Simply Saturday upcycle and Guest Designer Viv

Hi everyone,

Great news today and for the next 4 weeks, we have a new Guest Designer joining us: Viv (aka Daizy Mae's Crafty blog). Fell in love with her work one day when I was blog hopping and was really pleased when she agreed to join us as a GD.

  Hi everyone, my name is Vivien Hodge and I live in the U.K.  I have been making cards and wire jewellery for over 10 years now.  Retired.... I turned 61 last year (oh my!) and happily married for 42 years this year. 

 We have three wonderful grown up children (now all happily married also) and two very young grandsons, who I absolutely adore. 

My husband is also into crafts and makes lovely things out of wood, turning mostly and now carving too.

  I got into card making when I watched QVC and saw Dawn Bibby making cards, and thought..... I could do that.  Little did I realise what an addiction it would be and I now have my own craft room overflowing with 'stuff '!

I also make wire jewellery and my latest idea is to use real silk handmade & hand dyed ribbon and beautiful stones to compliment them.

I like to make mainly quite simple cards using digital images, rubber stamps, etc.  I love my new Happy Cuts A4 machine, my Cuttlebug, Copic Markers, Promarkers & Flex Markers now too. I  love using Distress inks and the lovely effects they can achieve.  I often make a bookmark to match a card as an extra gift or sometimes even a matching envelope too. My new thing is to make my own paper flowers (after much trial and error) and add them to my cards.

I look forward to joining The Craft Barn as a Guest Design Team member, such a great site for all our crafting needs. What an honour to be chosen by them also.

Here's Viv's first sample. I am sure you will love it. 

More to come next week

First I made a 144 mm card base & used it tent fold style.

I used an old lemonade can, I cut the top and bottom part off then cut the cylinder in half using scissors.

 I punched three butterflies from the metal, then ran those through an embossing folder for texture.

 Using some TH Alcohol ink in purple I dabbed some onto the butterflies.I used a heat gun to set the colour. Then I used three Promarkers to add another colour to each butterfly & heat set those also.  I used a dark blue Promarker to colour the separate body and feelers, heat set again and then I glued them onto the main butterflies.

  I printed a sentiment and stuck that to the card after first distressing it with some TH purple ink. I cut two more strips of white card and used little 3d pads to raise them above the main card area either side of the sentiment. I cut a strip of purple card & added that to the side of the other strips. A few clear gems added to the butterflies & that completed this card.

Products used

144mm white textured card base

Purple card off- cut

Empty lemonade can

Memory Box Moonlight Butterfly die

Cuttlebug embossing folder Script

TH Alcohol ink Purple Twilight,

TH Distress ink Dusty Concord

Promarkers Cobalt blue, Carmine, Forest green, Indigo blue

Clear gems


 As part of our Grand Opening celebration following our move,
from 6pm on Friday (5th April) to 6pm on Monday (8th April) 
we have
free P&P on all UK orders 
(for customers outside the UK shipping is free for orders over £30)

See you tomorrow