We Went to the Zoo

The weather was fab all last week and as Sunday seemed likely to be the last of it we decided to have a jaunt. 
As an anniversary present I "adopted" a lemur at Whipsnade Zoo for Hubby hehehe and as part of the deal you get a complimentary ticket, It seemed a good day to make use of it.  Obviously, a lot of other people thought it the perfect day to go as the place was really busy - good job it's on such a huge site and able to swallow up the thousands of people who must have been there.
Whipsnade was one of the places I remember visiting with my family when we first moved south - I was always a bit jealous of the people who took their cars in - it seemed the height of decadence to drive around instead of just walking, but my dad was having none of it!  FAR too much money for that carry on!
On Sunday I ticked that little "want" off my to-do list yay!  And yes, it did feel a bit naughty and a bit decadent but it was fun....we bought sandwiches instead of making our own .....and we had ice cream 99's too - oooh definitely a treat-filled day of the not-dad variety. Amd boy, was it hot - so a regular blast from the car's air-con was appreciated!
We still walked miles, as the road doesn't go to all bits of the park, but it was nice to be able to go round and round as often as we wanted, and not to have to lug all the junk and camera lenses on our backs!
I absolutely adored one of the elephant areas - it's where they do the elephant "displays" but on Sunday the elephants were just chilling out and having fun.  The fencing was very minimal, with a couple of keepers just keeping an eye on proceedings - such as heading off Big Mama Elephant when she was being encourages to "ooooh come over here, we won't hurt you" by one daft visitor with small child in tow....well, nooo you might not mean her any harm but she's a few tons of giant mama heffalump and she's heading your way....doh!
There was a baby elephant being bay-sat by his big sister - I admired her patience - you'll see why in the photo below.
Whipsnade has lots of free-running residents with wallabies, muntjack, hares, pheasants etc all happy to muddle along with the human and other animals and the scenery is fabulous with wonderful views over the rest of the Dunstable Downs and Bedfordshire countryside.
 I hope you enjoy seeing the photos!

  

 

 Someone is hitching a ride on the rhino's back!

 

 The penguins have a pool with a view!

 

Thanks for looking

Twice on Tuesday

It's my turn to share my project on the Get Funky blog today.
This month we've  an "Anything Goes Using Funky Hand Stash" challenge on the go and there have been lots of lovely things to see since the launch on the Funky Fifteenth of August.

  We're getting close to the 14th of September now,, which is the closing date for entries to this challenge, but you've still time to get out your Funky Hand stash and join in.  As usual Anice has created a freebie downloadable paper which is available only for the duration of this challenge but means that even those who don't have any Funky Goodies can still grab that and use it to make something....anything....and join in.  There's a free download of your choice on offer for our winner, so it's definitely worth taking part....especially as there's the beautiful new "Daisy Day" collection available now.

I chose to use the 3 rosy pink designs from Daisy Day to make this origami box.  You just start with two squares of paper and make some folds and you're done!  The link for the instructions can be found on my Get Funky post today
Click HERE to find the link and also to find the info info on how I made the flower decoration for the top if the box.  I hope you like it

 I love these soft and pretty papers and I know they are going to be used time and time again - the brilliant thing is that I can print them out whenever I want more - and I can print them on different papers too, which really adds to their versatility.  If that's not enough to convince you then maybe a price of  £3.49 you get:
20 twenty backing paper designs
Matching upper-case and lower-case alphabets
Numerals and extra characters.
Set of Daisy themed Digi Images to colour in, or over -print onto the backing papers for cutting out and layering
Can't be bad, eh?
Thanks for visiting - please leave a message to say you called by ;)

Friday's Daring Cardmakers - on a Tuesday

OK so I'm really rubbish at this blogging lark just now, two weeks running I'm late with my Daring Cardmakers card tut tut, must try harder....
This year the first Dare each month is a Colour Combo Challenge and our September hostess is Lythan who is loving living at the seaside and has chosen to draw the colours from one of her hubby's photos taken on a family walk along the beach.
Here's the card I made

Tools and Materials:

Mix of several MME sets, Fancy Pants "Country Boutique" and 

some Prima papers, all 6x6,

Bazzill card (greens, brown, black)

House and tree shaped buttons

Craft Robo to cut the hot air balloons and the frame

Here is Lythan's lovely photo and the colour palette drawn from it

Everyone loved the colours, but we all agreed it wasn't so easy to find the "right" papers in any one collection - so had you been able to do a secret spying tour of our desks last week, you'd have seen us all hunting through our paper and other stash searching out the stuff we needed - all good fun, though and you do unearth forgotten gems when this sort of thing happens!
Please visit the Daring Cardmakers Blog to see all the lovely cards the design team came up with this week.

Thanks for visiting
 

September on The Sketch File

Last posting for today's Big Blog Catch Up session!

A new sketch comes out on the first Tuesday of each month over on The Sketch File, so September's LO idea is now live

This is my first project using the "Over the Hill" sketch

I wanted to shrink the sketch and see how it worked in an aperture (yes, I'm still in hole-making mode haha).  I thought it would be fun if the sketch part showed through the aperture, with the full image showing once the card was opened.  I should have cut my aperture higher up to make it work, but as usual I didn't think it through before I started die-cutting, so the cupcake is a bit stunted!

The cupcake and candles are hand cut because they are such easy shapes to do

Here's the sketch - I hope you'll join in with us this month - you can link any crafting project you fancy, as long as we can see the sketch in there, it counts!

We add new projects to the BLOG over the course of the month, so please keep visiting to see what's new from the team.

Funky Flowers!

Over at Fabulous Funky Hand there's a wonderful new download for you to get your hands on.  It's called "Daisy Day" and is full of pretty papers to play with.
Here are a couple of cards I've made with this download collection - I'm sure there's another one, but I can't find it at them moment - well,, I've never claimed I was an organised crafter, have I? hehe

  Since making this one I've used the same idea again for a second card - I was asked to make something for the 70th birthday of a lady who has quite a severe vision impairement.  She finds yellow on black the easiest to make out, so I used the same upper layer design and fixed it onto a larger black card, adding the flowers into the black circle apertures.

 I added the lady's name and a greeting using the yellow. black and white colour-way which I hope she will be able to see. It was all a bit of a rush and I forgot to do a photo :(

The second card was made using leftovers from the first one.  The buttons were made using the diecut circles cut from the first card with a couple more card layers added for a more button-ish look.  They are quite large buttons!

If you click on this link: Funky Hand you'll find out just how much you get for £3.49! And it's Instant Gratification too - no need to wait for the postie to bring you the stash, just click, pay and go!
On the same page there's a gallery so you can see some of the fab things my Teamies have made using this luscious, summery "Daisy Day"set of papers

 Aren't those papers pretty?  You know you need them.....

Late, Late, Late

I'm still playing catch-up after a lovely long weekend spent with family, so here's the first of a series of "Things I should have blogged by now" posts!

Friday was Daring Cardmakers Day and it was our lovely Germany based Belgian teamie Rein who set the challenge - she was very kind and simply asked for a flower-themed card.
I decided to make another "window-box" card - it's a fold I made up myself a few months back (no doubt someone else has made this idea up too, but it's not one I've seen anywhere else).
 It folds (relatively) flat to fit in an envelope for mailing, but then the box section folds out again to make a 3D shape at the lower edge
Here's my card:

 As usual when it comes to using flowers, I got a bit carried away as you can see :)

Materials and Tools:

Papers: Country Boutique from Fancy Pants

Copper coloured pearls, Blue satin ribbon, Wire for "springy" flowers

Die-namics Doily die, Memory Box flower die,  EK Success border punch,

Blue circle cut with Craft Robo

Just under 24 hours left now to join in with us this week - please pop over to the Daring Cardmakers BLOG to see what my wonderful Teamies have created this week

Life's a Beach

These weeks go by pretty quickly, eh?

Another Friday, and another week without updating my blog since the last one. oops!

Daring Cardmakers Day and it's Gez who is our hostess this week with a lovely challenge just right for this time of year..  We're also trying to get back into the (good) habit of inviting a Guest Designer to join us on the team for a few weeks, and we were delighted when Kate said "yes" when asked if she'd like to come and play. 

"Hi, it's Gez here this week and I've got a brand new dare to share with you.. for this weeks dare.. 

I would love to see the sea included on your card.. think  

sun, sea, sand.... 

the living is easy!

Anything to do with beach life can be included!"

A quick look at the DCM BLOG will show howthe team enjoyed the theme, with a whole boat-ful :) of lovely seaside inspired cards.  Some of the team have just returned from their holidays and have definitely come back full of creativity!

By coincidence I'd been thumbing through a copy of the Papercrafts magazine that I get on subscription from the US recently and the seaside was one of the themes they were covering in that issue - there were some wonderful shaped cards, and that's what inspired me to make my first card

I used a free online colouring page to make a template for cutting on my Craft Robo - but something like this would be easy to make just by printing the picture, cutting it out and using that as a pattern for making the card.

I used:

Smooth white card for wobble card base

Bazzill card (light blue, dark blue, white, red, black

Silver thread to make the chain for the anchor

Red ric-rac braid, Grey pen

Having made this card, I started feeling a bit guilty that I'd not made a beach hut card - well you know how I love them!

So I made this one too:

 The Craft Robo Template I used here is one I made in Paint Shop Pro, just using the pre-set shapes and stretching and welding them together.  The basic hut is a pentagon and the door is a rectangle - to make the top rounded I added an overlapping circle to the rectangle, and to make the roof I used more circles. Even the heart and the sun are pre-sets!

Once the shapes were all in place, it was just a case of erasing the bits I didn't need, then making it into a template to cut on Robo.

The surfboards and dolphins are  made using free clip-art from the web

Materials and Tools

Smooth white card blank, Bazzill card (sand, sun)

Papers: MME 6x6 (sorry, I'll have to add which ones later)

Pink twine, Stickles (Lace)

Craft Robo, Medium Circle Punch, 

Spellbinders: Large Circle Die, Plain Oval Die, Scalloped Circle (sentiment)

That's it for today, I hope you'll be joining in with the Daring Cardmakers this week

Thanks for looking

Caught on Film

 It's been a hectic week in the Waffle Zone.  Hubby had the long-awaited operation on his elbow on Tuesday, so we spent the day at the hospital in Bushey being looked after by the nice people there.  It's hard to know whether it's done the trick until he starts usong it properly, but fingrs crossed it has!

He felt well enough to work on Wednesday, but has been working from home all week - which sort of cramps my crafting as I tend to use a lot of noisy gadgets - not conducive to him talking on the phone!

I do try to be quiet - I'm just not very good at it, hehe!

Over at the Daring Cardmakers, it's Jo's turn this week - and you always know life will be trickier when that's the case hehe!

This week's was no exception - for me, anyway, as it's all about those lines from films which other people remember and quote all the time - but in my case go in one ear and out the other!

Film Quotes

I'd like you to use a line/quotation from the Big Screen as your inspiration and see where that leads your cardmaking.
A great chance for all you Movie-Buffs to use your favourite lines, but If you are in need of some inspiration, this site;

http://www.moviequotesandmore.com/

has some fantastic quotes and sayings to inspire!

I did think of some lines - but when it came to using them for a card they were useless!  i thought about Hubby's favourite film "The Italian Job" and that wonderful line "You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off" - but how would you use that on a card?

Then I remembered making an  "The Italian Job" themed card for him years ago and hunted out the photos to see what I'd done that time.

So, I pinched the quote, and the cars idea from that one, and made something new.

I've been intending to make a Robo template for a mini for ages, but hadn't found a picture to use till now, but this time I was lucky.  Making templates is a nice quiet crafting task - cutting them on Robo is definitely not, so all the pieces had to be cut when he wasn't on the phone!

Materials and Tools

Bazzill card in various colours, 

Pearlescent silver card for road (hand-cut)

White pen, Silver pen

Orange Stickles

Trees are made with a Punch Bunch leaf punch

Craft Robo to cut the cars

Computer generated sentiment

My second card is probably a bit of a cheat really as it's a "word" from a song which is in a film, rather than a line from a film.  Actually, a lovely forum friend (thank you, Karen) gave me a great idea that I'd have loved to have used, but it was a bit too late for me to get it done in time - I might just make that card anyway, so I'll not tell you what it was atm ;)

It took a while to make the sentiment, getting the fonts, sizes and colours right, but now it's done it's been saved so I can use it again. I didn't want to push my luck and use Robo to cut the birthday cake shape I'd planned to use on the rest of the card, so I just hand-cut a bunch of candles to use instead - I think they work pretty well, considering they took about five minutes to do!

Materials and Tools

Bazzill card in various colours,

Ice Stickles (gold)

Computer generated sentiments

Right, that's me done for now.  I completely failed to update the blog as promised last week, didn't I?  Oh well, tomorrow is another day..........

hahahahaha

Thanks for dropping by, don't forget to visit the DCM BLOG - we'd love it if you'd join in with us this week

Have a great weekend

Tied Up in Knots

This week it's Lythan's turn to set the challenge over on the Daring Cardmakers

"Get Knotted!

You can use bows, knots, ties, knotted bow ties - anyway the

words take you is fine!

And once more the team have come up trumps - even with the holidays and the Olympics and everything

So come and be inspired and then play along by linking up

 and leaving a message."

I've made a couple of cards again this week, though one of them is not quite finished!

I had the idea of having a go at making some knots of the sort that used to be done by fisherman - the sort of thing you see displayed in frames in seaside pubs.  However while doing a bit of a google search I was diverted by Celtic Knots, and then by some that had been copied from stones in Alnmouth, Northumberland.  As Alnmouth is just along the coast from my home village I just had to see if I could do anything with these patterns.

It didn't take long for me to give up trying to do anything with a piece of string...hehe!

So I turned next to good old Craft Robo, and cut the design three times.  To be honest, it's not as "tidat" as I'd have liked, it's better to begin with a bigger image and clean up the edges.  This one is quite small and it would have taken way too long to tidy it up, but by now I was determined to use it so there you go.

I actually cut it six times, planning to do two rows of the knot design - but it took ages to poke out all the waste bits so I decided 3 would be so much better ;)

I like the idea and maybe I'll even go back and see if I can improve on the template, and look for some others too.

Materials and Tools

Smooth White 14cm sq  card blank

black Bazzill card

Pink satin ribbon

Black Prima flower, Pink flat-back pearl, Tiny black gems

Home-made decal rub-on sentiment

Craft Robo

I've seen a lot of the lovely shambala bracelets around lately and thought I'd try using the idea on a card.  You use a simple flat knot at either end of the bracelet and between the beads so it definitely counts for the challenge!

While I was poking around among my beads looking for some that weren't too big and bulky to use on a card, I came across a tin of alphabet beads that I bought years ago from Eclipse in the US and a plan to get ahead with a commissioned card presented itself.  Now all I need to do is work out the best way to add the baby's info when she arrives!  Apparently the scan say's its a girl, so fingers crossed it's tight!

 Materials and Tools

 Smooth White 15cm sq card blank

Papers "Beautiful Moments"  6x6 from Carta Bella

 Silver crochet thread, alphabet beads

Yellow flat-back gems

EK Success border punch, and small daisy punch

 

There are some fab ideas for Lythan's challenge to see over on the Daring BLOG, so please head over and take a look.  I hope you'll give the challenge a try and share your own ideas with us.

That's it for today, thanks for visiting, please come back soon

Olympic Inspiration

The inspiration for the new August sketch from The Sketch File comes from the Olympic rings.

I don't know about anyone else but I'm hugely enjoying watching the action - what with all the extra TV channels dedicated to specific events, the BBC website with lots of live coverage and the fab BBC App on my phone it's so easy to find interesting things to watch and so much more fun than it's ever been before.

I'm not and never have been any sort of sportsperson, but I just love watching loads of the different sports you get to see in an Olympic year.

This is my first project using  the Olympic tribute sketch:

It's really simple - I wanted to pare down the sketch to a small section of my card and keep the colours nice and crisp.

This is the sketch - I hope it inspires lots of people to join in with us this month

I cut the circles in the blue card using the smallest of the circles in my Spellbinders set, added the "circles" ribbon then used foam tape to fix the rectangle to the corner of the white card blank.

The letters were cut with Craft Robo and I couldn't resist adding a few black flowers and a big white pearl.  

You've got to admit though that this is pretty minimalist for me!

I've been pretty rubbish with blogging my stuff lately so I have a few things I've not shared yet - I'll try to catch up with blogging those soon.

Thanks for visiting today, I hope you like the sketch and will click HERE to find more ideas for using it - it would be fab if you'd have a go at making something using it.

August Colour Combo

This week on the Daring Cardmakers it's time for the next in our Colour Combo sequence of challenges:

Gosh!  It's August already and the holiday season is in full swing, so if you notice a few gaps over the next few weeks - that's why!  As this is the first Friday of the month it's time for August's Colour Combination Challenge. 

"A Mediterranean Corner"

features whitewashed walls, fresh green and hot pink,

 a dash of powder blue and a smidgeon of purple

Once again we have a photo which we hope will inspire you to join in and get creative with us this week.

This is actually one of our photos from the Eden Project down in Cornwall - it may well be my favourite corner of the Temperate Biome, maybe even in the whole place.  It reminds me so much of those beautiful Greek villages where you'll come across a scene like this around nearly every corner.

I made a couple of cards for this, the first inspired by the photo as well as the colours

Having decided to make the shutters open, and cut the card accordingly I realised that the aperture was really big and I hadn;t planned what to put inside!  Nothing new there then.

The 6x6 MME papers I'd decided to use for the flowers came to the rescue with the birdcage design which fitted into the theme nicely.

Materials and Tools

Papers MME 6x6 

Nazzill card blue, green and purple

Small mulberry paper flowers

Pink flowers cut with Craft Robo, Pots and hinges are hand cut

EK Success border punch (inside card), Punch Bunch Leaf punch

Memory Box swirly border die

On one of the cards I made last week the text was used more as a feature than as an afterthought, so I thought I'd do that again this time  too by again using colours and fonts to focus more on the words.

Materials and Tools

Bazzill card; green, powder blue,  Papers MME 6x6

Lokta paper for purple tassels cooked flowers and pinked edge circle, others are same MME as the large fancy circle

Blue Polka dot satin ribbon for tie and also twisted ribbon rose

Medium pearl brad

Sentiment created in Word

Spellbinders dies, Punch Bunch Leaf punch

 This has taken me ages to write - I kept getting diverted by the Olympics - not to mention the Everest-sized mountain of ironing.

I hope you'll join in with us this week - there's lots of insporing ideas from the DT HERE - even though so many of the team have beetled off on their jollies - not jealous at all ....she lied :)

Thanks for visiting, hope you like what you see here.