Christmas Mice....

I don't think I shared with you the Christmas mice commission that I made for Papercraft Inspirations magazine last year, the one that caused me a lot of angst because I couldn't get my head around mice and Christmas. In the end, the cards were cute, I will share the others with you tomorrow. This is my favourite - the mice were done with punches and I messed around with their little choirboy robes and gave them a little scrap of sheet music to hold... 

Look what my very talented artist friend Anne has done for my kitchen - well, she didn't paint it for my kitchen exactly, but it sort of jumped into my car and came home with me. It hangs behind the dining table and looks perfect.  Isn't it fabulous? It's painted in ink on canvas and has the most alluring silver highlights. I so wish I could do this sort of thing, but as I can't, well it is very handy to have a very good friend who can! Thank you Anne x 

Overheard in town as I was walking along, a small child's voice piping 'please tell me we aren't going to go into that shop Mummy'. Amused, I turned around to see a worried looking little four year old - yes, it was a boy child, aversion to shopping must be in the male DNA!

See you tomorrow x 

Season of Mellow Fruitfulness and a harvest of coathangers......

Well after a very nice summer here in the UK, it suddenly changed overnight from warm sunshine to a distinct Autumn nip in the air. Definitely sweater weather......

So a chore for this weekend, has been to pack away the flip flops with a sigh and get out the winter stuff. Sigh.....

Now this is always a major undertaking. I pull stuff out with a snort of disbelief 'I can't believe I paid good money for that' or 'ooh, I remember wearing that to a party fifteen years ago'. Time for the charity sack to make an appearance. Delving into the pile of boots and winter shoes, wearing my brand new brown boots bought last week, I find the brand new brown boots that I bought in a sale at the end of the winter in March. Ooops

How can it be that all summer I have been double-hanging stuff, making tops share a hanger with a couple more tops because I just didn't have any spare hangers. So where did this lot come from then?

Could it be that they were quietly having a hanger orgy in the back of the wardrobe while I was reading a book in the sun? They must have had a good time - they have reproduced in a very prolific way....

And here is the end result. A depressing sea of grey, brown and black. Note to self: take the boots back and buy something BRIGHT. Mind you, now that I have spent a whole day doing this, we are guaranteed to have a late summer heatwave, which means I will be diving into various boxes looking for those flip flops...

and lastly, my new definition of true love is Mike going out to fill the car with petrol and coming back carrying this for me......

Back to the crafty stuff tomorrow, I just fancied a Sunday morning chat with you all....x

Christmas Post for Craftwork Cards

Here's a peek at the brand new Christmas Post collection from Craftwork Cards. It has the most yummy papers, sentiments, coordinating candy, die cut flowers, all with a vintage feel. It's my turn to post over on the Craftwork Cards blog today so hop over there to see what I have been up to...... 

If you aren't already a follower of Craftwork Cards, join up to follow, leave a little comment then come back here to leave your name. I will put the names in the hat on Tuesday, and Craftwork Cards will send the lucky winner a lovely Christmas Wreath kit - all you need to make this gorgeous Poinsettia wreath for Christmas



Have a lovely weekend. I am up to my eyes in top secret hush hush missions (I'll have a martini, shaken not stirred please....), but I will be back tomorrow as usual. See you then x

Win Safmat AND a Set of Limited Edition ProMarkers

It's my turn to post over on the Letraset blog today and it's all about using Safmat. Go HERE to see the post, leave a message there, then pop back here to leave your name and you could win a pack of Safmat AND twelve of the very latest Limited Edition Autumn/Winter ProMarkers that are only just arriving in the stores now. Please share this post on Facebook if you go there, or give a little shout on your blog (Don't worry if you don't visit FB or have a blog, you will still be in with an equal chance of winning) 

Set includes:

• Carry-case packaging
• 12 x Brand new, strictly limited ProMarker colours + 1 Blender pen
  • Winter Spruce
  • Solstice Blue
  • Fire Wood
  • Sugar Plum
  • Red Sweater
  • Frosted Jade
  • Pressed Leaf
  • Hearth-stone
  • Trick or Treat
  • Sleigh Bell
  • Frozen Lake
  • Iced Pearl
  • Blender Pen

A great prize for one of you. I will draw a winner from all the comments under this post on Sunday and announce the winner next Monday. Good luck

Halloween Magazine Cards....

I'm pretty sure I haven't shared all these Halloween cards with you - they were made for Papercraft Magazine last year, and by the time I could share them with you, Halloween had been and gone......

This first one was made using the Cricut, the letters were cut with Plantin Schoolbook, and the ghosts are from Paper Dolls....

This next one has a memory box bare tree, the bats were cut with the Cricut but I don't remember the cartridge...

For this next one, I used a large button as the body of the spider, and hand cut the legs. I also doodled the spider web, and the little spiders on the bottom. I thought the rather flirtatious googly eyes were a fun touch.....

This next one was made using Polkadoodles Halloween downloads

The cards were in the 'quick cards' section of the magazine, which means the readers must be able to reproduce them in about thirty minutes - always a challenge to come up with stuff for that section

I don't think my kids ever dressed up for Halloween, it just wasn't heard of in the UK back then. I did decide to have a Halloween party one year and spent the afternoon making a ghost (balloon under a sheet) that I hung in a corner of the kitchen, and scattered some black plastic spiders about. My then 5 year old daughter burst into tears, refused any tea, and blames me to this day for her arachnophobia! The party was one of my rare Martha Stewart-ideal-mum type moments, others being a couple of quite hideous home baked birthday cakes and an innovative party game when one of the children attending fell over and ended up in the emergency room. After that, I found a woman who made cakes that looked like castles or forts, and kept the games to 'pass the parcel'....My kids have grown into nice, normal, responsible people, so as far as I know, they don't have a great sense of having missed out on the Martha Stewart-ideal-mum. Who knows, I bet if they ever had therapy it would all surface.....(I hate the internet fashion for inserting LOL to show that you are amused, but I must admit to a little LOLLING as I write this...) 

See you tomorrow....

It's the most wonderful time of the year....

Yes, it's that time of year again, when I will be turning my thoughts to jingle bells and holly, time to get started on the Christmas card list. For today's card, I used a memory box snowflake background stamp, stamped in white stazon, the bare tree, and the deer trio and star......The card base is 5 x 5

I added sparkle to the snow, and hand cut the snow banks at the bottom, they had a sprinkle of glitter as well.....

I do love making Christmas cards, but as I don't generally make Halloween cards unless it's for a magazine or design team, and of course we don't have Thanksgiving here, you may get a bit sick of looking at Santa by December. Thinking about it, I could make some Thanksgiving cards for some of my American friends, I do love those Autumn russets and golds, and it would make a change from ho ho ho in October!

By the way, the sentiment on today's card wasn't stamped, or typed onto the card via the computer. I used Safmat. Wait until Thursday and my Letraset post to hear a lot more about this fantastic product.....

See you tomorrow x

Special Delivery

I have been seeing these little caterpillars on Pinterest in the past few weeks, and thought it was such a cute idea, I adapted it a bit....

and made this card. I will send it to one of the children when they are being particularly sweet....

and the same design came in very useful when a new baby boy came into the world last week. Not a typical baby card, but he has a hungry caterpillar mural on his nursery wall, and hungry caterpillar curtains, so it's perfect......

The new baby boy, called William, is the first grandson of my very good friend Anne. His arrival gave me joy on many levels - she will now be able to compete with me in the 'most boring grandma in Britain' stakes, we will be able to try and outdo each other with what our infant geniuses are doing, and of course, we can each compete in the paparazzi granny stakes, cameras always on hand. Think of the added dimension to our shopping trips - now we can add baby shops to clothes, shoes and handbags. Brilliant. Welcome to the world little William, I can't wait to meet you

The winner of the scrapbook pages is:

DIANNE BELL

Congrats Dianne, email me with your address and I will get them in the mail
Thanks to everyone for the lovely comments you made about the pages

See you tomorrow x

Glitzy Butterfly

I've been messing around with glitter again, which means my clothes, hair, skin and even my slippers are looking a bit shiny.....I wanted to try a technique that I have been thinking about since my last foray into glitterland...

Firstly, I covered some white cardstock with scor-pal tape.....

and die cut this Quick Kutz (I can never remember the silly spelling of this brand, but you know who I mean...) butterfly out of the cardstock, then I peeled off the tape..... 

and broke out the glitter - these pots are by Silhouette and came with my Cameo machine. I dumped various colours onto the sticky butterfly, keeping the top fancy layer as a plain silver with just a touch of aqua .... 

I kept the card really plain, anything more would have been too much gliding of the lily! So a simple embossed background, and an elegant sentiment tile by Craftwork Cards

We recently got a TK Maxx here in my hometown - yes, it's exactly the same store as TJ Maxx in the USA, but for some bizarre reason they have to call themselves TK over here. I love going in and browsing because they carry a lot of my favourite American brands and it makes me feel a bit nostalgic for Florida. Today, I found these Tim Holtz stamps for £7.99. I don't do a lot of what I call arty stamping, but I pondered, and put them back...... 

Then I got home, and googled the stamps. They were selling here in the UK in online stores for £29 and £19. Well, arty or not, I wasn't going to pass up a bargain like that, so I went back into town and bought them. I have an idea for the 'reflection' stamps (they are 'kiss' stamps, so when you ink them up and 'kiss' another stamp with them, the writing will be the right way around not reversed. I could have fun with that). It's always nice to have new supplies to gloat over, particularly if they were a bargain.... I also saw some We R Memory Keepers corner chompers in the baby toys department. Obviously some shelf stacker scratched their heads and said 'any one know what these are? Okay, I'll throw them in with the toys, nobody will notice'

Hope you all have a great weekend, I'll be back tomorrow with the name of the person who will be getting the spring garden scrapbook pages. See you then x

Butterfly in white.....

A reminder that the lovely Julie Hickey is on Create and Craft TV today with all the new goodies from Craftwork Cards - I don't have the new Christmas papers yet, I am stalking the postman, but they look delightful and I can't wait to work with them.....

Do those of you who are not in the UK know that you can watch Create and Craft TV online? There are always a lot of demos, so you might enjoy it

A quick card from me today, I did this cut on my Cameo, just as a test really, but it cut so well it seemed a shame not to turn it into a card, I attached it (fiddly!) with some pinflair glue, and just added some little red gems here and there. So although it was never destined to become a card, the end result is quite pretty.....

Lots of 'must do this' stuff on my desk that I need to get cracking on. A huge box of stuff arrived today from Letraset, all destined to be posted all over the world by me as blog prizes over the next few months, so keep your eyes peeled...

I have only heard from one of the winners of the Angelberry CD, if I haven't heard anything from the second winner,  I will re draw the names next Wednesday.

See you tomorrow x 

Some net - and some winners!

Before I get onto the winners, let's talk about today's card.....

I'm quite pleased with this one. I cut some cardstock slightly smaller than the card front (5 x 7) and positioned some nestablitly circles onto it. I held them in place with tape and ran them through the big shot. Then I embossed the panel, and cut a piece of black netting and used double sided tape to stick that to the back of the panel, which I then attached to the front with foam tape

I used a sissix die to cut a black flourish, then punched some hot pink flowers which I layered and added a drop of black enamel dimensional paint to the centers - I figured someone who likes the sophistication of a black and white card would like the hot pink!

Time it took to make the card (plus fiddling around time when I couldn't get the design in my head to work out), 2 hours. Time to clear my desk afterwards one minute (I just put the cap back on the black enamel stuff, the rest of the place is littered with black and pink bits). Time it took to find my camera - the rest of the day. Where was it? In the bathroom. Don't ask. I don't know either. Oh dear, worrying senior moment.....

On to the winners of the Angelberry Christmas CD. I used random.org, but because of the camera problem, you have to take my word for that. The lucky winners are:

MizMaryAnn

and

littlebee

Congrats to you both, email me with your address and I will get those angels flying over to your place. For the unlucky ones, don't forget you can get the CD HERE and Nikky offers free worldwide shipping. There is a currency converter on the site

See you tomorrow x 

Get Well Card

This is a get well card for a little girl that I have never met, or am likely to meet. She is only six and has had a very big surgery on her legs, so I thought that as she lives in Canada it may cheer her up to have a card all the way from the UK...

Her mum has a blog that I love, she arranges the most fantastic themed parties, I marvel when I read about them - however a young mother with three children finds the time is beyond me! Go HERE if you want to browse around. So when I read that her little girl was going into hospital, I emailed her for her address and this is what I came up with....

The dog was cut using the Four Legged Friends Cricut cartridge (although why they called it that is beyond me when they have a snake and fish on the cartridge). Cut at 2 1/2" I decided to jazz him up a little and cut him in gingham. The sentiment is from the Cherryblossom Lane CD by Polkadoodles

So today the little doggie will be on his way to Quebec. Let's hope he brightens her day a little when he gets there...

See you tomorrow x

Little Girl's Scrapbook Page...

When I was searching for the Pirate scrapbook, I found this double page layout that was made for a magazine commission - after they photograph it they send it back. I must have made it about four years ago now. I did lots of pockets for tags.....

and used my Cricut a lot before adding some little Magnolia Tilda girls...

Does anyone have a little girl they scrapbook? Or know someone who does? It seems a shame for this to be languishing at the bottom of a drawer, if someone would like it I would be happy to send it to them. If more than one person wants it, I will put names in a hat, or toss a coin! I will send it to anywhere in the world. 
I can hear some of my regular blog friends saying 'what about Kiki?' Well her baby/little girl scrapbook is pretty much up to date, and she is now into cool stuff (really really cool, with accompanying eye rolls and hand waves. At nine!), so really these pages cry out for a pretty little toddler or two on them, I would be happy to see it going to a good home!
See you tomorrow x

Presenting the young scrapbooker of the year....

No card from me today - all my creativity has been spent helping Max with his holiday project of a scrapbook for school - the brief was to tell them all about yourself, what you did and what you liked. 

Luckily I had this really sweet fabric covered scrapbook hanging around at home...... 

I took lots of brightly coloured tags for him to write on.....

The Cricut came in handy, and I showed him how to make some lego tiles......

It was lucky that they have just had a holiday in California, so there was lots to write about......we added a lot more 'journalling' on Sunday, which was a lot less exciting for him than sorting photos and glueing everything down

and he did some drawings for some of the pages, this one is about a camping weekend at Warwick Castle, hence the knight.....

and while all this was going on, I set four year old Milo the job of cleaning the barbecue - he did a really good job, I may have to have him here to do a few odd jobs about the place.....

and the email? Well a few of you got it right, he had saved 11 tickets, pages (I don't quite know what he means by this, I think they were his leaflets) and had a box of supplies!

Don't forget if you haven't been here for a couple of days, you can still add your name to the last two posts to be in with a chance to win Angelberry Christmas.

See you tomorrow x

Another chance to win Angelberry Christmas

Here is another chance for you to win the Angelberry Christmas CD, full of Christmas images, papers and sentiments. Thank you Nikky, designer and owner of Polkadoodles for this generous givaway.

For my card today I used one of the pre-coloured images, a few layered ovals, pretty paper from the Cd and a Martha punch and I was done.....

Just leave your name under this post - if you didn't drop by yesterday, scroll down to see that post and leave a comment there as well. Only comments under either Saturday or Sunday's posts will be considered. You will not be entered for today's draw if you left a comment yesterday, so double up your chances and leave your name under both posts.

Good luck !