Nearly ready for Christmas

Hi everyone, long time no see. We've been rushing around trying to get prepared for Christmas and I think we are almost ready. Just a few little bits and pieces to get and then I need to write a long list so I don't forget to pack anything when we go to my parents on Friday.

I've recently finished a project for Papercraft Essentials magazine using this Magnolia stamp so as she was sitting on my desk I inked her up again.


I used Mina's fabulous sketch (flipped on its side) on this weeks Just Magnolia challenge and the papers are from a Papermania pack I bought from Hobbycraft recently. The diamond stickles took on a yellowy tone on the brown card which looks a bit odd but apart from that I'm pleased with how this card has turned out. I'm going to enter it into these challenges:

Just Magnolia - Sketch
Allsorts - Anything goes
Creative Card Crew - Anything goes

I'm not sure if I'll get a change to craft again before the big day so I would like to wish all my blog visitors

A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

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A Gem of a Challenge / Truly Scrumptious

Hi everyone. I hope you are keeping warm in your corner of the world. It is still freezing here and the side roads are treacherous. I skidded on my way to work this morning. Luckily there wasn't anything coming the other way at the time as I managed to slide all the way across the road, bounce of the piled up snow and slide back over to the left again. We have more snow forecast for Kent but hopefully it will be very light showers.

I have two cards to show you today as both the challenges I design for have fallen on the same day. The first is for A Gem of a Challenge where we have a fab sketch for you to follow and an optional extra challenge of distressing.


I've used this super cute new stamp from Pink Gem Designs called Andy with Snail. I enjoy making boys cards much more now I have a boy of my own and I know I use these DCWV papers A LOT but they are perfect for a boys card. Andy is coloured with distress inks and the sentiment is also from Pink Gem Designs.

My second card is for our new Truly Scrumptious challenge - the last one of 2010. We have a sketch for your to follow with the optional extra challenge 'frame it' - create a decorative frame around your image.


For this card I have used Kira from Wild Rose Studio. I think she looks like she has a bit of attitude so I chose some funky Basic Grey papers and created a my frame with distress inks and a Stempelglede grunge stamp.

I do hope you can join in on both these challenges and I look forward to visiting your blog soon!

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A Clean & Simple Christmas card

Hi everyone, thanks for visiting today and I hope you are keeping warm in your part of the world. We woke up to snow this morning, just a sprinkling so I headed off to work as normal - big mistake! The roads got worse and worse the closer to London I got and it took me 3 hours to do a 50 min journey. I had to park my car and walk the last part of my journey as I couldn't drive up the very small hill to the office! So I think it will be a day at home tomorrow, desperately thinking of things to keep Thomas entertained.

I had all sorts of plans for my card tonight but instead found myself on the phone for over 2 hours so my crafting time was shortened somewhat. So instead of colouring an image I made a simple card with some gorgeous DCWV Linen Closet papers and a Papertrey Ink sentiment.


I'm going to enter my card into these challenges:

Clean & Simple - Sketch
Colour Create - Robin egg blue, Sea foam green & cream
Totally Papercrafts - Untraditional Christmas
Stampin for the Weekend - Winter

Have a great week.

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Pink Gem DT / Friday Sketchers

Happy Friday everyone! It's been another busy week in our house. I handed in my notice at work and couldn't believe how nervous I was! It's been 15 years since I resigned from a job so I'm a bit out of practice but its done now so there's no going back (gulp). The whole household has had colds so we are coughing and spluttering but hopefully over the worst of it now. And the weather is soooo cold! They have forecast snow for the weekend which I'm really not looking forward to. We're hoping to go to the switching on of the Christmas lights in our local town on Sunday and see the firework display and it will be a real effort to leave the house if there is snow on the ground - I'm such a wimp!!

It was nice to have a bit of time to sit down and make a card this evening (in between watching bits of I'm a Celebrity).


The sweet image is Chloe & Penguin from Pink Gem Designs. She is coloured with distress inks and I used the same colour (Dusty Concord) to stamp the snowflake around the edges. The sentiment is also from Pink Gem Designs and the papers are by Wild Rose Studio. The layout is from this weeks Friday Sketchers challenge.

I hope the weather isn't too bad where you are and you have a lovely weekend.

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Truly Scrumptious - Think Pink

Hello, thanks for visiting my blog today. Blogging has has to take a bit of a back seat over the last few weeks as I've been extremely busy with work and getting ready for when I go self employed in January. I still get the occassional 'wobble' day when I wonder if I'm doing the right think, but deep down I know I am and I will be much happier (and will earn more!).

We have our penultimate 2010 challenge for you over on the Truly Scrumptious blog and this time as well as the sketch the optional challenge is 'Think Pink'.


I made my card last week for my cousin who had a baby girl.

This is one of my favourite Whiff of Joy images and I've coloured it using distress inks. The papers I've had a while and I cut of the info strip so I can't remember what they are. Just a few Wild Orchid flowers and a Wild Rose Studio sentiment and thats it.

I hope you will join in our challenge - the other DT ladies have made some gorgeous cards so please pop over to the blog and take a look.

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Wild Rose Studio Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to THE first ever Wild Rose Studio Blog Hop. During the hop you will have a chance to see many of the lovely Christmas stamps that are available and be in with a chance of winning some gorgeous stamps along the way :-)

If you arrived here from Katina's blog you are going in the right direction. If not you may wish to start at the beginning on Dulcie's Blog

The word you need to collect on my blog is (WILD)

For our hop the lovely Dawny P designed a gorgeous sketch for the Design Team to use and here is my card

I used the adorable Christmas Milton for my card. He is coloured with distress inks and I used plenty of diamond stickles on his Santa suit. The paper is from the Wild Rose Studio Milton Christmas Papers pack. My layered snowflake is made with two Sizzix dies & an X Cut punch.

How would you like the chance to win this gorgeous stamp?


To be in with a chance of winning Christmas Milton, please add your name to the Linky tool at the bottom of this post (or leave a comment if the Linky tool doesn't work!) and then make a card/creation using Dawny P's sketch and enter it into the challenge on Dulcie's Blog. You have until 12.00 GMT on Saturday 27th November to enter.

Don't forget to collect all the words from the DT's blogs along the way!

Now I'm going to send you on your way to Ria's blog to continue the hop. Have a great weekend, enjoy the rest of the DT's creations and good luck with the prize draw.

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Wild Rose Studio DT

Hello, I hope you had a lovely weekend and are having a good week so far. We had Thomas' birthday party on Saturday. We hired a local church hall and booked an entertainer who was fantastic. She came dressed as Thomas the Tank Engine's driver and had the children enthralled from start to finish. Thomas was slightly overwhelmed at times but really enjoyed himself.

I've got lots of thank-you cards to write but tonight I decided to finish two cards I started last week. One is a DT card for next weeks Truly Scrumptious challenge and this is the other one


This is the gorgeous Kira with her kitten from Wild Rose Studio. I've coloured her with a mixture of aqua promarkers and distress inks. The papers were a freebie from a magazine, flowers and buttons are from my stash. The sentiment is from Wild Rose Studio too. I'm going to enter this into two challenges:

Sketch & Stash - Sketch and my new stash is the Kira stamp
Creative Card Crew - Give thanks

We're having a Wild Rose Studio blog hop this weekend with lots of fantastic prizes to be won so please visit again then!

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Truly Scrumptious DT - Happy Birthday Thomas

Hello, thanks for visiting today and I hope your week is going well so far. We have a new challenge for you today over on the Truly Scrumptious blog. This is the sketch we would like you to follow;


And the optional extra challenge is to make a birthday card. I chose the challenge as it is Thomas' third birthday today. I've taken the day of work so we're going to take a birthday cake to playgroup this morning and then its a pizza lunch out with his grandparents.

This is the card I made for him


The image is from Pink Gem Designs and it reminds me of Thomas and our dog Benji. The papers are DCWV Linen Closet and the stars and balloon are Quickutz dies. I decided to put the sentiment next to my image and place the balloon where the sentiment should be.

Pink Gem Designs are sponsoring us this week and the winner will receive this gorgeous Santa Kaya Christmas stamp so I hope you will be able to make a card for our challenge.

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A Gem of a Challenge

Good morning and thanks for visiting my blog. We have a new challenge for you over at A Gem of a Challenge and this month my teamie Christine has designed a fab sketch

And the optional extra challenge is to make a Christmas card using non traditional colours.

For my card I used the adorable Penguin Friends image. I know penguins are meant to be black and white but I stuggle with the Black Soot distress ink as it always looks very grey so I used my aqua promarkers instead and made them brown penguins!


The papers are a mixture of Wild Rose Studio and Papermania and the lovely sentiment is also from Pink Gem Designs.

I hope you will be able to visit the blog and see the rest of the DT's gorgeous work and then join in our challenge.

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Something for the Christmas Tree

I always mean to try to make more crafty projects other than cards but my mojo always seems to escape me. I got the idea for this decoration from the front cover of this months Craft Stamper magazine. One of the designers made a gorgeous Christmas wreath made with dozen of stamped and punched flowers. The article gave me the idea to use some of my paper flowers to make a smaller version that I can hang on our Christmas tree.


I used two Nestability dies to cut a ring from stiff card and then covered it with paper. I started to attach the flowers by wrapping the wire stems around the ring but it looked too messy so I cut all the stems off and glued the flowers instead. Then I repeated the process on the other side and spritzed the whole thing with glimmer mist. Apart from having to wait for the glue to dry it was actually very quick to make and I'm really pleased with the result. I'm going to make a few more and try added some other elements like ribbons and maybe some leaves.

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Wild Rose Studio DT

Hello, thanks for visiting today and I hope you week is going well so far. We had a quiet weekend, dodging the rain on Saturday and then a lazy day on Sunday. We didn't have any trick or treaters knock at our door which mean we were left with a large bag full of treat sized bags of maltesers. Needless to say they didn't last very long!

Last week I received some gorgeous new stamps from Dulcie at Wild Rose Studio. I couldn't wait to ink them up and this adorable fairy is Lily.


She has been coloured with distress inks and I added a thin covering of diamond stickles to her wings. The papers are a mixture of Fancy Pants and Bo Bunny and the sentiment is also from Wild Rose Studio.

I know I'm thinking ahead but wouldn't she be perfect for Valentines day with the little heart seal on her letter?

I'm entering my card into these challenges:

Sketchy Colors - Sketch
Spoon Full of Sugar - Relish to Embellish
Secret Crafter - Anything that Flies

Thanks for looking. I hope to post a picture tomorrow of a Christmas tree decoration I've been making - just waiting for the glue to dry and I'm the most impatient person in the world!

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Goodie Bags

Hello and thanks for visiting my blog. It's wet and windy here tonight but we've had quite a nice day - nice enough to spend a bit of time in the garden picking up the fallen apples and cutting the grass for the last time this year! It's a nice feeling when I can put the lawn mower away for another 6-7 months!! And we have enough apples for about 50 pies and there are more on the tree!!

I don't have a card to show you today but I have started to make the party bags for Thomas' party in a couple of weeks time. I bought some paper bags ages ago with the intention of making some paper bag albums. I haven't managed to make an album yet but the bags have now come in very handy.


The letters are cut with a Quickutz Marisa alphabet and the stars and flowers are also Quickutz dies. The tags are a Sizzix die and I've written "Thanks for coming to my party!" in glitter pen. I've got a few goodies to go in each one and I also plan to make each child their own biscuit iced with their name on it.

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

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Truly Scrumptious - Petals, Pearls & Pins

Thanks for visiting my blog today. It's wet and windy in Kent today - a bit different to the beautiful blue skies we saw on Monday! My husband and I took a day off work today and had a very productive day. We had a big clear up in the garage and took a car full of rubbish to the tip. Then we visited Toys R Us to buy Thomas' birthday present. He's really into Fireman Sam at the moment so we got him a lovely box set with all the characters, a fire station, fire engine, helicopter and ambulance. We had lunch at Pizza Express (another discount voucher!) and then home to do a tidy up in the spare bedroom (my craft room) before picking Thomas up. Unfortunately I'm back at work tomorrow.

We're up to challenge no.44 on the Truly Scrumptious blog. We have a sketch for you to follow with the optional extra challenge of using Petals, Pearls & Pins.


It's been a while since I used a Magnolia image and I love this Tilda sitting and picking the petals off her daisy. She is coloured with a mixture of aqua Promarkers and distress inks. The papers are DCWV Linen Closet and the sentiment is from Personal Impressions. I couldn't find my pins so I added some pearl sprays which look quite similar to pins!

I thought I would share this picture of Thomas with you. I tried to get him to help me make some biscuits on Monday. He was interested for about 30 seconds and then went to get his step and proceeded to wash all his trains in the washing up bowl. This took about 45 minutes and he was soaked by the time he had finished!

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Cute Card Thursday

Well its been a little while since I last blogged. Last weekend I was on an advanced Pilates training course which was really interesting and lots of fun. But being away for the weekend meant I had lots to catch up on when I got back.

I coloured this super cute image from Pink Gem Designs with my aqua promarkers. Now I'm getting used to them I am really starting to enjoy using these pens. I think I might ask Santa Claus to put a few more in my stocking!


The papers are Wild Rose Studio and the lovely sketch is from this weeks Cute Card Thursday challenge. I've used lots of stickles on the trim of her hat and coat and I kept the layout simple.

Have a lovely weekend. Thomas has been invited to a birthday party tomorrow so we will be enjoying lots of jelly & ice cream and birthday cake!!

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Truly Scrumptious Challenge #43

Hi everyone, thanks for visiting today. We have a new challenge for you over on the Truly Scrumptious blog today. There is a sketch for you to use plus the option of making an easel card.

We are sponsored this week by Robyn's Fetish Digi Stamps and they very kindly sent some fabulous images for the DT to use. Unfortunately I'm still having problems with my printer ink bleeding so I wasn't able to use one of their images. I picked this gorgeous LOTV stamp instead as I needed a birthday card for girlfriend.


The papers have been in my drawer for ages and ages so I can't remember what make they are.


The flowers are Prima and the brad in the centre is from Wild Rose Studio. The swirl is a Sizzix die. Here's a close up of this adorable fairy


I shaded the background with chalks which I haven't used in ages but I do like the soft effect they give. I do hope you will join in our challenge this week.

I probably won't get the chance to make another card until next week now as I'm in London on a Pilates course this weekend which I'm really looking forward to.

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I'm a Euro Millions winner!

Unfortunately I'm not the one lucky Brit who won £113 million but our office syndicate did win the grand total of £21.50 last night! So thats £2.15 each - oh I had lovely time last night dreaming about how I was going to spend it all, ha ha!!

I finished this card late last night and he now packaged up and on his way to the lovely Dulcie at Wild Rose Studio with all the other DT cards I've made recently. I thought this super cute Fergus image would make a lovely get well card so I chose some bright and cheerful papers (MME freebies with a recent magazine).


The brad in the centre of the bow is from Wild Rose Studio, as is the sentiment. I'm going to enter this card into this weeks Friday Sketchers challenge.

Now I'm hoping that someone can help me with a technical blogging problem. I like to use Windows Live Writer to do my posts as the pictures appear bigger than if you use blogger. However, I can't lay out the text properly, it doesn't seem to recognise when you put spaces between your paragraphs. I've downloaded the most up to date version but it's still doing it. If anyone can help I'd really appreciate it.

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A Gem of a Challenge

Hello and thanks for visiting today. It's the 8th of the month which means it's time for a new Gem of a Challenge.

This month the challenge has been set by me! There is a sketch for you to following the option of using Autumnal Colours of red, orange and brown.

I had some lovely Basic Grey Indian Summer papers in mind for this card but they didn't really work well with the super cute Kaya with Flowers so I chose some MME Bloom & Grow papers instead; no red or brown but plenty of orange!



Kaya is coloured with distress inks and then mounted on a nesties label die cut. I added some pearls to the centre of her flowers and coloured these with a peel off pen so they match her dress. The rest of the DT girls have made some gorgeous cards with my sketch so I hope you will join in the challenge. You have a whole month to take part and if you use a Pink Gem image you could win your choice of two Pink Gem stamps.

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Wild Rose Studio DT

Hello and thanks for visiting my blog today.  We’ve had a lovely family day today.  First we took Thomas swimming.  He is doing so well and gaining confidence so quickly.  Today he was jumping off the side of the pool and didn’t really mind if we were there to catch him or not!  Afterwards we had lunch at Pizza Express (gotta love those £1 pizza deals!) followed by a trip to the supermarket and then a relaxing afternoon at home when I even managed to squeeze in some crafting time.

The result is this card which will be winging its way to Dulcie very shortly.  The image is called ‘Wedding Day’ and I decided she was a modern bride so gave her a lilac dress!

 

I added some pearl earrings and a necklace and some stickles for a bit of bling.  She is framed by some gorgeous sparkly fabric paper which is mounted on white bazzil.  I used the same fabric paper again for the panel over-lying the lilac Wild Rose Studio paper which covers my card base.  The ribbon is from Wild Orchid Crafts and the sentiment is also from Wild Rose Studio.

 

Here is a close up of the pretty bride.  I added a bit of colour to her cheeks so she is definitely a blushing bride!

I used the layout from this weeks Sketch Saturday challenge so I’m going to enter this card in their prize draw.

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Hello, and thanks for popping by today. It's the weekend at last and I hope you had a good week and have lots of nice things planned for the next two days. The forecast here is rain, rain and more rain but we have a 1st birthday party to go to this afternoon and then tomorrow we will take Thomas swimming. He's doing really well and gaining in confidence every time we go. Hopefully he'll be doing well enough by Christmas that we can start taking him to lessons in the new year.

I've been lacking a bit of mojo recently so thought I would try something a bit different. Christine has made some fabulous recipe cards which you can see on her blog, so I thought I'd try one. I made some muffins this morning that turned out really well so I've used that recipe for my first attempt.


This is the very first Magnolia stamp I bought and I still love her. The papers are by Nitwits and I'm going to have to stock up on some more as I love them. I used a Martha Stewart punch for the border and doodled the stitching around the recipe.

The instructions are on the back of the card.



I've seen a recipe box on EBay which I plan to buy so hopefully I'll keep on making these cards as I really enjoyed making this one.

I'm going to enter this into this weeks Just Magnolia challenge - Anything Goes.

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Truly Scrumptious - Snowflakes

Hello and thanks for visiting my blog today. It feels like I'm getting less and less time to spend crafting at the moment. I'm planning to go fully self employed from January 2011 so I have a lot of organising to do which seems to take away my crafting time. It will be worth it in the end though and hopefully I'll be earning more and will have more spare cash to spend on stash!!

We have a new challenge for you on the Truly Scrumptious blog this week. This is the sketch


With the option of having snowflakes on your card.

It wasn't until I photographed my card that I realised I had forgotten to put a sentiment on the front of the card! I did remember snowflakes though; they are on my DP and a large Sizzix snowflake on the inside. I've used a Pink Gem image 'Skiing Snowgirl' which I've coloured with aqua promarkers and distress inks. Unfortunately the sparkle on the image doesn't really show in the photo.


The bow holds the card closed and I've used some more of the DP and a Papertrey sentiment to decorate the inside.


I hope you can join in our challenge this week and I'm going to try and get to visit all your blogs later this week I promise!

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Celebrating 43 years

Hello and thanks for visiting today. This is going to be a very quick post as I've still got a lot of jobs to do and I need an early night for an early start tomorrow morning.

It's my mum & dad's wedding anniversary on Thursday and they will have been married 43 years! I picked layout #4 from the Clean & Simple blog and used some very simple papers teamed with embossed card. The brad is from Wild Rose Studio.


Hopefully I'll be back later in the week with another card and a slightly longer post!

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Fabric flowers

I'm going to post this card quickly before my internet connection drops out again. It was happening all yesterday evening and again this morning so fingers crossed I will get to the end of this post before it happens again!

A few weeks ago I bought some calico fabric with the idea to do something creative with it. I had a go at making some flowers last night and I'm quite pleased with the result. The flower needed a shabby/vintage card to go on so I came up with this;


The papers are from K & Co and I've been stroking them for a while, unable to cut them up! the lace is from Wild Orchid Crafts and I've also attached a couple of skeleton leaves behind my fabric flower. The metal brad is also from K & Co. Here's a close up of the flower. I did spritz it with glimmer mist but its not that clear from the photo:


I'm going to enter my card into these challenges:

Friday Sketchers - sketch
ABC - distressing
Cute Card Thursday - Tweet and a flutter

Have a lovely weekend. It's a fabulous day here so we going to make the most of the sunshine while it lasts.

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Truly Scrumptious DT

It's Wednesday which means it's time for another Truly Scrumptious challenge. We have a nice simple sketch for you


With the optional extra of using blue & green. I had some lovely paper all ready for this card but then my Wild Rose Studio DT stamps & papers arrived and I just had to use them!



Christmas Millie is coloured with distress inks and I added plenty of stickles to her hat, coat trim and around her feet. The punched strip is made with a Fiskars punch and the snowflakes are an XCut punch (I think). The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink.

The rest of the DT have made some gorgeous cards and we have a fabulous prize from Wags 'n Whiskers so please hop over to the challenge blog and join in.

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Clean & Simple

I finally feel like I've caught up after our holiday. There is a huge pile of ironing still waiting to be done but I can hide that away and pretend its not really there!

Thomas had two of his friends come to play this morning. I never knew that three 2 year olds could create so much mess and make so much noise. The only time they were quiet was when they were eating. It's lovely to see them growing up together and I really hope they will remain friends as they get older.

Onto my card and before our holiday a lovely blogging friend ordered some Papertrey stamps for me. I love this Boards & Beams set and this weeks Clean & Simple sketch was perfect to try them out.


I coloured the house with distress inks (Brushed Cordroy, Walnut Stain, Pumice Stone, Weathered Wood & Scattered Straw). I cut out the image and mounted it using sticky fixers onto some Kraft paper which the lovely Christine sent me. The gingham paper is by Nitwits and the sentiment is also from the Boards & Beams set.

I'm really enjoying these simple layouts. I'd like to build up a stock of cards to sell to my Pilates clients and these designs are perfect.

Have a lovely weekend. We're going to a barbeque tomorrow but the forecast is bad so I think it will be an indoor event! Summer is definitely over.

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