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You are welcome to copy any of my designs, as long as you do not take credit for them yourself. I am very happy for you to sell them. If I have used anyone else's design, I always try to give credit where it is due. If I have missed anything, please let me know and I will put things right.


This is intended to be mainly about my crafting stories, as a personal record of what I do. However, I interpret crafting quite widely, not just paper crafting but other things too. I have a butterfly mind and like to change from one thing to another depending on what I feel like on a given day - knitting, crochet, cross-stitch, cards, baking and several others, including my favourite right now, parchment, both traditional skills and Groovi, very relaxing and calming to do.

I have decided to put some structure into my blog so that each day will have something of a theme.
Monday- for Mindfulness; Tuesday - Tidy Up Day; Wednesday - What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday; Thursday - Technique and Tips; Friday - Finish Off Day; Saturday - Start Something New; Sunday - Anything Goes
These themes are not hard and fast and will be changed if I feel the need.

Thursday 17 December 2015

ClarityStamp Challenge for December 2015 - No 34

Why don't I listen to Barbara shouting at me?  Why do I go just that little bit too far and then wreck it?

I had started off yesterday with the stencil of the dreamcatcher and transferred that to the parchment, and done all the embossing on that.  All I had to do yesterday was to put the faces from the mother and child into the central aperture.  Easy peasy, no problem at all!

No, there was no problem here, just a little more whitework to do on that central  section.  A little patience and care to avoid puncturing the parchment.

There was no problem even after I had cut out between the lines of the dreamcatcher.  A bit fiddly, but a pleasant relaxing thing to do in front of the TV.  Almost there.







I added a few little star centres off one of the snowflake plates.  Then I decided it needed a little more work so I got out the diagonal pricking plate and set to work.  Still ok at this point.  Then I thought I would be clever and do a bit more cut out work in a pattern.  I really should have listened to Barbara at that point.  She really was shouting at me by then.

Now it went wrong - BIGTIME!!!!!!










Now what to do.  Do I throw it all in the bin and start from scratch or just give up?  If you know me, you will already know that I do not like being beaten, so a bit of thought and out came my scissors, ordinary and parchment.    I cut out the whole of the dreamcatcher with its feathers and the four little stars.  I also snipped out the thin frame  found a piece of pale blue shiny paper, cut a piece of blank parchment to match it.   The parchment was laid over the blue and glued together, with the frame over the top.  Because the frame was embossed and coloured, the glue was hidden.

The final part was to glue the pieces on to the parchment within the frame and stick the whole thing under a weight to keep them in place until the glue was dry.  Here is the final result which is my entry into the ClarityStamp Challenge for this month. 
My choice of the stencil and the Groovi plate was dictated by something I used to read to the chldren in my classes years ago, which they loved.  It was the story of the Creation, told by one of the native American tribes.  Hence the dreamcatcher.  I just combined it with the Madonna and Child, which brings back memories from travelling with my parents in Italy, where we saw the Pieta in St Peter's in Rome.  It was a combination of different beliefs and just seemed to fit the times we are living in these days.

I hope you understand my thinking and like the result.