Iris folding

 I made these 2 cards a while ago following patterns from 'Iris Folding' by Michelle Powell.  It is a lovely book, I had never tried iris folding before but found it really easy to follow.

Decoden.....Deco-whatnow?

Whilst looking for Fimo tutorials on Youtube I found some videos of people doing Decoden.  This is a Japenese trend of decorating objects (eg tins, little boxes, mobile phone covers) with really cute little trinkets or cabochons.  These cabochons are usually little cute replicas of food (eg cookies, doughnut) and often made out of different types of modelling clay, eg Fimo, Sculpy, air clay.

The cabochons are then stuck down with a substance that looks like whipped cream but dries hard, there are specially made products for this though they not widely available here in the UK, therefore, I used white bathroom silicone sealant :)  Sounds odd, I know, but when piped through and old piping bag and nozzle, it really does look good.  Here's what I have made so far, the tubs once contained body scrubs from Soap and Glory.   The sprinkles are micro-beads. 

The pieces stuck on these are Fimo,
I made them a long time ago but had no idea what to use them on,
I'm glad I kept hold of them now.

 After making these, I then found a really lightweight clay in the toy section of Home and Bargain called Super Clay .  The light clay is air-dry and needs a few days to dry completely but once dry it is so light that it can be stuck on a card without causing any balancing problems.  When completely dry it feels like a very very firm foam.

After looking at many Decoden videos on Youtube, I saw someone using the kit below which is also a very light clay that dries like a hard foam.  I searched Amazon and found it as an import from Japan.  It was quite expensive really but it comes with lovely little re-usable moulds which I tried with Fimo (not very successful) and the cheap clay from Home and Bargain which worked really well.

The pink, brown and Oreo cookies are made using the cheap kids clay, the blue cookie, wafer and ice-pop are made using the Japanese clay.  The heart cookies is made from Fimo with a pink hot glue stick used for the icing/filing.  Except for the heart cookie, they are made with moulds from the Japanese kit.  Underneath, you can see other little pieces I have made.  

Potentially, the only thing you need to buy to try this is the sealant as you can decorate the 'cream' with anything you already have, even if you just sprinkle with some seed beads it will look yummy scrummy.

Cute little critters

For Christmas, my lovely boyfriend gave me the Create a Critter Cricut cartridge.  It is soooooo cute.  Here are some cards I have made so far. 

The monkey is only attached by a flower brad so that it can swing 

This card is for my nephew, it is nearly as cute as him.

I also used the Create a Critter cartridge make these wall decorations.  I just love them :)

A Christmas Garland

 A bit late for the jolly holiday season, I know.  But I just found these pictures on my phone so I thought I would share.  I made this garland after watching 'Kirsty's Homemade Christmas'.  It was really easy to do and I used my Cricut to cut out the hearts :)

After the success of the Heart Garland I went on to make a garland with little Christmas stockings in much brighter colours.  I never took a photograph though so I can't post it, maybe next Christmas when I put the decorations back up.