Bags of fun

My first go at making Beckie's Bagalicious

Papers are a mixture of Cherry Arte papers from the Bumbleberry October kit, and Chloe's Closet ones from an old Self Addressed Collection. I'm going to fill the bag with nice bbathtime treats and give it my friend sara for her birthday.

Monday Monday

Our new sofas are ready! They are at the showroom and ready for delivery, we could have had them on Saturday but as the lounge is already full of sofas they are going to be delivered on Thursday instead. So yesterday saw us putting the old chair in the guestroom and the sofa bed up in the spare room. Sounds easy? Not a bit of it. It was far too heavy for us to get up the stairs - which btw have a "dog leg" half way up. Hubby decided to take the metal bed frame bit out of the sofa so that made getting it upstairs much easier. Next problem was getting it into the room - would it go? Not without a fight. We ended up taking the door off and still it was a struggle - all a problem of angles - or lack of them. Oh the feeling of triumph (and relief) when we found the right way up the sofa had to be to go into the room.
We now only have our tiny sofa till the new stuff arrives - and then we have to figure out what to do with that, but we'll put that one off for a few days.

The TV has been moved to other side of the fireplace, but as we're not sure if this format will work, it's just sort of sitting there, with all the wires across the floor - looks really pretty and organised - not! It's a bit like the chaos of "just moved in" all over again. Hey it'll be nice when it's finished. I hope.

After a bit of a struggle I finally managed to make the waterfall book I've been playing with for the last few days. I did what I should have done in the first place, make a "dummy" version with bits of blank card just to see how it worked - it was so easy once I'd done this that I'm cross at having spent so long reading and re-reading and trying to work it out without actually sticking it together. I hope the recipient will like it and see through the imperfections, because this little book took a lot of time, effort and determination - plus a little bit of temper and foot stamping before it was done! Pictures to follow!
I've also got one of Beckie's Delicious Bagalicious Bags almost done. This I will fill with bits and pieces for a birthday present for one of the December birthdays we seem to have so many of - rather inconsideratly, I can't help feeling.
More of that later too.

Mind Your Language

What a fantastic response to last week's Daring Cardmakers Dare - you did us proud, Thank you.
I added another link just this morning so don't forget to go and check out all the blogs and the gallery - apart from those of the DT there are around 13 or 14 other cards to look for, and they are all fantastic.

Right, on to this week's little teaser.
At first reading Tracie's Dare didn't look so bad. A card which had to feature another language on it - no problem.

YES Problem........

It's not that I couldn't come up with some ideas, it's just that either they didn't work on paper, or that they were ideas that on reflection would be better for other projects (wink wink).
So Wednesday night saw me lying awake working out how to make the latest idea work.

I made the card yesterday morning - after it was done I realised that I'd even forgotten to have my usual mid-morning cappuccino - see what sacrifices I made for this one? :-)
Anyway, here it is:

Just in case it isn't obvious, it's "The Language of Flowers"

Originally I was going to put squares of card with individual flowers and their meanings, a mix of photos, diecuts and paper flowers, but I realised that a bouquet would look better as long as I had enough paper flowers to make one!

Actually I was quite surprised to find just how many different usable elements I had in the shoeboxes of flowers. Plenty enough to make a decent bouquet and then some....

The background is glittered vellum from K&Co's Chelsea collection, with a bit of extra chalk ink around the edges. I found the flower meanings on the net, printed them off in green ink and dabbed different shades of decorating chalk over to take the whiteness off, then used cats eye chalk inks in various shades to colour the edges. It's hard to describe how to make a bouquet , but they're not as tricky as they look - all you really need to do is get a few flowers and wind something round the stems to hold it together - I usually just bend up one of the flower stems and use that to wind around the rest.

Hope you like it.

Close run thing

Tomorrow sees the new Dare going live and I've had a real struggle to come up with an idea I could make work. The pile of discarded paper, card, pictures etc on my desk tells a tale of ever increasing panic.

Late last night inspiration finally struck and this morning I've made my card - but you'll have to wait till tomorrow to see it - huge sighs of relief here, I can tell you. I should be allowed to play this afternoon, but instead there's a great big pile of ironing to do. Maybe if I become a really speedy ironer....

Paula - thanks for the mini book idea, its def on my list of things to do I think they'd make fab little presents and would love to give them a try. If only Debs sets us a nice easy Dare for next week I might have a bit more time.

Waiting and wondering

Is today too soon for my new Self Addressed Kit to arrive? If I go up to the postbox to post this card order off, is that the time the parcel post will arrive with my box of goodies? Of course it is....I'll wait and go to the post this afternoon then. Thanks for helping me to decide.

Feeling chuffed because I killed two birds with one stone and used the Daring Cardmaker's "Little Extra" - this week a card layout sketch, to make a birthday card for a commission - are you like me and get a buzz from doing something like that? Feels a bit naughty and like you've "got one over" on the system. I know it's daft. Anyway here's the sketch and here's the card

Oooh after a grey and gloomy start the sun is making an appearance - typical of course that it should wait till I'd taken the card photo in poor light and packed it up with the others ready to post.

I'm prevaricating - can you tell? Loads more to do including my card for Friday's Dare for which I still have NO IDEA what to do....

Then there's the Christmas cards to get on with only 31 done so far - not 331 as I miss-typed on a forum and made all the other readers' jaws drop - hehehe, I didn't half laugh when I read the comments that followed and realised what I'd done!

"331 .........are these all for yourself to send out kathy? or do you sell some?? I make about 40 ish for ourselves, have 2 done so far!"

"I just reread your mail about 5 times - how many cards do you send?"

chuckling still at the very idea that I could EVER manage to make that many cards.....

Wellllll

How about that for timing.

Two minutes after I pressed "Publish Post" the doorbell rings and Postie is there with my lovely SA kit for this month. Now, what am I going to do with microscope slides and wooden discs, ummmm

More to show....

I've been making some more Christmas cards (well, it has to be done...) Just going to show a couple here for now. The black and white one was made with left over bits from a challenge to make a card using black and white, with ribbon only adding any other colour. Hared than it sounds as I had to fight against adding a brad, or a flower etc! I can't count this card though as the backing paper, stars and pots add too much in the way of "extras"


Another card made for a commission, this one an egagement card. There is no blue on it despite how it looks - the light must have caught on the silver edge as I was taking the photo! I had loads of bother with this - it started off with a fuchsia rather than dark red colour on the B&W baackground but no matter how much stuff I got out I couldn't find the right embellishments to work with it. Went back to my favourite dark red and hey presto!

Fireworks

Back on the seemingly never-ending Curtain track (haha pardon the pun...) we went to one of the nearby towns where there is a good curtain /interiors shop and spoke to a lovely and very knowledgable lady about our curtain problem. Anyway, upshot is that it's all much more positive than the last outing, and she's coming over on Tuesday to have a look in situ, so to speak. Fingers crossed, because I'm getting bored with this now!

It was a lovely sunny Autumn day yesterday, we were up and about early for once, did some Christmas shopping at one of the local garden centres, then headed for St. Ives where Hubby had noticed there was a car he wouldn't mind seeing (yes, we're still on the car-buying trail). However, sneakily the road we usually use to get there was closed and we found ourselves going in the wrong direction - so we gave up as we were running out of time to get there and back. Hubby was out doing some archery in the afternoon - it's what they call a "frostbite" - they shoot outdoors once a month through the winter and hubby uses the longbow for this. His exxcuse is that a longbow takes no putting together/taking apart - a great benefit on chilly days!

November 5th was not only my cousin's birthday but it
was Guy Fawkes Night too. No bonfire (well apart from the little one when they managed to set light to the football pitch....)and no Guy Fawkes on top of it, but plenty of pretty pretty fireworks to ooooh and aaaah at the display we went to. Not even that cold either. Remembering back to having fireworks in the garden when I was little and living in Northumberland, we'd be well wrapped up in big coats, hats, scarf and gloves and still feel the chill. but last night I had my gloves on but didn't even need to fasten my coat!

Home by 8 and some nice M&S food for dinner. A good day.

Dare3 it was all my fault

I thought Sewing would be such a good idea for this week's Dare. pah!
It wasn't long till I was regretting it, funny how all the ideas you get in your head just won't make it onto paper sometimes isn't it?
Anyway this was my card. All the letters are made from various ribbons, folded (or otherwise persuaded .....) into shape and sewn by machine onto some thin pink card. I used different stitches and wasn't too precious about how neat it looked going more for a "relaxed" look - well that's my excuse anyway. After the sewing I cut them out quite close to the stitches ready to be fixed onto the card. the "O" is made with loops of 4 differnet ribbons sewn together then a cute flower shaped button sewn in the middle (it hides all the messy stitching too) and tied with a dotty pink narrow ribbon. . I used a DL sized card - it had to be big to get all the letters on! The edges have strips of Junkitx Hip Hop Skinny Stripes paper along the edges - I love this paper.

The tag is machine sewn - a chance to try out the memory in my sewing machine which lets me load several stitches/letter patterns in and then just put my foot down - cool or what?. The little primas are sewn with bead centres and the button in the centre of the big Prima came from a pack of similar ones but I can't remember who makes them, sorry!

With a bit of luck I might even get rund to doing another card with sewing stuff on - I'm sure those ideas that are swimming around the goldfish bowl I call my head could actually get out and show themselves if I only force them.....

Don't forget you don't have to have a blog to play along now, we've got a gallery and an email address for you to send your cards to - check the Daring Cardmakers Blog for all the info. Now I'll sit back and look forward to seeing your "Just Sew" stories, shall I?

Love is.....

I've just finished this page for the scrapbook I'm making as a Christmas gift. I've used this week's theme from the "Because You're Speshal" blog, I loved this photo of Julie with her newborn son, and it seemed to work well with the "Love is...." theme. It's my first go at entering a scrapbook dare, and hopefully not my last because I need all the help I can get to make this book worth actually wrapping up and putting ribbon on at Christmas!

Quick quick....

Catching up while Blogger is behaving properly!
Had a lovely time with my aunt and uncle when they came over for a few days stay on their way home from visiting Baby Grandson.
It meant I didn't get much crafting done, but spending time with them is much more important, and we always enjoy their visits. My cousin lives just along the A1 from here so he came over after work on Friday to spend the weekend here too.
As usual their visit involved a tour of local garden centres, a bit of other shopping and an English Heritage or National Trust site, this time Shaw's Corner at Ayot St Lawrence.


I've been wanting to try on some of these much acclaimed "crocs" shoe things for ages now - so was chuffed to find that the garden centre at Willington (Bedfordshire) has them. Couldn't quite get my head around the bright pink, considered the pretty lilac but in the end plumped for nice sedate navy blue. And here they are. Hubby says that if I paid more than £2.99 I was robbed and my aunt, uncle and cousin just looked, they were wearing that "I can't think what to say about those" faces. What do you think of the socks? they don't show up well but are pink, turquoise and white stripes and even have glitter thread in them.


We went to Ireland for lunch on Saturday, to the Black Horse, which is a rather nice "Dining Pub" in the middle of nowhere. That's Ireland, Bedfordshire by the way!. I had pork medallions in a creamy mustard sauce, then shared the Assiette of puddings with hubby - little sizes of white chocolate sorbet, baked cheesecake with summer fruits, steamed fudge pudding with butterscotch sauce and cherry brandy creme brulee. Oh boy how glorious were all of them!

A nice parcel arrived on Friday morning - some new stash from Crafty Pastimes. I only went to order some little silver charms, but somehow a load of Angel Kisses flowers, some tiny ricrac braid, and this lovely pack of papers from Prima fell into my basket. Now how did that happen?

Getting there

I've done them! Yes, thanks to a bit of nagging and a tight time schedule I knuckled down and got the birthday card for my cousin Colin done - always a difficult one to make, that one is! As it's his birthday on Sunday I really did need to get something made!
The message reads: "Is this card Cheesy or what?"
I raided the freezer for a pizza box, then scanned and printed off a couple of copies on card. One was used as the base card, the other I cut up to add some dimension. I used the slice, plus a few bits of pepperoni and stuck them on with foam tape. Adding some good old Glossy Accents has made the pepperoni look scarily real....

I also made a card for one of my uncles who celebrates his 80th birthday next week.



I was a bit stuck for ideas so in the end resorted to using photographs (often the way I resolve difficult card issues!). So this one has some of our Northumberland photos on. He left the north many years ago and doesn't get up "home" very often anymore so hopefully he'll like seeing these pics.
I'll leave it at that for now and see if any of the NBL contingent can identify the places - answers on a postcard.....or just in the comments bit will do :-)

Paula's Crafty Tag

Paula (mini book pixie) posted these questions on her blog, so I thought I'd take up the baton.

1) What technique would you consider to be your "trade mark" (what do you do most?)
I use beads quite a lot, usually tiny beads strung on gold or silver thread and added down the side of my cards, oh and I make cards with pockets on the front and then decorate tags to slip inside quite often too
2) Which technique(s) do you wish you could do/do better?
Like you (Paula), I wish I could draw, but there's also stamping, cutting out neatly and loads more things I'm useless at
3) What are your 4 favourite embellishments?
Brads, Ribbon, Eyelets, paper flowers
4) What are your 3 favourite gadgets?
Quickutz, mini xyron for fixing ribbons etc, pointy proddy thing for making holes
5a) What do you like to do but haven't done in a while?
Friendly Plastic
5b) And what have you done recently & forgot how much you enjoyed?
Shrink Plastic - I did a couple of cards for the last DCM Dare and that's the first time in about a year.

Right then, who shall I tag? I think I'll pass the baton along to Janine, Andrea, Rachel2 and Saffa

Sunny Sunday

The sun is shining and it's a beautiful Autumn day.
Hubby was up and out early this morning (not sure I like 7 am starts on a Sunday...), he's gone on an archery "field shoot" - they appear to wander around a wood and shoot at various animals as they go - not, I hasten to say the real thing, but pictures of Bears, Deer and (I'm sorry to say this Kel) fluffy bunnies etc... Last year he went on this event and it rained all day so he was relieved to see it dry this morning.
Our visitors left mid morning and should be well on their way back up the A1 to Northumberland by now. Please Tracey and Clare give them a wave if you see a metallic blue Kia go past Blyth later on...

I've just spent a happy hour or two catching up with the 22 messages on The Daring Cardmaker
I've popped on to all the blogs to see the fantastic range of cards that our wonderful visitors have been making, and I've added links to all their blogs to make it easy for everyone to go and see all the fab, clever, inventive Kitcheny cards for this week's Dare. Let us know when you've made a card and your link will soon be there on the list :-) Everyone is welcome to have a go.

I've not had the chance to do any crafting since Thursday when I made the Christening card I showed on Friday morning, but I can show you my latest beady offering, the box I made for it and the card to go with it now. The bracelet is Swarovski crystal beads in clear, fuchsia pink and black, interspersed with sterling silver donut beads and findings.

I've used papers from the Making Memories Simply Fabulous "Brooke" pad

Maya Road ribbon plus some other bits from my ribbon drawer

Prima Hydranga flowers

The oval tag is from Bossktz and the letters are Katie Classic - I topped them with good old Glossy Accents

Use the Kitchen!

Jane plonked this scary challenge on us then went off to her bed on the other side of the world leaving us with our mouths hanging open in shock! If you've already checked the Daring Cardmakers blog you'll see that eventually everyone came up trumps though.


These two cards used the same stuff. The backing papers are glossy card, the sort you print photos on, I spritzed the pieces with water then dripped food colouring on one piece and placed another on top then squidged the colouring around a bit between the two. I loved the vivid colours, I'd never tried this before and was amazed at the results - and they dried really quickly too so no hanging around waiting.
The embellishments are shrink plastic coloured with Brilliance inks - I used cotton balls to dab the ink on and move it around as shrinking intensifies the colours so you need to be careful not to overdo it.
Normally I do SP with a heatgun, but this time I used the oven and it was MUCH easier. I put the SP pieces on baking parchment on a baking tray, another piece of parchment on top, then another baking tray to keep it all nice and flat. This worked a treat, no more wrestling with curly SP for me, I'll use the oven from now on. Karen's card has SP squares wound tih crinkly wire and a few beads, the "K" was SP just hand cut, shrunk then topped with Glossy Accents. The rest of the letters are QK Katie Classic alphabet.

The flowers on the 2nd card were cut from the inked SP with a giant punch, and ended up about4cms after shrinking. I used spare coloured card to make the tiny flowers in the centres. The gold crinkly wire is there just to add a bit of extra interest, the torn paper and the flowers are edged with gold krylon pen.
Using Hundreds and Thousands was my first plan, but the first effort went Disasterously, HORRIBLY wrong.......my tip is - Don't use Glossy Accents over 100s & 1000s! The prototype is still a squidgy mess and all the colours have run into each other. Maybe I'll add a photo to prove my point!
The 2ns attempt uses double sided tape to cover the heart pattern, then I sealed it with Plastikote sealent stuff - better, but I don't think I'd risk it in the post.
I used letters from most of my alphabets to add to the 100s & 1000s theme, they took ages to cut and arrange and tbh I'm not really happy with the result.
Still this whole Dare thing is about rising to the challenge and sometimes you win and sometimes you make a red, squidgy gooey mess.....

Right, now over to YOU!

Just a quickie...

Right, here's the first card for that order I mentioned. The backing card, the cross and the little flower brad are all actually silver but I took the photo late on and they look more gold coloured.

She's decided against having a box for it so that's one thing less I have to make, but it would have been much nicer to have a presentation box to keep it in, wouldn't it?

I'll be back later with my cards for the Daring Cardmakers challenge of the week, so get ready to have some fun in a place where crafters usually HATE to go.......

Guilt

I "do" guilt really well - it's probably the thing I'm best at.

So I have to confess that my "to do" list of the last posting was only written when most of it was already done (red-faced smiley in here please!)

BUT, I have now also written and posted the letter that was on the list and finished the other things (except the scrapbook LO) too. And I can't do that because the book I'm making is going to be a Christmas gift for the visitors who are staying with us at the moment - hopefully that excuse will let me off the hook on that one!

However, the cards I need to make for an order are still...well, not even on the drawing board tbh. Please feel free to shout at me next week if I still haven't shown any cards for this order.

Crossing things off the list

Food shopping done
Cards for new Dare done
Clean house sort of done
Make up Guest room done
washing forgot to get it out of machine
ironing not finished
wrap Christmas presents (sad, but true) not done
scrapbook page not a hope
Write the letter that's been waiting all week next on the list, I promise
Feed Hubby might have to be pizza
Clean mucky mark off lounge carpet done
Go to post box ok ok I've got to write the letter first....
Put bins out later alright?

I've been busy trying to get organised as we've visitors coming tomorrow for a few days stay.
So it's been a rush around doing shopping, house cleaning and the usual washing and ironing routine - plus getting ready for Friday's new Daring Cardmakers challenge as who knows what time I'll have to play with paper while my rellies are here. If you've not already shown us your card for the Friends theme, please give it a try, we'd love to see your work.


Must have been something in the air yesterday because I even managed to get another couple of Christmas cards made - the first for a couple of weeks - I'm really not doing well with these, reminder to self; must try harder.
I bought a couple of PaperMania Christmas paper packs (8x8, 100 sheets each) a week or so ago. The paper isn't as heavy as I like, but it's fine for Christmas cards and the colours and designs are nice. I used a couple on these cards. The bauble is a Bosskutz die, edged with silver krylon and topped with some of that wonderful Glossy Accents. I put a swirl of glitter on first for one of them but forgot that bit on the other! The silvery stuff was in a mixed pack of similar stuff - it's really pretty with a stitched swirl plus little dots of glitter.

No way will I get another scrapbook page done now, so that'll be another one to put off till next week.

Lovely sunny day here today - chilly but very bright. Next boring housey task - put the bins out. Gosh it's just a never ending whirr of excitement around here isn't it?

Any of you UK readers who know where I can get small plain silver cross charms (for Christening cards etc) or that thick handmade paper that usually comes in big sheets (wrapping paper sized) in white, please give me a shout!

After the Weekend

Friday was so exciting. The launch of The Daring Cardmakers Blog had us all hopping about in anticipation in our various homes in both the UK and NZ.
The reaction has been fantastic, we're thrilled to bits over the positive comments and delighted that so many Crafty Friends new and old have already joined in with this week's Dare.
If you've not had a go yet, please join in - we'd love to see your cards.

We went out with some friends on Friday evening for a fabby curry, it's been a while since we managed to arrange something so it was great to be able to catch up with the news and have a good laugh. We all had different meals for once, but I stuck with the house special of the restaurent which is too tasty to veer away from - boring, I know, but I just don't care!

We had a shopping trip on Saturday which proved tiresome and frustrating. We went to John Lewis to try and sort out some new curtains for our bedroom and the dining room. It started well as we saw some cushions which will be great on the new sofas (when they arrive), then we found fabric that we liked for both rooms. That was when the fun started and it's too long a catalogue of dead ends to bore you with so I won't. I had no idea that getting curtain poles would be so complicated....Back to the drawing board.

By the time we got out of there (without ordering anything) it was about 2pm and we'd gone right off the whole "shopping" thing so we went and had lunch in one of our favourite pubs to console ourselves.

I suppose Sunday must have happened, but can't think of anything to report - well except I wanted to start another LO and got a nice lot of paper out........then put it back in the box when inspiration failed to strike.

Can't even show you the pretty pictures hubby took at the weekend because I can't find them.

Might as well go and have another cup of coffee then

My cards for the Very First Dare

OK, so the first theme for our wonderful new Daring Cardmakers blog is FRIENDS - a good choice for a newly gathered group of crafting buddies. Some of us know each other already, but there are new friends on the team too, and of course we all hope that we will make lots more new friends from all over the world through the blog.

All our cards are shown on the new site, but we'll all be adding more info about them on our own blogs, so please check them out for the low-down on what we've used.

What is a friend?


Paper is all from Blonde Moments "Spring Fling" range. The alphabet is "Katie Classic" by Quickutz as are the teapot, hearts and rosebud on the tags
The quote tags are decorated with brass charms, eyelets, paper rose, ribbons and fibres from various suppliers



Friendship is like a garden....


Pink hearts paper is from the Blonde Moments "Sugar Dumpling" range and the striped one is Junkitz Pop Rock Skinny Stripes.
Pixie Press vellum, shaded with a chalk ink pad
Loads of Prima flowers (I feel quite brave having used that many on one card :-))
Brads and ribbons from my stash

Ohhhhhhhh It's live at last

Dare Blogs

The scrapbookers have them - lots of them, so why not cardmakers?

Today at 10am our Brand New Blog went live. I'd like to introduce The Daring Cardmakers a wonderful new place for all crafty bloggers to hang out.
The whole thing started a few weeks ago with an idea from Jane - why couldn't cardmaker's have some fun with dares and challenges like the scrapbookers do?

So here we are, a team of Cardmaking Bloggers from the UK and NZ (next, The World!) keen to challenge each other and the whole blogging world to come and have a go at our Dares.

Our first Dare is up and running and our own efforts are now on show. We hope that you'll like the idea and feel inspired and challenged to get involved.

Looking forward to seeing your cards.