Joppy.co.uk

 I have been off line while changing Internet provider so not posted for nearly a month!! I have been very busy decorating my house ready for a sale when the spring arrives - I hope! I was not planning for 'decorating' to include the craft room but then .....I spotted this lovely shelf unit and Si made me some cubes to match underneath and the paper partitions to measure with a little drawer for my framelit and thinlit dies and space for ink bottles under ....and then I moved the old shelves out and discovered the wallpaper ripped behind ...soooo needed to wallpaper and then it looked so shabby it all needed painting! So I ended up with a complete craft room refurb and boy did I chuck a lot out! I am now a very much slimmed down version of the craft room - so much so I can get my rocking chair in and Aggi - my mums old dressmaking model. (fondly known as Agatha - Aggi for short). Its great having such a clever man to make made to measure cabinets and paint them to match!

I love square cards and I had such a lot of fun creating the backgrounds using the Brusho powders that I had some spare pieces of watercolour backgrounds so I have used them to make some more cards. Very much along the lines of the A4 picture I created on Saturdays blog post. They are all slightly different these two I have folded a piece of A4 size card in half to obtain two large portrait cards. It was so lovely to have my sewing machine back in working order. It is very old and was my mums so sentimental value and it now (thanks to my very talented other half) running like a dream. I can't wait to start sewing again, but first my craft room is being decorated..... it was not intentional to decorate but I moved some bookcases and the wallpaper had torn and then when I replaced the paper the walls looked really tatty so they needed a paint and then I decided it would be nice to turn the whole room around so my desk is in front of the window looking out into the garden

I recently undertook a class online using paint effects and I have adapted this technique to use with my stampin up inks and dies. These cards I made as a batch and I did all of the backgrounds in one go, and then sewed them all on my sewing machine using white or black cotton. I do like the layered look with certain images and butterflies and this stamp set lend themselves well to the technique as they provide backgrounds and lovely text as well as images and then there are the butterfly thinlits that match the set and provide a focus. I can't wait to get some 12x12 watercolour paper and start doing this type of background with my photos/scrapbooking! I chose 3 colours of inks and took a piece of plastic and pushed onto my ink pad then spritzed the plastic to make the ink run and then pressed parts of the inked plastic onto the watercolour paper. This works better if the watercolour paper is already a little bit wet. Then have a paper towel handy to  pat off the excess. Be

I made some cards with these lovely watercolour backgrounds and I liked them so much that I made one in A4 size to hang on the wall. The background is made by sprinkling some Brusho powders in blue and yellow onto the watercolour paper and then spritzing with water and they sort of spread out and blend  - the more water the more they spread out. Then you can mop up a little with kitchen towel or dry naturally or with a heat gun. I use the paper towel method! Then when dry I used my sewing machine to sew in black onto black card in A4 size I glued the middle of the watercolour paper first onto the card so it will stay in one place but not the edges as they may make the sewing needle sticky. Every now and again I switched the sewing needle to zigzag - you need to ensure your sewing needle is raised above the paper when you do this as the change to zigzag can move the needle and may rip your paper. Then I cut two of the butterfly images using the dies from stampin up called 'Bu