Cheers me dears!

Hello, crafting friends!

 

We had fun celebrating my youngest son's birthday earlier this week and I thought I'd show you the card I made for him. It was designed to make him smile and I hope it might give you a chuckle too!

 

The sentiment is supposed to be read in a cockney accent. When I used to live in London, I might hear someone say: "Who's that geezer with the dodgy tache?" meaning: " Who is that gentleman with the inappropriate moustache?" Anyway, enough of that...!

 

The drinks are from an older Clearly Besotted set called Raise a Glass. I stamped them on off-cuts of watercolour paper, coloured them with my Arteza Watercolour Brush Pens and fussy cut them. In case you were wondering why the boozy card, my son is not a dipsomaniac but IS a master cocktail maker!

 

The sentiment was made using The Greetery's Slim Alphabet dies which I cut from the matte black packaging my Arteza Brush Pens came in! Waste not want not! I arranged everything on a thick card base, making the letters dance about as if someone had (ahem) imbibed rather too many of the cocktails! I tried to make the cocktails realistic - see if you can spot a Martini, a Margarita, an Old Fashioned (he told me off because it's the wrong glass!), a Singapore Sling, a Cosmopolitan and a Bellini! 

I forgot to take a photo of the snippets before I cut them out but here's a photo of the cuttings!!

 

CHALLENGES

I am of course romping off to the Snippets Playground with my cocktail shaker in my satchel - will tell Miss we're doing scientific experiments! The Male Room's theme is Food & Drink so I'm joining in there too.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

My son kindly brought his cocktail shaker up at Christmas and had great fun devising cocktails for our enjoyment. I took a photo of some of them:

 

... unbelieveably delicious! I would share the recipes but naturally they remain a secret known only to the genius behind their conception ;) The decoration in the second photo was supposed to be frosted cranberries but I hadn't been able to find any so my poor son had to make do with a frozen cherry. Other great artists don't have this kind of nonsense to contend with do they?!!

Sending hugs,

Aged like fine wine

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Welcome to another fun Thursday at the Tic Tac Toe Challenge :) I couldn't wait to get my teeth into this fabulous board dreamed up by Felicita:

 

Are you excited by all this inspiration?! I went for the top row Masculine/Die Cut/Beer or Drink to make a card for a wine lover's birthday.

 

I started by die cutting an arch shaped card base. I used the largest of The Greetery's nesting arches die set, positioning the die just off the edge of the fold. Next I stamped the vine leaves and grapes and coloured it with coloured pencils and added the sentiment in a very dark purple ink. The stamps I used came with a magazine that was a gift from my youngest son, bless him.

 

 

I used another of the arch dies to create a stencil and sponged inks into it to create a background for my image. Finally, I stamped a wine glass from Clearly Besotted's Raise a Glass and coloured it with pencils and a white acrylic paint pen.

 

Okay, now it's your turn! Which column or row will you choose this week? Or will you opt for one of the diagonals? Whichever you choose, do hop over to the Tic Tac Toe Challenge blog and check out the inspiration from the rest of the team. You'll find the Linky Tool at the bottom of the post and can use it to link up your own creation. We can't wait to see what you make!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up at Happy Little Stampers Die Challenge where Anything Goes using dies and Happy Little Stampers Birthday Challenge which must be birthday-themed; also at Addicted to Stamps and More where the challenge is to use Dies and/or Stencils; DD's Fresh Picked theme is all about fruit and definitely NOT about flowers so I'm linking up there too!

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

The Hen Party is happening this weekend and the house, instead of being the serene, beautifully decorated backdrop I had envisaged, is a riot of lists, boxes of decorations and food preparations! Also can anyone please explain to me why, when there is a requirement to keep a house clean and tidy, menfolk (who will remain un-named) instantly feel a compulsion to pot up some plants in the kitchen because it's raining outside, or to find something in the back of a cupboard, taking all other items out and arranging them at random around the hall?!!

Sending hugs,

To absent friends at Christmas

Hello, crafting friends!

This year, there is a possibility that some people will be missing the usual crowd at Christmas, and a toast to absent friends and family was the idea behind today's card.

I started by masking the bottom off a card panel and sponging soft pink ink through Funky Fossil's Funky Circle stencil, fading it out towards the edges. The mask was swapped to the top of the card panel and I sponged the same ink across the bottom to create a 'ground'. The panel was trimmed with a stitched rectangle die by Heffy Doodle and mounted on dark pink card stock.

The glasses and bubbles from Clearly Besotted's Raise a Glass were stamped onto the background and I added colour with alcohol markers. The finishing touches were a bow from WPlus9's Silver Bells on one of the glasses, shimmer on the drinks courtesy of a Wink of Stella pen and some gems.

CHALLENGES

Every year in October, Stephanie and Lauren from Jingle Belles raise money for breast cancer research by donating $2 for every card linked up to their Pink Christmas Card challenge so I'm linking up there. I'm also joining in with The Christmas Kickstart Challenge where the theme is also Pink Christmas.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Eva is, I'm glad to say, on the mend and is getting lots of TLC. She did suggest that extra snacking might be an effective convalescent treatment but I vetoed that idea firmly. She might have become a little gloomy after that but luckily she found the clean laundry and made an interesting arrangement of socks up the stairs which cheered her up no end!

Sending hugs, 

Winter Wear for summer

Hello, crafting friends!

When I bought Winter Wear by Concorde & 9th, it was an indulgence. I knew I could make winter woolly Christmas cards with it, but I like my stamp sets to work harder than that! Well, it turns out that with a little doodling, it becomes a very versatile set indeed and one that has given me HEAPS of fun!

The ladies in the set are the top part of a face with beautiful hair, and they are designed to be used to peep above a sentiment. But it really doesn't take much artistic skill to doodle in the bottom half of the face and some shoulders - the mouth is the trickiest bit. I stamped the specs that come with the set and turned them into sunglasses, coloured my lady with alcohol markers and cut her out.

It's her birthday, so I gave her a pair of pearl earrings. She needed a beach to lounge about on so I masked a square shape on a card base and sponged in a simple sky, sea and sand. I thought she could do with a treat while she's waiting for her pals to bring the cake, so I stamped her a cocktail from Clearly Besotted's Raise a Glass. Cheers!

I'm having a bit of fun combining sentiments from different sets at the moment, and this one uses the banner from Concorde & 9th's Hello Sunshine Turnabout, 'wishing you a happy' from WPlus9's Silver Bells and 'Birthday' from Uniko's Wild. For a little tropical flavour, I decorated the banner with some tiny flowers from Raise a Glass.

CHALLENGES
I'm going to link up with Double D Challenges where there's a fabulous beachy mood board and the theme is Let's Go To The Beach; Ellibelle's Crafty Wednesday Challenge where the theme is Summertime; Seize The Birthday, where I'm sticking to the Anything Goes challenge; and a new-to-me challenge site Challenge Up Your Life where the theme is Vacation Mood.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
If all this beach talk is making yyou feel like a nice cool dip, you're not alone...

... the beach may be out, but Eva and her pal Jasper are happy with a river party :)

Hope you are all keeping safe and well.

Hugs,

Peace on the beach

Hello, crafting friends!

After a win at the fabulous CAS on Friday challenge, I've been invited to Guest Design with the lovely ladies there. *waves hello* The theme this week is

Summer 

Since there's no chance of me going on holiday this summer, I've gone to fantasy holiday land! Come and see:

A peaceful spot on an empty beach, glorious sunshine, a pile of books, the clink of ice in my Strawberry Daiquiri... YES PLEASE! Sorry, I didn't mean to shout but it does sound like the ideal place to unwind. In reality of course, Eva would be with me and would be scampering in and out of the sea in a very unrestful way and shaking cold salty water all over me!!!

I used one of Lawn Fawn's Stitched Hillside Border dies on speckled card stock for my sand and a pale blue card stock for the sky. This was masked with a sticky note and a sea inked in with a sponge. I added a sunshine from Concorde & 9th's Hello Sunshine and used a Heffy Doodles Stitched Rectangle die to cut them first into a rectangle, then to trim it into a square.

I made a beach towel out of a piece of striped washi tape and then assembled the rest of my elements - the cocktail is from Clearly Besotted's Raise a Glass, the books from Waffle Flower's Books and Coffee and the sunglasses from Paper Smooches' Sunny Side Up. I coloured everything in with alcohol markers, fussy cut them and attached them to the card.

Finally, I found a sentiment which worked perfectly with the shape of my sand: it's from Fly With Me by Clearly Besotted and it made me very happy!

Okay, it's over to you now! What does summer mean to you? I hope you'll join in with us and link your lovely CAS creation up here. There's some amazing talent on the CAS on Friday design team and you'll find some fabulous inspiration here too :)

CHALLENGES
I'm joining in at Time Out where the code word is Peaceful and the Beach/Ocean theme at The Sisterhood of Crafters.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
Eva doesn't need a beach to go swimming. She has a very effective water radar and is always diving into undergrowth and finding hidden streams.

When she gets home, she likes to be rinsed off and rubbed down with a towel. After that, she's more than ready for a square meal. Once that's eaten, she checks to see if I'm good for any chews or other treats but, if not, she settles down for a nice snoozle. This is usually in an area where I have to step over her to leave the house because then she knows if I'm going out or not :)

Hope you are all safe and well.

Hugs,