Critter Crowd Birthday...

Hey,

Happy Sunday to you!!

This set is one of my all-time faves - Critter Crowd by Simon Says Stamp for Stamptember 2019.

I love using it, it makes such gorgeous cards. These ones are for charity, Scrapbook.com run Cards for Kindness and I like to send a bumper box of approx 150 cards every 3 months. This time they were requesting kids birthday cards. This set is perfect for that subject.

Pretty easy to make, I stamp and watercolour them (watercolouring bigger batches of cards is much quicker for me than colouring with markers), blend the bottom of the panel, stamp the sentiment and then assemble.

I always make a few extra for myself, but I am running out of little kids....

Cx

 

Blended Alien Stars...

Hey,

Happy Monday!

In our house we are all about recycling and as minimal waste as we can manage.

So when I was making cards for charity, I had the offcut stars from when I used this die. They sparked an idea, because I also had some spare Aliens from a earlier batch of cards.

I blended them with 2 shades of distress oxide and spritzed them with water to get a bit more of a space feel and voila! fancy blended stars.

Because the stars were so fun, I kept the card super simple and just added an Alien and a sentiment - both of which are by Lawn Fawn from the 'Beam me up' set, which has certainly earned its keep this year!

Gotta love an easy bulk make, especially one that uses offcuts.

Cx

 

Punny Dogs...

 

Hey,

Happy Friday!

I hope you all had a good week. Mine was a bit crazy at work, but I had such a wonderful Thanksgiving with Hubby and Clint Catwood that I didn't mind too much.

During my recent vacation in November I made 100 cards for charity. I really love doing this, it's nice to do something for others and I have fun whilst I am doing it.

This time I was determined to trawl through some older neglected stamps and use them with some of the newer things in my stash.

I came across these awesome freebie dog stamps (they came with a craft magazine in the UK) and I thought that they would work really well with the newer Taylored Expressions 'Woof' simple strip sentiments. I love a pun, so these worked really well, as did the ones that came with the stamp set (main photo).

My amazing friend Lisette has the banner dies that coordinate with the strips and she cut me TONS of them, so kind.

I had previously made a card using these stamps and I coloured some of the dogs in random colours and others I left blank. I really like this as a technique and I believe if you just colour one, it is considered 'spotlight' stamping.

Here are a few more of the cards - 

Fun right?!

Have a great weekend, I am having a playdate with JT and watching endless sport on Sunday - WHOOP!

Cx

Say yes to cake...

Hey,

Can you believe it is going to be Thanksgiving this week?!

2020 has whipped by!

I thought I'd share a couple of the things I made for the card drive that Ricky was doing.

When I was making the 100 cards for this drive I decided to properly play in my craft room, so that meant I used old faves or things that had only had 1 use.

I love the sentiment stamp I used here. It's by Stampin' Up and from their retired 'Amazing Life' set, I had to track it down :)

I paired with two different sets. The main photo actually uses a new to me Wendy Vecchi set 'Birthday Bash' it was a birthday gift and I love it. I coloured the cake with Copics and added nuvo drops in blue for a kind of 'royal' icing look. Royal icing was always my fave growing up, I loved it when my Momma made cakes using this technique.

The second card uses the Taylored Expressions 'Gus and Gertie' set - I love that Gertie is in a party hat here.

I loved how these came out, so I made doubles and kept them for my stash. 

The best thing about making for charity is being able to rediscover all of my stash, as there are not really hard and fast requirements, so you can make what you like.

If you are considering making cards for charity, Scrapbook.com run an all year round card drive called Cards for Kindness. I donate cards to them approx 3 times a year. I bet if you are a card maker you have a bunch of cards you've made for challenges, etc, donate them and share the joy.

Cx

WOYWW #216 Time to give back...

Happy WOYWW!!

This last week has flown! Julia confused the hell out of me putting the post up early, but it keeps us on our toes :) Go to Julia's blog Stamping Ground to join us on the weekly global desk nose..

What's on my desk...inks, a finished cards, some digital stamps waiting to be coloured, a pen, a perfume bottle? and a half made card for JT - aaargh what a mess...and a big stack of cards for Operation Write Home (OWH) - briefly this is an organisation that encourages us lovely cardmakers to make cards for US troops based overseas...they can't get to a card shop and shop bought isn't as personal...so that's where we come in.

As I have only just moved to the US, I don't want to start selling my cards just yet, but need to keep my idle hands busy...I used to make cards for a similar organisation back home in the UK, so did some research and voila!

I love making these cards - super easy, no glitter, not too much dimension, limited sentiments and a set card size means that you get to plan and crack through heaps of them at a time. They prefer it if you don't make similar cards e.g same image different paper, but it's ok in small quantities.

Here are a few close-ups of some of the cards in the stack.

Missing You and Thank You - made using scraps

Crab Kite Birthday - stamp by Bugaboo Stamps

Flower Garden Missing You - stamp by Bugaboo Stamps

Finally a big shout out to Darnell and Kim, who took the time to respond to my requests from WOYWW #215 - Jodie I am nearly finished your 'creation'

Off to have a peek at desks now.

Cx

Keeping me alert

Loved my last 'live action' WOYWW yesterday, so many cool desks with great projects to nose at.

JT mentioned that the Mojo Monday sketch this week - #282 was pretty cool. So I took a look and thought I could work with that...

Here's the sketch.

As you can see the main photo today is my card. Pretty true to the sketch and a bit fun, utilising some of the things I have been playing with whilst making up the 2 really big orders..

The flower embellishment is one of the many things that I bought those on my little whirlwind tour of The Range a couple of weeks ago..The yellow paper I have had for ever and it's by Basic Grey..I have never really found a use for it and I have tons of it! The other papers are just scraps from my stash, as is the scalloped circle.

I really like this card, but let's have a laugh shall we...here is what happens when you craft when you should be sleeping...this is my first attempt at this week's sketch...

Ha ha - way too busy..
It is fun to show the oops, this bad boy will be packaged up and taken to the British Heart Foundation charity shop that I use all the time. They actually think the oops cards are nice and think I am crazy to donate them. It makes me feel better about the wasted materials, as they actually don't go to waste, people buy them and the money goes to charity. Win win all round :)

Cx

The long weekend

It's been a pretty good weekend, despite the chaos in the flat due to the new windows (which are beautiful) finally being installed. The craft room doesn't exist at the moment and everything is everywhere and the cats are freaked out. So are the adults to be fair!

On Friday night, Hubby and I went to visit Lemon to start her birthday celebrations (Saturday was her birthday) she cooked. Score. It was fun and relaxed, I couldn't handle much more than that after the wretched cold.
Saturday was originally going to be a day of chilling, but Lemon and I both fancied hanging out some more so we into town to shop and eat din dins. We had such a laugh and I started to feel better. Today's main pic is of Lemon and I eating doughnuts in Selfridges! Unfortunately Hubby couldn't join us as he had to work. Boo!
Yesterday was the chore day, we hired a van, sorted the cr*p in the flat, went to the dump, made a list, went to IKEA (yes on a bank holiday Sunday, we are insane enough), came home, tided a bit and then slumped around.
I managed to create a craft space in amongst the window related chaos in the flat. Here's a pic of the craft space - its cracking me up. I am perched on the edge of our bed and have managed to track down the essential tools and stash that I need to work with - in the background behind the desk is our chest of drawers that is covered in stuff from the craft room.

I made some lovely owl cards and some bunting ones for the charity sale. I also had an idea and started to make a complicated bunting variation (let's see how this pans out later in the week...)

Today I have been sewing tank top tote bags - photos are below. So easy to make and fun too. I took several different pics,to create a mini tutorial (the finished pic isn't great sorry).

Step 1 - Fold tank top inside out and match the straps up

Step 2 - Sew both sides together

Step 3 - Mitre the corners to add strength

Step 4 - Fold right side out - voila! Finished tote

I managed to make 4 of these in 25 minutes - here's a pic of them all piled up ready to be gifted to friends and charity.

I am thinking about making little drawstring pouches to store them in, but I can't decide...

I also made these -

based on an example I found on Pinterest. I used a mixture of embellishments I bought when I went to Berkhamsted a few weeks ago, flowers JT gave me, flowers, papers and bling from my stash. I like them, think these will be going in the charity pile.

I have to go into hospital tomorrow, but I'm not going to dwell on that. It's more exciting to point out that all the pictures on the blog today were taken on my new (= previously belonged to Hubby) HTC using the Instagram app - awesome!

Cx

The playdate continues...

We made so many things on our playdate that I have at least 2 more posts of fun stuff to show you.

I am also working on some cards for the charity event that JT's Mother-in-Law is hosting. I have delivered a small batch, but I making many more - I'm working with 3 designs I think - 2 old favourites and a new one. I'll show you some pictures soon of those.

Today's main picture was an experiment, I've never embossed a patterned paper, I like the way it has come out. The colourful floral paper is from JT's Martha Stewart punch pad (DO WANT) and the chipboard butterfly is from a sheet with chipboard buttons on, that I dug out so JT and I could play with them. Below is a close-up shot - I like the texture the embossing added to the subtle pattern in the paper.

The pink card below isn't a firm favourite, it was based on a sketch and I like the idea, but now I am not convinced by the green strip! No matter, I am sure I'll find a use for it :)

The card below I love, really simple and very masculine I think. I used a really nice recollections card from Michaels' I bought these in Vegas in the sale bin - $1 for 10 cards! Bargain, you can't see but it has a slight shimmer. And no I didn't buy another scalloped punch, the small green punch was made using JT's punch (DO WANT). I can see myself making lots of these, might add these to the charity batch.

Last but not least by any means is this cheerful blue star embossed card. The corner star punch is JT's and the green felt star came from my stash. Love it, it's so fun.

So that's all for today. I am going to relax over the Bank Holiday, no partying for me, as I try and shift this cold. I'll be trying to blog too - got to get my posts back on track, following the April internet related hiatus!
Cx