Is that even the Scouts moto any more? I couldn’t tell you if it is or not, but what i can tell you is that this card went down a treat with my brother Roger. Roge has been a scout or scout leader ever since i remember (probably all my life in honesty) and this year he was on a scout camp for his birthday. Not just ANY scout camp, but a special scout camp where survival expert Bear Grylls came to visit! how cool is that!

It was obvious what i had to do. Crack out the kraft cardstock and fashion a Scouts shirt in a birthday card.

To make the collar I cut a slit into the top of the card (front flap only) then used a ruler and a bone folder to create a crease from the top left corner, diagonally down to meet the bottom of the slit. Then I repeated this on the other side to make it symmetrical. When you fold the two triangles down, this creates the impression of a shirt collar.

For the scarf I took a strip of brown fabric and a length of yellow ribbon and ran stitching down the length with my machine, twisting as i went. It looked a little messy, but i didn’t really care because i was so pleased with myself for having a good idea! LOL

I had to chop the fabric in half and stick under the collar on each side, using glue dots, foam dots, wet glue, anything that would hold really!

To make the woggle (haha, love saying that word), i tried so many different things before i got it sorted. First i tried to make a loop with yellow ribbon but i couldn’t get it to stick properly. Next i folded the ribbon over and tried to stitch a line down it to create the loop, but oh my goodness, that was fiddly and looks terrible. Then, i thought about creating a loop of paper, but that didn’t look good either as i couldn’t get it to sit right without seeing the join. Determined not to lose out, i kept going and then it came to me in a flash of inspiration! In my sewing kit were old spools of cheap thread that came on tiny, little cardboard tubes; and it just so happened that the yellow thread that i used to sew the scarf had finished and the roll was sitting on the top of the sewing machine. woohoo! I used my craft knife to carefully slice off a small section without damaging it. Then I used my paper piercer and tweezers to push the scarf through the tube! One little woggle on one scarf on one scouts shirt! Perfect for my brothers birthday card!

Happy Birthday Roge. Love ya bro.

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I’m baccccck! Sorry for the hiatus, and i’m afraid i have no other excuse than plain old naughtiness. heehee!

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you KNOW that you should be doing something, but just have no will in the world to do it. I’ve been feeling a bit like that recently. I had a scrapbook layout to make for issue 65 of the Scrapbook Magazine, which i made quite happily without bother, but i get the feeling that i must have packed my paper crafting mojo into a box with the layout and shipped it off to the Publishers.

Its not that i’ve been uncreative. Just blatantly creative in ways that i shouldn’t be. I should have been making a birthday card for Craig’s mum, and i should have been making cards for the mass onslaught of birthdays that are coming over the next few weeks –  i think there are about 5 in total!

Instead I want to paint. PAINT? yip, paint.

I have been increasingly frustrated with our white walls in  our house and feel the need for something more. Something more colourful, something more inspiring, something more inviting…just something MORE!

I have plans. Lots of plans. Some have gone through the necessary approval levels, some have yet to be pitched to hubby but i am hopeful that these changes will make me feel more at home when I’m at home. All i can say is God Bless Pinterest! There is so much inspiration on that site! love it!

I have a ton of projects lined up to show you as i finally got my camera back in my hand to take photos of the stuff i’ve made, starting with another MAN-day Monday post tomorrow.
See you then
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This layout was inspired by one of Jen Gallacher‘s recent layouts which featured a layout based on four blocks, and i thought it was pretty cool. Check out her layout here at two peas (video).

For once I started with the papers and designed the page with no idea of which photo to add. It felt a little weird because I don’t normally work that way, but it’s good to push yourself outside of your comfort zones sometimes.

In parts it was a little freeing, but when it came to adding a photo I found the frustration kicking in as I had to trim my photo much more than I wanted to in order to make it fit, but im sure you probably couldn’t tell that from looking.

Did you spy the journaling card which I chopped up and added? This is one of the free downloadable journaling cards which I made for this Thanksgiving Project. I cut out the bracket shape and used this as a stand alone embellishment in the bottom right quadrant then used the rest of the card for writing my journaling on the top right section. You can still download these journaling cards if you are wanting to get your hands on them. Here’s how

All you need to do is to click on the sign up tab at the top and become a free member. This will give you access to all the free digital downloadable elements. Be sure to also sign up to our newsletter so that we can let you know when new stuff is available. Also, all newsletter subscribers are automatically entered into any competitions we run on Hungry Heffy Crafts. Great, huh?

The middle section was a bit of an experiment. It started life as a piece of stripy paper – i used a craft knife to cut in between the stripes, but left a couple of inches uncut which is the section on the left under the button. Leaving this section untouched made it easier to stick to the layout and also easier to create the waves in the thin pieces of paper. The little arrows are left overs which i cut at a 45 degree angle in order to make the pointy-bracket shape.

I also got to use up some old supplies – these chipboard starburst shapes have been in the stash for well over three years i think! I have absolutely no idea where they came from, who made them or how they managed to find their way into my chipboard drawer. heehee.

Thanks for stopping by.

Here’s another little notecard made from a few bits of scraps. Some times it’s amazing to see what you can create from the little pieces of papers that could have easily landed in the bin.

My usual recipe is ‘scrap + ribbon + button = cute’.

I think it works!

X

So confession time. This card was actually for a girl, but i thought that is would work well for a boy too.

This is a ‘congratulations, you passed your driving test’ card built primarily with stamps. I picked out a few stamp sets from my stash which had cars and a driving theme, and tried to build a picture in my head. Its important to do some proper planning whenever making a one layer card because you have to start at the top and work backwards using masks – i used post it notes to mask over the stamped area.

I chose a word stamp from this Gas Hogs stamp set from Sassafras and repeated it over the bottom section of the card to make a patterned paper effect.

When I was finished stamping, i felt that it was missing something (perhaps i just missed a little bit of colour) so i punched some hearts out of scraps of scrapbook paper and adhered these with a glue pen.

Thanks for stopping by, I have a few layouts to share soon so come back to me soooooooon.x

When Mum and Dad were visiting a little while back, we went shopping in London and I wanted to replenish my summer wardrobe a little. I’ve been feeling in the mood for more day dresses recently you see. I tried on LOADS, but only came home with a few. The problem was that many of the dresses in shops these days are SUPER short. I’m not really in the habit of flashing my knickers at every Tom, Dick and Harry in the street so this meant that my choice was limited. I usually end up buying a dress that could be worn over leggings or thick tights (but in the summer I rarely want to be wearing thick tights, do i?). I picked up two stripy dresses, one red and the other navy. Nothing overly special, but i thought they were cute, albeit a bit plain. So i decided to experiment with the navy dress, and add a little sunshine to it, whilst at the same time adding length to keep my modesty in check! Below is a photo tutorial (which means its a long post..sorry guys). I hope you can follow along. Disclaimer: I am NOT by any means a professional seamstress, but i like to play with my sewing machine every now and again. It’s a bit messy in bits, but I don’t really mind that. I hope you enjoy taking a peep at the tutorial.

Take a strip of yellow fabric fold in half lengthways and sew along the edge. I used a stretch stitch which kinda acts a bit like an overlocker.

If you need more length, do this twice and sew both together to create one lone strip of material. Once again I have used a stretch stitch to prevent unravelling of this seam.

Next set your machine to a long straight stitch and adjust the tension. As you sew the fabric will start to ruffle itself.

Let the machine ruffle the material of its own accord.

When you have done the entire length, it will look like this.

Find the bit where you joined the two pieces of yellow fabric together and pin it to the bottom of the dress, matching up the side seam of the dress with the seam in the yellow fabric.

With navy thread and using a straight stitch, sew the fabric to bottom edge of the dress, making sure to keep the visible length of yellow fabric consistent the whole way around. I kept a ruler at hand whilst doing this bit.

When you have gone the whole way round you will have two edges. Sew together with the zigzag stretch stitch once more, just like in photo 2.

Next I made the belt. I had some fabric left over and i also thought that it would tie the whole dress together. Here’s a photo walk through.

Take a Looooong strip of fabric and iron in half lengthways (right sides facing each other) and sew along the long edge with a straight stitch. Turn the right way out and iron flat with the seam in the middle. Next sew along the outer edges to neaten.

Fold a piece of fabric in half and draw around a leaf template with a pencil (i sketched the leaf shape freehand onto a piece of scratch paper). Sew along the pencil line, leaving one end open. Do this twice so you have two pieces. Cut notches and then turn right way out.

Take a rectangular piece of spare scratch fabric and sew the leaves to this piece. Pinch the fabric first so the leaf will ruffle a little.

To prevent the corners of the rectangle peeping out, tuck them back to create a point and add a few stitches to hold in place.

To make the know, take another piece of fabric about 5″ long and 2″ wide, fold in half lengthways and sew along the long edge. Turn inside out and sew along the edge to neaten. Next tie a loose knot into the fabric.

Match the two tails of fabric together and sew with a straight stitch.

Push one leaf through the knot and wriggle into place. The knot should sit snuggly in the middle.

Next find the middle of your belt length and sew a button hole. The button hole should be as wide as the knot tails (see photo below)

Tuck the knot tails into the button hole.

First I used a zigzag stitch along the edges of the knot tails to prevent unravelling then using a straight stitch, sew back and forth to attach to the belt. If you are careful you can sew over the top of the seam which is already there which gives a really neat result.

To finish I added another button and a button hole at either end of the belt so I could fasten it around my waist. I made the button fasten inwards (so the button is against my back) but as an embellishment I added a big fancy yellow button.

This week’s MANday Monday carries on with my love of notecards. I just love their ittybitty style! And for this weeks masculine card I have also decided to work with chevrons.

Chevron patterns are very hot at the moment, very a la mode in the crafting world. Theres something about their zigityzagity nature that makes them seem masculine to me.

I didn’t have any chevron papers but I chose a page from the We R Memory Keepers Hippiyty Hoppity stack which had solid stripes in a variety of gorgeous colours, and by cutting strips of this paper you can make your own chevron effect.

`The trick is to cut at a 45 degree angle to the stripes, I used my cutting mat as a guide, first cutting across the diagonal of the grid marks, then turning my paper so that the edge lined up with the vertical grid lines. Then i cut at 1cm intervals.

I used a 12 x 12 piece of scrapbook paper, first cutting into the bottom left corner, then i repeated this on the bottom right – this makes sure you have both the ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ in order to make the chevron shape.

I love the way the bright chevrons stand out against the kraft background. All it needed was a little greeting – so I turned to these Hero Arts Sparkle stamps.

Thanks for stopping by.

I’m a list maker.

And i love it.

At work, I have a ‘things to do’ book, and really cannot function without it. Its like a life line, an aide-memoire, an archive, a thought extractor, a telephone directory, a doodle pad and really, all in all, that book is priceless to me.

At home I must confess that I am not as organised. I’ve got loads of notebooks here, there and everywhere. I like having them so i can jot things down, but then sometimes i find that i write something down and then don’t look at that book for weeks.

I decided that i needed a way to make a note of project ideas which was more visible to the eye. Whats the point in writing down ideas then tucking away the notebook and not looking at it for ages?

So I started creating, and this is what I came up with. I knew i wanted to use little clothes pegs. I had some teeny tiny ones, but thought they were too small, and i knew that normal clothes pegs would be a bit too big for what i wanted. So for a while this project sat on the sidelines, until one day I found a pack of pegs that were the perfect size. Not too big, not too little. just perfick! wooohooo, love it when that happens!

They say the best things come in small packages

Given that my crafty time has diminished since the arrival of Miss Pi, I have fallen in love again, with tiny notecards.

Notecards are a great way to use up scraps of paper and all those extra embellishments or cut offs that you never for round to using.

There was a piece of kraft cardstock on my desk that has given life to a few tiny notecards, heres the first one.

These Hero Arts stamps are perfect because the greeting is small, clear and so versatile (and cost effective too)

The cupcake is from the Bake me a cake line of papers from 3 bugs in a rug and the floral papers are from Echo Parks Victoria Garden range. They work beautifully together.

And….

the winner of the scrapbook paper giveaway is EllenM

I have also picked a bonus winner who will receive some random goodies from the craft stash -
Renee Schimel.

congrats you guys, send me your addresses – lez(at)hungryheffycrafts.com

Happy weekend everyone! Woooohoooo. I love the weekend because it means lots of time with my two favourite people. One with stripy legs and one with denim legs.

This weekend’s project is half crafty & half practical and means that I get to play with my sewing machine…but more about that soon.

I wanted to share a layout which was recently in The Scrapbook Magazine (issue 57). The theme was Art Deco, so i made these little flowers by layering circles on top of each other. I love the way they turned out.

Its hard to believe that this photo was taken almost one year ago exactly. I remember those days vividly. As much as I loved having a newborn in my hands, I am really having lots more fun with a 1 year old. Being able to play together, communicate with one another and share moments which are special for both parties is the best feeling ever!

Todays fun and games – Piper’s first proper bike! Granny Oman send a surprise package in the post (thanks for the happy mail Gran-O) and I spent yesterday evening building the bike so it would be ready for today. When Pi came downstairs this morning she must have sat on my knee for a good few minutes before she started staring over at the bike. Then she turned and made the bunny rabbit sign.

Even though we didn’t have a sunny day we went for a test drive. It was so precious seeing her little smiling face as we were out and about. I think this bike is going to be used a lot!

I love this smile so very, very much!

Have a great weekend!
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