A Birthday card for a friend

I decided to have a play with the Summer distress inks again when I made this card for my friend Sarah's 40th Birthday. I used the Orchid stamps from Dimension Stamps and the Friend definition (Hero arts) to create the background. The main panel was coloured using my Ink Dusters and the summer distress inks. I added stickles and sprayed with glimmer mist to add a bit of sparkle which I think you can see here.

The orchid and the flower buds were coloured with distress ink too, but this time I used 'wild honey' for the orchid centre as well as 'picked raspberry'. I also added a bit of white gel pen. The base card was stamped with the smaller orchid stamp and Brilliance ink in Twilight.  Sorry if I don't get round to visiting you back for a little while. Mr Blogger is sending my comments off into the ether. I have been back to several places I have visited recently and found no comment, and after commenting I got a 503 error message. I'm also having a little break and some fresh air weather permitting. This half term has been very hectic, and I really need to recharge the batteries, and tidy up the mess that has accumulated on my desk over the past few weeks. I will be back by the end of the month. Thanks for looking!

A very quick anniversary card

Just remembered an anniversary that I had forgotten, so I used a freebie stamp from the front of a magazine, coloured it with promarkers, added a few blobs of gold tulip paint and mounted on a scrap of paper from my stash. The sentiment is from Waltzing Mouse. Little random blobs of tulip paint are great for covering up little mistakes or marks on the card. Note to self - check your fingers for ink before pressing the card into place!
Thanks for looking!

Cake with glitter!

 This is what I made this morning. My niece is celebrating her 30th Birthday today, as on the actual day she will be working. She is in the middle of a project on Dragonflies for Cheshire Wildlife Trust, so the green icing and blue edible glitter had to be used!

The cake is a carrot cake topped with cream cheese frosting and the dragonfly's wings are dusted with gold - they looked better in real life!
I am off out to another party this evening - My friend Sarah is 40 tomorrow. I may well be falling asleep by 9.30 - not used to this social life business!!!
Thanks for looking!

Spring Dreamy

I had a request for another card like one I did for this month's Stampalot Challenge, but in the Spring Distress ink colours.

I stamped and clear embossed the 'Dreamy' flower, then dusted the background with Peacock feathers, dusted Lavender and squeezed Lemonade distress inks. I then stamped over the top with the Hero arts Friends definition in Dusted Lavender. The base card was stamped randomly with Dreamy (Penny Black) in the same inks. The central panel was mounted on silver Mirri card and placed over the matching ribbon. When I use this technique I ink up the main image first with versamark and then with distress ink before stamping, to make sure the embossing powder stays put.
I think I like this colour combo the best, although the summer colours come a close second. Perhaps I should keep using the summer colours to prompt an improvement in the weather! We have had some heavy downpours and there is a puddle outside work like a ford, but nothing like they have had a little further north, or in the south west. There have been moments when I have given up trying to teach over the noise of the rain drumming on our flat roof and told the children to watch the hail, rain, lightening etc through the window! We have had an impromptu lesson on what lightening and thunder are, so it hasn't been all bad! Thank you to all the lovely people who keep visiting despite my sporadic visits, and thanks too for your kind words.
Thanks for looking!

Normal service soon, hopefully

After months of being seriously unimpressed by BT, I've changed my broadband and telephone provider to Virgin Media. The good news is it is so much quicker to upload photos to my blog and I no longer get cut off mid post. I am determined to sever all ties with BT, so the bad news is I am having to let everyone know my new email address... which is taking hours! If I am in contact with you by email and you haven't had an email from me yet, please forgive me. You can find my new email address on my profile page. Then there are the craft sites who send me their newsletters, etc... On top of all that I am trying my best not to watch the tennis. It is on and I am glancing over whilst trying to make my niece's birthday card, but if I get engrossed I will get all upset if Andy Murray loses!
Yesterday was our School summer fair, and thankfully it was dry for the three hours it was on. The sun came out too! I did some baking to sell at the fair, so I thought I'd share some photos with you whilst I get round to making something worth showing you card-wise.
Banana cupcakes,

 Lemon Cupcakes

 and Bran Loaf

Thanks for looking and I hope I will return your visit very soon x

In Bloom

When I saw the theme for Allsorts this week I was quite pleased, as I had this card nearly finished. After my trip to Doncaster, where I bought this beautiful Hydrangea stamp from Inkylicious, I have been itching to have a go at a background dusted on linen look card stock with my ink dusters. I got out the Spring distress inks (LOVE these colours!) and made the background, adding a little detail with the text stamp and some sequin waste. I stamped the Hydrangea in black and added a line of white gel pen around the edge. I saw one of Deby's cards where she had done this and loved how it made the image pop. I added an embossed panel, some ribbon, some flowers and leaves cut with a Marianne Designs die, and a few spots of diamond Stickles. All stamps are from Inkylicious. I'd also like to enter this into the challenge at Penny Black and More where the theme is Summer blooms. Thanks for looking!

A lovely weekend

Well, my lovely guest left England and is flying back to Rwanda as this is posted. We had a great weekend and I think he enjoyed himself. I took him to my Dad's church where there was a flower festival followed by cream tea and brass band on the vicarage lawn. I don't think we could've shown him anything more British. We dodged the showers and he loved the scones, jam, strawberries and cream!

We drove through Sherwood forest and talked about the differences in the landscape. He says we have lots and lots of trees in England.
On Sunday we talked about Rwanda and plans for when we go over there. He tells me we will either go to the National park to see Zebra, Elephants, Giraffes, Lions and Hippos or we will visit the Mountain gorillas! How exciting is that! Meg also tried teaching Andre a few chords on the guitar.As well as helping to entertain our guest, Meg has had a weekend free of homework (she is on work experience next week) and has been sketching like mad. You can see her latest portraits here .

What's my Crafty Passion?

Good Morning and welcome to the first Sunday in the month, in other words, time for another Stampalot Challenge. For July we are asking 'What's your Crafty Passion?' Well, where do I start?!

Distress inks, tree stamps, Hero Arts leaf swirl and old French writing to name but a few. Here is a close up of that old French writing that I stamped in versamark and brushed with mica powders...

The tree(Indigo Blu) was stamped with flitterglu and then covered with gilding flakes.

Another crafty passion I have is floral stamps, so I made a second card featuring a Penny Black floral stamp called Dreamy, Hero Arts friend definition, and the gorgeous new summer set of distress inks. I used my ink dusters over the embossed image to blend the three inks together before stamping the friend definition with shaded lilac DI from the spring set. The prize this month is this rather lovely set of goodies.

 Pop over to the Challenge blog and take a look at the fabulous creations of our lovely Design team, and then create something to show us your crafty passion.

Thanks for looking!

A bit of news!

I've been so busy at work this past couple of weeks, and I finally finished writing my classes reports this evening. There I was looking to have a good play with my craft stuff over the weekend. I should stop planning! The Rwandan head teacher whose school I am visiting in September (Yeah - very excited!) is going to be staying with me over the weekend. Not entirely sure what we are going to do for two days, but I think a trip into the countryside is in order, as he asked if we have elephants in our national parks today! He was totally blown away by a trip to Tesco too. I moan about the government here interfering in education, but their schools spoke and taught in French until 2008, and then were told it all had to be done in English! I think we may have to resort to some French over the weekend - thank goodness Meg is doing GCSE!
I will do my best to visit those of you who have left me lovely comments on Sunday afternoon after I have dropped him at the university from where he will head back to Rwanda. Hoping normal service will resume after that. In the meantime my craft space needs to become my dining table!

A maternity card and a baby card

I made a card for a colleague who was due to go off on Maternity leave. Unfortunately she had to finish work earlier than expected due to blood pressure problems.

The image is from Digital Pencil Too and was coloured with promarkers. Baby arrived rather earlier than expected (35 weeks) weighing just 4 pounds. We were still signing the maternity leave card when she arrived! 

The image on this one is from Squigglefly, again coloured with promarkers.Clean and Simple, and very quick - well, it needed to be! I'm happy to say baby is doing very well.

Both of these cards were made with snippets, so I'm entering them into this week's Crafty snippet challenge. I didn't make it out to play last week, so I'm looking forward to a bit of skipping. Hope it is not too wet in the playground.

I'd also like to thank all those people that responded to my email regarding Meg's Food questionnaire. She was given the weekend to ask 20 adults about their coffee shop preferences and collate the data. As I had taken up her time going to Stampalot yesterday, I thought it was only fair to help her to get the info she needed. I'd rather that than her have to go knocking on neighbours doors, so a big thank you to you all! Thanks for looking!

Had a little play at the weekend

It was back to work with a vengeance last week, so I stared longingly at my new goodies without playing with them. The weekend was mostly filled with Father's day preparations and a bit of an outing for the two grandads, Steve and his sisters family. However I did find time to have a little play. My first card was a little scene inspired by Deby at Inkylicious, who likes the Kaleidacolor creole spice ink pad. I used all Inkylicious stamps, my ink dusters and a bit of masking.

I love these colours, and the new Cow Parsley stamp. I added a bit of glitter too, which you can see better in the next photo.

I finished it off with some embossed lines  either side of the coloured panel.

Next I decided to have a go with my Pan Pastels.

I am not totally sure what I think of these yet. I can't see that I will be able to do anything more than I do with ink, and ink is considerably cheaper. The ribbon was from Doncaster too - I loved the colour combo. Again all stamps are from Inkylicious (Wild Meadow and Create a collage Meadow).
Finally I will leave you with a photo of some of the deer in Wollaton Park.

These are the Fallow Deer, but there are also red deer, and there will be photos of those on Meg's blog very soon. Thanks for looking!

A quick card

This is a very different sort of card for me, but today was the Birthday of one of my colleagues. He is a drummer,  has a beard and likes his cool sunglasses, so when I saw this image from Kenny K It had to be bought!

The stripy paper was from Canon Creative Park (free download) and the brown card was embossed using a cuttlebug folder. The wooden notes were silver, so have been coloured using a gold promarker. I have no idea where they came from, and they have been in my stash for years. He sought me out at the end of the day to tell me he loved it and might even start wearing his cap back to front as part of his mid-life crisis!!!
I'm entering this into the Boys and Men challenge over at Do you Stack up?. It is a new challenge for me. Thanks for looking!