Sunday 22 February 2009

I'm still rolling.......Part 3!

Just a few more cards, starting with this cute little nurse of Kerry's. I admired her for quite a long time before I went ahead and made the purchase. I'm not all together happy with the layout of this card though. Its one for the box though!
At the same time I bought Janet's Get Well Millie stamp which I thought was really sweet too and here is my first card I've made with her. I've used K&Co papers combined with some bazzill cardstock.
The next card is one I've been asked to make for a friend. Its for her to give to a female friend who's a keen fan of travelling and camper vans. I got out my trusty camper van stamp again which I love to use. I was asked to make it using blue's so I decided to try and make it more feminine by using some blue swirly background paper and my Stampin Up scalloped border punch.
I've had a couple of these pink petticoat images sitting in my images box for a while now and decied that it was about time I did somethig with them! They were already coloured, I cheated and coloured them in in paint shop pro and then printed them out! I didnt really have any papers that matched them though until I saw this one from my Dovecraft set, which i've enhanced by edging all of the flowers in red pen. Originally the paper was just shades of grey.
And finally, a new baby card! I love making new baby cards. They don't need to be fussy. Just simple and elegant! I haven't really had to make many baby girl cards, so I jump at the chance when I get asked. Everybody I know seems to be having boys at the moment! We need more girls!
I'm going to get back to making some more cards now, before my inspiration runs out. There's just not enough time to make cards and blog them and follow all the other lovely blogs too.
Thanks for visiting and for all the lovely comments. They are all very much appreciated.



I'm on a Roll......Part 2!

Here are a few more of the cards that I've made this week. These ones are a more for the ladies! I was inspired to make this card by a card I saw on Erica's Blog. If you haven't visited her blog before, go and take a look she has some beautiful cards and altered items and every time I visit I come away inspired!

I coloured in the paddling Tilda image before I knew what I was going to do with it and luckily the colours just happened to tie in with a new K&Co set of papers I'd just bought! I really liked this card until I went and stamped the words onto the blue circle, but its done now and I cant see how I can rescue this one! I'll learn for the next time and maybe just emboss the circle instead!

This has got to be one of my favourites of the week. I've used yet another one of my new Tilda stamps which I've masked and stamped her onto the chair! The first time I've ever tried this technique. I did have to try a few times before I got her in the right place though. Again, I coloured this image in well before I knew what I was going to do with it. I pulled out my Laura Ashley stack and voila, a paper that matched! I saw this beautiful card on Julia's blog which inspired me to make this. I love this combination of colours.

Again, I've gone with the same layout as with the paddling tilda and have used a combination of Laura Ashley papers and Core'dinations cardstock. What I was trying to do with these cards is use a selection of different papers. It always looks really good when other people do it, but when I try it I sit for ages thinking do they really work together?
I knew before I made this card, which papers I wanted to use which is very rare for me! Its from one of my K&Co stacks and I think its beautiful. I'd coloured this Tilda image in previously too when I made another card for my cousin. I was going to make copy of that card, but decided to do something different with her instead. I knew I wanted to keep the card quite simple as I was inspired to make this after visiting Debby's blog, another one of my regular sources of inspiration!
This is a card I was asked to make for a lady recently. She likes gardening so instantly I thought I'd use the Jolly Nation Gardening Lady set that I bought about a year ago and I've never used! I've used the male version quite a lot but never got round to using the lady! I really like her though. I decided to use the Laura Ashley papers again, combined with some doodlebug cardstock. I've added a bit of shine to the rosebush by embossing with my glue pen and some clear embossing powder. I think I might have a go at re-creating this card for Mothers Day which is coming up soon!

I'm on a Roll this week!

As the title indicates, I've had a pretty good card making week this week. I've made quite a few by my standards! First of all though I want to share with you my new ribbon/embellishment organiser! Its a rotating carousel, which has five layers which contain a total of 60!!! round plastic storage pots! Its fab. I saw it in a shop a couple of weeks ago but they had all sold out so I've had it on order since then. The moment I saw it I thought it would be perfect for storing some of my ribbons. It only cost £12.99, a real bargain!And here is one of the pots containing some ribbon! I've actually got about 10 metres of ribbon into one of the pots.

So to start with a few cards, here are a couple of the more masculine cards I've made this week.

I stamped and coloured a few of my new Edwin stamps to co-ordinate with these Laura Ashley papers. The layout just came to me in a flash of inspiration, which doesnt happen very often! and although at the time I wasn't all that happy with it, now I really quite like it. The sentiment is from Craftwork Cards and has been inked with green ink. Edwin is mounted on foam pads.I bought Harry the Fireman a few months back and this is the first card I've made with him. He is of course one of Kerry's fabulous stamps which you can buy from Spiral Whisper. I've used my trusty Stampin Up spiral punch again! The background paper is part of a DCWV stack but I thought it ties in quite well with the fireman image as it looks kind of watery to me! This card didnt go quite as I'd planned it either, but again I like the result so that can only be a good thing! I love this Camper Van stamp, I have the mini one too! The paper is again from a DCWV stack and i thought it looked quite retro and this is what led this card! I cut some circles using my nestabilities and then embossed them with my cuttlebug circles folder. The two circles are joined using an eyelet, but i've hidden it by tying ribbon through it! The stars are just punched card which I've put some holes in and drawn a line between, hopefully making them resemble buttons. That was the aim anyway!And finally, my lovely guitar playing Edwin. I coloured him in ages ago and he's been sitting in my stamped images box ever since, poor thing. So I decided to do the decent thing and put him on a card. The papers I believe are from the Basic Grey Archaic collection. The brown strip across the card is actually stitched leather! One of my good friends gave me what must be about a 5 metre length of it in a bundle of things she'd collected for me. Another quite simple card, but I really like this one too! I like it when I make cards that I'm actually pleased with. Too often I'm not happy with the end result so it makes a nice change.

Sorry about the quality of the last two pictures, the light has not been great here today!

I think I'll come back tomorrow and post some more cards as I've made more than I thought!

Monday 16 February 2009

What a LOVELY Weekend!

Hi there, I hope you all had a great weekend and had lots of Valentine's goodies. I thought I would share with you the card I made for my hubby!

Now the funny thing is, that when I was reading Jules' Blog earlier this week, she said she was taking part in the Cute Card Thursday challenge which this week's theme was Music and Dance, using song titles on your card. Personally I don't get time to take part in challenges but I thought that this was a really lovely idea so I set about making a card for my hubby with the words "Truly, Madly, Deeply" on it, as it was the song we had our first dance to at our wedding. Now as usual, the card didnt go to plan and the writing smudged all over the pearlescent card after I'd printed it so I decided not to use it in the end. Then on Saturday morning when I opened the card from hubby, it had the very same words down the right hand side of the card. Spooky! Maybe I should start to give him a bit more credit than I do! He obviously thought about it this year!

I didnt get any flowers this year, but I bought hubby a nice heart shaped box of Ferrero Rocher which I ate half of! We were going to go out for a romantic meal, with the 2 and half year old! but I decided it would be nicer if we stayed in and had a candle lit dinner instead. I invited my parents round and we had a lovely romantic meal for 5! I cooked a lovely roast, one of my best yet! and I tried to make the table look pretty. It was lovely, and we didnt have to spend a lot of money! Hubby took this artiscit shot of the dining table!

On Friday afternoon, hubby rang from work asking me to make a card for a colleauge's wife! Talk about leaving it til the last minute! Men! So I just copied a card I'd made for my brothers girlfriend, changing the colours. I've not made a huge amount of valentines cards this year for fear I'd still have them sitting in my box until the same time next year.

I decied to make a matching set for my Mum and Step-Dad and here's their version of my Valentine's card!

Michelle over at The Card Grotto is offering some yummy blog candy to celebrate her blog passing 100,000 hits! Thats a lot of visitors! Congratulations Michelle! To be in with a chance of winning, head over to her blog!

Tuesday 10 February 2009

I've been stamping again!!!

I've been playing with my new stamps again. I've inked up a couple of Magnolia's and Sugar Nellies and heres what I came up with! First up is Edwin with his oar! I'm not sure where is boat is though. I coloured him to match the papers which are part of a DCWV Stack. I'm not too keen on this card. I had the layout in my head but it just didnt seem to go quite as I had imagined.
Next up is another one of my all time favourite cards. This is one I made for my brother to give to his girlfriend for valentines day. I got the Edwin and Tilda from The Glitter Pot sale in January. They are actually from the Christmas set but I thought they'd work great for Valentines Day or even Anniversary or Wedding Cards. I've cut the scalloped heart and inner heart by hand, sadly I dont have the heart nestabilities, yet...
This was a bit of a quickie for me. Sometimes I really struggle getting the right layout so I decided to find a sketch and follow it! instead of changing and moving things around like I usually do. I love this little Edwin, he's so cute.
This is one quite similar to the cars I posted a few days ago, but I like this one even better which is why I'm sharing it! I have quite a lot of corrugated card in my stash and I've never used any, but love the depth its given to this card. I might have to start using it more often! I'm still loving my new punches! Especially this Spiral Punch and the Tab Punch from Stampin Up! I think most of my cards will have one of these used of them for some time yet!
I coloured this image before deciding what I was going to do with it and now I think I want to eat it. Its mint choc chip! How delicous! I think the mint coloured card is from the Swimming Pool range by Doodlebug, I really like it, and think I should probably use it more often.

Well the snow is melting fast here. My poor snowman's head fell off at lunchtime today. It's really sad, but to be honest, we've had a really good week of snow and it may be time for it to just go now. I'm happy if it wants to continue snowing but all this wet slushy stuff isn't nice. In all we built 4 snowmen over the week and generally had great fun. I have to say that the brightness of the snow made it a lot easier to get a good picture of my cards.
I've had a few orders just lately so have made quite a lot of cards, although I can't post a few of them just yet. I'm never quite sure who's checking my blog and who's not, so to be on the safe side I've decided to wait a while.
I think thats about all for today! I need to get on and catch up with some blogs as I haven't checked any for a few days now.
Bye for now!

Friday 6 February 2009

Wow...Northampton has got SNOW!!!

Well this is just fantastic, I'm loving all this snow. As I've mentioned before we live in a little eco-bubble in Northampton and we never seem to get any weather. Monday we had quite a snowfall and subsequently I built a cute little snowman with my little man. I think he was a bit tipsy though and he fell over! When we awoke on Thursday morning there was an even thicker layer of snow so we went out again and built snowman mark 2. Now I dont have a fire, so we had no coal for the eyes, or mouth. I had to improvise and cut up a potato for his eyes, which i've coloured with marker pen. For his mouth we've used some red ribbon. Luckily we did have a carrott for his nose!Its been snowing quite heavily here now for the past couple of hours and the snow is really quite deep out there now! This is the view out of the front of my house, its lovely. No tyre marks in the road, no traffic moving.And my back garden. I'll be back later with some cards. I'm just so excited about the snow!

Monday 2 February 2009

Blog Candy Alert

Sharon over at Gramma's House of Cards is offering some Valentines Blog Candy. Please check out her blog to be in with a chance of winning two gorgeous Magnolia stamps.

Sunday 1 February 2009

Playing with my new Toys! and I've been Tagged....

Hi All, hope you all had a great weekend! I'm hoping that this promise of heavy snow is going to come! I love the snow. I think its about time that we got knee deep in snow! I want to build a snowman with my little boy! I dont really ever remember having deep snow. The weather seems to bypass us here in Northampton. Well this weekend has been a busy one for me. On Saturday, I decided to pop into my local hobbycraft for a look around but nothing really took my fancy, so instead we took a trip over to the Coleman Warehouse in Rushden, by far the best craft shop in Northamptonshire! Anyway upon arrival we noticed that the car park was heaving! I've never seen it so busy before but we ventured on in anyway. Note to self...the last Saturday of the month is demo day, Avoid! I did however get some goodies, some Basic Grey and K & Company papers.

This morning I was in spring clean mode, and decided that my craft room could do with a tidy up, well I've been through every box and every drawer and have thrown away so much stuff. Nothing of any use, but just little scraps of paper that I think will come in handy one day and boxes that I think are too pretty to throw away but just end up sitting on the shelf gathering dust. After spending all afternoon tidying, I thought I'd have a go with some of my new goodies. I sat and coloured lots of stamped images last night and here are a few cards I've made using them.
First up is my favourite! I love these papers, Archaic by Basic Grey. I've had this Sugar Nellie stamp for a good few months now and I think this is actually the first card I've ever used him on! I've also used my new Spiral punch and Tab Punch from Stampin Up! They are fab. I love them so much!
I've inked up one of my new Magnolia Stamps, Edwin with Oar, that I got in the sale from The Glitter Pot. In all I think I have about 11 new Magnolia stamps over Christmas. I love them all and I still want more! I've been trying to talk my hubby into joining the Magnolia Stamp Club for me, but I think its going to take a bit of convincing. I've also tried talking him into buying me some Copic Markers. I'm not great at colouring images and at the moment I use my Whispers pens and some acetate and I paint them. I find it can be quite time consuming and I'm not always happy with the result. I've seen a few sets of the Copics at a really great price, but we just dont have the funds at the moment. I think I've become totally obsessed with them! I need to get selling a few more cards!

I've also been Tagged by Julie. The rules are that you have to go to your Picture Folder and choose the 6th Folder and then the 6th Picture!

This is my little fella Adam. It was taken on the August Bank Holiday weekend. We took our caravan to a little site in Warwickshire with a group of friends. It was a lovely sunny weekend but the ground was absolutely soaked due to all the wet weather we'd had previously. The kids all played in their welly boots all weekend and the fun game was to push the water carriers around the site! They were empty ones though. I dont think he'd manage it if it were full, but we will get him trained eventually! This is one of the best sites we've been to in a while. The toilets and showers were not very good, but it did have its own tea room which sold cream teas and home made cakes, yummy! The site also had acess to the oxford canal which we took a few walks along. It was really lovely!