Happy Easter! Finger Print Chick Cards

If you are looking for activities to do with your children over the long Easter weekend, why not try making some finger print chick cards.  They are so simple, but great fun for kids (big and small!) to make.  I remember doing this when I was little and writing this blog post was a good excuse to pretend to be a child again and get messy!

All you will need is:

• some card or paper
• yellow paint (poster paint would be great, I used some acrylic)
• pen or pencil

Start by using your fingers to print little yellow blobs...

When the paint is dry, use a pen (or pencil) to draw on eyes, a beak, wings and feet to create your little chicks...

You can draw in other things like grass, flowers or a 'Happy Easter' message...


Happy Easter everyone, whatever you are doing I hope you have a lovely weekend!

6 DIY Ideas for Easter

With Easter almost upon us I have been gathering lots of ideas for recipes, decorations, DIY projects, gift ideas and more on my Easter themed Pinterest board.  I thought I would share a few of my favourite DIY ideas with you here!

1. Easter Bunny Spring Wreath by Krista from The Happy Housie
I love the green eyelash yarn used as grass with the bunny in this wreath!

2. Cook Craft String Easter Eggs by Jeannette Nyberg on craftwhack.com
These look great as hanging decorations, I've also seen them made with small chocolate eggs inside.

3. DIY Easter Bunny Bean Bag Toss by Leslie from Pink Stripey Socks
This would be fun to make for your children to play with!

4. Felt Bunny Softie PDF Pattern by Precious Patterns on Etsy
These are so cute!  I think one of these would make a lovely alternative to chocolate as a gift for a child!

There are so many creative Easter recipe ideas around!  These are a couple of my favourites:
5. DIY Easter Basket Cake by Carrie Sellman on The Cake Blog

6. Easter Egg Cookies by Debbie Thorne on HobbyCraft

See more Easter ideas on my Pinterest board:

Follow Hazel's board Easter on Pinterest.

Spoonflower Design Challenge and Free Shipping Day!

If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram you will already know that I have been taking part in Spoonflower's Design-A-Day Challenge, I thought that it would be good to also share a round-up here with all the things I have been drawing, painting and making over the last couple of weeks.  It's been a really fun challenge to take part in!  I've enjoyed trying out some new things and it's been quite liberating just playing with different mediums and designs without worrying about making things to sell/ if people would like them etc.  That said, there are several designs which I will be adding to my Spoonflower shop though!  I've also really enjoyed seeing what other people come up with each day and finding new designers to follow on Instagram.

Each day of the challenge Spoonflower sent out an email with a prompt for the day and some inspiration and tips to get you started.  Then at the end of the 15 days they announced one of the themes for the contest.

Here is what I have been drawing, painting and making...

Day 1: Pencil Drawing - I practised drawing foxes and a hedgehog

Day 2: Watercolour - experiment with painting watercolour flowers

Day 3: Abstract - I enjoyed playing with my watercolours so continued using them for the Abstract theme

Day 4: Block Printing - I went for something very small scale and used the erasers on the end of pencils to make some basic shapes and printed simple patterns in my sketchbook

Day 5: Pen and Ink - leaf and flower drawings in my sketchbook

Day 6: Geometric - patterns made with watercolours and my stamps from day 4

Day 7: Vector - I turned some of my leaf drawings from day 5 into a vector pattern

Day 8: Photographic - I used a 'kaleidoscope' effect on a photo of blossom and took one of the patterns I made to create a repeat design

Day 9: Open Source - design made with PicMonkey

Day 10: Steampunk - a repeat pattern made from my illustration of a clockwork hummingbird and line drawings of leaves and cogs.

Day 11: Dyed - pattern made from scanned fabric which I dyed with watercolours

Day 12: Typographical - pattern made from my watercolour paintings of letters

Day 13: Kawaii - Easter inspired pattern with cute bunnies, eggs, chicks and sheep

Day 14: Found Objects (I skipped this, but may come back to it another time!)

Day 15: Designer's Choice - I created my entry for the contest.  Spoonflower chose the theme 'Watercolour' and my design was inspired by some of my earlier designs, using watercolour letters, feathers and arrow shapes.  The image at the top of this post is a larger view of my final design.

Voting for the contest is now open!  There are so many great designs, with a wide range of subjects covering flowers, animals, geometric patterns and much more.  You can see them all on Spoonflower, and vote for your favourites too... http://blog.spoonflower.com/2016/03/vote-in-the-design-a-day-spoonchallenge.html

Spoonflower are currently holding a Free Shipping Day - a great opportunity to stock up on fabric, wallpaper or gift wrap!  The offer runs until 9am EDT (1pm in the UK) on March 18th 2016 and applies to standard shipping, worldwide.

(The image below shows my Steampunk Valentine design - you can find it in my Spoonflower shop).

Penny Slider Butterfly Birthday Card

It was my sister's birthday recently, which provided me with a good excuse to try out a new paper crafting technique on her birthday card!  Inspired by this penny slider card on PaperCraft Inspirations website, I decided to try making one for myself.  I had never made a penny slider card before, but it's quite straightforward to make one and they are really effective and fun too.  I will definitely be trying out this technique again!

For my card I used:

a white card blank

scrapbooking papers from DCWV's Citrus stack

the butterflies are my own designs, taken from my Butterflies Digital Papers set

lime green 3mm wide satin ribbon

rub-on happy birthday message

As this card involves moving parts I thought it was also the perfect opportunity to try making a (very) quick little video.  One of my goals/ dreams is to make craft videos to share on Youtube.  So this is me taking the first step in learning how to do this!  Have you made videos for Youtube? Any tips are welcome!

Mother's Day Card - Floral Heart Digital Stamp

Yesterday was Mother's Day here in the UK, so I thought I would share a photo of the card I made for my Mum.

I used the floral heart design from my 'Decorative Hearts' set of digital stamps (available from my Etsy shop).  I printed the heart onto white card and coloured it using watercolour pencils and watercolour paints.  By using shading, I have given the heart a 3-dimensional appearance.  (This design would also work well with decoupage, if you printed and coloured multiple copies of the heart.)

I cut the heart out and attached it to a white, hammer textured card blank using double sided sticky foam pads.  Finally, I hand wrote the message 'Happy Mother's Day' on the front of the card using a black PITT artist pen.