Quick and Easy Watercolour Valentine's Day Card

I couldn't let Valentine's Day pass without sharing a card with you.  This one's really quick and easy to make - it's also a good excuse just to play with some watercolours!

Craft Challenge - Hot Air Balloons and Free Printables!

UPDATE! The closing date for this challenge has been extended to Thursday 21st July!

Would you like free printables and to join in with a craft challenge with the chance of winning a prize? If the answer is yes - keep on reading!


I have been working on lots of new hot air balloon themed designs recently (which you may have already seen if you follow me on Facebook or Instagram), so Hot Air Balloons seemed the perfect theme for my first blog challenge!

What is the Challenge?

I would like you to create a hot air balloon themed card, scrapbook page, atc, tag or other craft project made using my printable designs.  You can use the free printables below, or something else you have purchased from my shop...

This hot air balloon digital stamp and spotty patterned paper will be available for you to download free until entries close on 18th July! Download them here. (Please follow the Terms of Use)

If you sign up to my newsletter by 22nd June you will also get 2 bonus printable patterned papers (which will be sent out in my newsletter on 23rd June)!

The digital stamp is approx 4 inches tall (you can print it smaller too) and the spotty paper comes on a letter size sheet (8.5x11 inches), which can also be printed on A4 paper.

You can find more of my hot air balloon themed printables in my shop here.

Challenge Rules

1. Create something on the Hot Air Balloon theme - using either the free printables above or something else you have purchased from my shop.  You can use any other supplies you like in your project.
2. Post your entry onto your blog or online gallery and include a link back to this blog post, so that other people can join in!
3. Enter by leaving a comment at the bottom of this post, with a link to your project - please make sure I can contact you if you are a winner - either via your blog or by leaving your email address.  The link you submit must be for your project post, not a general link to your blog.
4. Your entry must be new and created (by you) for this challenge.
5. Up to 3 entries per person are allowed.
6. The deadline for entries is Monday 18th July 2016 (challenge closes at 11:59pm BST).
7. Winners will be announced on my blog on Thursday 21st July.  There will be 2 winners:
• 1 chosen by me - will win £10 coupon for my Etsy shop hfcSupplies
• 1 chosen at random - will also win £10 coupon for my Etsy shop hfcSupplies
8. By entering the challenge, you are giving me permission to share your entry as an example on my blog, website, facebook page and Pinterest board.

For full Challenge Terms and Conditions and Printables Terms of Use please see here.

For your inspiration, here are some I have made:

I hope that you enjoy taking part in the challenge, I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with! I will be posting all the entries here on the blog, so do check back and see what other people are making.  Share your creations on social media with #hfcblogChallenge and please share a link back to this post so more people can join in!

Happy crafting!

Halloween Card

On Tuesday I released some new Halloween themed printables; I will be sharing some different ideas over the next few weeks on how you could use them - first up is this Halloween card...


Materials used in the card:
144x144mm white card blank
orange paper
black and white card
Halloween night sky scrapbooking paper (from this set)
Witch, cat and 'Trick or Treat?' digital stamps (from this set)
watercolour pencils
black and orange baker's twine
double-sided sticky foam pads
craft glue / double sided sticky tape
silver glitter glue
silver gel pen
black pen
hole punch

How I made the card...
First I prepared the digital stamps for printing; I layered the cat digital stamp so it slightly overlapped the witch image and printed them onto white card.  I decided to test out my Silhouette Cameo cutting machine's print and cut feature and was very impressed with how well it cut around the girl and cat - I'll be sharing a blog post about this another time!  You could cut around the image with scissors or a craft knife too.  The girl and cat were then coloured with watercolour pencils.

I cut a square of the night sky scrapbook paper, smaller than the card blank and mounted it on orange paper, then glued these to the front of the card.


The 'Trick or Treat?' word stamp was printed onto white card.  This was then mounted onto orange paper and I drew a striped border to match the baker's twine using a black drawing pen.  I threaded baker's twine through a punched hole before tying the twine around the card.

Using my Cameo I cut a bat silhouette from black card, you could also cut this by hand.  Drawing lightly around the very edge of the bat with silver gel pen helped it to stand out from the dark background paper.


I attached the witch, bat and 'Trick or Treat?' tag to the card with double-sided foam pads to add dimension.  Finally, I added a little silver glitter glue to the some of the stars on the background paper.

What’s new in my shop? – Update on lots of new printable designs!

I have been designing so many new things recently that I thought it was time for an update, so here are some of the new things I have been adding to my shop…

There are several new sets of printable gift boxes.  Each of the box designs comes as high resolution 300dpi file on a ready to print sheet measuring 8.5 x 11 inches (A4). The completed boxes measure approximately 2.5 x 3.5 x 2 inches (6.5 x 9 x 5cm).  New designs include nautical patterns, London soldiers and buses, aqua chevrons and pink flowers…

I have also been drawing new digital stamps which can be printed and coloured in to use in craft projects like card making and scrapbooking.  The new digital stamps sets include different hand drawn frames, cupcakes, London motifs and woodland animals…

I have been adding to the Nautical themed party printables with some new birthday bunting and an invitation…

Recently, I worked on a design for a photo birth announcement with a London theme for a customer.  It was a pleasure to do, so I decided to create some more designs for photo birth announcements.  Similar to the invitations already in my shop, they come ready personalised with the customer’s choice of text and are sent as digital files for printing as many times as required.  They are also personalised with a photo which I can edit as needed, I can also alter the photo to be sepia or black and white.  The circles pattern design below is shown in ‘Olive’ colour scheme but can be made in other colour schemes too.  The woodland design with the owl is available with a choice 4 different coloured owls.

To see all the my printable designs, past and new, please visit my shop… www.hfcSupplies.etsy.com

Nautical makes - a handmade card and model boat

I had to wait until after Father’s Day before I could show you these because I made them for my Dad!  The card is made from 2 of the images in my new Nautical digital stamp set and one of the patterned scrapbooking papers.  I cut along the waves of the backing paper and layered them with sticky foam pads to make the sea.  The boat and banner digital stamps were printed on card, I then coloured them in watercolours and cut them out.  If you are going to colour with a wet medium like watercolours make sure you print with ink that won’t run!  I used an Epson printer with pigment ink – see this post I wrote a while ago if you want to know more about dye vs. pigment ink.

I also made this little boat - after picturing it in my head I was so pleased with how it turned out!  It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be either, although there were a few tricky bits that I had to practise first.  I cut the hull from 3/4 inch thick wood and shaped and sanded it.  I then drilled a small hole for the mast, which is made from a bamboo skewer.  The sails were hand sewn and attached to the mast with thread.  The sails were made from fairly stiff fabric but to make sure they kept straight I stitched a little eye pin to the corners of each sail and pushed them into the hull.  I also added a little flag made from satin ribbon.

By the way, my Dad really liked them too! :D

Sail away...

Nautical things seem to be very popular at the moment so I’m hoping I’ve picked a good theme for my latest collection of designs!  So far I have made a set of printable scrapbooking papers, cupcake toppers and some digital stamps – I’m still working on other designs so there will be more to come!

The boats, anchors and other illustrations in the paper set were drawn in pencil and watercolours before I scanned them and finished the patterns digitally.

The cupcake topper set (which could also be used as tags or in scrapbooking / card making projects) contains 3 different boats and 3 other designs which can be personalised with your own choice of text.  This example is for a birthday party, but I can do other messages for different occasions too.

This set of digital stamps is something slightly new for me; I’ve made printable collage sheets before but this is my first set of digital stamps / clip art.  There are 6 designs in the set – each comes as a jpg file with a white background and as a png file with a transparent background so they can be printed and coloured by hand or coloured digitally and used in digital scrapbooks.

If you like these designs you might like to see some of the other Nautical things I’ve been pinning to one of my Pinterest boards… http://pinterest.com/hazelcreations/nautical/