It's been a loooooonnng time...not a lot to report but I hope I am back with a few pics of cards made in the interim. No promises for the future but fingers crossed :)

Silver wedding card for my niece and her husband, Background is silver mirri card, die by Sue Wilson, flowers made with a hand punch, matte silver leaves made with a Britannia die and numbers from  Hippy Chick Cuttlebug alphabet .

 I have several like this saved on my Pinterest board but had to play around to get the effect I wanted. At first I embossed the design (rubber stamp by Hero Arts) with clear powder then coloured with Adirondack Color Wash sprayed directly over and wiped with cottonwool, but although it was acceptible the design absorbed some of the colour so the contrast was lessened. In the one above I used white EP, sprayed the wash into a container and wiped it on with a cotton ball which gave  more control. I tinted the punched butterflies with a pale pink / fawn Promarker because the white was too stark.

An easy card for our neighbour aged 9  using a borrowed acrylic stamp, maker unknown because I forgot to keep a note! The red Promarker was a better match for the background paper than appears here.

Another resist design but I've forgotten the details....I think I used a special resist pad then coloured the whole thing with ink taken from a Versacolor stamp pad and applied with cottonwool, then polished over with a clean piece. Silver peel offs to finish the edges compliment the vertical peel off greeting.....I should remember this next time I need a card in a hurry!

Been at the magic mushroom again!

OK, so this is the card I made in March just before the death of my laptop: I had scanned and saved it then shared on Pinterest but the computer file disappeared in a black hole and I have this only by doing a C&P from Pinterest. Sorry it is so big, I don't know how to make it smaller but just for the sake of completeness I will leave it as is. I can't now remember who made the stamps - it was an American selling on eBay complete sheets of red rubber uncut stamps and I bought them several years ago. I love the Tenniel drawings and a big advantage for me is that they don't need any added colour! This was for our 86 year old friend and the wording inside said "The best way to stay young is to lie about your age".

A forgotten springtime card

Still having problems but hopefully getting sorted slowly! This is a card I made for a friend's birthday - she showed it on a craft bulletin board and I was able to copy since I hadn't scanned before sending.. The fact that it saved where I wanted it was a minor miracle, now I'm trying to see if it is still there and I can show it.

Yay - it worked! Another 3D decoupage picture and this time I added a simple stitched border. The birthday was in April so the primroses and bluebells were very apt, and the yellow card was a pretty spring yellow not quite as acidic as it appears here.

I remembered another card I made in March which I certainly scanned because it's on Pinterest, but it isn't in the same file so it may have disappeared with the dying laptop. If I find it I'll add it to this post; I've already tried lifting it from Pinterest but haven't got it right yet.

You wait for ages then 3 come at once...

Well my good intentions to blog more often were set at naught by a combination of events, triggered by the death of my laptop! A new laptop was the first step on the road to recovery, but a forced change from Windows XP to Windows 7 and the loss of most of my files from 2011 onwards has left me with another steep learning curve to conquer, coupled with new problems discovered this evening related to uploading photos from camera to computer. I hope I have managed to save the pics I took of 3 cards I made this month so here goes...

 This was for our exDDIL,  a 3D decoupage motif on a die cut background by Marianne Dies.

 Back to the stitched and beaded initials by Emilie's Designs that I did such a lot last year. The colours have not reproduced well - they were turquoise, coffee and apricot.The letter has got a little lost: it's T for Teresa.

Our neighbour's elder girl was 8 last week: I don't make many cards for children and was stuck for something suitable until I remembered the Art Impressions rubber stamps I bought years ago called Fronts 'n' Backs. A pair of stamps, one being the full length back view and the other the front view of just head and shoulders, coloured and cut out then stuck together and mounted carefully to look over the fence. The top picture  shows the card closed and the lower one, open.  I chalked round the words to add a bit of interest; if I had had more time I could have added some stamped flowers or a cat to the garden. I really enjoyed fiddling with these and plan to use the other stamps I have of children dressed for snow to make a few Christmas cards,


Next time I hope I will have the cards edited properly with less background and definitely the right way up!

It's Official: Spring has arrived.....

....and hibernation is over! Yes, once again the gloom and depression have lifted and depite the icy wind straight from the Arctic there is sunshine and patches of blue sky; the snowdrops which were very late to flower are putting on a lovely show and mixing it with early crocuses and miniature daffodils, and the weeds are flourishing like.....weeds!

I haven't been idle on the craft front although there's not a lot to show for my endeavours. Having received my new die cutting machine at Christmas I soon discovered it wasn't quite as easy to use as I had assumed and there was a time of tears and tantrums before I admitted that what my husband was saying was right and I was doing it wrong! I still use my dear little green bug when I can but am much more confident with the X-Cut Xpress now. I had plenty of practice throughout January having decided that I needed a catalogue of all my dies, so I was kept busy cutting samples and sticking them onto big sheets of coloured paper(so I could quickly see what I had, section by section) and filing them in a shiny new binder with a neat printed label on the spine. This then led to more sub-divisions within the die storage box, and more magnetic sheets, and labels, and bags.....and I was a happy little bunny, remembering my days as a library junior filing catalogue cards over 50 years ago!

In the midst of it all I actually made a couple of cards. The first is just a variation on a much used theme - origami inkwell with a stamped script background and quill pen courtesy of a pigeon. This was for a WI competition "How creative can you be with feathers?" which caused a lot of amusement and my response was "Not very". The second was much more important being a Diamond Wedding anniversary for two very dear friends. Colour scheme was bright white and silver: as usual the matte silver card hasn't scanned well, nor have the clear diamond-like gems, and the bright white looks distinctly grey, but you can get the general idea. Dies by Spellbinder, numbers from a Cuttlebug alphabet set.

I went to a big craft show last weekend and came home with a bag full of new dies - why do I find them so irresistible? I'm always certain that these are the ones which will get me back into the full swing of producing cards for every possible occasion, with perfect designs.....but don't hold your breath while waiting for the great reveal.

I'll try to post again before everyone dies of boredom, but I'm away next week so it may be a little while.

Catching Up with Christmas

The deer design was copied  from one on Pinterest but with my own twist (the original was white with red, on a rectangular card). The snowflake was inspired by a friend but is sufficiently different for her to earmark it for some of her next year's cards. Finally,  the bottom one is well and truly my own original work! This stamp is one of a series by Barbara Gray of Clarity Stamps and I deliberately chose it to go with the Memory Box holly die which I've had for a few years. I also made a couple of cards using the companion  'Silent Night' stamp and nativity dies by Cottage Cutz but although they were supposed to be only experimental in the end I sent them without scanning first. Never mind, I have at least two more of these carol stamps and plan to make most of next year's cards with them so will be able to show them later.

All three designs lent themselves to production line assembly (I made 5 deer, 12 snowflake and 5 holly) but in the process decided that my beloved Cuttlebug is showing signs of the hard life it has led and maybe it would be nice to have one of the larger die cutting machines. I did some research, found what I thought I wanted was on special offer so mentioned to my husband that I intended to treat myself....only instead it was transferred to Santa's Grotto (a.k.a. the loft) when the courier delivered it and I still have to wait until next Friday before trying it out. You know - the Christmas present which I ordered but do not know anything about ;) So I can't tell you that it's the XCut Xpress which has a dial to adjust pressure instead of using plates and shims of differing thicknesses. A friends saw one in a craft shop and was very impressed....I hope I have made the right decision, but I shall hang on to my trusty little green Bug, just in case.

If there should be any readers out there still, I send greetings to you all and wish you a very happy, healthy and crafty new year.

Playing Catch Up

It's been a long time.....but no boring explanations or excuses, just some record shots to show what I've made in the past few months. Cards have been thin on the ground, until a couple of weeks ago when I pitched into making Christmas cards and the 6 birthday cards needed for December. There wasn't time to wait for the muse, or inspiration: if I couldn't produce something there and then it wouldn't be done! Not for the first time two friends missed out but I did more than I expected (there was another identical to the second one above as well) and I'll make another post with the designs for the Christmas cards.