Floral mail

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Welcome to another fun challenge at The Flower Challenge! This month it's hip to be square as our theme is to make a square card featuring those gorgeous florals.

 

It's hard to believe it's March already and that here in the UK, we'll be celebrating Mothers Day on the 10th of this month. How fun to open an envelope and find a card inside featuring another envelope bursting with pretty flowers!

 

I stamped and fussy cut the flowers from The Greetery's Pine Blossom - which is a Christmas set but when has that ever stopped me?! Next, I cut the envelope from Mama Elephant's Botanic Envelope die set, as well as the Inside and Out leaves dies from The Greetery, which I sponged with green inks. I arranged the flowers and leaves inside the envelope and stamped it with a Mothers Day sentiment from Uniko. 

 

For the background, I stenciled a panel using blue ink and Funky Fossil's Fancy Trellis stencil, then layered a piece of thin mustard envelope paper over it. To finish, I positioned the flower filled envelope in the centre.

Right - now it's over to you! Do hop over to The Flower Challenge blog to see all the wonderful samples made by the talented design team, then come up with a creation of your own feasturing flowers on a square design.  When you're ready to share your card, you can use the Linky Tool which you'll find at the bottom of the post. You have until the 25th to join in - enjoy the challenge!

CHALLENGES

I'm joining in again at Allsorts with this envelope of spring flowers as Lorraine's theme is Spring; Spring has also sprung over at the Four Seasons Challenge so I'm linking up there too; I'm also linking up at Inspired by where I was inspired by the inspiration photo with its gorgeous envelope of blooms; and Color Dare #590 where the trio of colours are Lagoon, Clover and Honey Butter.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

We've been spoilt with some moments of sunshine in the last few days, but cloud is building up again as I type and I'd better get those golden girls out before it rains! They have caught on to the fact that I always seem to be looking for water at the end of a walk and have enthusiastically joined in with the task of finding it:

 

Not sure if they read the memo all the way through though...!

Sending hugs,

Spring flowers for Mothers Day

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Welcome back to the Tic Tac Toe Challenge! Today, it's my turn for the privilege of coming up with a board to inspire you 8 different ways :)

 

There's a real spring vibe about the board because I'm so excited about everything coming up in the garden! I went for the diagonal from bottom left: Use a Stencil/Flowers/Sentiment to create a card for Mothers Day which is coming up in the UK on 19th March.

 

I got out some favourite spring flower stamps from Clearly Besotted and used masking techniques to create the flower grouping. I watercoloured the flowers, adding detail with coloured pencils when the image was completely dry.

 

To finish, I positioned an arch stencil from The Greetery over the group and sponged blue ink through it. Once the stencil was removed I stamped the greeting in soft grey ink and added clear dots for that 'fresh as the morning' feel!

 

Okay, so now it's your turn! Which row or column will you choose? Or are one of the diagonals calling to you? Do hop over to the Tic Tac Toe Challenge blog to check out the amazing inspiration from the design team. You'll find the Linky Tool at the bottom of the post and you can use it to share your own creation with us. I'm looking forward to seeing how you use my board!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking up at We Love Stamping which has a Spring is in the Air theme this month; also Hand stamped Sentiments where I used the pretty sketch; I'm also joining in at Retro Rubber where Anything Goes using stamps older than a year (the tulips and daffs were released in 2018 and the blossoms in 2019.) And I'm going for the Anything Goes option at Allsorts this week.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Sorry I've been a bit AWOL recently. What with regular visits to the dentist with my youngest son, wedding planning and sorting out Eva and her pals' social lives, I've been the busiest of bees. My allotment is calling for attention, the garden needs a good tidy up and as for the house - well, shall we say that a spring clean is definitely on the cards!! And talking of cards... I have a few made that need blogging and am trying to come to terms with some new technology. Help! Whelm is happening!

 

Perhaps I should take a leaf out of Eva's book and have a relaxing spa day...?!

Sending hugs,

Left overs for Mothers Day?

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Today I decided to tip out my scraps box! I wanted to make a mothers day card and, after a little rummage, selected these items:

Those watercoloured flowers were left over from THIS box card which I made for a lovely friend of mine last year. Later on in the year, I bought the pads and mats that would enable me to use my dies to emboss. I used one of the Nordic Frame dies from The Greetery to see how it worked and this embossed panel was the result. It has been sitting in the snippets box ever since but was perfect for the card I planned today. Here's what I made with my snippets:

I started by masking off the bottom of the embossed panel and sponged a little blue ink above it to make a background, leaving the negative space as a 'ground'. The bottle, from The Greeteryy's Bottled Up, was stamped on the snippet of white card, cut out and glued onto the panel.

 

I fussy cut the flowers and leaves and arranged some of them over the neck of the bottle, popping the front daffodils up on dimensional pads.

 

I couldn't for the life of me find a mothers day sentiment in my stash but then I had a bright idea - the magazines would be full of adverts for mothers day! Sure enough, I found a white on black mothers day text, cut it out, mounted it on black card and added a pink, die-cut 'happy' using a Lawn Fawn birthday die. Clever huh?!!

EDITED TO ADD AN AWARD

This card won March's Flower Challenge! I felt very honoured!!

CHALLENGES

The Flower Challenge has a fun challenge this month - to make a card featuring flowers and to Use Scraps. My card was made with snipppets apart from the card base so I'm linking up there, and also with The Snippets Playground where all cards entered must be from snippets. I'm also joining in at We Love Stamping where Anything (stamped) Goes with optional Spring theme; also Stamping Sensations where we are invited to Stamp Something For Spring. I'm also linking up with a new-to-me challenge called Four Seasons where Anything Goes Spring.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I do love dear old England with its silly weather! Two days ago Eva and I were drenched with torrential rain every time we went out but today, spring has definitely sprung. It was so hot that Eva, who is still sporting a winter coat, spent a lot of time reacquainting herself with the river.

 

She was with a friend, a cheerful black lab named Otis, who is a genius when it comes to finding balls in the river. No ball today but he DID manage to come out with this squeaky carrot which he generously shared with Eva!

Sending hugs,

A sunny spring day

Hello, crafting friends!

There are plenty of spring vibes going on here. It's windy and the clouds are scudding across the sky but the sun is shining and highlighting all the spring bulbs and even a first hint of blossom too!

This card is a celebration of spring flowers glowing in the sunshine. I started by masking a border on a thick card base with sticky notes and blending yellow ink through Clearly Besotted's Sunny Day stencil, up from the bottom left hand corner. While the masks were in place, I blended a little blue ink down from the top, avoiding the yellow as I didn't want any hint of green in my spring sky!

The flowers and leaves are from the large Country Garden die by Gemini. I brought out all my tiny snippets of blue, green, yellow and pink card stock and positioned the die to cut individual elements. I trimmed them as required, and removed the centres of the flowers and replaced them with green centres. Also, as I wanted the flowers and leaves to remain intact, I used tape on the back of them to hold all the bits in. I stamped the sentiment onto the card base and after finding a pleasing arrangement for the flowers, glued them into position.

CHALLENGES

At The Paper Players Claire has chosen a Spring theme, so I shall link up there; I'm also joining in with the Anything Goes theme at Happy little Stampers Dies challenge and Happy Little Stampers Stencils challenge; I'm also nipping over to the Snippets Playground as this card cleared a whole lot of snippetys!

AND IN OTHER NEWS

When you see spring flowers AND blossom out, it really is spring isn't it!

We've done it! We've got through the winter!

Sending  hugs,

The colours of spring

Hello crafting friends!

It's my third week Guest Designing with the talented ladies at Just Us Girls and it is such a pleasure! I was bowled over by all the fabulous techniques you used for last week's Black Background challenge and really enjoyed popping over to visit you all. This week, there's a fabulous colour challenge:

You can use any shade of yellow, blue and green! What do these colours say to you? They yelled SPRING at me, so out came the spring flowers:

I chose tulips and daffodils from Spring Tulips and Spring Daffodils by Clearly Besotted and used the flowers from Stampin' Up's Soft Spring to make Muscari. Parts of the stamps were inked up with a green marker and stamped along the bottom of a card panel, finishing by turning the stamp upside down and using the stems as 'grass'.

A little Shabby Shutters distress ink was sponged over the stems and then the flowers were coloured with alcohol markers.

I searched high and low for a happy mother's day greeting - I swear I had one! - before giving up and making my own from other sets, using a stamping platform and some sticky notes to mask parts of the stamps off. To finish, I sponged in a 'sky' with Tumbled Glass distress ink then used a Heffy Doodles stitched rectangle die to cut out the centre of the card before replacing it.

Now it's over to you! What will you create using these colours? The regular team at Just Us Girls have got loads of wonderful ideas to inspire you - pop over to have a look and you can link up there too :)

EDITED TO ADD AN AWARD
What a lovely surprise to find that this card won an Honourable Addict award at Addicted to Stamps and More!

CHALLENGES
I'm also linking my card up with The Flower Challenge where it's Anything Goes this month; with Stamping Sensations where the theme is Spring Flowers; and with Addicted to Stamps and More, where I'm playing along with this month's Anything Goes challenge.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
For those of you that think I'm getting a bit ahead of myself with this card, Mother's Day is on March 22nd in the UK this year. It is always celebrated three weeks before Easter Sunday and is linked to the Christian festival. It was called Mothering Sunday and was all about returning to the 'mother church' (the one you were baptised in or your local parish church) before it became associated with the idea of honouring mothers. Read more about it here including why it was also named Pudding Pie Sunday in some areas, or Sunday of the Five Loaves - and possibly still would be in this house if we could actually buy any food from our local supermarket!

Stay safe and well, and I'll see you soon,

Happy mothers day with Nature's Perfection from Stampin' Up

The Stampin' Up yellows come into their own at this time of year as crafters think about spring and Easter. Crushed Curry, Daffodil Delight, So Saffron... they're all such a lovely, positive shades and with this surprisingly warm, spring weather we're having, I'm embracing it too! Come and see:

The large flower from Nature's Perfection looks great in yellow and I've made a whole bunch of them for Mothers' Day by stamping several on the card panel and then adding another fussy cut one, popped up with dimensionals.

• You can choose Nature's Perfection free as part of the Sale-a-bration promotion! Find out more here.

The flowers look pretty watercoloured in shades of yellow. I stamped the outline with Crushed Curry, painted in the shadows with Daffodil Delight and finished off with a wash of So Saffron. The leaves are punched out with the Bird Builder punch - such a useful addition to your punch collection!

I'll be linking this card up with Less is More where the challenge is to make a card using yellow and green.

BUY THE SUPPLIES TO MAKE THIS CARD NOW!
Click on any item to be transported to my online shop!
Don't forget you'll get a free Sale-a-bration item for every £45 you spend

Nature's Perfection Wood Stamp Set FREE with SAB	Crazy About You Photopolymer Stamp Set £22.95	Old Olive A4 Card Stock £6.25	Crushed Curry Classic Stampin' Pad £4.95
Daffodil Delight Classic Stampin' Pad £4.95	So Saffron Classic Stampin' Pad £4.95	Aqua Painters £12.95	Paper Snips Scissors £8.95

My shop is open 24/7 so you can buy Stampin' Up products from me any time, day or night.

If you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm happy to help.

You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

It's Mothers Day this Sunday in the UK but never mind mothers for the minute - today is all about sons! It's my youngest son's birthday today and although he's doing all the usual sleep overs and what not at the weekend, this day after school is reserved for family feasting and games - so I'd better get on with the preparations then! If you'd like a peek at how I wrapped his presents and made his card, do join me again tomorrow when it will be another fabulous Stampin' Up Artisan blog hop day! Hope to see you then,

Mothers' Day with From the Garden and ribbons by Stampin' Up

What comes in all the (Stampin' Up!) colours of the rainbow, is inexpensive and makes your projects look gorgeous? The beautiful 1/4" cotton ribbon! Come and see:

Here's a quick and pretty Mothers' Day card I rustled up using three colours of the ribbon as a background strip. This gives a really pretty soft look and just makes you want to touch it!

I  topped my ribbon background with garden-themed pretties which you'll find in the From the Garden stamp set. I love the little garden markers and all the gorgeous little  images in this set (AND there are coordinating framelits!) 

• Mothers' Day is just a few weeks away in the UK, on 15th March!

BUY THE SUPPLIES TO MAKE THIS CARD NOW!
Click on any item to be transported to my online shop!
Don't forget you'll get a free Sale-a-bration item for every £45 you spend

Melon Mambo 1/4" Cotton Ribbon £5.50	Marina Mist 1/4" Cotton Ribbon £5.50	Pear Pizzazz 1/4" Cotton Ribbon £5.50
From The Garden Photopolymer Stamp Set £13.95	Melon Mambo A4 Card Stock £6.25	Melon Mambo Classic Stampin' Pad £4.95

My shop is open 24/7 so you can buy Stampin' Up products from me any time, day or night.

If you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm happy to help.

You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

It's lovely to see all the spring bulbs coming up in the garden isn't it. Just think - it won't be long before I'll be able to type without gloves on!

See you tomorrow,