oopsie, had to check, oh dear!

Well the title says it all really! I had to check wether or not I had actually posted this card! How bad is that? In fairness I made it 2 days ago, the night before my mate turned up to play, and it was put to one side for later, lol, so I am only a day behind!

This is quite a delicate card for me, so much so that I wonder wether it is too delicately coloured, wether I should have gone for darker inks or not?
But it's made, and you should all know by now, that I am an honest blogger, and boy have I posted some humdingers in the past!
So what have we got here? An amalgamation of electronic die cutting, manual embossing, stamping using inks, and using pens.
First to be produced was the bird with the flourish tail. Its actually a design I bought from the Silhouette store, and have converted it to be cut with the e-craft, on smooth white 250 gsm card stock. Beak to tail tip it measures 5 1/2", quite sizeable really. So fine I had this lovely bird.....what to do now?
So out came Mr Happy and a Sizzix embossing folder I received in my Goody bag from the My Craft Studio workshop in Doncaster. Okay, so now it is beautifully embossed, but it needs something to make it pop!
Milled Lavender Distress ink, and a large head blusher brush, as Doncaster had completely sold out of large Brushes for ink dusting with (boy was I not pleased about that), to add definition to the embossing.
Okay so now I am working in the lilac/purple range, which decided the base card colour, and the Matt cut from a sheet of 12 x 12" Docrafts Capsule collection paper.
A lilac ribbon, and it really needed something else.....hmmn! Okay, so out came some cute little stamps I got as a freebie with Nicky Hall's Creative Chronicles magazine, again from Doncaster. Some tiny little Lavender bunches! Perfect, but they are small, and I wanted to use 2 colours on the stamps........Whispers pens to the rescue! So a purple and a green pen at the ready I proceeded to stamp a little line of Lavender bunches above where I would place the ribbon. Huffing periodically to re-awaken the ink, yes those huff pens, they're the ones!
So ribbon attached, birdie attached, gems sorted just needed a sentiment, so Heartfelt wishes from the same stamp set, and what did I do? Picked up the WRONG INK PAD!!!! AAAAARRRGHHHH!!!!
Bit late now though! I picked up the Tattered Rose instead of the Milled Lavender! Now sorry I'm no Barbara Grey, even though the stamps are clear, as my hands dont hold steady enough, so it has to stay this way, until I root out everything again, and die cut a piece to stamp on, then I can cover it up, and hopefully hide the miss match in colours!
Told you I'm honest lol

hugs to all who make mistakes, Boy do I know how you feel!
So lets see if the various members of challenge groups have a good old giggle at my mistake!
The Pink Elephant:: TPE 160, use ribbon
Papertake Weekly Challenge: Anything goes
lou xxx

Cards for my crafty friends.

Well another post, these are all the same design, as I do believe that this is unique to me........

Paying attention? Then I'll begin.........
its a quadruple twisted easel card, measuring 8x8 inches. And I do believe no one else has come up with this, but its really easy to do, and I'll soon set up a new page for my own design creations on this blog, so keep your eyes open.........
This one was done using K&Co Glittered letters, Some Papermania Christmas Henbury Lane  papers, Berry Merry Christmas 6x6 papers by Jennifer Ellory, and some paper from my stash, which is years old, but I think its again a papermania one.
I folded the Berry Merry papers using Mel Heatons paper Fold technique, inserted and glued the Papermania Henbury lane inside, and matted it onto some red textured card, followed by some holographic Mirri card which I bought quite a while ago at one of the Manchester Craft shows, this was way before it became popular and I got loads of packs of it for a pound.
The base was prepared using the old Papermania 12x12, and then scored at 4 inches, and again diagonally, to create the twisted easel. The bases were then stuck on with DST, and the glittered letters glued on and some peel offs added to edge the base. There are NO stoppers on this card at all. Its all to do with the way its assembled, so it then lies flat and slips into an ordinary 8x8 envelope for posting, with no extra charge for bulky letters!! Yet it  is a dimensional card which displays pictures all the way around.

All these images and papers came from the My Craft Studio Christmas Classics Looking Out cd, I just used a bit of gold Holographic card to mount the images on. The images for the Toppers are printed on Pearlescent paper, and then Ultra fine Crystal Glitter was liberally applied.

This one is again all My Craft Studio, but this time the Walk in Winter Wonderland Cd. I printed the Fairy Baubles onto Acetate, and liberally coated the inky side with Crafters Companion Gold Spray and Sparkle to seal it, mounted the images to some white cardstock. Then on the outside of the acetate image I used a versa mark pen, and some gold Pearlescent embossing powder to edge the baubles, and some glittered Gold embossing Powder for the bauble tops.

Again MCS Winter Wishes Cd this time, printed on supersmooth Xerox 250gsm card, I got a full ream of this wonderful card for £7.99 from everycraftsapound.co.uk, a few weeks ago, and it is superb in both my inkjet and my laser printer. I actually printed the images twice, one slightly larger than the other, and then layered the smaller image on top of the larger one using DST . I also ran round the edge of each topper with a silver paint pen, to finish the edges off nicely. Then I used glitter, Crystal Accents, Fluffy Stuff, and also some mica powder in paint form to highlight various snowflakes throughout the images.

These images and paper were taken from makinghandmadecards.com, where I am a member, and this is from the Vintage Quick Christmas Cards download. I used Whispers Dual tip Markers and a water brush to colour the images, Highlighted small areas with Cosmic Shimmer Mica inks, and then used the Spellbinders Labels 22 with the Happy Cut to cut them out.
I then mounted them onto some C&C textured Gold Cardstock, and used Cosmic Shimmer, Olympic Gold Pearlescent Glue which dies dimensional, to create pearls of gold, and used Crystal Glitter to highlight areas. The the old corner chomper by We R Memory Keepers came out to play, and I used the 1/2 inch end.

This one used Crafters Companion Christmas Humphrey's Corner images and backing papers. I cut each image out using the lattice rectangles by Spellbinders, and matted them onto some Green patterned Mirri. each image has at least one area which was brightened with Cosmic Shimmer Mica inks, then Crystal Glitter, and MCS Snow was applied. The base was brightened up using the edges of some Holographic Peel offs, you know the straight bits down the sides, well "waste not, want not" as the old saying goes.


And last but not least..

Again Humphrey's Corner Christmas CD by Crafters Companion, some red printed cardstock, some holographic silver mirri card, and Cosmic Shimmer inks, and Crystal Glitter. These were cut using Sizzix circle dies, and the base was trimmed with some silver holographic peel offs and corners for interest.


Phew that took some time to write, as unbeknownst to you lot reading this, youngest had inserted himself into my crafting chair, and was making some Christmas cards..........." Mum....how do I ? Can you help.......Can you do this bit..........can you heat this?   Can I borrow your mouse mat?  


yep think you get the idea now lol. But here's one of his cards that he has just made..........

Not too bad for a nine year old, but I need to work on his stamping a bit I think!

Look what the Postie bought!!

Well, I have had a lovely day!!
First Linda sent me the photo's she had taken at the NEC, and I'm going to post them on my side bar, I was very creative, and have lots of work ready for tomorrow, when I get back from picking eldest son up from Preston, and the Postie came!!


Here's the results of the Post!!

More goodies!!
I am lucky enough to be a member of My Craft Studio Platinum Club, a wonderful friendly place to chat to other crafters, and this past weekend MCS had an offer on their Mystery Boxes, so I bought one , having had 3 previously that were exceptional value!!
So........All this is MCS except from the Whispers pens which arrived today from Crafter companion, yippee!!
Ribbon, 2 Pots of Meltdust, some, well loads really, of Klever Construction flower sheets, and some that I had also ordered, so I have 3 sheets of some now, which means I can keep one of each for stroking, a pot of everyday glue, some foam tape and pads, sheets of unprinted diecut windows, and shapes, some Paper flower expert sheets, probably go to youngest, some Glittered acetate, peel offs, card stock, a wad of 6x6 papers, an alphabet stencil, 50 wonderful word books CD, a big tub of pearl hat pins, some liquorice sprinkles, a pack of Jump rings, a sheet of foto-polymer stamps, and some gel pens. And a £5  voucher to be spent in December, get in!! All for £15!

Needless to say I was a happy chappie!
So Whispers at the ready.....Open the Joanna Sheen stamps that arrived the other day, I was saving them for the Whispers pens, colour them in, and start stamping..erm hold on that one doesnt ring a bell? eh? the stamp didnt match the insert! and I'D CUT IT UP!! I couldnt send it back!! Phoned them up, LOVELY lady, said I was the second one that had had that problem, with the same stamp, of all things, not different ones so we could have swapped, oh no, the same stamp!! But as it was their mistake, they'd send mine out immediately  and please keep the one I had got by mistake, with their compliments!! Now that was a lovely surprise, as I was quite willing to pay for it, as I should have checked it when it arrived!
this is what I should have got

But I didnt get the Wreath, instead, I got the poinsettia and music!!
Any way, here's something I made earlier on today

This is made using some A3 dark Blue card stock, some A4 Hunky Dory Card, from the Christmas past collection I believe, but it is hard to remember as I do have a large collection of HD Christmas stock, this much in fact

Think I had better start using it! I used some Create and Craft embossed matt gold card stock, to cover the remainder of the length of the A3 sheet, used one of my Martha Stewart punches to create the blue "ribbon, added a cut off of the embossed gold card, and in order to create a matching "topper" I was very naughty and scanned in the backing card, imported it into MCS, changed the opacity and size, to that of 6x4, selected a swag of holly from the MCS Winter Whimsies CD and added a verse from Verses4cards.Then Matted and layered that onto alternating layers of Gold Mirri and some of the remaining blue A3 scraps.
this is the inside.

Hunky Dory do do some wonderful designs, and their quality is always top notch, but I wanted something different from this set, as I am creating special Family cards for the church fairs, and I wanted something that a young teenager might buy for their parents Christmas card, sometimes HD can be a little too sophisticated for that age group, not that I am complaining!! Dont worry that pic is now deleted form my pc, as its here, and I cant use it again, for 2 reasons, 1, I have used the original and dont have another of those, and 2, I know full well that I wont get the same effect or quality as the original provides, no matter what I do so its not worth even trying!!
The card just needs finishing with a red bow, some glitter, and maybe some Klever construction Christmas holly, if I can bear to cut into it that is!!
Right this is a late post as I had a VERY late CT scan appt tonight, 7 pm!! My own fault really, as I should have been there at 8.50 this morning, but got myself confused with the specialist appt NEXT week for 3.30, and suddenly realised what I had done, phoned the hospital up, and they shoved me in tonight bless them!


Right time to post a few pics, and off to bed with me!!


Happy Crafting everyone, xx