Putting your craft skills to work is a great way to add one-of-a-kind personal touches to any special occasion. In our household, we're busy preparing for a wedding and being a crafty pair, my daughter and I decided to incorporate some handmade details to add that extra pizazz to her special day. One of the projects we're tackling is the bonbonnieres. Hers will feature a handmade polymer clay tag with a sentiment on it. It's a big undertaking to make 100 so to speed things up, we made a mould from silicone rubber. But before we get into making the mould, we created a master tag by following Marie Segal's tutorial from Art from my Heart. Marie suggests looking in the Mexican aisle for the alphabet noodles she uses to create her sentiments. In Australia, I found them in the Italian aisle. But no matter where you are in the world, look for something like San Remo's Soup Pasta . Begin by conditioning the clay and then place it between the wooden stir sticks and roll......

Ahoy me maties..... there's something a bit fishy going on today! Starfishy, to be precise! One of the items I had to prepare for the Glass House resin workshop kits this weekend is a batch of polymer clay starfish. It's really hard to come by the real thing these days so a while back I made a mould of a tiny little starfish and began casting my own. Actually, it was a two step process - I didn't really like the original starfish shape. It was too rigid and a bit too small. So I cast a starfish from that mould and then set about manipulating it into a slightly larger, and much more interesting starfish. I turned this one into the mould I use for these great little starfish. But it's a fiddly little piece to get out of the mould so today I want to show you not only how to get it out but also how to give it a bit more personality before baking it. I use beige and white Sculpey mixed together in roughly equal quantities and then pinch off small balls. Roll the ball into a ......

Isn't that a catchy title?!! It's the tagline on the tourist brochure for the Royal Australian Mint and I think no visit to Canberra would be complete without a visit to The Mint. How's this for a staircase? Go on, take a closer look...... Can you see the coins? On closer inspection, you can see that the risers are completely filled with 5c coins! Now, take another look at the whole staircase. Notice how all the coins are tumbling down from the top of the staircase to fill the risers from the bottom up. How neat is that! The staircase leads to the viewing gallery where you can watch the coins being made and learn all about the coin making process. The first part of the process is really low tech and it occurred to me that it is similar to how I'd produce a design in my own studio. It starts out with an artist who sketches the design on paper and then carves it into a plaster disk the size of a plate. This is painstakingly refined until the design is perfected. Now, I m......

It's time for some Friendly Plastic eye candy today. You've seen some of the jewellery pieces I made using the demo samples from the Brisbane Paper Crafts Festival but many of you have asked how you can use Friendly Plastic in your papercrafting projects. Well, let me share some of the things that I like to do. For the first one, I've used cookie cutters to cut some letters from a marbled strip of Friendly Plastic and layered them on a textured strip of gold. Adding texture is one of my favourite things to do with Friendly Plastic Designer Sticks. You can either stamp into it with a rubber stamp or press a texture into it as I did. This one is a silicone texture mat from Krafty Lady. I've layered the Friendly Plastic embellishments onto a piece of stamped acetate which I've coloured with Pinata alcohol inks... the vibrant colours certainly are eye popping! Fun in the Sun To add to the fun of the card I tied a polka dot ribbon around the embellishments before assemb......

As a card maker and paper crafter, I love to create embellishments to add to my projects. And being on the Krafty Lady Design Team I have access to some of the best moulds available for that very purpose. These moulds are wonderful: apart from the fabulous array of designs, and the fact that they are made from silicone so nothing sticks to them, they are also very flexible, making demoulding a breeze. I've used these moulds to cast every kneadable or pourable medium I could lay my hands on including soap, wax, polymer clay, air dry clay, resin, Opals and UTEE. They've stood the test admirably and are as good today as they were when I first used them, literally hundreds of casts ago. So today I'd like to share my method of moulding with Friendly Plastic using a heat gun. So let's begin: Gather all the materials you'll need: Friendly Plastic, Krafty Lady art mould (I've used AM247 Leaf Med), Tim Holtz Tonic scissors (because they cut Friendly Plastic so easily), ......

For all you Friendly Plastic fans out there here's a couple of techniques you might like to try. FaveCrafts.com has just uploaded these projects to their extensive craft library along with full instructions. The first card, called Three Kings , involves casting Friendly Plastic into Krafty Lady Art Moulds. Friendly Plastic and Krafty Lady Art Moulds are a match made in heaven. The flexible silicone makes demoulding a breeze. Look at the fantastic detail the Friendly Plastic has picked up. The second card, Unique Florals , combines the marbling technique with cookie cutters to create the interesting floral embellishments. This card uses both the marbling comb and a needle tool to blend and marble. Click on the card names to take you directly to Fave Crafts website where you can print out the images and instructions. I'll also be a guest blogger on the Fave Crafts blog in the coming weeks sharing a little about my work with Friendly Plastic so stay tuned for an update....