Shambala Style Bracelet

Who remembers macrame?  It was very popular in the sixties and seventies and I must have made countless plant pot holders, wall hangings, bags et al using huge wooden beads and heavy string.  Last week I caught a few minutes of a demonstration on jewellery making on the TV and it was macrame all over again but with very fine cord (1mm) and glitter-ball beads which I think is where the term Shambala comes in but not sure on this.   I don't actually have any of the glitter-ball beads - yet - but did find some 1mm cord knocking around and as you can guess I have loads of other beads so I just had to have a go, hoping I could remember how it was done.  This type of bracelet has a sliding section so that it can open up to slide over the hand and then you just pull the two small bead ends to close it although I'm not quite sure how you can pull both ends once it is on the wrist - it's not a style of bracelet I've tried before.  I had to resort to one hand and one mouth.  It was really nice to revisit macrame again and it is much more my style to work with fine thread on a smaller scale.  When I can get some more fine cord I will be using up some of my oddments in beads to make a few more and of course starting with longer lengths necklaces could be made too.

Simply Stampin' Challenge 69

There is a theme challenge at Simply Stampin' this week and one of my favourites - VINTAGE.  After giving it some thought I decided to go along with the obvious choice of using SU Vintage Vogue stamp set which I've combined with other suitable items.  Background paper was from Tim Holtz Shabby Vintage pad. The details are:-

Vintage Vogue - flowers stamped and cut out, also sentiment cut with SU label punch
Vintage wheel - stamped across background to form a border
Notably Ornate - label stamped and cut out
Framelits die cut run through a Textured Impressions embossing folder
Quickcitz dies - cameo and oval
SU ink pad - Simply Suede
Tim Holtz - Distress ink pad Tea Dye
SU card - crumb cake and simply suede

For Two challenges

Hopefully I'm catching up with myself a bit but only because I was awake soon after four this morning with no chance of getting back to sleep so I decided to get up, have breakfast and then into the craft room.  Mind you it feels like almost lunch time now (or at least elevenses!!).  I think I'm in time for the Make My Monday challenge which is to use the complimentary colours of  PURPLE AND YELLOW  and because I've used an embossing folder which has lain unused for such a long time and a small dragonfly X-cut punch equally neglected I am putting this card in for Judith's Forgotten Friday challenge as well. Background paper was a piece from my scrap box and of course the die cuts and punched elements used more scraps.  Embossing folder is from Cuttlebug, as is the word die, the large dragonfly was cut with a Sizzix die and Memory Box Tessatina die for a border.. The yellow card is from Coredinations whitewash range and has been sanded and inked with Lemonade Distress ink to bring out the colour.

I'm off now for early elevenses!!

Zentangle Inspired Art

Another tangle has been added to my Zentangle page.  Hopefully I will be able to catch up with some of my usual challenges tomorrow before it is too late - this week seems to have passed me by far too quickly somehow.

Twinchie challenge week 2

The challenge this week on the Twinchie blog is SUMMER - what summer I say - it has been raining steadily here again although thankfully looking a bit brighter now.  Anyway back to the twinchie and for a bit of fun and because I seem to be having a muddled week somehow I had a very quick play in Craft Artist and produced a summer scene which I then shrunk down to the regulation 2" size.  With hindsight I think I should have started with a square of the correct size but sadly more time to play at the moment - some weeks are like that I find. All in all this wasn't terribly successful but at least I've managed one challenge so far this week.

Edited to add one which is a bit more colourful and I started with a 2" 'canvas' on the screen in Craft Artist - pure fantasy of course and very quickly cobbled together.

This one looks smaller but in fact prints out at exactly 2"

P is for Poppies

This is the second of my tags for this month and predictably it is poppies - well there was a new stamp plate with them on from Chocolate Baroque which was irresistible!!  This one reminded me of the explosion of poppies which arrived uninvited all over my garden (including paths and the gravelled area as well) and they are various shades of pink and red.  Stamped onto watercolour paper and coloured with Coloursoft pencils, the seed head in the background is also a CB stamp which I've had for many years.  Quite a simple tag but then it is nice to have some less elaborate ones amongst the collection which is growing as the year progresses.

O is for Owl

Time to send off the Alphatags for this month and this is the first of them.  I'm all behind with posts and so on because I lost my internet connection (again) for most of yesterday - I do hate being cut off from the world!!  Who would have thought a few years ago that I'd be feeling like that because we'd hardly believed that we would be able to communicate so readily with people all over the country and indeed in far flung places too.

Anyway back to the tag - the large owl (a stamp from Chocolate Baroque) was gold embossed, coloured with Distress markers and cut out so that he could sit on the die cut fence.  Background was coloured with distress inks and the teasel and leaves were also stamps from CB.  Finally I squashed a bottle top, added another stamped owl (CB) and used Glossy Accents to make it into a nice embellishment.

It so happens that I've not used this owl stamp for a really long time so this qualifies the tag to appear on Judith's Forgotten Friday challenge.  Could this be a sign that I maybe have too many stamps??  The theme on Sunday Stamper this week is Embellishments and I know there is only one embellishment here (unless I can count the letter O at the top) but I did make it myself so hopefully that will be OK.  I hope Judith and Hels will forgive me for doing another 'three in one' this week.