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Hello All. Hope you are feeling happy and healthy today and that 2013 is being good to you. If you would like to be a part of our Friendship Quilt at the Hatters please look at the page  here  to find out more about it This week at Out of a Hat Creations  the challenge is to make a set of Three ATCs with any subject but each card must have red, green, white and black somewhere on them. I thought it would be easy but I seemed to be stuck from the start for some reason. Do visit Janet and Sandra's blogs to see the beautiful work they have done for this challenge. I digitally painted this face and used it on my set of ATCs by adding effects in Paint shop Pro. Here she is pegged out to dry on the cactus cause I varnished the cards and it took ages for them to dry. Here they are again all in a row. I think when I see the word ATC my brain goes back to when an Artist Trading Card meant just that and they were an artist's own efforts printed onto little cards to hand out to show off

Hi All--hope your day is going well and that the weather is being kind where you are. Dark, wet and dull here but no floods or snow at the moment. Spent ages making this inchie for Every Inchie Monday  where the subject this week is Hut First thing I did was take a photograph of one of my beach hut money boxes and I have used that on the inchie. The door is closed on the money box but I have made it look open and added a bathing bell behind the door. The dog is a little pixel image I drew years ago together with folders full of little pixel images--I guess they might come in handy for inchies. I printed the hut out twice so that I could decoupage it. I have also made a sheet to save all of my inchies together so I can make a hanging or picture with them when all 52 are done. I thought that I will be able to cut out the grid and add the year and details to the middle bit. Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone. Hope you are all safe and well. So many tragedies at the moment with the floods and the snow-I am thinking of lots of people and wishing them well. I saw this challenge at Catered Crop and I couldn't resist looking back over my crafty year to see what I could chose. I always enjoy making anything but some things just seem to turn out better than others so here is my list. Most of my choices were made for the challenges at Out of a Hat Creations  where 2 friends and myself challenge each other every week and anyone can join in with us-just for fun. 1. These are knitted flowers with a stamped background 2. A Poundland BBQ fork decorated 3. Four corner bookmarks on a clock project 4. Paper Dress with silk tie at the waist 5. A stamped Gift Bag 6. Metal look Tag 7. Oriental Fan 8. Altered Bottle 9. Sewing Kit 10. Scanogram picture 11. Steampunk Doll 12. A box of notelets Thank you for looking Happy Crafting Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone-hope you are well. We have about 4 inches of snow that arrived in the night -just when we thought it had all gone away. I won't be venturing out today so lots of crafty hours ahead for me. At Addicted to Stamps and More this week it is their 5th CAS challenge. Not something I am very good at but there are some great samples from the team as inspiration I used a folder to emboss a piece of white card then distressed it with some Rangers Ink on one of their ink pads. Mounted this piece of card on another piece of coloured card. Stamped the sentiment-distressed it and mounted it onto the same colour as the other piece. Stuck them both onto a white card.Clean and simple. Thanks for looking Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone--hope your day is going well. We are going to the cinema this afternoon to see The Quartet. Our cinema wasn't going to show it but so many people had asked if they would that they have decided to put it on in one of the smaller screens. It's nice to know that people power is working. At Craft-room challeng e this week the theme is monochrome. It was good to see what that really means as I used to think it meant just black and white but it can be any colour which is much easier for me. Lots of inspiration from the DT and the entries that have flooded in already. Always lovely challenges here and a friendly team. I collected together various brown papers and emblies and went from there. The round shape is one I made using crushed eggshells and the flower I painted with brown paint to make it fit in with the theme. Nice to have you drop by Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone. I hope your week has gone well and that you have been enjoying some great crafting. This week at Out of a Hat Creations  the theme is Clocks so lots of things you could chose to make if you join us in the challenge. I bought this old clock last year at the car boot sale near to where I live. It only cost 50p and when I added a battery it worked and kept perfect time--what a surprise that was. I put it up on the wall in my craftroom until this challenge came 'out of the hat' then I thought it would be a good time to transform it. Now is a Steampunkery Clock. The first thing I did was cover the edge of the clock with aluminium tape then work in various inks to make it look like old metal. The wings and cog I stamped onto the tape as well using Chocolate Baroque stamps. That done I could concentrate on the middle so I looked for the Roman numerals clock face on Google and printed it out to fit my clock. I cut a slit at the centre of the circle so that I could slip

Hello to my Friends and Followers and thank you for popping by and leaving such wonderful comments on my projects. I made this page today for the Alpha, Dictionary Challenge at The Craft Barn . It is a wonderful challenge and I am sure I will look forward to making every one of the pages I scanned the relevant pages from my dictionary as I was unable to find an old one. The word I chose for C is Carnival and it was the first word on the left hand page. The background is painted in various H20 colours and spritz with Cosmic glitter mist. The stamps are 4 I have had for a while-they are made by Tabby Kat. I stamped 2 of them straight onto the pages and the others I had already stamped and coloured a while ago so I stuck them on. Thank you for the challenge and for looking at my page Love Chrissie xx

Good Afternoon--hope your day is going well. I am loving the Inchie Challenges at Every Inchie Monday  and this week the word is STONE. I couldn't think what I could use for this so I had a look in Vic's 'MAN' drawer as he keeps all sorts of stuff in there. Brilliant! I found a plastic back with different polished stones. He said he bought them over 30 years ago in a rock shop in Arizona and I could have them :) They are all quite small and the one I chose I thought looked heart-shaped. First I drew a zentagle with the heart shaped middle then stuck on the coloured stone and the hardest bit was writing 'Heart of Stone' small enough to fit on the Inchie. Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone and hope where ever you are the weather is being kind to you. We have had lots of snow but now it is being washed away by heavy rain with a forecast for more snow again later in the day. That can only mean one thing----stay in and craft :) At Artful Times  Neet and Von would like us to make an ATC with Time as the theme. Lots of things associated with that and I thought how my time always seems to pass far too quickly to fit in all that I would like to do. I chose part of a Chocolate Baroque stamp that always makes me think of a busy machine that can do all sorts of things. The full stamp is amazing and from the Punky Romance set. The background is painted in various shades of H20 paint and I added a bit of colour to the stamped image with Promarkers. That's about it really. Have a great day Love Chrissie xx

Hello Again everyone--hope you have had a really nice crafty week. Thank you for all the lovely comments and for popping by my blog This week at Out of a Hat Creations  it is time to use the most useful stamp in your stash and also tell us why it is so useful if possible. This butterfly stamp was one of the first stamps I ever bought and I have used it many times for all sorts of projects. It was made by Elusive Images and is numbered DO455. I have always loved it because of the shape of the wood it is mounted on and the way I can hold it so well and get a clear stamp every time. The light was so poor when I took this so none of the sparkle shows well at all-I usually take pictures outside but we have deep snow at the moment(Tuesday) and it is freezing cold.. Vic is making a light box for me so things should get better I covered a notepad by using the sheet of sticky foam left when you have used all of the round foam pieces on a sheet. Firstly I covered the whole notebook with the shee

Hi All--hope today is going well for you. We have lots of snow and it still keeps trying to put down more so I am having a crafty day today Last week I found Every Inchie Monday  and had a go at making one--I couldn't believe all the wonderful tiny pieces of art that people had made. Had to have another go for this week as well and the theme is Girl This is me at the ripe old age of 4 being a bridesmaid. Everyone says I was a very serious child and it looks like they were right if this was my usual pose. Thank goodness I have made up for it since lol. Thanks for looking Love Chrissie xx

Hello friends and followers. Thank you for all the wonderful comments and the encouragement they give me in my crafty ventures. I hope 2013 is going well for you so far. I saw this challenge at The Craft Barn on my friend Von's blog and I just loved the idea so thought I would have a go. I searched for an old Dictionary but haven't found one so thought I would scan the pages from the dictionary we use and add the pages I make to a book so that they will all be in one place. This challenge is the letter V and I chose vegetable as my word. I printed the veggie images onto the page and coloured the carrots image with Promarkers. The carrot image I got at Free Vintage Digi Images  where there are always lots of images of interest. The first page of the book I added an index so I know what is where. I am really looking forward to making more of the pages and thank you for the challenge. Love Chrissie xx

Hello All-hope the sun is shining where you are. The forecast says snow for us this weekend and it is very cold at the moment so maybe the white stuff isn't far away. Hope you are having a nice crafty day. I decided to venture into Inchies when I saw one on Hazel's blog. I hadn't realisesd how difficult it is to make something so small so here is my poor effort for the challenge at Every Inchie Monday  where the theme is a Star. I made the inchie in felt and did some random sewing around the edges. The star shape is cut out in card and embossed with some mixed up embossing powder. I added it to the card with a heart shaped brad. Then I stitched a red sequin to each corner. I did get a book called Inchies for my birthday-printed by Search Press and costs £6.99. I will read it before the next inchie challenge and maybe get a better idea of how to make them. Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone and a big thank you to all the people who take time to comment on my blog. It is always lovely to see what you put in the comments. This week the Hatters are still in a party mood and Sandra made us a Bingo Board that is a little bit different from the ones you usually see on blogs. As you can see every line you chose will have a Hat on it and 3 other things. You can use any line you like vertical, horizontal or corner to corner. I chose Hat-Glitter-Bow and Text and made this Mad Hatter's Hat from toilet roll middles and leather cloth. The bow is on the peel-off and the glitter is on the heart. I got the idea for this from Rita's Blog  when she made some for Christmas. I did make my own version of her idea with twists here and there to make it more like the Mad Hatter's Hat. Thank you for the inspiration Rita. I filled the inside with chocolates Hope you will join in with us and made something from the Bingo Board. Do pop and see what Janet and Sandra have m

Hello Everyone. Two posts from me today--aren't I doing well? Always love the Twinchies challenges at Show us your Twinchies  the team's samples and the wonderful entries always fill me with amazement as they can fit so much interest into such a small space. My Twinchie was mainly made because I was messing with DecoArt one stop crackle. I hardly ever have any success with it at all so I decided to try different ways with it. This background was one layer of acrylic paint and a thin layer of the crackle medium. then I sprayed it with Cosmic glitter mist. I had already done another twinchie shape with the same acrylic paint but a really thick layer of the crackle medium This is what happened when I dried it with my heat gun and sprayed it with the glitter mist. I think the effect is much more interesting and maybe a stand alone twinchie with just the background. Love Chrissie xx

Hello everyone! I do hope that 2013 is going well for you so far and that you have managed to avoid all the awful bugs that are invading so many spaces at the moment. I feel fit as fiddle so far and the sun is shining in a cloudless sky so it can't be bad. Time to do a 'two for one challeng'e as Artful Times would like us to use 2 or more embossing folders on their challenge and Craft-room Challenge would like us to make a Valentine. As my crafty brain is still half asleep since the break I thought I would combine the two as I do like to do the challenges on both of these blogs. I covered two pieces of card with some white, muslin material and when the PVA  was dry I cut out two different size shapes and passed them through the Cuttlebug in two different folders. The effect was better than I thought it would be and I spray painted them with colours I had mixed from some old inks. Then ran an old black ink pad over the embossed bits to make them stand out. A bit of a spray

Hi Everyone-hope you are ready for another crafty day. Just had to show you this :- Janet bought 3 children's jigsaws with 9 pieces in each and she worked out a way so that each of us did 3 pieces from each jigsaw and none of the pieces we made were next to each other in the completed puzzle--how amazing was that for a start. Each piece in each jigsaw was assigned a subject and we had to decorate the piece on that theme. It was brilliant having 9 different themes and knowing that eventually all of us would have a very unique piece of artwork. this was my puzzle before and they were all different These are the backs of the puzzle that Janet had marked out so we knew which pieces we should make-we had to decorate the other side of the pieces.  This is my jigsaw finished and ready to frame.   Sandra  and  Janet  are going to show theirs as well so do pop along to see them. I made the top right, middle and bottom left Janet made top left, right middle and centre bottom Sandra made top

Just thought if I put this on my blog it would definitely stick in my mind. I know when I post on my blog I am in the company of some of the nicest people in the world and they encourage me and share their ideas on crafting and I am sure I will feel their support with my weight issues as well. These are hopefully behind me and I will be going forever forward on that journey. The first picture was about 4 years ago when I was 16 stones and the second one was on my birthday 5 days ago and over 4 stones lighter thank goodness. Everyone used to think the rosy red cheeks looked healthy but it was just high blood pressure and pain from my aching knees Both of these have improved considerably since I lost the weight. I am only 5 feet tall short so I was almost as wide as I was high at one point. Now I have a 3 lbs rule which means that I get weighed every Monday morning and if my weight gets to 3lbs over what I have set as my limit then it's basic food for me until it goes back down. Thi

Hello everyone--hope that 2013 is being kind to you and that you are back into crafting after the Christmas and New Year break. At Fun with ATCS this time the challenge is Something New Everything on this ATC is new. I painted the background with H20 paints--my daughter bought me 30 of the little pots and also some pots of the Cosmic Shimmer Irdescent Mica Pigment so I added some of that as well. The beautiful stamp set was sent to me by Von with my birthday card--thank you Von. It is by Cart-Us. The  bird in a cage emblie and the little flowers where with other things in a beautiful Christmas box from Janet and the gold pen I bought for myself and used it to do some faux stitching and colouring in bits here and there. I did colour the edges of the flowers with an old Promarker lol. Love Chrissie xx

Happy 2013 to Everyone. I hope you have enjoyed the festive season and you are ready for a new crafty blog year together. Thank you to everyone who has left comments and the wonderful encouragement I have received. At Out of a Hat  we are starting the year with a party and hope you will join in. For this week the Hatters have made invites to the party and anyone joining in can make a reply to the invite. Sandra thought up this great idea.  for all of us. Here is my invitation to everyone outside inside The party will continue for the next challenge where there will be a game for you to join in also made by Sandra. Do pop to see what Sandra and Janet's invites look like then we hope you will send your reply. Love Chrissie xx