Christening card...

Hi, guys!  I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but where on earth are these days going to?!  It's really quite scary to think that we are now in the second week of September...September....who stole summer?!  I'm feeling a bit flat at the moment and don't have the inspiration, or inclination to craft at the  minute, just doing what I need to do really...it may have something to do with the fact that I have had the most annoying cough ever for the past week which decides to be at it's most aggrevated between the hours of 9pm and 6am!  I do not work well on lack of sleep...heck, I don't do anything well on lack of sleep!!  There was a glimmer of hope whilst watching Sheena on C&C, whilst having my dinner - I SO wanted to have a 'play' and get inky and messy!  Unfortunately, I had a card order to fulfill, so will have to keep the messiness for another time, but I thought that I would share my creation with you anyway...

...I was asked to do a special Christening card for a friend who is going to be a Godmother, so decided to use the vintage pram digistamp from my A Year in Cards disc - I do love the way this image turned out and it can be used for any baby occasion.  The image was coloured with Promarkers and cut using the Classic Oval nesties, then mounted onto a silver faux nestie by drawing around the outside of the die.  I used 2 Marianne circular doily dies behind the oval, cutting a couple of scallops off, then attaching them together to make more of an oval and hiding the join with the ribbon.  The flowers are a mixture of paper and satin ones and I also used a couple of wired bead sprays instead of leaves.  The background was embossed using a Crafts Too embossing folder which has small flowers all over and I finished with a touch of Glamourdust, a nice big satin bow and a few self adhesive pearls.  I printed off the blue baby paper from the September folder and created a box to keep the card safe and that's it...
...I hope that my creativity starts to flow again, as I hate it when crafting is a chore...it's that bad that we even managed to have Sunday roast at the table because it was empty!  Come back craftiness, all is forgiven!!

I'm entering this card into the following challenges :

The ABC Challenge

'W' for Wishes

My Mum's Craft Shop

#73 Anything Goes

Allsorts Chalenge Blog

Layers

Dream Valley Challenge

Something Old, Something New

(Old is the ribbon and flowers which ahve been hanging around my stash for at least a couple of years! And new is my pram digistamp)

Box frame template and instructions

Good evening, everyone!  Well, as promised, I'm back with the template and instructions for the box frame as requested by so many of you at Leigh Show...

...I decided that it would be easier to do a template to share (I use my score board) and I've put the instructions on the tutorials page, which you'll find by clicking on the tab at the top of my blog.  I hope that they are easy enough for you all to understand - I tried to take as many photos as I could to explain it, but it's always so difficult putting instructions into words.  You can download the template for free from 4shared, here, and I would appreciate if you could direct people to my blog to download it. 

Hope you enjoy using it and I'd love to see what you do with it, either leave me a comment with a link to your blog or email (I won't publish comments containing email addresses)  Happy crafting!  Lisa x

Jammin'...

Firstly, can I just say a big 'Hi!' and thank you to all of you that came over and said hello to us at Leigh show, over the weekend!  It was lovely to get such positive feedback for my designs and I hope that you're all enjoying playing! 

After my eureka moment of making the tool caddy gift box with the strawberry papers, as I said I would, here's the finished result...

 ...you will have to imagine that there are 2 jars of jam in there, as I could only find one in the cupboard!  I printed off the plain tool caddy box, then printed the strawberry and gingham paper from the Teatime set (March) as I wanted to decorate both the inside and outside of the box.  I turned the patterned papers over and printed the tool box matt template on the reverse, then cut out and attached the different papers to the panels.  Instead of using the tag as a tag, I attached it to the handle (just because I liked it there!) then printed 2 strawberries from the march jpeg and png folder, using Windows Photo Viewer contact sheet size and checking the mirror image option before printing the second so that they would go back to back on the plastic teaspoon.  This would also be lovely done in other papers with sample size body lotions, etc or tool shaped chocolates?!  Great Christmas gift ideas and can be personalised too!

Before I sign off, I would just like to announce the winner of my latest disc 'A Year in Cards' from the Art Stamp Wales show in Wrexham last month...and the winner is...No.15 Carol Jones...Congratulations Carol and I hope you enjoy using my latest designs!  Well that's it from me for now, I'll be back soon with a template and tutorial for the box frame card that everyone loved at the show...until next time, thanks for dropping by!  Lisa x

Hi, guys!  I'll now be setting up at Leigh Show, ready for the doors to open and hopefully, a busy day of meeting people and sharing my designs.  For the duration of the show (Saturday and Sunday) my latest disc, A Year in Cards, will be available to buy here for £17.00 with free UK mainland P&P, then afterwards both here and in my digi shop for the usual retail price of £17.99.  If you live outside mainland UK, please contact me for postage costs at contact@ellasdesign.co.uk

It's the final countdown!!

...Only one day to go to my first solo stand at Papercraft@Leigh Show - getting a bit jittery now!  More for the fact that I remember everything...I am a checker and re-checker and still end up forgetting something stupid!  My hubby's motto is as long as you've got your phone and purse, everything else you can buy, whereas I'll still be going through my mental list whilst travelling up the M6!! (Not that it would do me much use then, but hey ho!)  The pile of stuff in the hallway is getting bigger by the minute and I'm just hoping the boot's big enough!  My poor old Epson printer is working like a trojan again printing off posters and sample pages (it must be about 8 years old now, I don't know what I would do if it finally gives up the ghost!) and my head is full of mental post-it notes to do before I go!  So, amongst all this organised chaos, I thought I would come on and share some more of the samples that I'll be taking along to the show - although photographs never do the finished result justice...mind you, it probably has something to do with my naff photography skills, too!

  Have a great weekend, whatever you are doing and here's hoping the weather is kind (doubtful!?!).  My new disc, A Year in Cards, will also be available to buy here on my blog from tomorrow at Show price with free P&P, so if you can't make it to the show, you won't miss out!  Thanks for dropping by, Lisa X

More samples...

Hi, guys!  Oh my word, where is this year going to?!  I can't believe that it is September next week and that Leigh Show is this weekend!  The dates seem to just creep up on you and what seemed to be an age when the summer holidays started, quickly turned into headless chicken preparation with less than a week to go!  I think I've just about managed it though and there is a large pile of boxes cluttering the hallway ready to be transported north!

I hope that we have a good weekend (though it is a Bank holiday weekend, so the weather will probably be atrocious!), but it will be nice to see everyone and share my new designs.  If you're coming along, I'd love if you pop over and say hi, it's always nice to put faces to some of you lovely bloggers.  If you can't make it, my new disc will be available to purchase here on Saturday and Sunday for the same price that I'll be selling at the show, with free P&P and then both here and from my digi shop after that, at normal retail price, plus the usual retail outlets.

So, to whet your appetites, I thought I would share a few more samples...

...hope to see some of you on the weekend, take care and Happy Crafting!  Lisa x

A Year in Cards...

Hi, guys!  Well, I thought I would share a couple more samples with you today from my new disc - the sun is shining beautifully, so it was a good opportunity for me to get out in the garden to take the piccies!  The first is a side step card using one of the digistamps, coloured with Promarkers and the second is a gift box/basket made with some of the papers...

...The disc is now in production - thanks to my lovely hubby, and fingers crossed, things look to be on track for them going on sale at Leigh Show on the Bank Holiday weekend, 25th and 26th August (hope I'm not tempting fate!?!)  It's quite a lengthy process from start to finish, from sitting with pencil and paper to converting the images and colouring them digitally, to making the predesigned cards, backing papers, decoupage, inserts, digistamps, sentiments and 3D projects, to designing and creating the interface, cd and case images and then producing and packaging the discs!  All in all, it takes me around 6 months from design work to completion and I do all but the burning of the discs (which is where my better half comes in!) 

So what's on the new disc?  Well, it's called A Year in Cards and as the name suggests, there is a card for each month of the year, starting in January with New Year through Mother's Day in March, Father's Day in June, girl and boy birthday cards in August and November, New Baby in September, Halloween in October, to Christmas in December!  I have created many of the designs to give as much versatility as possible, so the New Year design can be for a Retirement card, or a birthday, the Mother's and Father's day cards are also for female and male birthdays and the Halloween card can be for a child's birthday.  There are 7 predesigned 3D gift boxes/projects, with full instructions, plus the blank templates to create them using the papers of your choice (like the one shown above).  Then there's all the usual digistamps for colouring with your preferred medium, backing papers, colour decoupage, sentiments and text editable inserts in 3 different sizes and both portrait and landscape orientations!  I am really pleased with the finished designs and hope that you will get as much pleasure from crafting with them as I have creating them!  Thanks for dropping by and I'll be back with more samples soon, Lisa x