Coffee Time for Spellbloggers

Did you know Spellbinders made stamps as well as dies? Who knew! I used the Celebrations
 Cup for Two stamps for this little card - perfect to send as a note to a coffee loving friend. The outlines are bold and well defined, so they were easy to cut out. I love the one with the lettering on......I added the little red glittered heart to add a pop of colour

I must admit, I am a bit of a coffee addict. Our kids bought us a Nespresso machine for Christmas which has a nifty little milk frother twirly thing built in, so every morning sees me with my barrista hat on, making my fancy coffee to put me in the mood to start my day. Surprising really, as I was brought up in a house where a cup of tea was the answer to all of life's problems. I don't think my mum even had coffee in the cupboard. I blame it all on Dunkin Donuts - one of my guilty pleasures when we lived in the USA was that large iced caramel latte, with extra caramel and whipped cream. Sigh.......after my friends, and coupons for Michaels, it's the thing I miss most about the USA!  

Blog Hop for Spellbloggers

Today, we are having our very first Spellblogger blog hop, a chance for you all to pick up some lovely Spellbinders dies......

We have all used dies from the lovely Market Fresh collection, as you will see on the hop. I used the Make Mine Lemon Lime set, a collection of eight dies. I thought it cried out to be used on a glass of lemonade....

 Each blog will have a winner, chosen by Spellbinders, and each of those winners will receive FOUR sets of their choice from the Market Fresh collection - you can choose from Strawberries, apples, tomatoes, pears, carrots and so much more. It's easy to enter, just leave a comment below, it will be much harder to choose your four sets if you win! Entries accepted until midnight on the 3rd July. 

If you are following the hop, you arrived here from:

Dawn

Next on the hop is

Kathy

Sharon

To start at the beginning, go HERE to Spellbinders

Down to the Sea - for Spellbloggers and Daring Cardmakers

The dare over on Daring Cardmakers today is "Down to the Sea", so I used the Nautical set of Die D Lites by Spellbinders to come up with this card. I used classic circle dies to make the lifebuoy, and sponged a sky background onto the plain white circle.

I added some little brads to the portholes, tied the anchor on with a bit of twine, and used my Brother P touch label maker to finish the sentiment

Be sure to pop over to the Daring Cardmakers blog to see what the talented team have come up with for this week, and don't forget to join us in this week's dare.....

Using up scraps with a rainbow.....

Here is a card I made for the Fiskarettes page, using up some scraps of card in rainbow colours. The butterflies were punched with the intricate shape butterfly punch and the Hello word die is by Spellbinders. I know there is no Indigo - I should have used a bigger card base 😀

An update on our little Molly - she is doing really well, has a couple of teeth and makes an unbelievable mess eating bits of toast. She is such a sunny natured little baby, the whole family adores her

I have to make a trip to Ikea to grab some stuff for the wedding. Why am I treating it like a trip to the dentist? I keep making excuses to put it off for another day. It's the thought of having to trawl around the entire store, following those arrows, when I know perfectly well that the stuff I want is in the bargain basement place. Last time I went there was a dramatic fire alarm and we were evacuated, the time before the lifts were out of order. I mean, have you tried carrying a flat pack containing a Jorgken  or Hinjjiar or Vidjik (okay, I made those names up) down two flights of stairs to the car park. Traumatised doesn't begin to cover it......

Chrysanthemums - for Spellbinders Spellbloggers.........

I love this stamp set with matching dies - called Chrysanthemum from the Earth, Water Air collection by Stephanie Low for Spellbinders

I used the Picnic embossing folder by Tammy Tutterow as a background, and inked it very lightly over the raised areas in Spun Sugar distress ink to match the flowers which were coloured with Promarkers. I left the front without a sentiment as it is one of those cards that can be used for any occasion...... 

So we are melting a bit here in the UK  - perfect weather for me of course, but hard to take if you don't like the heat. The temperatures are around 28 - 30 (85 - 90) which is quite average for lots of places in the world, but here in the UK we only get a few days like this every year (if we are lucky), so we are always woefully unprepared. Our houses are built to keep heat in, our gardens are planted with plants which love our temperate climate ...... air conditioning is almost unheard of in houses here, we are too busy making sure the central heating boiler is serviced before the cold weather arrives. If you are speedy, you can dash to Argos to buy the last fan on sale in the entire country. I have been quite tempted to buy a child's paddling pool, under the pretence  that it would be nice for visiting grandchildren to play in (the reality being that I would go for a little wallow with a long drink and a good book....). In the meantime, I am loving every minute......

More Balloons ..........

More balloon card today (can you tell I was having fun?) For the first one, I cut the balloon shape out of the center of some self adhesive vinyl, and started inking through the shape direct onto the card.....

Move the stencil over, leaving a bit of the inked area showing, and ink again in another colour. Keep going with different colours until you have a bunch of balloons.... you can keep the stencil for future use, and the beauty is that you have a balloon mask as well for future projects

I used the curly sentiments by Simon Says Stamps as 'tails' for the balloons

and my last card had the balloon shapes cut out of the card base itself. I cut a number of balloons out of double sided paper to back the shapes, which means that there are some balloons floating around on the inside of the card as well. The clouds were cut from the Die D Lites Flight 2 set, and the bold sentiment (love it!) is from the very useful Phrase 2 set - pop over to the Spellbinders site to have a browse around all the lovely dies and check out the inspiration on there as well

I promised you a sneaky peek, here they are. What do you think? Made in Italy of the softest leather, I think I better wear them around the house for a while to 'break them in' before the big day. Mind you, I will look slightly mad if anyone comes to the door and I answer it wearing my old jeans and sweatshirt with these on my feet!  

Hip Hip Hooray - For Spellbinders Spellbloggers

Time for another play with my Spellbinders dies. This time I used the Hip Hip Hooray die set, and enjoyed it so much, I came up with four designs - pop back tomorrow to see the other cards

For this first one, I cut away half the front of the card, and just stuck different sized balloons cut out of paper scraps onto the front. One of those cards that is difficult to photograph, but has quite an impact in real life

and a totally different look for this one. I heat embossed some card that had been swiped with versamark and sprinkled with Wow embossing powders in different shades of pink and purple. I added some glitter and left to cool before cutting out the balloons. The purple background was cut with the  PiercedSquares set (I love these pierced dies to add a bit of interest to a simple shape)

The balloons are gorgeously shiny, textured and glittery.........

Go HERE to check out all the lovely range of Spellbinders dies - they have a great rewards programme as well, where you can earn points for making reviews of products you buy, and quickly add up. There is a great clearance shop as well, a really good way of building up your supplies at bargain prices

Check out my other balloon cards tomorrow......

In other news, the elusive shoes have been hunted down and purchased (I did have a passing thought that I might have to sell a kidney when I saw the price, but what the heck, it's my daughters wedding). To find them involved a cross country drive of around 100 miles, getting lost more than a few times en route despite the best efforts of my sat. nav. After dragging you all along on this journey with me, I'll snap a photo to share tomorrow - they better be comfortable after all this effort! x

A wedding invite and some random thoughts...

Well, after a lot of hard work, the wedding invitations have gone out.....I forgot to take a photo of them but snapped this one of the first sample I made for Alex to see. The white hearts are quite glittery, the wording on the insert is gold, and I am pretty pleased with them

And here is a Fiskars card, again quite simple, but I like the fresh colours

Lastly, after the terrible events in London this weekend, I had some really lovely messages from online friends who visit this blog. I don't often make any sort of comment on events like this, but I am reproducing here a post I made on Facebook, which sums up pretty much how I felt on Sunday morning

Our children all live in and around London. They travel to work in London by train, tube, car, bike. They take our beloved grandchildren to the British Museum, Hyde Park, Hampton Court, to absorb the history, vitality and culture of this great city. Because of them, a big part of my heart is in London. When I talk to them today I know how the conversation will go....."don't worry Mum, we will be fine" - like millions of others, tomorrow morning they will get on to crowded tube trains, climb on their bikes and get on with the business of earning a living for their family. They are British, it's what we do. London has faced the Blitz and terror attacks in the past with the same stoicism and resilience that they show today. We are British, it's what we do. So for every terrorist bent on bringing this country to its knees, there are millions of Brits like my children, living, working and loving in their cities, towns and villages throughout the land. We are British, it's what we do