Better Late than Never

I've just realised that I forgot to blog the card I made for The Sketch File last week.  T to share so please pop over and have a look through the things we've been making and sharing over Februrary.
The sketch was perfect to use alongside an image and papers from Funky Hand.  This little fairy house is one of a series Anice is busy creating - isn't it cute?  The papers are all from trhe latest download collection "Just For Jen". - I love that there are soft and bright pinks and that the grey and white colours they are teamed with are soooo stylish!

I really can't colour in by hand so I've been practising my digital colouring skills - I think I'm getting better at giving some shade and colour depth so that the various areas aren't just flood-filled with a single "flat" colour - what do you think?

I turned the sketch upside down to make my card

Materials and Tools

Sketch from The Sketch File

All papers and Image Funky Hand

Flowers: some cut from one of the paper designs, for other's I've used the flower shape as a template to cut some from scraps of different papers

Lace, pearls and gems from Creative Treasures

Dies: Spellbinders; Lacy Scallop Circles, Plain Circles

Sentiment; made with decal paper from Crafty Computer Paper

Did you know that twice a week the members of the Funky Hand Design Team take turns to add some new inspiration to the "Get Funky and Craft" blog?  It used to be about challenges, but now it's all about sharing the things we make using Funky Hand products - it would be great if you would add the blog to your reading list and visit regularly to see what's new on there - and it would be even better if you'd take a minute to leave a comment every now and then!  There's still an Inlinkz gadget so that you can share anything you've made with Funky goodies too - we'd love to see what you're making!

Thanks for visiting - please come back tomorrow when it'll be time for the Daring Cardmakers' March Colour Combo Challenge

February Colour Combo

It was my turn to choose the colours palette for the Daring Cardmakers this time, and as Valentines Day isn't far away I thought Id go for something traditionally romantic.
The colours are

Cranberry, Slate Grey, Pale Grey and White

My card took so long!  Not because it was tricky to do, but because I wanted to use the velvet ricrac braid on it as its gorgeous!  Problem was I have it in brown, deep aqua and raspberry pink....not cranberry or dark red.  So I inked over the pink one with the Fired Brick Distress ink and got a really good colour.  DI takes a long time to dry doesn't it?  I am impatient and went ahead making my card, covering any inky finger blotches (oops) with flowers and gems.  It wasn't till I photographed it and went to "develop" the that I realised that I'd managed to get the red ink all over the white lace grrr how could I have missed that?
So back to the desk to fix it and then more photographs.and here's the finished card

Materials and Tools:

Papers - various including Hot Off The Press, Funky Hand, Colourbok. Bazzill

Pink Velvet ric-rac braid inked with Fired Brick DI

White Lace, Deep Red Organza ribbon, Gems and Pearls (dark red, Grey, Silver) - all these from Creative Treasures

Punches: Small Square, Hearts are "waste" from MS Doily Hearts Border Punch

Craft Robo cut "Love"

This won't be my Valentines card for Hubby - far too heavy on the flowers and ribbon for him hehe.  I'll keep this till someone asks me for a wedding card and it'll be just the job ;)

That's it for today, thanks for visiting - I hope you'll pop over to the DCM BLOG and see the other cards - it really looks gorgeous today with all the colour coordination!

Have a great weekend

Smile Please

Not a chance - point that camera at me and I'm off out of here.....

 **********

  It's Jo's turn to set the Daring Cardmakers' challenge this week and she.....

     "would like everyone to...

Smile Please!

and to use a camera, or photo on your cards, or both or even a polarid style frame...

The team have created some beautiful cards to inspire you..."

......so, please CLICK HERE to see them all

 

I'm not sure how the others work on their card ideas, but after I've seen what the dare is I usually mull it over in the back of my mind for a few days.  Ever so rarely, an idea pops into my head straight-away, but usually an idea will gradually work it's way out over a few days.  This time it was more like dragging it out kicking and screaming through a prickly hedge backwards!

I was desperately looking through photos on the pc, hoping an idea to bop me on the head when I came across last year's Christmas photos and thought "hmmm, I wonder...." Coupled with a newly arrive box of delights from Creative Treasures (do check out the Christmas Boutique - it's gorgeous!) the idea was formed - making it nearly had me demented and it very nearly went in the bin, but in the end I came up with this

 The photo was printed on glossy photo card and adhered to the smooth white card blank
I didn't want the snowflake wreath to be full size, so I cut sections out to use around the red glitter card circle    

Materials and Tools
14x14 smooth white card, Glossy photo paper
Red Glitter card, White smooth card for wreath
Red satin ribbon, Twirly ribbon (gold, red), various Berries (gold, red), Leaf, White Cherry Blossom flower (looks a bit like a Christmas rose). Small Pearls and Gems (Red, Gold) - all these from Creative Treasures 

Green Bazzill to cut sentiment
Dies: Spellbinders Plain circle, Memory Box Snowflake Wreath
Craft Robo to cut the word
All photography by my OH (even the finished card photo as I couldn't get a dazzle-free image!)

Thank you for popping by today, I hope you enjoyed your visit

 
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Join in with aCaD blogging

A Christening Card

My card today is a Christening card made for one of my customers.
As you probably realise by now (haha) I've been using the new Funky Hand Christmas downloads a LOT recently, so that file is often open on my pc.  Rather than go on a paper hunt for suitable things to use, it just seemed  obvious really to open the blue collection;  "Winter Wonderland" and see if I could use them for a non-Cword card.
This is how it turned out

I just LOVE downloads as they allow you so much scope to play around with them - which is what I've done to create the base "layer" of colour on this card.
To begin with I did a bit of on-screen editing to make one of the "textured" designs into a perfect square.  I resized this to 13x13 cm sq, then positioned it so that it would print with a border onto a sheet of A4.  Once printed I folded and cut the card down to make a card with a 0.5cm border all around the printed square.
I then used a couple of the other designs to make the layers and shapes for the rest of the card. I try to always use the same paper or card to print on for any particular project to ensure that the printing quality and colour stays the same.  Different papers print in different ways so mixing designs printed on card and paper may not look uniform - better to stick to one type per project.

Materials and Tools

Papers: "Winter Wonderland" from Funky Hand

 Lace and Ribbon from  Creative Treasures

Baby feet, Teddy and Cross charms from "A Charming Place" (USA), Silver thread for attaching

Small silver brads

Sentiment printed onto plain white card

2cm circle punch

Quite a simple card, really, but I hope those concerned will like it.
Thanks for visiting
 

Join in with "a Card a Day Blogging" by leaving a message on the post below this one, or by linking up with our Facebook group

November's Colour Combo

It's the first Friday of the month and this year that has meant a Colour Combo Challenge for The Daring Cardmakers - this is a special Friday for us too as it's the first Dare in a whole new year - we begin our 7th year of setting challenges today - doesn't time fly when you are enjoying something!

Today also sees us welcome Mirir (Mirjam) as our Guest Designer for the next couple of months.  Miri has often joined in with us over the last few years so it's especially good to welcome her to the team.  It'll be fab to see her cards on the blog.

This  month, Zuzana has chosen the colour palette - it's a lovely crisp red, green, white and blue mix to play with this time. 

  I'm still on a bit of a crusade to use suitable DCM challenges to make the special cards I need for Christmas.  I try to keep most of my Cword cards thin enough to send without over-stepping the measly 0.5 allowance the RM gives for standard post.  Not easy for someone who likes to "stick stuff on with abandon" as I do hehe
This one will definitely need a "fat" stamp!

The green, white, creamy brown and red were easy - they all popped up in the paper collection I wanted to use, but I struggled to get the blue into the mix.   I cut down on the amount of those papers I used and added in a lovely Bo Bunny one from a couple of Christmases ago for the snowy border.  I think it works ok now and I quite like the finished result.

Materials

Papers:

the top border and the sentiment banner both Simple Stories "Handmade Holiday" 6x6

Blue paper: Bo Bunny (I think it's "Midnight Frost")

Poinsettia made from some old paper from the Christmas Scraps box - I think they are from Fancy Pants, Small white flat backed pearls coloured with yellow ink and a sprinkling of Glamour Dust

Small flowers are made from flat, cream petals coloured with inks and formed around some white stamens (I inked some yellow)

White organza and pearl flower from Creative Treasures

Berries came from last year's Christmas Crackers, I added a couple of leaves cut into holly shapes

Wide, silver edged organza ribbon, A few blue gems

Tools

Craft Robo to cut the Poinsettia

Memory Box Snowflake border die

note; I intended have used the apple blossom type flowers from Creative Treasures rather than make my own - I could have sworn I had some in the box but when I went to get them all I found were lilac and lemony-green ones :(  The ones I've made are ok but not as nice as Tracy's, hey ho, you can't have it all!

As so often the case, I ended up making a new Craft Robo template for this card - in this case the poinsettia.  I really like this one - it's actually just the one shape which I cut in 3 sizes, a couple of times each - dead easy!
The DT have made some fabulous cards this week (they always do, though!).  The BLOG looks especially pretty when it's all colour-coordinated.  I hope you'll join in with us this week
Thanks for looking in today, please leave a message if  you can spare a minute or two!
 
Join in with "a Card a Day Blogging" by leaving a message on the post below this one, or by linking up with our Facebook group

If You're HAPPY and you Know it....

Over at the Daring Cardmakers this week Keilly is simply challenging us to

"Be HAPPY"

She's asked us to make a HAPPY card - featuring the word, or just a design that really makes us feel happy.  It made me pretty happy not to have to look at cards with spiders on for another week, tbh hahaha

Lots of us decided to make the actual word the main feature of our card designs and you can see how we did this - and all the other Happy cards too over on our BLOG - so please check them out - hopefully they'll make you feel happy too!

As I'm trying to get going with my Cword cards (and not doing particularly well) I thought I'd take the chance to add another one to the meagre number already in the "finished" box.

 I used the Christmas Tree download from Funky Hand for this one - I printed the designs straight on to my cardstock - I resized a couple to print at half A$ size and then more to print at a quarter of A4 size - don't you just love that sort of flexibility?!
My first piece of A4 was the card base - I rotated and resized the spotty design to print "front" of my card, then I did the same with one of the green designs, turned the card over and printed the "inside" of the card.
The other designs I've used were ll just resized to print 4 on each sheet of card for making the letters, stocking and "Christmas" sentiment piece.
I made the HAPPY template in Paint Shop Pro - making one with the letters joined together to act as a base, then creating each letter as a separate template to cut in different designs

Materials:

All designs Funky Hand "Christmas Tree Download - available NOW from HERE

Green Satin ribbon from Creative Treasures

Stickles Ice glitter glue in Gold Ice

Tools:

Craft Robo: "HAPPY" letters, "Christmas" word

Memory Box Stocking die from "Dies to Die For"

This is quite a 3D card - the stocking and the "Christmas" word are added on box hinges so that they fold relatively flat to fit in an envelope but then fold out for a more interesting pop-out design

I hope you like it
Thanks for visiting

This and That

My crafting has been a bit lax lately so it's a good time for a bit of a catch up on things I've missed posting, and a quick update on our house refurbishment projects too

I meant to post the third of my Crafty Templates projects last week, but for some reason (I think it may have been the Time Thief's fault, I didn't get round to it (oh, couldn't we all use a round Tuit sometimes?)

I made this using the Tall Cupcakes template from the latest set of templates and papers from the gorgeous Crafty Goodies Kit.

I cut 2 copies of each "topping" section and cut one in a spiral shape. I used glue only on a small section of the spiral so that the rest could "ping" out from the card

 

I used:

Tall cupcakes template from April Crafty Templates

Papers from the Crafty Goodies Kit

Glossy Accents

Border Punches from EK Success and Martha Stewart

Back in March it was Niece Izzy's 18th birthday - I'm going to blog her card tomorrow, but I thought I'd pop some photos of the ribbony decoration I made to put on top of her gift box, today

I made a length of wrapping paper into a rosette, adhering it onto a piece of card for stability, then added lots of matching seam binding and flowers to make a frothy topper!  The silver spirals are a happy accident - I'd used this floristry wire stuff to hold it all together and was about to tuck all the ends out of sight when I thought I'd see if it was strong enough to hold a spiral shape - it was, and I love the way the silver lifts the rest of the bits and bobs

 All the flowers and ribbons are from the wonderful 

 Creative Treasures 

 - an online shop that is "just what it says on the tin!"!

The Building Update Bit:

 Well, after all these months, I'm (very) happy to say that the kitchen is finally finished!  The glass splash-back finally arrived and even fitted ;), and last week the last few bits and pieces were done to the cupboards etc. On Friday the last sockets were fitted and it was all done!

I'm just going to put one photo on here - but if you'd like to see more, then I've put loads of hubby's Kitchen Photo Shoot pics onto a dedicated "Finished Kitchen" board on Pinterest which you can visit by clocking HERE.

There are still jobs to do in the other areas we were altering. As I write, the decorator is busy touching up those bits in the new cloakroom and hallway that needed it and prepping the new hall coats cupboard for painting,  He's also going to be doing some extra painting work we've had time to think of since he was last here - you know how it is with those ever-expanding "jobs to do" lists!  We've ordered a new bookcase for my cookery books, and chosen the new carpets and booked the fitters - all this means that the end is in sight - at least for waving "goodbye" to the various builders, tilers, painters, fitters etc.  I will still have a mountain of stuff to put away before the various rooms regain their proper use after months of being "storage" spaces though.

Actually, it might be nice to get someone in to do that job too.....I wonder if "sorter-outerers" exist?

That's it for now

I just need to find room for the stuff I've dumped on my craft desk and then I can get busy on my crafting to-do list for this week....

Thanks for visiting

Colouring May

Here in the UK it seems that Shades of Grey are the only colours we've seen for most of the last few weeks but at least over on the Daring Cardmakers we've had some pretty colours to play with for our challenge this week.

The first Friday of the month is "Colour Combo Challenge" time and this month it was Keilly who chose our theme of muted sea-green, aqua, pinks and cream via this fab inspiration photo

I loved the look of the flowers on the photo, so thought I'd start off by making a similar flower of my own.  I was very brave ;-) and instead of throwing loads of flowers into the mix I managed to stick to using just one!

It took a while to make my flower, but in the end took less time than deciding on the background - why is that so often the case?  Probably because I rarely plan what I'm going to do before getting stuck in.  I feel this is also the reason that after making something like this my desk always looks lie someone emptied the contents of every shelf and drawer on to it - which, to be fair, I did!

Materials:

Cream card blank

Mix of papers from Dream Street Papers, MME and Fancy Pants

Pink Silky Crush ribbon for bow from Creative Treasures

Hand-cut Tag

Home-made decal sentiment

Tools:

Border; Spellbinders Moroccan Accents die,

Flower; Tim Holtz Flower die, Memory Box Cherry Blossom for centre

Lots of ink!

Quilling tools for shaping flower

I was really pleased with the way this flower turned out and I hope it doesn't get too squashed when I send the card to my SiL for her birthday!

 These are such pretty colours to work with - even though it did take a bit of stash exploring to find them.  Stash exploring is good though as you find all sorts of lovely things you'd forgotten about!

The DCM Blog looks gorgeous with this colour palette so please check it out.

Thanks for visiting

Spring Greens

Don't you just love it that the day you have loads of internet-required tasks on your list is the day you wake up, switch on and find....."cannot open page as there is no service..."

I gave them a couple of hours after the "it'll be back by 2pm" they told us, and then rang to find out what was going on. Yes, the fault is fixed, you probably need to reboot the wotsit - do you know where it is?  hmmm, well I know it's on the ledge behind hubby's desk - but I also know that there's a mess of all sorts of gadgets, wires and cables behind there and to be perfectly honest that's as far as my knowledge goes.  Thank you to Nice Man at Virgin Media who kindly and patiently waited while I dragged massive desk away from the wall enough to squeeze behind, then as I described the various "stuff" - finally finding the right one to unplug so he could do the honours from his end. 

I guess they are used to dealing with such ineptitude!

Bad thing number 2 for yesterday was the discovery that the glass splash-backs arrived and didn't fit!  We know the templates fitted perfectly because we were called in to the kitchen by the guy who made them to see how it would look when the glass was in. The glass is exactly right against the templates he made, so how the blazes don't they fit?  Bemused.

Today the UK Rep for the manufacturers of the doors and drawer fronts has been to see for himself the problem with those!  Last time I did the Swiss a dis-service by saying they came from Switzerland - I apologise! - it's the Austrians who mucked up!  The whole lot are to be replaced, which is good, but means more delay.

Through it all our Kitchen designers have been absolutely fab and I can't fault the way they have dealt with it all - none of the problems have been down to them - all the work they have done is first rate and their attention to detail is brilliant - their handling of the project and determination to make sure it is all perfect in the end has kept us sane!

Tomorrow we have the plumbers here to fit the new water heating system.  I think it's called a "mega-flow" system and will hopefully mean that it won't take five minutes to get hot water from the various taps, and that the new taps in the kitchen will produce more than the dribble they do atm!

I can't quite believe we're getting towards the end of March already as we've been living in Building Work Limbo since a week into 2012.....it will be lovely when it's finished......

So yesterday's internet hiccup means I'm sharing my own challenge for Get Funky's Funky Fifteenth on the 16th and also my card for the new Daring Cardmakers Challenge too.

For Get Funky, I chose a "Spring Celebrations" theme; It could be something for Mothers' Day, or Easter, or it could simply be a celebration of Spring itself, and any sort of project goes - so if you want to make an Easter basket, or an Easter Bonnet, or a scrapbook page showing off the daffodils in your garden then it's all okay!  Just make sure you use at least one Funky Hand product on whatever you make.  It's amazing and not a little irritating when people don't read that one little rule!  It's especially annoying when they share such gorgeous creations, but rule themselves out of being chosen as our winner because they've not complied....such a shame!

I think my own Celebration of Spring project may end up as a little wall hanging, or maybe as a page in a mini book, rather than as the card it is atm!

Visit the Get Funky Blog to find out how to join in with us this month - and maybe win our prize of a free download of your choice.  There's also instructions on how to get hold of this month's Funky Freebie.  I've added more about how I made this card and instructions on how to make the paper frill

Materials:

Funky Hand CD Craft the Year Away - I've used papers from the Marching On and April Fool collections

Matching shades of Seam Binding to make a layered bow

Organza flower with pearl centre

Lemon Ice Stickles

It's actually one of the Spring Celebrations that Samm has chosen to base her "Lucky Green" challenge for the Daring Cardmakers around this week too

It's Samm here and this weeks' challenge is

'Lucky Green'

Yes, St Patrick's day is on its way, so I challenge you to make a card using the main colour as green and feature 'luck' somewhere on your card. It's one of those colours we hardly ever get to use so I hope it gets you all digging around in your crafty stash and creating frantically!

Looking through my Funky Hand downloads and CDs for the right stuff to use for the project above was very timely as the "Marching On" set I got the pale green background paper for the Get Funky card from is all about shades of green with a bit of deep turquoise/aqua in the mix.  Just the ticket and meant I didn't need to go searching through my stash - I could just "Print...and Go" hehe

 I'm not entirely happy with this and it might undergo a bit of a facelift before it actually gets used - I think it might be better on a white background for starters.

Materials:

All papers: Funky Hand CD Craft the Year Away - "Marching On" collection

Good Luck banner and the 3 leaf clover motif are created from images also found on the  Craft the Year Away CD

Green ruffled edge ribbon from Creative Treasures (there's a special offer on Prima flowers atm )

Ice Stickles

Tools:

Craft Robo to cut the banner, letters and shamrock shapes

I hope you'll head over to our BLOG as the cards look stunning again this week. 

Thanks for looking today and for putting up with my waffle at the start - sometimes you just have to have a good old rant don't you? - but I do seem to be on a bit of a ranting roll lately!  I will try to make my next post rant-free :)

Have a great weekend

Stuff and Nonsense

Time for a bit of an update.  I've not been managing as much craftiness as I'd hoped over the last few weeks and I've managed even less blogging, so I thought I'd add a couple of crafty makes today plus a little picture catch up to show how things were going with our refurb.

 Mini "Hello" card

Here's a mini card using gorgeous ribbon and lace from Creative Treasures - I really love this stuff so much!

 This ribbon is one of their lovely "Silky Crush" collection, some ruffled along the card and some made into a rosette.

The lace is a pretty flowery design so I added some Imaginisce gems to the centre of each, then added more of the gems to a large gold brad.  I then gave the brad a coating of Crystal Ice Stickles - I used my fingers to brush some of the Stickles onto the lace rosette

Tiny Gift Box

This is a tiny box made is from a sheet of card which I've covered and lined with papers from the recent"I Heart You" download collection from Funky Hand

 There's an even tinier gift tag to match, with the tiny flowers made from scraps of the same papers

The cloakroom is finished now - we just need to add a few decorative details, some pictures, a vase or two and a blind for the window.  As it's a small space we gave ourselves the luxury of natural Travertine tiles for the floor and lower wall area.  The upper tiles are handmade, with a few "designer" accent tiles - which took simply ages to arrive!

The washstand is oak and has a nice big cupboard for all the cleaning junk and a shelf for spare towels. We've got a heated *ladder" towel rail now - a luxury, as the old room, though twice the size it is now had no heating at all - and it had a shower in there brrrr.

The kitchen will be all but finished by the end of this week (fingers crossed).  Ben the fitter will be back to fit the remaining drawer fronts and doors, to do the rest of the oak trims and to fit the curvy breakfast bar.  We are having glass splashbacks along the long wall - the template has been made, but it will take a week or two for that to arrive. 

See if you can guess what colour it will be.....

There are a couple of plumbing and electrical bits to be finished off too

The rest of the work has involved making a broom cupboard off the hall - it's just an empty space atm and we are trying to decide what shelving to add, and a dressing area which is all freshly painted and waiting now for our builder to start making the cupboards which will tidy away our coats, shoes etc.  We've bought a pew, which was cut down to the size we wanted for this area so that we won't need to queue up to sit on the stairs when we are tying our shoelaces any-more :-) hehe

So, you can see that at last things are nearing completion - I still haven't a clue where I am going to put everything, but it will be soooo nice to reclaim the other rooms in the house from all the stuff that's been stored in them during the work.  I bet it will take even longer to put away than it did to clear it out though!

Thanks for looking.  I'll be back with some Crafty Templates makes soon

Cake, Anyone?

Yet again I've fallen into "Bad Blogger" mode.  Just can't seem to settle to doing anything much atm, but hopefully this malaise will go away soon.  I miss my blogging buddies!

Thank goodness the Daring Cardmakers gives me a bit of routine and forces me (ever so gently) to do a bit of crafting each week.   This week it was a real challenge too and more than one piece of card went into the bin.  Sharon really gave us all something to think about with this one - but it wouldn't be a "challenge" if it was too easy, would it?

She says:

I want to see your Vintage Parisian/Palace of Versailles creations 
as this week's theme is

Marie Antoinette

There are lots of possibilities with this theme - your card doesn't necessarily have to feature the Queen herself, but can be in a Baroque/Palace of Versailles style, or something inspired by the fantastic gowns and wigs she wore. Or, you could even opt for a 'let them eat cake' inspired card (even though she apparently never actually said that!)

Can't wait to see what you all come up with!

Fortunately my Craft Robo seems to be working atm - maybe it just needed a rest (don't we all?). but I suspect it will need to go away for a bit of a spa treatment (service) even though it's working atm - I've not had the guts to try it out with more complicated images yet! 

Right, I've just cut out all the rambling waffle about what went wrong and how many versions went in the bin, and how many things I couldn't find that I wanted to use, so you can just know that there was a long list!

Here's what I ended up with

 

Materials:

Turquoise "Stardream" card for base

mix of Bo Bunny and MME papers 

Gold card is part of something that went into the bin

Black Bazzill card

Seam Binding, Lace, Flat backed pearls (part of a Prima set of swirls and butterflies) all from Creative Treasures

White Organza circles for flower, Crystal Ice Stickles, turquoise pearl brad, Ranger Gold Metallic Paint Dabber

Tools 

Cuttlebug Embossing folder "Textile Texture"

EK Success border punch

Spellbinders plain circle and Doily Accents dies

Craft Robo

Notes:

The white flower is made from layered circles on white organza which were each held over a tea-light till the edges curled up a little

The seam binding was used to make a rosette and also to make the bow - I used some spray on starch on it (actually used the iron, shock, horror), then crumpled it up tightly and used clips to keep the crumples till I was ready to make the bow.

There are some fabulous ideas and "takes" on the challenge this week - you can tell it gave us all food for thought.  Please pop over and visit the DCM BLOG and see what the team have come up with.

Building Update:

We're at the end of week 7 of the building work and things are really taking shape now.  This week the tilers finished in the cloakroom and the plumber was then able to fit the washstand and loo which have been sitting in the lounge and a corner of the hall respectively - so we've managed to reclaim most of the lounge now!

The new hallway/dressing area has a pew in it now - but the cupboards are still to be built around it and we're now toying with the idea of adding an extra little radiator in that area (I'm sure the idea of making fresh holes in the lovely, newly plastered and painted walls didn't please Keith, our builder one bit, but he coped admirably when I told him hehe)

The Corian worktops that have been holding everyone up by being late arriving have been installed over the last couple of days and look FAB!  

We're still waiting for a few doors and drawer fronts to arrive, somehow they didn't arrive with the rest of the stuff.  
Now that the Corian is in, they've templated for the glass splashback which goes all along the long wall, next week the last plumbing jobs can be done, the last bits of wood can be added, the funky pop-up  socket can be put in and all sorts of other jobs done.  
The glass takes another couple of weeks though so the electrician can't finish 2nd fix till that's installed. 

Now I can't wait for the glass to come and for the oak breakfast bar to be fitted.  It's all so tantalisingly and frustratingly close!

I completely forgot to add photos last week, but I will try really hard to get some up on here this weekend!

Thanks for visiting, please come back soon

It's in the Mail

This week on the Daring Cardmakers our challenge is about all things postage:

It`s Rein here this week and my dare for you is

"postable" people

Please use things with a postage/mail theme such as postmen, postage stamps, parcel delivery or perhaps postage-inspired greetings on you card.

First port of call for me was the box stuffed with what I like to call Ephemera - but is really where I stash away all manner of "things that might come in useful one day".  Ephemera is a lovely word and makes it sound less like I'm just hoarding stuff that should be thrown away 

I knew there was a stash of interesting stamps and suchlike in there but before I got to them I found a bag of gorgeous reproduction postcards in miniature sizes - among them was this lovely wedding image which I couldn't resist using.

Can you believe that until this week I'd not ordered any new crafty stash THIS YEAR?  I well and truly broke that record though by ordering 4 new MME 6x6 pads, a Marianne Hearts die and replenishing the black and white Bazzill card stash, plus the Echo Park 6x6 pad and some 12x12 sheets from the same collection which I'd forgotten were in my stored basket since before Christmas - hmmm, maybe I should pay more attention to the contents before I hit the pay button, oops.  They are lovely though and I think I might get some non-Christmas use out of them.

Anyway, the MME papers are "Howdy Doody" from the Miss Caroline collection and I don't know why they have such a rough and ready name for what is quite a romantic/chintzy set

 Materials:

Cream 14cm sq card blank edged with Tattered Rose DI

Papers all MME Miss Caroline collection, "Howdy Doody" 6x6 pad

Miniature postcards from The Fruit Pixie

I went a bit mad with the ribbons, lace and flowers, but sometimes that happens!  Most of my supplies for these came from Creative Treasures

The Flowers (vaguely left to right):

off-white gardenia petals with wired "daisy double" in centre

Peach organza flower with pearl centre

Peachy-pink organza circle (edges curled by candle "method"), wired rose centre

Rosette flower created from folded silky crush ribbon, narrow ivory lace and a large pearl brad,

creamy brown wired Cherry Blossom

white rose bud and small white rose, large white rose

The peachy-pink flower above the white ones is made using 3or 4 "flat" Prima blossoms, formed around a flower stamen centre (I can't remember where they came from!)

There is a length of wide lace across the card and gathered up at the left side, plus a length of ruffled up seam binding

flat backed pearls, home made rub-on stickers

Tools:

Dies - Spellbinders Floral Doily, Marianne Hearts (3 die set)

Tim Holtz Distresser

Please visit the Daring Cardmakers Blog to see the lovely projects made by our fab team - we'd love you to join in with us this week too.  Don't forget our new Facebook page is up and running so if you use FB you can leave a message and a link there too.

Building work/Kitchen Update:

We're at the end of week 6 and nearly all the paintwork in the various areas is done.  Mark has been here most of the week wielding his trusty rollers and brushes - it's amazing the difference a coat or two of paint makes - especially the gleaming gloss on the woodwork.

The tilers came during the week and the kitchen floor is now finished.  Unfortunately, they couldn't finish the cloakroom too as the feature tiles didn't arrive in time, and we're short of a few of the Travertine tiles too - knock on effect is that the new loo looks lovely sitting in the hall and the washstand is still in the lounge.  hey ho!

Ben the kitchen fitter is also here today fitting the drawer fronts and doors so it's all going to look a bit different by the end of today.  No word yet on the work tops though - I was hoping they'd be here today too.  

The skip was collected yesterday - now that's always a good sign that the end of any building work is getting close, isn't it? 

So, we're still camping out really, most appliances aren't fully fitted yet and some not even in the room yet, but bit by bit it's all taking shape.

I'll try to remember to add some photos over the weekend.

That's me for now though, I have crafty stuff to be getting on with so I really should make a start on that.  

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