Happy New Year!

Well here we are in 2015!  Things are getting slowly back to normal after the festive period, children are back to school, hubby is back to work and I’m back at my desk!

Things got very busy here around Christmas – I had lots of orders to fulfill, presents to buy and wrap, not to mention a bedroom being plastered and a loft boarded out!  Sadly this meant my blog ended up getting a little neglected, but on the plus side, I’ve got lots of goodies to share with you in the next few days and weeks.

Today I have a dog-themed Christmas card, order specially to commemorate the arrival of a new puppy shortly before Christmas…

The image is a free download from Tiddly Inks – just so cute and versatile!  I coloured it with Pro-Markers, making sure I didn’t blend the colours, but instead leaving the brush strokes to look like fur.  The image was mounted on a plain kraft layer, edged with white chalk ink, then mounted again on a pawprint background printed directly onto another kraft layer.  A festive red bow finished it off nicely!

Christmas Is Just Around The Corner….!

As if you need reminding, Christmas is literally just around the corner now!!  I’m pleased to say I think I’ve pretty much finished my shopping, time to start wrapping 🙂

I’m here to share my card for the new challenge at Sentimental Sundays – we’ve got a nice and easy “Anything Goes” theme for you this week, so you really have no excuse not to join along!!  Not only that, but we’re sponsored by A Random Fan this week, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss the chance to win some really cute digis!

I’ve used Christmas Decor for my card this week – cute Christmassy penguins are definitely a soft spot for me!!  The image was coloured with ProMarkers and mounted on co-ordinating mats, with a simple Christmas sentiment.

Thanks for looking – make sure you stop by Sentimental Sundays and show us what you’ve been crafting this week.

A Special Gift

Well, at least I’m managing weekly posts for now!!  I’m back today with my regular post for Sentimental Sundays.  We were so lucky to be sponsored by A Day For Daisies this week; I couldn’t wait to play along with A Special Gift!

The theme for this week’s challenge is “Lots of Layers“.  Now, I’m the first to admit that layers get me worried, I’m so much happier when it’s CAS!  So I did just that and kept it very clean and simple…..

As you can see, I have added lots of layers, by building up the frame around this gorgeous image with more crisp, white layers!  I also fussy cut the image and mounted it on the background on tiny 3D pads, to add another crafty layer 🙂

We’d love you to pop over to Sentimental Sundays and play along – see you there!

Where Did November Go??!!

Today’s post is all about the new challenge over at Sentimental Sundays!  We have been sponsored by 2 Cute Ink and our new theme is “Heartfelt Thanks“.

Before I carry on though, I need to apologise for going AWOL – I really don’t know what happened to the last three weeks!  I haven’t had much time to craft or blog as we have been having the loft boarded and I’ve also been preparing my bedroom for replastering this week, and then there was my son’s birthday (although I do have some cute projects from his birthday to share with you later this week!)….

Anyway, back to today!  Here’s my card:

I’ve decided to go back to my comfort zone with my projects for a while.  I love CAS – and while I’ve enjoyed developing other areas of my hobby, this is where I craft happiest!  With this in mind, this card is super simple – just the cutest image, coloured with ProMarkers, mounted on a co-ordinating mat….et voila!

As we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in the UK – so my card is just a thank you card, I like to always keep a couple to hand!

Make sure you pop over to Sentimental Sundays and have a peek at the other DT makes – you won’t be disappointed!  And you could also pop over to 2 Cute Ink for a little retail therapy……..why not, eh?!

Football Themed Birthday Card

I’m back today with my latest make for the Polkadoodles’ DigiQueens! I’ve chosen to use this cute little footballer, available as an instant download from the Polkadoodles DigiWorld store, on a card for my friend’s football-crazy son….wonder if you can guess which team he supports?!!

The image was coloured with Promarkers – I was stuck for a moment when it came to colouring in the famous claret stripes on the West Ham kit, but after a little playing around with my markers, I found that Purple and Ruby blend together to a reasonable claret 🙂

As for the rest of the card, I kept it fairly simple – the football is a cutfile from the Silhouette store, I created the sentiment myself in the Silhouette software and the mat was simply embossed using a chevron folder!

Pop over to the Polkadoodles blog now to have a peek at the other DT projects….or maybe you’re heading straight to the Polkadoodles Digi Store to grab yourself a cute footballer to play with!!

Distress Inked Paper Flowers

It’s time for a new challenge over at Sentimental Sundays – and this week, our theme is Anything Goes!

My time has been stretched quite thin recently – I’ve taken on a more active role in the family business, my school commitments have increased and I’ve had a lot of DT projects on the go, so it was quite nice to play along with this challenge and just switch off and see what happened!!

What happened was this: messy desk, very inky fingers; snippets of paper everywhere; buttons, brads and thread hanging from every available surface!!  And the result was this lovely flower birthday card….

The flowers were cut on the Silhouette from a piece of aqua cardstock and shaded using a mixture of Tumbled Glass, Salty Ocean and Peacock Feather ink pads.  Some of the petals were embossed with Sea Foam embossing powder (although it wasn’t as successful as I’d hoped, I think it looks OK when the flower is assembled), while I doodled on other petals with a white Jelly Roll pen.  One flower had some silver Brilliance daubed in the middle and on the edges of the petals.

The whole lot was popped together on a doily mat, on top of some Peacock Feather stained card, which in turn was laid on a dry embossed piece of aqua cardstock.

And then it was time to tidy up 😦

Head over to Sentimental Sundays to see how the rest of the DT played along with the challenge!

Happy Days!

I grew up watching the Fonz and Happy Days, so it was no surprise that I couldn’t resist the Papermania Happy Days Collection…especially as it was reduced!!

The papers on this card are all from the stack, with a little added Kraft for contrast.  I printed the sentiment banner directly onto the Kraft and skewed the banner slightly to avoid looking like I’d tried to cross out the cars behind it!

And that was pretty much that!!  As you can see, this card is headed to France for a birthday, so I’d better hop off down to the Post Office pronto!!

Home Sweet Home

We have new neighbours moving into the house opposite today, so I thought I’d take the chance to make them a card and try out a new technique.

I’ve kept the card very simple, mainly because I have a huge pile of stuff I should be getting on with!  The house and heart shapes were cut on the Silhouette, and simply inlaid  – I’ve seen several cards like this recently and love the simple, crisp and clean lines!

That’s about it from me today – wonder how long I’ll manage to avoid the ironing for today….!!

Manly 21st Birthday Card!

Our new challenge starts today over at Crafting At The Weekend!  As usual, our theme is Anything Goes, and we’re lucky to be sponsored by Faery Ink and Crafty Sentiments.

My card for this challenge focussed once more on clearing our my stash!!   

The striped and spotty papers are from a pack of origami paper that I couldn’t resist buying from Tiger (I may have also “accidentally” bought a couple of other colour ways too….!).  I like the combination of kraft and navy for a male card – as it felt a little too dark, I added a coupe of touches of cream to break it up.  The 21 was cut on the Silhouette, using a store file, and the sentiment was printed directly onto the cream card stock.

Why don’t you head over to Crafting At The Weekend now to see what else the DT have to share with you today?

Christmas Hollibobs With Polkadoodles

Time for my next Polkadoodles post!!  This fortnight, I have a little Christmas card to share with you, using Santa by Polkadoodles, available now as an instant download!

After printing and cutting the image with the Silhouette, I coloured this little chap using ProMarkers.  When I started colouring last year, I remember being so intimidated bold colours like  the red I used for this image – 12 months on and I’m quite chuffed with the end result!

The sentiment and patterned papers are all from the Festive Hollibobs collection, so they co-ordinate with each other really well.  The holly uses a cutfile from the Silhouette store – I simply dragged one of the gorgeous papers into the Silhouette software to fill the shapes, before cutting and printing.  I love the way the paper resizes to fill the shape you have  added it to – in this case, the berries are filled with the same paper as the spotty background and the leaves are filled with the same paper in a different colourway, but as the pattern has resized automatically, the colours appear deeper.  So versatile!!

Head over to the Polkadoodles DigiWorld store now to have a peek at all the gorgeous Christmas images you could get you pens on instantly!!