Pearl anniversary

I wanted to make an anniversary card for a friend & her husband who are celebrating their pearl anniversary. Sandra loves to use pearls on her creations, so that was another reason why they were an essential element in this card.

Papers are Basic Grey, with a wooden heart & ticket was made from a stamp & die set by die-namics (you can find the set here). Papermania pearls

Image is by Lily of the Valley, coloured with Promarkers.

Tfl, & for any comments you may care to leave

Field of wheat

Whilst surfing the net the other day, I came across a You Tube tutorial which inspired me to make this card. I made the card several days after watching the tutorial, so didn't follow the tutorial faithfully, but instead used it as a source of inspiration

Items used for the card:

Coated cardstock. Hero Arts stamp Silhouette Grass 55316

Stampin Up inks in: So Saffron, More Mustard, Riding Hood Red, Close to Cocoa, and Chocolate Chip. Versafine black ink, White gel pen for highlights on the wheat. Black gel pen for birds.

Ribbon donated to me by a friend (cut from her clothes lol)

Closer detail of the card

This will be for my sister's birthday 

(I'm fairly confident she won't see this before her birthday as she is so busy lol)

Tfl, & for any comments you may care to leave.

Shades of blue

Unfortunately I've caught a stomach bug. I can't believe it, especially so soon after returning to work. I didn't want to take any time off sick, even more so as we're so short staffed at work, but I couldn't go in and pass it onto anyone else, besides which, I still can't face the thought of food. Hence why I am utilising this time and thought I could post another card I have made over the summer.

I made this as a friendship card for the lovely Kerry, whose blog can be found here

As usually happens with me, the finished card turned out very differently from the one I had planned. It was going to be a fairly simple card in shades of blue, but turned out as a generous & varied selection of blue elements as I found so many things I wanted to incorporate into the card!

I took my inspiration from the lovely Papermania Capsule collection papers, and used SU ink (think I used Not Quite Navy), stamps by Stampin' Up and PaperArtsy, & Papermania brads. SU punch used for scalloped edge on paper & for label tag that the bird is on.

Close up of some of the detail. The flowers were handcut - after making the card, I managed to buy the punch which will simplify things in the future. 

Detail from a different angle, I really like the PaperArtsy hinge & sentiment stamps I used here.

Tfl, & for any comments you may care to leave.

Advent box project

I do apologise for my long absence in blogging. I had completely lost all my inspiration in crafting and blogging, so I took a complete break. Inspiration is still lacking, but I have started to make a few things again now. This is a project I started when I met up with a group of crafting friends in Bristol (we have such a lot of fun and laughter when we get together)

I know it's a little early for Christmas, but I'm pleased I made it, and so glad it is now finished.  

I wasn't sure how I wanted to decorate it, then I found these nostalgic papers (which I'd pondered on how to use for several years now) 

The handles are different from how I had first imagined them as I was going to use eyelets & tie the ribbon behind them, but the fact I didn't have quite enough eyelets turned out to be a good thing as I quite like the way the brads look like rivets 

I think my youngest likes the idea of her advent box - but I bet she'll like it even more when the boxes are filled and she can empty them each day!lol 

Thank you for looking, and for any comments you may care to leave

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Hope all is well with you all. Life has been dealing me a series of events recently. I have been so tired as a result, and have struggled to have any creative sessions, the ideas just don't seem to be flowing at the moment. Ho hum, things will get better soon (I hope!) I hope that "what goes around, comes around" happens, and the sooner the better. I know things happen for a reason, just I can't see the reason at the moment.

My youngest daughter (like me) is fascinated by beach huts, & would like to spend some time using one - we have now been lucky enough to have agreed a weeks rent of one in the summer, so I hope the weather will be good that week. It made sense for me to make my daughter's birthday card in the same vein, I used this lovely Little Claire's room with a view stamp The border was cut using a X Cut die.

Here's the detail of the lady in the beach hut.

Images coloured with Promarkers

The sentiment stamp which is part of the set.

MS punch around the page punches used on the mats.

I'm off to do a bit of blog hopping before my eyes shut

Tfl, & for any comments you may care to leave

21st. Celebrations, cake, jiving - and a card

Wow! What a fantastic time we had at my eldset's 21st party (I finally got to bed at 3.30am!). We were so lucky that family and friends (some of whom we hadn't seen for many years due to house moves) joined us for the evening, some of them travelled long distances and booked into local accommodaion for the party. My daughter was upset that several friends decided not to come on the night, and went to another party instead, but the people who matter were there, and I think she learnt a few things about some of her so called "friends", it's a hard lesson to learn though.

One of my work colleagues made the cake, she has met my daughter a few times, & I told her that my daughter likes red, her Ka, her bed(!) & has lots of cushions on her bed. Her hair was blond - until she dyed it the other week. It took me a few minutes to realise how busty (like my daughter) my friend had made the figure lol.

My daughter has recently taken up mojive, & really enjoys it, here she is dancing the night away with one of her friends that she dances with, they had us captivated with their dancing. My sister gave her some new dance shoes on the night, which she was thrilled with, put them on straight away and started dancing :-) How fortunate too that she chose to wear her red dress on the night too.

Finally, here is the card I made for my youngest to give to her sister for her birthday. I found this beautiful black diamante ribbon a short while ago. It was quite big, so the only way to get it to fit onto the card was to use it from corner to corner of the card. I used a square of black card & applied small gems to it to make the 21, then glazed it with Anita's 3D glue to ensure the gems stayed in place. Tatty Ted stamp coloured with Promarkers, matted onto black card, gems applied to corners. Papermania monochrome paper, flowers & brads to secure flowers. 

Tfl, & for any comments you may care to leave.

Eldest's 21st, how time flies!

Where do the years go? Today is my eldest's 21st. It doesn't seem two minutes since I first held her in my arms. Photos capture such special memories, so here are a couple of photos of her when she was little. I made the smocked dress for her 1st birthday, I'd never done any dressmaking before, and taught myself how to do it from a book, I now realise that smocking as a first attempt was quite a challenge - I loved that dress. My daughter has been teased lots of times over the years over the pouting photo - I realise now she was practising the "look"! 

              Now look at the beautiful young woman she has become (here with my youngest, last month)

Onto the card I made her. Kenny K stamp, heat embossed, coloured with Promarkers. Matted with card stock, backing papers are Basic Grey (think Boxer), edged with gold leafing pen - also used for the numerals. Red is her favourite colour, hence why I chose these colours.

I was really quite pleased with how I had achieved the shading on the characters face, so have put it here in a close up too. My daughter loves her ipod, so I thought this was a very appropriate image to use for her card.

Well, I'm off to see what my daughter would like to do today, and will return to do some bloghopping later on. Have fun everyone.

tfl, & for any comments you may wish to leave.