Here's something to keep you going.......Blog Candy time

Here's some candy for two of my lovely followers, to say thank you. This first parcel is going to the USA with me, and is full of UK goodies. So if you are in North America, you will get......

Embossing folder Snowflakes (Kars)

a pack of fantastic Christmas rubber stamps by Polkadoodles

Four packs of the fabulous Card Candi - legless brads that are taking the crafting world by storm

A dozen Warren Christmas images

A pack of silver and gold foiled birthday sentiment circles

A copy of the latest Papercraft Inspirations magazine

and this next parcel is staying in the UK and will be sent to one of you (courtesy of my friend Anne) here or in Europe

You will get

Stampin Up embossing folder Manhattan Rose

Martha Stewart punch anywhere butterfly punch

Pack of Martha Stewart fine tip pens, four tubes of MS glitter glue, and a stack of MS inks 'aquarium'

Pack of tiny flowers by Recollections

American Craft ribbons

A copy of the Cricut magazine

All you have to do is leave a comment under this post, telling me which country you live in, I will draw two winners on Sunday 4th September and let you know who won on Monday 5th. If you have a blog, a link would be nice :D

Good Luck!

Here's a little card for today, I used a digi stamp from Sugar Nellie

Coloured with Promarkers, sorry I lost the list of colours I used. The papers are from a Martha Stewart stack and I dotted some shimmerz gems by Papermania around for a bit of shine

We are travelling tomorrow - rather a roundabout route because of the weather on the East coast of the US. We fly via Frankfurt, to Houston then down to Tampa. It will be a very long day. I will be back as soon as I get unpacked and have some sleep, who knows, I may have a tale or two to tell........

Under the Weather?

Here's a card made with my Cricut and the Just Because Cards cartridge. The finished card is A6 size, and I cut a rectangle of acetate to back the front, so that the brolly looks like one of those fancy clear ones that are fashionable now. I handcut some curved strips of orange card (I used the umbrella shaped piece cut out from the front as a template) and stuck those onto the acetate.

I outlined the raindrops with a pale blue Promarker, the blue rain splashes are by Fiskars , and the wellies are printed from the Sundae of Seasons CD by Polkadoodles

A couple of gems jazzed up the umbrella. The inside sentiment is a simple 'get well soon'

I am still dashing around in ever decreasing circles, so not a lot of time to chat today. I have found time to do some online shopping, so there will be a nice pile of goodies waiting for me when we arrive in Florida on Monday evening - hurricane Irene permitting, as we fly into New York before flying down to Tampa. Any of you reading this who may be in the path of this storm, keep safe, and hoping that this capricious lady burns herself out before reaching you......

Hedgehogs and Goodies.......

First of all today, if it's Friday, it must be Polkadoodles day. This week the theme is spots and dots, and it's our stashbox stamp week, which means that the team can use any stamp from any manufacturer. I was hampered a bit (well, a lot) by the fact that my printer had broken down, so I rummaged in my box of printed out goodies, and came up with this blue and pink spotty paper printed from the Sundae of Seasons CD. The stamp is a Penny Black, coloured with promarkers, and the sentiment is also printed out from the CD. I did a triple punched border along the left hand side. (This would be a good card for Kiki, who loves her Saturday ballet lesson......)

Next, on to some goodies that arrived in the mail to brighten my day. Look at this gorgeous card sent to me by Bobby and Jill who won some blog candy here. The card is beautiful, inside and out, with stitching and lots of detail. Thank you so much for going to so much trouble Bobby and Jill, I really appreciate it

and a bit of a bumper box arrived. I had made my bi-annual order of cardstock from

Craftwork Cards. Will I ever use all this? Well yes, it will last me about six months! I love the quality of the cardstock, they are a really good weight and feel classy. Tucked away at the bottom is a pack of their super smooth card for stamping and printing out digi images. If you haven't tried this you are in for a treat, it is a joy to colour. My last pack got ruined in the famous flood, and I have really missed using it....

and look what they have come up with now, cards with elegant shaped edges and crisp embossing..... here's an argyle pattern

and some dots. Yes I could emboss the edges but I don't have folders that would emboss 6" cards, and those crisp lines would be difficult to do as well...

here's some holly.......

and flowers......

and paisley.....

Keep these fabulous ideas coming Sue and Julie - love them

I have had a day off from packing and sorting yesterday, my sister came over for the day, and we had a lovely time just chatting and mooching around shops, and drinking coffee, and laughing.

Isn't memory a funny thing? We often find that one of us can recall some incident from our childhood with crystal clarity, and the other one has no recollection at all of the incident. Yesterday my sister was reminiscing fondly about our Uncle John and Aunt Phyllis, remembering the wonderful afternoon teas that she used to do, snowy white tablecloths, lovely china, and masses of gorgeous cakes to eat. I found this very very scary indeed. Why? Couldn't I remember these wonderful feasts?

No, it's worse than that, much worse.........

I didn't know we had an Aunt Phyllis!!!!!

Oh dear........

Autumn Colours.....

It's nice to play around with Autumn colours for a change. I cut around Tilda, but couldn't faff around cutting out her skipping rope, so I made sure she was standing against a white background, so it didn't show too much

I found the beaded buttons in Hobbycraft, and I really like the look of sanded embossing on white core cardstock

She was coloured with Promarkers

Skin: blush and soft peach

Hair: sandstone, tan and vanilla

Clothes: mango, mandarin and orange

Tan, caramel and sandstone

Random musings for today:

Why do people say short hair is easy? Have they never woken up looking like a demented hedgehog?

Why does it always rain within 30 minutes of watering the garden?

How can a suitcase that went easily up through the hatch into the attic, suddenly grow whilst up there and refuse to come back down?

Why, when I hang up a brand new pair of black trousers (pants if you are in the USA!), do I then find that my trousers have been breeding over the summer and I now have five identical black pairs? And why do I make this discovery immediately after tearing off all the tags so that I can't return them?

Why do I own four red sweaters when I know that I look like a overgrown tomato in red?

How do these things happen?

See you tomorrow

Christmas IS coming.......

Here's a card made with a Lili of the Valley stamp. Isn't he sweet. Coloured with Promarkers, I used the Snow embossing folder by Provocraft for Kars and some nestability labels. Simple, but I liked it so much I made two - which is unusual for me

I decided against putting a sentiment on the front, the base card is only 4" square, and it would have looked crowded

and here's a sneaky peek at one of two cards on Scrappy-go-Lucky's blog today - loving these Peachy Keen face stamps

Yesterday we were 'putting the garden to bed' for the winter! I have optimistically planted loads of pansies and violas so that we have some colour in the spring - optimistic because we don't have a watering system, and as soon as I leave the UK, there is a heatwave. Doing stuff in two countries means that I am often out of sync. My job for today is putting away summer clothes and getting winter stuff out, so that when I get home, shivering, I don't open the wardrobe to find a load of T shirts sitting there. Advanced planning is key, and I am not very good at it..........

In The Pink

Here's a Heartfelt Creations card made for Papercraft Inspirations magazine. The sentiment is one from a acrylic set by Fiskars. I love these Heartfelt Creation stamps, they come with a matching Spellbinders die, so you stamp the flowers, then cut them out using the die. Clever. The leaves are a Hero Arts stamp

I put tiny black seed beads in the centres of the flowers, which don't really show up on the photos

Do you ever look at sentiment stamps and wonder 'who on earth would I send that to.....' I particularly dislike the hectoring ones, that sound as if you are being a very bossy self-righteous school monitor, telling folks how to live their lives. 'Live life to the fullest' 'Do a good deed every day and your kindness will pay you back' ......and so on. I also have a bit of a hate thing going for sickly sweet sentiments, although I know a lot of people love them. Talking of which, who on earth is Garson Kanin, who wrote the quote on today's card? Anyone know?

Time for this particular work of art to get a move on and do some chores.... see you tomorrow

Single Layer for Polkadoodles

Our challenge over at Polkadoodles this week was to make a single layer card with no (or minimal) embellishments. I can't tell you how difficult I found this, being a multi-layer sort of gal. Thank goodness for embossing folders - the one I used is a UK one, made by Woodware. I used a gorgeous Polkadoodles tree stamp, coloured with ProMarkers, and gave it some red liquid pearl berries (or are they apples?)

Be sure to pop over to see what the rest of the design team came up with - there's some very inventive single layers over there - check out Nikky's colouring on her card, fabulous

The sun is shining today, I have a list of stuff as long as my arm to get done, so much easier to get into gear when the sun is shining don't you think?

See you tomorrow

Here's three I made earlier........

Three cards I made for the Scrappy-go-Lucky blog, but haven't put on here. I used the Everyday Pop Up Cards cartridge, and decided to use the sentiments - something I rarely do, I prefer to stamp, use sticker letters or my computer.

The base cards were cut with the cartridge as well - there are some interesting shaped cards on there - for the elephant card above, I like the chunky squares, looks like elephants feet. For this card I cut the sentiment, and added it to the elephant to look like a saddle, or whatever you call the throws elephants wear when they are dressed in their best......

For this second one, I used papers from the DCWV crafty stack, another card base cut with the cartridge (I like the pinking shears effect along the edge). I 'threaded' the machine with real thread, and added a brad

I was woken as usual today, not by an alarm clock, but by our neighbour, We all have really small patio gardens in our townhouses, with some large oak trees overhanging them, and he is slightly obsessed with his garden blower. I swear he spends all day waiting for a leaf to fall, and POW he is out there, brandishing his blower, sucking up the stray leaf. We clear our garden of leaves about twice a week, but Mr. Blowerman goes out every day at what seems like the crack of dawn to tidy away any stray debris. He also washes his car every other day, and blow dries it with his trusty machine. Just a touch of the OCD's I think. It is so nice living next to him, makes me look affectionately at my husband and think 'thank heavens you're normal'. I am confident that he doesn't read this blog, but if by some mischance he does............Mr Blowerman, please don't be offended, but could you possibly lay off the blower a bit, after dawn would be good......

I'll be back in a bleary-eyed way tomorrow

Warren and friends......

No apologies for more Christmas cards today - when you are on design teams and the new Christmas products come out, well, you just have to say HO HO HO and dive in there.....

This first one was heavily 'cuttlebugged' using my all time favourite cuttlebug folder called Snow - I think it is made for Kars in the UK, so may not be available in the USA. I used a scallop edge card, and cut the scallop edge off another card to make the top flap. All embossed, and swiped with pale blue chalk ink...

For this second one, I cut Warren out and decoupaged him onto another of the sheets - you get two of each design in the kit, so you can play around with them. There could only be one sentiment for a slightly sloshed little bunny leaning against his pile of Christmas presents....

Merry Christmas!

The embellishment is just an accordion pleated strip of papers, stuck down quite loosely with double sided tape, and candi to anchor it down

Hic! Cheers!

I am in panic mode, all the jobs that I have put off doing over the summer, now take on a bit of urgency before we jet back to the US at the end of the month. Where has the summer gone? What happened to all my good intentions? Why do I never learn?......

See you tomorrow

More Christmas Warren

Here's some more cards made with the kit of the month from Craftwork Cards, honestly, you get so much stuff in this kit, enough to make loads of cards. Although Warren is irresistible, I made this first card using some of the gorgeous papers and flowers from the kit. The papers are all double sided, so you get matching plain colours as well. I hand cut the holly leaves and used a bit of artistic licence to give them a flower instead of berries........

there are some great precut flowers, ready to roll into these rolled beauties.......

I used an assortment of the Christmas banner shapes in the kit to make this clean and simple card

and here comes Warren, another simple card.......

I gave him a pompom for his hat, and some pearls for the mistletoe berries

There are a couple more cards made with the Peachy Keen face stamps on the

Scrappy-go-Lucky blog today, hop over there to see them. Here's a peek at one of them

We have caught up with our sleep after the weekend, and have laughed - a lot - at the memory of 4 year old Max telling Mike, very sternly, to go and sit on the naughty step. No he didn't go, we tried very hard to retain some sort of authority over the four year old mini dictator......

See you tomorrow

Pens, Christmas and FUN

Here's one of the first cards I made with the brand new Christmas Warren set, available now from Craftwork Cards. Warren comes already coloured on the scallop circle, I just added some liquid pearls to the holly berries, and a matching green scallop circle. I really like the tag greetings, in coordinating colours

So the weekend was fun, and exhausting. The boys spent hours playing in a cardboard box, which became a house, garage and fire station................

Max made these cards. The blue and green one will probably still be drying in a years time, the glue application was a bit generous.......................

but it took a lot of concentration to make them..............

the black eye was, thankfully, done before we took charge.........

and when it got boring, well, a bit of climbing will liven things up, and give the grandparents something to fret about................

Here's a quick little video showing the brand new flex markers from Letraset, you will be seeing a lot about these in the crafty world over the next few months. As I said in the video, I really like the very pale colours they have introduced, and it will make shading even more interesting