Crafter's Companion Challenge #1

This is a completely new Challenge blog and all you have to do is make a card following the sketch below, all they ask is that you use some product from Crafters Companion, it can be papers and toppers from one of their Cd's, or you might have some of their lovely stamps that you would like to use, You must have something visible on your item from the Crafters Companion range.
This weeks prize, donated by Crafters Companion, is one of their new Popcorn stamps,

This weeks sketch Challenge is designed by Wendy

I don't have any stamps by Crafter's Companion so I used backing papers from the Cute Companions Cd Volume 1 and layered them up with a stamped image from Penny Black which has been coloured with Whisper brush pens. The ribbon, flowers and brad are from my stash and the greeting is a peel-off.Nip on over to the Crafter's Companions Challenge blog and check it out.

Good Luck dragon

Sallie has been in her new job now for a week and seems to be enjoying it.

To wish her well I made this card using a Dragon with Butterflies stamp from Lili of the Valley. I coloured it using Whispers brush pens and mounted it up onto a green backer.

A piece of ribbon with butterflies and circles, from Hobbycraft, was stuck onto a pale green card before the image was layered up. A peel-off greeting completes it.

Crafty catch up.

Looking through this blog last night I realised that there is a serious shortage of crafty items so set out this morning to make a few cards with the many stamped and coloured images I already had in the box on my desk. It also gave me a chance to use up some of the many pre-scored card blanks I have collected over the years from various kits and not used.

These first cards use stamped images from the Penny Black range. They have been finished off with various bits and bobs from my stash. This one is a Sarah Kay image stamped and coloured with the addition of a piece of ribbon, flower and brad. This last coloured image is my latest stamp from the Lili of the Valley range, i've added a few die cut flowers and a strip of contrasting paper to the pale green card. This final card uses a template given away with Simply Cards & Papercraft magazine some months ago. I inked through the template and after layering the image onto a couple of contrasting colours attached it onto a card on which I had randomly stamped a 'Happy Birthday' greeting. Well things should look a bit 'craftier' now so i'm off back out into the sun!

Oh Dear!

Sallie left her job yesterday and is on holiday now before starting a new one at the end of the month. To celebrate leaving she is going out with her friends next friday in fancy dress.

She is going to be a fairy but she didn't want to be a traditional pretty pink one. Trawling all round Cardiff last weekend and being unable to find anything suitable I agreed to make the skirt she wanted.

We bought black, cerise and white net, getting home we realised we had no black fabric for the waistband so went out and bought a black dye to dye a scrap.

Dying my fingers in the process and ending up having to scrub them with bleach!!

After several attempts we finally came up with the idea of attaching the net pieces to the waistband and used ribbons to tie the skirt in place.

Easier said then done!

She tried it on and decided the layers were too heavy so out came the scissors again and zig zags and points were cut into the fabric. Cerise glitter glue was put on the points of the black net and allowed to drip.

Out into the garden then to view the complete outfit - complete with killer heels and fairy wings. On the night she will add spray glitter to the skirt, her hair and anything else that stays still long enough.

I had silver glitter tried out on one arm and multi colour on the other and our friend went to work with silver on his arm when he didn't run fast enough. He escaped before she got to his hair.

Goodness only knows what she was laughing about in this one or what the neighbours thought we were up to. That's without a drink inside her as well!
Oh the joys of being young again. Watch out Ashby de la Zouch next weekend!

Sallie's birthday

Sallie was 23 last week, this is the card and gift I made for her.
The stamp is from Penny Black and has been coloured with Whisper marker pens. It was stamped onto white card then layered up onto pink and white ovals cut using Nesties. The ribbon is from Hobbycraft and the flowers and green backer from my stash.
The stamp actually belongs to Sallie but she is very kindly letting me store it for her.

She mentioned when she saw mine that she would like a Birthday book. She chose the papers from my stash and said she would decorate the cover herself if I made the book for her.

I decided to complete it as a surprise present for her following her ideas for the layout.

The paper on the cover is from K & Co., the flowers are from my stash and the word is computer generated then cut out with an oval Nestie. All finished off with the BIA.The inside pages are all comuter generated with the addition of stamped letters for the months using stamps from a See D's alphabet set.

First fruits

These are the first fruits from our strawberry plants, freshly picked this morning. We protected them from the birds this year by making a cage with sticks and mesh so they could ripen on the plants. They were fed with tomato feed as well.
Yummy - strawberries and cream!

NRC challenges

A group of ladies from the Bubbly Funk forum took themselves off on friday for a long weekend of crafting fun, those of us left behind were not to be forgotten as Kathy arranged a last minute Non Retreaters Crop. Referred to as the NRC.

I have combined 2 of the challenges in this little book. It is just over 4 inches square, covered in paper from K & co, fastened with a length of ribbon and decorated with fabric flowers and funky star brads.

The first is a 10 minute mini book and the second a photo challenge.

10 minutes my ar*e it took me longer than that to choose my papers! Add 2 phone calls from Sallie and Mick arriving home from work.

It is a very easy book to make though and all the papers are from K & co. The photo challenge was set by Hazel who gave us a subject matter every couple of hours during saturday and sunday. The initial letters of which were B.U.B.B.L.Y.F.U.N.K.

Sallie was here and took part in some of them and we had great fun both looking for old pictures and taking new ones.

I printed them all out and combined them into this book.

BLUE - my slippers.

UNDERNEATH - my crafting workspace.BEAUTY - Faith in her frilly pink dress. BOTTLES - the booze is hidden behind the soft drinks!LEATHER - Sallie wearing her stripey socks with my shoes.YOURSELF WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG - me aged 20 on holiday in Spain.FACES - Sallie and Me this Easter in Barry Island.UP ABOVE - the snow seen through the conservatory roof earlier this year. NATURE - the view from our veranda in the Dominican Republic a couple of years ago.KNITTED - a couple of garments i've just finished for my niece's baby boy.
I did the writing by hand (can't you tell!) on white card cut into ovals with Nestabilities.

2 for Dad

We are going up to the Midlands on wednesday to see the family and take cards for events this month and next.
These are cards I made for my Dad for his birthday and Father's day.
This is for his birthday - he always wears a shirt and tie when he goes out so it's very suitable for him. The image is a stamp from Funstamps called 'Gent's shirt'. I ve coloured the stripes with Whispers pens and decoupaged the cuff, collar and tie on the blue one and added a blue brad for the cufflink.
The shirts are in pink, green and blue which fits in with the theme on the Lilli of the Valley challenge site. This second card is for Father's day, which is 2 days before his birthday.
I've stamped an image from the Daisy and Dandelion collection by Design Objectives onto brown paper and again coloured it with Whisper pens. The letters have been stamped and glittered. Multi layered flowers with brad centres complete the card.
This fits in with the challenge on Cute Card Thursday to include letters or numbers on a card.

Boy or Girl?

My neighbour across the road is in the very late stages of pregnancy so while I was playing with my Nesties I set about making a card but not knowing the sex of the baby made one blue and one pink. The images are from Penny Black and have been coloured using Whispers brush pens - another of my favourite things at the moment. The background has been cut into an oval and mounted up onto an oval nestie shape with a star shaped button threaded with spotty organza ribbon for an embellishment.

The large letter'B' is cut from glitter card using a chipboard letter as a template while the smaller letters are cut with a Cuttlebug die.

Since making the cards I have discovered that the baby was in fact due yesterday and is a little boy.

Anyone want a card to celebrate the arrival of a little girl? I'll happily send it to you if so.

1st birthday

I'm just getting to grips with the Nestability dies that I bought a few weeks ago and have been finding any excuse to use them.

This is a card for my neighbours little boy who will be 1, obviously, next month. I do love this image, it's so cheeky and have used it for both a girl and a boy now.

The image is from Paper Nation and has been coloured using Whispers brush pens. It's layered up onto a scalloped oval nestie shape in silver mirror card and then a plain oval in blue.

The large '1' is a peel-off which is layered up in a similar way.
The greeting is all spelt out in silver peel-offs.

As it is very shiny it qualifies for the Cute Card Thursday challenge which is 'shiny'

52Q

I've been catching up with these questions and indeed the answers and am now pleased to say I am bang up to date with them.

Q15 asked 'What makes me me?' and Q16 'What is the truth?'

Q17 was 'What is my super power?' and Q18 'What is on my to do list this week?'

Now this had to be done at the beginning of the week otherwise things would already have been done. Yeah right! I should add to this last one 'to kick this blasted computer out the window'. It has been so slow recently it's a wonder i've managed to get anything done on it.

Barry Island

After the Easter weekend was over we went to Barry Island, it's not far from us and is our closest stretch of beach I think.

Sallie wanted to go to see where the tv show Gavin & Stacey is filmed. The arcade is right on the sea front and well advertised!We went for a long walk along the cliff top. We all needed a rest when we got to the end!We walked from the buildings in the background.Faith had a piggy back on the way back. The tide went right out in the afternoon so we bought a bucket and 2 spades and walked down to the sea. It was so far out and quite breezy so we left Sallie and Faith digging up the beach while we went for a cuppa.

Faith had a ride on the 'big' wheel before we left.

Owl sanctuary.

When Sallie came to us for Easter we still had Faith so went out and enjoyed ourselves.
It was a beautiful day on Easter saturday so we went out shopping as we normally do. We ended up at the Festival Village shopping outlet and after spending some of Mick's money went off in search of the Owl Sanctuary. I'm so glad we did as the 3 of us enjoyed it so much, especially Faith as she got to hold the birds.

This is a beautiful owl and Faith was so pleased when she was asked if she wanted to hold it.The birds all had the leather cuffs around their ankles and Faith wore the gauntlet with the ties wrapped around her fingers.

This is a huge bird!

The man brought it over for us to see and told Faith to rest her hand on the fence. He then put the bird on her hand, she needed the support of the fence as it was so heavy.
Here he is sitting up on his perch again.


All the birds have been rescued and are unable to be released into the wild again. We were told of one which had been kept indoors and kept breaking it's wings by flying into the glass in an attempt to get out. It is kept in an aviary with green netting inside to prevent it flying against the wire.

52Q

I'm still playing catch up here but have now done week 12 and 14.
Week 12 asked - What am I grateful for right now?
Week 14 asked about the last good book I read. I read lots of books but most of them are easy read paperbacks soi'm not counting them.
Here are my answers. The two stamps are from Magnolia and have been coloured using Whispers brush pens. The artwork and text is from the Walking in Wonderland Cd.

Birthday book

This birthday book was inspired by the ones made by Net and shown on her super blog.
I've been working on this for around 3 weeks as all the measurements are my own. The first stage was to design and print out the tables on the computer, then decide how to display them and make the pages.The month initials are stamped in purple on tabs extending from the pages. I have a double page spread for each month with 18 spaces. I've included a column to add details of where I know the person from e.g forums, f/b etc.
I've used paper by Paper Adventures for the covers. The Sarah Kay image is stamped onto cream card and coloured using Whispers brush pens. The letters are die-cut stickers from the Brenda Walton range by K & Co. The tiny flowers have been double layered and finished off with a spot of glitter glue. All bound together with my BIA.

Son's birthday

A card for my son's 30th birthday yesterday, gosh it does make me feel old! I used white cardstock and folded it to make a landscape card with a top fold and covered it with pale blue paper.
The letters have been cut out of blue holographic card and layered up onto pale blue paper embossed with swiss dots from a Cuttlebug folder. This was layered onto matt silver paper.
The greeting from Personal Impressions is embossed in pale blue and layered onto the same colours with 3 small brads.
A small double layer flower with a brad in the centre finishes it off.

Baking day

Today I decided to do some baking with Faith. We had bought some sugar sprinkles and chocolate flakes yesterday for decorations.

First things first - the cake cases.

Fun with the mixer.
A couple of spoons full into each case.
All ready for the oven.
Out of the oven and cooling.
I did the icing and Faith did the decorating.

After going through my boxes she came across these decorations, they seem rather appropriate as it's almost Easter. The one with blue hat is for Sallie, the pink hat is Faith's and mine is the baby one.

This one is for Grandad of course!

Next we tried making cheese scones.

Faith did most of this, she was very good at this first part.

I added the milk and formed it into dough ready for her to roll and cut out.

She enjoyed putting the milk glaze on them.

They are very yummy!!

This last picture is just for Kaz, to prove that I did get help with the washing up. In fact Faith did the whole lot apart from the baking trays.

Spring Flowers.

2 cards here using the same Sarah Kay stamp. They have been coloured with a combination of Stampin' Up markers and watercolour pencils. The backing card mounts for both is from DCWV. The stamped greeting is from Personal Impressions. This first one has the greeting embossed in pale blue which shows better IRL. It has 2 layers of flowers and some spotty white organza ribbon held together with a brad.

This has the greeting embossed in purple and is decorated with flowers and brads. It also features an oval cut with my very first set of Nestabilities.

Easter Hens?

The birds on these cards look a little bit too large to be Easter chicks but the colouring on the images from Personal Impressions certainly fits in with the theme of 'Citrus Colours' over on Cute Card Thursday challenge this week.

I chickened out a bit (pardon the pun) with the colours on the first one but went all out with the second, giving her lime green dungarees.

Both images have been coloured with Stampin' Up marker pens and watercolour pencils. The papers are from HOTP Citrus pad and the sentiment plaques from Making Cards magazine. The stripy ribbon is Anita's and the circles one from Hobbycraft.

Trio of Bunnies

3 cards made using the free papers in this months Making Cards magazine.
All i've added is A4 cardstock folded to make an A5 card, some shiny silver paper and a few peel-off sentiments. I've also put a touch of glitter glue on a few of the butterflies and bunny tails.

As they feature bunnies i'm going to call them Easter Bunny cards and this way they can be used for the Lili of the Valley challenge which is quite simply to make an Easter card.

52Q

Week 13 asked..... What was the worst (or best) hairstyle experience to date?

Now i'm either very brave or very foolish to be putting up the answer to this one, please no laughter.

Curly perms were the BIG thing of the late 1970's and I had mine done a couple of times. A quick blast with a water spray bottle in the morning to tighten the curls and you were set for the day.

I can't believe how young I look in this photo. As it's obviously Summer time it must have been August and I know it was 1978 because it was only a few months later that we found out I was expecting our first child.

I know i've skipped a week and missed out Q & A 12 but that one needs more thought. I will get round to it.

Card display.

For a while now i've been looking for a small easel on which to display my cards for photography. Tried all the local shops and even a large craft show with no luck.


A couple of days ago I decided I must find a way to display the Cd clock I made a few weeks ago as the clock mechanism doesn't have a way to hang it up. I thought of a plate stand which I no longer use and it was perfect.
Then an idea struck me, which it does from time to time, and I tried it to stand a card on and what do you know it worked!

I won't bother looking for an easel now as I have a few of these shoved away in the cupboard.

52Q

Week 11 asked ....... What keeps me awake at night?

A ridiculously easy one for me to answer especially as I spent last night sleeping on the sofa bed in my craft room. The background for the question is taken from the Walk in Wonderland Cd and the image from Google, the photo was taken a couple of years ago in the Dominican Republic at the outdoor bar. That's the reason for the plastic cup! He doesn't usually drink from one like that.

52Q

I'm a bit behind with these so had a blitz on them this afternoon.

Week 10 asked ........ What 5 films inspire me creatively?

A difficult one really, which I suppose is why i'd not done it before now. Films don't really inspire me but the music does. I've listed 3 of my favourite films which I can follow by the music alone.All images are from sources on Google. The ticket stamp is from Maya Road.