Vintage images

Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas Everybody

Ho! Ho! Ho! it's come round all to soon this year, just let me sleep inbetween goose and pork and sausage rolls ho. hum. says Alex :-) And now he has had his little say, can I wish all my visitors and friends a Happy Wonderful Christmas, and a Healthy, Wealthy and Prosperous New Year, filled with everything you wish for yourselves. Promise I will be a better blogger in the new year and post more often. Love to you all xxx

GONE FISHING Blog Candy !!

Bernice is offering the most delicious stamp set for male cards, titled Gone Fishing - Pop over and look and leave a comment to be in with a chance to win. The link is : http://allthingsinky.blogspot.co.uk/ Sorry - I forgot how to do a clickable link, butg highlight gthe above link and paste it in your browser bar - Good Luck !!!

ATC's

A few ATC's made for swapping .....

Floral Birthday card

I made this card for my cousin's wife, such an easy card and yet, so pretty. I cut out the die cut, stuck on the flowers, attached it to the base cream card and stamped the greeting, simples :-)

Early Birthday Pressie

I had a lovely surprise today, my lovely friend Carol sent me a gorgeous set of Tim Holtz embossing folders that she picked up on her hols in Iowa. Well, I was crowing with joy and couldn't wait to play with them, so here are the results - hope you like them. I have to say there will be no problem with male birthdays from now on, these E.F's are just the ticket :-)

I have loved the Umbrella Man for ages, think he is just perfect, and these other two folders are just as perfect for male cards as well, although my scanner is playing up, because the vintage car was swiped with bright red ink !!

Finally, I thought I would make a simple card using this pretty embossing folder. I sent off another 60+ cards for my soldiers last week, so my box is totally empty now and these cards are just perfect to start the next batch, although they won't be sent now until after Christmas and New Year, so all I have to do now is my own Christmas cards.

a Little Message

Hello friends, I mentioned a while ago that I was going to start a new blog about my family, well, its just about up and running, not much there yet, but - its a private blog, invitation only, so if you would like an invite let me know. xx In the meantime, the image I posted was taken in Italy - if you would like to use it for your cards, please feel free to do so.

Mixed Birthdays and Christmas cards

I have been busy making cards for my boys and girls overseas, but will have to find another collection point for them. I have around 50 made so far - had to dig into them last week because a friend was looking for cards for a church bring and buy sale, so I made her 30 cards - half Welsh and half English, so I needed to up my pace to get my number up again.

Blue Butterfly

Such a simple card, die cut butterfly, and an embossing folder for the dots and Happy Birthday - just swiped with an ink pad and finished off with beads and a couple of punched daisies ....easy peasy but pretty :-) hope you agree xx

Audrey and more .......

Hopefully a modern take on Andy Warhol - using a mega-old stamp I call Audrey xx Simple but effective, embossing folders and punches and a peel off greeting .. Collage birthday card shaped like a gardening apron - central image is an ATC ...

Red Wellies

A little DoCrafts girl, just coloured in her wellies with wet and dry pencil, I think it's enough - hope you like it x

Anniversary Card

made this card using my brand new Grand Calibur and a trellis set of dies I bought to use with it - am loving it already. I used 2 punches to make my daisies, and used gold brads to pin them together. I stamped the background using Brilliant pink ink and stuck on pink ribbon underneath it. The motif backing the daisies is part of the die set. Finished off with a bow and Happy Anniversary. Hope you like it. p.s. many thanks to Carol for all your advice (pop over to her blog, its listed down the side of mine)

Cards for my Soldiers overseas ....

Love this Stampin Up image (Carol gave me her set, thanks so much Carol xx) simple words, nice sentiment, perfect for a soldier to send to his Mum perhaps :-)

I try to keep my Sympathy cards as simple as possible, they work better for me that way ..

KanBan make it so easy for us to make pretty cards - sometimes I cheat and buy a page of images, these took my fancy, such soft pretty colours ...

My Paper Inspirations Gibson Girl has been around for years, and is still as fresh as ever (wish I could say the same about me)

ATC - Cup

The theme over at Think Monday, Think ATC here is CUP - well, I searched everywhere for a cup stamp because I fancied this challenge - and eventually came up with this image which I could cut out - the other stamps are Portobello Road, by Papermania and Distress Inks, hope you like it..

.. The face image is Lucille by Impression Obsession - old lady now but still used a lot..

Port Sunlight/Goodies and Gossip

Distress Inks, Masks and a wooden heart...

Pink and lacy Anniversary card..

Lovely words for my soldiers cards...

Distrtess Ink dabs

Well,  almost a month since my last post, and believe it or not but I have been busy crafting cards and delivering them to my two distribution points for our troops overseas ....plus ahem,  buying a few crafty bits - the sort of things you really don't need, but can't live without :-)   I have also mastered (well almost)  a new technique - something that has bugged me for years - I kid you not !!   I learnt how  to use Distress Inks without making a muddy mess, with some fab little brushes and instruction from a lovely man at Port Sunlight stamp and craft show, which was last Saturday.  So thank you to Carole (her blog is down the left hand side of mine)  because she saw this demo and fetched me back to look, because I go to these shows with blinkers on - see what I want to see, and just miss out the rest, and in fact, I must miss some lovely stuff  and demo's, so in future, I will slow down, take time to smell the flowers - and watch more demo's :-)

Now, my cards - the first one, orange and green is my favourite play with Distress Inks, using two masks, a new stamp and a tiny wooden heart (inserted in the large cog and overstamped )
The second one,   Remember this Moment, hasn't scanned very well, but I thought it was really pretty, having a strip of lace and pink ribbon down the side, and the two tiny daisy buttons, very feminine and girly, a lovelyh anniversary card, I think......
The third one is a Hampton Arts stamp, and a new word stamp, which I bought at the show - loved this, and will use it a lot for my soldiers cards because I think the sentiment is so poignant for families apart ........

The last one is a fluke - I used the card to dab my brushes on when I had finished my play tag at the top - it cleaned my brfushes and made a lovely soft background for another new stamp, the hearts were also from a mask - simple and uncluttered ..   my type of card :-)

Hope you like them, friends and visitors xxx

New Card Layouts

Hello everyone, hope your weather is as good as ours has been this last few days, I think Spring has finally arrived, and now we've put the clocks forward an hour today seems to have lasted forever, it's been lovely.. well know, a couple of weeks ago I bought some new card stock - wasn't sure what I was going to do with it at the time, but I liked the shape, plus, there was a bonus with them, some lovely oval cut out shapes. Here is a pic of my first two, simple and fairly plain, but I think there's enough on them and I liked the soft colours, plus, my lovely new butterflies from Inkadinkadoo look pretty peeping from behind the cut-out front flap - let me know what you think please xx

Busy, Busy Busy ~~~~~

What a few weeks of ups and downs - I have had to escape (if that's the right phrase) into my tiny craft room to get away from heartache and aches and pains - friends developing cancer and having chemo and all sorts of awful things happening in my life at the moment, so its been a few weeks where I have poured my heart into my crafting, just to get away from the real world for a while - does that sound really awful of me? plus I have had an abcess under a tooth which gave me a jawline like Rocky Marciano's duh .......getting over my part of it now, its just the cancer thing that is so awful because the lady concerned is such a gentle, hardworking soul who never did a bad turn to anyone in her life - so cruel and wicked for it to happen to her ......

Anyway, on a lighter note, some of my cards have been sent out for birthdays, or sent off to our troops overseas, but here is a random selection of ones I have left, the cream card with gold embossing on it (a new Inkadinkadoo stamp) is for a 90th birthday, hope you like them. I also had a serious parcel of goodies from a lovely, lovely lady in USA so some of my cards are using her stamps - where would I be without Carol (follow her blog on the left) Sue (follow her blog on the left too) and my lovely, so kind friends and acquaintances who help by donating goodies for me to use in my charity work, thank you all so much mwahhhh !!!! Now the cards dah dahhh......

The two Wisteria cards are a Spellbinders die - it also cuts out the two individual flowers - I am in love !!! I used a purple and green flower paper to Papermania paper to cut this die from ..... and sprayed one card with Tattered Angels glimmer mists ....

the Happy Birthday daisy card is cut with a Martha Stewart punch ....

the Butterfly is die cut from the card, and colour chalked on - its a Cuttlebug die ..

the top image is the inside of the card ....with mygorgeous fav. Inkadinkadoo stamp again :-)

Guess what - my butterfly stamp again - embossed this time with sparkly gold EP

- this is for my cousin's 90th birthday - I shall just add a small word stamp, something like Have a Special Day, underneath the butterfly, because she doesn't want a 90 anywhere on any card she receives teehee.......

sorry my cards are posted in reverse order, hope you enjoy xx

Jake's Card

I made this card using a lovely die cut decoupage car from a pack of stuff for making up to 5 cards, including the backing papers (a strip of which I cut off to use across the centre of my card, I think the young man will love his card :-) - well I hope he will anyway. I put his name on the front grill ....

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Hello everyone,
I am so sorry I have neglected my blog this last year, and I do thank you all for your patience and for calling in on me when you can. Hubby is now fully recovered as is Alex the woofer so this year is going to be 100% positive and I am back to making as many cards as I can for my armed forces lads and lasses ..

Incidentally, I had a light bulb idea these last few days for using up left over Christmas Pudding or stale cake -- crumble it - and mix with melted chocolate - I used half a large bar. Set aside in the fridge until it is very hard but can still be moulded and then make lots of tiny balls of the mix, dip it once more into melted chocolate and place on non-stick parchment to set. Put it back in the fridge to set really hard and then put the little balls into tiny paper cases and voila - home made truffles - and very tasty ones too - try it ladies :-) xx