Crafty Jo's blog

Posted by Jo in Featured Articles on February 28th, 2009 | 9 Comments

Welcome to my Craft Blog

Wandering round my house I’ve found so many things that I have made over the years – I think I must have been crafting all my life – and I look forward to sharing them with you. If you want any explanations about anything then please contact me – if I can remember how I’ve done it then I’ll gladly share with you. I’d love you to leave a comment about anything – good or bad – I like constructive criticism! Please, enjoy browsing, I do hope you’ll grab a cuppa...

Posted by Jo on May 19th, 2013

Card in a box...

Another one of my sisters turned 60 this year so I made her a special card-in-a-box to mark the occasion. It started out as a patterned tin box which held chipboard shapes – it was silver coloured on the base but a garish blue/orange/green/yellow hotch-potch on the top. The first step, therefore, was to mask around the acetate window and then paint...

Posted by Jo on May 10th, 2013

Re-purposing a shirt...

My youngest son was having a clear-out of clothes – stuff he’d outgrown mostly. Being ‘frugal’ as I am, I had a root through the bags and found this lovely shirt. It is a gorgeous, thick, cotton jersey with an unusual front zipper and it was just crying out to be played with. I had my eye on some embroidery designs at Urban Threads...

Posted by Jo on April 29th, 2013

Wedding Card...

Wow, two in one month….like buses, I haven’t made one for years and then two weddings come along together. This was made for my Stamp Club teacher, Gloria – she married her long-time partner Bob last week and I suspect she will have had more hand-made cards than anyone else I know! I used an 8×8 card in a pearlised ivory for the...

Posted by Jo on April 15th, 2013

Recent card making...

I’m going to post several different cards I’ve recently made here, under this one heading – most of them don’t have a lot of photos or descriptions but if you click the thumbnails you’ll get to see a bigger picture. This first one is for my eldest sister, it was made for a sketch challenge and I used some designer paper for...

Posted by Jo on March 25th, 2013

Spring in North Wales...

Snow may not be unusual in your part of the world but, believe me, this amount of the stuff is just not the norm here in our part of North Wales. It started – as predicted by the weather forecasters – just before 10pm on Thursday and didn’t stop until Saturday evening. By then, we had well over 12″ everywhere and drifts almost waist...

Posted by Jo on March 23rd, 2013

Green Challenge...

This is my entry for the Michael Strong Sketch 52 for March and also for his Green Challenge. Mike ‘challenged’ us: “You may make any kind of card you want as long as the predominant colour is green. To add to the “green-ness”, you must also include some recycled element“. Focal Image From my stash I unearthed this...

Posted by Jo on February 13th, 2013

Queen of Hearts #4...

Quietfire Creations are holding their 4th Annual Queen of Hearts Challenge and this is my entry. The card base is a deep red with a subtle gold pattern all over and some gold foliage and butterflies near the bottom – which I seem to have covered almost completely! I stamped the ‘queen’ on to some watercolour paper and die cut it with...

Posted by Jo on February 12th, 2013

MS Sketch 51...

The sketch challenge for February (as shown below) is very inspirational and this is my take on it. I am also using it for the February challenge at Stamp Club which involves a card using a daffodil stamp. I chose a large 8″x8″ card base – my current favourite size – to give me plenty of room for all the stuff on there.

Posted by Jo on February 12th, 2013

Shrunken Owls...

I was lucky enough to win a set of Michael Strong‘s new Whimsical Owls as a prize and have finally had a few minutes to play with them. They are a matching pair of designs and I immediately thought of earrings! I stamped them onto frosted shrink plastic using StazOn Black ink and then coloured very lightly with some watercolour crayons. You...

Posted by Jo on February 2nd, 2013

Owlish Blog Hop...

It’s blog-hop time again over at the Enjoy Michael Strong Stamps Yahoo group – hopefully you have arrived here from Inge Postma‘s place. Leave a comment on all blogs if you want a chance to win an Owl Stamp of your very own . Hetty will announce the winner on Sunday, February 10th on her blog. The theme this time is Owls. Now, I...

Posted by Jo on January 24th, 2013

MS Sketch 50...

****News Flash**** I’ve just found out this card was voted the winner for the Sketch Challenge – it has pride of place on the home page of the group . Another month, another Saturday Sketch over on the Michael Strong Yahoo Group – this card I made for my good friend Janet. The main body of the card uses the Spellbinders Expandable die...

Posted by Jo on January 8th, 2013

January Cards so far...

This isn’t strictly a January card as I mailed it in December! This blog post is just showing a few recent ‘makes‘ though so I figured it would sit here nicely. It was actually made for a sketch challenge for stamping club and the letter panels are made with a stamp I’ve had for many years and really do not use enough – it’s...