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,

Left overs and hugs

Hello, crafting friends!

 

I can't even begin to explain how much fun I had today! Some Blogland challenges had inspired me to take a look in my patterned paper drawer and the first thing I saw was the Simple Stories Christmas pad I'd bought to make some last-minute 'patterned background and bold die cut sentiment' cards last year. There were some whole sheets left in the pad but there were also some off cuts and some little journaling cards which I thought I might use to create some non-festive cards. Come and see:

 

CARD NUMBER ONE

 

I started trimming some coordinating strips which I put together in an L shape on a card panel. The large heart, which I found on one of the journal cards, was fussy cut, stiffened by stacking it up with snippets of white card, and popped up on the panel. I added another heart, die cut from a mustard snippet and an enamel heart.

 

The 'hugs' sentiment was cut using the Greetery's Slim Alphabet dies. I thought it would go nicely with the heart theme :)

 

 

CARD NUMBER TWO

Instead of going for the blue and red with mustard accents, this time I focused on the warm mustard with red and blue accents. I LOVE the patterns and muted colours in this pad!

 

 

The mug of flowers was fussy cut from a journal card and I added layered die cut hearts and a sentiment banner fussy cut from another journal card. 

Here are some of the snippets I used (I added more as I went along plus white snippets). Sadly I ran out of time as I would definitely have enjoyed making more of these!

CHALLENGES

I fell in love with Kim's gorgeous sketch at Freshly Made Sketches, and used it for both my cards; I used Patterned Paper on both, so will enter these at Double D where that is the theme; X is for Xtra Hearts at The Alphabet Challenge so I'm linking up Card One there; I'm taking my mug of flowers to The Snippets Playground - I shall give the flowers to Miss Di to cheer her up and then nip up to the treehouse and fill it up with hot chocolate! Liz said something about Baileys... I don't know what that is but it sounds delicious!!

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I tend to walk the golden girls in the park at the moment because it is mostly flooded. They are thrilled with this and I can let them off to zoom around in the water because there are very few people around, and those there are tend to have dogs who are also careering about! We saw a man looking thoughtfully at the football pitch, which is completely submerged. "Looks more like a water polo pitch doesn't it!" he said to me. And then went off into peals of laughter at his own wit!

Sending hugs,

Celebration in the playground!

Hello, crafting friends!

 

There's a new challenge starting in The Snippets Playground today - and it's a special one: Miss Di has been mistress of the playground for 12 jolly years! To celebrate her amazing milestone, Head Prefect Sarn would like to see us submit homework using snippets as usual but with an extra theme this time of Celebration.

 

Well that's easy - who better to celebrate than Miss Di herself and how better to celebrate than with a card made just with dies?! We all know that Miss loves the colour pink so I had a rummage through my pink snippets folder and brought out a new die, Woven Cane from The Greetery. I don't know what got into me getting this folder as I'm not blessed with a great deal of patience and of course it needed all the little bits poking out, not to mention trimming to size as it's designed for an American A2 card size - AND I couldn't find any double sided adhesive sheets so had to use glue!! I do love the look of it in pale pink layered over a darker pink though and am already thinking of other colour combinations :)

 

Then came more die cutting and a bit of punching! I'd saved a piece of gold foil gift wrap from Christmas which I glued to a snippet of white card. From this gold piece, I cut the letters to spell 'celebrate' using The Greetery's Slim Alphabet dies and some stars using a retired Stampin' Up punch. I punched more stars out of a dark pink snippet, as well as a die cut 'you', and finally cut a stitched label out of another white snippet. Once everything was cut, I arranged everything on the label and attached it to the background with dimensional pads.

 

I added one more touch: a jade green enamel heart, as a disruptor colour, but also as a nod to our lovely Jules who ran the playground before Di, and who always incorporates a heart in her designs!

 

Here are the snippets I used this time - gold foil gift wrap, a spoilt card base, pink snippets :)

CHALLENGES

I'm off to the Snippets Playground with some champagne and my homework; I'm also dropping in on Darnell at the NBUS Challange as my Greetery die is Never Before Used Schtuff.

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

There are so many bugs going around at the moment and I'm sad to say my Dogmobile has succumbed! I tried to start it last week and there was a lot of coughing and spluttering but not a great deal of action, so it had to be sent off to the garage to be fitted with a new battery! But MUCH worse is this little poorly pudding:

 

Poor Lulu has cut one of her pads. She keeps telling me she's PERFECTLY okay and is there any chance of going out hunting rabbits? But I'm afraid she has to be rested and the paw bandaged for protection. She can go out for very short walks, but only on soft grass, and must be kept on lead so she doesn't rampage about. It's been a week so far and it's probably going to take at least another week to heal. She hates being left at home when I walk Eva but I am playing games and doing loads of training with her so she doesn't go completely crazy.

 

Hope your 2024 has kicked off better than ours!

 

Sending hugs,

Playing with plaid

Hello, crafting friends!

 

It's a Tic Tac Toe Challenge day today and Betty has come up with a great board:

 

 

What I love about these boards is that the ideas in each box can be adapted for almost any occasion. I chose the top row: Red/Patterned Paper/Die Cuts and, since I'm growing my Christmas card stash, used it to make a festive card.

 

While rooting about in my designer paper drawer earlier in the week, I came across a snippet from a gorgeous pad of plaid paper - a much appreciated gift from a lovely friend. I glued it to a card panel and then trimmed the panel down with a stitched rectangle die from Heffy Doodle. The 'to the world' part of the sentiment was stamped in red ink under the plaid panel and I made the 'joy' part from the Greetery's Slim Alphabet dies. Each letter was cut several times from offcuts of red card and stacked together for dimension.

 

Next I brought out lots of white offcuts and cut curvy brackets using The Greetery's Noted die set, and lots of pine branches and berries using the Holiday Foliage die set by Flora and Fauna. The brackets were positioned around the word joy and I coloured the foliage and berries with ink and sponge daubers adding snow with an acrylic paint pen. I made a swag out of these, curving it around the sentiment.

Right! It's your turn now! Which column or row will you choose this week - or will you opt for one of the diagonals? Do hop over to the Tic Tac Toe challenge blog and check out the gorgeous sample my team mates have made to inspire you. You'll find the Linky Tool at the bottom of the post and can use it to link up your own card. Have fun!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up with Happy Little Stampers Die challenge where Anything Goes; I'm also nipping back to Jingle Belles with another entry for their Pine Trees or Branches challenge;

AND IN OTHER NEWS

We're having funny old weather at the moment! It's warm and sunny most of the time but it will often rain overnight, which makes it humid and plays havoc with my hair do! I am deeply envious of a certain natural blonde...

 

 

...who can get her hair wet, leave it to dry naturally and it always looks fantastic!!

Sending hugs,

A snippety nativity

Hello, crafting friends!

 

With all the focus on my daughter's wedding this year, normal crafting patterns have gone out of the window, but I realise that my task from now on is to enlarge my festive card stash!

 

This card was made using the plain side of Funky Fossil's Arched Window stencil, masked at the bottom to shorten it - and at the sides to prevent ink from smudging onto the card base (why do I always imagine I can skip that step?!) I also made a star mask with a sticky note and a star stamp and positioned it before blending brown, yellow and blue inks into the stencil.

 

The sentiment is from The Best Gift of All by Reverse Confetti and was stamped in crisp black ink in the centre of the ink blend. I had planned to leave the star uncoloured when I removed its mask but it didn't look right so I coloured it with a coloured pencil and embellished it with a clear gem.

 

And now for the fun bit: the idea for this card came when I was making another card using The Greetery's Slim Alphabet dies. while clearing the left overs away, I noticed that the inside of an 'O' and a 'K' turned onto its side looked a bit like a manger. I coloured them and trimmed the 'K' slightly and I think it works quite well - what do you think?

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up at Addicted to Stamps and More where the theme is Die Cuts and/or Stencils, and I've used both; Little Red Wagon where we are to choose to make a Christmas or a New Year project; Happy Little Stampers Christmas challenge, where the optional theme is twinkle; and The Snippets Playground, where I hope my alphabet offcuts will be enough to count as snippets!

AND IN OTHER NEWS

The wedding was a bohemian affair with wild flowers in jam jars, hay bales to sit on and dogs mingling with the guests, but there was a very fancy photographer there - which is just as well because I was too busy to take any photos! But here is a snap I took of my beautiful daughter before the wedding, with her hair and make up freshly done, in her wedding gown, casually sitting on the door step stroking Eva!!!

 

No harm done thank goodness, but this is typical - she is not one for wearing clothes that need to be worn with care and it didn't take long for those elegant ballet slippers to be kicked off either I can tell you! (She is rather like her fluffy sister in that respect!) I'll be posting more wedding-related stuff this week so do come back and share it with me :)

Sending hugs,

Goodbye high flyer

Hello, crafting friends!

 

It's Saturday and time for another fun challenge at Addicted to CAS, brought to you this fortnight by  Ceal. Here's the code word she has chosen:

 

Very thought provoking! In our house we have the saying 'Free as a bird in the sky' so I made it the theme for this card. Perhaps it could be for someone who might be flying the nest or who might be leaving the workplace for greater things!

I started with a thick card base, sponging one corner with cloudy sky using a stencil made from one of Lawn Fawn's Puffy Cloud Border dies. To this background, I glued the words 'fly high' cut from coral card using The Greetery's Slim Alphabet Dies. There was a nice little space that I filled with the 'we'll miss you' sentiment from an old Clearly Besotted set. The swallow is an X Cut die. I cut him out of white card and coloured him with alcohol markers. 

 

Okay, so now it's your turn! My team mates have come up with some amazing cards using this code word, so do hop over to the Addicted to CAS challenge blog to check them out. We'd love to see your interpretation too! You can share your entry with us by using the Linky Tool at the bottom of the post on the challenge blog. Don't forget to keep your cards nice and clean and simple with plenty of white space!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up at Happy Little Stampers Die Challenge where Anything Die Cut Goes.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

All my human babies flew the nest a long time ago, although one has since returned which is nice :) My  fluffy baby will definitely not be leaving home as she lives the good life here! Sometimes I sense that she would prefer an extra meal or two a day and if I wouldn't mind diverting the river so that it runs through our garden for handy swims - oh and if I could just let her out onto the street in the mornings so that she could say hello to all the neighbours as they're getting reading for work/school, that would be good too. On the whole though, we're not such a bad family!

Sending hugs,

Hugs and puppy snuggles

Hello, crafting friends!

 

What a couple of weeks it has been! But February is here now and I'm happy because I've had a chance to get busy with some snippets:

 

I often ink around the edges of the front of my card bases and this one was one I changed my mind about. The little dog was in my snippets box too. It's from a wonderful Anita Jeram image (see a card made with it HERE) but I really messed up the background of my first try. I saved the dog by snipping it out of the quilt and put it in the snippets box to use on another project. All the other bits are tiny snippets of designer paper and card.

 

I trimmed the white card down with a stitched rectangle die by Heffy Doodle. This was attached to the ink-edged card base and topped with the green floral paper and the wooden plank piece. Eva prefers to be on the hard floor (when she isn't taking up all the space on a sofa!) but I gave my little pup a soft place to sleep by trimming the coral piece of paper with a cloud border die.

 

The letters were cut with The Greetery's Slim Alphabet dies but I found they got lost against the green floral. Luckily I hadn't glued everything down yet!

 

 

The solution was to wrap a snippet of vellum round the floral paper, securing it behind, and glue the sentiment over the top. I finished off with a few enamel shapes.

CHALLENGES

I kept my colours to the palette in the Color My Heart Color Dare challenge #531 (choosing the top row Papaya/Peach/Sage and adding in Honey Butter and Toffee) so will link up there; I'm also joining in with The Alphabet Challenge where Debbie has chosen V for Vellum; and of course I'll be heading over to The Snippets Playground with my homework and to play 'Pinch, Punch, First Day of the Month' with any unsuspecting playmates!!

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Its been a Golden Girl day today! I took them to a favourite place that has a stream running though it AND a river at the bottom AND a melted ice rink!!

 

And no, in case youre wondering, there can NEVER be enough water for a Golden Retriever to career about in!!

Sending hugs,