Black and White......

It's been a while since I made a black and white card, always a favourite of mine. This one is really simple, the papers are anonymous ones that have been hanging around for ages. I cut the circles for the flower with the George cartridge and the Cricut expression, and roughed the edges up a little with sandpaper. The leaves were handcut

I will be picking the winners for the Promarkers later today - pop back tomorrow to see if you won

I see that the President of the USA is visiting the UK over the next couple of days. Apparently he has an entourage of 400 with him. 400? Good grief. These include a few chefs apparently. Chefs? Do they not think that he will be fed in Buckingham Palace? There's me, I manage to cross the Atlantic regularly with an entourage of one - my chief luggage lugger Mike. I have been known to do the journey with no entourage at all, just me and the inevitably overweight luggage. Now if I had my way, in a perfect world, I would have my personal hairdresser, a make up artist, my ladies maid, a couple of chefs........until the world is perfect, I will just have to rely on smiling sweetly at the nearest available bloke 'would you mind terribly just giving me a hand with this suitcase....careful, it's a bit heavy'.

Talking of cases - yes, it's that time again, the packing, the anxious lifting of cases to assess the weight, the agony when you can't fit it all in. I always take ridiculous choices of clothes back with me as well, flushed and warmed by the hot Florida sun, I tend to forget that in the UK I rarely, if ever, wear shorts, we don't have a pool so I really don't need ten swimsuits, I probably will never wear the stuff until it is time to pack it all back into the poor old suitcase to lug it back to Florida again. Life is a circle........

See you tomorrow

Polkadoodles Friday

Time for another challenge over on Polkadoodles. This week it's

Anything but a Card

but...............

guess what.................................

I just didn't have time to make a project this week, but hop over HERE to see all the fabulous offerings from the rest of the design team

Here is a Polkadoodles card though, made with the red-hot sellers, the neighbourhood stamps.

These are sets of red rubber stamps of houses, then you get all the little extras like the trees, flowers, the vines to stamp on the walls, little picket fences...... you don't have to bother with masking, or at least I didn't, just stamp away until you get a pretty scene like this.......

I added the trees, grass etc etc, I just love playing with these stamps, coloured with Promarkers in pastel shades. The daisy ribbon seemed to go well, and the large daisy is by Martha Stewart. I thought this would make a good card to send thanking friends for a visit to their home

Next week Polkadoodles are having a blog hop, and Nikky has come up with a really original twist on the usual hop, lots of goodies to be won, so come on over next Friday

Thanks for all the camera information. I saw a beautiful woodpecker today, and so wanted to take a photo. Of course I didn't even have my little nikkon with me, so not much hope of that. We are off to try a few out at a camera shop in Tarpon Springs today. At least we will be able to have a nice Greek salad for lunch. In the meantime, this new and alien trait of researching before I buy is a bit worrying, I hope it doesn't spill over into other aspects of shopping. Life is really too short to worry about which store has the cheapest baked beans!

Talking of photos - take a peek at my sidebar to see the latest photo of Kiki that my son sent me yesterday. Only two weeks now until I see her again

But I'll see you tomorrow......

A couple of cocktail cards......

Here's a couple of cards with a cocktail theme that I made for last months Papercraft Inspirations magazine - on sale now in the USA. Details of how to make them are in the mag............

We are looking for a new camera. Never before have we researched anything so thoroughly, and the more we read, the more confused we get. At the moment a Canon G12 is in the lead, but that could change at any moment when I read another online review that complains of some obscure technical downside. I have visions of going happily to advanced camera courses, learning all about ISO and image stabilization......... The reality is that I will set it to AUTO, and there it will stay. Anyone have any camera preferences?

It was Milo's second birthday yesterday, and Max will be four tomorrow.

Happy Birthday poppets,

Tutorial for Envelope Gift Card

Loads of you wanted to know how I made this envelope gift card..... I made another one very quickly taking photos of the various steps, I hope it is fairly simple......

Measure the envelopes you are going to use, and cut some double sided cardstock 1/2" wider (I forgot to do this, a fine example I give....) and double the height plus 2". I used 5" square envelopes, so cut the cardstock to 5" x 12" (should have been 5 1/2" wide).

score at 2", then at the halfway point, in my example at 5" - it doesn't have to be a square card, you can use a C6 or invitation sized card

Crease your folds with a bone folder

Cut a rectangle of pattern paper for the front (in this case 2" x 3"), round the corners and mark the center point about 3/4" down from the top

Punch a hole and insert an eyelet at the marked point and thread with about 2 feet of ribbon. With half the ribbon running down the back of the panel, fix to the bottom fold of your main card

Seal two, or three envelopes and cut to fit inside the card comfortably - I cut them down to 4"

Apply adhesive to the backs of two of the envelopes and stick another envelope on top, so you end up with a little stack of envelopes, make sure the cut side openings are all facing the same way

A poor photo showing the envelopes stuck together with the openings at the top

Put sticky tape as shown on the top and bottom folds of the main card

Stick the envelope stack to the top half, making sure the open edges are at the top, then bring up the bottom half and stick to the envelopes

I used some ready made tags for quickness, and cut a scrap of the pattern paper to make a gift card pocket for one of them

Thread the tags with ribbons, and insert into the pockets

Wrap the ribbon around and tie in a bow as shown - sorry about the photos, I made this at night and photographed as I went....

Decorate your panel and add a sentiment

Any questions? Leave them in a comment and I will answer them on this post

Linda asked if you can use just one envelope to take a gift card? Yes you could Linda, but the little pockets look cute, I would advise two - one for the gift card, and one with another tag to write your message. If you use three, make the gift card pocket for one, another for your greeting, and write or stamp a verse or sentiment on the third one - you can decorate the tags as much as you want as long as they stay fairly flat, otherwise the card would be too bulky when tied up

Scroll down to enter the Promarker giveaway

Butterflies and Pearls for Polkadoodles

Scroll down to leave a comment to win the Promarkers

I really enjoyed doing this week's challenge card for Polkadoodles. We were asked to choose:

Butterflies or Fairies

Ribbon or Lace

Pearls or Gems

Pink or Turquoise

I chose butterflies, lace, pearls and turquoise

All the papers and the image were printed from the Sundae of Seasons CD, the pearls are Papermania adhesive pearls, the lace is a scrap of white lace that I dipped in tea to make it look vintage. The sentiment is a Stampin Up stamp. Base card by Craftwork Cards

Why don't you have a go and enter the challenge?

I love doing challenges, I often don't have the time, but when I do they kick start a creative gene

My car has developed a personality, every time I lock it up and walk away, it starts loudly protesting, the alarm tooting like crazy, lights flashing. It seems to be saying 'missing you already........' I feel as if I have a demanding toddler instead of a heap of metal.

See you tomorrow

Love and Laughter - WIN some Promarkers

Let's try again - if you have already commented to be in with a chance to win, I'm afraid you are going to have to comment again below this post. The original post has disappeared into some dark blogosphere, never to be seen again I fear.

Thanks to Letraset for this month's generous giveaway, open to all my followers. TWO of you will win a blending set of your choice, see the colours available below, and start dreaming of which you would like to win. There are twelve markers in each set, plus a blender, all colours especially chosen to complement each other and make shading a breeze

All you have to do is pop over HERE to see Letraset's fabulous new look blog, then come back here to tell me what you would like to see on the Letraset blog. Be sure to leave enough information for me to identify you if you win. If you have a blog, please link to this post.

The post will stay open until Tuesday 24th May at noon GMT (7 AM EST)

Here's a Lili of the Valley card, coloured with Promarkers of course. All the scallop label shapes and heart border were cut with the Elegant Edges Cricut cartridge

Well what a hoo-ha and furore in Blogland. People seemed to be getting quite demented over on the Blogger help site, the whole system was crashed for about 20 hours. I don't think they could have got more upset if they had heard that their granny was dead..........lighten up folks, it's not the end of the world. So apart from the inconvenience of having to do this post over again, and the inconvenience for you folks having to comment again, all is well. I must admit, I would be slightly more than peeved if it happens again..............

I have been busy, very busy with a magazine commission. Sometimes the inspiration flows, sometimes it doesn't. I had the ideas in my head alright, the problem was that when I tried to execute them, they just didn't work. I think I threw about twenty cards into the trash before I was finally totally happy. I sat for hours waiting for a stroke of genius, a dash of brilliance, until a little bit of mediocrity would have been welcome. Then after all this angst, I suddenly saw the light, and voila, there they were. Cardmaking is a funny old hobby sometimes

See you tomorrow

Blogger Problems

Hi everyone. Blogger has been down for almost 24 hours, now it has been restored, but the post and comments with the Promarker giveaway has disappeared into thin air. So frustrating! However, they say that they will be restoring missing posts over the next few hours, so I will wait a day before reposting. Sorry to all those of you who have emailed me, and popped over numerous times today. Hopefully all will be well by tomorrow.

Envelope Gift Card Holder

Here's a cute idea. I have no idea who originally thought of this, I got the instructions from my craft group, and altered them until I got this.......

A pretty folder made from a single sheet of double sided paper...........

I decorated it with a cut out flower and a sissix die cut leaf..........

undo the ribbons.................

and on the inside you have pockets each holding a tag cut from the Tags Bags Boxes Cricut cartridge, I altered them in the Gypsy so that they were exactly the right size for the envelopes..............

the pockets are made from sealed envelopes that you cut down to size...........

I made a little pocket for one of the tags, which will hold the gift card. The other two tags will hold a sentiment and a hand written message

If enough of you want it, I can do a quick photo tutorial later in the week. Not today though, we are off to Anna Marie Island for a couple of days, to visit friends from the UK who are holidaying there, so a couple of craft free sandy days ahead. I'll be back on Wednesday.

The winner is....... and some tweet cards

Hi everyone - Happy Mothers Day to those of you in the USA and anywhere that's celebrating mum's today

Thanks to all of you who joined in with the Royal Wedding street party blog hop - I used

random.org to pick a winner, and the hopper out of the hat is

Sharon in Arizona

Congrats Sharon, email me with your address, and I will get your package in the post

Here are a couple more cards from last month's Papercraft Inspirations magazine. My commission was to make four cards with a bird theme, for the 'quick cards' section of the magazine. Don't forget that every month you can go HERE to download all the fabulous free papers that are in the magazine each month. Lots of giveaways and competitions on there as well, sign up for a email newsletter to give you all the latest news

This first card used Tim Holtz papers, and I can't tell you what a job I had to find that white feather - I could only find dyed feathers. No, I didn't have to capture a dove, I found a white feather boa in Poundland!

This next one used papers and toppers printed out from the Back to Nature Polkadoodles CD

It seems strange to have everyone wishing me 'happy mother's day' here in the USA, because I have already had mothers day once this year, it is celebrated in March or April at home in the UK. I am trying to educate my kids so that they recognize my immense talents as a mother twice in one year, but for some reason they are reluctant to start what seems to me a very sensible new tradition. The general reaction is 'don't push your luck Mum'.

See you tomorrow

Happy Wedding

I used Elegant Edges, the new Cricut cartridge, and a Lili of the Valley stamp for this card.

I cut a heart border out of a shell pink Bazzill cardstock for the left edge, the shape on the right edge is one of the book feature cuts, and the image was stamped onto one of the oblong label cuts - see, I told you this was the most versatile cartridge ever. The image didn't need a lot of colouring, but of course I used Promarkers. The base card is a 6 x 6 white card by

Craftwork Cards

Making the card was easier then trying to post it on here - Mr Blogger has been very capricious lately. Note that I make blogger a male - he is just so darned awkward! I decided to put a load of cards I had made into drafts, already for me to add some waffle and publish later. So easy when I am short of time. A good idea don't you think? Well, no, not really. It is easier to start from scratch, Mr Blogger decides to be uncooperative and just won't let me edit posts at all. That makes him very male to me, just unable to cope with multi tasking. So I will go off in a huff to cook the dinner, doing a bit of ironing while I wait for the pasta to cook, wiping the countertops down as I go and talking to a friend on the phone the whole time...........

I will post the winner of the Street Party blog hop tomorrow, be sure to come and see me again to check............

Max and Milo Birthday Cards

The challenge on Polkadoodles this week was an easel card, so I decided to make this one for Milo, who will be two on he 18th of this month. I used the bear and cake from the Sundae of Seasons CD, the kraft paper is from the Sprinkles of Kraft CD. I 'iced' the cake with Pebeo pearl fabric paint. The cake with candles is popped up with foam pads to keep the easel standing. The green letters spelling his name are rub ons by Making Memories, and the tiny tag is by Craftwork Cards

Once this was done, I had to make a card for Max, his big brother, who will be four on the 20th May. Max is still fascinated with fire engines,firemen and emergencies, so this card will be perfect for him. The engine and lettering were cut from the B is for Boy cricut cartridge, the blue gingham paper is Recollections from Michaels. I embossed the red panel for texture and added some silver card candi to the fire engine

I was with my craft group all day yesterday. We meet in a community centre, which has woods at the back of it, and all day we were watching cardinals and bluejays flying around. Then a feral cat came cautiously out of the woods, looked around, then went and fetched her tiny kitten. When darkness fell, we suddenly heard a tremendous snapping and snarling outside, then the unmistakably anguished cry of a cat. We were quite upset to think that the little kitten may have been taken by a predator. Nature can be cruel.

See you tomorrow

Golden Wedding Mini Book

I have a new love in my life - the new Cricut cartridge called Elegant Edges. Those of you who are cardmakers and Cricut owners, this cartridge is a must. It is crammed with nestability type shapes - ranging from simple scallop ovals, circles and squares, to label type cuts. Then there are the borders, it's like having masses and masses of border punches at your fingertips. One of the features I couldn't wait to play with is called the Book feature, it cuts the scallop edge but with a straight edge down one side. So this is how I made this little book, I manipulated the cuts a little bit on the gypsy, just made the pages very slightly more elongated than the previous one. I cut it out of the cardboard that is on the back of paper stacks, then cut a front and back for each page from the Martha Stewart pattern paper.

The '50' medallion figures were cut from Jasmine at 1 3/4", with a gold mirri card shadow

The book pages were cut at 5" (note: the dial size determines the HEIGHT of the cut, not the length)

I cut some pretty borders and shapes to decorate the inside, but left room for the photos

I think that gorgeous cut out daisy shape is my favourite.....

I decorated one photo mat with a couple of 'gold' rings threaded onto gold ribbon

You will be seeing a lot more of this cartridge believe me....

Don't forget you still have time to take part in the Royal Wedding blog hop - scroll down

Someone in a store today, on hearing my accent, started enthusing about the royal wedding.

'Why did they start it so early though?' she asked. Well it could be something to do with the fact that it was a UK wedding, held in the UK, on UK time. Still, she liked the dress, and thought Harry was 'hot' so that was okay then....

See you tomorrow

And the winners are..........

First of all, thanks to all of you who entered the Polkadoodles giveaway this month. Unfortunately there can only be two winners, and they are:

The Sprinkles of Kraft CD goes to Carol aka cyimbugbitten

and the Wonderland papers CD goes to 2KutiesGrandma

Congrats to you both, email me with your address and I will get them in the mail to you

Don't forget, Polkadoodles has free shipping to anywhere in the world, and I will have another giveaway at the end of May

On to todays card - a sweet little image from Lili of the Valley, coloured very lightly with Promarkers. I used an embossing folder found in the UK called Drip Drop (I knew when I saw it that it would be useful for cards like this). I added some Doodle Dewdrops from Polkadoodles, and although it doesn't show, the puddles of water and bubbles have a coat of Glossy Accents

Well, what about the wedding then? Wasn't it totally fabulous? I did stay up for most of the night because I sat mesmerised in front of some obscure TV channel which had some so-called-etiquette-expert from the UK teaching some American presenters how the Royals ate their soup.Honestly, it was riveting :)
Of course, we all agree, the bride looked stunning, the bridesmaids adorable, the two Princes bought a lump to my throat.............. I felt very proud to be British

BUT

I have questions

1. Doesn't the Archbishop of Canterbury have a wife? A daughter? Anyone who loves him enough to say kindly 'You know Rowan, if you are going to be on TV in two billion homes, perhaps you should get those eyebrows trimmed' They were more flyaway than a jumbo jet!

2. Does anyone know who the nuns were? Did you notice them, sitting quietly, hands folded in laps at the side of the newly weds when they were listening to the reading and address? Then at the end, when the clergy left the Abbey, they joined the procession. One was about 4'6" tall, the other one must have been nearly 6'. Wouldn't you think they could have found a perfectly matched pair for the occasion? Perhaps they were MI5 agents in disguise......no, that's even sillier

3. When did hats stop being hats, worn on peoples heads, and become ridiculous models of various world landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa, or Big Ben, balanced on the bridge of the wearers nose

4. Princess Eugenie. Princess Beatrice. Why?

I have observed all these details, as I watched the replays over and over and over......sigh, time to get back to the craftroom

See you tomorrow