Another new home card

Hello everyone,

I had a lovely time in Shropshire, spending time with my gorgeous daughter, Laura. The food in the hotel was wonderful so I ate far too much and will need to pull back now I am home. The day after we got back, my eldest son, Chris, moved house so I quickly made a new home card with my Cricut wild card cartridge. It is going to be a real bachelor pad so I tried to keep it very masculine.

I hope you are having a great Bank Holiday weekend. Thanks for stopping by.

Carol x

Competition photos

Hello everyone,

Just a quick post to share some of the photographs that my family entered into our photo competition on Saturday. You can click on any of the photos for a larger view.

These were from the 'people' section:-

This shot of my youngest son, Nick, was taken by my husband.

This moody shot of the men (2 sons and a husband ) in our family was taken by Laura when were were on holiday in the Lake District.

The next shots were from the Landscape section:-

This beautiful shot of a lake was taken by my eldest son, Chris.

This shot was taken by Laura at Conway in Wales.

I'm very proud of my talented family, and I would recommend Laura's family challenge for a fun evening. We couldn't have our barbecue because of rainy weather, but we shared a meal and then had the slide show. Each of us had a voting paper and we voted for what we thought was the best photo in each section. I made rosettes on my Cricut for each winner and the overall winner received a certificate. Luckily, (and without 'fixing' if you know what I mean) everyone won at least one section.

I'll share some more photos when I can, but I'm off to Shropshire tomorrow for a few days with my lovely daughter.

Thanks for looking.

Carol x

Fabulous friend card.

Hi again,

I had an afternoon to myself today so I decided to make a card for the Simply Stamping Challenge. I only found the site today and the challenge is to use pleated ribbon on a card. As I've never tried this, I thought I'd have a go and this card is the result.

I ended up rather sticky and with lots of frayed ribbon on my work surface but it was fun trying a new technique.

Materials:-

Paper was from Craftwork Cards, Stampin'up Oval punches and stamp. Pink ribbon and star gems from my stash.

Wedding Card

Hi everyone,

Hope you had a great weekend and took advantage of the sunshine. We had our get together for the family  photography competition I told you about a while back, and soon I'll try and post some of the pictures we showed each other. I also had my first try at making some jam, and although I say it myself, my 4 jars turned out ok, and I'm going to try again and make more jars next time. I want to try dressing the jars up a bit now so that I can give some away as gifts, and I'm wishing that I had the Friendship Jars stamp set from PTI to help. Oh well, I'll have to look for something else in my stash instead.

My daughter, Laura, asked me to make a wedding card for one of her colleagues and I came up with this design:-

I've had this stamp from Serendipity Stamps for some time and have used it for Valentine cards but I thought I'd try it for a wedding card this time. I coloured the image with Copic markers BG10, BG13, BG18, RV13 and YG00. I also also used BG18 to colour the gems. I used the Martha Stewart deep trellis punch on silver embossed card for the background and also used the same silver card and some black paper to mat the heart shape. The greeting was done on the computer.

Thanks for taking the time to look.
Carol x

New baby door hanger gift.

Hello everyone,

I hope you had an excellent weekend and are refreshed for the week to come. I actually got round to making the door hanger baby gift I told you about on Friday, so I thought I'd share it with you.

I started with a plain wooden door hanger blank.

I gave it two coats of pastel green paint, allowing it to dry completely between coats.

I traced round the hanger and then cut it out inside the lines. I glued the K and Co paper onto either side of the blank and then inked all the edges.

I used a variety of embellishments to decorate :-

Cricut Zooballoo cartridge for the giraffe and the different sized stars.

Stampin' up oval scallop and oval punch,

baby foot punch,

Sizzix sizzlits alphabet for 'Aiden'

Blonde Moments, Sweet Nothings stamps,

Stampin' up twill ribbon and blue gingham ribbon.

Some old stickers that I had in my stash and livened up with a little glitter and buttons.

I was quite pleased with how it turned out but the colours shown here aren't quite true. In reality they are more baby pastel colours, as was the baby card shown on the previous post. I need to spend some time with my camera and maybe get some photo editing software to try and sort the problem out. If anyone has any ideas on how to solve this one I'd be very grateful.

As always, I'd love it if you could take time to leave a comment.

PTI/Cricut Zooballoo baby card

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to my blog on this wet and grey Friday. I hope you have good things to look forward to this weekend. I want to share a new baby card I made for some friends who have just had their first gorgeous baby boy, Aiden. Having a first baby is such a special time and it brings back memories of the arrival of my first born, Chris, even though it is more than 30 years ago. What a scary thought that it is so long ago.

Anyway, back to the card.

I used some yellow card, and polka dot blue card from my supplies, along with PTI spring rain card. I embossed part of the yellow card with the Cuttlebug Swiss dot embossing folder to add a little texture and matted it onto black card. I wasn't at all sure about using black on a baby card for some reason, but it did help the yellow to stand out. I used the PTI rickrack die to cut the spring rain cardstock and with a little playing around, I was also able to cut an additional very narrow strip from the same die. I cut the giraffe on my Cricut with the Zooballoo cartridge and shadowed it in black. The stamps were PTI Round and Round, Blonde Moments Sweet Nothings and a SeeD's  baby set that has lost its label.

I'm hoping to have time to make a door hanger for Aiden over the weekend, so feel free to pop back some time to have a look at that.

I think this card will also fit the challenge for a tall card that Passion for Papertrey are running at present.
Thanks for stopping by.

Carol x

PTI Friend card 2

Hello everyone,

Just a quick post to share another card that I've made for the Passion for Papertrey 'friend' challenge. I was playing with the scoreboard and and my new PTI beautiful blooms flower dies and wanted to incorporate them into a design. I decided to challenge myself and try a clean and simple card which is a little out of my comfort zone because I always want to add more, so I quickly tidied up and walked away to to stop my hands reaching for more stuff.

I used:-

the Martha Stewart scoreboard,

PTI Beautiful bloom die and Cuttlebug flower and leaf die to cut out the felt.

PTI stamps from Boxes, Bags and Tags

PTI vintage button in Spring Rain and Rustic button twine.

For the sentiment I used the Hero Arts Friendship Messages set and inked it in two parts to follow the embossed lines.

I used Spring Moss and Spring Rain ink.

Have a great weekend.

Carol x

PTI Spoil yourself friend card.

Hello everyone,

The week is rushing by but I took some time today to make a card for the Passion for Papertrey challenge. The theme is friends this time and I think there is nothing better than chatting with a friend over a cup of tea. Unless, of course, it is chatting with a cup of tea and a scrumptious cake!

I got the idea for the card when I was playing with the Rickrack die and noticed that the waste strip reminded me of the shelf edging you sometimes see on Welsh Dressers, and where you have a Welsh Dresser you have to have cups hanging don't you?

I used:-
SU card Close to Cocoa and Mellow Moss.
PTI Fillable frame 4 die, Teacup die and the Rickrack die along with a tiny tag punch. Stamps were from Fillable Frames 4, Tea for Two Additions, All About You and the Spoil yourself sentiment came from another set in my stash.

That's all for now.
Carol x