Tuesday 31 May 2011

Cake!

As the weather was so awful yesterday we stayed at home and found time to do a little baking. These are Malteaser cupcakes - a joint effort between Meg and myself. Meg tried her hand at piping the frosting and was looking pretty good!

A malted flavour sponge with rich chocolate frosting and topped with broken and whole malteasers - yummy! EDIT: You can find the recipe here.

Thursday 26 May 2011

Been a bit busy

It has been a bit of a busy couple of weeks. We have been doing Key stage one SATs, and I've been marking some each evening. The maths and reading are pretty straight forward, but the writing seems to take forever. Two pieces of writing per child (Fifty six altogether) to be checked against fifteen or sixteen points each. Don't get me wrong, I love reading them, but it does take a while. Anyway, I finally got them finished, so I thought I would venture into blog land to see what's happening. I might not be a very good blogger for a while as my next job is writing reports.
Well, I will share my offering for Less is more this week, where the theme is 'Butterflies'. I've got a few stamps with Butterflies on, in fact nearly as many as I have trees!
I stamped the 'Stampin' up!' Butterfly and coloured it with distress inks, before covering it in versamark and triple clear embossing it. I used some green pearl embossing powder on the Waltzing Mouse frame that I stamped on the base card, then stuck the butterfly on with 3d glue. The sheen on the pearl embossing powder is lovely, so I took another photo to try and capture it.
I did make another Butterfly card at the weekend, but I felt it was a bit too much like Chrissie's beautiful creation, but nowhere near as good. Here it is anyway
More distress inks, teeny meadow stamps (Chocolate Baroque) and a Hero arts Butterfly. Wish I hadn't done the faux stitching!

 Thanks for looking and I will try my best to get around some of you to comment in between reports, and if Mr Blogger will let me.

Tuesday 17 May 2011

Waltzing Mouse 2nd Birthday tea party!

Waltzing Mouse are having a tea party to celebrate their second Birthday and are asking us to download a free template for a 'tea-bag baggie' and decorate it. I received my latest purchases from Waltzing mouse last week and they were tea themed too, so I set to work.
I used Broken china and tea dye distress inks (tee, hee!)The two main stamps are from Waltzing Mouse and the background is from Hero arts. The small stamp on the cup is from the Chocolate Baroque teeny meadow set.
I had to make a card to go with it too...
I used more distress inks and some backing paper from my Artylicious essence of Nature cd. I Love this tea cup! There is a fab prize on offer, but not for much longer! so pop over to the Waltzing Mouse Blog for more details. Thanks for looking!

Sunday 15 May 2011

Less is more - Embossing

The theme at this week's Less is More challenge is Embossing - much more within my comfort zone! I used a magenta butterfly stamp.
I embossed it with ranger ultra-fine silver and painted it with distress inks. For once this is the first card I made! Here is a close up to show the shine on the embossing powder.
I have had this embossing powder for quite a while and it is the best I've ever had - Very fine, no static and so shiny. I've been struggling to find somewhere that stocks it though.
Thanks for looking. Let's hope Mr Blogger doesn't do away with lots of your lovely comments this week, so I can read them and leave some for you all too.

Wednesday 11 May 2011

Been Baking!

Thought I would share my latest bakes with you. At work we take cake for our birthdays and I would never live it down if I bought one, so it was Rhubarb and Ginger cake (Jamie Oliver recipe)...
and a Crunchy top Lemon cake (Mary Berry recipe) that I took to school.
 Well, you should've heard Steve's protests! He needed cake too, so at the weekend I tried a recipe from a new book called 'Love Bakery' for Rhubarb and Custard cupcakes and made these...
Well, I made 12, but there are very few left now! I was quite proud of my custard frosting and the little decorations I made from ready roll icing.With these you take a core from the middle of the cake with an apple corer and fill it up with jam or stewed fruit - Yum!
Finally I did make a card for a colleague...
I used some Dovecraft clear stamps, coloured with promarkers and glittered. They were  stuck onto a gingham 'tablecloth' made with a Martha Stewart punch around the page set.
I'm entering this one into:
Moving along with the times where the theme is Have some cake and
Craft your passion where the theme is Check it out, using gingham, plaids and checks
Thanks for looking, and I hope I didn't make you too hungry!

Tuesday 10 May 2011

Less is more - White on White

The Less is More challenge this week is white on white...Well, it hasn't been easy! I made three cards before this one that all looked more like the royal wedding cake than a LIM card! I started again with a clean slate and came up with this:
I embossed Stampendous ruffled blooms in white on to parchment paper, painted it with indenting fluid (Something that was around years ago before they invented H2Os!) and used an embossing tool on it from the back. Now it looks a bit yellow in this shot, but that is just the light reflecting. Here is a close up to show you the dots of glitter glue.
The leaves were cut with a Marianne die. I finished it off with some embossed lines in the other corner. What? You want to see my wedding cakes?! Go on then...

I'm so glad I started again! Thanks for looking!

Sunday 8 May 2011

Loads of stamps!

The Allsorts Challenge this week has a theme that is right up my street at the moment - Stamp alot, that is to use at least three stamps. As I've been playing with my Hobby art scene-it stamps it took no time at all to knock a couple of cards together! This first one uses stamps from the 'In the country' and the 'countryside' sets - seven separate stamps, and the leaf swirl on the base card is from Inkylicious.
This little scene was created with the coastal set and uses 9 stamps plus one more from personal impressions for the greeting.The papers are from Summertime designs blog.
Both cards were watercoloured using a combination of Aquamarkers and distress inks.
Thanks for looking!

Thursday 5 May 2011

A bit of this and that

The last few days of my holiday were spent watercolouring with distress inks using the Hobby Art Countryside, Coastal and In the Country Scene it stamps.

I then tried using my new Aquamarkers to colour these little scenes that I will turn into cards over the weekend.

Besides my Aquamarkers and some Hobby Art goodies, Steve and Meg got me a new camera for my Birthday, so get ready for a lot of photos as I have a play. Here are a couple from the garden this evening...

Before I go I'd just like to say Welcome to my latest followers and thank you for your lovely messages and comments. They are very much appreciated. Thanks for looking!

Monday 2 May 2011

In Fantasy land at Sir Stampalot

Good morning friends! Today is the first day of May and that means it's time for a new challenge at Sir Stampalot. Our theme this month is"Magical Worlds" and it can be as simple as a single butterfly or full of fairies, unicorns and wizards, it really is up to you.
I went for fairies this time and here it is!
It is a double easel card with squares brayered with Hydrangea big and juicy, and stamped with two Lavinia fairies and Hobby Art (Anna's collection - Just for you) stamps. these and the sentiment are mounted on nesties Fleur de Lis squares. the border along the bottom edge was made with an x-cut corner punch. Here are some close ups of the brayered panels.
You can see I added a little bit of glitter to the flowers.
What is the prize I hear you ask...

More lovely goodies from Sir Stampalot!
Hope you are able to join us this month with your magical creation. Don't forget to pop over to the Stampalot challenge blog and take a look at the fantastic work my talented teamies have created.  I look forward to visiting you. Thanks for popping by and for your lovely comments.

Sunday 1 May 2011

A couple of thank you cards

The theme at Less is More this week is Thank you or Congratulations. I opted for a couple of thank you cards, but I'm not thrilled with either. The first features some Hobby Art stamps with an Inkylicious tree and has been watercoloured with Distress inks. This base card wasn't a great surface to watercolour on, so the shading wasn't how I'd wanted it.
The second card was initially just going to be the inchie stamps (Inkadinkado) stamped directly onto the base card, but I tried and decided it needed some colour. I stamped again onto some glossy cardstock brayered with Big and Juicy spice, then cut out and stuck on. Using Macro on my camera has made it look less straight than it actually is!
The sentiment on this one is from Waltzing Mouse. I might try it again with some other colours. Any suggestions? Thanks for looking!