Melus Makes

Hi there everyone! Thanks for stopping by! It's a brand new week, so lets get the ball rollin' Last week it was my friend Aisha's birthday, and as a cat fan and cat owner - I thought she would appreciate a birthday card with cats on it! That's right - the Little Cat Agenda stamp set is getting used! Yay! And here's the simple birthday card I made her. I used: Crealies Rectangle CLXXL 10 Dies Quotables die - Paper Smooshes Birthday Wishes - Mama Elephant Little Cat Agenda - Mama Elephant White Cardstock Raspberry Cardstock - Canford  3D Foam Pads Happy Day 6 x 6 Pad - My Minds Eye Cat Colouring: Spectrum Noir Markers 1: TN5, DR4 2: CT4, GB7,  CR5, TN8 3: BGR1, CT4, PL4 4: BGR1, IG5, CG3, CR5 I hope that you like my birthday themed cat card - thank you for stopping by the blog today. Until next time - Happy Crafting!

Christmas was a time of giving - and this was no exception. There were quite a few craft hauls going - the festive season is the best time to indulge in buying craft things for yourself or for getting other people to buy them for you. Here is the last haul of 2016: *Links will be mostly from UK sites. If an international site is only available this will be mentioned instead ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Seven Hills Crafts | www.sevenhillscrafts.co.uk MFT | Peekaboo Triple Window Die Simple Stories | Love and Adore 6 x 6 Paper Pad Avery Elle | Card Easel MFT | Hog Heaven Stamp Set Lawn Fawn | Donut Worry die Dies to Die for | www.diestodiefor.com MFT | Hog Heaven Dies Papermaze | www.papermaze.co.uk Project Life | Charming Core Kit Simon Says Stamp | www.simonsaysstamp.com Pretty Pink Posh | Peekaboo Windows Simon Says Stamp | Heart of Rose...

Hi everyone! Welcome back to the last 2016 review post on the blog for the year. We have looked at my favourite stamps, my favourite dies and now we look at some of my favourite tools - I hope these are some of your favourites too! *links will be from UK sites Tim Holtz / Ranger Multicutter Serrated Non Stick Scissors Great scissors, multi functional, non stick, can cut most things. Worth the price point and investment. Cheery Lynn Metal Die Snips Brilliant for cutting the wire attachments on your dies. I used to have to file the points down, but now I can just snip the attachments off cleanly. No awaiting accidents! Tonic Retractable Craft Picker Great for die cutting when using intricate dies so that I can peel the whole design off the die with no problems. Great for use with small elements and small die cut pieces. Clover Pom Pom Makers A fun tool for making the newest craze in crafting - pom poms. They come in a set of 2 and you can get s...

So, I haven't entered or created a card for a challenge for a while, but knowing that I have quite a few dies and stamps in my stash, I thought it would probably be a good idea to use them! One of my favourite stores to buy from is Seven Hills Crafts and they launched their January Challenge a couple of weeks back which I thought I would partake in. Below was the design sketch which our card layout should follow as inspiration: And... you have to use a product that Seven Hills Crafts sell in their online store. Pretty easy right? Right! So below is the card I created:   Dies and Stamps Used: MFT Magical Unicorns Stamp Set MFT Magical Unicorns Die-namics Lawn Fawn Large Cross-Stitched Rectangles Lawn Fawn Small Stitched Circles WPlus9 Landscape Borders Die My Minds Eye Jubilee 'Sherbet' 6 x 6 Paper Pad Pink / Blue / Silver Sequin Mix White Cardstock Canford Cardstock - Blush Unicorn and Rainbow coloured in Spectrum Noir: Unicorn: BG...

So...err. I need to stop spending. But with Christmas coming up - I can't actually help but buy stuff for myself at Christmas time - its probably the only time you can get away with buying things for yourself and of course for other people. I'll be honest - I've had done about 65% of my Christmas shopping by then and with maybe a handful of buy - I got there! So what more to say an early 'Happy Christmas!' to me? It's to buy a few craft things. This is over the course of two weeks (I don't know how long I can escape saying that...) - after this: NO MORE SPENDING (unless it's a Christmas gift...) *Most links are from UK based websites Seven Hills Crafts | www.sevenhillscrafts.co.uk Totally went slightly overboard.... MFT Ewe Are The Best Stamp Set | £14.25 MFT Die-namics Four Way Chevron Cover-Up | £18.50 Lil Inker Folding Tag Original Die | £13.95 WPlus9 Bold Banner | £5.50 Avery Elle Stamp Storag...

Stamps this year have seen in a complete overhaul with the use and introduction of watercolour. Flowers are now given a whole new light and look so different with resistance techniques on card fronts and scrapbooking. Stamps that require you to 'build' layers and construct images are great fun and experimenting with different colours are also amazing and the creations crafters come up with are beautiful and original. With that said, here are my favourite stamp sets of 2016 *links are from UK based websites ------------------------------------------------------ MFT | Essential Sentiments A diverse section of sentiments. Great in black ink against a white background, or embossed with white embossing powder on black card. MFT | Magical Unicorns The first of many unicorn stamp sets. Great elements and the unicorns are soooo cute! MFT | Beary Special Birthday How cute are the bears? Absolutely ridiculous how sweet the bears are. Great f...

Over the next few days I'll be posting up on the blog my favourite dies, stamps and tools used over the course of the year - essentially coming to the end of the year means a great review of the craft tools used by well-known cardmakers and designers for us to invest in for the coming year (if we haven't already), but also to look forward to the new stamps, dies and tools in 2017. So without further ado. Here's come of my favourite dies of 2016 *links are UK based where available. Simon Says Stamp will be the US site only. ------------------------------------------------------------ Simon Says Stamp | Painted Words Great for cards and scrapbooking - adding that special sentiment to any project. Love the font too. Simon Says Stamp | Triangle Pattern Background Die I have recently bought a few background dies just to add a bit more dimension to cards and make backgrounds for cards more interesting. Love this one by Simon Says Stamp Lawn Fawn |...