Out of my comfort zone!

The challenge this fortnight over at A Passion for Papertrey is to make a project out of our comfort zone! I love to look at my Hawaiian Shores cardstock but I rarely make anything with it as I just can't seen to make it work - so I tried hard with this one! I have also had my Star Prints stamp set in the cuboard for ages - I bought the set as I always love what Aimes does with it but so far my efforts have only been bin worthy!


























I clear embossed the flourish and when I stamped off the stars it occured to me that one matched the Dot Spot stamps so I pulled that out to make the white panel. Now its finished I quite like the melon berry and blue mix - but so not me and not a flower in sight!
All supplies are by Papertrey.

Flourishes Timeless Tuesday 100th Challenge Blog HOP!

The challenge for the 100th anniversary challenge is to use favourite things in the card or project - so here are a few of my favourite things:-

• the rose from A Year in Flowers - Flourishes make the most beautiful flower stamps and I had a hard time choosing which one of the sets to go with!
• coloured with copic markers
• my large scalloped circle nesties
• ribbon, card and pearls in pink
• a little doily

I was trying for a Victorian valentine type card with the lacy doily but I forgot to distress it before I included it and so rather lost the effect - still, I love pinkiness of it even if I did go a bit OTT with the pearls!

The dp is by Papermania and the cardstock and ribbon is from Papertrey

Thanks for stopping by tonight - have lots of fun hopping round the other great creations!

Stamping With Friends

I was so lucky this week when three friends came over to craft with me - it was such a lovely day that I thought I would share the photos with you - thank you for letting me indulge myself!

I was joined by my long time friend Pam and two ladies I met more recently - Mary at Pam's daughter's wedding last year and Betty through this blog and our love of Papertrey. Betty is over here from Nebraska visiting her son in London and it was just great to have her join us!

So here we are all together - (L-R me, Betty, Pam and Mary)















Betty bought over some PTI dies and after Betty had cut two bookmark dies side by side Pam used the negative left to make a card - inspired! Here she is holding her card which has a Penny Black bloom stamped through the frame and brads over the reinforcing hole gap - so pretty!

























Betty and I didn't actually finish anything on the day - I was busy die cutting the banner border set in every colour cardstock and Betty was background stamping and inspiring us, so I got her to hold up a card that she sent me recently - a beautiful Alice in Wonderland card! You can check out Betty's gorgeous cards here



























Mary is new to stamping but not to papercrafting as she makes some beautiful cards too - here she is holding her card cased from one of Dawn McVey's using scarlett jewel colours and one of the doilies that Betty bought for us to play with. I think a cuttlebug is now on Mary's wish list now!

























Thanks girls for a wonderful, fun day - lets do it again soon!

More Mums

I made this card for the weekly sketch challenge over at Split Coast Stampers - I love a good sketch to kick start me now and again!

The Mums were still out on the table so I used them again and made the card up with some pink and kraft card.





















The sentiment stamp is by Penny Black and I used one on my little strip embossing folders for the leaf pattern.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

If you are going to case a card......

....... then case the best! Especially when you need a card double quick!

I think it was this card on Nicole Heady's blog that sold me on adding to my Year of Flowers collection and so I went for it. I wouldn't normally show a card like this but it turned out so pretty that I thought you might like to see a slightly different version.




















I coloured the Mums with Berry Sorbet and Ripe Advocado colours of Copic markers and mounted it onto kraft cardstock. I can see this layout working with other flowers so that is now on my to-do list!

Tea for Two Gift Card

For Christmas we bought Paul's Mum a gift voucher for traditional afternoon tea for her and a friend at the Compleat Angler in Marlow - it is a beautiful spot right on the banks of the River Thames and the tea there rivals any I have been lucky to try out in town. So I needed a card to pop the invite in and here is what I made - not Christmassy so she can use the card in the future to invite the friend.
























The background papers are matted on terracotta card and I used orange zest ink on the tea pot. A mat stack die and some ribbon finished it nicely! All supplies apart from the Kaiser pearls are from Papertrey Ink.

Favor It for Christmas

I love these little favor (or favour if you are over here!) dies - although they are rather small and I only managed to fit a couple of chocolates in them (I was good though and gave the recipients the remainder of the boxes of chocs!)

The container - is it a bag, is it a box? is the Favor It from Papertrey with the Mat Stack 1 die overstamped with a sweet little set of clear Basic Grey stamps that my friend VikkiJo sent me in matching PTI colours.

Fliss was great and as I made each bag she stuck the bling on - she was complaining she was bored so I asked her to help and we got them completed double quick!

Birthday Frames

Here are two recent birthday cards for close friends, Jenni and Sharon who both have their birthdays on Christmas Eve.

I used the Frame It set from Waltzingmouse Stamps as my theme and I was trying to get a trelliswork effect for the background using the Papertrey background basics - Tin Types. It's really easy to mask off the frame with post-it notes - what did we do before repositionable pads!!

The first one up has the background stamped in Smokey Shadow ink and the flower set from PTI's Four of a Kind is stamped in Chartreuse and Raspberry Fizz.

This one is background stamped in Chai ink and the dahlias and leaves coloured with copic markers. I used my dahlia die set to cut the leaves and flower - so much easier than cutting them out by hand.
















Did you have a great Christmas? We had a very relaxing one and I intend to spend the next few days playing with some new stamps that my friend Betty bought over from the US for me - I have a whole two weeks off work - bliss!

Amarylis for December

I am shockingly late in showing my last calendar page. Possibly my favourite one of the lot - I have a beautiful amaryllis blooming right now in a pot here at home - all four trumpets are out and it is stunning.

I went with deep red colours - well it is December!

Here's a close up of the flower - coloured with copic markers. Thanks for stopping by this week - I hope you have enjoyed the Year in Flowers.

Tea for Two Birthday

Tea for Two came across the pond for me recently and I couldn't resist getting the matching dies. For its first outing I made a birthday card for my friend Penny in aqua and chocolate.













I used lots of bits and bobs on this card - Pretty Pastels paper, aqua and chocolate card, aqua ribbon along with pearls and die cuts. I also stamped the woodgrain background stamp onto the mat stack die but it's hard to see in the picture.














I used a Martha Stewart punch for the card edge and made it into a tri-fold card.
As there are a few pearls on this creation I'm putting it in for the lastest challenge over at A Passion for Papertrey which this fortnight is to use pretty pearls!

Cyclamen for November

It's hard to believe that there is only one month to go and the Year of Flowers is complete. My Mum and my MIL always have pretty cyclamens on their kitchen windowsills and so took my inspiration from them. I broke into my new Dotty Biscotti paper pack - love the colours - and choose raspberry fizz for my theme this month.
















Here is a little close of the blooms which I coloured with the copic markers that match the raspberry fizz and ripe advocado colours.
















Look out for Amarylis next month!

Climbing back on the crafting ladder!

Sometimes life just jumps up and bites you in the bottom on occasions and this last month has been one of those! A quick visit to Romania on work business and a health scare for my dear Mum (who is fine now) put my crafting on a back burner so to celebrate finding my JustRite stampers that I thought had gone out with the rubbish when I had my new storage units, I made some notelet sets.



























The ones above use the Dot Spot stamp from PTI along with the matching Bitty Dots paper and ink for my friend Jeanette.

These ones below are a gift for Nina and Graham whose wedding we went to a month back, this time using Friends to the End.






































Thanks for stopping by today and not giving up on me! The November installment of the calendar pages is coming up next!