It's nearly the weekend!

I seem to spend most of my weeks wishing for the weekend, so I suppose it's no surprise that January, February & March have screamed past with barely a blink (there is that joke that even on the calendar it goes M,T then WTF!).

I do love my weekends, I spend Saturday morning cleaning so that I can spend Saturday afternoon crafting, preferably with my buddies Alison & Sharon.  Last weekend, this is exactly what I got to do and it was soo much fun, very relaxing and always just what the doctor ordered after a week at work.

Alison and I were playing with her new Tonic Studios pick of the bunch punches and having a go at making flowers - the pictures that go with the instructions are tiny, but we managed to come away with some lovely flowers.  Sharon made a lovely card for a young boy's 7th birthday using a kit from Chaplins which looked amazing.

This week has been really slow on the card making front (I usually work on cards between 7.30 and 8 am in the morning) but I am hoping the addition of some LOTV stamps should correct that (when they arrive).

Anyway, onto a card, afterall that's what this blog is supposed to be about!  This card was made a little while ago, but I hadn't got round to putting it on my blog.  It was made shortly after I did my colouring day with Tracy, and I think it really shows, I just love the way I've coloured this image!  The papers are from the CD (bamboo), I used a spellbinders die to cut out bamboo and mat & layer, and the swirl in the corner is a diesire die.  The sentiment is from the hunky dory paper pack that I got with bamboo.

Well, hope you like it & sorry it's been a week since I last managed to get on lines, time just flies when you're wishing your life away waiting for weekends!

See you soon...

Things with wings

Okay, this card was supposed to be made in time to enter the Mo's Digital Challenge for this week, which was 'things with wings', and I even went to the trouble of buying a new set of digital stamps (well, rude not to!), but I didn't quite get it finished and published in time.  In fact at time of typing this I was almost exactly one hour outside the time.

In spite of that I'm in love with this card, it is the most cluttered card I've done in ages, but I think it's really pretty.  The backing paper was a free pad with a magazine ages ago (I've stopped buying them now as they get addictive and take up lots of space!), the roses were from Wild Orchid Crafts, the sentiment and tag die are from Whimsy Stamps, the leaves are a Sizzix sizlets die, the blue is embossed using a Darice embossing folder, and the picket fence is a magnolia die (not one of mine, a friend cut some for me ages ago).

The beautiful fairy is coloured using my wonderful Prismacolour pencils, they give such a beautiful soft finish to this - love it!

Anyway, best go before I burn the tea!

Monsters

It was my wedding anniversary yesterday, 21 years of happy (well mostly!) marriage, and as my present hubby got me a couple of stamp sets, which was what I asked for.  These were the new "The oddly sweet curiosities" sets no. 3 and 4 by Suzana Loves Stamps - she's not the only one, I think these are amazing & you can get them here, have to say I Love Quixotic Paperie, I ordered the stamps on Wednesday at about 10 am and the delivery despatch email came through before lunchtime & they were delivered on Thursday - you really cannot get better service than that!

Anyway, I just had to get inking up these stamps & this little cutie screamed to be first - he's just lovely, although I have to say I am not very happy with my colouring, but you can't always be happy, other than that this card really makes me smile.  The paper is from a First Edition Pad (up, up and away, I think) and the card stock is from my stash, I embossed the card stock using one of my embossalicious folders from Crafters Companion.  All things being equal and forgetting that my colouring is still not great, I'm quite pleased with this.  

Expect more monsters soon! - I'm entering this one into the Sketch Saturday challenge

Having fun

I have been having such a brilliant day today.  I spent the morning cleaning the house (boring I know, but essential), so that I could spend the afternoon doing crafty stuff with my friend Alison, who was finally feeling up to coming over (dodgy knees are such a bugger!).  We had such a great catch up, showing each other our recent crafty purchases!

Anyway, I'd been colouring another of the Bamboo images all week (only get about 20 minutes in the mornings to play before I have to get ready to go to work) so I had that ready to turn into a card, and I pulled off one of the old Saturday Sketch challenge sketches to work with it, then I got out a stash of old papers I'd printed off from Crafters Companion CD's and set to work, I borrowed a die from Alison to do the layer around bamboo, the finished result is this lovely card!

The next card is straight from the Party Paws papercraft collection and features the new pendulum cards, thought this one was lovely, not made for any other reason than I just felt like it, sometimes it's nice to just put something together (though there was a lot of thinking about which way round everything needed to go!).

Hope you like, I'm off to play some more, cook tea, yada, yada..... same old, same old!

SWALK

Okay, so I've now moved on from my Bamboo obsession, however my love of all things Crafters Companion continues.  The image for this card actually came from the SWALK stamps  CD, which I printed out onto Neenah card stock and then coloured with my trustee spectrum noir pens, think I'm finally getting the hang of them!

All of the papers are from the SWALK Christmas papers CD, the punch is a Tonic Studios ribbon punch, had great fun doing this one, but it took longer than I was hoping to put together.

I would like to enter this into the Sketch Saturday Challenge and the Spectrum Noir challenge, which is currently a 'spring' theme - most appropriate the 'I love the rain' stamp!

Hope you like & hopefully I'll be back again with another card really soon!

Bamboo

I have been having great fun playing with Bamboo, well it actually started out as playing with a new card design from Splitcoast Stampers, which uses an 11" x 11" sheet of patterned paper as the card base.  Now as STILL have the Papermania Claire Curd signature range paper pad that I bought years ago & am still trying to even make a dent in, I decided to use a sheet of this, didn't really matter which sheet but that's where I started.

Having used a black & white design, I then realised that this fitted perfectly with a little black and white panda and so inked up one of the lovely Party Paws stamps, which I then decided needed to be coloured in a monochrome scheme (apart from his lovely rosy cheeks!) using my Spectrum Noir pens, once I had this, the rest was easy.  The sentiment stamp is from the same stamp sheet as Bamboo.  The flower was a Quickutz die I've had for absolutely forever, and I cut out several (you only get 4 petals per cut) using black and silver, then layered up and finished off with a glittery blob in the middle.  The butterflies were cut with an EK Success punch, which has several different cuts on it to allow you to layer up the butterfly, I only used the deepest as I wanted the finer detailed butterfly, not sure if you can see it particularly well but some of the butterflies are silver and the other black.

It folds down to make it's own envelope as well (providing you're not putting it in the post) and just looks amazing (well I think so anyway!).

I'd like to enter this into the Crafters Companion Challenge Blog for april, which is flowers appropriately enough!

Well, hope you like, I'm off to play again!

I played in the Glitterpot!!!

Well, I'm enjoying a well earned (well I think it is anyway!) break from work this week, and as hubby had just sold his tennor sax and needed to deliver it (halfway meet), we decided to take a day trip to Sussex.  Yes, I know it's a long way to go, but it was a one off opportunity to go and visit far off lands and all the goodies to be had there.

The Glitterpot is well worth a visit if you're ever up that way (or fancy a very long day trip!), it is really well organised with loads and loads of stamps, papers, dies, inks and anything else crafty you can think of - it really is one of the best craft shops I've ever been in for variety (although our local shop, Just Tracy's is brilliant too).

Anyway, I restrained myself (mainly because we didn't take a transit van with us!) and bought a few little gems - a couple of sets of nesties, some stamps, some ink, more glue and knife blades oh and a paper pad, but not too much!

Well, when I got home I just had to play with it all, and the following two cards have used bits from my purchases.

This first one used a new stamp I bought of a Mo Manning image, she is just soo beautiful, but then I love all of the Mo images, she is such a talented woman and I love the fact that she shares her creations with the world and gives us the opportunity to craft with them.   In the background the lovely lacy doily is a Magnolia doohickey die, this comes as half of the circle and you then have to twiddle it round (technical term) and cut the other side - really easy once I'd got the hang of it & it creates a stunning shape.  The other items used on this one are from my existing stash, oh and the image was coloured with my Speccies, thanks to Tracy from Just Tracy's for the colouring day, I really learned so much from it, all put to good use on this image.

The next one is an image I stamped a few days ago and coloured but was waiting to turn into a card.  Bamboo is again coloured with Speccies, the backing paper is from the Bamboo CD, the die cut leaves and shape around bamboo are Diesire dies from Crafters Companion.  Flowers from stash (Wild Orchid Crafts and some from a craft show so I can't remember the company).  The butterfly and sentiment are from the Party Paws Luxury Card Collection oh and the peachy lace section you can just see behind the image, we that was a new stamp that I bought at the Glitterpot - gorgeous isn't it?

Anyway, hope you've had a good easter & overdosed on chocolate to your hearts content - diet can always start tomorrow!