Independent Shops ..... Craftability

 

I am lucky that nearby in Ipswich, Suffolk, there is a wonderful independent craft shop called Craftability

When I popped in there on Saturday, I picked up 2 sets of spellbinder nested dies for the bargain price of only £3.00 each! That was because they had been used at one of their workshops and were not on the original packaging 

I also went to the Ipswich branch of WH Smiths that was closing down and found these pots of Dovecraft flowers reduced from £1.50 to 25p each. They had the date of 2011 on the back, so had been sitting around in a stockroom somewhere for 15 years!

So that seemed a good excuse to sit in the craft room and marry the die cuts and flowers together in some birthday cards.

And use up a few old peel-offs too!

Spellbinder Shapeabilities Oval Heirloom Dies

I know these have been around a long time, but I have only just discovered them whilst looking for a nice oval border die!

I like their flexibility so that you can cut a matching fussy edge background to layer the border

plus there is a fancy label to go in the centre - that just matches the oval sentiments from Craftwork cards that I use all the time

Recycling Drinks Cans into Flowers!

My daughter had several projects to complete in the school holidays - one of which was to make something out of recycled objects.

Her first thought was to use drinks cans( we have plenty of those to recycle!) and make a windmill. But after checking it out on Google, they seemed quite difficult to make, so we tried flowers instead!

We cut out different sizes of blooms with the spellbinder blossom set and decorated some of the layers with glitter glue and smooch paints.

Then we fasten them together with a brad and sellotaped the flower to some old knitting needles.

Leaves were cut out of green cardboard.

The vase was made out of an empty bottle of Aspalls cyder ( my favourite) with the label covered with a piece of recycled envelope and finished off with an old cerise ribbon 

Nestie Flower Card

I've got the day off work but it's just too hot to do anything other than craft indoors in the shade! I made the flower from layers of pink mulberry papers cut out using the blossom 2 nestie from Spellbinders.

The rest is pretty much recycled - the little girl is a free image from a magazine which was printed onto the back of an old Christmas card. The backing paper was a tag left over from a piece of wrapping paper and the black paper used to layer it up was out of a box of chocolates!