Happy 15/10...

Hey,

Hubby and I are currently in Mexico to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, but if you have read my blog before then you know that yesterday was the anniversary of our first date - making this 15 years that we have been together!

I have written SO many posts about Hubby and our relationship over the last 10 years that I have had my blog.

My fave post is this one I wrote to celebrate our 10/5 year anniversary and I can't top that. I also decided not to use one of our Wedding photos for this post. The one I have used is from a friend's wedding last year and I love it, as it's SO us.

So today, I'm just going to show you the two cards I made Hubby for both anniversaries - I am a cardmaker, after all, so he always gets two cards!

I bought this amazing set by Ellen Hutson when it was on sale, especially for this occasion, as I refer to Hubby as Otter Boy - too personal for this blog ;) AND Hubby really hates all my punny cards, so I love to wind him up by giving them to him..

But also Otters mate for life and when they are in the Ocean or the River, they hold hands/paws at night, so that when they sleep they don't drift apart.. We have always thought that this is the sweetest thing ever and the set had two Otters holding hands/paws making this set perfect.

The first card is the one for our 15th Anniversary -

Gorgeous right! I started by stamping the Otters and masking them off before stenciling over them using a fave heart stencil by Dutchdoobadoo. The bottom half is a Clearly besotted stencil and I added the sentiment from the Otter set along with some Tim Holtz stickers to complete it. To hide the join, I added a glittery blue strip.

Here is a close-up of the sentiment - 

Here is the card for our 10th Wedding Anniversary.

This card is SO sparkly IRL, as I added Wink of Stella everywhere!!
I started by stenciling in the waves using a MFT stencil, then I added the sunburst, using a Clear Scraps stencil.
I stamped, coloured and die-cut the Otters and added a sentiment from the set.

Really happy with both cards - especially the mad puns!

Happy Anniversary Hubby, so glad that we are 15/10 in and continuing to have fun together, here's to the next 15/10 of fun, laughter, love and adventure. You will always be my Otter boy.

Cx

Retro Rubber Challenge.. Let's get sketchy..still time to play

Hey,

There is still time for you to play along with the current Retro Rubber challenge.

This time we have a sketch (by me) for you.

Show us your interpretation of the sketch and pop over to Retro Rubber and get inspired by the things the DT have made.

Challenge ends November 1st.

Don't forget to tell us the age of your stamp, which is part of the fun of our challenge and please only enter 10 challenges including Retro Rubber.


Cx

Simon Says Stamp: Stamptember Critter Crowd..

Hey,

Happy Monday (from Mexico).

I love Stamptember over at Simon Says Stamp, there are always so many fun collaborations.

This year I bought two sets, one of them I used on today's 'Critter Crowd' - the other set, you'll see soon.

I started by stamping and watercolouring the critters and the balloons. If you follow me on Instagram, you will have seen my little video about this step - I am attempting to make videos, they are a bit janky right now, but practice makes perfect ;)

I then stamped the Happy Birthday and created a little mask for it, so I could blend over it to create the pretty pink and orange background you see. I watercoloured the sentiment too and then added my critters and the balloons, all popped up using foam tape.

Such a pretty card, I can't wait to play with this stamp set a bit more.

Cx

The World is full of Beautiful Things..

Hey,

You might have noticed that I have been posting a lot recently.

I had a bit of a mental health break from my blog this year and decided to not put so much pressure on myself!

Recently I have made so many fun things that it felt right to share them, that's really what my blog is about. For a couple of years I made myself post almost every day and that was so time-consuming and not as much fun as this is supposed to be!

I made today's card a long time ago... it has been sitting in my 'to be blogged' folder patiently waiting it's turn!

I love digital stamps, they were my go to when I first starting crafting and I was still nervous about physical stamps and inks. That has obviously changed, but I still love digi stamps.

A company I discovered this year is Graciellie Designs - I love their digital stamps and I believe they do physical rubber ones in conjuction with Unity Stamp Co. (who I also love).

I bought their 'Tea for the Soul' set on sale because I loved it and one of the sentiments 'When life gives you lemons make tea' - you can see it here.

I fussy cut the stamp out after colouring it with Copics and because I chose to make the fruits Limes, I went with a kind of green theme.

The mini cover-plate die (Scalloped Stripe) is by Reverse Confetti and it is an all-time fave of mine. I die-cut it out of green cardstock and mounted it onto my card blank.

I cut my cardblank down to a kind of 4bar size. The excess that I trimmed off I used to stamp and heat emboss my sentiment which is by Hero Arts and then I fussy cut that to size. I hate to waste a decent sized scrap!

I love how bright and cheerful this card is and it has long since left to make a friend smile.

Cx

Desk Crap..

Hey,

So whilst I am sunning myself in Mexico, I thought I'd treat you to a super long post about some desk crap I found a few weeks ago!

I had this box on my desk that I have been dumping stuff into - oops. It finally gave up all pretence of standing and collapsed. So I threw out a bunch of stuff and the main photo shows some of the useful things I found (elephant dies I have been searching for, for months).

The watercolour tag pack was a great find and that inspired me to use as much of the crap as I could to make x10 cards using the watercolour tags.

So first I watercoloured the tags - just a basic colour wash -

Then I set to work making cards. It was a LOT of fun - there are x5 photos to follow with all the cards. Way too many products used to give you a full list, leave me a comment if anything particularly grabs your eye.

The Peep sticker, is actually an action wobble!

The sparkle tag was made using perfect pearls and is super shimmery, the holiday bauble card, I cut down the embossed heart from my main photo.

The card on the left uses a great Unity Stamp Co after dark stamp and was not part of the desk crap.

This is a bonus photo as I wanted to show you how anything in your craftroom can be used to create. The lines on a lot of the panels were created using the corrugated card from the watercolour tag packaging. I just added ink and 'stamped' it directly onto the panels.

I love all of these cards and they are now nearly all gone!

Cx