Tick, tick tick

We did loads of Christmas-related shopping on Saturday. Funny though how you're always left with the same few "awkward ones" after everyone else is sorted, isn't it? Not helped when one of those "awkward ones" has a December birthday too.

Anyway, I'm feeling much calmer now about the whole she-bang than I was, which is good.

I've had a Wedding Anniversary card on order for months and have finally got round to making it - just as well as the anniversary is only about a week away.
It's really simple, but it took me ages to make - I knew I wanted to use the little hearts and then a larger one for the message tag - but then I couldn't decide what layout to use, I faffed about with all the punched hearts for ages, then realised that if I made the squares they sit on smaller it would all work out just right.
I've used silver card, then a piece of white embossed with the tiny hearts Cbug folder for the background.
The hearts are cut in black glitter card and mounted on red and silver squares.
The ric rac is a lovely dark red velvet stuff and the large black and red heart conceals the personal message from my customer to her hubby.

That all finished and ready to be packed up I thought I should get started on making some tags for our Christmas presents.
As we're having a gold/copper/bronze theme for the tree this year I thought Kraft type card and a sludgy home-spun look would work ok.


I used Mr Robo to cut these and managed to get all of these from one sheet of 12x12. There wasn't much left, I can tell you.

I decorated them mainly with scraps and leftovers that were lying about with the other Christmas stuff. My faves are the last lot - they took hardly any time to make and those little Cbug minis are just so cute!

That's all for now, hope you're getting on ok with your Christmas "to do" list.

Merry and White

I'm a bit late loading the card I've made for Jozza's dare on the Daring Cardmakers this week. Mainly because I started doing some Christmas shopping on Amazon, and got thoroughly bogged down in searching for stuff for everyone. I'm sure you know what it's like when you get lost among the "shelves" - sometimes I wonder if I'll ever find my way out.
However, it's got to be less of a hassle than traipsing around real shops at this time of the year - especially when you're not really sure what you're looking for!
Now, if only I could find my Christmas gift notebook things would be easier. Looks like I might need to make another one!

Still on the theme of Christmas I can move niftily and seamlessly into Jozza's dare for this week.

"I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas"

I want to see Christmas cards that are mainly white with just a hint of colouring on your embellishments or stamped image.

If you head over to the DCM BLOG you'll find a fab array of mainly white cards - we all moaned and griped about the difficulties we had photographing them, but it's lovely to see them altogether, they do look so pretty lined up like that.

Lots of embossing and layering and plenty of other pretty things came into play this week, texture really becomes the name of the game when you are limited to mainly white for a card. Mr Cuttlebug certainly earned his place on the crafting desk this week!

Here's the card I've made for this dare
I know the photo is rubbish, but trust me, this is the best of a bad lot - there are 19 other photos )I've just been and counted them) sitting in PSP - I tried different backgrounds, different angles and some even had some "props" in an attempt to go all posh and arty. In the end though, it was this one taken flat on the top of the bookcase that turned out the best. I really couldn't find the patience to try anything else!



I cut the baubles with Mr Robo, then embossed them with various CBug folders before layering them up a bit and adding some gold highlights. The card blank was embossed with the baubles folder. The ribbon on the lower edge is white, but has a pattern on the centre satin section and also has gold thread running through it, but that's not showing up at all. I made the "Merry and White" sentiment on the pc then cut it out with a Spellbinders die.
Basically this is just white card, some ribbon, a couple of brads and some gold thread. So why did it take sooooooo long to make? lol

White on white always looks impressive and delicate but is a mare to photograph - we hope that won't put you off having a go at our dare this week though!

Right, I have three choices of what to do now
1. make a coffee
2. make the anniversary card that I've had on order for months
3. do some more Christmas shopping.

hmmmm, I wonder.....

Thanks for popping by

Bubbly Funk and a Jaunt to the North

Did you miss me?
We've been up in Northumberland with my rellies for a little bit of R&R. It was lovely to spend some time with them and to be near the sea for a little while - nothing quite like a walk along the prom for blowing away those cobwebs!
We didn't take many photos this time, but I've got a couple to share in a minute. First though, it's Thursday and that means my turn to add something to the Bubbly Scrumptious EMAG. I did a couple of cards before I went away, using bits and pieces from the November "Christmas Magic" kit and just a couple of bits from my own stash.
These are fairly quick to make, and use a couple of the journalling cards, chipboard letters, and Stickers as well as using up some paper scraps I had saved from other projects













You can see more about how I made them HERE

I grew up in a seaside village - I've posted photos before, but here's another one, anyway! The Church on the point is where for hundreds of years most of my ancestors were baptised, married and buried.
My mum would meet me out of school on nice days and we'd go straight down to the beach. I spent hours with my Grandads and dad playing in the rockpools by the breakwater.

We had some lovely sunny weather - some rain too, but all things considered we did pretty well compared to a lot of the country, so decided to go up the coast and over the causeway to Lindisfarne (Holy Island).

You can't miss a garden centre visit at this time of year, can you? While we were up there we went to Heighley Gate GC and spent a small fortune, I might add!

I don't normally take photos of giant inflatable Father Christmases, but this year I've made an exception as this will be perfect for a page in my Christmas journal!

(Actually, to be honest - I made Hubby go and take the photo)

I promise I'll get around the blogs just as soon as I've caught up with the "to do" list - mind you, that could be sometime next Summer at the rate I'm going!

This month's fave

As promised on my last message here's the card I made using my favourite template from Leo's November Crafty Template set

I cut a regular C6 card down to 14cms wide so that I could take the poinsettia right off the top edge and then use a 15cm sq envelope for posting.
It was so easy to put together, and is such a stunning design that it really doesn't need much embellishment. I've added is a length of red ribbon and a bow to fill the emputy corner of the card, a few yellow beads for the centre of the flower and a bit of gold Stickles to highlight the edges.

I'm going to try this one out in some other colours too as I think it's a flower that will work really well on non-Christmas projects too.

You can find out all about Crafty Templates HERE, along with info about this month's Gooyes Kit which takes the form of downloadable stash - so you don't need to wait for the postie at all this month!

Another really quick message today, hopefully back to normal soon!
Thanks for popping by

Two Crafty Templates

There's a fabulous new Template set available now from the Crafty Templates WEBSITE. Lots of lovely new designs from the wonderful Leo and most of them are so adaptable that they'll not just ve good for Christmas but othertimes too - and of course they're not only for cards.

The Add-on Goodies kit this month is a download of printable papers that are really pretty and lovely to use.
I used some of them for these two cards

First is a little Snowflake Cupcake card
My second card uses the more Christmassy set of papers, but I also added in some Kraft and red card from my stash as I thought the heart design had a lovely "homespun" look about it

I'll be back tomorrow with my favourite template from this set.

Sorry this is a bit on the short side - just like me, then really lol

K is for......

Not a lot as it happens. Something I discovered when Rein set the challenge this week for The Daring Cardmakers.

It's Rein (or Rika) here today and my,dare this week is:
"The First Letter"
I'd like you to put things on your card which begin with the first letter of your name.
You can use other things too, but see if you can use at least 3 things that share their initial letter with your own name.

For example my name is Rein so I could use rose, robot, radio, raven...

hmmmm. I managed to come up with Koala, Kangaroo and Kitten - not a great start.
Thanks to my fab Teamies and some ideas from Hubby things eventually started to look a bit more positive. Mind you one of Hubby's favourite ideas was Klaxon, but we won't say any more about that. I also rejected the idea of Knickers - no surprises that it was our lovely Lythan who came up with that one.

Anyway in the end I made a card with Kisses, Knots and Kraft card. Sorry Rein, I just couldn't think of any more to fit on!

Supplies for this card were:
Kraft card base
White card & MS hearts border punch
Papers are from two different sets both by My Little Shoebox
Red satin ribbon, pink & red brads from stash
Letters are cut on the Craft Robo from red gloss card
The little hanging sentiment was just printed via the pc, I handcut the heart shape and punched a red gloss card circle to mat it on and used eyelets and knotted red fibres to attach it to the card

Oh yes, the kisses are mine - made by plastering my lips with loads of lipstick and "kissing" some white card - I did feel silly doing it but it worked really well.
Obviously, there's only one person I could give this card to - my lovely Hubby who tolerates my ever increasing stash collection and doesn't grumble too much at the mess I make or even the state of my desks - which must be really hard for him as he's an "empty desk" sort of person. He has a huge desk too - what's the point of a huge desk if you don't fill it all up with stuff? hehehe

This dare certainly got us thinking - and we hope it'll give all the DCMers a good challenge too - after all that's what it's all about, it was easy it wouldn't be a challenge, would it?
Well, that's our excuse anyway!
If you've not already been there, please pop over to the DCM BLOG and see what the team have come up with using their own initials. We'd really love it if you'd join in too, and have a bit of fun with this one.

Paddling Against the Tide

Today on the Bubbly Scrumptious emag I've gone against the Christmas Flow (should that be Torrent?) and made something which isn't for Christmas but still uses the wonderful "Christmas Magic" kit from Bubbly Funk. Does that make any sense at all? Too many "Christmases" in there I suspect, but what else could I say lol!

Anyway, what I mean is that instead of making another Cword project I've made a Birthday one instead. Mil's birthday is right at the start of December so it was time to start thinking about making a card for her. The Prima Poinsettias which form one of the Kit Add-Ons have been sitting in my DY kit box looking enticing and just waiting for me to come up with the right project to use them on.
No way was I using more than one though, so I've used some velvet leaves from the kit plus flowers from my stash, and I've made some coiled paper ones from scraps of the papers to fill it all out a bit.


So what do you think? Does it shout "Christmas Stuff" at you, or have I got away with it?
You can see more of this project and many, many others by clicking HERE and you can have this kit for your very own by clicking HERE and choosing some or all of what's available this month

If you're up for another little challenge - how about seeing what non-Christmas project you can come up with using Christmas stash - go on, I dare you!

Happy Crafting!

Workdesk Wednesday and a catch upand more Cword Cards

I really am a rubbish blogger just now. I'm not great at posting and even worse at blog-hopping! This is mainly down to two things, one is that Cword thing and all it entails, the other is Bejewelled Blitz - which I've got to stop playing if I am to stand any chance of getting my generally self-imposed Cword commitments met!

The actual Cword cards are going fine - I think I've made enough to cover my send-out list, my card box is looking nicely stuffed!
Here are a few more of the ones I made on Sunday.

I made the stocking template and cut them out with Mr Robo. A layer of thim card, then the stocking shape, then the twiddly bits on top. They don't really take long to make then the cards are easy to put together. The papers are MME Merry Little Christmas and as usual the cards are pretty simple - I try to let the paper do most of the work. The only extras are the sentiment and a few blobs of gold Stickles.

If you check the card and scrapling combo on the post below this one you'll recognise the design I used for putting these together! I really liked the way it worked so used it again for these cards.

Wednesday comes around pretty quickly and about half an hour ago I remembered that Wednesday means WOYWW and I hadn't done my photo. Just made it before it got too dark.


When I look back I do wonder if my desk is really boring to look at - nothing much changes from week to week, it's always a whole lot of mess surrounding a teeny bit of green mat to work in ah well, the goof thing is that thanks to Julia I know I'm not the only one who works like this!

Show & Tell Monday

Well, with the horrible wind and rain we had over the weekend, it seemed a good idea to spend as much of it as possible indoors playing with paper!

Actually we did go out on Saturday, but yesterday I settled down at my desk and made another big batch of Cword cards, I've not counted them yet, but I think I must have made it to 100 which should be plenty, and will hopefully mean that I'm not still making the blessed things during Christmas week when I discover I didn't have enough for the neighbours.

Anice and Funky Hand released her brand new Christmas Digi Stamps at the weekend. The Funky Hand Gang have been playing with them for a couple of weeks or so already and have made some fabulous cards. Check out these great downloadable/printables HERE
As I seem to be having a bit of a "snowflakes" year, those are the ones I homed in on. I converted them to cut on the Robo and have had a great time making up a batch of cards using the snowflakes along with the Blue Christmas download paper collection. This is the first card I made, using different snowflakes in different sizes and papers all layered up onto squares cut from the Blue Christmas papers and a little bit of silver and glitter for seasonal bling.


For some reason the colours haven't photographed particularly well, the papers are much more like the colours on the next set.
For these I resized the designs and cut lots of small snowflakes from plain white card, then made "tiles" from some remnants of paper left over from the one above to make this one with lots of snowflakes

I still had lots of snowflakes, and lots of scraps of the papers, so in the end I made these too.
You can click on them for a better look - I thought you might start feeling chilly if I made them all full size!























I enjoyed last week's DCM challenge so much that on Friday afternoon I ended up setting myself a secondary challenge - actually it would be great if anyone reading this would have a go at this.

The idea is to use a sheet of A4 to make a "big" card and a scrapling in the same style.
Here's my twosome


I wish I'd ordered more of this gorgeous dark green card now, it works really beautifully with the MME Merry Little Christmas papers, doesn't it?

Today I have vacuumed up the mess under my desk so it's all ready to mess up again. I failed to find the bag of glitter card scraps that I've mislaid - I've even tidied a couple of boxes while looking for it. I wonder where it could have gone?

Anyway, that's it for today, I'll show the rest of yesterday's haul next time - yes, there's more AND they're not snowflakes - how about that then!

Hope you didn't get blown away at the weekend

Scraplings

This week on the Daring Cardmakers it's Paula's turn to set the dare and it's her first time setting the challenge. She's come up with something both practical and unusual. Practical because it's a chance to use up scrap cardstock and unusual because of the shapes and sizes of the cards we're been making.

My first challenge is all about

SCRAPLINGS

Scraplings are little narrow cards made from scrap cardstock. You know how when you make a card from a a piece of A4 or Letter sized cardstock you're left with an off-cut? Well that's the basis of a Scrapling. When folded in half, the Scrapling's card front will measure roughly 2 1/2" x 4 1/4" , though this depends of course on the size of card you were making in the first place!

Paula set the pace when she gave as examples not one but THREE little beauties to admire. They looked so pretty grouped together that a few of the team followed her lead - or it maybe that they were just showing off lol lol
So when you head over to the DCM BLOG you'll find lots of Scraplings to admire and inspire/ there are solos, duos and trios to see, so please check them all out - more info on them all will appear on our personal blogs too.


I made two - because I had two pieces of the Kraft card lying on my desk from last week's dare. Somehow they were different sizes, which is strange as both the cards I made last week ended up the same 14cm square that I prefer....
That's really why I made one portrait and one landscape style card, they'd have looked rather odd otherwise.

I used MME "Merry Days of Christmas" papers for these two little cards.

I knew I wanted to use those papers but couldn't decide how to use them on the little cards - you know how it is when you're having one of those days, nothing goes according to plan, does it? Even something as simple as sticking a couple of scraps of paper on a card is difficult!

Then it took me ages to make the sentiment because I was trying to be clever (I should know better by now). Hubby was working from home yesterday but was soooo busy and looked so stressed that I didn't like to keep asking for help, but in the end I had ask how to to get the ampersand behind the words as I'd got in a right muddle with layers and backgrounds and Heaven knows what (I'm so not techie!).

But it was the snowflakes I think that really slowed me down and ended up with me adding my cards well after 10am this morning!
I wanted to achieve something similar to the K&Co layered snowflakes you can buy - but they are in whites and blues and I wanted creams and reds because I'm awkward.

I knew the smaller dies in both Spellbinders sets weren't going to be much help and the Cuttlebug ones weren't what I wanted either.
I have a couple of punches but I wanted more variety. That's when I ended up searching the web for clipart snowflakes and converting them to Robo templates.
It took ages to get them into template form, and then the templates took ages to cut etc etc - any other day I'd have asked Hubby for advice, but I muddled on because he was so busy and I didn't like to bother him again! I just know that he'd have got them sorted out in a quarter of the time and they would have been more streamlined and quicker to cut.

Never mind, I got there in the end and actually even though I got myself in a right old pickle I did enjoy working with these Scraplings, they are a lovely way to use up off-cuts and a really nice size to work with. I've just been thinking that it would be fun to make little envelopes to fit them, too. Not sure whether I actually will or not mind!

Right. I'm going to take my coffee over to the other desk now and investigate the contents of the parcel that's just arrived from the lovely Karen at Charmed Cards and Crafts - then I plan to do some more crafting - and please, please let it not be as much of a struggle as it was yesterday!

Thanks for popping by and for leaving such wonderful messages which are always such a thrill to receive

Journalling Christmas, and a late WOYWW

I just adore the gorgeous Bubbly Funk November Kit which is based around the Fancy Pants "Christmas Magic" paper collection, I love the muted colours of the papers and as usual Caroline has added in some fabulous embellishments to go with them. So, over on Bubbly Scrumptious today, I'm continuing working on the Christmas pocket journal I started last week.
This week I'm showing how I decorated the front cover of the book

The Inside cover or Intro page

And believe it or not I've even managed to do the first page (it's nothing complicated mind!)

I've also done the first side of the first tag
Are you impressed? No, I thought not!
I'll be impressed myself though if I actually manage to fill all the pages and tags. Whether that'll happen we'll just have to wait and see!

I was so busy yesterday - finishing that page and tag plus writing it all up for the BS EMAG that I didn't get to post my WOYWW, even though I did actually do my photo. So here you are - you can see the album on there, the box in the foreground is the November kit.
There's plenty of mess to tut-tut over as usual

Maybe, once I've got my DCM card done for tomorrow I'll get a chance to have a mooch around all the other craft desks and see what everyone is up to this week.
That's all for now, back tomorrow with DCM - if I ever get my card made that is!

Getting Funky

Last week I had an exciting email!
I then spent a few days trying not to blurt out the secret, but it's all official now so at last I can tell!

My email was from Anice of Funky Hand inviting me to join her wonderful design team. Now, I've seen the work of those girlies and it's fantastic so I did have a bit of a gulp, wondering if I could do anything half as good as you can already see on there.
However, you never know unless you give it a try, do you, so I've grabbed this chance to play with the fab papers Anice designs and fingers are firmly crossed I can deliver!
Thank you for inviting me, Anice, and thanks too to the other members of the team for making me so welcome.

Lately Sunday has been my "C-word card making day" but yesterday I only managed a grand total of two - pathetic, eh? But, I was trying to come up with cards using some of the Funky Hand papers, and I did cut lots of little bits out ready to make up some more, so eventually that number should look better!
So here are my first two cards for the Funky Hand Gang, made with designs from the "Tis the Season" download, which I love.


I made the tree template in PSP then cut them on Mr Robo, first in card then I cut them again in some of the FH papers. One of the special things about printable papers is that you can resize the designs - of you look at the trees on the first card, you'll see that the spotty design in the middle tree is much smaller than spots on the other two trees. It's the same design, I just resized it to get some contrast, I was really pleased with how well it worked.
I got a bit carried away inking the hanging sentiment on the second card so I think I might change it for a rather less murky-looking one!

That's it for now, I must try and make inroads on the "to do" list today, it's starting to get out of hand - again! Obviously I need to go and get me a coffee firt though. lol

Hope everyone had a great weekend
Thanks for visiting