Vintage vintage vintage

Yes well I think a little overboard!!

 But I needed to create a card for the O/H's birthday, and he is into trains (!), I even have a railway in the garden,  YES! the garden... so this lovely vintage train from vintage digi stamps was just the ticket... sorry for the pun.. anyway the frame came from the same site and with a bit of jiggery pokery I put the sentiment inside, distressed it and covered the whole frame in glossy accents.. which now looks a bit wonky.. did some cutting with my faithful cricut, for the cogs and corner piece. Lots of distressing later and here it is!  Not sure he will love it,  but I sort of do!  And .. no sewing, yes I know, I know, my pink machine is desperate.. but not enough room on this card lol x

Spring birthday wishes

How can you resist this lovely image from Wee stamps... it's so cute!

Couldn't resist colouring her in again today... promarkers of course, in spring colours.. nice and muted, although I liked the depth of the flower and background paper. I still need to perfect my floral arrangements, I'm really not happy with them,  but practise makes perfect!  Or I might just give up!  Anyway used the cricut for 3 pink flowers, other flower and embellies from Wild Orchid. Sentiment is my usual Safmat, how I love that product. Papers from my stash, 8x8" card base, my favourite by far..



Suzi with bunny - Wee stamps

This shouldn't have been A4!  But I got carried away with my Cricut... again!

Really really love this digi stamp from Wee Stamps, thought I would do a grey version with a touch of pink, promarkers of course. Ornamental Iron 2 cartridge, papers from Cuddly Buddly and some freebies. The sentiment is computer generated, onto safmat, brilliant product. Not much good on plain card, but on patterned you can't see the edges, highly recommend. This card is for my my partners daughter in law... hope she likes it.



Life is a beautiful struggle

Ain't that the truth!

I've never attemped a tag, would you believe it!  But I am inspired by Hels... what beautiful work. Anyway, tag cut on cricut (of course) as is the clock and clock parts, which have been embossed with black and gold mixed embossing powders. The tag has been distressed with vintage photo and peeled paint, also so has the doily, a new purchase from Wild Orchid... the sentiment is from a newly found site called  Gingers house which has some lovely free downloads. Buttons from my stash. Butterfly stamp is from Bo Bunny.

Thank you .... home decor!

These digi stamps are FREE, you get 49 different images, some ready to colour in and some already coloured, click here  to get them from Cuddly Buddly, one of my favourite digi download sites. Anyway this is a little wall hanging for my eldest daughter who bought me the mini sewing machine, pictures on my blog.. not my normal colours or design, but these cute images don't lend themselves to grungy!  Although I might just try.... I have used papers from Cuddly Buddly too, they are called Cottage garden - yellow. Promarkers to colour in, Cricut for frame and sentiment... I printed the flowers onto one of the papers in the cottage garden collection, and if you look closely the background paper is made up of patchwork squares using my new machine,  and also a bit of stitching elsewhere. I need to practice and be brave!  Hope she likes it! xx

my new mini sewing machine!

Wowzers,  just look what my daughter bought me for mothers day!  I have been saving up for one, but I shall now use that money for buying all the lovely threads I need for my cards!!!  This mini machine is from John Lewis, and an absolute snip at £50... just under I think!  It's bubblegum pink, and measures 9" x 10.5" and is as light as a feather. It has a choice of 10 stitches,  wow wee i can't wait to get started !!!

Tag and turn card.

Using the super stamps from Nikky Hall's Chronicle... what super quality they are. This time I have used a brown and pink theme, a twisted easel card with a secret tag sentiment. I used papers from the Pretty Tuff CD, I used the free valentines heart as a background, I put the digi stamp into my graphics programme and tiled it, using a light pink background was perfect as the stamp is transparent, very useful. So well done Nikky for such versatile products.

The card and the upcycled heart tin are for my sister, hope she isn't reading this blog..! xx

Sew what?

Ahh sweet

Using the stamps issued with the Polka Doodles new Chronicle, a really good quality set of stamps, and samples of work.. this inspired me to create this card for my Neice, whose birthday is on the 28th. Hope she likes it. I have used Promarkers to colour in, flowers from Wild Orchid, lacy borders using my super Cricut, and papers from the CD which comes with the Chronicle. Altogether well worth the money, the 2nd edition has been ordered !  xx

Love is ....

Love is everything... a lovely free digi stamp from Polka Doodles,  and couldn't help enter their challenge too!  Made for a certain chap!  So quite a masculine card, although I couldn't help putting some lovely flowers I just purchased from Wild Orchid Crafts, the blue one was a in a bag of freebies, super!  Anyway, I printed the background paper with the stamp on top, as it's transparent a very easy job,  also printed out some co ordinating paper, mounted onto some super red heart papers, a bit of a border with ribbon, flowers and a butterfly and there you have it!  Oh and I used promarkers on the actual stamp.  Cheers Nikki!  xx

Welcome to your new home card.

This card was put together for my partners son, who we moved yesterday, he is now in a very lovely new house, with a fab conservatory, I wish I could have one!!  Anyway I hope he likes it.

I've been so brave, I've done some close up's of my work, gulp! I have used a fabulous digi stamp from Make it Crafty, coloured with Promarkers, my wonderful Cricut has cut the hinges and cogs, I used Tim Holz card. The sentiment is from the cartridge Life's a Party, and added a button and metal tag. Inside is a map of the area where he lives.  I have distressed the edges of everything, no glitter !!!  Hope he likes it.

Stitching... at last!

I think a slightly better photo..

Looks a bit better with the winter sunshine on it. Or perhaps it's the reflection of the snow! Yikes it's cold today.. so much better tucked up in my little craft room. I shall take a picture of it one day, just to show how messy it is! I am going to enter this into the Anything Goes challenge of Bingo! I have chosen the bottom line, swirls/pearls, flowers, stitching, ribbon and lace... I have used artistic licence with the lace bit,  I think she has a lace trim on her top !!  Yay....  xxx

This is the card that was published in Making Cards Mag

I'm so proud!

Stitching... at last!

It's a bit of a rubbish picture, but I will take another in a better light tomorrow. But really wanted to do some stitching on a card, and tonight I had a bit of time to myself and thought I would give it a go. I'm not entirely happy with it,  in hindsight you really need to plan your layout, because once it's stiched there is no going back.  I wanted a shabby chic look,  and I think I acheived that. Super digi stamp from The Stamping Boutique,  what a fabulous site that is!  Anyway coloured in with Prisma's my absolute favourite.

I've had a card published in "Making cards " magazine.

Yes it's true, page 74 of the March edition, they have printed my email and picture, oh wowzers I'm so proud!!!! I shall scan it later and add it to my blog.  How exciting! x

Super sweet "love you lots" card

Using a lovely image from Willow designs.. promarkers and a little artistic licence!  I have also used my ribbons and rosettes cricut cartridge to create the bottom border, which has been made in two parts, a "ribbon" strip from my paper stash, I threaded a thin ribbon through and added a tag. I have cut 3 hearts from some free papers I had, and this is where the sentiment comes from too... the colours all seem to work together.. I love this image, as it's useful for birthdays for someone you love, and I have two daughters and a grand daughter, and a sister and too many neices to mention!  Not too much embellishment, and unusually for me I have left the background of the card clear, except for a bit of distressing of course!  xx

Aqua, clean and simple part deux!

I have listened and have tried!!  Clean and Simple is very very hard!  There is no place to hide lol

Ok, so I cut a template on my Cricut using the ornament iron 2 cartridge, using the negative I used broken china distress ink to pick up the image, then using the positive I used versamark ink and transfered that onto the image, I mixed "snow" embossing powder with aqua mica powder and used the heat gun to set. That's the sheen you can see. Then I dug deep into my almost non existent stamps, ( I do "digi") and found these Kars stamps of the butterfly birds and branch. The sentiment was (sorry a bit wonky!) in a plain pack, goodness knows where the cover is!  So a bit of work but I kept it CAS I think!  See it is very very hard!  Good challenge for me though lol.xxx

Aqua, clean and simple

Aqua clean and simple. I found it quite difficult for me to keep this simple, I'm not sure I do clean and simple, I tend to embellish things so there is no more room to embellish!  So this was a really good challenge for me to keep it "bare".  I found the blog simply less is moore  and thought the challenge of Aqua a good one for a snowy day in Suffolk. Yuk! I loath the stuff. I used papers from the Forever Friends black and gold collection,  which I changed to aqua tones,  and printed a 2nd sheet for my layer and flower where the transparency had been taken down by 50% thereabouts. I cut the flower from my Flower Shoppe cricut cartridge, and the band was made using 2 ribbons and fusing together on my Gypsy this was made using the Ribbons and Rosettes cartridge, very useful! The sentiment was computer generated onto safmat, which if cut with fancy edge scissors and burnished becomes almost undetectable. So actually I rather liked the end result, clean and simple. xx

Special birthday wishes

I used the lovely digi stamp from Mo Manning, she is such a cutie. I used prisma pencils. There is lots of glitter on this card, it doesn't show in the pic. x

Flower wreath

I really enjoyed making this flower wreath using the Cricut Flower Shoppe cartridge and following Mel Heaton's instructions. I love turquoise so used this instead of the usual pink and purple combo. I think I should  have done a bigger bow, with tails, but this is ok for me, it's in  my kitchen at the mo.. I'm going to make my Mum one for Mothers Day,  and I would have done one for my sister but she is in a months time going to be living in her Motorhome, not quite travelling the world, but obviously has no space for flower wreaths!  Anyway I love the end result, it took a bit of time putting all the bits together, distressing each petal, dotting and dashing nearly all of them too,  but when the O/H is watching footie, I am right beside him, covered in ink!  Lovely..xx

For my Mum on mothers day... well it's soon anyway!

Another Mo Manning image,  how lovely is she,  I've coloured her in with Prisma pencils, I love the shading you can do with them, and they blend beautifully. I think I prefer them to Promarkers!  This is for my Mum, she unfortunately won't get it. It's going into a competition where they cannot return the cards,  I just hope they all get donated to charity.  Anyway the background paper is from Polka Doodles, other papers have been distressed, dotted and dashed, cut into flowers using the Cricut, no surprise there then. Using my band again to get a different effect, it's growing on me!

Storm in a teacup

Well hardly a storm,  but I bet this little one has a trick or two up his sleeve. I'm going to enter this in the Willow Designs challenge, I have followed the sketch to the letter... I love the colours I used with my Prisma pencils,  I matched the papers after, not always a good idea, I had all my paper stash out on the floor !!! Made the flowers with my faithful Cricut and Flower Shoppe cartridge, florishes from Cake basics and doily from cricut essentials. Don't I just love my Cricut.  The wonderful digi stamp is from Mo Manning,  she just has to stop drawing my bank balance is suffering!!! I used a computer generated sentiment, printed onto safmat! Excellent excellent product.

Hugs and Kisses

I have been trying to use this ribbon band, I'm still not 100% happy with it,  but I shall try it a few more times yet!  Made using the cricut Rosettes and Ribbons cartridge, and the gypsy to fuse 2 together. A lovely image from Mo Manning, gosh what a talented lady, her digi stamps are wonderful. I'm going to enter this into the challenge for Willow designs. Promarkers to colour in, core'dinations for papers, distressed and dotted and dashed as usual. Also I used the Flower Shoppe cartridge for the flowers. A bit of glitter and gems and all done.

So retro part 2!

Another take on the same image, Princess Vespa, this time using Polka Doodles paper for the background and keeping everything else simple, well for me at any rate !!  Coloured in with Promarkers, I wanted a quick card, instead of my lovely Prisma pencils which sometimes take an age to get the tones right. Flower cut from Flower Shoppe Cricut cartridge, coloured in with toning promarker, faux stitching, 3 buttons greeting cut from my Safmat printed sentiments I've done, and that's it. Another card for my birthday card stash! lol

So Retro

So Retro.. I wanted to enter the Polka Doodles challenge this week,  and when I saw what the requirements were I jumped for joy. I downloaded some papers from Polka Doodles website ages ago, and needed a project, here it is!  Although I cut the papers about a bit... I have used the large colourful flowers as embellishments, rather than the whole sheet. The second image is the clean digi stamp from http://thestampingboutique.com called Princess Vespa, perfect. I thought about just colouring her in, but decided to paper peice instead. I printed out an assortment of papers from Pretty  Sweet and Pretty Tuff and printed the digi stamp over the top. The background paper for the actual stamp has also been printed a second time with the wiki definition of Retro, in grey, which I thought was good fun. Anyway after a couple of hours of cutting out, resizing papers etc etc, this is the end result, a bit manic, but then so Retro!  I finished off with a slider greeting. Her face which was cut from plain white was coloured in with Prisma pencils.  Hope you like it. x

Something new... my new Polka Doodles CD!

How I love my new CD from Polka Doodles, but why isn't there enough time in the day/week/year to make everything we want to! I used this lovely little lady with a digi stamp, and for me kept it really simple, just a bow, gems and sentiment. Thanks Nikki! x

A new beginning

I love this digi stamp from Little Miss Muffet, and just had to use it for a Bon Voyage card, it looks like she is looking into the distance, and in my mind it's me saying goodbye to lovely lovely sister, who has sold everything she owns and taking to the road in her Motorhome, how brave... I torn papers, distressed, cut the embellishments with my cricut, ribbon and a button. The little lady is coloured in with Promarkers.

Best wishes to YOU!

Best wishes to YOU!  I loved this digi stamp from Mo Manning,  and just had to use my prisma pencils to colour it in. I used my solvent with the pencils too, I saw a really good you tube video from Bev Rochester on how to use the solvent... excellent results I think. Used my wonderful Cricut to cut the flower, nit wits papers, distressed, dots and dashes, lace and ribbon.. I wonder what else I could have done !!

Anything goes

Anything goes,  well a bit of steam punk and lacy ribbon, buttons and flowers!  I have used a fab digital image from Little Miss Muffet, such a great stamp for men. I have used my cricut for the cogs, which have been cut from Tim Holz card, distressed using photo vintage by Tim Holz, flowers by Tim Holz too!!  Beautiful wired lace ribbon, which I recently used for my daughters 1st wedding anniversary card,  which was very dainty, unlike this card... buttons from my stash. Coloured in with Promarkers, of course!!  A card for my OH's birthday coming up soon. xx

Summer window

At last I can concentrate on what I love most, crafting!  With the festive season well and truly behind us, what better than a summer window. Image by Elisabeth Bell and embellished with flowers, lace and dottie pearls. Coloured with Promarkers, even though my most favourite colouring in is done with Prisma pencils at the mo.  For my sister whose birthday is coming up soon.