Happy Mother's Day...

Hey,

Today is Mother's Day in the UK.

In the last few years I have started making a card for my MIL.. Hubby is not a card guy and his Mum is ok with that..but for me as a cardmaker it feels really really wrong.

I actually haven't seen my Ma yet this year, as I was off work for 2 months (unpaid) so I haven't managed to get back to the UK yet. But we talk a lot and that helps - because I miss her a lot.

Just as I was thinking about what cards I would make 'The Mothers' x2 new sets arrived in the post.

My Ma's card (main photo) was made using the Avery Elle 'Mardi Gras' set. I don't have the dies yet, so I had to stamp and cut out the mask and then trace around it with a white gel pen onto the black card and then cut that out.

Because I don't have the dies yet, I didn't want to use all the little mask elements that come with the set, so I dug through my dies and came up with the beautiful flourish die by Simon Says Stamp. I die-cut it out of DCWV glitter cardstock and I think it works really well here.

I added some bling and gold marker to the eye area of the mask to complete it.

I had planned on stamping the sentiment directly onto the white panel, but I dropped the stamp and made a mess, cue a hastily heat embossed banner to cover my oops. To finish the card off I added a few gold stamped stars all over the panel.

I love it, can't wait to play with this set more.

For my MILs card I used my new Neat and Tangled 'Bloom' set, it is SO pretty.

I stamped and coloured the flowery panels using Promarkers and after die-cutting them out, I added a few drops of stickles here and there.

The sentiment is from Paper Source and I bought it on super bargain sale, because I loved the handwritten feel.

Because the flowers are so fussy, I decided to use a simple piece of spotty paper for the background. I love Lawn Fawn papers (Jenn Shurkus you enabler you.)

Both completely different from each other, but they suit the personalities of 'The Mothers'.

Happy Mother's Day Momma and Mandy.

Cx

Belated Happy Birthday Momma Bear...

Hey,

Happy Friday.

This is the 2nd Friday in a row that I have been to the gym at stupid o' clock!! I think it was easier to do that when I was on vacay last week!!

Last Friday I showed you Lucy's birthday card that I made using parts of a Stampin' Up cardkit, I used the same kit to make my Ma's birthday card.

Here is what the card looks like when it is in the kraft sleeve -

Ma has been busy losing weight (super proud of her) so to keep her motivated I gave her one of my older fitbit's and made this bag to put the card and the fitbit in.

This is something I do a lot - basic plain muslin bags and then stamp onto them. The recipients are ALWAYS impressed.

Have a great weekend.

Cx

Happy Mother's Day..

Hey,

In the UK it is Mother's Day today.

I thought it would be nice to make my Ma and my MIL Mother's Day cards.

My Momma was a rockstar when I was having my op and the week after. My MIL was great following the complication with her daily updates.

Making their cards using a mix and match of my MFT flower sets. I love these stamps and I have four of the sets..for now..

The main card is for my Ma, I used Flashy Florals and Tropical Flowers. I stamped and die-cut the flowers first, then die-cut the white panel and set that up in my MISTI. I positioned the flowers and worked out how to stamp the leaves. The sentiment is an old wood stamp and I added clear droplets by Pretty Pink Posh as a finishing touch.

A new thing for me, I only popped up one flower and I think it really works.

Here is the card for my MIL, different for me as it is one layer..

I used Bold Blooms  for all the flowers and leaves on this card and I added the sentiment and the hearts by Lawn Fawn. For a finishing touch I added Nuvo Crystal drops.

I am really pleased with both the cards..I love playing with these stamp sets.

Cx

Gotta love a freebie..

Hey,

I am a bit slow to the party today ;) Momma has gone home and Hubby is WFH to keep an eye on me!

After I post this, I will be going out on my daily 15min walk..

Last week JT sent me an English craft magazine that came with this great stamp set - 

I had to have a play pretty much immediately!!

I kept the cards simple - a) because that is all I could manage and b) I think the sentiments shine on their own.

I die-cut MFT Stitched Scalloped Circle frames in white and blue. I stamped the sentiment onto the white circle (the scalloped white piece goes in with the dies for use another time..)

I framed the sentiments with the blue pieces and decided they looked better popped up on foam dots.

They felt a bit plain, so I added some Nuvo drops to the white circles around the sentiments, I love Nuvo Glitter drops...I am totally overusing them!!

Love it when a gift triggers fun times at my desk.

Cx

CASology: Cut

Hey,

So I am doing pretty good following my operation. I am able to move around and do normal stuff.  A bit stiff and no lifting, housework etc, but all good.

It has been lovely having my Ma here for a week.

This week's CASology cue card -

..Inspired me a lot.

Cut means a couple of different things to me - die-cutting paper and cutting fabric for sewing.

I decided to combine die-cutting and fabric and broke out some ANCIENT adhesive fabric paper that I bought years ago and have never ever used.

I die-cut it using one of my fave Sizzix border dies and added a few stitches to hold it firmly in place. You can just about see the stitches, so here is a close-up.

As I used fabric and stitching I thought that the sentiment from a Freebie set I have would be appropriate.

I love the simplicity of the card and the bright colours make it pop. I really must remember to stamp my sentiments in coordinating colours more often.

Cx

Concord & 9th Thanks..

Hey,

Happy Monday!!!

Time to get back to normal, post Thanksgiving, but with my family and friends in town it's going to be hard!!

After all the rushing around, I think that soothing cards seem to be in order..

I love this Concord & 9th set from the October release. I recently bought the dies, so thought I would have another play with the set.

Both cards are super simple and I only used 3 colours of ink on each card. I am loving this new trend for leaving bits of the die-cut in..very clever.

I am also slightly obsessed by Nuvo Crystal Drops - I used Silver Moondust on the card below.

Simple but really effective.

Cx

CASology..Soft...

Hey,

So it's the last day of the Thanksgiving break (that went quick).

My good friend and her boyfriend are in town this week and so I am excited to be spending some time with them, starting today with brunch.

My Ma arrives tomorrow, along with our Goddaughter, her boyfriend her Mum and other family members to celebrate her 21st birthday. So this week is going to be cray cray.

So let's have a bit of calm first shall we :)

I have been playing along with CASology challenges - I really like the cue cards, they have been really inspiring my creative juices and I have been lucky enough to get two honorable mentions..isn't that lovely.

Here is this week's cue -

I decided to use a great stamp (MFT Knit Happens) given to me recently by a friend. I felt inspired to use it because I am in the midst of crocheting the world's ugliest blanket LOL, but it is also the softest thing ever.

It's ugly because the wool is 'borrowed' from everyone I know who has spare wool, so it doesn't match..I fly a lot for work and I hate to fly and crocheting de-stresses me.

I love wool or yarn as my American friends call it :)

Anyway..back to my card. I coloured the stamp using Distress Inks and an aquabrush and stuck with 'soft' colours. I added a bit of sparkle using Stickles on her hat.

The sentiment is by The Alley Way Stamps..

Cx

Stylish birthdays...

Hey,

So today Daddy and I are going to see an NFL game, super exciting.

My Ma asked me to make a stylish 50th birthday card for a friend of hers and I was so pleased with the result that I made another one :)

I used the watercolour background stamp from my new Concord & 9th Lace Leaf set and a Dina Wakely silhouette woman stamp.

I made the 50th birthday version using Worn Lipstick distress ink and Studio Calico sentiment stamps.

The version above uses Twisted Citron distress ink and a Simon Says Stamp sentiment stamp.

Fun cards that I can see myself making a lot of.

Cx

Happy Birthday Momma Bear...

Hey,

First day of work in the London office for a week and I am also wishing my Momma a Happy Birthday today :)

I am lucky that I was here this weekend, meaning I got to celebrate with her and give her, her card in person (no sharing today, its a DT make!).

The main photo today is from Day One of her recent trip to NYC..it was fun, obvs we get on each others nerves a bit, but that's standard :) She's still the best Momma ever.

I reviewed my post about Momma from last year (she was 60) and I realised that I couldn't top it, so if you want to know more about her go here.

Happy Birthday Momma Bear..

Cx

30 Days of Colouring...a little glimpse

Hey,

So I am now in London for the next week, which will be nice as it's Momma's birthday on Sunday, so I get to celebrate with her this weekend.

I thought as I am travelling I would give you another peek at what I have been colouring / making for the latest The Daily Marker 30 day colouring challenge..they are not in any particular order :)

The main photo today is Day 16, I love the digi stamp by Dearie Dolls..how cute is the bunny and her Carrot dress (I totally need a Carrot dress), it was so much fun to colour this image and turn it into a card.

The next card is Day 21..I was very tired post yoga and so opted for the bare minimum colouring..I love these new Avery Elle fish, they are so ugly and fun.

The sentiment stamps are by Snarky Stamps and they have some stamps in there very suitable for my potty mouth. I made the background for the card using a Tim Holtz mini stencil and texture paste. When it dried I laid the stencil back down and blended distress ink over the paste, to kind of get a sea effect for my ugly fish :)

Finally Day 10, I love these great watercolour panels by Suzy Plantamura for Simon Says Stamp.

I got a whole bunch of them in a cardkit and they are so easy to colour using distress inks and an aquabrush, they make super easy and impactful cards.

I will put all of the cards up onto Flickr when the 30 days are up.

Have a great weekend, my posts will be mainly scheduled this week, so I'll see you live a week on Monday :)

Cx

CASE a Card...Flowers..

Hey,

Happy Monday, I am off today, hanging out with Ma, following our weekend in Philly and Sunday spent with JT's parents.

Following on from yesterday's post, I thought I'd show you another of my Pinterest CASEs.

I chose this card - 

Image Courtesy of Cupcakes, Cards and Kim

I love this idea of scribbly circles as flowers..

I pulled out three stamp sets by Simon Says Stamp - Scribble Flowers, Favorite Flowers and Birthday Flowers to use on my card.

I also decided not to stamp the solid circles but used Distress stains and kind of splodged them onto my paper..

For the main card I used Abandoned Coral, Squeezed Lemonade and Peacock Feathers stains. It is a pretty straightforward CASE, no real modifications, but it was so perfect, I didn't want to change a thing :)

Obviously I made a whole bunch of these as they take about 5 mins to do, once you have got your colour splodges down.

Here is another colour variant, using Picked Raspberry, Mowed Lawn and Peacock Feather stains -

These were super simple to make and I really love working with Distress Stains, you get such rich colours and no mess!

Cx

30 Days of Colouring...

Hey,

Happy Monday.

I am off today and hanging out in the sunshine with Ma.

I thought I'd share some of the things I have coloured so far, as part of the awesome The Daily Marker, 30 Days of Colouring.

The main photo today is my Day 2 colouring. I used a KennyK clear stamp that I love, she's so sassy. The sentiment stamps are by Neat & Tangled and are a recent addition to my stash. The journaling card that I used for the background was actually sent to me by Kathy Rac, who is responsible for this awesome colouring challenge and is the sweetest person ever.

Day 3 is a little bit different, as it is a page from a new colouring book..I think it will end up incorporated into my art journal.

It took me two days (4 and 5) to colour the next image from my Day of the Cat colouring book that Lemon recently gave me..

He was quite detailed and because of the paper that the book is printed on, I had to go over it twice!!

I love him though and can't wait to colour more of the book.

I love to colour and this challenge reminds me that I can colour for 10 mins every day, there is space in my life for that.

I'll show you more later in the week.

Cx

I hope your day is as nice as your butt...

Hey,

Happy Sunday!!

I think Ma and I are going to go off on a post brunch adventure today, but I can't decide where.

I am off tomorrow, so we get to spend more QT before she heads to Philly, I will be joining her at the end of the week.

I loved this stamp by Unity Stamp Co. it absolutely cracked me up. I made today's card for Lemon and she told me that it has already arrived.

I love this newish Wilted Violet Distress Ink, I am totally overusing it..

Here I smooshed (technical term) it into my craft mat and spritzed it with water, dipping my paper in an out to get the fun splatter you see. In between each 'dip' I dry my paper, you get deeper colours that way.

I heat embossed the sentiment stamp, I always think this looks so amazing against a smooshed background.

Cx

This is to inform you...

Hey,

Happy Saturday!

We are off to brunch today and then probably back home for a bit of art journal playtime, as it is jungle hot here in NYC right now..

I recently bought two fun things - one the great stamp you can see on my cards today from Scraptastic Club and two the grid vellum paper that I stamped it on.

I found a very random stationers / art supply shop in Midtown NYC recently and it was a treasure trove of goodies.

They had these Clearprint Vellum Grid books - 

I fell in love and bought the teeny tiny one. I think I am going to get a lot of use out of it.

The cards were very simple to put together, stamp onto the vellum grid, affix to the card blank, add co-ordinating washi tape and a glittery star!

Here is a different colourway - 

I like the idea of giving these as gifts, so people can tick whichever box is relevant for the person they are giving the card to.

Clever stamp.

Cx

Awesomesauce...

Hey,

Happy Friday..

Happy for me as I have Monday off, so I can hang with Ma before she heads to Philly and we hook up again next weekend..

Today I am playing along with this week's Shopping Our Stash challenge 'Say What?!'

I have had the Dachshund stamped (by Scraptastic Club) and sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks now, so I decided to colour him and use him finally!!

Anyone that knows me knows that Awesomesauce is a most overused word in my world.. So I couldn't resist using it here - it's from a cute TAWS set that had not seen ink yet..

I mounted the Dachshund panel onto a spotted Lawn Fawn card blank and voila! completed card.

I am super pleased with it and the fact that I finally used what has been lurking on my desk.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Cx

Playing in my Art Journal..

Hey,

So my Ma arrived last night - yay!!

I suspect that tonight she will want to break out her new art journal and have a play..so I thought I would show you some things that have been going on in mine lately.

The main photo is a spread I created based around a photo of a painting from a book I found in my $1 bin bookstore dive.. The book is called America in Print. I chose to use this painting by William Russell Birch because a) it is the view from Long Island across the East River looking at Manhattan and it's possibly, roughly where I live now on Manhattan and b) William Birch was English..

I used a Dina Wakely elephant paint for my background and used lime paint for my central highlight. I wanted to make the spread be an extension of the painting and I wanted to get the artists name it. I am really pleased with it and it is a fun mix of stamps and stencils.

One of the best things about art journaling is stretching my stamps and stencils and making them work a bit harder for me. 

The next spread was born out of my desire to create a pink spread LOL, seriously..I felt my pink paints have been a bit neglected recently.

Before the paint dried, I quickly used two stencils and removed some of the paint through them using baby wipes..love this technique and you get such awesome results.

Obviously I opted for Flamingoes, they are pink after all. I die-cut them using glossy paper and dripped alcohol ink onto them to create the fun colours on the right ones. The left ones I inked through the negative die-cuts.

I anchored the Flamingoes using tissue paper and washi tape. For a final touch I added some glitter paste through a stencil here and there..

This spread makes me so happy, so soothing..I think it's the pinks..

I love this art journal thing, I like the lack of rules, playing with paint, collaging things in, just the general random nature of it all.

Cx

WOYWW #370..Momma arrives..

Hey,

Happy WOYWW!

Time for the weekly global desk nosy, currently hosted by the lovely Lunch Lady Jan at her blog. Whilst our leader Julia recovers from her op.

I'm all wiggly with excitement today as my Momma arrives for 2 weeks tonight - yay.

My desk photo was taken just as I was finishing work yesterday, so my work keyboard, mouse and desktop (on the computer) are visible. I was getting stuff ready for colouring for Kathy Rac's 30 day colouring challenge and I got out some stamps for the art journal spread I'm working on.

Here is the finished card from yesterdays 30 day colouring..

I love this stamp, it is by Stamping Bella and it reminds me a bit of me lounging in the sun LOL.

Some of you asked me to show you last week's art journal spread in progress finished, so here it is, along with a close-up shot -

I am not 100% certain that it is finished, but it's done for now..

Have a great day, I will be checking out desks after Yoga before Ma arrives.

Cx

Sweet Succulents...

Hey,

Happy Saturday and whoop whoop to fellow US dwellers who are enjoying the long weekend.

I love nature / tree / flower stamps, so the Shopping Our Stash theme this week got me all excited. The SOS team are asking us 'How does your Garden grow'

I am actually quite green fingered, but I've never had an actual garden, always pots or a pot or two in my Ma's garden...one day.

I LOVE succulents - this is because of my Ma, she has always had them and I love the weird shapes and sizes they come in, so this meant my choice of stamps was a no brainer.

I had to use the Simon Says Stamp Cups and Succulents set. Imagine my delight when I went to the set to discover I had a whole batch of stamped and coloured items, that I had done during the last 30 day colouring challenge, its fun to go to stamp sets and find things that are ready to go ;)

The succulent part was watercoloured with Distress Inks and the pot was coloured using a Promarker.

Because the stamp is so detailed I wanted the card to be pretty CAS in feel, so I opted to emboss the background, using a free flower embossing folder.

I added the scalloped circle a) to cover something..I reused an oops panel and b) because I didn't like how the pot looked against the embossing!

Final touch was to add the SSS Sketchy Banner sentiment.

This is earmarked for a friend, who like me loves Succulents.

Cx

Red, white and blue...

Hey,

Happy Friday and welcome to July..ALREADY!! Where is this year going?!

I have had a fun, fun week and with the 3 day weekend ahead, there can only be more fun in store.

June was a SUPER successful blogging month for me, despite having been in London for 10 days, I posted every single day..I actually don't think I have ever done that before.

I'm also excited about the start of the next 30 day colouring challenge, hosted by the awesome Kathy Rac - it starts on July 5th, so get involved!!

AND my Ma arrives next week - what an awesome month July is going to be..

Today I am showing you a quick card I made for the Unity Stamp Co, show and tell Facebook group. I love playing along with the challenge (you have to use a Unity stamp) and the theme for the last week was Red and Blue..

I chose to use Array of Bottles, love this stamp.

I decided that watercolouring the stamp would be fun, I used Distress Inks (Tumbled Glass, Salty Ocean, Chipped Sapphire and Worn Lipstick) and an aquabrush, I love the variance in the blues and reminds me of all the lovely blue glass that I like.

The sentiment stamp is by Hero Arts.

Another super simple card..Distress Ink watercolouring makes me SO happy.

Have a great 4th of July weekend..

Cx

Simon Says..Summer Garden..

Hey,

Happy Friday to you..

I am leaving on a jetplane for London later on today, but first I wanted to join in the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Summer Garden.

I liked the theme and thought it would make for a good play in my art journal.

The phrase 'Summer Garden' makes me think of my Ma's garden.

I love my Ma's garden it's a peaceful happy space and is full of flowers, shrubs, birds, animals (Squirrels, Foxes, Hedgehogs, our Cats), butterflies and is basically a reflection of my Ma's happy generous personality.

I miss Ma's garden a lot. My Dad is not a garden person and is baffled by the amount of time we spend out there!

I started my spread with five colours, yellow, peach, orange, lime green and pale blue. I layered them onto my journal and kept layering and blending until I had something I was happy with.

I used my new fave trick of a baby wipe through a stencil to add some interest to the pages.

I recently bought a Hollyhock die by Impression Obsession, because it reminded me of Ma's garden, so seemed appropriate to use here. I collaged them in, along with the big blue birdie (Ma gets lots of birds in her garden - Swifts, Sparrows, Robins, Starlings, Magpies, etc) and stamped a few flowers here and there.

I used a fave Clear Scraps stencil to create a 'sun'. I also used a Tim Holtz tracks stencil in random places on the pages.

Finally I added 'Summer is best in my Momma's Garden' because it is and I'll be in it tomorrow, drinking tea, eating cake and gossiping.

Have a great weekend.

Cx