Reviving Old Jewellery

Many of us have probably items of jewellery lying around in a box or corner, which we have not been wearing for ages - and I am no exception. Especially when these pieces are made from precious metals parting with them is not easy. Even selling the jewellery will never bring a price close to the real value.

I had a pair of large sterling silver hoop earrings, which I had not been wearing for at least 15 years, in a box. So the best option seemed to be to give them a bit of a twist and a new lease of life.

After thoroughly cleaning the earrings with a silver polishing cloth and in an ultrasonic cleaner I added lightweight 4mm jump rings in sterling silver and 9ct yellow gold. After a final bath in the ultrasonic cleaner they are now nice and shiny and as good as new. And the weight is with just 2.2g per earring still very good for comfortable wear.

And the best thing:

It is easy to change the design, if I ever want to give them a new look again.

Tea Party

Today is actually a dry and sunny although a bit chilly day here, but the last couple of days the weather was simply atricous. It was freezing cold with temperatures in the single figures, windy and wet. It felt much more like November than May.

So I decided to cheer myself up with the gorgeous Dovecraft Tea Party products by Trimcraft.The goregous pastel colours and yummy treats really lifted my mood - although it was hard not to go to Starbucks and organise some real treats ...

For the card above I used the Tea Party decoupage paper pad. I created the flowers with Card Candi, which is shapped around tweezers - a technique I saw demonstrated at the recent Sincerely Your papercraft show in Edinburgh. The leaves are cut with a Marianne Design die.

My products of choice for the next cards were the Tea Party glitter stickers. I added again Card Candi flowers. This time I used a Crealies die for the leaves.

Product lists and step-by-step instructions for both cards (with exception of the Card Candi flowers, as I created the projects for Trimcraft) are in my Trimcraft gallery.

I hope you like these two cards.

Crafting on the Wild Side

It was time for a bit of fun crafting time and getting out my beloved Clarity tiger stamp. These big cats are so beautiful, powerful and majestic - although I prefer to keep a bit of a safety distance once they are no longer cubs ...

I stamped the image onto a piece of kraft cardstock using black VersaFine ink and coloured it in with Derwent Coloursoft pencils before mounting it onto black cardstock. I combined the tiger with Kanban Safari cardstock, tiger Card Candi and foliage die-cuts from Tim Holtz Kraft-Core cardstock that I created with a Marianne Design die. All these are arranged on a square kraft card blank and layers of textured black cardstock and embossed kraft cardstock.

I hope you like this different style of card.

Sincerely Yours Papercraft Show 21 April 2012

It was a long and busy day at the Sincerely Yours Papercraft Show in Edinburgh yesterday. And the place was buzzing with crafters.

It was a great experience, but I must admit that my feet are still recovering a bit. And when it comes to the preparation of yesterday's dinner I did not manage more than shoving a pizza into the oven and opening a bottle of wine ... But it was well worth it. And thankfully I still found the time to treat myself to some goodies, so unpacking and playing with the new toys is on the agenda for today.

Here are a couple of photos that I took of our stall. It was lovely to see so many of my cards on display.

Only one more sleep ...

... until the Sincerely Yours papercraft show in Edinburgh. We do not have many of these events around here, so it is really something to look forward to. A good craft shopping spree, soaking up new ideas and inspiration as well as meeting other crafters that is what I call bliss.



And I even found the time for a card with the small Scottish wedding couple stamp by Crafty Stamps last night. For the groom's kilt I inked up that particular section of the image, stamped it onto tartan paper, cut it out and fixed it to the image.

Here is what I used to create the card:

• Scottish wedding couple (small) by Crafty Stamps
  
• White textured cardstock
• Lilac pearlescent card
• Tartan paper
• White glass-smooth cardstock by Southfield
• Black Memento ink pad
• ProMarkers
• Darice embossing folder
• Marianne Design die
• Ribbon
• Adhesive gems
• Adhesive
• Die-cutting machine
  
• Toolbox essentials
  

Thistle & Rose

The new Crafty Stamps collection of romance and wedding themed stamps also includes a few beautiful floral images. For the card featured in this post I used their Thistle and Rose stamp (SC151HF).

I coloured in the image using ProMarkers in Crimson, Aubergine, Forest Green and Pine. To lift the image I surrounded the outlines with Ice Grey 1. I also used:

• Textured cardstock in white, beige and purple
• Glass-smooth white cardstock from Southfield
• Oval and scalloped oval dies
• Heartfelt Creations die set 'Bella Rose'
• Tea roses and rose buds
• Decorative pins
• Purple adhesive gems
• Darice 5" x 7" embossing folder 'Plaid'
• Stickles glitter glue in Crystal
  

And if you are near Edinburgh, the Crafty Stamps/Stampers Grove team will be at the Sincerely Yours show at the Royal Highland Centre on 21 April 2012. So why not say hello in case you are going to the show.

Little Drummer Boy

What a day! I assume it will be noisy here tonight considering that the Scottish cup final is turning into an Edinburgh derby in Glasgow. Football fans will probably party everywhere - especially as this is the first cup final between both Edinburgh clubs since 1896.

Unfortunately I am nursing a very sick QuicKutz Epic Six that suddenly only wants to work with Cuttlebug plates (and that only with the stick and carrot approach) and seems to be allergic to QuicKutz plates. Something is telling me that I will need to think about replacing it at some point. But at least I managed to convince it to produce the die-cuts for today's card.



I used Marianne Designs button dies and the Tim Holtz Alterations washer border die, which I combined with textured cardstock in three colours, tartan paper as well as black and white baker's twine.

The image is created with the Scottish Drummer stamp by Crafty Stamps. I coloured it in using ProMarkers in Almond, Satin, Sandstone, Umber, Burnt Sienna, Burgundy, Black, Cool Grey 5, Ice Grey 2, Warm Grey 3 and Warm Grey 4 plus Spectrum Noir pens in DG4 and IG1 (the last one for the shadow around the drummer). For the kilt I stamped the relevant section of the image onto tartan paper, cut out the kilt and added it to the stamped drummer.