Christmas baubles

Hello, hope your weekend is going well :)
It's Sunday, which means I am here with a post about something other than a card-today is Christmas decorations! Baubles to be precise.  I know it's still early yet but with these taking a while to make, I figured I would get started early to ensure I have enough for the fayres and markets I will be doing in the coming weeks and allow time for working on any specific products to fulfil orders placed.

Easy to make, just require some patience!
materials required:
Polystyrene ball
marker pen
tape measure
sharp craft knife
fabric (small amount needed so really any scraps can be used)
glue stick
pokey tool

Draw your design on the polystyrene ball, then use your knife to cut along the lines.  Cut fabric to bigger than size of section, apply small amount of glue to section on polystyrene. Place fabric down and then use pokey tool to push edges of fabric into edges of section marked out by knife lines.
That is essentially it!
Can be made to order in any colour, or combination of colours.  The metallic copper and turquoise colours you can see are paint, so I can paint designs and text onto the fabric as well.  It will be my first Christmas in my own place this year so I am going to make one of these to commemorate that and give it pride of place on my tree!
These are 6cm in diameter but I can also do slightly smaller ones at 5cm diameter if requested.  Can be finished with either ribbon or thin cord (in gold or silver) or left with just the loop you see in the blue and red bauble here.  If you would like some baubles making or have any questions, please just send me an email at craftyshutterbug@gmail.com
Thanks for reading, happy crafting and I'll be back on Wednesday :)

A tag today

Hey there,
Hope you are all well. Just a short post today-I have been busy working on something new (I will blog it as soon as it is completed) and I am very excited about it!  Today I am sharing a tag I made-I think these are a great idea, especially with Christmas on its way.  If you don't have the time to make your own cards (you can always get me to make them for you!!), you could have a go at making a tag to attach to a card or gift-a handmade touch means so much more.

I will be attaching this to the lantern I blogged a few weeks ago, and if you are in North Wales you can see it tomorrow on Rhyl High Street on my stall on the market there.

So, very simply, the tag itself you can just cut from scrap card, or buy ready cut quite cheaply (I think mine was bought from asda or wilkinsons, somewhere like that!).
I used distress inks in Milled Lavender, Dusty Concord, Seedless Preserves, Fired Brick. I stamped with these as well as distressing with them.
Stamps used were Grunge Flourish, ink splats and small rose by Visible Image and Stampendous large butterfly.
I used some teeny gems from MeiFlower and dusted areas of the tag with Forever Violet Perfect Pearls before getting completely carried away with my liquid pearls! The sentiment is written in majestic Purple Liquid Pearls, and there are a few 'pearls' on the tag in this also.
(Details are easier to see on the tag than in the photo!)

That's it, thanks for stopping by. I will blog again on Sunday and I hope to see you at the market tomorrow, or hear from you-you can leave me a comment here or send me an email anytime :)
Enjoy the rest of your day.

8x10" photographs

Hello,

I trust everyone is having a great weekend? I can’t believe how nice the weather is again just now (apologies if it starts raining-I didn’t mean to jinx it!)-I am hoping to get out and about with my camera shortly but wanted to share with you what I have been holed up all weekend working on! 

I now have my photographs available in another size, perfect for those with smaller wall space and also ideal to give as a gift!   

There are 60 in total and they include most of the images you have seen to date on here along with many more.  The photographs are 8x10 inches in size and each comes mounted, backed and wrapped for display and protection.  The mounts measure 11x14 inches and vary in colour, some are black, some are grey, some are cream and most are white, some have a slight texture while some are smooth.  These images do not do them justice at all, so if you can make it to one of the markets I have a stall at please do and you will be able to see for yourself :)

My favourite of the day is this one: 

Titled: In Search of Fairies, it is a black and white image-very striking in a black mount (also available mounted in other colours).  What you see is the Conwy river as it winds through Snowdonia National Park close to Betws y Coed (just a little downstream from Fairy Glen) I have colour photographs of the area close to that seen here but this is my favourite-I am partial to black and white photography though!   

These are for sale at £14 each or 3 for £40 but if you follow my blog then you can get 3 for the bargain price of £35.

Right, I am off out for a little while now, then back to the grindstone to get messy with some ink and paint as I get going with Christmas cards and my first attempt at a mixed media canvas!

Have a great rest of your Sunday and I’ll be back on Wednesday.

First of the year

Greetings to you all,
Well, I guess summer is officially over now-I saw Christmas stock in Tesco yesterday! So, here is the first of my Christmas cards for this year:

I decided to opt for something different as a base, rather than the more traditional red or green for this one (they will come soon!!).  Using purple card stock folded to be just a tad smaller than 5x5 inches (I have some lovely 5x5 inch silver envelopes that I have been dying to use for a while now and these cards are absolutely perfect for them), I used Black Soot Distress ink to shade the corners and slightly distress the edges of the card.  I then took the 'Merry Christmas Tree' stamp by IndigoBlu and stamped it using Versamark clear pigment before making it pop with Metallic silver Wow embossing powder and the ever so handy heat tool.
Staying with the black soot ink, I put the Stars1 by Lavinia Stamps 2 or 3 times into each corner before then using a small Merry Christmas sentiment from my stash (could have been a magazine freebie, I do not recall) stamped close to the top left corner, where Majestic Purple liquid pearls finish the look by adding some subtle shine.
Inside the card is a simple white insert with 'Merry Christmas' embossed in silver along the centre and plenty of space to write your own message.
These are for sale from today at £1.20 each or £5 for 5-I recommend getting orders in early and then that's one less thing to think about as the festive season draws near.  Email me at: CraftyShutterbug@gmail.com for further details or to get your cards.

Challenges entered:
Simonsaysstamp- Embossing
Sparkle N Sprinkle- Anything Goes with glitter, embossing powder and/or flocking
Creative Creations- Early Christmas Makes
Card Mania- Favourite colour combination
My Craft Creations- Stamped image challenge

The beauty of nature

Hello world, I hope you are all having a great weekend.  The horrendous rain here on Friday highlighted a couple of leaks in my roof, but other than that it was a pretty great day-I headed on out to Llandudno and picked up some craft items I needed at bargain prices, as well as storage for some of the art and craft stuff that has currently hijacked my living room!  I returned somewhat bedraggled and resembling a drowned rat, but was all excited at the parcel waiting for me-printed cards of some of my photographs (from a well known very reasonable online printers). 

This one I called 'Murmuring Vale'. It is the Conwy river as it gently meandres out from the Fairy Glen area of Snowdonia National Park.  The light was just perfect on the lovely day in April when I caught this idyllic scene there-I don't know about you, but I think the water looks inviting!  A paddle in a cool river would be wonderful right now as I just got in from a brisk walk along the seafront.

The seafront here has many facets, beautiful and dramatic, and they vary with the light and the weather and the mood of the ocean.  Today the water was definitely more grey than blue and, from the waves pounding the wall, it seemed rather choppy but that did not stop one adventurous crew from getting out there!

Sunsets on the seafront are especially spectacular and one of my shots that I consider amongst my all time favourites is a sunset in September just a little way along the front from me here.  I call it 'Heavenly Glow' as the distinct rays of the sun streaming through the cloud look as if someone above has turned a spotlight onto this stretch of coast!  I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I do.

Well, I guess I just did my bit for Rhyl tourism! haha.  Take care everyone, and I am off now to get started on my next card design, see you Wednesday :)

Friendly Owl Card

I hope everyone is enjoying the weather! (apologies if you don't have a lovely sunny day where ever you are)
Today's post is a card-and I am still getting used to the protocol for blogging cards so bear with me! 

Beginning with a cream coloured A5 card blank, I stamped the Visible Image Grunge Flourish randomly all over the front using distress inks in: Rusty Hinge, Vintage Photo and Gathered Twigs before then distressing the edges with Vintage photo.  The grunge flourish is one of my favourite stamps-incredibly versatile and never boring!  I ripped two pieces of Tim Holtz Kraft Core card in brown, one smaller for the stamp and one larger for the background, and distressed them both with some fine sandpaper.  The larger one was stamped in gold with part of the grunge flourish in the bottom right corner before having its edges run across the gathered twigs ink pad and then being attached to the card.  The sentiment reads 'For a Wonderful Friend' and is from Stamps by Chloe, I stamped it in Brilliance Galaxy Gold by Tsukinek and in Memento Tuxedo Black.
The die cuts-an owl (not sure of die, bought as a cut from Donna's Kraft Kabin in Rhyl) and the larger flower (bought as cut from Pier Crafts in Llandudno-I think it's from Spellbinder's Bitty Blossoms) were coloured by dabbing with the gold ink pad and then dusting the different brown shades of the previously mentioned distress inks across.  The owl was then stuck on a piece of coredinations card from the Tim Holtz/Ranger distress collection, the two smaller flowers are just this pale brown coredinations card ripped and rolled.
All visible corners within the design were dabbed with Hot Cocoa liquid pearls, the brown ribbon, owl charm and golden yellow pearl gems are all just from my stash (I have lots of charms in my stash!!).

I hope you enjoy the card as much as I enjoyed making it.  Thanks for stopping by, happy crafting!

Challenges entered:
Card Mania Challenge-Ribbon
Craft Dee Bows- Anything Goes with a handmade bow
The Crafty Bloggers Network- Things with Wings
Lady Anne's Challenge- Must have Wings
Love to Scrap- Anything Goes
Make It Monday- Anything Goes
Parade Your Crafts- Anything Goes
Scrapbook Stamp Society- Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp- Stamping All Stars
Squigglefly- Add a flower
Bearly-mine- Anything Goes 
Cards und more- Anything Goes
Just Inspirational- Animals
Loves Rubber Stamping- Anything Goes
Papertake weekly- Anything Goes
Happy Campers- Use a Stamp
Creative Card Crew- Things with wings

Some photographs, some exercise and a little bit of history.

Hey there,
I hope the weekend is treating everyone well.  Friday I went to Llangollen with my dad and brother-it's a lovely little village/town (they call it a town but it's so much smaller than where I am from that, to me, it's a village!)-very picturesque and a photographer's dream.  I have many photos from there but I have not yet gone through and selected the images to print, but a print run will be done soon.  There is a varied selection of things to do in the town and its surroundings-it is the closest place to the Abbey I camped by in my first post!  There are a number of walks around this part of the country and I was told that from the town to the top of the nearby hill is only a mile so I figured I would give it a go!
From around halfway up, you can make out the ruins on the top of the hill:

My brother and I climbed the steep and winding path up to Dinas Brân castle-a walk in total of less than 5k (we went around, coming back a different route than we went up) but so steep in places that I was not sure I would manage it!  My painful back and joints were complaining-as were my completely unfit lungs, but with the encouragement of my brother, I did make it to the top-and it was well worth it!  The views are magnificent.  Dinas Brân is Welsh for City of Crows (or Crow City), I imagine it was so named due to its location perched above all else for miles around.



Once we made it to the top, the camera came out! You really can see for miles around.

I think it would be an ideal spot for a picnic-like dining on the world's mezzanine!  I shall take one with me next time (and some water and some spare batteries for my camera).

As castles go, there is not much that remains of this one but there is enough to get a sense of how spectacular it would have been-plus this is one you can visit again and again without it costing you a penny.  The castle that stood here was built in the 13th century and used as a dwelling after it ceased to be used as a strong hold.  It was burnt down by the Welsh to prevent the English from taking it, yet the parts which escaped the fire stand against the elements all these centuries later.

I think an earlier start next time to get the light to take the above shot in black and white-I think that would look awesome.
None of these images have a name at present, so any suggestions will be welcomed :) 

I am off now to get back to work but I will be walking more as I aim to make the climb less difficult for me when I go back to the ruins of Dinas Brân castle next month, so expect more images of the area in which I live-particularly the coast! I would love to hear your comments about this location, or for you to share the story of your climb to the top-it was the hardest thing I have done in a long time but the sense of achievement was immense.

Have a great day and I will be back on Wednesday.