Inspiring moments

Today as I picked up my Derby Telegraph from the door mat I noticed a small advert asking us to tell them about our heroes.

Turning to page 25 I was met with a call to celebrate the people we share our wonderful city with.
With several categories to choose from I began to wonder who would get my vote?

What qualities do these people have and how can I learn from them to become more inspiring myself.

Sometimes the smallest of gestures can brighten a whole day.

A great example being: someone I work with today helped someone with directions. To accompany a thank you they added ' you have a lovely smile'

The impact those simple words had were far greater than the effort it took to say them.

If we took the time to say the little things more often how would that shape the rest of someones day?

What would be the impact of taking the time to recognise someone as your hero and celebrating that?

Take a look here at the conditions

Derby Community Champions

 

Until tomorrow

Take care
Sam

Hi Ho

Paying the bills....

I have been given an opportunity to take the skills I use at work and offer these for free to members of the public.

 

http://www.creativeby-nature.com/about-opc/

 

Take a look online at the 'our peoples coach' website and learn about what coaching is and what it can do for you.

If you are shopping in Derby this Saturday keep an eye out for us and bag yourself a free 10 minute coaching session from a qualified coach.

Give yourself a gift of time, 10 minutes, to think about what you can achieve.

Your worth it!

'Imagine what you could do if you could do what you imagine'

A new make

Monday comes around so quickly, too quickly for me so I would like to rewind back to the weekend and share with you a project I have made to support my selling ventures.

I have started to make earrings, mostly due to the magpie in me that loves all things shiny.

My goal is to sell my earrings at local craft fairs, to fund my habit further.

Displaying the finished product gave me an opportunity to draw on my love for paper and ink.

I have had a little wooden house for a while and not been sure what to do with it. I enjoy making pretty things but prefer not to have too much stuff around the house.

Inspiration struck and I decided to use my house to showcase some of my earrings.

My lovely husband bought me this blank house for Christmas on one of our rare visits to the Indigoblu shop in Retford

This is what it looks like when covered with a coat of gesso, white acrylic paint, stamped with a flourish and lined with pretty papers.

I had great fun making it and attached springs to the 'ceiling' using a glue gun to hang each earring.
This makes it so easy to add different earrings and to dismantle between sales.

Choosing which earrings to put into each section will be tough, some of the smaller earrings may get lost in the patterns.

 

What do you think?

Tasty Treats

Victoria Sponge

Who doesn't love a simple Victoria sponge cake?

Below is my favourite recipe taken from The River Cottage Collection.

Ingredients
175g self raising flour
pinch of sea salt
175g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and softened
175g caster or vanilla sugar, plus extra to finish
3 medium eggs, lightly beaten
1tsp vanilla extract
3-4 tbsp. soft set raspberry jam

Equipment
2 x 20cm sandwich tins or a 23cm round tin, lightly greased and base lined with baking parchment

Method
pre heat oven to 190C/gas mark 4
Sift the flour and salt together into a bowl and put aside

In a large bowl beat the butter to a cream

Add the caster sugar and continue to beat until light and creamy ( this will take around 5 mins using an electric whisk and 10 mins by hand) The lighter and fluffier the mixture is the easier it will be to blend in the eggs, which in turns helps to prevent the mixture from curdling.

Add the eggs about a quarter at a time, adding 1tbsp of the weighed out flour with each addition and beating thoroughly before adding the next. Beat in the vanilla extract with the last of the egg.

Sift in the rest of the flour, half at a time and use a metal spoon to carefully fold it in. The mixture should drop off the spoon easily when tapped against the side of the bowl. If it doesn't then add a spoonful of hot water.

Divide the mixture equally between the prepared sandwich tins, spreading it out evenly with the back of a spoon.

Bake in the centre of the oven for about 25 minutes or until the cake(s) are lightly golden and spring back into shape when gently pressed with a finger.

Leave the cakes in the tins to cool for a couple of minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.

When cold spread on cake layer with the jam, place the second on top and dust lightly with caster sugar.

This cake will keep for 5 days in an air tight container.

I know this cake definitely doesn't last 5 days in my house!

Put the kettle on and enjoy.

A Look Inside

Today I thought I would share with you my work space, my little place in heaven.

This is where I play with all my 'stuff'.  Its kind of an organised chaos with most things I can put my hand to pretty easily.

Every once in a while I decide to tidy up and have a sort out. These days are great. The things I find that I forgot I even had them. Its a great thing to do when I am not sure what I want to create.

The things I find fill me with new inspiration. Saved empty bottles and bits from Jeff's garage usually get the grey matter ticking.

I look forward to sharing some of the new things I am making with you soon

Take care
Sam

From the heart

This weekend I decided to create my Indogoblu challenge piece.

My beloved bought me loads of goodies for Christmas and in the stash was a MDF door hanger.

I covered it with gesso and then applied a coat of pantry white acrylic paint. I distress around the edges with distress ink worn lipstick.

It got really messy next with some squirts of dylusions ink sprays, pink blue and yellow.

I stamped the ' love is' image with archival black ink and added some colour using distress inks, picked up with my aqua brush.

I also stamped 'script' using a light grey ink and finally using blue ink I stamped 'harlequin' to add some interest.

Using a Martha Stewart punch I created some flowers coloured with matching inks to compliment the scheme. I used round nosed pliers to coil odd bits of black wire to tuck in with the flowers.

Adding the lace around the edge wasn't easy!  Some pink glitter stickles covered a multitude of sins.

The final embellishments were made using a flourish spellbinders die, craft foam and painting it with silver acrylic paint.

This project will hang from my craft room door with pride.

Don't Forget ...

I recently bought a cheap wipe clean notice board, to help me remember the crafty makes I need to make.

This weekend I played nicely with it and I am very pleased with the finished look.

Ingredients

Wipe clean board from The Range.
Indigoblu acrylic paint hot cocoa & pantry white.
Reeves metallic acrylic paint.
Spellbinders cutting dies leaves, fantastic flourish one.
Cheery Lyn cutting dies, leaves, large flower, lily.
Silicone mould, buttons, key, bee & crown.
Indigoblu stamps, sheet music & flutterby.
Distress inks, various colours.
Hot glue.
Cosmic shimmer spray green.
Cardstock and acetate.

Method

I removed the white wipe clean board, leaving just the frame.
The frame was then painted with brown paint. Once dry I applied the hot glue to the frame randomly. A second coat of brown was then applied. To give the frame an aged look I applied a small amount of  white paint using  A dry brush.

The leaves were made using the cutting dies and applying a small amount of cosmic shimmer spray.
The flowers were created by first stamping the sheet music stamp onto white card stock, then die cutting flowers. Coloured using the distress inks with an ink duster and finished with little stamens.
The remaining embellishments were all made out of air dry clay and silicone moulds, then painted using metallic paints.

The butterfly was stamped onto metallic card stock and acetate. The acetate butterfly was coloured using promarkers then mounted on top of the card version.

The scroll of music was by stamping the sheet music stamp onto white paper, then distressed using distress inks and tied with an odd piece of cord to hold together.

All the embellishments were stuck to the frame using silicone glue.

The wipe clean white board was the slid back into place .

I have enjoyed making this really useful item.