A Christmas farewell

It's always sad to say goodbye to my favourite stamps but I must put them away as my job is to show you all the lovely things in the current catalogues. I've used three different stamp sets today, all on the Retirement List and all available, as I'm typing this, until the end of this month or until stocks last.

I made the card for the 52{Christmas}Card Throwdown where there's a colour challenge this week: Red, Brown and Cream or White. Come and see:

This was a really fast card to make and there wasn't a sponge in sight for the background! I started off by smearing my Whisper White craft ink pad over a panel of Crumb Cake card stock, more thickly on the bottom two thirds to make snowy fields, and more sparingly over the top third for the sky. The winter grasses were stamped in Early Espresso over the snow - I used Autumn Days and Greenhouse Garden for this.

The robin is made with the Two Step Bird punch, using a simple technique I came up with ages ago - I made a video tutorial of it that you can see here.

Here's the sentiment from one of my all-time favourite Christmas sets, Season of Joy. And have you seen the snow? Another fabulous use for my white Watercolour Wonder crayon - I love how useful these are.

Here's what you'll need to make this card
Stamps: Greenhouse Garden, Autumn Days, Season of Joy (all retiring)
Ink: Riding Hood Red, Early Espresso classic inks, Whisper White craft ink
Card stock: Crumb Cake, Riding Hood Red, Whisper White (for the bird)
Other: Two Step Bird punch, Whisper White Watercolour Wonder crayon, stamp-a-majig

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and have them delivered straight to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593. Click here to view my regularly updated lists of retiring stamps and accessories, some at up to 40% discount. 

I can't believe we've been back from holiday for only a week - it feels like forever! I loved the east coast of Kent and we'll definitely be going back there. It's steeped in history and there are lots of unspoilt medieval towns, such as the town of Sandwich (or Sandwiches, as my youngest son insisted on calling it - as in: "Let's go to Sandwiches today!") There are plenty of cobbled streets and narrow alleys and we were amused by this street name. We imagined there being some heated arguments when they were thinking up names for it, culminating in slammed doors and people saying "Fine then! If that's the way you want it, we won't call it anything at all!"

I've just realised I meant to post a card using Perfectly Preserved today! If you were looking for it and feeling a bit bewildered, I do apologise and it'll be here tomorrow instead...

Hugs,

Greenhouse Garden gift presentation

I have been meaning to  join in with Crafty Cardmakers for ages and now seems like a great moment... the challenge there this week is to make anything except a card and I've just made a box for my niece's birthday! I bought her a pretty little polka dot top with a peter pan collar (which I couldn't photograph to save my life!) and here's how I presented it:

I made a box using my Simply Scored using Daffodil Delight for the base and this beautiful tone-on-tone designer paper from the Beyond the Garden range for the lid. I added a matted panel to the lid to give it a bit of strength. Do you want to know my secret for making effortless boxes with my Simply Scored? When using the imperial board, you need to start with a piece of card stock any size for your base and a piece of card stock or designer paper for your lid that is cut 1/16" larger both widthwise and lengthwise. (For example a box base 3" x 4" will need a lid cut 3 1/16" x 4 1/16"). Score both the box base and the lid the same measurement in from the edge all the way round and assemble. The lid will magically fit like a glove every time!

The papers are double sided and this is the other side of the lid. I lined the base with orange tissue paper to pick out the background of the design and folded it over the blouse.

This pretty flower from Greenhouse Garden was stamped onto Whisper White card stock and cut out, then turned into a sticker using a corner of a Multipurpose Adhesive sheet. I've used it to seal the tissue paper closed. This was the moment I was going to show you the top but the photo I took made it look like something from the rag box so I won't! I will show you the tag though:

It's one of the tags from the Two Tags Bigz die which I scored several times before stamping with flowers from Greenhouse Garden and a leaf from my new Bright Blossoms set and decorating with a flower-shaped button. The gift was finished by tying the box up with double ribbon. I always think a box makes a gift so much fun to open!

Here's what you'll need to make today's project:

Stamps: Greenhouse Garden, Bright Blossoms

Ink: Pumpkin Pie, More Mustard, Daffodil Delight, Certainly Celery

Card stock: Daffodil Delight, Whisper White

Other: Beyond the Garden designer paper, Simply Scored, More Mustard grosgrain ribbon, Certainly Celery 1/8" taffeta ribbon, multipurpose adhesive sheets, orange tissue paper from stash

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you (except the tissue paper) and can have them delivered to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

My youngest son has just put my white cushions on the floor - it has been raining all day and people have been traipsing in with wet shoes so I am justifiably miffed. "Please pick those cushions up off the floor!" I said sharply. "Sorry!" he said huffily. "I'm only learning how to do the splits!" What a bad mother I am, quashing his creativity! How on earth is he going to be able to run away and join the circus if I don't let him practise the splits on my white cushions? I have a washing machine don't I?!

Do join me again tomorrow when I'll be here with something dotty!

Hugs,

Greenhouse Garden emboss-resist

Well it's been all go here today on the first day of the holidays but I've found a moment to rustle up a little something for this week's Less is More Lucky Dip challenge (where the lovely and extremely talented Jenny is guesting today!) The challenge is to use the inspiration picture from Design Seeds and here's what I've come up with:

Those gorgeous pink flowers attracted me so I thought I'd use my two-step Greenhouse Garden flowers and go for a bit of emboss-resist. I stamped the solid flower first, then the line image in a darker shade of pink, before colouring the centres with my Certainly Celery marker. The flowers were covered in versamark using a versamark pen and then heat embossed with clear embossing powder. This made them waterproof so I was able to sponge in a Crumb Cake background and add grasses which I stamped using the thin stem image in my Greenhouse Garden set.

The sentiment is from the Petite Pairs stamp set which is made up of sentiment pairs designed for stamping inside as well as outside cards.

Here's what you'll need to make today's card:

Stamps: Greenhouse Garden, Petite Pairs

Ink: Pretty in Pink, Melon Mambo, Certainly Celery, Always Artichoke, Crumb Cake, Basic Grey

Card stock: Whisper White

Other: Certainly Celery marker, versamark pen, clear embossing powder, heat tool, corner rounder, stamp-a-majig

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and can have them delivered to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

Today, while we were having lunch, I complimented my husband on the coral jumper he was wearing and told him it was right on trend. Just then, the phone rang and he joked that it was probably Gok Wan calling. He disappeared into the hall and we heard him pick up the receiver and say "Hi Gok!" and then apologise to the caller and try to explain that he was only joking... What hope do my children have with this trace of madness in the gene pool?!

Thank you for coming to look at my card today. I'm looking forward to seeing how everyone else has been inspired by the challenge picture so I'll see you soon!

Hugs,

Thank you with red, white and blue flowers

I know it's usually a three minute card on my blog on Thursdays, but during the month of August I shall just be posting when I can. Three Minute Thursday will be back in September though. Now, I've not missed a single Less is More challenge since it started and even though I'm supposed to be dealing with the holiday laundry and the ironing mountain is threatening to engulf us, I can't let it go...

The challenge this week is to make a card using the colours of your country's flag. Well, the red white and blue of the British flag was calling to me so I've snuck in a quick one! Come and see:

The idea was to mount a red floral panel onto the tone-on-tone Patterns designer paper in Pacific Blue, then have that on a white card base. I used the fabulous 2 step stamping set Greenhouse Garden for the flowers and got quite carried away!

Aren't the flowers gorgeous? These 2 step sets have solid images and line images to go with them which you stamp over the top using a stamp-a-majig. I usually stamp the line image in a darker shade of the solid colour and it really gives them a 3D feel. The background is sponged in and I added blue leaves - a little crazy I know, but fabric designers do this all the time!

I always like to show you the sentiment but this one turned out rather dark and I have a lowering suspicion that I didn't clean the stamp properly when I last used it... naughty Vicky!

Supplies needed for this card:

Stamps: Greenhouse Garden, Baby Blossoms, Sincere Salutations

Ink: Real Red, Cherry Cobbler, Riding Hood Red, Pacific Point

Card stock: Whisper White

Other: Patterns designer paper (brights), markers, stamp-a-majig

You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

It was so quiet in our house yesterday. I think the family were suffering from car-lag! Or perhaps they just needed a little time alone after being together for a week - there's nowhere to be alone in a caravan. Which reminds me of the ad for the film Alien all that time ago: 'In space no-one can hear you scream'. Well, in a caravan everyone can!

Thank you for dropping in today. I'm really hoping to be able to catch up with you soon!

Hugs,

MMM using French Foliage and Greenhouse Garden

I took a look at the Make Your Monday challenge site today, as I've been rather enjoying Jacqueline's floral challenges, and this week there's a sketch. I have to admit that I was rather daunted by it at first as it seemed quite layer-heavy - which isn't my style of card making at all! - but I had a little think about it and came up with this card:

I decided not to use designer paper for my background, choosing instead to mask off the cross shape with strips cut off a post-it note, and sponge a soft design over the top using Crumb Cake and Old Olive inks. I've probably said before that there isn't a day goes by without me using Old Olive ink! I am still using the same pad I bought three years ago, I have never re-inked it and it's still going strong!

All the stamps in my French Foliage set that AREN'T leaves were used to stamp this background! To underline the soft effect, I used a piece of vellum for the central panel of the card, cutting a border for it using my spiral border punch and curling up the corners.

Have you seen the leaf spray? It's a sizzlits die exclusive to Stampin' Up called Little Leaves and I love it! I teamed it with three of my favourite flowers from the two-step stamping set Greenhouse Garden. The flowers are clear-embossed so they're all glossy in real life and they're finished with the tiny self-adhesive pearls.

Supplies needed for this project:

Stamps: French Foliage, Greenhouse Garden, Pocket Silhouettes (sentiment)

Ink: Old Olive, Crumb Cake, Early Espresso, Marina Mist, Not Quite Navy, versamark

Card stock: Whisper White, vellum

Other: Little Leaves sizzlits die, spiral border punch, clear embossing powder, basic pearls

You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

Whenever we go to fairs or sales I always have a look on the bric-a-brac stalls to see if there are any good board games as they can be a fun way of spending a rainy afternoon. At the school fair on Saturday, I was lucky enough to spot a game of Articulate for the bargain price of £1. It's a great game where one person describes the word on the card using words (and without saying the actual word!) and their team guesses what it is. We couldn't wait for a rainy day to get stuck in so I can report that it's perfect for our family, which ranges in age from 10 to 50, and we all highly recommend it!

Thank you for coming to visit me today. I always appreciate you spending a little of your time with me and would love to return the visit if you leave me a comment!
See you tomorrow,

OLW59 - using Greenhouse Garden and Nature Walk

You may be wondering whether you're in the right place, but your eyes don't deceive you - Crafting Clare's Paper Moments is a French Foliage-free zone today! Don't worry, I'm not so fickle as to have gone off it already! It's just that I've been waiting for the fabulous One Layer Wednesday challenge to come out and, when I found that it was to use this picture as the inspiration for a one layer card, well, it didn't exactly shriek leaves to me! Here's what I made:

I don't know quite why (!) but I decided to use the remains of a top note cut-out to use as a mask which I held over my card base while I sponged a background inside with So Saffron and Old Olive inks. I've used my favourite Confetti card stock with those beautiful speckles in it.

The white flowers from Greenhouse Garden were stamped on top of this and embossed with white embossing powder. I really like the misty look of them! The stalk from the set was added randomly in Old Olive and then came the Nature Walk plant, which I coloured with Daffodil Delight and Old Olive markers before stamping repeatedly.

To finish I defined the white flowers with markers and added a sentiment using my stamp-a-majig. This was one of those cards which started with me wondering what would happen if I just... and then ended up like this!

Supplies needed for this project:

Stamps: Nature Walk, Greenhouse Garden, Sincere Salutations

Ink: So Saffron, Old Olive, Whisper White Craft ink

Card stock: Confetti Cream

Other: Top Note die, markers, white embossing powder

You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

This week, my 10-year old son went to a science fair at the 'big school' his older brother and sister attend. When he got home I asked if he'd enjoyed his day. It was brilliant, he told me - he'd met his sister's friends at lunchtime! I told him that sounded great, but what about the science aspect of the day? He then launched into an animated monologue about how this cool guy had made a ball of flame on the end of a stick and it had exploded! He added that he was thinking about buying some hydrogen and some nitric acid on ebay. He then disappeared outside to play, leaving me mentally picturing the charred remains of the family home...

Can you believe it's Friday already? We have a packed programme of cricket, shopping expeditions, summer fairs and tennis tournaments scheduled, so fingers crossed for the weather! I hope you have a lovely weekend too, whatever you have planned. Thanks again for all your support - I really appreciate my followers, your visits and comments, and hope to see you here again very soon.

Coordinated gift set using Greenhouse Garden

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you'll know that I LOVE a coordinated gift set! (If you look at the bottom of my right-hand side bar, you'll find my index under the heading Labels - just click on 'coordinated gift set' to see sets I've previously posted.) Today, I'd like to show you one I made for a friend's birthday:

Here's the box containing her gift... hmm, what could it possibly be...?!!!

The box is a standard base and lid made out of Whisper White card stock. I decorated the lid with another piece of Whisper White, stamped with a floral design using the Greenhouse Garden stamp set and mounted on a Night of Navy panel using dimensionals. A strip of organza ribbon passes under the floral panel and ties on both sides with another strip adhered to the bottom of the box base.

The floral design is stamped in blues - Tempting Turquoise, Not Quite Navy and Baja Breeze. Greenhouse Garden is a two-step stamping set, so each flower has an 'overstamp' which I added with Night of Navy ink using a stamp-a-majig. I love the depth this gives the flowers. The darker flowers are finished with a large self-adhesive pearl in their centres, while a Night of Navy marker defines the others.

Here's a close-up showing how the ribbon fastens. It looks pretty but of course its main function is to hold the box closed!

When the lid is taken off - you can see the gift is wrapped in tissue (I bought mine from a local market stall.) I like to seal the tissue closed with a sticker that coordinates with the design on the lid of the box. To make the sticker, I stamped the Not Quite Navy flower on an adhesive address label and cut it out with a circle punch. There's another of those self-adhesive pearls in the centre of the flower. What IS in the tissue?!!!

Another feature of the box is a place to rest fingers when removing the lid. I used a 1/2" circle punch to cut semi-circles on either side of the lid to create these.

This is a card I made to match the box. It was only a prototype - I felt that the double ribbon feature was a bit excessive on the card and made a much more CAS one for my friend who is a very elegant person! Sadly, I couldn't get a photo of it as I lost the light!

So what IS the gift inside this box? Well, I can reveal (since the box was opened at a delightful little dinner party last Friday evening) that the gift was the gorgeous Sanded background stamp. My friend is a keen stamper who makes gorgeous CAS cards with lots of individual touches. She doesn't yet have a blog but I promise I'll let you know when she does as each of her creations is a must-see!

Thank you so much for spending your time here with me today. I'll be back tomorrow when I'll be showing you something I made with those Sale-a-bration poppies again. I hope you can join me!

Three Minute Thursday -with Tart and Tangy

Good Morning! It's Three Minute Thursday here but, more importantly, it's Chinese New Year! This is an enormously important celebration for Chinese people all over the world and I'd like to send everyone my best wishes for this year of the rabbit.

So, today's three-minute card is a Chinese new year card. I cheated a little because I don't have a Happy Chinese New Year stamp, so I started timing the card after I'd printed the sentiment.

I chose the citrus image from Tart and Tangy because tangerines and oranges are often given as gifts at this time as the Cantonese words for them sound the same as the words for luck and wealth.

This card was made for my daughter's Chinese teacher - but then I realised that she teaches Mandarin, not Cantonese. I'm sure she'll know! And then I realised that I'd got so carried away with my design that the card didn't have any rabbits on it...

...So then I thought I'd add a rabbit inside the card and obviously that took the card way over three minutes! All in all, Three Minute Thursday has turned out to be a bit of a disaster time-wise today! But, on the other hand, the initial card design would be useful for summer invites and notecards so perhaps you'll overlook it this time...

Here's how to make this card:

• Cut an 8cm square piece of Whisper White card stock.
• Stamp a sentiment in the centre of the card stock using a stamp-a-majig for accurate positioning. TIP: Blocky sentiments look good with this design - I used the Fathers' Day sentiment from Occasional Greetings but Happy Birthday from Afterthoughts (hostess) or one of the sentiments from On a Pedestal would work really well too.
• Stamp the sentiment onto a post-it note and trim to size. Use this to mask the sentiment on the card stock.
• Stamp the citrus image all over the card stock using Pumpkin Pie ink. Now sponge More Mustard ink over the whole area using a sponge dauber, paying particular attention to the edges of the mask. Remove the mask.
• Cut a 9cm x 18cm piece of Cherry Cobbler card stock. Score and fold in half to make a card blank and attach the stamped image to the card front.

Supplies

Stamps: Tart and Tangy, Occasional Greetings

Ink: Pumpkin Pie, More Mustard

Card stock: Cherry Cobbler, Whisper White

Other: Cherry Cobbler marker

Since I've already blown the three minutes, and anyway I'm in a Chinese New Year mood, here's another celebratory card:

I've been told that chrysanthemums in various shades of red are also big at Chinese New Year so I thought I'd use these two-step stamping flowers from Greenhouse Garden on this card. Have you noticed how much I use these self-adhesive rhinestones at the moment? I love them!

Here's a close-up of the sentiment. I used my computer to print the numbers because I haven't got my set of numbers yet (I really need them but something pretty always tempts me first!) The 'be' is from a sentiment in Just Believe!

Well, now that I'm in a thoroughly Chinese mood I think I might plan a Chinese feast for later. Happy Chinese New Year! Have a great day!