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Hello Everyone and welcome to my blog-hope you enjoy your visit. Happy Easter and I hope the sun is shining where you are as it is here at the moment. It definitely shone yesterday so we set off on a 'summer' bus that goes in and out of the caravan parks along the coast to the north of us. We decided to get off the bus at Primrose Valley and walk down the beautiful ravine there to the beach and along the beach to Filey. It was quite busy in Filey which was good to see, so we joined the holiday makers to enjoy a walk along the seafront. We had planned a much longer walk along the Brig which you can see in the distance behind this beach hut model This is just so cute and I would love it in my garden or one like it. Not sure Vic is skilled enough to make one but who knows. Further along the prom we met this very tall fisherman. I love these huge figures that seem to be popping up along the seafronts of North Yorkshire. As you can see at this time of the day the sky was blue with f

Hope everyone is well and happy. Another week has flown by and I hope you have been enjoying crafting as much as I have this week. Sometimes everything seems to go really well and the bin is almost empty and other weeks it fills up really quickly and ideas don't come into my head at all. It is the last week in March and the last week that we will have the pleasure of Tracey as guest designer. It has been lovely to see what she made for us and I would like to say a huge thank you to her for being our first ever guest designer. Back to normal now after the excitement of Out of a Hat Creations first birthday and this week the theme is faces. This went into the hat a while ago and was one of Sandra's suggestion. This is my husband Vic, Daughter Linda and son in law Graham as no one has ever seen them before. I have always liked the 'pop art' pictures of Andy Warhol and have seen a few of them in real life. I thought I would play around in Paint Shop Pro and come up with a

Hello Everyone--it is still very cold here today and there is snow about still so I have been enjoying a crafty day I thought I had left it too late to enter the Tando creative Challenge  but there are still a few days left so do join in as the subject is Flowers so lots of choices for that. I knew I had time to do the challenge at Try it on Tuesday  as that has only just started--hope you go there and see the wonderful things that the DesignTeam have made--so inspiring for sure. This is what I have made to combine the 2 challenges. So what is it I hear you ask??? I asked Vic for a pair of his old jeans--he has loads that he says are for gardening. Well he sure doesn't need that many pairs so I chose the worst pair to recycle. The flash went off so the jeans look a lot paler in this picture than they really are. I had a loose leaf folder that was getting shabby--sorry I forgot to take a photo of it I was too excited about covering it. I cut off part of one of the jean's legs an

Hello Everyone especially my new followers. Still very cold here with little flurries of snow but nothing to be worried about. This week at Every Inchie Monday the theme is map I saved a map of 'our house' location and used that. Not very exciting really but it does have a bit of the golf course on it so some nice greenery Hope your day is going well and thank you for popping in Love Chrissie xx

Hi Everyone and a warm welcome to my blog. Hello to Tracy and Wendy who are my latest followers-thank you for joining. Today is icy cold and very windy so I am staying in and doing some crafting and telly watching.Not good for my weight at all so I hope it gets warmer soon. At Craft-Room Challenges this time we are asked to make an 'In The Garden' project but not a card. I made a postcard to start with then wondered if that wouldn't be acceptable so I decided to use it for the front of a journal as it will be nice to do some 'garden pages' with photographs of our plants-if it is ever warm enough to go into the garden this year.:( I gave the book a rustic feel with 2 coats of matt emulsion in different colours and used some of the stamp set I used on the postcard. The stamp are all from sets by Joanna Sheen 'Back to Nature set' and 'Garden Flowers set'. I masked the middle image then embossed the leaves that I stamped at either side. Coloured everythi

Hi All--dull here again today but no snow where we are-well not yet so we are keeping our fingers crossed. Vic has just been to Aldi and brought me a present  :) Here it is-a sturdy box to hold lots of bits and bobs and even paper or card in the bottom. I placed my ruler to show you the size of the box. It was only £3.99 so a bargain I reckon. Off now to fill it--not a problem :) Have a good day and thank you for popping by Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone and a warm welcome to my new followers. Always lovely to have everyone pop in and comments are a big encouragement. I can't believe that Out of a Hat Creations is a year old already. Time has just flown by and we are still enjoying crafting together and my husband is still pulling the themes from a hat which seems to work very well as we all contribute to the themes. This week is an exception as it is the Hatters birthday we are having a game. The game was originally Janet's idea and I played around with it a bit and came up with what we have for this week. The game is based on a spinning top and where it lands is the theme you use for this weeks project- for details of the spinner go to the Hatters . Hope lots of people will have fun with us for this special event. This is what I made because the spinner landed on shopping bag for me I knitted, crochet and sewed with a lot of old plastic bags from the supermarket and some black ones that we had thought were no

Hello Everyone-hope you are well and happy. Today is supposed to be the start of Spring but we have a covering of snow and it is freezing cold with ice on our path in the back garden. I am off to the hairdressers this morning to get this dark colour out of my hair and get it cut shorter. Heaven knows why I try new colours and styles cause I always go back to the old ones-guess it's a woman thing??? Now to the title of the post.  Anyone who knows me will tell you that I keep out of the kitchen as much as possible as my hubby, Vic, loves to cook. I usually do all the veggie chopping and make fruity puddings--cold ones--but he does everything else. Imagine his surprise when I announced yesterday morning that I was going to make a cake! Well Valerie is to blame as she had posted a wonderful picture of a cake she had made from a recipe by Neesie . It looked delicious and the recipe sounded fool proof--it needed to be if I was going to try it. I needed flour--we didn't have all that

Good Morning, Evening or whatever time of day it is where you are. A dull and dreary day here again today but always nice to have lots of things to do in the craft room and then a bright jigsaw to have a go at this afternoon. Some ironing on offer as well if anyone has a few hours spare :)I'm far too busy for that! This time at the Craft Barn  the letter is P and we can chose any word we like for our page. I chose the word 'Painting'- so time to dig into some old photograph folders and hunt down some of my paintings that I painted over 20 years ago. The actual paintings have long since gone and the one on the right my daughter still has on a wall in her house-forgotten which wall but it is a minor room somewhere lol. I sketched that one when we were on a walk in the snow in the Lake District where we lived at the time. Both painting were in Gouache so very strong colours. I love going to art galleries so I pretended my own paintings were on show with people chatting about t

Hello Everyone from a wet and windy NE Yorkshire. All the caravan sites here in Bridlington are now open but not sure anyone will want to come and stay yet as it is still very dark and wintery. I hope the weather is better where you are and if it is please could you send some our way :) It's Monday again so time for another Inchie challenge at Every Inchie Monday . This week the challenge is footstep The thought of putting bare feet anywhere near the sea at the moment fills me with dread but I painted a sky, sea and sand background and added the fun footsteps-well one has a fun face the other isn't too sure. Now for the Moo(S) for the challenge at Moo Mania which is steampunk this time. I can hear some of you saying, 'Not the Steampunk boots again' , well it is the said boots and I still love this image which was a free digi image from Beyond the Fringe many moons ago. I used the Tim Holtz embossing folder on the card and the moos and distressed both to make the designs

Sunday and a second post for me today so hello again. Thought I would try to get back into making ATCS as I used to love making and them and have albums full of beautiful little works of art that I have swapped in years gone by. It is wonderful to recall all the people who I swapped with and see their different styles. This time at Fun with ATCS the theme is Gothic which is a subject I enjoy so I just had to have a go. The background is from the Gothic Arches collection at Nicecrane design s and the digi lady is from All that Scraps -I added the 'dead lover,s skull' and the pet giant bird and devil. lol Thanks for looking Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone-hope your day is going well. Nice to have you visit my blog today and hope you enjoy what you find here as much as I enjoyed making it. Today I sharing my project with Artful Times where the theme is Alcohol Inks and Tando Creative Challenges where the theme is flowers. I cast my mind back quite a long way and remembered a piece of hand made paper that Von had sent me and she had written on the back 'shaving foam and alcohol inks'. I think she even wrote a tutorial about how to do this but it may have been before she ventured into Blogland. Well there are lots of tuts on how to do it and these are some of the card pieces I made with one splodge. Mine shaving foam has a wonderful smell that lingers around for ages. I cut out a piece from one of the 'artworks' and used it on this 6x7 inch card. The flower is also made using alcohol inks. I cut out the Tim Holtz tattered flowers dies using parchment then I lightly spritz it and blobbed on some alcohol ink.

A very warm welcome to my blog-always great to read what you say about the things that I make. We have snow and ice here again this morning so I won't be venturing far. Another Thursday already-hope your week has gone well and you are ready to join us for another challenge at Out of a Hat This week the challenge is Easter Bonnet so you can do anything at all that has a fancy hat in it. I did look up Easter bonnet and it didn't say it had to be a bonnet and the ones I saw were mostly hats. This is the one I made I needed a model so I put a face on a polystyrene egg I had bought ages ago-I didn't imagine what it would be used for and I bought a packet of smaller ones as well so watch this space lol. I stuck a long stick into the 'egg' and put it into the nice bottle that I had bought at the carboot sale last year. Then added wool hair, pinned on the pink ribbon and made a hat to fit the head. It was all fun from there as I added all sorts of things that I had found in

Hi All-we are back to winter weather here in NE UK and it keeps snowing in flurries and is bitter cold so a good day to stay in and craft. Always lots of things to play with in the craft room and also have a new jigsaw to start today as well-that will be fun :) Here I am with a post for 2 places. I am trying to join in with both every time--the inchies are every week and the Twinchies once a month. At Every Inchie Monday this week it is the theme glasses. I had thought of ones filled with lager but changed my mind. This is my take on the theme and it sprung to mind after going to the cinema and trying to book for the Hobbit. The person selling the tickets kept telling Vic he needed to have the right glasses to be able to see it and he kept saying he could only use one eye properly so they would be useless. In the end we came away and waited until we found somewhere with the non 3D version. Brilliant film if you haven't seen it and like The Hobbit story. Next is Show us your Twinc

Hello Everyone and welcome to my blog-a special welcome to my latest followers. The numbers seem to keep creeping up and I do hope everyone who visits finds something that interests them. I haven't made tags for a while but Janet sent me some wonderful large tag die cuts so I couldn't wait to try one. I saw on Trace's blog a link to Dragon's Dream Tag it On  where she has chosen the theme for this week so thought I would join in. For the background I used the Tim Holtz cogs folder and spritz the background with a pale green. Then I used Stazon Evergreen to highlight the raised cogs. Next I added some die cut  dragonflies that a friend gave me a long time ago The cogs were from Crafty Emblies and I sprayed them with Shimmer Mist. I think that is green, diecuts and cogs covered. All that was needed then was the stamped quote-one I got free with a magazine, distressed edges and some ribbon. I will have to get back into tag making because I enjoyed making this. Have a grea

Hello everyone and I hope you have had a great crafty week--Thursday seems to come around so quickly. A big welcome to my new followers and I hope that you like what you find on my blog. At Out of a Hat this week the challenge is Friends and Friendship. I am sure we all need those and I am always so happy to hear from my online friends and also to hear what you all have to say about my creations. Thank you to everyone who visits my blog. This week at Out of a Hat Creations we have Tracey joining us and she is staying for the month of March as a guest designer. You can learn more about Tracey and about this new venture if you visit ' the Hatters'  blog I bought a box of Kleenex tissues then made a cover for them--hopefully who ever gets this will be able to replace the tissues with a new box when they run. First I made the box cover from a strong packaging box then I painted it green. I coloured the free digi image and added a patterned background to match-this was printed out

Hello everyone-if you are basking in sunshine please could you send some to East Yorkshire because we seem to be shrouded in fog or very cold misty rain these last few days. Always brightens my day to read all the wonderful comments-thank you Here I am again combining two challenges both of them favourite places of mine At Crafty Emblies the theme is Wings-they now have two different challenge blogs so do read what the post says there. Then at Craft-room Challenge there is From Me To You which was my inspiration for this piece. We are taking my MIL our for a slap up meal on Friday as she is visiting someone on Mother's Day. I hadn't a clue what to buy her as a present but she does like cooking and old recipes so this book should be fine. Always difficult to know what to use to wrap her presents because she does like a clue as to what is inside. I  stamped butterflies onto brown paper and lightly coloured them with water colour pencils then I made a big tag with a Mrs Beeton q

Third post from me today-I think I will call Monday 'posting day' as I seem to make things for the challenges over the weekend. This time at the The Craft Barn  the letter is M and there are lots of great M words to inspire you for your pages but they must begin with 'ma' or 'me'. I got an old dictionary at last from a charity shop and it is much clearer than mine that I use for the proper purpose so the scanning looks sharper. I chose the word Magic-I think this was influenced by the fact that we are doing 4 jigsaws with that theme. The back was sprayed with various colours the I used a bit of mesh to add some extra colour. I printed the images onto the paper when it was dry and coloured them with some felt tip pens. I also drew the flashes and the M. The black square was a big mistake as it was supposed to be a shape edged with black but I dropped the black ink pad. I added a bit of colour and a few silver stars and the word magic so I hope it looks ok now. Gr

For the challenge this time at Artful Times  the choice is, Spots and Stripes / Circles and Straight Lines Von and Neet always make great samples for inspiration. This ATC just seemed to evolve as, when I started it, I wasn't sure which of the choices to make. I painted the background with acrylic paints then I rubbed over the stripes with a baby wipe to make them blend together. That ruled out 'stripes' so I left it to dry. In the meantime I cleared out a drawer and there were even more peel-offs waiting to be used up. My quest to use up all my peel offs isn't going very well.:( The circles were from one sheet-the lines from another and the words from yet another sheet. I actually enjoyed using them--who would have thought that peel-offs could be fun lol. Hope you pop over to Artful and join in the challenge. Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone-hope you are all well and have had a nice weekend. Welcome to my new followers and any other friends that pop by. I hope you enjoy what you see on my blog and maybe even gain a little inspiration sometimes. This week the Challenge at Every Inchie Monday is 'wave'. The background is one of our photographs and I cut the man out of a magazine-this shows two meaning of the word and there are more so a great word for this week. Have a great day Love Chrissie xx