Happy Post and birthday gifts

 This gorgeous envelope arrived today, I didn't open it for ages and when I did I was careful to not damage the artwork by Bibi of Rubber Dance Art Stamps in the Netherlands, and inside....

Lots of lovely rubber! These are all the stamps I won in a recent celebratory giveaway on the Rubber Dance blog, WOW if I hadn't been so tired today I would have already got stuck into stamping with these babies! Thank you Bibi, now I need to enter the July challenge!

 I also won a challenge at Cute Card Thursday and got a £10 Bunny Zoe's voucher, Bunny Zoe's is having a 60% off sale so I got even more than I would have done normally, and at these prices I did add a little more to my order which arrived yesterday - thanks Nikki!

These are all of my 60th birthday cards and two ruby anniversary cards, which just goes to show that if you don't throw a party you don't get many cards! These are lovely and much appreciated though. The second from the left is hand made by Myriam - see below, the third was made by my Mum, the sixth is made by Marg - see below, and the eighth is made by Mum for Hubby to give me.

Today I decided to take them down and put them in a keepsake box, which is when I found I had so many more for my 50th, and even for subsequent birthdays but since I took early retirement I don't get any from work colleagues, and my remaining family members have all sorts of problems and haven't remembered I guess. Other friends who did know clearly only give if there is a party going on that they are invited to!

The keepsake box was slightly overflowing, I found some old photos in there and some keepsakes from the holiday to Prague that I had for my 50th - which I had forgotten were in there. I looked at another little keepsake box thinking there might be space in it, only to find it was full of embellishments I forgot I had. So another surprise today!

 Hubby's family didn't know about my birthday or our anniversary either, as the lynchpin of the family - mother in law who knows all the birthdays and dates to remember - has been ill and in hospital then a home for weeks and only returned to her home this week, so the news would not have got round to anyone, although she doesn't see much of the family these days so it might not have made much difference. MIL is the reason I am so tired today, after two good nights and days home she had a bad one and we were called out in the early hours, and she has continued to have a bad day so I had to call the doctors and get a home visit for her, but let's hope tonight will be better and she will settle down again.

 This sweet little card was made by Quirky team mate Myriam and came all the way from Costa Rica with the little gifts shown, Myriam I love it all - thank you so much! It even arrived just in time.

 This very elegant and opulent card was made by another crafting buddy, Marg Byatt, Thank you so much Marg, Hubby was much impressed with this one.

 These were little gifts on the day from Hubby, who is going to put money towards a new camera for me when I decide which one to go for, which could take me some time!

 My son Richard and his girlfriend Julie bought me a gorgeous rainbow seaglass bracelet by Seaham Waves, I have wanted one of these for a few years since I first saw them, I love it thank you.

I also had money from the parents, and my other son Chris and his wife Vanessa and little Kenny and bump, or I will have toward that camera - I really need to decide but so many things have taken up my time in the last few weeks and months I have been to the camera shop to try the weight of the ones I have thought about, but do I change to a CSC, big decisions!

I don't normally grow sunflowers, well not deliberately - the birds have planted the odd one in the past. This year I did, and these survived the onslaught of the moluscs, when this dark red beauty showed it's face I was quite surprised because I can't remember the seeds I bought being anything special, but they probably were as I got them from Thompson and Morgan. I will take a better photo of it soon.

This is another view of it. I have normal yellow ones growing too.

Finally - a while ago I bought The Cinch to replace the Bind it All, I am talking months ago too. I had not used it yet until I made this. Richard asked me for a list of birthdays and dates and I thought why not make a little birthday book. There are downloadable pages for this and instructions on the WR Memory Keepers blog. It was so easy, I am in love with The Cinch and think I will be making many more books. The Bind it All was a good little machine, and took up less room in it's pretty matching tote but I never managed to get the pages and covers quite lined up, or the right number of holes just where I wanted them but The Cinch has changed all of that. I covered the greyboard that I used for the covers with paper from a Sara Book, and I used a free balloon die from Simply Cards and Papercrafts magazine, part of set of two dies which are this month's cover gift. I added strings and birds in the sky with a Souffle pen and the birds, and die cut Birthday with a Spellbinders die and book with Quickutz dies. 

I have actually entered a challenge or two with this book:

Crafting from the Heart - #68 anything goes (Sun)

Papertake Weekly - don't be square (Tues)

Creative Fingers - #87 Anything goes (Fri)

Bunny Zoe's challenge blog - Summer breeze (Aug 9th)

Die Cut Divas - Summer (July)

Challenges won:

Incy Wincy - doodle what? 

Published in  Simply Cards and Papercraft magazine issue 140

Merry Christmas to you!

Well here it is, Christmas day and all of the fuss will soon be over. We are ready, just about. The dogs are bathed, the bathrooms cleaned and the towels washed, the rest of the house is clean, the beds are made. Shopping is as done as it will be, presents wrapped and labelled, I just have one box to decorate, a special box for a special boy. It will contain some second hand Thomas the Tank Engine track and a Sordor mine and is an extra present that will live here for when Kenny visits.

I think most of the presents under our tree are for Kenny, and Richard has added his presents, they are not all ours. Awaiting our visitors to open them.

This card is made from a Unity stamped snow peeps image that I stamped and coloured, with Promakers, last year and a Spellbinders die cut frame that I made when I got this die, they seemed perfect together. The paper is a freebie from a magazine. The sentiment came with the snow angel, and for this frame I attempted to add white through the die with my Sharpie white paint marker. This was the second attempt, the first was far messier. I think this will be a card for next year. The ribbon is from Crafty Ribbons, and I added snowflake eyelets to the corners to let the lime green card show through.

I have entered the following challenges:

I love Promarkers - anything goes (Jan 6th)

Creative Card Crew - anything goes (Jan 6th)

This is Kenny's card, he loves any sort of vehicle so Santa in his snowmobile by Dustin Pike seems like a good choice. I coloured the image with Promarkers, the paper is Papermania/Docrafts, the ribbon is from Crafty Ribbons.

Inside the card.

I have entered this card in the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp - Wednesday challenges, anything goes - Docraft paper.

I needed a couple of gift card holders and made them with perlescent card and the WR Memory Keepers envelope tool, which made the perfect size holders. I added a couple of images I had stamped and coloured with Promarkers last year. The geese are a Little Claire stamp, and the sheep is a Penny Black stamp.

I haven't decorated the back.

I have entered the following challenges:

Allsorts - last minute gifts (Sat 3rd Jan)

Well I made a Quirky mess alright!

I'm back, with my second make for the Quirky Reminder. I decided to use the Gelli Plate (hmmm, where did I put it, scrabble scrabble, panic ----- oh There it is!), and re-watched some of the videos first, thought I was ready so after searching for the thing and then some paint I found I didn't have a great colour choice in cheap acrylic, mostly silver, gold, white and some green - oh and some yellow from a tube that split and I tried to save the contents by putting it in a plastic screw top jar and seems to be hardly usable and drying up now, I gave yellow a miss!

If the phone will upload the photos to the cloud I can show you WIP, which started out well then went downhill fast. I wanted to over print my first efforts, and I found some Plaid Artist Acrylic paint in maroon and green (more green), didn't shake it right away so ended up with clear gel stuff, shook it and got the paint, added some of both and brayered away. Tried to do some stuff with stencils and foam stamps, and ended up with a gloopy red and green mess on my card (I don't have Bristol paper, or even know what that is yet, so used my best stamping card here).

(So this was the ghost print from the first print, except I have run the roller over a blank bit and the roller had silver paint on it. It was actually looking promising at this point!

I printed over the green with silver you see, but then added this maroon and green Plaid paint, and tried lifting some like you do, but ended up with this total mess, see details below of how I got from this to .........

this!

This was after over printing in white and then green and this is the panel cut to fit the card.)

Today I came down and the mess was dry so I thought I would add some white over the top, maybe that would help, brayed the Gelli Plate, and then realised that all my efforts with stencils and torn paper was on the acrylic sheet that protects the plate - I forgot I covered it before going to bed! Never mind I wasn't going to waste that so tried to get a print anyway, semi successful. So got the cover off the plate and went for the bright green again, with stencils and again varying degrees of success. I brayered the paint through the stencils before removing them, didn't work on the flowery stencil, so got another one out for that corner.

I cut a panel, mounted it on Kraft, wrapped round some rafia, punched holes and used a couple of flat headed eyelets from WR Memory Keepers, added some metal letters that are ribbon sliders, and added the image which was first mounted on Kraft. The image itself is coloured with Promakers, and I tried to give it a middle of the night look with the shadow round the image, this went a bit wrong when I added blue dots, so I tried to cover it (unsuccessfully) with black glitter glue! I used clear gel medium on the water too. 

I love the image, it is so funny, it is called Ferald Sleepwalking from Squigglefly, what is Ferald? I think I might have coloured him wrong, he looks like a little lion cub to me, but Ferald could be a ferret perhaps!

One thing I can say is that this card is UNIQUE! If you hop on over to Quirky Crafts you can see plenty more uniqueness and if you join in you could win some great prizes from That Craft Place,  Squigglefly and Digital Delights.

I dived into the following challenges:

Cute Card Thursdays - Splish Splash

Pan Pastels - go grungy (3rd May)

Quirky reminder, and new cards.

Just a reminder that you have until midday Saturday to enter my Quirky Challenge - Everybody wants to be a cat. So far we don't seem to have many (if any) entries that are inspired by either the Aristocats film or the song, and that means if anyone does enter with anything inspired by either they stand a really good chance of making the top three!

I don't have a reminder card to show you, but if you hop on over to the Quirky Blog you will find some great new examples from the team.

 On Sunday we had a stall at the Canon's House fete in Devizes. Canon's House is a respite home for disabled children, and they can have 8 at a time but have 54 on the books. I took my spare stash to try and sell some, and I took all of my cards, which I took out of the shop, and made a few more. These hat cards were last minute but I am quite pleased with them, I have a bag of the hats, goodness knows where from. The middle card sold on the day, one of the three I sold! Die cut panel is Locking Loops by Spellbinders.

This little Papermania Rabbit image has been sitting waiting to go on a card for ages, and finally he is there! Hero Arts greeting and panel, Spellbinders butterfly circle and circle and some baker's twine to finish. Image coloured with Promarkers.

I have entered this card in the following challenges:

Stamping for the weekend - anything goes.

 I was told the theme was By The Sea, but it had changed to Hawaii on the day, I made some flip flop cards with a Sizzix Bigz die, which fitted either theme! The shell is a Accucut die, stamps I think are Papermania and Hero Arts sunglasses. The flip flop opens to reveal Fun in the Sun from the Hero Arts set.

Pink flip flop which I had to stick down as I had problems with some of the hinges which had cut through on the eBosser, maybe due to me cutting 3 sheets at once.

Several flip flop cards, some are topped with funky foam to look like real flip flops. I made envelopes with the WR Memory Keepers envelope punch tool which was so easy.