The Kimmidoll Tag

Has anyone heard the Kimmidoll Story? Beware parents of young girls...I recently came upon this line of Japanese dolls in my local gift store. And I was smitten. I could see myself collecting these but on this occasion, my excuse for purchase was the 10th birthday of a special girl. I didn't think to photograph the chosen doll but to give you an idea, here's what a Kimmidoll looks like:


She stands about 12cm tall, and is beautifully finished.

I made the gift tag above in colours to match the doll I chose. I'm not much of a bling-crafter but I think the gemstones finish it nicely.

I'm still loving Asian-themed cards - have a few more to share at some stage.

Thanks for looking.

Love from Crafty Kim

Party Animals

A few months ago, I came across a range of paper featuring various party animals. One of the sheets had large size images perfect for card-making. I had to have those sheets. The paper range makes for quick, easy and colourful cards.

I made the card above for a friend who shares my interest in A Lion Called Christian. You might already know this true story but if not, it's worth a look, just click on the following picture:

In this same paper range, there is a tiger which suits a friend of mine who has a special connection with tigers:

Now before I sign off, I want to share a card with you using the same Party Animal range, from someone whose work I greatly admire, Kerry Bunting:

(Card and photo courtesy of Kerry Bunting)

Hasn't Kerry done a great job with the co-ordinating stamp? You can see more of this card (the inside) and its reason for being at Kerry's blog, just click on the picture above.

Thanks for visiting.

Love from Crafty Kim

Scrabble Card

This is the card I made for my friend [no prizes for guessing her name ;) ] who is very keen on Scrabble. The Scrabble-themed paper pretty much does it all. And I was running late by errr, a few months, so I kept it simple but took the time to decorate the inside too:

Well this post has to be very short but sweet (I hope) as the hour is late and the work day tomorrow is rushing up at me at high speed.

Thanks for looking.

Love from Crafty Kim

Punch Art Runner Card

Last year, we made an exciting discovery: my son can run long distances and quite quickly at that. Not sure where this talent originated - not with me. I've done my fair share of running for fitness in days gone by, as has Ashley's father, but neither of us are fast.

When a small boy ran towards the finish line after his first 2.5km school cross-country run, ahead of many other runners, a nearby school mother poked me and said "is that your boy?". I said that I doubted it and glanced briefly in the direction of the field. And there he was...concentrating hard, almost out of puff and plenty red in the face - check out his expressions in other race pictures below. He went on to compete at the next level of competition, against boys from other schools.

Later in the year, he had a try at shorter distances, 100m and 200m sprints, where he did similarly well. I soon found myself with other tired parents at Little Athletics on Friday nights. The friendly salesman at the local shoe store introduced me to shoes I never knew he needed!

I made the above card to encourage him and to let him know how proud I am of his efforts. I was inspired by Michelle Hoffman. I matched the colours to his school athletic uniform. I've used mostly the Stampin' Up! Word Window punch but also the Tag punch and some circles. The Sun also uses a Star punch.



Anyway, just another idea for kids' cards. When I finally get a chance (working full-time at the moment so not much crafting happening), I'm going to try making a footy player card along the same lines so please stay tuned.

Love from Crafty Kim

Blokey Cards

Cards for blokes, bit tricky aren't they? Some might contend it's not worth spending much time making cards for the significant males in our life but I like to think it's worthwhile.

My first card (shown above) is inspired by a current paper-crafting trend, hot air balloons. I don't have any balloon stamps so pulled out some spotty paper and put my punches to use. I used dies to cut the clouds and sun and made my own tag with computer-generated sentiment (perfect for when you know what you want to say but don't have the stamp to match).

The second card is to appeal to the home handyman. I also love the bright colour combination. The card elements come mainly from the decorative paper along with some rub-ons but I've dry-embossed the black panel with a tool folder (in the Big Shot) and sanded the paper to make the raised images more pronounced. A home-made sign completes the card :)


This one is my attempt at vintage card, designed for the "young at heart". It's a style that doesn't come easily to me by I think I've pulled it off. I love those cogs. And twill, with metal embellishments, all great for guys. I "aged" or "distressed" my card using Glad Wrap and an ink pad (as an alternative to using a sponge). It's a good if your sponge is missing in action. The little clock face is cut-out and popped up too, although you can't really see it in the photo. I also love the colour combination (yes, another one); rustic red-brown (Cajun Craze in SU! speak) is one of my favourite colours.

Lastly something for the petrol-heads...vroooom. I tried what is termed "motion stamping" which is basically repeat stamping without re-inking in between. Or stamping in a progressively lighter-coloured inks. Each time you shift the image across and up or down (away) from the original image. See those large silver brads, I wanted to put them in the centre of the wheels, thought that would look very cool. But I was advised by the MOTH (man of the house) that it wouldn't be correct. Given he is representative of the target audience, I relented and put them on the side instead. But I wasn't alone in thinking this wheel placement of the silver brads was a good idea, my talented friend, Fiona Redknap (go check out her blog, she's been posting up a storm lately), made the same suggestion to me without any prompting. Note for the keen stampers, motion stamping works best with rubber stamps rather than acrylic - they just stamp-off so much better.

I have this long list of ideas for male cards if anyone is interested to receive it? Just leave a comment with your email address or email me and I'll email you the file.

Just looked at the time, off to bed for me. Hope you're keeping snug and warm in this chilly Sydney-town if you live in my city.

Love from Crafty Kim

Kids' Easter Craft

My son, Ashley (9 years big), and I made Easter goodie bags for some special little people this year. I decided to keep the chocolate to a minimum because most children I know end up with more chocolate than they can consume. So I filled the bags with Easter novelties from the "$2 shops" (how did we ever exist without these places?) and Peter Rabbit books by Beatrix Potter (a personal favourite - in fact, having a child now, I've got a renewed love for picture books). I also googled to find Easter colouring-in pages to print from my PC.

Being craft designed for kids to do, we used stickers and die-cuts but I couldn't resist some stamping to personalise each bag:

I stamped the above two bags but Ashley wasn't to be outdone, as shown below:

The bags and their contents went over very well. Thanks for visiting today and I hope you and your families had a great Easter break. Back to the real world of work and school tomorrow.

Love from Crafty Kim

A wee rabbit

Here's a card I made for a Scottish friend of mine who adores her pet rabbits. Her little bunnies are very well cared for, with all that a rabbit could wish for.

On the card I've used a great set called Forest Friends. The rabbit is good for Easter and the deer useful for Christmas. Can't go past the owl and the tree either. All for $24.95 - that's my kind of stamp set.

The paper I've used here is retired but I often take colour cues from decorative paper - after all, the paper designers know about these things :) In this case, Chocolate Chip, Baja Breeze and Crumb Cake (Kraft is old-speak). I've had the corduroy buttons for a long time - enjoyed finally using them. I love corduroy - a true child of the 70's!

Thanks for stopping by and hope you're squeezing in some crafting.

Love from Crafty Kim

For The Teacher

My son's teacher recently celebrated his birthday and Ashley was keen for the whole class to celebrate with....cupcakes. 25 banana and chocolate iced cupcakes later I decided to answer the call to use some of this school-days-themed-paper. There really wasn't much to do - the paper did the job for me.

And I decorated the envelope with a old stamp I have which depicts the joy of children's smiles and inside, in keeping with the learning theme, I stamped with a "birthday" definition stamp:

I'm sure the kids' barely noticed the card but the teacher did write a nice note in the homework diary for me :D

Thanks for stopping by to look at my cards.

Love from Crafty Kim

Clowning Around

This is the card I made for my youngest nephew's first birthday. In keeping with the circus theme for his party. And look at the wonderful cake his clever and talented Mum made:

The bar for family birthday cakes has been raised hugely....really had to get my cake-making act together for Ashley's 9th birthday.

And while on things circus, Ashley attended another circus-themed party in December. It was held at a circus school in Hornsby. Pretty impressive. I was in a mad rush to make this card and to me it needs more colouring-in but I remember that day I was packing to go away on holidays, Christmas shopping, setting up the house/pets for my Mum to mind, attending a carols-by-candelight service at St James Anglican Church in Turramurra ahead of driving 5 hours up the Coast in the evening (and of course, my husband had already gone) so this was as good as it got:

If you want to see a truly fabulous card made with this same stamp, please visit one of my favourite card-makers, Paula Tracy, with her pencils. Here's a sneaky peek but click on the picture to see the whole card and visit Paula. Be sure to leave her a comment.

Well I'm enjoying having time to post this week. But I'm due to make cards for my next class and it's only one down, two to go at this stage but better get back to it before school is out.

Thanks for dropping by,

Love from Crafty Kim

Soccer Boy

This was a card made in a hurry. No time for fancy stuff. But I reckon the image and background paper are big enough stars to pull it off.

I got this stamp from my friend, Julie. It really suited the occasion because Ashley's friend had a soccer-themed birthday party. Picture about 20 boys running around a soccer field. Then came a thunderstorm but the kids quickly adapted the soccer game to a water bomb site. One child proclaimed it to be the "best party ever".

Ashley is off at another party today in this Sydney heat. I left him slipping and sliding along a sheet of plastic sprinkled with water and soap. It's a pretty good life for an 8 year old boy in our end of the world. This time he made the card for the party boy so I'll be back at some stage to show you his work.

Happy Hot Sunday in Sydney and thanks for visiting.

Love from Crafty Kim

A Mini-Beastly Card

My son and his class mates have been working on a Mini-Beast (whatever happened to the word Invertebrate?) project for the past month. Last Friday was the hand-in and present date which saw the teacher hosting two redback spiders, a scorpion and a jar of Mosquito wrigglers for the day. The kids were very excited...

During the preparation period, one of Ashley's school friends celebrated his birthday so I thought a Mini-Beast theme would appeal. This card was inspired by a creation from the very talented Karen Thomas. It's a very simple but cool idea to use two different circle punches to make a magnifying glass. The handle can be hand cut but I used the ever-handy Word Window punch from SU!

I always like to decorate the inside of the card if I have time which is no often as I tend to make these cards on the morning of the party :0


Did you see the button on the card? Well Buttons are my new obsession. I've just taken delivery of a whole stack of them from the US, courtesy of the mighty Australian dollar. Enjoy it while it lasts I say.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope your wet weekend includes some paper-crafting.

Love from Crafty Kim

The Tooth Fairy's Been Visiting

Ashley has been later to lose his top two teeth compared with many of his peers. The dentist says this isn't a bad thing because the older kids are when their adult teeth come through, the more likely they are to look after them well. But Ashley was very excited to finally feel his top teeth wiggling. I was less thrilled; more evidence that he's growing up and in a few blinks, he'll be an adult.

Without much fuss the teeth were soon gone leaving "the gap":

I thought I would make this card to mark and celebrate the occasion. The tooth fairy paid his visit too, although in our house, he's quite frugal ;)

It's not a great photo thanks to being taken late at night but there is glitter on the fairy's wings. I wanted to use a star embossing folder for the red panel but alas, none in stock, so I approximated it by punching stars in the same card colour and gluing them down. As with most punch art, it was fiddly and I ended up with glue in unwanted places but no matter.

I'm enjoying Ashley's toothless smile while it lasts. Thanks for visiting.

Love from Crafty Kim

Cards for Beagle Rescue (Attention Animal Lovers)

A couple of months ago, I was asked if I would consider making Christmas cards to raise funds for an animal welfare group known as Beagle Rescue. You can learn more about this cause here.

My association with this organisation has been as a foster carer for Beagle dogs in need of a new home. These dogs are generally rescued from death row at council pounds or other animal welfare facilities. I've fostered several dogs and it is very satisfying to see them find their forever homes in happy and safe places, especially the older dogs like Ellie who had a mammary tumour when we took her into care. It made for some very interesting times like when I cared for a 4 month old puppy so thin that he could walk right through my fencing. I still help Beagle Rescue when I can, however, I'm no longer fostering dogs. But I kept a souvenir:

Pictured with my son Ashley and his cousin Ciaran, this is our adopted (versus fostered) tan-and-white boy Beagle, Toby, or as he is frequently referred to, NORTY DOG. I did try to re-home him to a lovely couple with a very pretty girl Beagle but he busted out and tried to come back to me so he was obviously meant to be part of our family.

Sadly, there are too many people out there who don't consider the responsibilities of pet ownership before taking the plunge and the casualties are the animals. So I set out to make some cards to help this organisation. It was quite a challenge since they asked for cards with a distinctly Beagle character. Alas, a too-busy life intervened and I didn't make anywhere near what I had hoped but here's what I have managed:












I've never been one to be able to make cards on mass so these took me some time to complete (I made a few of each design). And you know my motto, never-a-naked-envelope, so each card has a co-ordinating envelope. I had a "light-bulb moment" while stamping and decided to make use of a cute Beagle photo as the main image as an alternative to stamping. I'm happiest with the first card shown, with the blue background. I'm still struggling to like the Glorious Green card (shown last), but I think it's the colour, it's never been to my liking.

I'm hoping if I start earlier, I might be able to make more next year, perhaps with the help of some other animal-loving paper-crafters. As I've said many times before, you can never start your Christmas cards too early.

Thanks for your attention to yet another worthy cause. So many worthy things to fill the day with...

Love Crafty Kim

Cute Punch Animal Cards

Woo hoo, I made it here to post some of my creations. I've been snapping away today so lots to show you over the next few days.

I love Punch Art but don't often take the time to do it. But I recently set myself a challenge to make some Cute Critter cards for a paper-craft class group. Here are the results:


Now this pup is a bit tricky because I had the hand-cut his body. Not rocket science I hasten to add, just not as easy as punching out the shape. Now I've also been having a Cuttlebug and Nestabilities session in preparation for another upcoming class so I used the Swiss Dots embossing folder to give this doggy a nice background to sit on. The greeting was printed out on my 'puter using Comic Sans font and then punched with the Stampin' Up! Word Window Punch.

This next card is the easiest one, a quick starting point if you're inspired to make some of these cards:


Again, I've used a Cuttlebug embossing folder to make the grass. And if you're wondering how the background is done, I hand-drew some clouds on a piece of scrap paper, cut two out, and then used them to mask the white card while I sponged around the mask with blue.

Now for my favourite card (although the dog was a close second):


This time I used a Nestabilities Label as a mat for my frog on its lily pad. And I've used a CuttleBug folder on the card base. I'm really loving the variety of card image mats I can make with the Nesties, sure beats a rectangle or square.

And last, but not least, was an adaption of a card featured on my blog earlier this year:


Most of the details are on the original post but I added the embossed heart background and greeting.

In the interest of speedy posting, I'm not publishing the ingredients or how-to for these cards. But if you have any questions, please let me know. And I confess, I didn't invent these creatures. I collected the ideas from a late night trawl of the internet and CASE'd away to make them my own. I'd love to acknowledge the inspiring artists but I've lost track. But THANKS to those other paper-crafters who so willingly and generously share their tips and tricks. May Kraft Karma reward you.

Love from Crafty Kim

Lillian's Build-a-Roo Birthday Card

This is the card I made for a little girl who turned four recently. Thank you to Margaret Crawford who supplied a sheet of images from the stamp set, Build-a-Roo (page 56 of the main SU! catalogue). The images are water-coloured with SU! Markers and the smaller images (hearts, gift and joey) were cut and stuck over the top of the main image. I've used some retired paper and ribbon (it feels good to be using items from my stash). It never fails to amaze me how using decorative paper can add that something extra to a card which makes it a "stand-out". Notice the colour co-ordinated button? Firstly, it is sewn on. "So what?" I hear you say but given I can't sew and I made this card at about 1am in the morning with very tired eyes, I'm proud. It's a Clear Button (P. 151 of the main SU! catalogue) with a piece of coloured card stock behind them. Such a simple concept and it works well. I can't wait to use some of the new Designer Buttons.

I had the privilege of helping with the birthday party. Here is the birthday girl blowing out the candles on her enormous cup cake, baked and decorated by her Mum.


I love decorating kids' birthday cakes but unfortunately my last effort for Ashley's 7th birthday party got eaten by a VERY NORTY Beagle dog just before the party commenced (thankfully The Cheesecake Shop saved the day).

On Mother's Day, I was thrilled to receive this card from my own cherub:

The poem reads:

Mum, you've always been the best
A better mum than all the rest.
I'm thankful for all the things you do
I'm glad my mum is extra special you!

On Mother's Day, I want you to know
You're the greatest mum, and I love you so.
There's one more thing I want to say:
I wish you a Happy Mother's Day!

Aaaawwww...he had a bit of help from his school teacher, Mr C - pretty creative for a bloke don't you think? Okay better stop there before someone nabs me for sexual discrimination.

Love from Craft Kim

Hoot Hoot Hooray - It's an Owl Card

Have you noticed how popular trees, woods, birds and owls in particular have become in the realm of paper-craft? My own interest in owls started last Christmas when my lovely friend, Fiona, and I used some Hero Arts Owl stamps to make Christmas cards. Then I travelled to Africa where I saw plenty of real owls up close and my fascination grew. So I was really pleased to see a new owl set in the 2009 Stampin' Up! catalogue.

I made this card following a design by Beth Stewart who declares Owl Together Now to be her favourite set of the new catalogue. The colours are Kiwi Kiss, Close to Cocoa and Pacific Point. The background paper is from the Urban Garden Designer Series Paper and the ribbon is Pacific Point Grosgrain. I've used a blender pen and ink pads to colour the image because of the small working area. I've eye-balled the positioning of the owls and balloon rather than used a Stamp-A-Ma-Jig. Which is why one of the owl's feet are not sitting on the branch but hey, it's a bird, they jump and fly so why not?

Love from Crafty Kim on Anzac Day 2009
Lest We Forget

Introducing Crafty Cow Creations

I've been feeling a bit shabby this end of the week and haven't been up to creating much. So, it's a perfect opportunity to borrow someone else's idea and introduce one of my Stampin' Up! team members to you, the very creative Clare McIllhatton.

Some of us come to paper-craft with no history of craft and without a clue as to how to create a work of art. Not so with Clare who can actually draw (unlike me who stamps for that very reason). Since meeting Clare in January this year, I've noticed she comes at her paper-craft quite differently from conventional stampers. With unique and admirable results.

Back at our team weekend away in August, we were set a colour challenge to make a card using Groovy Guava, Blush Blossom, So Saffron and Wild Wasabi:


Here's my card using True Friend from the SU! Spring Mini Catalogue:


Adequate you might say but a definite "Ho Hum", bordering on "Yawn Yawn". Far too much So Saffron for my comfort.

And here's the card Clare made:


Much more interesting and fun. Clare created her own template for the fish bowl (just drew it up) and, used some sponging with torn paper and blue and green ink pads, to give the rippled water background. The black outline is made with the Stamp Write Journaler and the white accent is from the White Uniball Signo Gel Pen. The stamp set is Fishy Friends and you can't quite see it from the photo, but she has used Crystal Affects over whole cut out image to give it a shine, allowed it to dry and then adhered it to the bowl using Stampin' Dimensionals. If anyone who can't draw would like a copy of the template, please email me .

I'm excited that Clare is going to be demonstrating her talents at the upcoming Get Ready For Christmas Craft Event on 25 October 2008. She is based in South West Sydney so if you're out that way and would like a local demonstrator, please contact her by email . Otherwise, keep an eye on her new blog for great ideas, especially for all things kid-related. She has three cherubs of her own and in another life, taught art to children at school.

Just one more of her creations to finish off:


Who doesn't remember Cookie Monster from Sesame Street? A great use of the Stampin' Up! scallop punch (you need one, trust me). For more details on how to make this card, please email Clare .

Hopefully I'll be back on track with more creations to share soon.

Love from Crafty Kim