Easy Pop Up Card....

Here's how to make an easy card with a bit of a wow when you open it......

Punch or die cut some shapes - I used the Fiskars intricate shape butterfly punch, you could use hearts, flowers, stars.....

Fold your shapes in half.....

add just a tiny dab of strong glue to a wing tip

now stack them, wing tip to wing tip, glueing each wing as you go. I used a clothes peg to hold them together while they dried...

Now you have a little line of shapes, all stuck together. Carefully stretch them out on the inside of the card, and attach with a dab of glue to the underside of the wings on each end...

 Now when you open your card, the butterflies will hang suspended across the card....

Decorate the front of your card.....

So I had a bit of a retail experience. I wandered into M & S to look at the shoes (for American friends, M & S is a store which would probably relate most to Target in the USA). I had bought some brown ankle boots from another store, which looked great, but are quite heavy to wear, so although they looked good, I feel a bit like Frankensteins monster clomping around. Time to look and try a few pairs on, feeling a bit guilty, because the brown clompers were expensive, and very new......I've only worn them a couple of times
So I wandered around trying stuff on, getting up to see the effect in the mirror, wandering off to get another pair off the shelf. I was in shoe heaven for about 30 minutes, until common sense kicked in and I thought 'I really don't need these when I have an almost new pair of brown ankle boots already.....
So I ambled back to the chair where I had left my brown clompers. They were nowhere to be seen. Bemused, I looked all around all the chairs, even looked on the shelves in case someone had put them there. 
After standing in my socks, without any staff around to ask, I decided to head to the tills (registers) to ask...................???? what? What could I ask? 'Excuse me, has anybody handed in a pair of brown boots, I seem to have lost them' How was I going to get home? I would have to walk across town to get to the car park, in my socks....
Panic set in
Then I spotted a woman browsing some sweaters - she was clutching my boots to her bosom! 'Excuse me, can I have my boots please?' I asked politely.....
She clutched them a little tighter, protectively shielding them with her body
'What! I am buying these!' she replied 
I wish I could say that we both had a merry little laugh about it, and went chuckling on our way, but I really did have quite a job persuading her that they were indeed my boots and that I wasn't in the habit of going shopping wearing socks and no shoes. She didn't take the news well. She had bonded with my boots, I half expected her to burst into tears as she had to hand them over...and human nature being what it is, now that I know I am the owner of such desirable footwear, I am looking at them in a totally new light

Sewing - for Daring Cardmakers

So the dare over at Daring Cardmakers this week is SEWING, I had a couple of ideas for this one.......

All these plans included getting the sewing machine up and running - but in the end, laziness prevailed, and I resorted to a bit of hand stitching. I did use the MFT stitched background die and the flower is by Clearly Besotted. I did a few ink splatters as well to break up the white

Do go over and get some inspiration from the design team, and I dare you to join us.....

Messing around with tiny stamps.....

I've been playing around with some tiny flower stamps - the sort you get as fillers in all sorts of stamp sets - a lot of them came from those little Studio G dollar stamps that I collected a ton of, just for the sentiments

So I cut a heart out of some Cricut vinyl, and used it as a mask, be sure to stamp right up to, and over the edges of the heart so that you get a crisp outline

then I used the positive heart to cover up the stamping, and brushed some Sea Glass ink by Simon Says Stamp around the heart....

and here is the finished card - I added a few tiny heart sequins and a bit of Wink of Stella clear glitter for a bit of shine

and using pretty much the same stamps, I punched a partial circle to frame a sentiment on this next card, and stamped the flowers around the frame

I have been holed up in the warm here during a spell of bitterly cold weather - somewhere in my DNA I share some genetic traits with a dormouse - if I could, I would just hibernate, bury myself under a duvet and come up blinking and needing an urgent visit to my hairdresser when Spring arrives.....but as that can't happen, I just wrap up like Nanook of the North, spend a fortune on various bits of thermal clothing that nobody will ever see (and wouldn't want to, believe me!), grit my teeth and get on with it. Preferably indoors, preferably with the heating turned to max, that way I will get through the misery until those daffodils and crocus start popping up through the frozen ground. Now all this talk of cold has made me even colder. Hot chocolate anyone?

NEW - for Daring Cardmakers

The dare over on Daring Cardmakers today is 'NEW' so I decided to try a new technique and made this card.......

I am a sucker for plaids and checks, so decided to make my own colourful background using inks and painters low tack masking tape. Firstly, I masked off the back of the card to keep it clean (I'm a messy inker!)

 Then I put down diagonal strips of masking tape, and started inking in between the strips......

Move the strips over and ink again in another colour, you can overlap the inking a bit, and leave some white space....

Carry on until your card front is covered 

Then apply the strips in the opposite direction and start inking again....

and here are a couple more cards made with more colourful check backgrounds

Do hop over to Daring Cardmakers and see what the rest of the design team came up with, and play along with the dare to try something new.....

Daring Cardmakers

Those of you who have followed me for yonks know that my favourite challenge blog is Daring Cardmakers - I love the variety of the dares, and the way they think outside the box, I have done a few guest designer spots, so when Kathy asked me if I would like to join the team on a permanent basis, I decided I could really do with a bit of creative stretching and said yes

Here is the first challenge of 2017 - elemental inspiration, and this is the inspiration photo........

 To be honest, I found it a bit of a challenge, mainly because after all those Christmas cards, I am a bit over snow and fir trees, and because I have been very short of time for the past couple of weeks, so I turned to my (neglected) Cricut, and cut out this pinecone from the Winter Woodland cartridge, added some frantage snow, and a few sequins. Be sure to check out the teams efforts here and join in with the dare - I bet there will be some pretty cool interpretations of the dare that will make me think 'ah ha! Why didn't I think of that.....'

I am doing a spot of baby sitting this weekend - cuddle time with Molly, perfect! Have a great weekend xx

Happy New Year!

A very happy new year to you all...........I wish you health, happiness and lots of fun crafting times in 2017

Thank you all so much for all your kind good wishes on the birth of Molly - she is doing really well, smiling and making those cute little baby cooing noises, here she is chilling out after her bath........I am totally smitten!

Resolutions? Well my main one is to be a lot more proactive with my blogging, I know I have neglected it a bit over the past few months, so lets get back into the swing now that a new page has been turned. xx