Crafts By Carolyn Big Weekend Challenge Nov 08

I am attempting to do the Nov 08 Weekend Challenge over on the Crafts By Carolyn forum. I have only managed the first two and I am not terribly happy with the keyring but I got the points and I am giving it to my niece with her card.

The card is an interesting fold and many of the challenges include variations of it, and we have until Friday morning to complete as many as possible! Mmmm!

Alfie dog - a Man United football supporter now?

Alfie found himself a new toy to adopt, and it doesn't even make a noise! Is he a Man United fan, or is it because it used to belong to my son who he seems to find very threatening and tries to keep him out every single day when he comes home.

Alfie hasn't ripped the red devil yet either, Sooty keeps running off with it but Alfie carries it round all over the place.


Guess what - more stamps arrived, I really must stop buying them!

I have made a birthday card for my niece in case they visit tomorrow and I can give it to my brother to take away ready for next week. I just have one to make for my 19 year old nephew now.

The stamp is Penny Black Beehave, coloured with Prismacolour pencils and blended with Sansador (and I am not very happy as I have found my new set of 120 has broken cores so I end up with half a pencil before I can start colouring), cut out with Nestie, matted on English Paper Company paper. Ribbon and MM Tag reads Hello, and Karen Foster blooms with Dovecraft brad, and chipboard letters.
Corners rounded with Paper Gator.

Craft Stamper Blog

Wow! I just found that my favourite magazine Craft Stamper has a newly hatched blog! Also there is blog candy!

I won new stash - I think and RAK from Linda

This is the package of goodies that turned up on Friday.
I don't yet know why but I know it was from Practical Publishing, could have been a give-away draw.

There are some lovely Cardology brads, cards with envelopes, sequins, wooden flowers with button middles and ribbons, more brads, mini clothes hangers, glitter, embossing powder (I think), and a sheet of greetings. So whatever the reason I am pleased with it but you would think they might have put a note in to give me a clue, it was only by googling the sender's address that I determined it must be Practical Publishing!


I also had a lovely RAK arrive from dear Linda, a gorgeous card and some lace and here they are:

Linda's Fairy card is just so lovely, love the dragon paper, and the lace is shown draped over the card. Linda's blog has many gorgeous creations on it and is well worth hopping over to.

It's Halloween!

Here is my very little pumpkin head, which let me down by going out when I did have some little trick or treaters visit, so he has to have his hat at an angle to let the air in. Smell the pumpkin singeing anyone?

You can see how small he is, those are regular size bricks behind him!

The other photo looks very spooky, the camera shook a bit and gave me an interesting light effect.

The last spooky picture is of my messy craft room, the tidy bit! I just added this wonderful cobweb I snapped outside suspended from the light and pergola I wasn't sure it would work reduced but I am happy with it.

Happy Halloween!

I'm ready, as long as we don't get a load more witches and wizards than last year!

I have actually carved a little pumkin, the first time I remember doing this since I was a child - did I do this as a child? I am not certain.

I downloaded this Craft Robo template for Halloween candy boxes from UK Scrappers, it is copyright and for personal use only not for resale.
I will check the name of the designer and add soon.

I bought halloween candy bags to put inside and have filled them up, all 6 that I made.

I had a lot of trouble finding black card thin enough for the Robo to cut, but eventually after several failed attempts I found this card.

If I get more visitors I have some candy in some of the candy bags, there are a lot in the pack!

Throw a curve for This Thursday

There are plenty of curves on this card for the Throw a Curve challenge on This Thursday challenge blog.

I have used my Bigz XL scalloped card die for the blank, and added a spotty paper wrap, polka dot green ribbon which you can only just see, and the lovely hand made dress from PCJ forum buddy Sabina and it came all the way from Oz where Sabina lives.

Added a couple of Bazzill wings blooms and a polka dot brad, then a handbag charm I coloured and a couple of chipboard peices though I am not sure I am happy with the placement. I added faux stitching with a Sakura souffle pen in green.

More stash

I just had a pile of stamps arrive from the USA (all the House Mouse ones and the PB bicycles stamp). I have bought from this seller before but now she is not using Global Priority and told me she sent an email to that effect, which I probably read and promptly forgot. So I didn't check how much postage was going to be, usually in the Priority envelope it is about $12 which is around £7 right now, but I had to pay $21 for this lot so double and with the exchange rate going down not so many bargains about but I did get quite a lot of stamps.

The stamps are mostly still cheaper than over here despite the low exchange rate, but I will think twice about purchasing again, at least without checking postage! Recently I have been buying some stamps from the U.K. because I have found them as cheap as the USA and postage is less.

There is one USA seller (beecreativestamps) who packs in as many bubble envelopes as it takes whatever the size of your order but only charges around $15 tops and bears the cost herself of any extra postage, and she now gives me 5% off all purchases for buying so much from her! I don't know how she makes any money from this.

Yesterday I had my goodies arrive for featuring in the article in Quick Cards Made Easy about latest craft purchase, it was 16 sheets of 12"x12" paper and several sheets of 3d card stickers all by Karen Foster.

I have a package on the way as a swap too, I have to put up a parcel of stash to send back which shouldn't be hard.

Yesterday I bought a "few" more dies on the Ellison site, they are having a sale on many items, some were reduced from £13.50 to £3.50 - how could I resist! I know I can get them for around £10.99 from Cutting Edge Crafts but £3.50 is still a bargain, and some of the thin cuts were down to £1 or £1.79 each. I put it down to retail therapy as I wasn't feeling well, and when I finally managed to get out of bed, and dressed by the evening I was on the spend!

I did take a couple of dies out of the basket again, they were the less reduced ones and three that were to make small cards with windows and a matching envelope (I assumed it matched) but I figured I could do those without the aid of a die but I kept one of the £9.85 ones to make a Christmas hanging star.

I thought I would show you some of my recent purchases and the prize stash. I had to include the Big Shot, I know I bought her a while ago but she is so pretty! The BS is not that way round now, I am left handed so I have the flower side showing and no gems.

What about the Inkadinkado Inchie stamp sets then, I haven't done a lot of inchies but I love these sets and there are at least two more sets that they make.
I added a spider to the Halloween card but I had a lot of trouble making him stick, and in the end I had to use silicone glue which is showing in the photo. I added another leaf to the baby pumpkin too.








Here are a few of the topper cards I made from the Arty Miss mystery box, no skill required! I haven't been sleeping well lately so last night was sitting up late sorting Christmas bits into a Really Useful box with compartment tray, before that I kept catching the corner of the box they were balanced on and sending them flying all over the floor, will be picking up for months!

Customer service is dead, well partly!

Not just craft goodies! First my 3 in 1 rice cooker bowl suddenly didn't fit right, it was out of shape. I searched for a replacement bowl, it was £27. The rice cooker is nearly 3 years old and a brand new 4 in 1 model is £50.

I was going to order it online at £50 from John Lewis, but I had an Argos voucher and some Nectar points and though Argos were charging just under £55 for the rice cooker we set off to get one from the nearest branch that was still open, a 30 minute journey.

It was 15 minutes until closing time which is why I guess an assistant rushed over to see if we needed help - I mean that doesn't happen in Argos!

We found the code then ummed and ahhed about getting a new phone too. I should say at this point that although Argos were charging more they were giving £5 back for spending over £50 and £10 if you spent over £100. When we finally got the phone sorted (ours has been playing up for ages and the display had vanished yet again), and got to the miserable woman on the till, she tilled it up and it was a few pence under £100. I said we could buy something little to make it up - no it is too late "I pressed send" she said.

Customer service is dead! If she was helpful she would have suggested we did just that, but no she wasn't going to undo this and let us get our extra £5 voucher.

I did get £35 off in points and vouchers though.

I have been getting stamps, in ones and twos, I have a load on order from the USA that I expect any day now, and I got a job lot of Cuttlebug die sets which I hope I don't pay tax on.

I am debating if I should buy a Making Memories Tag Maker punch set, I have the tag maker set and I hate hand cutting, I thought it would do that when it makes the tag but no - they make a seperate and more costly punch set!

If I get it at around £83 from the USA would I actually use it? I could try and train the Robo to cut my shapes, I tried Spellbinder dies before but it was never quite right.

What would I rather spend £83 on I have to ask myself, new boots, The Slice, clothes....... more Big Shot dies............

Hooray I am back!

I haven't been able to get into blogger, google, support forums, comment on other blogs etc since Friday, couldn't work out what was going on but much deleting of cookies - two days running and I am in!

It is no joke if this happens, the only way to contact google is via a form for which you need to log in to get to, and if you can't log in you are stuffed! The help forums also need a login to google.

Here is the engagement card I made for my son and his fiancee.

The card is dark burgundy in leather effect, and I teamed it with teal. The image stamp is by Inkadinkado and the sentiment was a cover stamp with Craft Stamper magazine both stamped in plum. The edge of the card and the insert panel were both punched with a Kreaxions 5 way punch and the hearts punched out were dotted over the main card. The scroll heart corners are on a Bigz die, and the panels were mounted on holographic silver card. Finally I added a layered bloom and tied round a ribbon.

I won - whooo hoooo, I won, I won.....

I won the fantastic Jamboree bag from the Artistic Stamper blog by Jennie. Whooo hoooo!

Spooktacular card

This card is to cover two challenges, one is House Mouse BOO! challenge, the other is This Thursday The Spooky Season. I had to improvise with the HM stamps, the graduate became aWizard with broom, and the Christmas bauble became half a pumpkin, both got new wizard hats.

Spider webs, broom and boo stamped with Hero Arts Owl-oween set, and die cut Pumpkin by Accucut. I don't think I did a good job of the colouring trying to make the robes dark but not losing the definition was hard.

More Christmas cards

I made these two from the card blanks in my Arty Miss mystery Christmas box. The holographic one is a bit dark. The other one is sprayed with glimmer mist, inked with green Whisper inks and I put some paper with baubles in the tree aperture. The stars are Crafty Bitz, the paper tree has bronze gems also in the pack with the stars.

Happy Birthday to Moo

Here is Mrs Fastidious by Penny Black in her red wellies, cut out with Nestabilities, sentiment stamped with Stampendous clear stamps.

I had some good news today, my son is engaged to Vanessa - engagement cards are in order then!

I was googling for House Mouse stamps today in my lunch break and found the House Mouse official design site which is great fun, you can sign up for the newsletter, visit the mice blog, look at the lovely stamps in year order, price order, buy them and lots of other stuff like mugs, T shirts, and calendars. You can spend many happy hours looking round!

Christmas cards

Here are a couple of cards I made, one was going to be entered into the This Thursday challenge but the panels are not on straight and I was ill on the last day so I didn't enter it. I finally got round to using my Cuttlebug embossing folders on my new Big Shot, I have had some folders for over a year not used. The design is cased from a card by Fe Fe.

The other card is using a blank I got in my ArtyMiss mystery Christmas box, with some holographic card in the aperture and some stickers. The next one will be better.

Alfie the destroyer

You might remember that Alfie dog only likes toys with sound boxes, no squeekers! Also that he got destroying the toy and removing the sound box down to about 20 seconds.

Well this is Alfie's new toy which I made from a section of a leg of a pair of jeans, stuffed with old clean socks, and three sound boxes. One is a dinosaur roaring (well it was a dino toy), one is a Dalek saying "Exterminate" from an Easter egg box, and the other was a turtle saying "cowabunga dude". The last one has faded to a buzz, and the one we can hear constantly is "Exterminate".

The toy is a bit big and heavy and is beginning to look the worse for chewing, but he hasn't got the socks or sound boxed out yet!

Just look at that grin!