and the winner is................

One last shout out for the delightful Braided Grace Square I have been showcasing for the past week - I found some left over die cuts on my desk and made this Christmas card in about five minutes! The box is filling up nicely..... the holly was cut from the  Jolly Holly die set from Spellbinders...

On to the winner - drawn randomly using a random list generator

SANDRA H

Congratulations Sandra. Email me with your address, and your dies will be on their way.

Thanks to everyone who took part, if you are disappointed, but fired up with enthusiasm for the die, you can find the Braided Grace Square HERE

Milo dived into my craft den as soon as he arrived, and emerged with these Christmas cards he had made for his friends - a pop up sweater card. Now this little eight year old came up with the idea, hand drew the sweater, cut it out, invented the pop up idea with no input from me at all. I think that's remarkably creative for a little guy, do you? The only input I had was to suggest a punched snowflake for the front of the sweater. Well done Milo, proud of you

Spellblogger Giveaway - day five

 My last day for ideas using this gorgeous die set, Braided Grace Square by Becca Feeken which you can win by leaving your name HERE

Today, I took the braided lace die, but instead of using the outline die to cut it out, I trimmed the surrounding card into a square, and mounted it onto a kraft card base - surprising how different it looks doing it this way!

I added some acorns and leaves cut with the Woodland Acorns Die set - look at the detail on those little leaves. This set is on clearance, so hurry over there........ I cut in white, the leaves were coloured with disress inks, and the acorns with ProMarkers and given a coat of glossy accents

The sentiment from the Special Birthday Sentiments stamp set just about fitted onto the little shape, stamped in momento cocoa ink

  

and a reminder of what the die set looks like

I hope you've enjoyed all the ideas this week, I will be drawing a random winner tomorrow, so be sure to pop by and see if it's you... x

Spellblogger Giveaway - day four

Day four of my giveaway for this lovely set. If you haven't done so, go HERE to leave your name to be in with a chance of winning this lovely set, the Braided Lace Square by Becca Feeken

I rather like pink and black together and I think it works well on this card......

  

For this card, I cut the braided shape without the frame directly into the centre of a pink base card. The black shapes were cut from fun foam

I added a pink panel onto the black foam, offsetting it by a tiny bit, so you just get a hint of the black as a shadow. This was added to the base card, the foam gave it dimension

 I added a strip of black net behind the bow, and added a pearl button in the centre of the bow, it made a flamboyant focal point to the card. The sentiment is from the Special Birthday Sentiments stamp set (gorgeous fonts and words on this set, I use it a lot...)

and this next photo shows how delicate and lacy the see through panel looks on the completed card - you could add a different contrast colour to the back panel of the card, I tried that, but it detracted from the lacy effect, so I left it as shown........

Spellblogger giveaway - day three

 Continuing with my cards made with the Becca Feeken Braided Lace Square dies - not one, but two ideas for you today. Both Christmas cards (I am trying to get ahead this year, after the last minute frenzy of last year). Go HERE to enter the giveaway

In both instances, I made a shaped card. Easy to do if you shift the cutting edge of the die up by a fraction when passing through your machine, those top edges stay uncut and hold the card together. For this navy card, the card base was cut in navy, then a white layer added. A glittered snowflake from the gorgeous Create a Flake six die set, topped with a word from the Ho Ho Ho Die D-lites set

A different look for this next one - I didn't use a solid background, but cut the card into a lacy frame. More snowflakes from the above set, but this time, instead of glitter, I pressed them into a Versamark pad, and covered them with WOW platinum embossing powder - I love the fact that the embossing detail on the snowflakes is  so detailed, that it shows even when coated with three layers of embossing powder! The JOY word is also from the HoHoHo set..... 

This shot shows how the back of the card is lacy as well as the front, a really delicate and pretty effect.......

Here's the set one of you will win......

Back to the crafty desk now, to make another card to show you tomorrow......
To enter the giveaway to win this set, go HERE to leave your name. Good luck

More Braided Grace - and don't forget the giveaway

Here is my second card made with the Becca Feekan die shown yesterday. To enter your name for the giveaway of this die, go HERE to make a comment

I went for Christmas today........

This one is quite simple - just the gorgeous  shapes cut in white, but they really pop against the red base card. I used the word JOY from the Die D-Lites set Ho Ho Ho and the flower (which looks a bit like a poinsettia) was cut with a flower from the Month 7 Die of the Month Club. Did you know that Spellbinders have monthly clubs? You can choose between a monthly card kit packed with all sorts of goodies, the large die of the month club, etc.

Here's a reminder of the die I am using this week, and giving away to one of you. Click on the link at the top of this post to leave your name for the giveaway

I'll be back tomorrow with my next card, see you then x

Spellbinder Giveaway

Over the next few days I will be posting cards made with the beautiful set by Spellbinders called Braided Grace Square designed by Becca Feeken. I have one of these die sets to give away to one of you - all you have to do is comment on this post, and look at all the samples I am going to show this week. I will draw a winner on Saturday, 14th October and will mail worldwide, so you can enter wherever you are.....

Here are the die cut shapes - I cut the frame separately, but you will see from my examples this week that you can produce masses of different looks just from this one set......in my hurry to grab a photo I forgot to add the lovely embossing detail, the iconic mark of a Spellbinders die, but you will see it on the cards.....

 Here's my first card, You can see that I cut the pretty shape out twice, and rotated it to give a layered look. The patterned brown detail in the center is a piece of patterned acetate (one of those things that looks better in real life. I hand cut the banner, and added a die cut sentiment from the Sentiments Three set

Be sure to pop by tomorrow to see the next card I created, and don't forget to leave a comment to be in with a chance of winning.....x

Becoming a house builder - for Spellbinders/Spellbloggers

I had such fun making these little houses - I wanted to make them as Christmas houses, so added snow to the roof and gardens......find the Build a House  die HERE

I used small dies from other die sets for some accents - the circle on this next house is the dial from the phone in the HELLO die set, I thought it made an interesting architectural feature!

For this next house, I used corrugated card for the roof, dry brushed with white acrylic paint and given a scattering of flower soft white 'snow. The wreath on the door is a flower center from the month 7 die of the month club set (I punched a hole in the middle of the die cut to make a wreath, and added red perfect pearls berries). The brick pattern on the walls was inked through a stencil

This next one had a brick stencil inked onto the walls, the roof was given some texture with an old embossing folder I had. The little banner was cut from the Flight 2 die set......It was fun altering the details so that the houses looked different - for instance, I drew a line down the center of the door in this one, to turn it into an imposing double door entrance

You can leave one side of the roof free, so that it can be opened to take a LED tealight, but I found this impossible to photograph, you will get the idea if you watch Yana's video (link below)

I had a lot of inspiration from watching a video made by Yana Smakula with her version of these houses - watch it HERE I especially liked her idea of cutting windows and doors out of fun foam to give dimension, and using vellum behind the windows, which I did on all my houses

The ridiculous thing was that I found myself being quite obsessive about the details of these houses, the colours had to complement each other, and the picket fences all had to be white (hey, I'm the CEO of this homeowners association, I make the rules......). I also found myself worrying that if I put the fences across the fronts of the houses, the little people living in there wouldn't be able to get out of their gardens to take the little dog for a walk - I know, nuts! 

Count the Stars.....Spellblogger for Spellbinders

I love this Spellbinders set called Count the Stars by Debi Adams. Find it in the store HERE - I like the fact that you could make cards personal for any age, and the style lends itself really well to those male cards

I chose to make a couple of cards for children, and just cut a bunch of colourful numbers out - the spares are all in a little bag ready for the next quick and easy card! 

This next card just had the numbers cut out of the navy paper, which was layered on top of the teal card, I saved the little pieces to add to the 8, 6, etc

Here is the set - you get the stamp sentiment (love the font), the numbers and two star dies

Thank you all so much for your lovely comments and emails about the wedding post, and for your good wishes for Mike - unfortunately, he is still unwell, but the doctors and hospital have been great, and we are hoping he will be better soon. In the meantime, my craftroom is my haven and 'chatting' to you brightens my day......x

Wedding! A day to remember..........

Sharing with you some photos of Alex and Declan's special day. After months of planning, it was a beautiful day - didn't Alex look gorgeous?

I had to show you my outfit - and the shoes!

Molly had a bit of a starring role - she spent the ceremony beaming and waving at everyone over my shoulder.......

Sadly, a shadow was cast over the day by the fact that Mike, my husband wasn't well enough to attend. It clearly was a sadness, Alex was 'given away' by her elder brother James. It also meant that I had to give the traditional 'father of the bride' speech - gulp!

In this next photo my new son in law is telling me he will always be my favourite son in law - fair comment as we only have one daughter!

On to some of the little details. We had a 
Candy Bar, stocked with lots of handmade goodies - lots of homemade fudge, truffles, peppermint creams, coconut Ice....the little green decorated fudge at the front of the table was Irish Cream Fudge, decorated with shamrocks, to welcome Dec's family from Ireland.......I made the little candy tree as well

I found someone to make the little sign on eBay, and I filled a wicker basket with little kraft treat bags decorated with twine and punched hearts, for people to fill with sweets/candy to take home with them

We wanted a natural rustic sort of look with simple flower arrangements - they were put into jars (the florist was still working when I took these photos, the second jar hadn't been filled). Instead of sparkly table confetti, I ordered a bunch of little wooden hearts and scattered those around the table. We wanted wood slices, boy, are they expensive. So I contacted a local tree feller, and asked him to cut me some slices, leaving the bark on. They cost me a fraction of any others I found. We sanded them down and gave them a coat of matt varnish 

 These were rustic little jars that I filled with scrolls and a pen that looked like a slice of wood, and a label asking people to write a message for them to open on their first wedding anniversary - much more fun than a guest book!

 They decided to use places that were special to them for table names, so the table plan, set on an easel was printed saying 'Where in the world am I?' - it looked cute! 

 I used a large birdcage that I already owned as a post box for their cards. I found some large wooden hearts in Hobbycraft, cut out some vinyl letters on my Cricut, and tied them onto the birdcage with twine 

The civil ceremony was held in a separate building, and again, we kept the decoration simple, a froth of gypsophilia (baby's breath) on alternate aisle chairs.......and wicker hearts on the others. A scattering of rose petals along the aisle........

I made some programmes for each chair, using a Spellbinders die......

because it was a civil service, the order of service left room for an Itinerary for the day - I was keen to do this, having spent hours at weddings whispering 'what time are we going to eat, I'm starving'

So there you have it, the Cashmore/Harkin wedding in a nutshell. All the planning was worth it, despite Mike not being there, it was a wonderful day, and all that's left to say on this post is wishing Alex and Dec all the love in the world and best wishes for a long and happy life together xx