Alicat Cards goes legit

Hi everyone

It's taken a while (life happened a lot over the last few months :( ) but Alicat Cards is finally starting to get out there to the general public.

I have a logo, thanks to a very clever friend who digitised my drawing, business cards, a Twitter account, an email address and I've done three craft fairs/table top sales so far. It's slow going, but I'm keeping on plugging away.

So, my logo. I'm very pleased with it so I'm going to show it off :D

I've had some business cards done which I'm going to ask a couple of local businesses to display.

You can find me on Twitter - @alicatcards, Facebook - facebook.com/alicatcardsandgifts and you can email me at alicatcardsandgifts@gmail.com

That's all for now

Happy crafting 😺

Busy bee

Well, it's been a while since my last post.

In the last 9 months I've left a job, got a new job, moved my craft stuff upstairs to the front bedroom, bought more shinies and branched out a bit in terms of things I've made.

I made some wreaths which I really enjoyed doing. I did a shabby chic style for some friends as a housewarming gifts:

I made some hessian flowers and used up some of my trinket stash. It's not my normal area of crafting and I'm really pleased with how it turns out (so is the recipient which is always a nice feeling!)

For my mother in law's birthday  I made a wreath in her favourite colourway:

I used crochet flowers and butterflies that I made along with some of my trinket stash and some vellum flowers that I made using some lovely Honey Doo stamps. When I showed my mum the pictures her response was "ooh that's beautiful, the same colours as my bedroom"....

OK mum, I got the hint...

I'm really pleased with how nice all the wreaths turned out and really enjoying being back into crochet, even the hubby is wanting to learn!!

Not content with just wreaths I decided to make mum a pair of fingerless gloves for her birthday. She suffers a lot with arthritis pain and also carpal tunnel and her hands are always cold. She's been wearing a grotty pair for the last goodness knows how long so I decided she needed a new pair

Her first response was "oh they're so nice, I shall save them for best" .... *facepalm*!!!

They were really quite easy to do thanks to a pattern I found online here. I followed it for the most part but added a few finishing touches like the picot border round the bottom, the top border to accentuate the waves and the flower embellishments. Again, really pleased with how they turned out.

Anyhoo, must dash, I have air dry clay to play with with my son and some boxes of cards to make for some raffle prizes for one of little mister's school friends who is raising money for his football team.

Happy crafting 😻
Ali xx

End of school year

It's that time of year again - last day of the school year. I can't believe my little mister is due to go up to year 2 in September, time really does fly!

Last day of the school year also means presents for the teachers. Unfortunately, this means 3 gifts for little mister to take as his year have had two teachers (well, they've had lots but that's another story) and a teaching assistant and as usual I left it till the last minute. Hence being up until 11pm last night then doing some quick finishing off at 6.30am this morning! I am, however, very pleased with the end result.

Each teacher has a card, a gift bag and a gift box:

I was at Crafting Live at Doncaster last Sunday and I was lucky enough to get a spot on the Tonic make and take. We made one of these Oxford boxes and I was so impressed with it I just had to buy it! I'm really pleased how these came out for my first try 😻

 I loved doing the cards as well, I'd bought the stamp and mask sets from Hunkydory specially for this occasion. The 123 and ABC were from the stencil and done in memento ink - London Fog and Tangelo - and the stamps were done in versamark ink so I could colour with my SN aqua blend pencils and the worms, pencils and apples were then blended with the clear sparkle pen.

That's all for now

Happy crafting 😸
Ali xx

Mixed media, first attempt

Hey guys, happy Monday afternoon!

I thought that I'd better start using all the stuff I've been buying and it's with much trepidation that I unveil my first attempt at mixed media.

I have a couple of canvases bought from a certain shop where everything costs the same but I didn't want to ruin one if it all went wrong (no-one could ever accuse me of being an optimist!) so I used the back of one of those "Please do not bend" envelopes. You know, the brown ones that are backed with thick cardboard.

For once, I actually knew what I wanted to do. Quite often with card making I just wing it and spend more time prevaricating over what to use rather than having a plan and getting on with it. I wanted something a little bit "out there" and also something that people that know me can look at and say "yep, that's Ali all right"

For the background I wanted texture so I used a crackle stencil from Imagination crafts, then overlayed that with some card embossed with Sheena Douglass's Day of the Dead embossing folders. The next step was getting some colour in and playing with my, as yet unused, pebeo paints.

A judicious use of gilding wax brought out the detail nicely. 

Then it was time to play! I love the skull die from the Day of the Dead series and I have all the Create a Flower dies as well and particularly like the What a Mesh die so I definitely wanted to add that in along with some spider webs! And what's the point of having all the Create a Flower dies if you don't throw in some flowers! I wanted the flowers to tie in with the background but not detach from the focal point of the skull so I didn't actually stamp them; instead I coloured them with spectrum noir aqua pens, screwed them up whilst wet to get some texture, went over with some memento inks - rhubard stalk and ladybug - for a bit of deeper colour then gilding wax...we all love gilding wax!! For the spider webs I was trying to get a 'covered in dew' look so added some sand texture gel and highlighted with silver gilding wax. Oh, and another reason to love the Create a Flower dies - they're designed for mixed media so can cut a little thicker than standard thin metal dies. 13 sheets of 90gsm copy paper cut in one run through the gemini 😸

I had fun with the skull; I knew that was my focal piece from the word go. I'm a big believer in staying true to yourself regardless of what people think, I mean, what's beautiful to one person can be ugly to another. Be who you want to be, not who other people want you to be. The sentiment from Inkylicious is just beyond perfect.

Whilst not to everyone's taste, I'm really please with the finished product. I think my biggest fan is my 6 year old son, he keeps going to up to it and saying "mummy, that's really beautiful" in a kind of awed and surprised tone of voice!!

Anyhoo, hope you like. If not, that's cool too. And if anyone has any hints, tips, pointers and/or constructive criticism please feel free to comment 😻

Happy crafting
Ali 😸

Trifold cards, files for Brother SNC attached

I really like the trifold kinetic card design and I've working on it for a while so I can get the mats and layers cut on my Brother scan n cut.

After much experimenting and wasted paper I am now happy with the results. I've done two types of trifold, an "innie" and an "outie" however for ease of reference I've just gone for boring "A" and "B"

I like both styles equally but I find that style B is really good for using up my stash of Hunkydory little books, of which I have more than a few!

The finished results:

Trifold A:

 Trifold B:

As you see, for the B style, I can use 3 of the Hunkydory pages, in this case I've mixed and matched 2nd little book of poems, butterflies and everything. For A I've used two of the same design from the faberdashery book.

Anyhoo, I know that some people struggle with trifold cards so I've put together a couple of templates:

Hopefully it's clear enough to understand. Basically, the two cut lines are the same, it's the scoring and folding that differs slightly for each one. For the base card also you'll need to trim a piece of A4 to 27cm to give an overall size of 21cm x 27cm. If you don't put too many embellishments on then the cards will fit easily into a DL envelope, otherwise it'll be a case of making a box for it. No hardship there though, we all love boxes, right?! 😻

On both of the cards I've done a 3rd layer with the little books. On the scan n cut I simply chose the bits I wanted and made them smaller by 6mm (to give a 3mm border) on the horizontal and vertical. If you don't have a scan n cut and need to do the mats manually, I've done a very quick diagram with the measurements (please excuse my scrawl!):

Also, in the spirit of crafty-dafty sharing, I've attached the scan n cut files for the mats and layers if anyone wants to use them. They are in .fcm format and I'm not sure how to convert them (I guess that'll be next on my hit list of things to learn) to SVG, apologies for my current lack on tech savvy-ness. 

So, there you have it. Whilst you still have to do the cutting and scoring on the base manually, I hope that this makes life a little easier for you lucky SNC users in terms of the mats and layers.

Happy crafting 😸
Ali xx

Trifold SNC mats

Temporary hiatus

Sorry that I've been absent lately. Arranging to go back to work after 12 months maternity leave, a 5 year old regressing into a toddler and a poorly husband does not a happy Ali make!!

All this, unfortunately, does not mean that I have not been buying new shinies. I have a whole load of new stencils, some starlight paints, gilding polishes and waxes, stamps from Leonie Tonic and Sheena to name but a few, new cutting dies and the whole sets of SN colourblend and aquablend pencils.

I shall be hunting out my mojo and playing with my new toys instead of feeling sorry for myself and playing Minecraft all day!

Watch this space!

Play time...

I've been very very bad lately, I'm definitely on a very high naughty step 😎

Well, firstly, Crafter's Companion had an uber good deal on the entire collection of Aquatints. They don't come with the pipettes (not an issue, already got loads), brushes or plastic trays but at less than 50 quid for all 34 bottles it would have been rude not to...

Then hubby and I went out to our local Dobbies (also happens to be the home of a CC store 😏) for a Valentine's day coffee date. I'd managed to somehow order something twice off the CC website so wanted to see if I could exchange. The super helpful staff - and they are just lovely there - gave me a refund against the stuff that I bought whilst there and with an extra 14% off for Valentine's day I just had to have the large pack of Pebeo acrylic paint small tubes. I'm going to have lots and lots of playing to do 😍