Leaving To Have a Baby

Hello

Just a quickie to show the card I made for Eleri's teacher who is leaving to have a baby.



I love this image - she's called A Gentle Touch from D'Arcy's Diaries. I've coloured her with promarkers, and I'm even fairly pleased with her hair! The image was very easy to colour because of the shading of the image.

I've forgotten the name of the paper pack, bought from The Range - I think they are so pretty and I love the colours, perfect for the new Spring limited edition Promarkers which I treated myself to recently LOL!

I would like to enter this card in the following challenges:

Simon Says - Anything goes
Paper Pretties - Bling
Craft Room Challenge - Bling and glitter/sparkle
One Stitch At a Time - Anything goes
Card Crafters Circle - Tic Tac Toe - I chose flowers, use a digi, and die cuts

As lots of other blogggers have been saying, we are having such gorgeous weather in the UK at the moment - warmer than we have in the summer sometimes! But it worries me - you watch, we'll be having snow in April and May! Although that wouldn't be a first - Richard's birthday is in April, and there was snow the day he was born in 1966 - we also got married in April and the day I was going to collect my wedding dress I woke to snow on the ground!

Enough waffle - I hope to be back again soon.

Love, Andrea xx

Simples!

Hello Fellow Bloggers!

Well, congratulations to Wales on their Grand Slam win today! We were supposed to be going to the match today but when the tickets arrived, they'd sent us the £76 ones, and we felt that we could not justify spending over £300 on tickets to watch a rugby match, particularly as we were paying for our holiday at the same time!:( Today I feel as though that was a mistake - it was a good match and looked as though it was a fantastic atmosphere in the stadium! Oh well!

Anyway, I have managed to make two cards but they had to be quick and simple ones! When my daughter saw the one this morning she said it was "half pretty". When I asked her what she meant she asked "Is it finished?"!!!

For both cards I used a Disigstamp Boutique Daisy image, which was printed directly onto the base card, coloured with promarkers, and then some paper piecing added. I do love paper piecing for clothes, easier than colouring LOL! The sentiments were computer generated directly onto the cards too.

I really wish I could colour hair better - I try to get highlights, but always think the hair just looks stripey. Then when I try to blend it, it goes blotchy! I just cannot get the knack despite watching lots of fab tutorials in blogland.

Here are the cards:

This first one is for a special friend of mine whose birthday is tomorrow, and I'm pleased to say she loves it (because of postal deliveries, I had to post it yesterday for her to receive it today!)



And this one is for my very special Mum - I even paper pieced the hearts on this one. The sentiment was supposed to read "With Love on Mother's Day" but I forgot to select borderless printing so it missed to print the bottom line.



I would like to enter these cards in the following challenges:

One Stitch at a Time - Use a digi
Digistamp Boutique - March monthly challenge
I Love Promarkers - Anything goes

Whilst watching the rugby this afternoon, I managed to make two stretchy bracelets, one for a present and one for little old me ;D

This is the present - made with gorgeous crackle quartz and tourmaline



And this one is mine ha ha!! Made with agate and tourmaline - the tourmaline is so sparkly because of the facets, and you can even see the reflection of my orange top in it!



Can you tell, I'm not stressing about work? - I have a week off now - yippee!! But I'll be decorating Eleri's room, and I'm not very good at decorating!

Sorry for all the waffle, and thank you so much for taking the time to visit me.

Love, Andrea xx

Stepping Out!

Hello - well, I have managed to make a card for my nephew, albeit a very simple one!



This is a Kenny K digital image, which I printed directly onto the base card. I printed it a second time, so that I could add an extra layer for the foot stepping off the card. What do you think? I added a sentiment which was computer generated, and then embossed one corner with Swiss Dots, and added a brad.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Anything Goes - Boyz to Men
Cards for Men - Cheeky Chappies - I think this image is a cheeky chappie, and my nephew can be quite a cheeky chappie sometimes, well he makes my Mum and Dad laugh anyway LOL!

That's enough from me for tonight - got to get on with some work!

Love, Andrea xx

No Time to Craft :(

Hello Everyone

I just wanted to pop on here to say that I am here and I am well - I'm just not getting any time to craft or be creative at the moment! (big frown).

Work is so busy, I've had to work quite a few evenings in the last 3 weeks. Some of that has been out at meetings, and then other times I'm having to try to work on typing the minutes up in the evenings at home. I'm also having to work 5 days at work each week for the timebeing, rather than my normal 4 days - probably for the next 6 months too.

I may have to go out and buy a card for my nephew - but then he might prefer a bought card anyway LOL!

I'm hoping things will slow down a little soon and I can make something!

I am managing to do a little bloghopping and leaving some comments, but that time is very limited too.

Anyway, enough moaning, I hope to have something to show you sometime this month!

Lots of love, Andrea xx

Testing Testing One Two ???...

Hello Fellow Bloggers

First of all, maybe I should explain my post title today - I dropped my camera down the toilet wilst we were out on Friday afternoon (please don't ask if I had flushed the chain before the little mishap, because I really don't want to answer that question ha ha ha!!!). So I wanted to test that it was still working properly - all the photos in this post have been taken since the camera's little swim, so yes it's working - yayyy!!!

Today is Andrew's birthday, and he says he's had a good day despite having to go to school on his birthday! He didn't want anyone to know it was his birthday today, but one of his friends knew and told their teacher, so Andrew had to stand up at the front of the room during Assembly for everyone to sing Penblwydd Hapus to him (he was very embarassed apparently - aawww!).

Eleri had a good birthday on Friday - we decided to go to a forest centre for a few hours, with the intention of having some fresh air followed by some nice food in the cafe. But as we were nearing the place the mist was coming down and the rain was starting - by the time we got there we could hardly see anything in front of us. But we had some good food! Thing is, the weather was quite nice at home before we left, and it was still good when we got home LOL!

Anyway, Eleri is very happy for people to know it was her birthday, and she wanted some cakes to take in for her classmates today. I was going to make some cake pops on lollipop sticks like last year, but I saw a similar idea but for cupcake bites instead - they are sort of a cross between cakes and truffles - very rich and sweet. I found the recipe and instructions here.







If I'm honest, I preferred the chocolate ones I made last year - I think I should not have used a rich vanilla buttercream to mix in with the cake this time - much too sweet for me, but then they weren't for me LOL!

Now on to the cards I made for Andrew:

This is the one from Eleri:



The image is a High Hopes stamp, the papers are the Crafts Beautiful magazine freebie this month, and the sentiment is from TLC creations.

I would like to enter this card in the following challenges:

Stampin for the Weekend - Photo inspiration/colour combo
Card Crafters Circle - To die for (use dies or punches) - my plain and scalloped circle spellbinders dies
Kaboodle Doodles - Lets get cooking - I would like to enter my cupcake bites into this challenge too, but not sure if they will count?

This next card is from Richard and I. The image is a Kenny K digi, coloured with promarkers. The spotty paper and sentiment is again from CB magazine. I tried to keep this simple but I'm not sure it worked very well - may have looked better if I'd layered the image onto plain card rather than the spotty paper, his foot coming out of the frame would have shown up better.



I would like to enter this card in the following challenges:

CES Challenge - Spots and dots
One Stitch at a Time - Use a digi
Kenny K Challenge - Emboss it

Well, if you've made it here to the end, thank you very much.

I'll see you soon.

Love, Andrea xx

For Our Little Princess

Good evening people - the evening before Eleri's 7th birthday - wow!

So I'm going to show you the cards I've made her.



I just loved the way this first card was coming together. The papers and the matching brad are Princess Fairytale from Dovecraft, and the border punch is an X-cut punch, and I bought them all last week from The Range - I love them. The image is from Saturated Canary - I am so falling in love with these images at the moment! I've realised from looking at the way other people have coloured this image that she actually has a hairband in with a leaf next to the flower, but I thought it was part of her hair!

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Do You Stack Up - Layers
CES Challenges - Lots of layers
One Stitch at a Time - Anything goes

And the second card is from Andrew



This time the image is from Little Miss Muffett stamps. The papers are from a free paper pack with Crafts Beautiful last spring. I intended to enter this week's challenge at Craft Your Days Away, so I used my WRMK Sew Easy tool to sew a scallop on the strip of paper across the middle (but darn it, I didn't get on the computer in time to enter the challenge :{). I also put some little stitches at the corners of the image.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Digital Tuesday - Use your stash - last year's papers and Sew Easy tool
Crafters Companion - Anything goes
Drunken Stampers - Texture - the stitching and the stickles

Well that's enough from me - I need to wrap Eleri's pressie - I hope she likes it! I did tell her this evening that I'd forgotten to get her anything, so she said I'll have to get her something when I buy her new bed! LOL! She also hasn't realised that my sister brought the present over from my Mum and Dad this afternoon. I think she will be a very happy little girl in the morning LOL!

Now I've got to get my thinking cap on to make some cards for Andrew, who will be 11 on Monday! And I've promised to make Eleri some cake pops for her to take to school for her classmates on Monday. I just hope I start to feel better and get some energy (a nasty cold caught up with me last weekend - I normally manage to fight them off, but not this one!)

See you soon.

Love, Andrea xx

Happy Valentine's Day

Hello All

Well I hope you've had a lovely day today. I received a lovely delivery of flowers at work today - a very nice surprise! I feel a bit bad to be honest, because all I gave to Richard was a card (the one I made below), a Chelsea Bun, and a tiny box of chocolate truffles! He always manages to outdo me - I really must make more effort to be a romantic LOL!

Anyway, here's Richard's card:



The Be Mine swirl is a digi from TLC creations, and I ran it through a Cuttlebug embossing folder. The hearts are an Xcut die, and I ran the large one through the Swiss Dots embossing folder.

I would like to enter this card in the following challenges:

Papertake Weekly - Black and white and red all over
Do You Stack Up - Love
Fab n Funky - Love is in the air
Simon Says - Love is in the air
Card Crafter's Circle - Valentine
Secret Crafter - Red white and black with texture

That's all from me this evening - I hope to be back soon.

Love, Andrea xx