Puff (the love dragon)

I've been a bit slack with my blogging, but that's probably cause I've not made anything to blog about lol! Since leaving the Bella design team I've taken my time with my crafting and I've pretty much been doing it when I felt like it. It has been quite nice to take a bit of a break and not have any pressure to finish a certain amount of cards a week. Although there was an upside to that, it forced me to keep going cause it is so easy to slack off and leave my craft stuff to collect dust.

This gorgeous little dragon named Puff is an absolute favourite of mine. I find him or her I guess, so adorable. I just want to go and hug him! Look how he has his arms, I mean wings, open and waiting, lol.

I coloured puff with a mix of Lyra and Prismacolor pencils, blended it with sansador (gamsol), and cut him out with my circle nestie. The paper is from Basic Grey, love the 6x6 pads.

I layered the image and the background paper on 2 way foam tape. I like having a raised look on my cards, it's funny how one gets into a style and then find it hard to break away.

My trip to Zurich was good except that I got so sick on my last day. I don't know if it was a stomach bug or food poisoning, but I finally started feeling better two days after I got back. It was not fun especially when I couldn't just crawl into my bed and sleep. But I'm all better now and looking forward to Easter weekend. A nice long weekend is just what the doctor ordered ;-)

take care and enjoy your week

Meahni

Far far away

Hi everyone if you are reading this post then you need to know that I am far away from home, in the wonderful land of chocolate. I'm sure you guessed it, I'm in Zurich, Switzerland.

I managed to schedule this post before I left, just so you don't forget me, lol! This image is of course from Stamping Bella and it was made for the Friday polka dot theme which I never got to participate in. No mistaken that I got lots of dots in there though.

I coloured it with my prismacolor pencils then blended it with sansador and cut it with a circle nestie. I added some glamour dust with my quickie glue pen and layer it on a scalloped circle nestie.

I was told before going to Zurich that it is as cold as the arctic there, now those of you who know me might understand how excited I am about that! I will let you all know if I froze to death or made a safe return home. I guess if there's no blogging then I froze, lol. Oh and this is a business trip, I would not chose to go visit a cold snowy country, hehehe.

Take care and chat soon.

Meahni

A turtle and a tutorial

I am sure it seems that I've disappeared into thin air, but don't worry I'm still alive. My line at home was down, so I couldn't do any blogging, but I'm back and I even have a little tutorial to share.

I have been asked by a few people to please explain how to partly cut out an image with your nestabilities. This is by no means the only way of doing this, but it's the way I do it in order to save time.

As you can see from the image below Turtle Tots cowboy has a little hat on and it sits outside of the nestie cut out line. How I do this is what I am going to explain to you today.

1. colour your image like you normally would, then select the nestabilities shape you want to use, I chose the circle.

2. lay the nestie down where you want the image to extend beyond it and draw a line with a pencil outside the nestie (*tip 1: remember that the nestie cuts below that line so you don't want to make it too high or you will get very little of the image outside of the nestie; *tip 2: don't make the pencil line too dark cause you need to erase it again)

3. remove the nestie and use your craft knife or scissors, whichever works best for you, to cut the portion of the image out that is above your pencil line

4. once you have completed step 3 erase your pencil line and take your same nestie, place a part of it behind the portion of your image that will extend beyond the nestie cut out line making sure the nestie is in place where you want the image to be cut out (*tip 3: if you place the nestie in front of the image you will cut it off, so please don't do that, lol)

5. here I have lifted my image just so you can get a better idea

6. and Here I have taken a picture from the back

7. once you are happy you have placed the nestie correctly, run the image through your cutting machine, mine is the cuttlebug

8. here is the image once it's been cut out with the nestie, see how the hat is still in front of the nestie and hasn't been cut off, but the rest of the paper has been cut away

9. before removing the image from my nestie I quickly sponged a bit of ink around the edges

10. here is the image sponged, and cut out ready to be removed from the nestie (* tips 4: if you are going to add glitter or glaze or any shiny bits do it now and not before running the image through the cutting machine)

11. here is the image removed from the nestie, sponged and ready to be used on a card

I mounted my image on double sided foam and then layered it on another nestie circle mat. I added some baubles, brads, and a bit of ribbon. Quick simple and easy. Now go and try it and please drop me a comment if you do so I can come and see your gorgeous designs. Oh, I nearly forgot, you can of course always double stamp your image, colour one complete one and on the other only the hat, cut it out with a craft knife or scissors and place it on your complete image. The complete image needs to be cut out with the nestie but you need to cut through the image where you want it to extend.

If you have further questions please let me know, I will answer as soon as I get a free moment.

Happy crafting.

Meahni