My first canvas

I've taken the plunge once again. This is my very first canvas for a very special friend's birthday coming up this weekend. She is an absolute shopaholic so I thought instead of using my many flower stamps, I would dig out my 'style' stamps of shoes and handbags. I am pleased with the result. I have used the colours of her house - chocolate brown and teal blue - so that it won't be hard to decide where she puts it. (Presuming she likes it that much, of course!!!) I used brown staz-on, sea breeze versamagic, aqua shade petal point inks and walnut stain distress ink. I UTEEd the stampbords after inking and stamping and set them on the canvas with silicone adhesive. I embellished the canvas with adhesive pearl cabouchons from http://www.scrappit.com.au/ where you will find every colour under the sun!!! I hope my friend likes it and I thank you for looking and welcome any comments. Denize

Birds, Bees, Butterflies and trees ... all add up to nature

Happy New Year to everyone! Well, it's certainly been a while and I didn't realize just how long! Thanks for coming back. A lot has happened in the last few weeks. Obviously Christmas which was quiet in this house as I was suffering with a chest infection. It didn't ruin our Christmas, I did what I could in the cooking department and my gorgeous husband Daren enjoyed running around for me! It is much appreciated and although still not 100% better, I am up and about and doing stuff again now including some crafting! I managed to make around 90% of my Christmas cards, which I was really pleased with but some of them were posted in the very last post!!!! I am sure they got to their recipients in the end.

A really brilliant thing that happened to me over Christmas is I won a Cricut Expression from my favourite craft shop http://www.scrapbooksisters.co.uk/ in the raffle. When Daren and I went to pick it up, the lovely sisters, Karen and Julie treated me like a VIP and took some photos. It was so lovely, a huge huge thank you to them. It is brilliant to know it was all for charity too. I never usually win anything and was major chufties. I definitely had to have a tidy up and a move around in my craft room to house it! It is now in pride of place and I cannot wait to experiment and play.

The other thing that I was chuffed about was when I was watching the QVC craft day on 21st December, feeling ill, very low, coughing, weazing and enjoying the whole day of craft, they were demonstrating Sakura gel pens. All of a sudden, I saw my Christmas Card I had sent to Dawn Bibby and she was showing that I had used the pens on the card and how lovely they looked. She opened it and read my name out!!! I was shocked, never expected it, but all the same, flattered. It was one of the ones below with the snowy village. I later received a Christmas card from her.

By now, I have done a little bit of crafting and I thought I would share some piccies with you. This is my fourth tissue box and it is for a very special friend. I won't say too much as she may guess it's for her - she hasn't received it yet! It seemed to take me ages to do - I just kept looking at it, and looking at it, trying to gain inspiration. I got all my stamps out and decided on a 'nature' theme. I made some background paper using Distress Inks and gold Tattered Angels. I firstly cut out all the paper for the sides and top of the box and stamped the images in black Stazon. I inked the same distress inks and stamped some different images on 1-inch stampbord again in black Stazon. I used Walnut stain distress ink on the edges of the tissue box and then put all the paper/stampbord together onto the tissue box. I used some black stones for the owl's eyes. All I have to do now is get a new box of tissues to grace the box!

My snowy village

These are two of the types of cards I have been sending out this year. I stamped the snowy village stamp on patterned paper, cut it out carefully and used white gel pen for the snowy areas. When dry I went over it with a glue pen and covered in glamour dust which is gorgeous uber fine glitter (that gets absolutely everywhere!) but gives a lovely finish. Meanwhile I stamped matching coloured snowflakes onto the card and stamped the icicle words Merry Christmas onto the card. Coloured in the words with matching sukura gel pens and did the same for the snowy tops. I put it altogether and voila ... waited for it to dry!!!

A snowy Christmas

I am not sure it's going to be a snowy Christmas, but one thing's for sure - I hope it is!!! I love Christmas, I think all us Mums love Christmas, the shopping, the Santa visit, choosing the right crackers, Turkey, mince pies, the right colour decorations to go on the tree, and all the fine details. And it's just 14 days to go and still I have only made a dozen Christmas cards! Yikes ... best I get a moving. Well, the good news is, I just have a couple of Christmas prezzies yet to get ... phew, now for the wrapping .......!

Here's another card, made with Hels' Stichels snowman.

Well, I know, I know, it is now December and I am definitely supposed to have finished all my Christmas cards by now. All in all I have about 120 to make but I usually end up making around 30 just for the 'special' ones. It is my mission at the moment to get further than 30 this year. All the time I have birthdays, I am not doing well though!!! So here's another birthday card. It is for another special friend a different Lisa, who emigrated to Spain at the beginning of the year and I miss her. I have only seen her 3 times this year as she is coming back every now and then. I have been making her birthday card for her this evening and this is what I have come up with. Firstly I stamped Stampendous Agapanthus Bloom all over the card with perfect medium stamp. I crystal embossed it and inked it over first around the edges, with Raisen Adirondack. Then I clear embossed a piece of stampboard with the stamp and another piece, the Happy Birthday stamp, and did the same to both with the ink and cut and dry foam. I pieced it all together, placing ribbon under the greeting and edged it with the thick Sukura Gold pen. Happy Birthday Lisa! x

Christmas again ....

Thanks for returning to my blog. It just goes to show Christmas is coming, we had a nice inch of snow this morning, enough to 'play' in but not enough to keep the children off school!!! :-) By lunch time it warmed up and began to rain and all the snow melted, much to my disappointment. I hope we get a white Christmas this year, it would be amazing. I only remember a couple of white ones when I was very little. We had a lovely big garden and couldn't wait to get out there and play. It wasn't long before our teeth were chattering and we wanted to come in again!!

Here are anothe couple of simple Christmas cards. Both were stamped with clear gluepad and heat embossed with cosmic shimmer holographic glitter embossing powder.

For the snowflake card, I inked 3 large snowflakes and stampbord, embossed as with the background snowflakes, inked the edge of the card and stuck into place. Added papermania clear adhesive stones.

For the stichels snowman card I stamped him on white card with lilac staz-on, cut him out and coloured him in with lilac and jade sukura pens. I added sticky ribbons in matching colours and a greeting, again stamped in lilac staz-on. Finally, I inked the edge of the card. I think Mr Snowman is happy with his new coat and hat!!!

Naughty me ....!

Ok, ok, I did warn you that it wasn't going to be a daily thing! BUT ... I am on my way now and this is my first Christmas Card of this year. I have dug out all my old stuff from Christmases past as I was determined not to buy much this year. The tree is a Dawn Bibby tree (bought this year!) which I have decoupaged onto DCWV christmas stack papers (bought for me this year!) embellished with pink christmas stickers (Anitas) and touched with clear papermania stones in the centre of the snowflakes and edged with my silver Krylon which I love. Hope you like it!