Hero - for Daring Cardmakers and Spellbloggers

The dare over on Daring Cardmakers this week is Superheroes, and to be honest, I was going to skip this one, until I remembered this die from Spellbinders........called Awesome Dad, it is the perfect die for Father's Day, or a dad's birthday. I cut it twice, in Grey and then Red, and simply slotted some of the contrasting letters back in. The bonus of this die is that you get all these die cut words which you could use as sentiments on other male cards or teacher cards. Such a simple card to make, but I really like the effect

A lot of you have kindly asked how Molly is getting on - the answer is that she gets more adorable every day. Our daughter has just been staying here for a week, so we have had loads of cuddle time. She has graduated to tastes of pureed food now.......

The other question has been how are the wedding invitations coming along.....with a huge sigh of relief I can now say that they are done. As soon as they have been mailed I will show photos. Only the place cards, table plan, table numbers and menu cards to go now.....who thought a wedding would be such hard work. And I still have the daunting task of finding a hat.........

Spellblogger - Getting messy with paint!

I had fun with this Spellbinder set called Paint.........

I loved the paint splashes die, and added to the effect by adding lots of blobs and splashes of paint onto the background, I dripped paint, flicked paint, splashed paint.........I was in paint heaven! I added some glossy accents to the paint on the palette and the tip of the brush. 

Pop over to the Spellbinders page and take a look at all the latest die sets available, and see some great inspiration on the blog as well.......

5 Patterns for Daring Cardmakers, and a tale or two from Paris

The dare over on Daring Cardmakers this week was to use five pattern papers on your project, I kept it small scale and used some hexagon shapes against a stencilled background, the butterfly was a free die from a magazine

So Kath and I are back from our adventure in Paris. Once we had got over the trauma of a two hour wait at passport control to enter the country, we found our hotel, and quickly wished we hadn't......let's just say that it hadn't had a good spring clean since the last millennium. Various elements of the room didn't work, a light in the bathroom would have been a luxury, and the loo stopped flushing, at regular intervals, leading to a bizarre conversation the next morning

"Room 201, the toilet is not flushing"
"When did you notice this?"
"In the middle of the night"
"Did you report it?"
"In the middle of the night?! No!"
"You should have reported it"
"Would you have sent someone to mend it in the middle of the night?"
"No"
"Well, I am reporting it now - will you send someone to mend it?"
"No, it is too early, you should have reported it in the middle of the night"

Added to this were various incidents on the Paris Metro, where we couldn't work out the ticket machine, which took our money but failed to spit out our tickets, leaving us pressing buttons and trying to make our plight understood to some disembodied French person at the other end, while a long queue of impatient Parisiennes formed behind us, clucking and tutting at our incompetence - when it reached the point when we thought we may destroy the rather fragile French/British alliance permanently, we cut our losses and left without the tickets, until a really kind person talked us through what we had to do, after that there was no stopping us, we whizzed about on that Metro like pro's.....

The weather was freezing, I mean really really bone chillingly cold. We had both optimistically packed nice little tops, which we had imagined would look fetching as we sipped an aperitif or two on the Champs Elysee. The reality was rather different as we layered up every garment we owned in an effort to get warm, and that was just in bed in the non functioning hotel.........

Does it sound as if we had a super time? Despite all of the above, we did, we really did. We laughed until tears rolled down our faces as one disaster after another unfolded. We met some really lovely people, and some people who were so rude it was hilarious. Thanks Kath, I hope the trauma doesn't need intensive therapy to recover from........xx 

Spellbinders - One die, three ways

Today for my Spellblogger post using Spellbinders products, I used the Tiny Floral die from the Joyous Celebrations collection, and had fun making three totally different cards.....

This is quite a small die (2.50" x 2.65"), but it's easy to make it fit a whole card front, just overlap the die as shown in the photo below.... I used die cut sentiments from the Celebrations two die set on each card

The shape of the flowers reminded me of pansies, so for this first card, I left the waste white card in the die, and coloured the petals with ProMarkers before popping them out....

Then I slotted them back in as an inlay onto the die cut which had been mounted onto a white card base

Here is the finished card, I added a dot of liquid enamel in the center and added some little dashes of black pen to the lower petals, to mimic pansy markings

 For the next card, I used distress inks to make an ombre background, and mounted the tiny flower die cut over that - little clear gems added sparkle

and lastly, I die cut just a strip out of white card, and again used distress inks, but this time I coloured the panel and left the background white. I managed to continue an ombre look with some different colours of liquid pearls for the centers. The sentiment square was cut using the Pierced Squares set

Daring Cardmakers - Spring Garden

The dare over on Daring Cardmakers this week is Spring Flowers - there are some really lovely designs on there from the design team this week. Pop over to take a peek, and join in with the dare if you feel like having a bit of a floral frenzy....

For my card, I used a clearly besotted stamp and did a lot of fussy cutting around the blooms with my Fiskars fingertip craft knife. The pierced square dies are by Spellbinders

It had to be quite a quick card, as I am still up to my neck in wedding invitations. The inserts have arrived from the printer, and I am almost feeling as if I am on the home straight.

I need to be organised, next Wednesday sees me jetting off to Paris on a bit of a jolly with my good pal Kath Stewart  , now those of you who follow our blogs know that Kath and I have a bit of a reputation for getting into scrapes when we get together. In fact, we managed to mess things up before we even leave home. We are spending a day at a craft show in Paris, and were searching for hotels nearby. We managed by a superb piece of mismanagement to book a hotel that we thought was just over the road from the Paris Expo. That would have been great - if the show was being held at the Expo. No, it is at another venue.....don't worry, I warbled, I will just google and see how long it will take us to walk from the hotel to the show...........

5 1/4 hours walking time!!!!

Okay, let's keep calm. Have a look at public transport. I kid you not, the only means of transport we didn't need to take according to the instructions was a boat up the Seine! We have to get buses, the Metro, a tram........

So after recovering from a joint nervous breakdown, we have desided that, blow the cost, taxis will be the order of the day. And these two crafting grandmas have to take separate flights and somehow meet up in the chaos of Charles de Gaulle airport before the adventure can begin....watch this space, it will be a miracle if there isn't a tale or two to tell...... 

Spellblogger - Succulent Garden

Time to play with some more Spellbinders dies - this time I used the Succulent Garden dies which I cut in white and coloured with ProMarkers.......... 

As I seem to be going through a phase of loving clean and simple cards at the moment, this set was perfect (plus being bang on trend). For this next card, I used the Nestability Classic Circle to cut an aperture , then I used the same die to cut a circle out of copy paper, and used the negative as a mask to ink a circle in vivid colours - I wanted it to look like a desert landscape..... 

and I added some spiky bits to one cactus with a black fineliner pen. Do go and browse the US store and have a look, you will see I am spoilt for choice about what to play with next. (If you are in Europe, they do ship internationally...)

What strange plants they are. When I Googled them, people can't even make up their mind whether the plural should be cacti or cactuses - and these are guys from universities having that debate. Why should they suddenly be so popular? Have people got tired of dead heading and pruning roses, and think 'I'll get something that never needs watering, and can just sit in a corner doing nothing for a few years'. Personally, as someone who regularly murders houseplants, I think they are rather useful. The inactivity bothers me a bit, as even with a spoonful of water once every month or so, they don't really go for rapid growth spurts do they? When we were moving house, I discovered a cactus plant that I had totally forgotten about - it probably hadn't been watered or even looked at for about six years. It was still alive! I felt a bit guilty and bought it over to the new house, where it has a regular sprinkle of water, it still sits there looking exactly the same as it did when it was totally neglected.......weird

Spellbinders Wreath

For my very first Spellblogger post, I used the fabulous Wreath die, and of course had to make one in my favourite white on white as a wedding card......

 There is also a smaller wreath in the set, and sprays of leaves and flowers, so this next card used the small wreath cut in kraft. The background doesn't show up very well, but I used a stencil and some glossy texture paste for texture, then inked over it with Simon Says Stamp sea glass ink. The sentiment is by Clearly Besotted

For the last card I used the large wreath in a different way, cutting side up, then a rubber mat and shim so that the outline of the wreath was embossed but not cut. Then I inked over it with distress inks. This was a bit of an experiment, but I quite like the result.........

Do pop over and have a browse in the Spellbinder Paper Arts store, (they have an amazing clearance section with some great bargains for those who like a deal) and the range of dies is brilliant. Let me know what you find!......

Some news.........

I was delighted to get an email from Spellbinders asking me if I would become a Spellblogger. What's a Spellblogger I hear you cry?  It's a new programme from Spellbinders, where bloggers from all over the world will be showing you the latest great products from Spellbinders, and giving some inspiration on how to use them.

A bit intimidating? Yes! Am I nervous? Yes! But having fabulous dies to work with will make me a happy bunny, and I will do my best to get my best creative juices flowing...

But first, I needed a new die cutting machine of course, so along came the Platinum, in a big box, all the way from America

It's a classy looking machine - I like the way the platform folds up so that even though it's a big machine, it sits neatly on my desk when not in use.......

and the platform just pulls down when you start work. Note the carrying handle on the top - but this is a heavy machine, with well constructed steel workings, so I won't be taking it out on many outings......not that I go to crops these days anyway

I really like the way the base plate has the various 'sandwiches' printed onto the plate. It looks as if the printing process is somehow ingrained into the fabric of the plate as well and won't wear off.  Note the size (12.5" x 8.5") - this machine will take really big dies, and also steel rule dies, as well as the wafer thin dies and embossing folders. You can get a magnetic base plate as well - so since I will be using it a lot and getting a bit fancy with my die cutting, I found one of those online and it is on it's way......

Apart from the (non-essential) magnetic platform, I got everything I need in the box - clear cutting plates, and an embossing plate for cut and emboss dies, and a rubber shim. Plus the invaluable Tool-in-One, I now have a spare, this is a pokey tool and a nifty little brush for getting all those pesky little bits out of your dies.

I got to choose some dies, so the machine is already cranking out stuff in a very satisfactory way for me............come back tomorrow to see a couple of my first projects