card was to include the dressform and hatbox.

Unfortunately I have run out of time and so offer only this one..




The room in the photo belongs to the fragrant elegant lady on this card. Her name is Madeline. It is her birthday and she is treating herself to Tea at the Ritz. She has been getting in the mood by having some nice tea for breakfast - probably Earl Grey. The dress she will wear is hanging on the dress form. On my card she is wearing the hat from the hatbox adorned with a pink rose of course! She also has pink roses for cheeks! She is beautiful...



The beautiful image of the lady was kindly provided by Carolyn at Antique Images. I hope you like what I did with it!

The backing paper is Madeline Painted Roses by K & Company.
The rose on the hat is Habico paper roses.
The stick on pearls are www.markrichardsusa.com
The frame and sentiment are (badly) handcut by me. Gold ink and glitter hide many an imperfection!

I may one day get round to making the other card I had in mind just for the joy of it. But right now I am away to have my own tea for one from one of these rosy china cups while daydreaming of Madeline taking tea at the Ritz. Sigh.


Then I have so many chores to do. :/

Peace is not just for Christmas

I have noticed that many people are already preparing for Christmas - in cardmaking that is. There was even a challenge ...Christmas in July!

Over in the UK we have a 'bumper sticker' which says ' A dog is for life not just for Christmas'

Both of these things have inspired my card for the Signs of Peace challenge at Moxie Fab World and the Peace sign gets pride of place (and some glitter) at the top of the Christmas tree.

Peace to all, always! ☮

All at sea..

Life's been way too busy lately to reflect and blog so I'll just post the pic...

Here's my card...


Featuring a proper real shell from Southport beach ...slightly enhanced with some glitter.


Also stamped around edges with gold ink using bargain £1.50 stamp with a scallop shell on it.

Home Sweet Home

What adorable creations The Shabby Tea Room has inspired with their week #21 'House and Home' challenge. All those bird houses are just the tweetest things (sorry bad puns again!). I loved everything about the challenge image -the soft colours, the shabby but homely feel to it. Reminded me of everything a home should be comfortable, well used and relaxing.

House and Home is quite the theme for us at the moment as I prepare my adult Autistic son for moving on. He will be going to a residential college in September and is needing much reassurance that he will still come home for holidays and be able to do all the things he enjoys and have around him all his familiar things which make a place home.

He is horrified however about the prospect of 'new house' ...which is some years away yet but eventually he will have to move out of the family home and in to supported living. I will not live forever. Nor will our home continue to stand forever ...its in a pretty delapidated state already. If I pull at the wrong piece of string for cardmaking the whole house may fall down around our ears!

However, the 'House and Home' issues which inspired (if that's the right word) me this week were the ones around those with lack of a home due to the floods in Pakistan...

Here is the card I ended up making...


I made it using brown parcel paper and bits of brown envelope but the rest of the paper was shop bought. Its meant to be a tent. And I was a bit messy with the glue (I need to get something proper to stick stuff with and practise precision gluing!). But my thoughts are with people all over the world without a home.

You can read here about the UK's Disasters Emergency Committee and what they do and also donate to their appeals.

There is also an organisation called ShelterBox who have been supplying tents to those affected in Pakistan.

Shabby Effort

I've haven't been cardmaking long and I'm not sure I can claim the honourable distinction of cardmaking yet ...am more at the experimenting with cardmaking stage. I hope to go on to be a fully fledged (just for the fun of it) cardmaker. Though with heavy caring responsibilities I'm not sure I'll find enough time to devote to this enjoyable pursuit.

Being at the just starting out stage I find all the challenges a very useful tool to focus ones endeavours.

Over at Moxie Fab World one of their challenges was to make a project based on one of five card styles ...you can read and see all about it here. In particular I am loving the shabby chic and vintage style cards and projects. I didn't participate myself but what delicious inspiration!

So I had a go at doing a bit of shabby (without the chic)/vintage.

I used the colours from the colour challenge set by Kaboodle Doodles - purple, red, green and cream.

While I love the colour combination of lilac and pale green it was a tough challenge to incorporate the whole set of colours.

Anyway here's what I came up with ....my shabby effort...



The lilac buttons were from my mothers very old button tin. The button tin is one I remember from being a child some decades ago! Its always been there as long as I can remember and contains very old buttons which are cracked with age and in no need of any treatment to age them ...to really awful 1970s buttons ...to more recent ones purchased for the items mother has knitted for my children (now both grown up). So quite a lot of history and it felt quite wrong raiding such a sacred object.

The purple flowers were from the sweepings of a local home furnishings store ...I asked if I could have them ...they had fallen from their display of artificial flowers which they had been moving.

The red card was from the inside of an A4 document wallet. Everything around my house at the moment has holes cut out!

And the lush silk purple ribbon was off a box of chocolates I got some time ago and saved the ribbon. Knew it would come in handy!

I know I should list the rest of the ingredients ...such as the stamp I used for the word love on the heart ...but I don't have the packaging and can't remember whose it is :(

I will try to be more organised in future ...

A bit of a shabby effort really.