Thank you for reading my blog.....

....this is just a quick post to let those of you who read my blog know I will not be on here for a while. My Dad has been taken ill and so I have just booked my flights to go down to Cornwall to visit. He is in hospital and has to have a heart operation which is very worrying. Much as I love my card making that has to come second!!

Sugar Bowl challenge card

Morning all! Well, it's a lovely sunny day here - so I've been indoors making a card!!

This is my entry for the Sugar Bowl sketch challenge. It's using one of my new Sugar Nellie stamps which my lovely husband went off all by his own to the shop and bought me for Easter!! I was very impressed as you can imagine. This image is called 'shopaholic'. I hope he wasn't trying to tell me something!!!

I was trying to decide what colours to use when I remembered this stripey paper I have from the Papermania Spring Burst collection. It seemed the perfect match to the girls shopping bags so I went with a purple and green colour scheme.

Image coloured with whispers brushmarkers and highlighted with twinkling h2o's.

Gems - Anita's gemstone wheels

Lime cardstock - Core-dinations

Black cardstock - Tesco's children's range - good for matting!!

Purple ribbon - Dovecraft.

Thanks for looking!!!!

Creative Inspirations Challenge 4

Dear all,

I hope you've all settled back to normal after the Easter break. I am now 'without visitors' and trying to get back into my routine!!!

This card is for the Creative Inspirations challenge no 4. The challenge was to use two stamped images on your work. I started out with the two main images - the owl and the toadstool stamps -then added a few more small ones - I hope this is okay for the challenge!!!

I fiddled around with loads of backing papers (as you do!) and nothing looked right with the two big images - pattern overkill - so I decided to leave off the patterned papers and add some small stamped images from the same set as the large ones - Woodware Woodland Elements clear stamp set.

This also meant I could tie this challenge in to Clare Curd's current weekly challenge on the DoCrafts website to make a card without using patterned papers - bonus!!

The images are all stamped in black ink, embossed with clear embossing poweder, watercoloured with whispers brushmarkers and cut out. The sentiment is stamped from the CCSR sentiments stamp set.

All edges inked with ColorBox Fluid Chalk in Chestnut Roan. Cardstock from stash.

Thanks for looking. I'm off to make the girls some tea then I'll be back to have a look at other people's blogs - I've missed seeing all the lovely cards you make!!!

My Dad's birthday card!

Hello everyone! Sorry I've not posted much recently (or been on other people's blogs) but I have a friend visiting this week, after my family over Easter and so we've been out enjoying ourselves!!! Off to pick my daughter up from school in a minute and take our dog and the girls to the beach - just thought I'd stop by with a quick post and to show you the card I made for my Dad's birthday yesterday.

Firstly, a big 'thank you' to Sarpreet and Dianne who have given me blog awards. Much appreciated ladies and I'm very sorry I haven't done anything with them yet!!

So, on to the card....





This was using the 'Rory' stamp from Sugar Nellie, coloured with twinkling h2o's. Papers from the CCSR Big One paper pack. I set eyelets around the image with my crop-a-dile and then threaded through some fibres (Grafix Create it! craft ribbon - this was meant to look a bit like a lion's mane, although my husband looked at me like I was a bit mad when I told him that!!!). The sentiment was cut from the CCSR papers again, bordered with some spotty papers cut from the stripey page and then I added some more of the fibres.

Thanks for looking - off to school now!!

New Blog Candy!!

I just realised my blog candy was all out of date - oops!!! I've added some new links - have a look - it's fab!!

Spoon full of sugar challenge card

Well, this card started out as something else!!

My Mum asked me to make a card for a friend's 60th birthday. I then saw that this week's Spoon Full of Sugar Challenge was to do an age card - perfect!! I knew I wanted to do another springy card like I did for my husband's birthday. Then I saw that Clare Curd's challenge over on the DoCrafts website was to use Triple Embossing so I thought I'd use this for the '60'.

I think I must have been using the wrong sort of embossing powder!! I used Heat It Up copper powder (on the black card), embossed three layers of the powder and then tried to push some number stamps into the embossed layer. It didn't make a single mark!!! It had dried straight away. However, I decided I quite liked the resulting embossed copper layer and so I've used this as my background paper instead!!

The chipboard numbers and corners are Papermania, covered with gold and copper ink respectively and then embossed in either enchanted gold or copper embossing powder.

The Happy Birthday stamp is from Clare Curd's Signature Range. The stamp, and all the edges of all the cardstock were inked in black pigment ink and then embossed in enchanted gold powder. I love the blacky gold effect that I got - doesn't show up too well on the photo!!

Thanks for looking!!

Happy Easter!

I hope you all had a good Easter. We had a glorious day here. We have a really boring garden (RAF quarter - bad grass on a big hill!!) so we've been getting lots of flowers out in pots ready for the summer. Now I just need to remember to water them!! In fact it was so warm the girls spent the afternoon running round the garden in their knickers!! A bit different from last Easter when it was snowing all day!

Instead of showing you a card today, I thought I'd share with you the things I made for Mother's Day for my Mum and Mother-in-law, as I just remembered I haven't put them on here yet.

I altered a couple of notebooks by taking the covers off, covering with patterned paper, decorating and then attaching them back on (the tricky bit).

Brown notebook: Papermania papers (CCSR Big One), Snag 'em stamp duo, coloured with pencils, faux stitching added, foam alphamini stickers from the latest DoCrafts goody bag.

Pink notebook: Papermania papers ( I think they came from the spring selection pack last year), Doodlebug alphabet stickers, Papermania stickers, Ribbon - can't remember!!

I also made a couple of triangular parcels with chocolates in. They were made from a rectange of paper sealed at the short end with double sided tape. One end of the tube was also stuck with tape. At the other end I added eyelets with my crop-a-dile filed with sweets and then tied with ribbon or raffia.

Flowerery parcel: Vellum paper from Making Cards magazine, Butterfly sticker - Papermania from the cover of Creativity magazine, Red raffia from Tesco's!

Green parcel: Papers from CCSR Big One paper pack, Daisy sticker from the goody bag, ribbon from stash.

Thanks for looking!!

Hubby's birthday cards

Morning all!! Well it's a lovely day here in sunny Scotland! I hope those of you who have today off work enjoyed your lie in!!!!

Today I thought I'd share with you the cards my girls and I made for my husbands birthday!!

The first card is a springy card I made after two kind ladies on the DoCrafts website sent me the template - thanks very much Leigh and Nike - much appreciated!!!

The stamps and papers were all from Clare Curds Signature Range - stamped in black ink, clear embossed and coloured with whispers brushmarkers. Card stock from stash. Faux stitching added by pricking with a pokey tool and then joining the dots with the fine tip of a brushmarker.

The second card is one I made for my parents to give to my husband. I wanted to make it totally different from the first (it's hard to find one theme for a man's card - two was tricky!!). He loves sailing so I used these large black peel off's I found. I stuck them on acetate and coloured the back with permanent pens. Finally I added a few shell beads I had and a (not very straight!!) border of black glitter glue.

Lastly, here are the cards my lovely girls (aged 4 & 6) made for their Dad!! As you can see, the cardmaking bug has struck here early!!!

Enjoy your Easter weekend - don't eat too much chocolate (oh well, if you must......!)

Sugar Bowl challenge card

I'm back - well kind of!!! I've still got my parents here until tomorrow and with my girls off school and nursery and my husband actually taking a week off we've been out and about doing loads of visits to things. We have lots of gorgeous beaches near us which the girls love. Great fun but not very condusive to card making!!

Still, I've managed to get this card done for the Sugar Bowl challenge. I have to admit, I'm not very happy with it. I mucked about with the colours for ages and I still don't think it's quite right, but I couldn't work out why!!!

The challenge was to do a card for Easter or Spring, so I used my Lola with Bunny stamp. I decided to frame it with punched flowers and that was where my trouble started!! I thought I should have quite a plain background with all the flowers and the image, but nothing seems quite right. In the end I've used some spotty paper from Clare Curd's Big One paper pack (I know I use this a lot but I love it!!!). I coloured it lime green-ish with chalk.

The stamped image is coloured with whispers brushmarkers.

Anita's gems from the mini gemstone wheel on all the punched flowers.

Cardstock and green handmade paper from stash.

Fibres - Grafix Create it! Craft ribbon - I think this was meant to be a kids pack but it looked great!!!

Thanks for looking. I'd be interested in your opinions as I still don't think this card is quite right!!!

CCSR Colour challenge

Well, I've had a really frustrating day trying to sort out problems with things I sold on eBay!!! I've managed to make one card though!! Was also going to make my husband's birthday card tonight and then he went and came home from work early - oops!! I've lots of visitors arriving tomorrow and his birthday is Sunday, so I'm not quite sure how that is going to work out!!!

Anyway, here is the card I made today. It is for two of Clare Curd's challenges - the pink & black colour challenge over on Stampin' Chic and her sketch challenge on the DoCrafts website.

The papers I used were the black and white patterned papers from CCSR Big One paper pack. I cut out the flowers, then coloured them with pink chalk (the dry sort), touched up the edges with pink fluid chalk, sprayed it all with hairspray and then added Anita's Clear Gloss. I was quite pleased with the finished result!! The card is actually a lot pinker than it looks in the photo, but you get the general idea!!

The sentiment is also cut from some of the Big One papers.

The circle shapes were cut with my xCut shape cutter.

Brads & black adhesive stones - Papermania

Cardstock - Craft Central in Inverness (was going to make the whole card blank from this but it was a bit flimsy so stuck it on a white blank!!)

Ribbon - from stash.

Thanks for looking everyone!!! Have a good weekend - I hope to be back at the begining of next week!!