Wishing you a happy 2013

Hello! I hope you've had a wonderful Christmas. We're still enjoying our break but I thought I'd put my nose round the door to wish you a happy new year with a card.  It features the Happy Hour set which ties in nicely with Less is More's challenge for the festive period - Drinks. Come and have a look:

How about this for a delicious cocktail of colour? Rich Razzleberry, Summer Starfruit with a dash of Lucky Limeade! Yum!

I expect you can see how I created the drinks: the glass on the right was stamped first and masked while I stamped the other two, and of course my stamp-a-majig came in very handy to get everything exactly where I wanted it! The drinks were stamped again onto a scrap of card stock using Summer Starfruit ink and the gorgeous patterned 'liquid' cut out and glued to the Rich Razzleberry glasses. TIP: when you have a round shape that needs cutting out, don't forget your circle punches - they're more accurate than cutting freehand and take a fraction of the time.

And here's another of my hybrid sentiments - the thank you is from Sassy Salutations and is combined with part of a great sentiment from Happy Hour. I'd love to take the credit for this but I think my stamp-a-majig has to step forwards and take another bow!

Here's what you'll need to make this card
Stamps: Happy Hour, Sassy Salutations
Ink: Rich Razzleberry, Summer Starfruit, Lucky Limeade
Card stock: Whisper White, Rich Razzleberry, Summer Starfruit
Other: 3/4" circle punch, markers, 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 +44 (0) 1280 820593.

We've been having a great time here - I love having my children off school! We all joined in with cleaning and decorating the house, went visiting relatives and exchanging presents, and made festive food together. One of the most popular activities was using the left-over marzipan from the Christmas cake to make petit fours which obviously revived playdough memories for the children.

We had a laugh over the scary pineapple and the strawberry that was the same size and me getting all muddled up and calling them plus fours (which are those funny breeches golfers wear!) but I think some of those fruit turned out beautifully!

Happy new year to you for Tuesday and I'll see you soon.
Hugs,

The Happy Hour wreath

The tree is up in our house and things are beginning to get very Christmassy indeed! I'm busy wrapping presents and writing greetings in the cards - and there are one or two I haven't posted here yet. Here's a bit of fun I had with Happy Hour for example:

The little holly stamp from the set makes a fabulous wreath. I stamped it in Gumball Green, added more greenery with the little fir sprig image from Lovely as a Tree and dotted on berries with a marker. The sentiment tag was given a bit of interest with piercing - one of my favourite embellishments at the moment.

I  gave the wreath a bakers twine bow and a touch of sparkle with Cherry Cobbler Dazzling Details - two fantastic ways to pep up a card and for less than a fiver for both, now that's what I call a bargain!

Here's what you'll need to make today's card
Stamps: Happy Hour, Lovely as a Tree, Teeny Tiny Wishes
Ink: Gumball Green, Always Artichoke, Cherry Cobbler
Card stock: Very Vanilla
Other: Dazzling Details and bakers twine in Cherry Cobbler, Essentials paper piercing pack, 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 +44 (0) 1280 820593. Check out current special offers here.

I seem to have spent quite a lot of the weekend in the supermarket this weekend. While I was there I picked up the store magazine called 'Real Food' which my daughter came across while helping me unpack the bags. "Ah - Real Food!" she said. "None of this pretend food you've been fobbing us off with!" The cheek! 

I'll be back with some little boxes tomorrow - see you then!

Easy Events Christmas tag card

The brilliant 52 Christmas Card Throwdown site is continuing its mission to get us prepared for the festive season in good time and this week the challenge is to use Pearls on a Christmas card. I knew exactly what I wanted to do: there were some tags left over from my Snowflake Season Simply Scrappin' kit and I'd had the idea of stamping festive foliage on them. Come and have a look:

I used the Christmas branch from Easy Events to stamp my mistletoe on the tag and embellished with Basic Pearls - I love the lustre on these! The leaves were coloured in with a Gumball Green marker

The tag was tied up with Cherry Cobbler seam binding, before mounting with dimensionals onto a panel embossed with the Perfect Polka Dots folder.

The eight diverse images in this set come with sentiments attached but I cut mine apart and mounted them on the edge of the block so that they're even more versatile. On this card though, I opted to use my current favourite sentiment from Happy Hour.

Here's what you'll need to make this card

Card stock: Whisper White

Stamps: Easy Events, Happy Hour

Ink: Real Red, Always Artichoke classic inks and a Gumball Green marker

Other: Perfect Polka Dots embossing folder, Big Shot, Basic Pearls, Snowflake Season Simply Scrappin' kit, Cherry Cobbler seam binding

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and have them delivered straight to your address in the UK, France, Deutschland, Nederland or Osterreich. 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 +44 (0) 1280 820593. Check out current special offers here.

I was curious about the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe so I looked it up.  Did you know that when a couple kiss they should take one of the berries off the bunch and that when all the berries have gone it's supposed to be bad luck to do any more kissing?! We've never used mistletoe as a decoration as I've never seen it growing wild around here; we stick to holly and ivy instead, and we certainly don't need a bunch of leaves as an excuse for a kiss!

See you tomorrow!

A sparkly Happy Hour

It's been another of those hectic weekends so I'm only just getting round to posting my Less is More card today. The theme this week is Glamour and Glitz - and what a shame Mandi is still away sorting out her new business because, as Chrissie says, it's just her thing! But Jen is back from Egypt so we get to be inspired by her gorgeous samples as well as Chrissie's.

I was a bit spoilt for choice on the sparkly front - should I choose rhinestones, dazzling diamonds glitter, metallic embossing, the brushed silver or gold card stock, my die cut snowflakes...?  In the end I opted to use just a pinch of the brilliant (no mess!) silver glimmer paper. Come and have a look:

Happy Hour was one of the first stamp sets to catch my eye when the new catalogue was launched. I love how graphic it looks with the patterned drinks in those beautifully shaped glasses. Today though I opted to fill the glasses with elixir of Christmas cheer instead - that's where the glimmer paper came in!

I stamped the glasses on the back of my glimmer paper and cut out the drink part, then glued those onto the stamped glasses. These were cut out and mounted onto card stock which had been scored to provide a 'grounding'. To finish, I added a few fussy cut embellishments from the Happy Hour set...

... and one of its fun sentiments. I really like the way this one fits the shape of the glass next to it.

Here's what you'll need to make this card
Stamps: Happy Hour
Ink: Real Red, Pool Party
Card stock: Whisper White
Other: Markers, silver glimmer paper, Simply Scored, stamp-a-majig, paper snips
I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and have them delivered straight to your address in the UK, France, Deutschland, Nederland or Osterreich. 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 +44 (0) 1280 820593. Check out current special offers here.

So, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that it's now only 29 days until Christmas day - and we need to be posting things considerably earlier than that! Yesterday at lunch, the children were laughing at me for saying that time seemed to be whizzing by. "I know!" said my eldest son. "It seems like only yesterday it was Saturday!" I frowned at him. "But wait!" he added, while the others fell about laughing. "It WAS Saturday yesterday!" Those bad, bold children had better watch out as Santa only comes for GOOD children!

I've still got loads of ideas for Christmas cards and I'll be back tomorrow so hopefully see you then!
Hugs,