A Clockwise countdown to 2014

Have you had a lovely Christmas? We certainly have! But it's over now for another year and in just a few days time, 2013 will draw to a close and a brand new shiny new year will start! I've been making cards to celebrate - come and see:

This design is based on Stampin' Up's fabulous Clockworks stamp set along with some die cut numbers but I've added elements from other stamp sets too...

... So, for example, I've sprinkled a little Coastal Cabana magic using Gorgeous Grunge, added my favourite arrow from Hello Lovely, used the Hello from Four You and the perfect new year message from Remembering Christmas. It's great fun making collage-style cards - as my daughter would say: "10 out of 10 - highly recommended!"

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

Stamps: Clockworks, Gorgeous Grunge, Four You, Remembering Christmas

Ink: Summer Starfruit, Elegant Eggplant, Coastal Cabana, Pumpkin Pie

Card stock: Elegant Eggplant, scrap of Whisper White

Other: Notecards with matching envelopes, markers, Big Shot, Timeless Type sizzlits alphabet (retired), paper snips, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night,

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

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

Top moments from our Christmas? Of course there are far too many to choose from but I loved it when all my children ganged up together in the kitchen on Christmas Eve to make special truffles for me...

They melted dark chocolate, whipped it up with double cream, left it to set in the fridge and then rolled balls of the mixture in chopped nuts, chopped coconut or cocoa powder - I nearly fainted with pleasure when I tried them!

Then there was the bit when my youngest son, who was already sporting a striking onesie and furry slippers ensemble, unwrapped this frog hat from his uncle...

 and declared his Christmas outfit complete!

And then there was the moment when our spoilt puss looked under the Christmas tree and seemed outraged to discover that there were no pampered pet pouches for her!

At the risk of sounding sentimental, the best bit was spending time relaxing with the people I love best in the whole world (ahhhhh!) Hope you had a lovely Christmas too and are looking forward to a shiny new year.

No holiday would be complete without a moment or two spent playing with my gorgeous new Stampin' Up stash so I'll be back in the next day or two to show you what I've been up to! Happy holidays!

A quick Festive Flurry

If you're anything like me, you're sure to run out of cards and need to produce a load more at the drop of a hat! Well, it's Three Minute Thursday today and I thought it would be a good idea to show you another quick Christmas card:

I'm always very attracted to cards with a single snowflake on them, especially if they have a special feature - like the layering on this one. I used the smallest stamp in Stampin' Up's Festive Flurry set which has defined shapes that work really well for layers.

I stamped the image three times, once on the Soft Sky panel and twice more on spare Soft Sky card stock. Using my  sharp paper snips, I cut out the star shape from one of the spares and the central hexagon from the other, layering them on top of the first stamped snowflake using dimensionals. You may think that cutting things out with scissors is hardly the quickest technique, but these are very simple shapes with straight lines so it really is remarkably fast!

The edges of the card stock were I distressed with my finger nail for a bit of definition and I added a gem to the centre of the snowflake.

I'll link this card up with CASology where the cue word is Snowflake. I always love playing along there although time has been an issue just lately!

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

Stamps: Festive Flurry, Remembering Christmas (sentiment)

Ink: Midnight Muse

Card stock: Soft Sky, Whisper White (for the insert)

Other: Basic rhinestones, paper snips, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night,

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

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

I don't know about you, but there's not even been a hint of snow here in Buckingham so far this winter and not much frost either thank goodness. I've never been much of a snow fan but when the children were smaller, I dutifully got excited when it snowed. I have an abiding memory of getting my daughter all togged up in snow clothes and letting her go out to play in the snow while I got my eldest son dressed up warmly too - only to find that when he was ready, the novelty had worn off for my daughter and she wanted to come back inside!

I have a tutorial to show you tomorrow so do come back and join me then!

Hugs,

A twiney bit of Festive Flurry!

I meant to get this card posted yesterday but by the time I got round to finishing the chores and settling in at the Crafting Square Metre, it was already dark! Oh well, dark evenings are something we're going to have to get used to for a while now that the clocks have gone back and dark evenings make me think of Christmas: cinnamon smells coming from the kitchen, roaring fires, cosy throws and cushions - and definitely a kraft and red colour scheme. Twine is the natural partner to that and since Less is More's challenge this week is to use twine, and a christmas card is required for Sandra's Rudolph Day, I was off! Come and see:

I used Crumb Cake card stock (that's the tempting name Stampin' Up have come up with for kraft!) for my card base and panel. The edges of the panel were swiped with a Whisper White craft ink pad and then I stamped the centre with a folksy snowflake from Festive Flurry in Real Red.

Now for the twine: using my piercing tool, I poked some holes in the snowflake and threaded some linen thread through them. It makes for a rustic, textured effect and some twinkling gems provide a nice contrast.

The card is finished with  and a sentiment from Remembering Christmas which I heat embossed with white embossing powder.

There are framelits which coordinate with the snowflakes in Festive Flurry but if you're not fussed about cutting them out why not have a look at the Snowflake Soirée set? It's one of 25 beautiful stamp sets that have been discounted by 25% as part of Stampin' Up's anniversary celebrations, and at only £16.46 for the cling mount set it's a bit of a bargain! But that's not all - if you use my special code FWRY 6ZXV in my online shop, you could be in with a chance of winning at least £25 of freebies when the promotion ends tomorrow!

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

Stamps: Festive Flurry, Remembering Christmas (sentiment)

Ink: Real Red

Card stock: Naturals Ivory, Very Vanilla

Other: Linen thread, piercing tool and mat, Basic Rhinestones, stamp-a-majig, versamark, white embossing powder, heat tool

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night,

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

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

Customers placing orders of £250+

will get a whopping £65 worth of freebies during October!

While I've been typing this I've been listening to my youngest son playing on his xbox. You never know what you might be getting with him - last week it was "Oh my goodness - there's a sheep in the enchanting room!", this week it's "No! Don't give Joseph a flame thrower!" Do I worry about the impact of gaming on his personality? Er no!

I'll be back tomorrow - hope to see you then.

Hugs,

A three minute Oh Hello for Christmas

The excitement continues after Stampin' Up discounted 25 of its stamp sets by 25% as part of its 25th anniversary celebrations. I've been using some of my favourite sets from the list this week and today, while using Oh Hello for my Three Minute Thursday card, I discovered a new technique by accident! Come and see:

If you stamp a solid stamp over the chevron oval from Oh Hello, the chevron shows through - how amazing is that?! The new-style ink pads are perfect for this with their brilliant coverage.

You may be thinking that the sentiment and fussy-cut chevron don't look very quick but they were! The patchwork chevron is one stamp so it was a case of stamping it in one go, and then it was such a simple shape to cut out with six snips of my sharp paper snips. My top tip with this style of sentiment is to cut your main panel slightly longer than you need it; you can then add your sentiment exactly where you want it using your stamp-a-majig, before trimming it off in a strip using your trimmer and attaching it to your card wherever you like.

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

Stamps: Oh Hello, Remembering Christmas

Ink: Soft Sky, Midnight Muse, Real Red

Card stock: Whisper White

Other: Candy dots, paper snips, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night,

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

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

Customers placing orders of £250+

will get a whopping £65 worth of freebies during October!

If you'd prefer to spread the cost of your crafty stash, but still get

freebies as well as handmade gifts and cards and complementary catalogues,

why not consider joining my Stampers 6 club?

Ironically I never remember what the Remembering Christmas stamp set is called and end up calling it Oh Deer!  Which reminds me of my youngest son - one of his earliest phrases (if you can call it a phrase) was "Oh deed" by which he meant "Oh dear" - which might give you some insight into life in our house at the time!

See you tomorrow,

Three minutes Remembering Christmas

It really is true that I sometimes say to myself "Right Mrs, you've got three minutes: off you go and produce a card!" That's how today's Christmas card happened and I will be making a whole lot more of this design in different colours. Come and have a look:

Oh I just love this wonderful deer image from Remembering Christmas!  And who needs traditional Christmas colours when Old Olive looks so gorgeous with Elegant Eggplant?!

This is one of my favourite Christmas sentiments ever! It's not new - it comes from Delightful Dozen, a set of 12 fabulous sentiments to cover a variety of occasions.

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

Stamps: Remembering Christmas, Delightful Dozen

Ink: Old Olive, Elegant Eggplant

Card stock: Whisper White, Elegant Eggplant

Other: Stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night,

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

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

Customers placing orders of £250+

will get a whopping £65 worth of freebies during October!

If you'd prefer to spread the cost of your crafty stash, but still get

freebies as well as handmade gifts and cards and complementary catalogues,

why not consider joining my Stampers 6 club?

A few years ago my children used to watch a TV programme which consisted of a series of amusing sketches and their favourite, which seemed to recur every week, was 'deer club' where a group of children put on antlers and trotted about through the woods in a group, raising their heads and looking about as if they scented predators and generally behaving like a herd of deer. I was fascinated by this idea! The funniest part was that the children in the sketch would be asked to trendy parties or invited to hang out at the skate park but they would always decline because of 'deer club'. Naturally deer club became an excuse in our own family for the children to get out of doing the chores until one day, deer club just didn't seem to exist any more...

See you tomorrow for a very special project,

A bit of a Festive Flurry

Christmas may seem a very long way off... but time spent preparing now means more time available for fun in December! You could easily make a stack of today's card design. Come and see:

You can buy framelits to go with the wonderful Festive Flurry stamp set which enables you to make all sorts of wonderful projects, but sometimes I like to pare things right back to a bit of simple stamping.

I used just two of the snowflake images to create this design, adding a simple strip sentiment. The stamping carries over onto the inside of the card too for a little extra detail.

Using matt grey ink instead of silver and candy dots in the same colour as the ink gives the snowflakes a contemporary feel. Have I mentioned how much I adore these candy dots? Yes, I thought I probably had!

This card would look great with one of these fancy tags from p.13 of the seasonal catalogue. They're made with the Festive Flurry set too but these stamped snowflakes are cut out quickly and easily with the coordinating framelits dies.

They make great decorations too. Now that would be a great project for December when everything's been done and you're looking for a little creative fun!

Today's card design popped into my head when I saw the inspiration picture at Merry Monday and the challenge at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown to use any colour other than Red or Green.

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

Stamps: Festive Flurry, Remembering Christmas

Ink: Smoky Slate, Pool Party, Night of Navy

Card stock: Whisper White

Other: Corner rounder, candy dots, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night,

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

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

Customers placing orders of £250+

will get a whopping £65 worth of freebies during October!

If you'd prefer to spread the cost of your crafty stash, but still get

freebies as well as handmade gifts and cards and complementary catalogues,

why not consider joining my Stampers 6 club?

I'm still suffering from car lag after all my driving about the country at the weekend. The journey was enlivened by my daughter's chit chat though and her amusing comments on the place names. My favourite was when we were passing Loughborough (pronounced luff-bruh). "Oh look Mummy," said my daughter. "It's Fluffborough! Home of kittens!"

See you tomorrow,