International Crafters Post

Kia Ora My Crafty Chums,

Oh my goodness you "found" my blog, lols.

So, International Crafters, you need to follow my blog, leave a comment for me here and then go back to the International Crafters FB page and leave me a comment under the post Day 3of 6 to tell me you have completed today's challenge to be in to with a chance to win the 1st Anniversary Giveaway.

Keep Well

Nicky

Folded Flower

Kia Crafty Chums,

I thought I'd come along with a quick make that goes with a video I uploaded the other day.

I got the idea from the paper craft magazine, it's full of great ideas every month, I love it.

What you need to do is cut 5 squares of paper, make them any size you want so long as they are square in the video I show you 2 sizes, a 3"square and a 2" square if I remember correctly. 

Fold on in half diagonally.

Keeping the fold at the top and bring the two outer points down to the bottom. 

This forms a square.

Open up the folded flaps, place your finger inside and squash the fold to make a kite shape on each side of the central square.

Fold up the top points of the kite shapes in line with the edge of the square.

Fold over the outer edges of the kite to enclose the previous folds.

Run a line of glue along the folded edge and join the two folded edges together without creasing the paper.

The petal shape is formed without creasing, continue until all the paper is folded into petal shapes and then glue them together along the folded edges to form the flower.

Five petal flower or Kusudama, front view.

Five petal flower or Kusudama, side view.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you liked the mini tutorial. 

Keep Well

Nicky x 

Accordion Fold Album

Kia Ora Crafty Chums


I hosted a swap over at International Crafters on FB the other week. It was an Accordion Fold Album swap and it was a lot of fun to make.

I even did a tutorial on how to make the album, I probably made it look harder than it was in reality to make, but I only have a limited space to work in, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it Lols. 

Here is part 1 of the tutorial.

See you again soon and as always 

Keep Well

Nicky x 

The event of the Summer

Kia Ora

Here is a bit of YT news you may have heard about already, if you haven't then there's an arts and crafts event taking place between July 17th and July 20th. It's a youtube hash tag event for both the creative video makers and the watchers.  To find it just search for the #lovesummerart between these dates and you'll find a lot of lovely creative people joining together to create some great things.

I hope to see you there.

Keep Well

Nicky x 

Card Share

Kia Ora,

Oh my goodness here I am back again so soon lols.
I had a few minutes spare from my crazy life to share some cards I have made. I needed a couple for a few  birthdays this month so I killed two birds with one stone by whipping some up to send and making a video for my you tube channel too.

Thanks for stopping by

and as always

Keep Well 

Nicky x 

ATCs

Kia Ora Crafty Chums,

I have been busy over the past year setting up a FB page with 3 other gals called International Crafters, we host challenges and swaps and are supportive of all the crafty guys and gals that post to our group. It's been a lot of hard work but we're getting more and more crafters join us every week.

Here are 2 ATCs I made a couple of weeks back…

And a Tutorial on my You Tube channel I posted on how to make the ATCs Here

It might just be that I have more time to make some cards now that we've settled into the routine of posting tutorials and challenges. Fingers crossed at any rate. 

Thanks for stopping by 

And as always 

Keep Well

Nicky :) 

Practice, Practice, Practice ...

Kia Ora Crafty Chums.

I thought I would write a little piece on practicing, drawing and painting.
Now, I just have to talk about my son here who is a pretty good guitar and piano player and I don't think that's just his Mum talking. But since he was small I got him to take piano lessons, not because he had aptitude but I just think that if you can play an instrument it gives you a measure of achievement and pleasure. Well that's my warped thinking anyway. He seemed to enjoy it and spent a lot of time practicing. I thought he was quite good so invested in an electronic piano for him and I say invest because it was a few hundreds of pounds. Anyway long story short, and this just dumbfounds me,  he can't read music, he never progressed at school with music exams because of this. Some of you will have heard his music on my videos and I often link to his band music as well. Someone said to him once you're so lucky to be able to play like that, I wish I could. His response to that was that it isn't luck it's hours and days and weeks and years of practice. And it really isn't luck or something he was born with, he practices a lot, in fact he works jolly hard at it. As a child he would play his piano and guitar for hours and hours a day, well, he used to play his guitar until his fingers bled and he split his nails from the ends to the cuticles. That's not luck it's perseverance and a willingness to put in the hard yards, whatever it takes really.

So, onto drawing and painting. I'm still at the practicing stage, and I may never get beyond that, but I know that for every two or three average or just downright fugly pieces I produce I will produce one that is ok. Now I shall show you what I mean, I really want to master watercolor, yeah good luck with that I hear you say. Yesterday I drew and painted 2 ATCs

This was the first one…

It's not too bad but it's not good, it would be ok as folk art or what ever it's called but I thought I could do better so I tried again ….

Number two was, to put it bluntly worse, it is out of proportion, I almost threw it in the bin but decided not to, why? Well, because it serves as a reminder of what not to do lols.. Anyway as you can see it's not good. So today I decided to give the picture another go and this was the result..

 Now I am happy with picture number three, the scale is good, the drawing is good and I have little touches in the water coloring that make me just darn happy. All I need is a consistency now and that takes practice. I put the three ATCs together in the next picture and to be honest it looks as if 3 different people painted them and that's because I have no consistency with my art. So I will keep on practicing, practicing, practicing and one day I may become as good as my son.

P.S. I failed art at school. I didn't just get an F (fail) I got ungraded which meant they couldn't even give me an F…….. 

Have a good day

Keep Well

Nicky x 

Mum's the word

Kia Ora,

I am a bit slow in the card making arena at the moment, it's taking me longer to back into it than I thought it would. I'd like to enter this card into the challenge over on the FSC blog #31 Mum's the Word 

The stamp is a LOTV stamp, Teddy for Mum. 

I have used a spellbinders die, copic markers, Santoro DP, Kraft card stock and mirror card. 

Thanks for stopping by.

And as always Keep Well

Nicky 

Pinky Pink

Kia Ora

Yay, I'm back, my card making mojo took a hike but I think it's back now lols.

I've made this card to get back in the swing of things following sketch #188 from deconstructing jen

I'd like to enter this card into TGF FFF challenge Pinky Pink. 

Internet has been playing up over the last couple of days and it's working now so I'm just going to post this as is…. the next card will have more detail I promise ;) 

Keep Well x