Crazy Birds #2 - Friday 29th May 2015

Hello Friends,

Hope you've all had a good week! Thank you for all your comments on the sewing card...my volunteer loved it and was sure her friend would too.

Today I'm sharing another card made with Tim Holz Crazy Bird stamps and I'm going to make this my contribution to this week's Sunday Stamper Challenge (week #357) from Hels Sheridan - deets here

I haven't had a chance to take part for a while because I've been so busy, but this week's theme is 'anything goes' so no excuses.

I have managed to get some crafting done this week...there are a lot of birthdays amongst family and friends coming up, plus one of my American family is about to have a baby (fortunately I know the sex so could get on with the cards!), so I've wanted to get everything made in plenty of time, especially as we have a week's holiday coming up soon.

This is a 7x7 card, I made the splattered background with a mixture of  Dylusions inks and coloured the birds with both Chameleon and Promarker pens. I then cut them out and mounted them on the card with 3d foam tape.

I cut the little word tiles using the tiniest of dies from my Spellbinders Classic Squares set and add the letter by hand. I did the same inside, mounting them inside a Spellbinders Word Bubble die.

 Finally I stamped the birds on the envelope and coloured them, first of all placing some card inside the envelope to prevent the ink bleeding all the way through.

Thank you so much for stopping by and have a lovely weekend y'all!

Love and Hugs,

Carole X

Those Crazy Ol' Birds #1 - Sunday 3rd May 2015

Hello Friends,

Thank you for stopping by! I'm was so pleased with your comments for the Sneakers card, which was a really fun card to make. 

I think I finally got around all your blogs yesterday....I'm sorry my visits are sporadic with quick comments lately, my valued (but too little!) craft time seems to be increasingly spent on time-consuming projects at the moment...and it be honest, I'm loving it. I just really enjoy taking a lot of time over something. The projects I made for the Eileen Hull post recently really brought that home to me.

This week I have made just one 'card' in three craft sessions, one of which was almost a whole day! Yes you did read that correctly... in truth it's not exactly a card - more a musical exploding box card, made for a wedding we are going to next month.

The bride is the eldest daughter of very good friends and they are a lovely couple, so I wanted to create something extra special...we are seeing her parents today and as it is virtually impossible to post, I wanted to hand it over to them. I will share it with you soon....

I've also been working on a couple of cards for other people; I  still keep getting asked for commissions, but I made the decision last year to not accept any more: I've been doing them for so many years and they take a lot of time, when I would rather be making projects that I really want to make. I used to tell myself that they were good for me because I was designing cards that were, well not exactly out of my comfort zone, but not what I would otherwise have made, but in truth I was finding that I was making so many cards for other people, that my own cards for birthdays etc ended up being very rushed. 

I do have a couple of 'customers' who have always given me a list of cards for the year and I agreed to carry on making for them, otherwise I have strangely found it very empowering to be true to myself and say sorry, but I can't do it!

Fun with Crazy Birds....

Last weekend I received a belated birthday present: Tim Holz's Crazy Birds stamps -  and before I started on the wedding project I made some craft time to play with them, so I made a card with each of the stamps in the set and here is the  first one...they are so quirky and funny, I love them!

 This is a shaker card...I used some lilac/mauve card for the base and inked the edges using Seedless Preserves distress ink. I then took some purple (with a hint of turquoise) patterned paper from stash. The paper was given free with a magazine quite some time ago and was in my 'must use up' box! I tore the edges and added this to the base card. I made the shaker from the same card as the base card and die cut using Spellbinders Classic Rectangles. I used little pink seed beads for the fill.

The flower is made using Spellbinders Carnation Creations, multi-layered and with a button and white twine for the centre. The edges were dusted with Seedless Preserves.

I coloured the bird with a mixture of Chameleon pens and Promarkers and decorated the envelope to match. To finish I die-cut 'Hello' with a Spellbinders D-Lite die.

 That's all for today, I hope you are all having a super Bank Holiday weekend(if you are in UK of course, but a super weekend to all!)...we had Friday off so spent the day in Cirencester, yesterday we had a mooch around Tetbury...the fields around here are all carpeted in yellow from the rapeseed plants, absolutely beautiful! Today we are seeing our friends and tomorrow, may be a trip to Bath, I am still looking for something to wear to the wedding!

Love and Hugs,
Carole X 

Hi -Tops Card - Wednesday 29th April 2015

Hello Friends,

Thank you for your comments on my last two posts, especially the wreath, which was something I really enjoyed making - glad you liked it!

Today I'm sharing a recent card I made for a 12 year old boy cousin. I made it using a digital stamp. I usually keep a note of where I find the digis to give the site credit here, but this time I didn't and I've searched but can't find it again! I'll keep looking.

I used a  6x6 card blank and covered the base layer with grey card. I used a shoe print 

M-Bossability folder (Spellbinders) with matt silver card for the background layer.

The image is coloured using Chameleon pens. I tore the card around the image in to rectangle shape and then added detailing using the following Sizzix dies:

Tim Holz Alterations - Artful Arrows

Tim Holz Alterations -  Mini Clipboard

Sizzix Bigz - Primitive Stars

I stamped the arrow on a left over piece from the embossed card, and once I had die cut the star and clip, I sanded the card to give it a rough texture.

The greeting was stamped on to black card using silver ink.

Thank you so much for stopping by,

Love and Hugs

Carole X

Lazing on a Sunny Afternoon! Sunday 12th April 2015

Hello Friends,

It was good to catch up with all your blogs yesterday, after a week of no blogging or visiting! I was busy at work, it's that time of year when we have end of year statistics and plans to make for forthcoming events, but that's all good.

I was again so pleased to find that my butterfly corner bookmark had won a prize at the butterfly challenge as well!

I've hardly made any cards over the past few weeks, but I have been crafting: concentrating on two special projects that I can't share with you until Thursday. They took up all the time I had spare to craft but I am very pleased with them!

No crafting this weekend as we are out quite a lot, but that's not unusual as I rarely craft on a weekend. I was intending to be home on Monday, but I have to go into work for part of the day to catch up with my two Monday office ladies.

Anyway, I made this card a few weeks ago for a male friend of ours...

I used this cute House Mouse Gruffies stamp, coloured with Chameleon pens...

That's it for today, I will be back soon!

Thank you so much for stopping by,
Love and Hugs
Carole X