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

 Hi everyone, first of all, I had loads of enquiries about the embossing folders used in yesterdays post. I got them at a craft fair, so didn't have a supplier, but some super sleuths tracked them down. Apparently the Craft Barn has them in the UK, (thanks Vickie) and Marlene wrote to say


I found and ordered the two folders displayed on your site. I got them from: Scrap'NStamp. Price $6.95 each. One is called: Crafts Too Embossing Folder-Sleigh, one is called: Crafts Too Embossing Folder-Snowflake Banner. Hope this helps just in case someone else asks you about them. Marlene

Thanks Marlene. On to the winners, I used a random number generator, but it was too much of a faff to take photos of all the screenshots, so I am just listing the winners here, 


The Polkadoodles Boutique Magazine - Erin Glee


Cricut Cartridge - Loz


Metallic Markers (thanks Letraset!) - Freetime Gone and Sandra (Misty)


Craftwork Cards bundle - Rae Ann


Polkadoodles Sprinkle of Kraft CD - (thanks Nikky Hall of Polkadoodles!) Paul (Crafty Blogocks blog)


Martha Stewart goodies - Krafty Karen


Huge congrats to you all. Can you please email me with your addresses, and in the case of the Letraset winners, also include your telephone number - the prizes are sent out by Letraset and the courier needs this information


Thanks to all of you for taking part, I just wish I could send something to everyone, but there will be more fun stuff up for grabs very soon




So on to today's project. My daughter Alex has a flatmate called Sophie, who has just become an aunt for the first time. She is so excited, and so much in love with her little niece, I offered to make her an explosion box to give her brother and his wife at Christmas. Here it is Sophie...........

I used New Arrival cricut cartridge for the little feet and the dress

I found these little dolls ages ago in Poundland - they are perfect for little girl boxes......

and of course I decorated all the pages with teensy brads, buttons and ribbons.....I hope she loves it

Christmas cards - oh my! I really should be writing them and addressing the envelopes, but half of them are not even made yet. I may have to resort to buying a box or two. 

Embossed Christmas and Babychino......

A couple of cuttlebugged card for you today - I find that the beauty of these very quick-to-make cards is that people think they are wonderful - always a bonus - and yet you can roll them out quickly - another bonus at this time of year. Both the embossing folders are from the UK, I don't know if they are available elsewhere. For this first one, I swiped all over the embossing with an ice blue chalk ink pad to accentuate the  raised detail, added a few gems and one of the lovely new foiled sentiment bands from Craftwork Cards, and I was done. Sorry about the shadow on the photo - the time available to take a photo in good light seems to be getting shorter each day

 and this second one didn't take a lot of skill did it? A lovely folder, a pretty shaped card from Craftwork Cards, one classy looking card.........

Talking of classy cards, I just wanted you to see two cards that were sent for my birthday all the way from the USA. The first one is from Bev who is one of my Thursday crafty mates when I am over there, thank you so much Bev xxx

This next one is from an online friend who is a regular and encouraging visitor to my blog, Colleen. Your card is gorgeous Colleen, thank you so much and I so appreciate you sending it over

We had a lovely weekend looking after the boys. I couldn't resist showing you this photo of a solemn little Milo - he is so like his daddy at that age, it melts my heart.......

 "They are only allowed to watch TV for an hour after tea Mum" instructed my son. Yeah right................... 

 Well what else keeps two little dynamos quiet so that exhausted grandparents can have a break!


The mention of babychinos seemed to intrigue a lot of you. Here's what it looks like, very sophisticated, in teensy little cups, and looking just like a cappuchino. All it is, is frothy milk with a sprinkling of chocolate on top.......

but it's really yummy  spooning all that froth up, and it makes a chap feel so grown up

I'll be back tomorrow with the winners of last week's givaways. See you then

Magazine Cards and some Martha Bits and Bobs for you....

Here's the last of this week's giveaways. A Martha Stewart acrylic alphabet stamp set (it's really pretty, with tiny flowers and vines all over the letters), a set of Aquarium chalk inks, some wide peach seam binding ribbon, and a pack of five ribbons. You will also get a roll of red and white bakers twine, which seems to have rolled off the table when I took the photo! 

Kimberley asked if you needed to use Polkadoodles images for the challenge blog. The answer is no, use any cute image you like, as long as you follow the basic rules of the challenge - like red white and green Christmas for this week

 Here are a couple of cards made for Papercraft
Essentials magazine (a new one for me, I have never done work for them before). My brief was to make eight quick and easy cards using the Magical Winter CD by Polkadoodles. Four were for Christmas, and four for a winter birthday. The photo that I took of this angel is rubbish, you can hardly see that she is hanging by a silver cord from a silver star, but it is one of my favourites, so I wanted you to see it. I made these back in the summer of course, and photographed them hastily before I sent them off to the magazine - it's on sale now in the UK, next month in the USA




We are babysitting Max and Milo this weekend, I plan to bake cupcakes with them, maybe a visit to Santa, definitely a visit to Costa Coffee, where they sit like a couple of old men over a babychino (frothy milk for those of you not in the know) and an extra large muffin each.........

Polkadoodle Friday - WIN a CD

Well if it's Friday, it must be Polkadoodles. This week the challenge was set by Miria who is Italian, and she asked that we make a Christmas card using the colours of the Italian flag. As they are red, green and white, this was a doddle!

I used the post box from the Creative Christmas CD and decoupaged all the layers, adding lots of glitter to the snow as I went along.....

 This little girl stamp was perfect, she's all dressed up to go to the post office to post her Christmas mail...........She is coloured with promarkers

and i love that cheeky little robin on top of the post box

Please take part in the challenge if you love making Christmas cards - there are always prizes for our top three, and loads of inspiration as well from a very talented design team. Today, I am giving away the fabulous Sprinkles of Kraft CD by Polkadoodles, and to win it, I am going to ask you to pop over to the challenge blog and click to follow us, then come back here and leave your name. I will pick a winner by random.org on Monday, along with the rest of the winners from this week

I'll be back tomorrow with a final giveaway for this week

Secret Garden - and WIN

Wishing all my American friends a very happy

Thanksgiving

 This month's project pack from Craftwork Cards, is this lovely Secret Garden - really scrumptious papers, some with glitter, these lovely floral images all ready for you to colour, and of course, candi in coordinating colours. They have also had the very clever idea of making foiled bands to take their shaped sentiments - I really love these. What's Candi? Gorgeous little domed discs of pearlised card, think of them as legless brads. They can be coloured, punched, have letters stamped on them, glittered, heat embossed - a lot of fun

The first card today is a simple easel, the scalloped green circle was in the pack, and I made a flower with upside down candy glued to a punched circle. I coloured the candi in the middle in one of the colours I used for the image (spice) so that it coordinated perfectly.................

 The second one was equally easy to put together - I coloured the image with promarkers, and used a silver metallic marker to highlight the edge of the shaped Craftwork Cards base card. You can see clearly in this one why I am in love with the foiled bands for the sentiments....... 

 So today, I am putting together a package of Craftwork Cards stuff for someone - you will get some of the above images, sentiments, candi, and a few little surprises that I didn't photograph, as well. All you have to do is comment under this post, and I will pick a name with all the others on Monday - the half price goody bags are now sold out, I hope some of you bagged some bags!

Thank you all so much for the lovely birthday wishes. I did have a very relaxing day with lots of cards and phone calls. I have a couple of cards I want to share with you, but my camera had a flat battery, so it will have to wait until tomorrow, when I will be giving another little something away


Hilarious conversation between my son and four year old Max.....
'Daddy, where do I have to go before I am an adult, to learn how to hold hot stuff from the cooker and microwave, and drink coffee....' 
'Drink coffee Max? What do you mean?'
No Daddy, don't worry about the coffee. I'll learn to do that in little sips. But I will need to go somewhere to learn about the hot stuff'


Ah, the wonderful, simplistic mind of a little child


See you tomorrow

Giveaway - Letraset Metallic Markers

WooHoo. It's my birthday today! The lovely guys at Letraset sent me a set of their new metallic markers, just in time, and they have given me another TWO sets to give away to a couple of you - a nice early Christmas present, and just in time to add a bit of glitz and sparkle to your festive projects. The colours are lovely - red gold, gold, silver, lilac, blue and green. They give a lovely, soft metallic sheen to a project. They have two tips as well, a broad one for larger areas, and a fine tip end for tiny details.  They are water based, but you can add them to images coloured with ProMarkers............ 

I took this photo after the light had faded, so it's impossible to see clearly, but I added tiny spots of gold metallic to the pears, old gold to the pot, and tiny spots of green to the leaves. In real life it adds a very satisfying glimmer to the card...............

All you have to do is leave your name under this post, I will draw the winners next Monday, and post them here on Tuesday


You should hop over sharpish to the Craftwork Cards site, they are selling their goody bags at half price - only £5, which is an absolute bargain. You get masses of stuff in these bags, base cards and envelopes (I only ever use their cards, they are such good quality), papers, sentiment buttons, card candi....it just goes on and on. And if you have a crafty friend, they would make a super Christmas gift.


So what am I doing today? Well, a nice long lunch and gossip session with my friend Anne, and out to dinner tonight with Mike. No cooking for me, yeah!


See you tomorrow with another bit of candy, and some birthday cards to show you as well

Sepia Santa - and win a Cricut cartridge......

Here is the giveaway for Tuesday - a brand new Cricut seasonal cartridge called Summer Vacation (not very seasonal in November, but hey, pretend Santa is coming early...). It has some rather nice cuts on it, love that ferris wheel, and there are some great car cuts on here - good for men's cards. All you have to do is leave a comment under this post, I will draw the winners next Monday and post their names on Tuesday. As usual, I will mail to anywhere in the world

On to today's card, I decided to see what this Santa would look like in sepia. I think it suits the image, do you? I coloured him with ivory, sandstone, tan and caramel Promarkers, and used grey green on the leaves

Come back tomorrow to see what those lovely guys at Letraset are offering as a gift for two of you this month.

Snowflake Christmas and a giveaway.....

Okay, let's have some giveaways for all you lovely followers this week to get you in the mood for Christmas. First up is the super Christmas Boutique magazine from Polkadoodles which comes with a pack of goodies containing all you need to make the projects inside the book. You get papers, stamps, ribbons etc, and loads of inspiration on how to use them from the Polkadoodle designers who are featured. This pack has been a sellout in the UK - apparently there are only 20 copies left in the whole of the country!

Look, there's me with some of the projects I did for the magazine. 

All you have to do is leave your name under this post making sure I can identify you if your name comes out of the hat (random number thingy). There will be giveaways later in the week, you can enter for all of them - who knows, one person might win the lot! I will draw the winners next Monday and announce the winners on Tuesday 30th. If you subscribe by email you need to click on 'going-buggy' at the top of your email which will bring you over here to leave a comment. I will mail to anywhere in the world. Good luck!

On to today's card -isn't she adorable? One of this year's Christmas releases from Lili of the Valley. Papers are from Papermania UK, and the snowflakes are a Sissix die

Coloured with Promarkers:
Hair Vanilla and Saffron
Skin Blush and Soft Peach
Clothes Soft pink and Dusky Pink

I'll be back tomorrow with another package of goodies for you

Peel Offs!

Like lots of crafters in the UK, I am quite snobbish about peel offs. I don't see these outline stickers very often in the USA, but you can buy them everywhere at home, and serious cardmakers tend to regard them as cheating a bit. So where I got these black Christmas peel offs is a mystery, but I suppose I must have bought them at some stage. When looked closely at them I realised that they were really rather nice. Here's what I made 

A few gems and I was done. Ah well, that's two more in the Christmas box - anyone who doesn't make cards will think I have been very clever (I hope!)


Look out for a couple of giveaways on here in the next few days. It's my birthday next week and I will have a birthday giveaway, and Letraset have come up with a gift for two of you as well. In fact, come to think of it, there will be giveaways for most of the week........


Only November, and already I am sick of the Christmas advertisements for the supermarkets on the TV  They seem to be playing them endlessly. I have already watched about 200 turkeys being carved, and jolly looking people in silly paper hats laughing merrily as they pull a cracker - come on guys, it's not that amusing - all you are going to get is a plastic keychain and a bad joke to go with your silly hat. Bah humbug (not really, I love Christmas, just hate the fact that the commercial side of things gets earlier and earlier. Soon we will be singing carols while we eat our Easter eggs...)


Off to take photos of some goodies for a giveaway now. Have a lovely weekend

Christmas Wreath

The challenge on Polkadoodles this week is a shaped Christmas card. This was easy - I printed out the ready coloured Christmas wreath from the Creative Christmas CD, did a bit of snipping, added some bakers twine and a few red gems and I was done. 

I am having a mini panic now about Christmas cards, I really need to gear up and do something I hate - mass produce. I can fiddle around with an individual card quite happily for hours, but when it comes to making more than one of each design, I get bored. Low boredom threshold, that's my trouble!


See you tomorrow

Paisley Tree

I totally forgot I had this stamp, called Paisley Tree by Impression Obsession, but found it tucked away and I couldn't resist getting my embossing stuff out to have a play.......

For this first one, I embossed the image in gold (Ranger) embossing powder, and sprinkled some gold seed beads on. Cutting it out was a bit fiddly, but worth it. Because I used a white background card, and stamped the image on white, I didn't cut out all the detail on the tree, just around the edge of the image. I stamped a script stamp (Rusty Pickle) and added a strip of lace and some bling

Doesn't this one look different? I embossed the image with clear embossing powder, then swiped the whole panel with green distress ink, then wiped the ink off the tree

We are back home from London, after a great visit to see the grandkids - they were as pleased to see us as we were to see their little faces. (Monty was having a bit of a panic in case we were going to take him back to our house with us, he shook his head gravely, like a doctor giving a patient very bad news just at the thought of it.  Funny little chap)

A friend of mine has been asked to a social occasion that she really doesn't fancy going to, but can't think of an excuse to get out of it. I gave her some excellent advice - say you have bubonic plague, or bird flu, that way nobody will come to your door with chicken soup, then say there has been a miracle healing overnight and you are now fit and healthy again - this excuse has the added benefit that the Pope may consider you for sainthood.

See you tomorrow......

Kiki's Advent Box

Here is Kiki's box - I used a Kaisercraft base and had a lot of fun decorating it. I purchased the box online from Ritz Camera in the USA, and have also found one in Sir Stampalot in the UK

I used scraps to cover the boxes and inked all the edges. The chipboard numbers were swiped with distress inks 

I cut a piece of navy snowflake paper (Papermania) to fit the back, then tore two pieces of white card to create the snow banks. They were lightly inked in ice blue and the edges glittered. The trees were cut using the Jolly Holiday Cricut cartridge. Both the little girl and boy are Polkadoodles images, coloured with ProMarkers..........

I layered the trees, sticking one to the backdrop paper, then using foam pads for the next one, and finally used a Papermania springy thing for the last tree, so it really stands out

The little boy was also stuck on with a spring (try Action Wobbles, or Piggy Tales in the USA, Papermania at Hobbycraft in the UK). I gave him a pile of cotton wool snowballs to play with, and glittered the base after doing a lot of squiggles with a snow writer......

The sentiment was cut at 2 1/2" from the Jolly Holiday Cricut cartridge. I left the base of the box (top, sides and inside the 'frame' uncovered apart from some inking. I think it gives a rather nice homespun sort of feel)

I have almost finished the second one of these Kaisercraft boxes (for Max), and that is me done for another year. (wipes brow and sinks into a chair for a restorative gin and tonic.....)

Advent Boxes

I have been busy making Advent boxes for the family - I love doing them, and half the fun is finding tiny things to put inside the boxes. This first one is for my daughter, Alex, stuffed full of tiny eyeshadows, nail varnish, a teensy sewing kit and of course some chocs as well. I used gorgeous pearlescent papers by Papermania, and found some sweet filigree angels in Hobbycraft. The numbers are peel-offs by Anita, mounted onto gold mirri card circles. I found the boxes at Hobby Lobby in the USA and carried them home to decorate.

 This next one is for two year old Monty. I made one for his sister Kiki last year and he was fascinated by it. Not having a great deal of spatial awareness at the age of 18 months, he totally ruined it by opening and shutting the little drawers after trying very hard to stuff them with his teddies  and other rather large toys! So this year he has his own, let's hope he has gained a sense of proportion in a year.........

All the papers and embellishments are again from Hobbycraft UK, at last you can get some really fun stuff in the UK.........

The drawers are filled with chocolate buttons, tiny cars, finger puppets etc - most of them from the dollar bins in the USA......

I'll show you Kiki's box, which is quite different tomorrow. We are in London visiting all the family. Max and Milo were gratifyingly excited to see us today, running up and down the hall screaming when we arrived. It is so nice to be loved!

See you tomorrow