Little flowers

Hello, crafting friends!

 

What a glorious day it has been here! The blue skies and bright sunshine have inspired me to reach for the bright colours and join in with some fun challenges.

I recently acquired a pack of two odd-sized embossing folders by Stampin' Up called Little Details and I couldn't wait to experiment with them. The folder I used on this card creates a charming panel in the centre of a C6 card front which I bordered with a couple of scorelines. I coloured the raised details with water-based markers and stamped a colourful sentiment using two Uniko sets.

 

This video by Jennifer McGuire, inspired me to use a pretty little flower from a Sissix wreath die set in a repeat pattern for impact. I cut six of them, coloured them with water-based markers, positioned them on my background and finished them with enamel dot centres.

This card will go in my stash for a summer birthday next year :)

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up with Little Red Wagon, where the challenge is Small or Large; Can You Handle The Pressure, where we must Use an Embossing Folder with optional Poppies theme (I haven't used that); The Flower Challenge where the challenge is to Use a Die on our flower themed cards; and Happy Little Stampers Birthday challenge where Anything Goes as long as it's a birthday card.

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I felt so sorry for the children in our area, heading back to school in this gorgeous weather today. Hopefully, they weren't issued any homework on their first day back and were able to get out and enjoy the sunshine before tea!

 

We walked in the cool of the woods earlier today and Eva found a nice little house to shelter in :)

Sending hugs,

A young Man's 18th birthday

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Those special birthdays are coming thick and fast around here. Today's card is for a young man, a friend's son, who turned 18 AND got his exam results all on the same day! He did really well and is all prepared to zoom off to uni, but first, we got to crack open some fizz and toast him with a few bubbles!

 

To make the card, I masked off the edges of a card base, positioned Clearly Besotted's Sunny Day stencil (a big favourite!) over the top and sponged yellow ink into it. Taking the stencil away, I added a bit more sponging over the top part to balance out the sun at the bottom.

 

The sentiment was stamped in red ink with 'Wishing you a happy' from The Greetery's preText Sentiments, and 'birthday' from Uniko's Wild. The name and the number were made from some left-over letter and number stickers I bought many years ago to create a title on a photo album. I finished the design with some red and yellow enamel dots for a celebratary feel! This card was for his birthday but I was able to write a message inside congratulating him on his uni place too.

CHALLENGES

The Red and Yellow challenge at Color Hues inspired this card so I shall link up there; I'm also joining in at AAA Birthday and Happy Little Stampers Birthday challenges, where Anything Birthday Goes; also The Male Room is looking for masculine cards featuring spots and/or stripes, so my sunshine creates stripes and the enamel dots are good for spots!

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I told another friend about the young man's birthday and his success, and that we were invited round to help celebrate before he went off to celebrate further with his pals. "I'd better not tell him that this adulting malarkey isn't all it's cracked up to be," I said. "Oh no," she agreed. "Don't grow up! It's a trap!"

PS. If you subscribe to this blog and you received an email with no pictures this morning, I do apologise! We'll put it down to Human Error shall we and move on!!

Sending hugs,

21st birthday arches

Hello, crafting friends!

 

You know that moment when you realise you have to get your niece's birthday card in the post straight away and then you remember it's her 21st birthday... eeek! Well, you know my mantra: When in doubt, reach for the stencils!!

 

The Greetery's beautiful Mistletoe Arches layered stencil set has done sterling service in the Craft Square Metre with wedding, sympathy and birthday cards as well as the Christmas cards it was designed for. So why not a 21st birthday card?! After stenciling the arches, the sentiment was put together with a couple of stamp sets from Uniko and some dies for the 21st bit.

 

This photo was to try to capture the different colours and textures of gold. The leaves were finished with Wink of Stella gold, and the berries a deep gold using a marker. The 'fabulous' was heat embossed in gold and the '21st' was cut out of sparkly gold paper.

Hope she liked it!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up at Allsorts where Lorraine has chosen the theme Anything but a Square; Inkspirational has a Use Stencils challenge this month as does Happy Little Stampers Stencil challenge where Anything Goes; I'm also joining in the Happy Little Stampers Birthday challenge.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

At the bottom of the fields behind our house there's a hedge and, for those in the know, a little hidden archway in it. The arched tunnel leads to quite a steep bank and down to a stream - one of Eva's favourite places to play! It's getting harder for the old joints, but I can still duck through the archway and navigate the bank, hurling myself across the stream at the bottom and up the other side. This is a short cut to the park with its enticing river and means Eva and I don't have to pound the pavements through the town to get there the conventional way! But that archway gets overgrown so, the other day, I performed the annual clipping to ensure we can still get through. That evening I was out with friends and at some point in the evening, while pushing my hair back, brought out a twig!! Honestly, I remember the days when I could still scrub up reasonably well for an evening out!

 

Me on an evening out!

Sending hugs,

Autumnal leafy arches

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Isn't it wonderful when a craft item arrives in your craft room and the ideas for using it come flooding at you? All I need is a bit of extra time to get them onto paper! The item in this case is a layering stencil from The Greetery called Mistletoe Arches. It's designed to  be used for Christmas cards but...

 

... I saw no reason that it shouldn't turn up on an autumn birthday card! I started this card by masking off the edges of a card base with low tack tape, stamping a background with a woodgrain background stamp and sponging yellow ink over the whole thing before removing the tape.

 

The next step was stenciling the arch over the background in layers using autumn coloured inks and adding detail with markers. The sentiment was made with two stamp sets from Uniko.

 

I added a little bird from The Greetery's Robin and Wren stamp set, stamped and fussy cut and attached to  the card front.

CHALLENGES

I'm joining in with Brenda's Colours of Autumn challenge at Allsorts; also Four Seasons challenge where the theme is Anything Goes Fall; I'm delighted that Darlene and Diane have also started their new Stencil Fun Challenge and am linking up there too; I'm playing along at Happy Little Stampers Birthday Challenge too where Anything Goes; This is the first outing for the Mistletoe Arches stencils so I'm playing at Darnell's NBUS challenge where we show off our Never Before Used Schtuff.

 

Also, a heads up: Allsorts are celebrating their 700th challenge this Saturday 29th October and there are prizes aplenty to be won! See you there :)

AND IN OTHER NEWS

On Saturday, OH decided it was time to curb the enthusiasm of some ivy in our back garden and Eva was delighted when she saw him getting out ladders and tarpaulin. She sees her role as general helper in the garden and this is exactly the kind of job she feels is her forté.

 

Here she is shredding some bits of woody stem - but wait, it appears to be raining leaves and Eva is quickly becoming the Incredible Disappearing Dog!

 

Sending hugs,

Birthday Cheers

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Welcome to another fun board bursting with inspiration at the Tic Tac Toe Challenge! Felicita is in charge today with a board that might get you going on your autumnal cards - or, as always, there's plenty of scope to go in a different direction!

 

I have a masculine birthday coming up in October and I thought this design might go down well! I selected the top line across Masculine/Rust or Orange/Sentiment and used a drinks stamp set from Stampendous that I was lucky enough to win in this Allsorts Challenge in the summer :)

 

The card started with the background: I stenciled a brick wall directly onto a square card base, using a variety of browns and greys and made a 'ground' with a straight edge mask and one of the brown inks. The sentiment is a mix of Greetery and Uniko stamps and was stamped at the top of my brick effect with rust colour ink.

 

Three of the glasses and a lemon from the Stampendous set were stamped onto white card and watercoloured. Once they were dry, they were fussyy cut and I went round the edges with a neuytral ink for a neat finish. These were arranged on my 'ground' and one of the glasses popped up on dimensional pads for a bit of interest.

 

Okay, so now it's your turn! Which row or column will you choose this week? Don't forget you can also choose a diagonal! Do hop over to the Tic Tac Toe challenge site to admire my team mates' fabulous creations. You'll find the Linky Tool at the bottom of the post and can use it to link up your own card when you're ready. Have fun!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up with Happy Little Stampers Watercolour challenge; I was inspired by the gorgeous mood board at AAA Birthday so I'm joining in there too; Dena has chosen Anything Goes at Allsorts with an optional theme of Back To School so I'm linking up with the Anything Goes option; and also We Love Stamping where Anything Goes.

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

There's a beautiful oak tree which graces a green area in our little neighbourhood. It is surrounded by ours and our neighbours' houses and on warm summer evenings we meet under it sometimes to have a glass of wine and a chat, or occasionally a barbecue or a tea party! I don't know why it never occurred to us before, but this year we have been calling it The Royal Oak. 

 

 

Lots of pubs go by that name in this country (because of the future King Charles II who survived being hunted down by Cromwell's Roundhead troops by hiding in an oak tree.) I think we need to commission our very own pub sign don't you!

Sending hugs,

Stencils and sequins

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Happy Thursday to you! Are you ready for a little Tic Tac Toe fun? Then Felicita's board is just the thing to kickstart your creativity!

I've chosen the right hand column Ink Blend/Embellishments/Stencil for a birthday card.

It was SO much fun making this card! I started with a white card panel, positioning Uniko's Pure Florals Rose stencil over it and sponging pale and dark purple inks into it. I clapped wet hands over it before removing the stencil, although you can hardly see that in the photo. When it was dry, I added a little detail with a purple coloured pencil.

I stenciled the rose again onto a scrap of paper and cut it out so that I could use it as a mask. Once it was in place, I blended green and blue inks over the background and trimmed the panel to size with a crimped rectangle die from The Greetery. These dies are designed for US A2 sized cards but I just used a trimmer to cut my card base to fit the panel.

 

The sentiment was stamped with the two purple inks I'd used to ink up the rose. I attached the panel to the card base and added some purple sequins for a touch of sparkle.

Okay, so now it's your turn! Do hop over to the Tic Tac Toe blog to admire the team's fabulous samples. You will find the Linky Tool at the bottom of the post and you can use it to link up your own creation when you're ready. Have fun!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up at Happy Little Stampers Stencil challenge where Anything Goes; I used the colours from the right hand column at Color My Heart Color Dare 492 Mulberry/Mint/Avocado so I'm joining in there too; and I'm playing along at Make The Cards Challenge where we need to Create an Ink Blended Background.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I have had so little time for crafting just lately that I'm getting withdrawal symptoms! But what with wedding-planning and Easter celebrations with the family and Eva's wild young puppy pal to supervise, there really hasn't been a moment to get inky. Thank you so much for sticking with me and hopefully I'll be able to spend a little bit more time here in May :)

Sending hugs,

Happy tenth birthday celebrations!

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Regular visitors here will know that one of my favourite stamp companies is Uniko, based here in the UK. Well Uniko is celebrating ten years of fabulousness this month and the owner, Bev, has come up with a really fun way to mark the occasion by sending us all on a series of quests! The first quest is to make a birthday card using Uniko products, and this is what I came up with:

I used the Background Blocks Layered Modern Floral for this card, but only the flowers, not the leaves. The flowers image was stamped at an angle off the edge of a card panel in a deep red and I love how bold and happy they look!

 

Instead of the leaves that come with the set, I used the leaves on the Natures Treasures II stencil or a whole different look. Pale green ink was sponged into the smaller leaf images and I added a bit of yellow detail with a coloured pencil.

The sentiment was made with a combination of sets. The upper case 'Have a' and 'Birthday' words come from Wild, and the 'Wonderful' is from You Are, Yes You. Stamping Platforms have made it so easy to create our own unique sentiments out of different sets and it's fun to do!

CHALLENGES

I'm uploading this card to the Uniko 10th Birthday Linky as per the first quest; I'm also joining in at Allsorts where Wendy has chosen a theme of Anything Goes with optional red flowers; Stamping Sensations has an Anything Stamped Goes with the option to Use a Stencil so I'm playing along there; as well as Happy Little Stampers Stencil Challenge where Anything Goes.

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I am a big fan of Lord of the Rings but a quest that DOESN'T involve hiking off to Mordor and chucking a ring into a dangerous volcano is much more my kind of thing!

 

Sending hugs,

Goodbye Ruby

Hello, crafting friends!

 

I am so sad to have had to make another canine sympathy card, this time for a friend who made the last journey to the vet with her dog, Ruby, last week.

I found a small card base in the drawer and used snippets to create my design. The polka dot tag was left over from an ancient Stampin' Up kit and I found some twine in a coordinating colour. The grey paper has a subtle pattern on it and was from an old note pad.

The little paw print is from Uniko's Wild, stamped on an offcut of white card using light brown ink and embellished with a clear gem. I positioned it above an appropriate sentiment from Pinkfresh Studios.

 

The tag was attached with dimensional pads as you can see more clearly here.

CHALLENGES

I am linking this card up at The Snippets Playground where there is a Ruby's Memory challenge. It is just a coincidence that the card was made for another dog named Ruby.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I looked after Ruby and her feline sister quite regularly and had become very fond of them both. Ruby was a King Charles spaniel with a tail that just never stopped wagging and who lived in a happy little world of her own - Rubyland as her owners called it! She had lived to a good old age but was suffering from cancer of the mammary glands. I feel so fortunate that I was asked to look after her on the day before her last journey so that I was able to say goodbye. Rest in peace little Ruby Two Shoes.

Sending hugs,

Birthday mail for the birthday male

Hello, crafting friends!

I was lucky enough to win a stamp set of my choice from Uniko back in the summer and have only recently found the time to play with it! This is what I made:

For my prize, I chose a beautiful large set called Decorative Doilies - The Hands of Time (which, as a master enabler, I can tell you is currently in the sale at Uniko!) To me, the designs look like those trendy honeycomb decorations and I thought they'd be perfect for birthday cards, especially for those challenging-to-design-for male cards.

To create this one layer card, I used a stencil I made with various circle punches. I sponged ink into each circle, then stamped the doilies over the top in a darker colour ink. The bold sentiment was combined with a 'happy' from Avery Elle's Big Birthday and a 'birthday' from  Uniko's Wild. I finished with some coordinating enamel dots.

CHALLENGES

I'm playing along again at Allsorts where Tracy has chosen From Boys To Men as her theme, so it's all about male cards; also Seize the Birthday where Jules' choice of topping is Beverages but I've gone for the Anything Goes (as long as it's a birthday card) option; I'm also playing along at Addicted to Stamps and More where the current theme is Birthdays.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Firework season seems to have finished for the season here thank goodness. It doesn't seem to have been quite as manic as usual - we have had years when fireworks have been fizzing and banging every evening for two or three weeks. The great news is that Eva has not been an inconsolable, quivering wreck this year. She has stayed close to my side but has been able to focus on me which is a massive stride forwards. 

Here's a photo of my girl enjoying an autumn walk with not a thought in her head about nasty noises, only squirrels and meeting her pals!

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,