Crafting again

Hurrah! The drought is over! I managed to get back in my craft room last night and make something, after nearly two weeks of no crafting (how did I survive?!)!

My friend Sally had a baby boy last Friday so I wanted to drop off a card for her (we'll go visit once she's gotten settled - I know how chaotic those first few days can be, especially when you've got a toddler as well as a newborn!):

The stamp is a Mo Manning design from Stampendous (doesn't she draw the most adorable babies? :)) and I've coloured it with my Promarkers and cut and embossed it with a Nesties die. The papers and buttons are all remnants from the June mini kit from Creative Craft World - I've already made a mini scrapbook page and two cards with this kit and still had enough left to make this card and can probably squeeze another one or two out of what remains! :D

I also used one of my new Memory Box dies and added some plain white baker's twine from Stampin' Up!. The scalloped border punch is also from Stampin' Up! :)

Am going to pop this through Sally's letter box on the way home from DD1's Rhythm Time class today. Hope she likes it.

WOYWW 160

Wow. I feel like I haven't WOYWWed in ages. In fact, it's been two weeks. And there's pretty good reasons for that. But, first things first, the desk:

Yes, this is a craft desk sadly unloved and neglected, piled high with paperwork (I was sorting through some papers looking for one particular document), and the only real feature of note is some pretty new Memory Box dies that I got last week.

And the reason for the neglected state of my desk and my absence from WOYWW? Well, I've not been crafting.. the only thing I've made in the past 2+ weeks has been a quick father's day card for DH. And the reason I've not been crafting? Well, firstly I was away in N Wales for 5 days, taking the kids for a mini holiday at my mum's. Then I was back home and spending my evenings (my only real crafting time) tidying the house and moving stuff around in order to make space for a delivery of new furniture. Then the furniture arrived and I spent an evening shifting heavy boxes around and unpacking some.

And then we reached Friday of last week.

This is what the river behind my house usually looks like:

This is what it looked like on Friday evening: :/

It got to about a foot away from actually flooding up onto the patio (and hence into my kitchen). It didn't get that far, thankfully, but it did get into the celllar. And because the fuse box is down there and we didn't know how far the water might rise, DH and I decided we needed to turn the power off, to be on the safe side, which meant we couldn't really stay in the house so we had to get the kids up, at about 11pm, and relocate to a hotel down the road!

Thankfully the waters receded the next morning and we came back home and have been spending every evening since, and a good portion of the daytime too, clearing out the cellar. We lost a lot of stuff - lots of books and CDs and DVDs that were boxed up down there awaiting us getting bookshelves etc sorted. Also a lot of my clothes that were in bin bags down there since we moved in (admittedly clothes that I haven't worn in years but still..). Oh and my beloved wedding shoes. :(

I've been salvaging some stuff that has sentimental value but most of it's gone for good. We're going to replace a lot of the CDs and DVDs and books in time. Oh and my Ranger heat tool has turned out to be very useful for drying out waterlogged books! :lol:

So, needless to say, crafting has very much taken a back-seat. But the cellar is pretty much sorted now and we've also managed to finish unpacking all the new furniture so that's done too. So with any luck, I may be able to get back into my craft room over the next couple of days and get some creating done. Fingers crossed.

Happy Father's Day!

Well, didja miss me? :)

I've been kinda AWOL from both crafting and blogging for the last week. In fact, I've been so busy I didn't even get chance to post a WOYWW on Wednesday... not that I had a desk picture to share cos the kiddies and I spent last week over in North Wales at my mum's and we had a fab, if busy, time. Lots of early mornings (the girls were sharing a room so tended to wake each other up in the morning rather earlier than usual!) and trips out - we were lucky enough to have some lovely weather so we spent a morning on the beach and at the paddling pool on the prom and an afternoon riding the kiddy rides at the children's village on the prom (DD2 *loved* the trampolines! :D). We also visited the Welsh Mountain Zoo and Bodafon Park Farm. And when we weren't out and about exploring, the kids had run running around my mum's house - and chasing after her poor long-suffering cat! :)

So I got no crafting done and no blogging either as I could only get online via my phone (my mum has wifi internet but has no idea what the WEP key etc is so I couldn't connect to it! :lol:).

So there you go, that's why things have been quiet around here. We're all home again now though and I did manage to find a spare few moments to do a quick bit of crafting on Saturday night... to make this for DH: :)

It was a very quick and simple card but it says it all really, doesn't it? :D

Challenges Galore!

I've been a busy little cardmaking bee lately, playing with some fab images and making cards for blog challenges. :)

Rather than spamming people's reading lists with multiple blog posts, I thought I'd combine them all into one post....

The first card uses a cute Sugar Nellie image and I'm entering it into The Sugar Bowl challenge (sketch challenge plus optional theme of Shades of Violet):

She's coloured with my Promarkers to match these pretty papers (Freebie Kate Knight ones that came with a magazine) and I added some lace, Stampin' Up! pleated ribbon, flowers and a butterfly brad to finish.

Next up, more playing with my new Dilly Bean digi stamps, this time a card to enter into the Dilly Bean Designers and Friday Challenges blog challenge (current theme: stripes):

When I saw this image, I just had to have it... not least because it's called Mia and that's my DD2's name. :) I coloured the image with my Promarkers and then masked the image and the border with masking fluid and blended Tumbled Glass Distress Ink over it and flicked water onto it to make a speckled, distressed background. The papers are more freebies (I wish craft magazines would stop giving away such pretty papers, I'll never use up any of my stockpiled stash at this rate! :lol:) and I cut a border strip using a Martha Stewart punch and added some seam binding ribbon that I'd coloured with Distress Stains. A few pearls finished it off.

And finally, a card for the One Stitch at a Time challenge (theme: Use a Digi), using this lovely Stitchy Bear digi stamp:

I've kept this card really simple because the image just went SO well this gorgeous paper (another freebie!) and I felt too much embellishment would detract from the "garden scene" look of the fairy (coloured with my Promarkers) layered through the paper. So I just stamped a TH sentiment and heat embossed with pale pink powder and finished with a couple of butterly stickers.

Red, White and Blue...

..that's the theme this week at the Passion for Promarkers challenge blog.

And here's my entry:

As I mentioned in my WOYWW post, I recently followed a link to Dilly Bean's blog and her gorgeous digi stamps and fell utterly in love with them and kind of had to buy a whole bunch of them! :lol: I was eager to play with my new goodies so I used this image - Heart Fairy Framed - for my card.

She's coloured in with Promarkers, of course, and a touch of white gel pen here and there for highlights. I kept the card pretty simple as the image is so striking I felt it needed a bold, simple card design. The papers and baker's twine are freebies that came with a craft mag (can't remember which one!) recently. I inked the edges of the papers in black and doodled a border around the card to match the one around the image. To finish I hand-wrote the greeting as that seemed to fit with the doodled/hand-drawn effect borders.

Et voila!

I'm also entering this card into the "use a digi" challenge at One Stitch at a Time. :)

I printed out a whole bunch of Dilly Bean images (might as well use up a whole sheet of card rather than print one image at a time and cut the card up) so expect to see more of them on my cards in the near future! :)

WOYWW 157

Alas, alack, the celebrations are over. No, no, no, not the jubilee, the WOYWW anniversary! :D And what a swell party it was, with hundreds of desks to nosey at and ATCs in their hundreds, if not thousands, being made and swapped! I did my darnedest to make it round all 180+ desks before midnight Tuesday but I didn't quite make it so apologies to the last few dozen that I didn't get to.

So here we are again beginning a fourth year of the biggest blog hop in the world. So what's on my desk today?

The usual mess and chaos including Distress Stains and inks from recent ATC sessions (WOYWW ones and others) and the Promarkers are out and about today as I've been playing with colouring some images. There's a Sugar Nellie image in progress and there's also a whole sheet of gorgeous Dilly Bean digi stamps with one already coloured in and ready for making into a card. I only came across these fabulous images this week, by following a link from Sue's blog, and I'm just a little bit in love with them!

There's a couple of other items of interest in the room today, out of shot of the main picture. There's a CJ page in progress:

And there's a random addition... two of DD1's toy knights.

They sustained injuries in a fall from her castle playset (their shields snapped off - lord knows why the manufacturer didn't build them to withstand such a fall given that the castle includes a trap door for the specific purpose of dropping the knights from a great height! :lol:) and are awaiting the tender restorative mercies of mummy's hot glue gun! :lol:

That's it from me this week. Thanks for stopping by, would love it if you'd leave a comment. :)

Frame It

The new monthly challenge is up at Sweet Pea Stampers and this month's theme is "Frame It" - so basically to use some kind of frame on your creation.

I decided this was a perfect opportunity to play with my new Stampin' Up! Framelits dies. :)

And, just for something a bit different, instead of using a Sweet Pea stamp, this time I decided to have a play with a Ching Chou Kuik decoupage sheet:

I love Ching Chou Kuik's artwork and this image - September Rhythm - is just gorgeous. I'll be honest with you, I rarely do decoupage. In fact, I think this is the 4th time I'm ever done it. :lol: In general I find decoupage images tend to be a bit on the cutesy/chintzey side and that's just not my style at all. But there are always exceptions to the rule and Ching Chou's incredible artwork looks just as beautiful decoupaged as it does as a stamped, coloured image. :)

Mmm. Maybe I'll try "home-made" decoupage with some of my Sweet Pea stamps one ot these days... :)