AMAZING ALTERED ART BY GIO.....

Hope you are all keeping warm in this very cold weather we are having in the UK.  However I believe we are in for a bit of a thaw next week - can't be too soon for me - roll on Spring I say!

I'm pleased to say Monty (Moodle) is fully over his nasty tummy thing - the antibiotic injection and the beef flavoured yummy tummy paste did the trick (however he really dislikes the vet now, as its been needles on every visit - plus the pet microchip fired in between his 'shoulder blades' - ouch).  He certainly knows how to squeal for her, and frighten away all her other waiting clients!! He now shakes violently as we approach the veterinary door - wish I could explain that it is all for his own good!  But he does thank you all indeed for your good wishes, which have set him on the road to recovery and back to making mischief (he loves being let loose in my craft room - aaaagh!).

Now to get on with the art...  As I have built up a luscious collection of Gio's beautiful altered art project images recently, I think I will pop them all on this one blog post this evening - she is one talented lady - and you can view more of her art on her own blog at http://giogioscrap.blogspot.co.uk/.  I believe Gio will be demonstrating at The Craft Barn Extravaganza in early June and we can't wait to meet her again.  The Extravaganza is great fun in the crafting world, with lots to see and do, so please keep the dates free - we all hope to see you there!

And now without further ado lets get on with the art .....

The first project is one of my absolute favourites - a teacup and saucer, decorated with Alice Palace's lovely cupcakes.  Check out Gio's blog to link to a step by step guide on this.

I will follow this with a fashionably beautiful altered book again in Gio's favourite colour - pink - and lets face it pink is just perfection!

She has used quite an assortment of CI stamps here including CI-347, the Butterfly Trio, fashion stamps CI-324 and CI-323, and corsets stamp CI-306.

The next project can truly be given the label 'altered art'.  Who, other than Gio, would have thought of altering a mini sewing machine, and how great would this look in the craft room?!

Coloured with alcohol inks I believe and then decorated with one of our newest elements mini plates CI-364 - it is adorable!

Also needing somewhere to store her bottles of paint Gio created this pretty caddy, using our background paper book 'Trees':

And my final 'Gio' project for tonight is this very sweet altered watch wriststrap ...

Again making great use of our elements stamp CI-364

Thanks Gio!

Goodnight all, and I will be back again soon...

Jean x

BACK AGAIN WITH MORE GOOD STUFF...

We are in the depths of winter here - lots of snow, and brrrr cold!!!  Looking forward to Spring - roll on the daffodils!

Still we have crafting to keep us 'warm', and I have lots of images to share with you tonight.  'Monty Moodle' is on a starvation diet for 24 hours due to an upset stomach, and I feel so cruel not being able to feed him - he isn't a very happy puppy at all.  So I will do as much blogging as I can muster the energy for, whilst feeling so sorry for him down at my feet.

Nice to hear that you are enjoying the projects I show you, and the CI 'Team' are amazing and just keep them coming!

Brenda has sent me this beautiful image, created with the sewing themed stamp CI-328 - and I love it - great colours, stitching and collaged layout.  This will be uploaded next to the appropriate stamp on our new website very soon.

Brenda has also sent over some other great projects - fantastic!

Loving the Lacewing Butterfly diecut, with the pen nib body, and the use of CI-171, Harlequin Background, plus the Gothic Door stamp CI-249.

Another great collage using an early stamp Butterfly Ticket CI-005, and finally a tag using one of the new Alice Palace stamps - such fun designs!

Thanks Brenda.

I'm going to pop a little 'house' folding booklet that I made recently in here.  I got the idea from a back issue of Scrap 365, and made myself a template so that my class ladies could have a go too.

I used a small Tando frame around an image from our Nature's Beauty mini book in the centre.  And added stencilling through our Masks to the background, various stamps, and Dies.

Sylvie has been busy creating beautiful things with CI-346....

With some mask work, and white embossed images from CI-351 decorating the background.  Great flowers Sylvie!

Plus a second one - similar colours, but quite a different layout.  Stunning!

I think I will end tonight with two very pretty canvasses by Lucy, who has incorporated images from our People and Places 2 Mini Image Book very effectively.

Hope you have found some inspiration somewhere in this post - keep crafting, and have fun everyone!

Jean x

MINI POST UPDATE ABOUT CRAFT STAMPER....

As promised I want to update you quickly and briefly about the latest issue of Craft Stamper (February), which has the gorgeous 'shopper' project by Helen Chilton, decorating the front cover.  Helen has used lots of Crafty Individuals stamps here and has transferred them to her plain 'blank' shopper with the assistance of the lovely TAP paper.  You will find both Craft Stamper, and TAP paper, under the heading of Must Haves, on our brand new website www.craftyindividuals.co.uk.  Craft Stamper is on the drop down list, and TAP can be found under 'Miscellaneous'.  And we all need pretty eco-friendly shoppers in our lives these days now don't we?!

Marvellous - well done Helen!

Jean x

FOCUS ON 'MUSICAL NOTES' CI-366, A6 ELEMENTS PLATE, PLUS A LITTLE BIT MORE ....

Hello All

Tonight I thought I would have a little focus on one of our newest Elements mini plates - 'Musical Notes' CI-366, which you can locate on our brand new website HERE.  If you have any music lovers in your life then this is the stamp for you, and two super talented ladies - Gio, and Sylvie - have both been making the most beautiful crafty projects with this set of delights.

Firstly a lovely card by Gio - so inventive! ..

Followed by a fabulous set of coasters in a box ..

Plus a lovely framed creation with the same stamp ..

Then Sylvie has gone all circular on us with her take on CI-366 - colourful and delicious!

With a little bit of CI-364, 'Pretty Design Elements' butterflies, going on in here too..

Thank you for sharing those ladies!

Talking about music - Isabelle Norris has used a couple of the bits of this musical stamp set, plus the Round Clock from Tando, and one of our clock face stamps CI-353 - 'Cog Workings' to make a cool and sophisticated, black and white, working clock ...

And now for the 'plus a little bit more'...

I have a few more 'Alice Palace' items waiting to be blogged.  Two colourful and clever cards by Helen Chilton (who incidentally has made the front cover of the very latest issue of Craft Stamper with an amazing decorated shopping bag using lots of our stamps, and TAP transfer paper - more on that in my next post) ..

The robin card definitely shows us that a robin is for life, not just for Christmas!!

Helen has incorporated additional CI stamps in her backgrounds very successfully, such as CI-365, CI-367 the new silhouette stamps and CI-209 'Winter Trees' mini plate.

And whilst I am on the subject of robins the image below fits rather nicely in at this point - an adorable little decorated box, sent over by the lovely Samantha Read ..

Finally to finish off for tonight Effie has decorated another two sheets in her little 'Alice' book ..

Stunning use of complimentary colours here!!

Well I ended up blogging far more images than I was going to tonight.  Hope you have enjoyed the display?!  Thanks to everyone featured, and to all of you who take the time to leave interesting and kind comments - you are all stars!

Bye for now,

Jean x

p.s.  If you are waiting patiently for details of our first Challenge of 2013, we decided to postpone it from January to February, to give us all a chance to get over Christmas.  Hope YOU will be able to join in soon. x

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE...

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year holidays, and are now raring to craft again in 2013!

Thanks for all your nice comments about our new website at www.craftyindividuals.co.uk, and hope you are now finding your way around it.  As with all new things of this type we have had a few 'teething' problems, and do please get in touch if you have experienced a problem with placing an order in any way - info@craftyindividuals.co.uk (01642 789955) and we can sort it out for you at this end.  Lots of orders have come through successfully, but one or two of you have had little niggles here and there.  However I'm sure everything will be perfect very soon!

We are now able to do all the uploading, images, etc., ourselves, so will be able to keep a check on everything - exciting times!  And just to answer a comment query from jac777 I'm afraid the old style gallery has now been put to rest, and images of projects currently appear next to the product they relate too.  I can completely understand that you enjoyed browsing the old gallery - I did too, however we also had many requests from crafters wanting to see the items that the images related to immediately - so this is the direction we are now moving in.  Hopefully we will be adding more images, and moving images around in time, so please keep checking back for new inspiration often.

Now for some more lovely pretty things ...

Brenda  has been making a couple of very lovely items with the new Alice Palace stamps, in a journaling style - how gorgeous are these?!

Perfect for the Alice stamps.

And Sylvie has done us proud too with her great Alice projects:

And Gio came up with the fabulous idea of making some oven mitts with the Alice cupcake stamp (and lovely TAP paper):

I think all the above delights show just how versatile the new Alice stamps are - hope you are having fun with yours!!!

Finally for today I have two customer projects to show you.  The first is a very pretty decorated mailbox - very unique, by Janneke de Vries:

Thanks for sharing that Janneke.

Plus we received this gorgeous card in the post a little while ago, from the Channel Islands.  However I have to confess the actual card is in the office (and I'm not!), so I will be adding the name of the lovely lady maker very soon, as I am having a total mental block at the mo.  Still I wanted to pop the image up here for you all to admire now.  (Ah yes - got it now - its Katie from the Channel Islands - thanks Katie!).

Beautifully made with CI-351 Sweet Elephants and Swirl stamp

Now I'm off back to puppy minding.
Chat again soon,

Jean x