Happy 10th Anniversary JT...

 

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2021.

My girl JT and her Hubby had a difficult 2020 for various reasons, but I saw that they decided to end the year on a high. They recreated their Wedding meal and I thought that was such a lovely thing to do.

I had been planning on sharing the card I made them for the 10th Anniversary last September, but never got round to it. So it seemed fitting today to share it.

JT and her Hubby share my love of all things bacon, so my first use of the AALL & Create 'Bacon' set had to be for them.

Sadly, you can't see in my slightly blurry photo the teeny tiny little handwritten gold 10's in the hearts. 

Wishing them and all my family and friends a very Happy New Year and I hope that if 2020 was a hard one for you, I sincerely hope that 2021 will be better for you.

Love

Claire x

Dancing Queen...

Hey,

Happy Monday!

Hope you had a good weekend?

I am a big fan of Clearly Besotted stamps and I was super happy when I saw this cute set 'Cha Cha Cha' was on sale.

I good friend of mine is a Disco DJ and she loves to dance and has a glitter ball.. so obviously, I had to make her the first card using this set.

I decided to do a loose CASE of this card -

I have the mini Cha Cha Cha set and so I needed a light beam. One of the things I really like to do is 'stretch' my stamps. So I used the beam from the Lawn Fawn 'Beam Me Up' set.

This card came out so well and my friend was very happy with it - I love #happymail!

Cx

16/11 - Happy Anniversary..

Hey,

If you have been visiting my blog for a while you know a) my wedding anniversary is Halloween and b) I always celebrate the anniversary of our first date - 30th October.

This year it's 16 years together and 11 years married!! 

The photo is from our anniversary early morning boat ride through the water park/conservation area last year in Cancun.

Being a cardmaker, I use these x2 anniversaries as an excuse to make Hubby elaborate cards. 

First up the 16 year card.

I love the 'Bacon' set by AALL & Create - a brand that I discovered earlier this year, whilst I was at home in London and they have been such a great find. I blended Worn Lipstick and Picked Raspberry distress oxides to create my background and then stamped the awesome bacon stamp from 'Bacon Break' by Sweet Stamp Shop. I added a few hearts for fun.

I mean how can he not love a card with a bacon background?! AND not a pun in sight (he very much dislikes a pun card, and I give them to him to wind him up - hee hee).

And here is the 11th Wedding Anniversary card! It's not strictly a pun, but it is kind of because it's Halloween...

I love all the amazing cloud blending I am seeing and I need MUCH more practice at it. But I am SO happy with how this came out and now I need a black blender brush..

I used an MFT Cloud stencil, Crate Paper 'After Dark' stamps and Papertrey Ink 'Keep It Simple: Anniversary' stamps. The inks are distress oxides in Black Soot, Carved Pumpkin and Wilted Violet.

We would normally be in Mexico right now celebrating, but you know global pandemic.. So we are going to our fave restaurant in NYC instead (hoping we don't freeze to death outside). 

I would just like to say that even though the last 7 months have been very strange, there isn't anyone else I could have been trapped in a small apartment with. Hubby and I have had so much fun at home, watching random crap, eating our body weight in cake, perfecting our fave recipes, and hanging with Clint Catwood. 

If you choose your life partner carefully, all storms can be weathered with humor.

I love you Mr G, you are my man, love, thing for life and beyond.

Cx

The Paper Players: Love you pig time..

Hey,

This weekend I had fun creating Valentine's cards for a few of my girlfriends.

I saw the Paper Players challenge this week and thought my card(s) would be perfect.

I love making Valentine's cards and if I wasn't leaving for London on Friday, I would have made more than 8 of them!

I bought the cute little Pig set last year in the post Valentine's Michael's sale and this is the first time he has been inked (I wanted to write oinked..) up.

I stamped, coloured and cut 6 of the Pigs and the coordinating sentiment, which had it's own die - WIN. I dug out some random small square card blanks and used that as a template for which size heart die I would use.

The heart die is pretty new, I bought it at the end of December when I was in London, I just loved all the details - stitched, scalloped and dotted - swoon.

I wanted these cards to be super quick makes and so I grabbed an ancient 4x4 paper pad and just choose 6 papers I liked!

They came together so easily and I love how silly they are!

I think Valentine's Day is silly, love is a 365 day a year thing and we shouldn't celebrate our love for our partners, friends, family on just one day, we should remember that life is very short and we should celebrate love every day. It sounds silly, but I tell my Hubby every single day that I love him, even when I want to murder him.
All of this said, I still love the card making part of Valentine's Day - silly, overblown declarations of love and that is partly why I love being a card maker, for the silly moments in life.

Cx

Weird Piggies...

Hey,

Happy Black Friday to you!

If you are in America, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

I had a great day, hanging with Hubby - basically watching him cook :) He is the best ever. I made a chocolate cake which is fave and there ends my contribution to the full Turkey dinner. We also watched all the NFL on offer and caught up with my parents and gave Boscat a mini Turkey dinner treat - which she LOVED.

Today, I am showing you a few little panels I made a few weeks ago. They did actually become fun cards, but guess what..I forgot to take photos of them before I sent them out! UGH.

Anyway...

The stamp is awesome and by Paper Artsy and was a gift from Cheiron. The minute she gave it to me I knew it would work really well with my current fave thing - Andy Skinner dots stencil.

I stamped the winged piggy and then masked him off and used distress oxides through the stencil over him.

I totally love the bright, fun, slightly weird end result and I'm going to mimic it, in my art journal.

Have fun today if you are shopping. I did most of mine in Vegas (which was so much crazy fun, I can't even begin to explain) and online. Today I will be just hitting a couple of local stores that I like to go to.

It's been a great week of vacay, sad to go back to work on Monday, but it will be nice to catch-up with the ladies.

Cx

More piggies...

Hey,

So I am feeling a bit jaded today :)..one too many Planet Claire's last night..yes I was drinking something that has the same name as me..

On Saturday I got a big batch of booty from Ellen Hutson and MFT..

The Lovely Piggies set by Mama Elephant was in there and I stamped and coloured four of the Piggies, one I used for a challenge entry.

I made x3 mini cards with the other three Piggies.

I followed a little formula.. die-cut the Piggies using stitched squares or circles, use the new MFT chevron paper I bought as a background and add a simple sentiment.

I love how they came out, I might have to make a fourth one, so they are a set that I can give to someone.

Cx

The Paper Players: New Piggies...

Hey,

Happy Monday!

I love the sketch over at The Paper Players this week -

I decided to break out one of the new sets that arrived this weekend 'Lovely Piggies' by Mama Elephant.

I stamped my Piggy onto watercolour paper and coloured her using Distress Ink. Then I die-cut her out using a scalloped circle die from The Works.

My background paper is actually from a pack of 'wedding invite insert' paper that I got on sale last December from Paper Source..It's sooo shimmery IRL.

The grey chevron paper is new from MFT and the flowery piece is an ancient scrap from a pad by Amy Tangerine.

To finish off my card I added a die-cut thanks and stamped the rest of the sentiment all from a Hero Arts set that Cheiron gave me.

I love the end result.. I think these Piggies are a great addition to my stash, good job I stamped and coloured them all at the same time ;)

Cx

Margate Craftathon 2017: Part Five..the end..

Hey,

Happy Friday.

So this is the FINAL part of the Margate series.

It was actually a lot of fun to write the posts and look at the cards in more detail.

Today's post is slightly different as these cards aren't really a 'family' - just random fun makes.

The main card used a Simon Says Stamp cardkit - I took a few along with me, for JT and I to play with and this one has fun scratch off stickers, so we totes had to play with that. I drew my own balloon string and I'm feeling pretty pleased about that.

Love this next card - in part because it is a total mix of our stashes. The background stamp (which I adore) is by Hero Arts and belongs to JT - she actually bought it second-hand from Jenn Shurkus. And as you can see there is that Thank You die again! The flowers and leaves are from my stash and are by MFT.

 Final card today uses a new stamp I bought whilst in London. It is called Party Pigs and is by Woodware, it actually has 6 pigs in a line, but I didn't have a big enough card blank! I love the stitched die that I used (belongs to JT, gift from me..)..why do I not have these?

I love the pigs, they are kind of kooky and I like that. And I like Pigs..so...

It was such a fun thing to do and sharing the cards with you has made me smile a lot, thinking about the laughs and JT, who is totes a friend for life, no way I am letting her go man.

Have a great weekend, sadly my time in Mexico will be up tomorrow (sob).

Cx

4 Cards, 1 Stamp Set: Avery Elle..

Hey,

Recently I have been inspired to pull out stamp sets and make 4 cards using the 1 set.

I plan on doing this a lot more and I have pulled out some older items so they get a bit of a new lease of life.

This time I used Hogs & Kisses by Avery Elle -

This is a reasonably new set for me, but I love it and have already used it a couple of times..

I'm pretty pleased with all 4 of my cards, but my faves are these two -

Cracking myself up with the floating Cow.. Balloon dies by Papertry Ink, gift from the wonderful Darnell

Background created using a Prima Floral background stamp with distress inks and water

All of the background were either previously made or papers. I coloured everything with a mix of distress ink, Zigs and Promarkers. All the panels were die-cut with MFT stitched rectangle dies

I am thinking I might leave these as a set and gift to a friend.

Cx

Addicted to CAS: Pink..

Hey,

Hope you are having a good weekend so far.

I had a lazy one yesterday, I engaged beastmode at the gym on Friday and then went out with Hubby, so felt like taking it easy!

I decided to play along with the latest challenge over at Addicted to CAS -

I had the Hogs & Kisses stamp set by Avery Elle out on my desk already and I thought it would be fun to use the Pig for my card.

I die-cut a piece of Tim Holtz Woodgrain cardstock and stenciled on the hearts using Picked Raspberry distress ink and a Dutchdoobadoo stencil.

The Pig was coloured using Zigs and I stamped one of the sentiments from the set into the heart.

Super simple card, but so pretty!

I'm having a playdate with JT today and I am most excited, it's been a while!

Cx