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Saturday 30 July 2011

A fruity hello!

I'm sneaking in very quickly today with a quick card for this week's Less is More challenge where Chrissie and Mandi are asking for fruity cards. I have trips to pack for, birthdays to organise, workshops to prepare for... and the last thing I should be doing is making cards! Fellow LiMettes will understand I'm sure - I couldn't miss it could I?!!

When I think of fruit, the Tart and Tangy stamp set springs to mind and, since my frazzled brain couldn't decide which of the yummy fruit to choose, I've made a fruit salad! Come and see:


The sun is out here in Buckingham today so I thought I'd go bright and zingy with a Tempting Turquoise card base! I stamped the fruit, cut them out (punches make this quick and easy), chopped some of them up and arranged them in a border.


Here's a close-up which I've just realised is a bit blurry! (Sorry - I've lost my turbo glasses and am having to make do with some really weak ones that mean I keep bumping into things!) The 'hello' is from the Hello Again stamp set which happened to be out on my desk.


Supplies needed for this card:
Stamps: Tart and Tangy, Hello Again
Ink: Peach Parfait, Pear Pizzazz, Rich Razzleberry, Real Red
Card stock: Tempting Turquoise, Pumpkin Pie, Whisper White
Other: Markers
You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

Okay, fun over. Just off to clear up, make a birthday cake, wrap some prezzies... my boy's turning into a teenager tomorrow. He shares a birthday with Harry Potter - how cool is that?! Once, at the beginning of Potter mania, he came to me and told me that he was having a lot of difficulty seeing things. Things seemed quite blurred he said, looking at me with his enormous blue eyes. I immediately whisked him off to the opticians where the first inkling I had that he wasn't being entirely truthful was when he headed straight for the Harry Potter display and gazed wistfully at the round spectacles. When the optician brought him out she seemed quite worried. "He tells me that his vision is quite blurred but I've done all the tests and can't find a thing wrong," she said. I'm sure I went right down in her esteem when I said airily that I expected he would grow out of it and beat a hasty retreat!

I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone's fruity creations this week, but that will have to wait until I've got my chores done!  I'll be back here on Monday with a masculine card - my son's birthday card of course! See you then,

Friday 29 July 2011

Nature Walk wedding

The latest challenge over at Make My Monday had me flummoxed for a while. There is an ongoing vintage theme at the site and this week the challenge is to use lace and pearls on your vintage card. Well I don't actually have any lace although I do have plenty of my beloved self adhesive pearls! Anyway, I've finally come up with something but I don't know whether it'll be okay for the challenge... Is there such a thing as clean and simple vintage? Because I think this might be it!


It's a wedding/engagement card! I didn't actually set out to make one - it just happened! Does that ever happen to you?!!


To get round the fact I didn't have any lace, I used my eyelet border punch to make some faux broderie anglaise. Does that count? I added a thin strip of one of my favourite papers from the Springtime Vintage designer paper range and then a border of these beautiful pearls. There are some strips stuck together on the Stampin' Up sheets to make this kind of thing very quick and easy.


Weddings are very special and deserve a bit of extra time to cut out this beautiful sprig from Nature Walk. I threaded a piece of Very Vanilla taffeta ribbon through the stem and tied it in a simple knot. I like the way it echoes the colour of the pearls and also provides contrast with the pure white of the Whisper White card base. The sentiment from Perfect Punches was coloured with markers to match the blue of the paper and the purple of the flowers.


Supplies needed for this card:
Stamps: Nature Walk, Perfect Punches
Ink: Subtles markers
Card stock: Whisper White
Other: Basic Pearls, Springtime Vintage designer paper, eyelet border punch, modern label punch, Very Vanilla taffeta ribbon
You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

We had an International Incident here yesterday when my eldest son found an earwig which must've strolled in during the day while we had the French doors open. My son took one look at it and quite literally screamed. "Aaaaaargh! There's a scorpion in the living room!" he yelled. Of course in his head he is the hero walking through a land teaming with dangerous beasts but I'm rather relieved we don't have to cope with scorpions!

Thank you once again for coming to visit me and for all the comments and emails you leave for me. I really love getting them and always try to reply (although sometimes, frustratingly, I can't if there's no link back). I hope you have a wonderful weekend and that the sun shines on you!


Thursday 28 July 2011

Three Minute Thursday - Hello Again birthday

Yesterday I showed you a bright birthday card I made using Hello Again. Well I had so much fun making that card that I carried on experimenting with the set and today's three minute card was born! Come and see:


Have I mentioned before how much I love this Naturals Ivory card stock? I adore it and was really pleased with the way it looks with the bright colours I used for the stamped images.


This Happy Birthday sentiment has to be one of my most frequently used stamps this year. It's from a level 1 hostess set called Afterthoughts which you can choose as a free gift with an order of £150 (that can be a group order or a single order - AND you get to choose other free products as well!) Anyway, I stamped the sentiment in Melon Mambo and then coloured the flower stamp with markers and stamped that next to it, elongating the stem with a Pear Pizzazz marker. The centre is popped up like yesterday's and is decorated with a self-adhesive rhinestone this time.


This card took a little bit longer but I thought I'd show you anyway. I didn't use my stamp-a-majig for this one and the flower ended up too far to the left, so I thought I'd rescue it by adding another flower (using the stamp-a-majig this time!) Let that be a lesson to me!


This photo shows how dimensional those flower centres are. TIP: The flower stems are extended with a marker and then a dashed line is added over the top which really helps to blend the extension.


Supplies needed for this card:
Stamps: Hello Again, Afterthoughts (hostess)
Ink: Melon Mambo
Card stock: Naturals Ivory
Other: Brights markers, Itty Bitty Shapes circle punch, Basic Rhinestones, corner rounder, stamp-a-majig
You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

For those that are wondering, here's an update on my son's ice cream jar. He got his dad to help him chisel a slot in the lid, wrote a message on a sticky label and decorated it with these cute ice creams - aren't they cute?! To make the cones he stamped a few criss-cross pattern stars from Seeing Stars and cut just the 'arms' of the stars out with the star punch. (I think I might've just broken the record for how many times you can get the word 'star' into a sentence there!) The ice cream scoops are cut from coloured card stock and punched out with the circle from the Itty Bitty Punch pack. He was very particular about which colours to use and told me in great detail what flavours they were and how they tasted. He then scandalised me by collaring my friend who'd popped round and getting her to donate to his ice cream fund, maintaining throughout the look of a child who has suffered great deprivation and never tasted ice cream in his life!

Thank you for popping in today - I always appreciate your visits and your comments. Are you around tomorrow? I'll be in summer wedding mood and I do hope you can join me for that!

Wednesday 27 July 2011

Hello again!

I love the sketch over at Clean and Simple Stamping this week and found it just the thing for a card for my niece's birthday. It was also fun to use a stamp set that I've had for ages but haven't used that much - Hello Again. I've no idea why I haven't used it much because I had great fun with it today, so I've no doubt you'll be seeing some more of it here pretty soon!

Come and see what I've made:


The card base is Naturals Ivory with Whisper White for the central panel to provide contrast. I was really pleased with the border which is made with Retro Remix, the wheel that coordinates with Hello Again. I loaded it up with Sahara Sand ink and wheeled it across the card front, then coloured bits of it with my watercolour pencils. I love the vividness of the coloured pieces against the buff of the card stock!


Look - here's a close-up. That sentiment is made from two stamps in So Happy For You, one of this year's Sale-a-bration sets. They really do get some use don't they?!


I used just the flower heads to make these cute flowers. The centres have been stamped again on a scrap of card stock, cut out with the circle punch from Itty Bitty Shapes punch pack and popped up in the centres of the stamped flowers. Each flower was pierced with my paper piercer and decorated with a coloured brad. I loved using these bright colours today!


Supplies needed for this card:
Stamps: Hello Again, Retro Remix wheel, So Happy For You (sentiment, retired)
Ink: Sahara Sand
Card stock: Naturals Ivory, Whisper White, Tangerine Tango, Old Olive
Other: Brights markers, watercolour pencils, Scallop border punch, Itty Bitty Shapes circle punch, Brights brads
You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

Have you noticed how men often communicate in monosyllables? I keep telling my husband it is NOT effective! Here's an example: Last week my teenage daughter kindly offered to pop out to the shop to get something I'd forgotten for dinner and my husband gave her some money to pay for it. When she returned we sat down to dinner and it was only afterwards he remembered he was due some change. "Change!" he said to my daughter as she was gathering her things together to go out to Scouts. "Oh no!" she said reassuringly. "We don't need to wear uniform today because we're having our end of term party, so I thought I'd just wear this!"

Thank you for popping in today. I'll be back tomorrow with a really quick card for Three Minute Thursday. Do come and have a look!

Tuesday 26 July 2011

Saying sorry with Growing Green

I'm always interested in using up left-overs when I'm crafting, so I've been trying to play along with Jules' Crafty Snippet challenge and ONLY using scraps. The card I've made for today was the result of that but before I show you, would you like to see how I organise my scraps?


First, my card stock off-cuts! I keep those in a vertical tub - transparent so that I can see what's going on in there. Periodically, I go through it and punch shapes from the very small pieces, which I keep in jars on my shelf.


This is my designer paper drawer. Because I'm a Stampin' Up demonstrator, it makes sense for me to use only current papers, stored by range in large poly bags. All the off-cuts go back into the bags so it's all kept together. I use my papers for cardmaking, scrapbooking and giftwrapping as well as for altered items such as notebooks etc.


I keep this tub under my desk and it's where I keep card bases I make but don't immediately use (on the right) and items that I've coloured and cut out or punched or embellishments I've made but haven't yet used (on the left). I purge the embellishmenty bit sometimes but am quite good at using things up. This system works quite well for me and I hope it's helpful to someone else!

Come and see the card I made using my scraps:


The starting point for this card was a left-over strip of Botanical Gazette designer paper - I adore this paper! In my embellishments tub, I also found this rose from Growing Green that I'd stamped onto water colour paper and coloured with my aqua painter. Whenever I use my Little Leaves die, I always make more than I need because they are so useful - so there were loads of these in my tub too. The card base was the other half of the A4 sheet used to make yesterday's card.


I mounted the DP onto an off-cut of Whisper White card stock that I trimmed with the eyelet border punch. It's topped with the leaves and then the rose cut out and mounted on a dimensional. I stamped the sentiment onto a scrap of vellum, curled it round a pencil and tucked it  under the rose.


Here's a close-up of the vellum sentiment with its snipped tail - and please, all you Latin experts out there, don't write in and tell me that you fainted when you saw this because the background I've used is full of rude words!

Supplies needed for this card:
Stamps: Growing Green, Basic Phrases (sentiment)
Ink: Always Artichoke, Melon Mambo, Peach Parfait
Card stock: Naturals Ivory, Whisper White, Always Artichoke, Pear Pizzazz, Vellum, watercolour paper
Other: Botanical Gazzette designer paper, Little Leaves die, eyelet border punch
You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

I'm really enjoying having my children around. In between social engagements they come and chat to me while I'm crafting and we have a giggle together. This morning I made a silly quip to my youngest son and my daughter met my eyes over his head. "Oh Mummy," she said shaking her head affectionately. "You and your so-called sense of humour!" She is beginning to remind me of Dame Edna Everage!

Oh dear, I've written a novel again! If you're still with me, thank you so much for putting up with my wittering! I've had an idea for this week's FTL sketch so hopefully I'll be able to show that to you tomorrow. Hope to see you then,

Monday 25 July 2011

Masculine Monday with French Foliage

Good morning! It's time for some more masculine inspiration here at Crafting Clare's Paper Moments. In fact, I made this card for a girlfriend of mine who isn't well but, as it works equally well for males and females, I thought I'd post it today.


Oh by the way, I'm so excited to introduce you to my new card stock discovery - Naturals Ivory. It's a good thick, matt, pale buff coloured card with a very faint fleck in it and I think you'll be seeing a lot of it here! It costs £6.25 for 40 sheets so it's great value too.


I stamped my leaf design onto the card base in various green inks with Crumb Cake ink splodges, then drew a border 2cm in from the edges with my Crumb Cake marker. I masked it with the imaging sheet from my stamp-a-majig and sponged Crumb Cake ink on the outside of the border - this reminds me of those lovely linen tablecloths! Can you see the shaded line outside the border line? That's been done with a grey watercolour pencil and I really like the 3D effect it gives.


The sentiment I chose is from a really versatile set Hopeful Thoughts, although you could use almost any sentiment with this design. It's stamped in Early Espresso which works well with these natural shades.


Supplies needed for this card:
Stamps: French Foliage, Hopeful Thoughts (sentiment)
Ink: Old Olive, Pear Pizzazz, Always Artichoke, Crumb Cake, Early Espresso
Card stock: Naturals Ivory
Other: Crumb Cake marker, grey watercolour pencil
You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

Thank you to everyone who sent get well wishes to my youngest son - he's much better now. He's currently making an ice-cream fund jar to collect our spare change. His hope is that we save so many coins that we won't need to eat anything else on holiday - just ice cream! When I ventured to suggest that we might get just the tiniest bit fed up of ice cream he couldn't believe his ears!

I'm delighted to welcome my new followers - I'm so pleased that you've felt inclined to follow my blog and I hope you'll come back and visit often. I shall be back tomorrow with something made from snippets so I'll hope to see you then,

Saturday 23 July 2011

Itty Bitty Buttons wedding

When I clicked on my favourite challenge site Less is More this morning I had to do a double take. Chrissie and Mandi have asked for ribbon and buttons on this week's cards and this card that I made for last week's circles theme would have fit the bill quite well! I had a bit of trouble getting past that idea but eventually came up with a card I was reasonably pleased with - although I couldn't get a decent photo of it to save my life!


I chose Very Vanilla textured card stock for my base and I love the subtle contrast between that and the smooth card stock I used to make the tag-like focal panel. I scored that to make areas for the buttons to sit in, then matted it onto one of my favourite papers from the Springtime Vintage designer paper range.

My starting point for the card was my tub of Itty Bitty Buttons. They are just gorgeous and I've been meaning to use these tiny transparent heart-shaped ones for a wedding or engagement card for a while. I cut hearts out of another Springtime Vintage paper and stuck the buttons to them and I'm really pleased with the effect.



Ribbon at the moment means seam binding to me - I am totally in love with it and this Baja Breeze colourway is one of my favourites! Seam binding ties into bows so beautifully and sits quite flat too which is good for posting.


Supplies needed for this card:
Stamps: Perfect Punches for the sentiment
Ink: Not Quite Navy marker
Card stock: Very Vanilla smooth and textured
Other: Springtime Vintage designer paper, Baja Breeze seam binding, corner rounder, Itty Bitty Buttons
You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.


Well it's the first day of the holidays and my poor youngest son is a little under the weather. He's a bit listless and tired so I've arranged him neatly on the sofa with the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series of books and from the giggles coming from his direction, I'm assuming he's enjoying them. My older son is out playing tennis and will no doubt return when his tummy tells him to, and my daughter is busy planning a whole new wardrobe! We could wish for a bit more sunshine but hey ho!

Hope you're having a great weekend. I shall be popping over to see what magic you've worked with buttons and ribbons shortly! See you soon,