Louise Sims Papercrafter

I have had a wonderful week in Ireland visiting my mum which is just what I needed to recharge my batteries. The journey is long but definitely worth it. I took my dog with me too and he was a complete darling in the car and on the ferry but he and my mum's dog did take a while to warm to each other .... finally getting on, 2 days before I was leaving. Back to normality now ..... There is a new challenge over at Pan Pastel challenges, "pink and white" and for my birthday, I was lucky to receive a fantastic selection of ribbons and lace which I just had to use on my project. I have created my background using a heart stencil from ARTplorations which I covered in Perfect medium and then covered in white and clear embossing powders, and using magenta pan pastel, lightly coloured the edges. On another piece of linen card I used the same stencil with Perfect medium but this time coloured the panel with magenta and red pearlescent pan pastel. They were blended out with

I am unfortunately a week behind with my blogging as I decided to take a little time off from the internet, which was actually quite liberating ...! All devises had the internet switched off and I went back to the old fashioned way of talking to people ... yep, I used the old land line and talked to people in person. I know ... shock, horror ... but it was great not being on call 24/7 for nothing in particular. Even better not being dragged to check status's or see the latest tweet and spending quality time with my family. However, normality calls again but I now know that I will definitely be trying to give myself breaks from the internet more often ... just got to get a little bit more organised next time. The last challenge over at Polka Doodles was "kraft inspired" and I wanted to use one of the fab design sheets from the Work and Play 8, Music collection to create my card. All the elements are from the design sheet although I have added some die cut stars

After having a rubbish start to the week, the last few days have flown past .... supersonic fast! In fact so fast, I forgot what day it was today! Only one more week and it's half term and boy oh boy, am I looking forward to a week without an alarm clock going off in the mornings ... aahhhh, bliss. The theme this fortnight over at We Do Doobadoo is "hearts and flowers" and I have decided to use the lovely "pressed roses" stamp set from Joanna Sheen. I really enjoyed using this set and am quite cross with myself that it's only been inked twice ... The background was made by covering the Dutch Doobadoo "small circles" stencil with Perfect Medium. I then ran the stencil through my Grand Calibur and then covered the recessed areas with Gold Glitter embossing powder. Using a chipboard mannequin figure, I over stamped it with a background stamp I have (think it was a magazine freebie) and embossed the mannequin with clear embossing powder. Ne

I have a huge drawer of boxes and containers that I know one day I will turn in to something ..... what, I'm not sure but I will alter them somehow. This time it was the turn of a chocolate box which had great deep sides and looks similar to a box frame. I have only used the lid, so still have the base to play with ..... I used the Octavia Dragonfly image from Polka Doodles as my main image and inspiration for my mixed media piece. One of my birthday presents was wrapped in black tissue paper .... a lot of tissue paper, so being a canny crafter, I spirited it away to use one day. I covered my box in the tissue paper and sealed it with Maimeri Gloss Gel. I made sure that it was all crinkly and multi layered. Once dry, I covered it with pewter and silver pan pastels, sealing again with the Maimeri Glassy Gel. I then covered the background with torn paper pieces from the CD (or download kit), edging them first in magenta pan pastel. Again they were sealed with Maimeri

One of my New Years resolutions I am going to try and stick to in 2015, is to do more scrapbook pages. I'm not ready to embrace "Project Life" just yet as still feel the need to create a page so I can remember all the feelings from the photograph whilst I hurl all my crafty stash  at the page ... mind you picking a photograph to use, needs to drastically speed up! Here is a page I recently made combining stamping and die cutting. I chose the photo because myself and Mr S will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this year ... remember the day well (as I should) but primarily as we got married around the World Cup. Luckily England weren't playing until the Monday after our wedding. However they were playing Ireland and being of Irish extraction, there were one or two heated conversations around the pending result ... which ended in a 1 - 1 draw (phew). Anyhow, on to my page ..... I used a locked key stencil to create my first background using Maimeri G