Alice in Wonderland for Daring Cardmakers

The challenge over on Daring Cardmakers this week has a theme of Alice in Wonderland - I came up with the March Hare having his cup of tea under a tree, away from the madness of the Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts......

To be honest, I went around the houses a bit for this one - I started off thinking of the Queen of Hearts, then moved to the White Rabbit, nothing worked, but then I remembered this stamp by Inky Antics, and with a stretch of the imagination, it filled the bill.

Whatever you are doing this weekend, I hope the sun shines for you and you have a lovely time. 

Poppies and Asters - for Spellbinders

Three new cards today, all made with the Asters and Poppies Spellbinders die - it's on sale, check it out.......

and my favourite, using the lovely A2 Scalloped Borders Three...... I thought this would make a lovely wedding, or wedding anniversary card

Which one do you like best?

So now I am a bit addicted to the TV programme 'Say Yes To The Dress'. I am astonished how many brides want to dress as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman - before she was rescued by the rich guy.   Also how many of them say that the dress is the most important part of the day. Hello......how about those promises you are going to make?
 But I did have a joyous moment when a forty-something bride had a (rather unhealthy) obsession with the late Princess Diana. Apparently they shared a birthday, and she 'talked with her' every night. So the dress had to be regal, fit for a princess, etc etc.  The dress she ended up with showed rather a lot of flesh, masses of it in fact, especially around the chest area. However, the bride was satisfied, popped a diamante tiara on top of her head and declared 'I look just like Princess Diana on her wedding day'
No, not quite, (although that might have something to do with the fact that the princess lookalike was African-American) the amount of flesh on show would surely have given the Archbishop of  Canterbury a heart attack, poor chap, he would never survive the ceremony, and although I reckon Prince Phillip would enjoy the latest royal fashion, the Queen would NOT be amused.....

Rad! - For Spellbinders

I couldn't resist this set from Spellbinders called Hipster 2 - perfect for those difficult male/teenage boy cards.........I am so behind the times, that I actually had to google the word RAD to see exactly what it meant. I'm not exactly hot on new urban language trends.....

Mind you, this would be a good card for Max, my ten year old grandson. When I went for a goodbye hug on our last visit, he announced  'I don't do hugs any more Ma, I do fist bumps......!'  ✊

If you go down to the woods today - for Daring Cardmakers

It's my turn to set the challenge over at Daring Cardmakers this week, and I chose a great outdoors theme, with the title 'if you go down to the woods today' - so think of country walks, picnics, nature trails and camping. Here is what I came up with, a little scene which needed a tiny pop of colour, so my tent is hand drawn. Since it's night time, the campers are obviously inside, warm in their sleeping bags. Mind you, if they had any sense they would be warm in their beds at home.......

Do pop over to see what the team have come up with for this challenge, and if you can join in, we would love to see your take.......

Whatever possessed me to think of this as a challenge theme - I have no clue. There is nobody in the world less likely to camp than me. I tried it once, when I was a teenager. We camped in a field in Wales. It poured with rain all night, I lay there clutching my cream coloured suede handbag to my chest, as protectively as if it was a new born baby. CREAM SUEDE! CAMPING! Was I crazy? Since then, if there isn't a solid roof over my head, and a nice clean surface to park my handbag, I prefer to stay at home

Happy New House.......for Spellbinders

 I spotted this little Shuttered Window die on the Spellbinders website - it's on sale at a bargain price, so hurry if you want one....

I used bits of a trailing vine from the Draping Vines Frame die, and added some pink enamel dots to the flowers. The sentiment is by Simon Says Stamp

Which reminded me - I made this card with the Draping Vine Frame set ages ago, and I have never shared it with you

Ice Cream - for Spellbinders

A 'sweet' card today using the versatile Chill set of Die D Lites by Spellbinders

I piled the ice cream scoops up high and made sure my favourite flavours were there - pistachio, strawberry, chocolate, and do I spy a scoop of cookie dough ice cream..........I cut the sundae dish and spoon out of silver card, it all looks quite authentic!

Here is a peek at the set, I just love it, and I haven't even used the ice lollies yet (or popsicles, depending where in the world you are living....)

What else is going on in my world? A very painful frozen shoulder for one thing which has made life a bit difficult for a few weeks now, but a cortisone shot seems to be helping - a bit!

It is now only two months until the wedding and I have a huge list of things to do. The current boring repetitive job is making the Order of Ceremony cards, still to go are the place cards, table plan, wedding sign.....I can't wait to  show you everything, but of course I can't until after the big day

Does anyone else have a problem with those hand held electronic signature things that delivery drivers thrust at you when delivering a parcel? I don't know if it's because I am left handed, or because I have a built in suspicion of being asked to sign for anything, without having first looked inside the parcel to see what exactly I am signing for, but the squiggle that I produce looks nothing at all like my normal signature - just a long scrawl across the screen. I could put the stylus in seven month old Molly's hand and she would do a better job! I don't really see what exactly the squiggle achieves. If there was a dispute over delivery,  I guess it would show that the family dog/cat/hamster/infant child were at home to receive the parcel and scribble on the screen. But show the signature to an expert handwriting analyst, and I am quite confident that they would never match it to my normal flourish. One of the mysteries of modern life that makes me ponder.........

Flowers - for Daring Cardmakers and Spellbinders

Today it is Dawn's turn to set the dare over on Daring Cardmakers and she gave us this photo collage for our inspiration. Now I am a little bit behind the trend on unicorns, and couldn't find a single stamp or die in my stash to fit the bill, so I focused on the photo of the pretty tiered fabric tent and the hot pink flowers.......

I cut a card into a pyramid shape and used a die from the A2 Scallop Borders three to create the layers on the base. Then I used the Dogwood dies to create the pretty flowers - I cut in white and just swiped with distress inks to colour

They look so pretty, and were a breeze to assemble

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

Best Dad - for Spellbinders......

Here is my Spellblogger card for Spellbinders this week. With Father's Day coming up I thought this Die D Lites set called Toolbox was perfect - I am always happy when I find dies or stamps that work for male cards

So an easy card to make - I cut a circle using the classic circle die, then just cut out the toolbox and a selection of tools from silver card

I'm happy to tell you that Mike is now out of hospital, and recovering well at home, he is taking it easy and I am pretty exhausted, so we are doing rather a lot of watching daytime TV and lounging around, but now that has been happening for a couple of days, I am beginning to notice that the weeds in the garden have flourished with a mixture of sun and rain, so it's back to normality now! 

One die three ways

Today I am using the Glass Effects Card Creator die by Spellbinders for my Spellblogger post

For the first card, I cut the die in black, and backed it with vellum which I coloured on the back with ProMarkers. This gave a lovely stained glass effect. I wrapped a vellum band around the card with a sentiment cut from the Celebration two set 

The second card was cut from a pattern paper which I mounted onto a plain white card base, then slotted in some shapes cut from different plain and coordinating patterns. Just a few little gems here and there to jazz it up a little......

and the last panel was cut from a delicate peach coloured card which I mounted onto a delicate pale green card base, adding a flower cut with the medallion nine die, and some leaves from the Romantic Blooms One set.....

I love how changing the colours can result in such different looking cards, suitable for both male and female recipients

Thank you so much for all the emails and messages wishing Mike well, he is still in hospital and is recovering slowly, but life isn't back to normal yet.....xx 

Two colours only....

The challenge on Daring Cardmakers this week was to use just two colours, that includes the base colour of the card. This was tough! I was going to go with black and white, but in the end decided on a rather graphic teal and black combo. 

The background stencils, and the large 'happy' stamp were picked up at the Version Scrap show I recently went to in Paris. Go HERE to see what the rest of the team came up with for this difficult challenge, and do join in if you can

Everything is a bit topsy turvy here at the moment, as Mike was taken ill last week and is in hospital. Thankfully he is recovering now, but hospital visiting and worrying, means that other stuff is definitely on the back burner for now......

All about the glitter.....

Over at Daring Cardmakers this week, Shabneez set the challenge, and it's all about glitter. Do join in with the challenge, and hop over to see the lovely cards made by my team mates for inspiration

For my card, I added some double sided tape to the front of the card, then peeled away the top layer to sprinkle with glitter. I had some ultra fine glitters by Martha Stewart that were in a Halloween pack, but I think the colours look fun on this card. The butterfly was die cut using Stick it double sided papers, and treated in the same way, with glitter dumped on it when the top layer was peeled off revealing the sticky surface underneath

The shoe hunt continues - I must have tried on at least 50 pairs, and visited every shoe shop within a 20 mile radius of home. They are too high, too low, too plain, too fancy, the wrong colour or just very uncomfortable. Am I being too picky? Probably, but I am a woman on a mission. If I get very bored, I may lose interest and wear flip flops! I could always make some flowers in exactly the right colour to decorate them!........

Wedding Card

Here's a sweet wedding card I made using Fiskars punches - I used the Egalatine lever punch, and hand held cross stitch punch. I just punched a circle, and covered it with the blooms to make my bouquet. Quite quick and easy....

Talking of weddings, I am on the hunt for shoes and a bag for 'the big day' in September. Have you shopped for shoes lately? There seems to be three variations on a basic theme available:

Ballet flats - not exactly what I want to wear with my 'mother of the bride' finery

Glittery heels - most of the heels are precipitous six inch high spindles, some with added platforms and ankle straps to add to the danger. If I wore these, I would probably end up in the nearest hospital with a broken ankle, or suffer backache for the rest of my life. What happened to moderation?

Granny shoes - okay, I'm a Granny, but that doesn't mean I have to wear sensible court shoes with blocky heels like the Queen....she is in her nineties bless her, by the time I get there, I will probably be glad to wear them, but that day hasn't arrived yet

So the hunt for elegant, pretty shoes with a medium heel continues today. Wish me luck!