New House

A few more pics of our new house as on my computer the ones on my previous post have somehow been replaced by little red crosses. Not sure if this is how everyone else sees them or not. Most confusing! We've managed to get rid of boxes from 2 of the bedrooms now. This is our 'girly' room, we've painted an old cupboard and a wooden bed frame in a soft lime and added Forever Friends transfers.

As there was some paint left over we decorated one wall as well. These colours fit in well with the purple curtains we had in the old house. This is our room up on the 2nd floor, with it's lovely sloping ceiling.
We don't have anything permanent up to the window yet, but are hoping to get a blind fitted before any neighbours move in behind us. In the meantime we have a voile curtain.

Sue xx

4 of a kind

4 cards all using the same stamped image but looking quite different, thanks to the colouring and embellishments used.

I do love this little stamp of 2 little mice cuddling under a flower and have used it lots of times, mainly for birth congratulations cards. These will be used for birthdays though and I have used a variety of colours and background papers to make them individual.

I have coloured them all with Promarkers and shaded the card with chalk to soften it. Each has been cut-out with Nesties and in a couple layered up onto a doyley. each has a strip of ribbon or lace and a couple have paper flowers with brad centres.

The colouring on these 2 is very soft but I love the vibrancy of this last one with it’s bright red and yellow mats.

Sue xx

Back online.

At last after a whole month without internet access we are back online.                We moved last month into a new house and have had to wait for the phone line to be connected.

This is how the house looked the very first time we saw it back at the end of October last year.

We even went on New Year’s eve to look at the progress. The exterior was complete but we couldn't get close enough to find out what had been done inside.   A month later and the garage had been built and the porch roof added. The drive has been compacted ready for the block paving and the front tidied up a bit. Round the back the patio has been laid and the ground prepared for the turf.From our bedroom window we can just make out the fairy-tale shape of Castell Coch through the trees. The roofs have been tiled now and the leaves are beginning to grow on the trees so we’ll only be able to see the castle during the winter months.

Sallie chose these border tiles for the bathroom, they seem to take on a different colour depending how you look at them.   The ones below are in the en-suite shower room and i’m sure they are not the ones we chose but I love them. They are so textured with small irregular dots covered in what can only be described as glossy accents! This is the business end of the kitchen/diner on the front of the house. We still don’t have any window dressings as we can’t decide what style to have.

Sue xx

New Baby

Another new baby has arrived in our circle of friends. The card uses images and backgrounds from MCS but isn’t how I would have liked it to be as all my embellishments are packed away somewhere ready for the move to our new house later this month. I was lucky in that the cd’s are installed on my laptop and I knew where to find the box with basic cardstock.

I’ve used the Papercraft Library volume 5 for the various components and put them all together on a spotty background. The text has been shaped using the MCS text programme. The printed page sits on a mat of pale purple card which matches one of the colours of the image.

I know exactly where all my knitting yarn is! The pattern for the little hats is a download from Crafts Beautiful magazine and is still on my laptop so easy to get access to. My laptop will never get packed away that’s for sure!

I’ve knit it in a textured pink yarn which has a slight shimmer to it and a pale lemon baby yarn, both very pretty. Each took only a couple of hours to knit and is ideal for using up yarn left from larger projects. I love the scalloped edge the pattern gives them.

The recipient will get them today so i’m safe in blogging them now.

I’ve decided to carry on knitting baby items as and when the fancy takes me so that I have something ready whenever it’s needed. I have loads of yarn ready to use. It relaxes me to knit and it’s something that I can do anywhere and at any time. In fact I have 2 blankets on the go at the moment.

Sue xx

Everyone’s 30!

I’ve had 4 30th Birthdays to make cards for among my friends and family in the past few months. What was it about 1980-81 that produced these babies and brought them into our circle of friends?

This first one was made back in September for a friend. Forever Friends bears holding numbers, matted onto blue backing paper and layered onto a swirly background from the Docrafts cd.

This one was for my daughter’s partner who plays football.

The images and papers are all from the Docrafts Forever Friends Cd. even the band of spotty tape. At the time it was made I hadn’t come to grips with the way this Cd works so imported the images into MCS, this enabled me to give the rosette a drop shadow to give it a decoupage look. I also used the MCs programme to shape the text.

Made for my ex Daughter in Law from an MCS Cd, possibly Walk in Wonderland. The image has been digitally layered onto the background. The ‘clothing’ and parts of the wings have been enhanced with purple glitter to give texture to the card.

This final card was made for my son who had his birthday just last week.

It is made from the Forever Friends Black & Gold Cd. Lots of elements and images layered together then matted onto a gold paper and cream cardstock. The ‘holes’ in the tag have been covered with card candy to match the colour theme.

4 completely different looks even though 3 of them use similar images, all to celebrate 30th birthdays.

Sue xx

Meiflower blog candy

Mei is a recent friend on facebook and on looking through her blog I came across her first ever blog candy giveaway.

She is giving away £50 worth of super crafting goodies, so very generous and lots of lovely items for a lucky winner. Do pop over and have a look.

Sue xx

Decorated Candles

Something i’ve wanted to do for ages now is decorate candles. I actually bought some plain white candles for this purpose over 12 months ago but never got round to doing anything about it.

Well I finally plucked up courage and got out my stamps and inks and after scrabbling around for some white tissue paper which I knew I had somewhere from my cross stitch days. (Used when mounting finished projects to protect the fabric from any nasties in the backing materials.)

This one has been decorated with a Forever Friends image of the bear holding out a rose and some swirls. I've not coloured this as I didn't know if it would be safe to do so, but on reading through other blogs I see images that have been coloured so may try it next time.

This 2nd one was made with a family member in mind for her birthday. I used the stamp a few years ago on her card but have not used it since. I stamped it 3 times around the candle so it looks good from all sides.

I'm linking to a few challenges with these: Teddy Stampers - #29 Love Bears. Crafty Creations - #104 my love is like a red, red rose. TandaStamps - #164 share the love.

Sue xx

Knitting

Here is a blanket i’ve knit for my new baby grandaughter Lily. It’s a very simple pattern, just cast on 4 stitches and then increase 1 stitch at the beginning of each row until the piece is the required size. Work 1 row straight before decreasing 1 stitch at the beginning of each row until you are back to 4. Then cast off. Simples!

I started off on short needles and ended up on a circular needle with 250 stitches.

The finished blanket measures 24 inches along each side and has been done using double knitting weight yarn on size 8 (4mm) needles. The colour is a variegated pink/orange mix which sounds odd but took my fancy when I first saw it.

I’ve since realised that it’s probably because I made myself a dress in fabric which was pink with tiny orange flowers when I was a teenager (many years ago)

Sue xx

80th Birthday

It’s my MIL’s 80th birthday later this month and I actually got my stamps out to make a card. It makes a change from all the Cd images I used for my seasonal cards.

The stamps are from Joanna Sheen and I used a marker pen in Ballet Blue from Stampin’ Up instead of an inkpad. The ‘tea’ is coloured using a vanilla Promarker. The tablecloth has been embossed with Cuttlebug Swiss Dots and has a coloured lace border courtesy of Martha Stewart. The flowers and brads are Docraft and the numbers are about the only thing i’ve used my CraftRobo Lite for yet.

I particularly like the colour of the flowers on this and feel it gives a nice Spring-like feel to the card.

Sue xx

Grandparents again

On New Years Eve we became Grandparents again, this time to Lily Hope who arrived at 2:25pm and weighed in at 6lb 8oz.

The Congratulations card uses an image and background paper from Teddies Friends cd by Peerless Designs.

It has been decoupaged and layered onto silver holographic card. Paper flowers have been coloured with Versa colour ink and held together with tiny pink brads.

Close-ups now, because I have a new camera capable of taking decent photos. Thanks to Mick for my surprise Christmas pressie.

Thanks for looking and HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all.

Sue xx

Merry Christmas

I want to wish all my blogging buddies a very Merry Christmas, thank you for reading and leaving comments throughout the past year.

These are the cards I made for my Mum & Mum in Law this year. Images from Forever Friends cd, embossed backgrounds using Cuttlebug folders, lots of organza ribbon, seed beads and fabric flowers.

Sue xx

Christmas Bunting

Over on the Bubbly Funk forum a group of us have worked together to make and decorate pieces of bunting. The pieces I received are in the green/red/gold combination but we also made pieces in a blue/white/silver combo for those who preferred it.

As you can see each one that I made is slightly different.

I had my pieces back last week and this afternoon decided to do something with them so armed with a hole punch, yards of glittery green cord and a large needle I sorted them into order. I ended up on the kitchen floor with them before hanging them from the door to get the spacing right.

I like how they turned out. Thank you everyone who took part, each piece of the bunting is totally different. I'd love to see how the other colour combo worked out.

In close-up.

Sue xx

‘Special’ Christmas cards

Each year I try to come up with something different for the family cards I need to make. I’ve used images from Forever Friends Cd for all of them.

These first 2 are for my sons and are A4 in size. I imported the images and backing papers into MCS and manipulated them and added text. Both are layered up onto mirror card.

This is for my daughter. It’s an 8 inch square card that started off as A4 but went wrong so had to be layered up again. Another image from the same cd with added silver yarn and a Martha Stewart punched edge.

Sue xx