Mike and Marie's wedding

Here is a photo of my lovely son and gorgeous daughter-in-law just after they tied the knot on 9/9/09. Sorry the photo is a bit grainy. I'm looking forward to getting the professional photos to scrapbook. 800+ photos will keep me going for life ;-)

After taking the photo I looked to my left to see two little ones having fun. It's one of my favorite photos of the day. The children loved taking photos. It was great to see lots of relatives who live far away and everyone had a lovely lovely day.

Scalloped Ovals




Haven't made any cards for ages, but feel I should get cracking with Christmas cards. One a week between now and Christmas will not be enough! This card is for my son, who like most men loves monkeys. It has a little bit of flower soft on the hat and is coloured with copics.

The scallop on the monkey card is made using a silhouette die cutting machine, whilst the oval below was cut with my new nestabilities. Both cards are approx 6" by 4". I prefer the nestabilities scallops but I am surprised how small they are. Please let me know if you have any ideas on how to use the tiny dies.

This card is a random selection of things, that tie together quite well with the colours. The background is glitter card.

Workshop

During my trip round the North East I managed to fit in a trip to Graphicus - so many temptations, but I was quite good and only bought one small stamp set of sayings and a few lovely things. Shame no workshops that week.

A the end of the week I went to a workshop at Art from the Heart in Harrogate. We made a little book from a paperchase diary. We glued, gessoed, daubed and stamped. Was great fun and best of all I rediscovered the joy of doodling. Here are a couple of pages, they are a bit rough but I like that as they don't look too nice to use.




I have been playing around with similar techniques today on a tag and in a small book. I also used masks and red ink to give an extra dimension - looks orange on photo.



As you can see I was a bit heavy handed with the black ink, but that doesn't matter I can use it as a line for writing along.

Messy is best for writing over, otherwise I am afraid of spoiling the page!

This a small card I made with the bottom bit of the tag.

Best wishes, Anne

Quick Catch Up

I've been off work for 2 weeks and in theory that should have meant lots of time for crafting. But what really happened was:

• A few days tidying & cleaning house - it gets so bad when I work long hours
• A lovely week travelling round North East of England
• A fab workshop with Dyan
• Shopping for wedding clothes. I now own a dress! Just need some shoes - I've seen ones I like but will I be able to walk in 4" heels?
• Had my hair done as test for wedding - below is a during photo and to be honest this looked better than final result! Why does my hair dresser want me to look like someone else at my son's wedding. I just want to look like smarter version of self. A much thiner version would be nice too - but unlikely to happen in next two weeks!
• Read a few books and am now on book three of TrueBlood series. I guess I'm an addict

Here is a photo of black cat Paws in her new bed! She is so difficult to photograph.

Back to basics challenge

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with all the craft goodies in my craft room and just seem to collect rather than use them. I look at some of the fab cards on blogs and feel overwhelmed. They are amazing and I couldn't make some of them even if I tried to copy them.

From time to time I like to set myself challenges and I really enjoyed this one. Use white card, one stamp and one inkpad to make 5 different cards. I used a Stampin' Up Real rose pad. I thought it would be really hard, but it got easier as I went along. Ok so none are masterpieces, but I would be happy to send them and most of all I really enjoyed making them. I've left the images big, so if you click on them you can see the backgrounds in more detail.

The card above is simply stamped and layered on a red border. The border was made by running the ink pad around the egde of the card to give a soild layer of colour. I cut my pieces to rough size and cut acurately after sticking, this way I only need to ink the edge. I guess I cheated a little bit using some ribbon.

The second card didn't go as planned. I tried to stamp the swirly parts of the stamp all over the background but it just looked odd. I used a matching marker to isolate the images but after I'd stamped a few on the right I didn't like it. So I rubbed over the images with a baby wipe to dye the card pink. This gave quite an interesting effect with the colour getting lighter across the card. The layering was coloured as above for one layer. The other layer was done by dragging the ink pad diagonally over the egde leaving an interesting effect.

This background was done with cut and dry foam to cover the paper in a random way, this was sprayed with a fine mist of water (you can just wet your hand and splash) dab the paper dry with kitchen roll to remove some of the water, leaving tiny random dots. If you don't have cut and dry try kitchen roll or baby wipes.

I used the rest of the water splash card to make this sideways card - though you could use it either way up. The torn edge is inked along the edge.


I cropped the image to make a square, The first layer is card pressed, with my fingers, against the ink pad to pick up the pattern of the linen ink pad. The third layer is just the flower heads stamped randomly. I used a marker, but if you have a cats eye or dew drop inkpad you could use the point of the pad. The final layer is just direct to paper again. Don't worry about overlapping lines it just adds an interesting effect. Fab easy technique which means you always have matching card.

I was going to stop at five cards, but this last card uses up all the bits I had left over. It was going to be an ATC but the measurements were not quite right. This uses prima flowers and a glitter brad. This is my favorite.

I hope this has inspired you to have a go at your own challenge. Please share any ideas you have.

More Loads of Love!I had a play with the bits leftover from the last card and came up with this slightly different version. The sanded stamp works really well with loads of different backgrounds and is great for men cards.

Loads of Love! Following on from the butterfly card, I made this with the rest of my sheet of kraft card. I roughed up some pretty paper with a more mustard mini ink pad; to give a more manly feel and used my new Stampin Up set Loads of Love. Bits of the truck are darkened using a grey marker. I find making cards for men quite difficult, so I must make a few more cards with this set.

I hope you are enjoying your weekend. I'm going for a Mongolian barbecue tonight, it's my son's birthday so guess who will be getting this card :-)

Kraft Butterfly I stamped this butterfly a while ago and sprayed it with a gold glimmer mist. This bled the colours whilst keeping most of the detail. I had no idea what to do with it, but it was far too nice to bin. Here I've used the card layout from Heather, I love her kraft cards but this is my first. I couldn't find a designer paper to link the Laura Ashley ribbon and butterfly, so I stamped my own.

Tilda thinking...




This card looks like how I feel today. Tilda sits and wonders what to do but can't quite bring herself to do anything! Still I did make some fab rock cakes - yum!

Glitter Butterfly

This card is cased from one of my fav blogs - pine is here. The whole background card is glitter and the butterfly is from Elusive images.

Having a relaxing day off work. Trying to make some cards, but my heart just isn't in it. Fingers crossed I will be feeling more creative later in the week.

Congratulations Judith for winning my mini blog candy of crochet flowers and stamped images.

Wish This is my favorite Leanne Ellis image. I always wonder what she is wishing for. Nice easy birthday card with a few quirky touches.

Butterfly card





Not sure about this card. I like the flowers but the butterfly is a bit lost against the designer paper. This butterfly is from an amazing set from Elusive Images. The sentiment is from Kirsty Wiseman.

Flowers

This Leanne Ellis image is a bit cutsie for me, but it goes well with the Stampin Up paper. Not sure what happened with the flower, it doesn't look quite so odd in real life.

I'm looking forward to going to the theatre tonight - the tart and the vicars wife! I'm looking forward to a good laugh.

Listen honey....it's not nice to ask a woman her age, but if you must know I'm 22!




I love funny images, but find them hard to find. I hope this one makes you smile.



It may just be because it's summer, but I'm enjoying using flowers on my cards. I tend to make clean uncluttered cards, so I find them difficult to use. I wish I could add lots of embelishments but it just doesn't work for me. If it looks unfinished then I'm done! These felt beauties are from Stampin Up.

Wacky flower





Time and time again I find myself drawn back to this background and layout from Dyan's blog. The lovely quirky stem is from blonde moments and the other stamps from Stampin up. I am planning to go to the September mini Ranger workshop at Dyan's shop - Art From the Heart. I wish I still lived in Yorkshire then I could do all her classes...

Another crochet flower

My cyber friend Anne sent me some suger nellie images including the one above. So far I have bought 3 of the images she sent me and now I have this one on order. For me swapping images is a great way of finding out if I will use an image, but doesn't seem to be a way of saving money - LOL!

Crochet flowers mini blog candy

Sorry have have been absent for the last few weeks. Work has been very busy and I just haven't felt like stamping. Instead a had a go at crocheting flowers and ended up with a big pile of flowers and no idea what to do with them. I based my flowers on the inside flower on this blog, but I used double crochet rather than triple crochet on the first row.

Here is a card I made in two slightly different colourways using one of my flowers. The image is from sugar nellie and the papers are Stampin Up.

For a chance to win 10 crochet flowers and some stamped images please leave a comment below. If possible please leave a link to any cards where you have used crochet flowers. I will anounce the winner next Sunday. Good luck. Anne x

Twisted Thursday's challenge

This card uses the Twisted Thursday layout. It reminds me of portrait on a wall.

The Gorjuss girl is coloured using Stampin' Up markers.

Congratulations to Anne for winning this challenge.

Flower Soft

This simple card uses flower soft to add a bit of fluffy magic. Is it just me who thinks it looks like the stuff used on train layouts to make grass? The paper and ribbon are Stampin' Up.

Paris

I saw this card layout on SplitCoastStampers.com but unfortunately I don't remember who made it. The original card had buttons where I have used flowers.

I was feeling totally uninspired to stamp so decided to set myself a challenge. I recently bought a book by Claudine Hellmuth which includes cards for colours and topics. She adapted the idea from something she did at art school, so as the topics don't really apply to cards I decided to make my own lists.

Here are some examples from the four lists I used:
Topics - wings, funny, places, background
Colour - black, red, pink, purple
Embellishments - brads, ribbon, designer paper
Company - ellusive images, bella,

I labelled them all 1 to 10 using excel and asked my hubby to choose a 4 digit number. The number he picked gave me Topic = Place, Colour = Autumnal, Embellishment = Flowers and Company = Bella. The Bella stamp I used is called Paris, so that is also the place. :-)

Why not write lists to suit your preferences. My lists also include use a new stamp/old stamp, use something from my desk and open a random box!

Have a lovely week, Anne

Supplies:
Paper - Stampin Up
Markers - Stampin Up and copics for the dog
Flowers - Prima with zoom dots
Sentiment - Kirsty Wiseman CD

Here is a quick and easy birthday card made with a gorjuss image my mate Anne gave me. The elusive images butterflies are left over from another project. I couldn't resist using the cute chicken, though she looks a bit out of place on a pink card.

More experiments

After making the butterfly card below I had some of the spiced marmalade (distress) ink and wild plum (adirondak) ink background left, so I thought I would give a more detailed explanation of what I did on the background and show a few before and after photos.

The first photo shows the background plain, and as you can see it really doesn't look much at this stage. I started with a sheet of white matt card and rubbed the marmalade ink in diagonal stripes roughly about 3" wide and 3" apart. I rubbed the pad on the paper until the colour was dark and fairly even (up and down and round and round). Then I did the same with the plum going over the edges into the marmalade to make a red colour between the orange and plum. You may need to wipe your plum pad on a bit of paper to get rid of the mamalde ink it has picked up.

Then I wet my hands and shook some water drops on the page. After about 30 seconds I blotted the paper and the ink became lighter where the water had been. I have seen this technique several times so unfortunately I'm not sure who should get the credit. I then wiped over with a baby wipe to even out the colour a little. I also wiped the back to reduce paper curl. Dry with a heat gun or place it under something heavy to dry naturally.

I overstamped with black memories using a Club Scrap stamp.

The image (Sugar Nellie by Leanne Ellis) was coloured with a mixture of ink from the marmalade and plum pads using a wet paint brush to get some ink from the pad (with the pad shut press the middle of the lid into the ink and then take the ink from the lid), copics (yippee! E000 is now available in UK) and glitter gel markers.

Then I layered everything up. In an attempt to make a card that wasn't exactly the same design as most of my other square cards, I think I may have lost the plot a bit! The happy birthday circles are from a Kirsty Wiseman CD and the flowers are prima. No idea where the bling came from! She looks a bit peaky so I think she needs a bit of blusher!

Love Anne E

Spring has sprung


Over the last few weeks the weather has been lovely - well for March. Ok so it rained a bit and was windy too - stay with me here I'm thinking happy thoughts :-) As I sit and type the daffodils are in boom and the birds are busy fighting over the seed feeders and there is even a blackbird having a wash in the bird bath.

With this in mind I thought I would share some photos of blossom - I think they would make nice backgrounds so feel free to copy them if you fancy a play.

I should be making wedding invites but my lovely - NOT - e-mail system has deleted the attachment which contains the words for the inside! Oh well at least I can play on the pc a little longer with a clear conscience.

I hope you are enjoying your weekend.

Love Anne E x

Experiment

Jo mentioned that she had spiced marmalade (distress) ink and wild plum (adirondak) ink and I got to wondering what that combination would look like. I expected something firey but instead I got a kind of dull dark red where the colours merged and when I over stamped in black I got an aged sophisticated look that I really like. I hope you like it too.

The stamps are Elusive images and the ink was applied directly to the paper.

I wonder what other unusual colour combinations work well together? Any ideas?

Anne E x

With some birthday money I treated myself to the lovely Elusive Images Butterfly Poppy Collage plate from Graphicus

I've been playing around with the butterfly and flower stamps from the sheet and I think I'm in love!

The background butterflies are embossed in white and with various die inks dtp over the top. The sentiment taken from a large stamp by Paper Bag Studios.

As you might have guessed I have a thing about hot pink and yellow! The background pink does blend more in 'real life'. I hope you like these cards.

I have updated my photo with one taken on my birthday. It kind of makes me look odd in the small version, so please be assured I am not quite that scary in real life....well if you saw the 'before' pictures I took when messing about you might not agree...Not sure I'm brave/foolish enough to upload them.

Anne x

You know how sometimes you buy a stamp and wonder if you will ever use it....well that is what I thought when I bought this stamp. It was a bit pricy too!...but I couldn't resist as it made me smile. Turns out I've used it loads to make quick and easy get well cards.

These are destined for Afganistan - via Kirsty Wiseman.

When I was tiny my Great Grandad used to call me his little princess, so it might come as a bit of a surprise to hear that I have never had a crown! Well until now.

I had a fab weekend at a paperartsy/LB Crafts event, made lots of friends and even made a lovely metal crown.

The crown is metal backed with plastic, decorated with ten second studio tools and paperartsy letter stamps. I love the scrunched up balls at the top - these are made from 1/2 polystyrene ball and crumpled up metal. I used alcohol inks and black acrylic paint to decorate.

Never work with animals....

My cat Heidi was looking gorgeous sat in a flower tub surrounded by daffodils.

But when I tried to take a photo she got up and all I got was a photo of her eye.

Kind of cool photo but not quite what I was aiming for....

When I offered to make wedding invitations for my son I had no idea how difficult it would be to get burgundy light weight card! This is my final mock up. Please keep your fingers crossed that they like it as they asked for a redder burgundy - but it doesn't seem to exist!.

Inside will be the words on vellum that is attached with a burgundy satin ribbon bow.

Hopefully one down 39 to go! Good job I stocked up on stamps before the postage price increase next week!

Edited 8 April - Oh no! Now I have to make 50 of the booming things! I even have to cut and fold the card before trimming and have discovered I can't do this at night as the light from the new energy saving bulbs is rubbish - guess what I will be doing all over Easter!