Little Girl Card

This one was inspired by a card that my mother made for me over 25 years ago. Gosh I feel old saying that. I have fond memories of helping my mom cut out the pieces to make them for friends and family. They were very popular. This one she made just for me. It has 1981 written inside, this was the year she made it for me. I will not tell you how old I was at the time as that really would be giving my age away ;-)LOL.

Here is a pic of the original card my mom gave to me. As you can see it's a little worse for wear. I still love it though to this day. It carries alot of happy memories for me.

And this one is mine. My card base is Always Artichoke. The piece of white cardstock was cut down slightly smaller and I then scored a border. I then colored the border with a marker. I used the original card to trace the shapes I needed for the girl. I then made a template for each using cardboard. Once I had decided on my patterned paper it was fairly easy to find colors to co-ordinate. I had some ribbon that was very close to the artichoke color that I used on the hat. I also found some mesh in one of my (I must keep that cause I know I'm gonna need it one day) boxes. I used it for a little underskirt. A flower with a brad finishes this trip down memory lane.

Thanks for looking

Hugs

Nic

Mother's Day Cards

On one of my many trips to Archiver's I saw the prettiest card on display. For those of you who are not familiar with this store they have projects and idea's all over the store to help inspire you. A card caught my eye one day a few weeks ago and I immediately bought the stamp set they had used with a plan to case the card. It took me a while to get around to it but the other day I finally got around to going back and buying cardstock, ribbon and stickers to help me complete these cards. I made 8 in total. Mother's Day is in March in the UK so I will put a couple away for my mum and Paul's. I hope when the time comes I remember I have them already made.LOL. Here's the link to the card I saw http://www.archiversonline.com/ideas/ideas.asp?cat=holiday_cards&img=hoC_08Momsday3_T.jpg. I rotated the card for my version.

I used a baby pink Bassil cardstock for the base of my card. I did not remember to get the actual name of the color, sorry. Other colors used were Basic Black and Whisper White. I cut the black to size and attached it. I also cut the white to size. I then stamped in black the large flowers top left and the small flowers bottom right. I used my SU watercolor pencils on the flowers and then the aqua painter. Once dried I went over the flowers once again with the pencil. I then went over the petals with a stardust gelly roll pen to add a little glitter and make them sparkle ever so subtly. I also used Pretty in Pink ink to randomly stamp a little flower everywhere. The center of the flowers had different sized Stampendous silver dot sparkler stickers placed in the center of them. This piece was then ready to mount. I stamped the centerpiece two times for each card. Once on the pink which I then punched out with my Marvy Giga scallop oval punch. The second time I stamped it on white and cut out the middle to fit inside the punched out pink. I put another sticker on each flower and cut 2 pieces of ribbon to attach to the back. This was then mounted on the card using dimensionals to make it stand out.

Thanks for coming by to take a look.


Hugs
Nic

Tickled Pink

This pretty much describes how I feel about my new TAC stamps. I felt I had to make the very first card with them a card for my friend Joani who is the wonderful lady who introduced me to them. I think I am going to enjoy playing with these for sometime to come. This set so cute with these flamingoes in their fancy clothes. I just love it. Here's the card.

The cardstock is pixie pink and green galore. The DP came out of a packet I found in the dollar department at Target. I used my cuttlebug on a piece of pixie pink and matted it on a piece of green galore. I colored the image with similar colors to the cardstock and used dimensionals to have it stand up from the card a little. I added a flower with a large gold brad to finish.

Thanks for looking.

Hugs
Nic

Birthday Train

I needed a birthday card for a friends son who's birthday is next week. He's going to be 4. I bought this set off my friend Gabby a while ago when she was having a clear out. This is the first chance I've had to use it.


The card base is chocolate chip. The DP is mounted on green galore and real red was used for the slider. The DP is from a DCWV premium mat stack called Nana's Kids. It's got some pretty papers and they all have either glitter or embossing on each page. The paper I chose has a train on it whoch suited the stamp set perfectly. The image is from Circus Train and the sentiment from Riveting. I used my cuttlebug to cut the slider and threaded twill tape through. The sentiment was punched out with a 1 3/4 inch circle punch. I watercolored the train image and the smoke has both glitter and white gel pen on it although you can't quite tell in the picture. I hope he likes it.


Hugs
Nic

Hostess Club April

I went to my friend Sarah's house on Monday as I am in her Hostess Club. She hosts it once a month but usually something crops up and I can't go. This time nothing got in the way. I got to do some cool make and takes. I thought I would share them with you as I had alot of fun making them. I have tried most of the techniques before but everyone can do with a little practice, especially me. We tried Dry Embossing (front,middle), Dahlia Fold (right), Split Negative (left), Watercolor Crayons and Paper Piercing (middle,back). I enjoyed myself so much, I now have watercolor crayons and make your own brads on my wish list. Plus I am watching for a coupon to get myself a light box so I can do more dry embossing. I always manage to come away wanting something.LOL. I did however order myself a new stamp set which I will eagerly await.

Hugs

Nic

Geometric

It's time to show you these cards I made last week. I have held off as long as I can to ensure they get where they're going but due to painting our bedroom at the weekend I still have a bunch of TAC stamps to mount and nothing else to show you just yet. Also I have got a burst blister on my little finger which rubs every time I pick up my scissors which is also slowing me down. Anyway I'm not here to have you guys feel sorry for me and my stinging finger. It is happily encased in a band-aid and I am soldiering on.LOL. Here's my cards.


I used the espresso colored textured cardstock from Archivers. I have been using this alot lately. I just love the color and texture. The paper is Heidi Grace and was also there in the reduced area. It is 2 sided and the green panel across the middle you can see is actually the other side of it. I used black eyelets at either end and the center piece are toppers from a packet my mum sent me from the UK. The colors went really well I just had to mount it on another piece of espresso. I chose not to do any additional stamping to this card as it really didn't seem to need it.


Extra, Extra
I won some blog candy! I have been checking out Cazzy's Blog recently http://cazzytime.blogspot.com/ she had a blog candy where you had to guess how many stamps she had just by the number of clam shells she had them stored in. My guess was 253 and the actual total was 257. I was the closest guess. So I have some goodies coming my way. I am so excited and will be watching my mailbox eagerly. I will post a picture when they arrive so you can see my goodies. Please go check her out her blog and as soon as I get a minute I will put the link on the edge of the page with my favorites.


Hugs
Nic

Preschool Pages

I have been eager to get more pages done for the kids school scrapbooks. I chose to make the front page a preschool page seen as my double pages start with Kindergarten. I planned the basic outline of both kids pages to be fairly the same but used different colored 12 x 12 cardstock for each of them. Megan's was fairly easy as I had no trouble finding the pictures I wanted for it.

Jake on the other hand was a little harder as his preschool year was spent in 2 different countries as this was the year that we moved over here to the US. I ended up using a picture of him in his school uniform from England and pairing it up with a couple from the daycare that he did his preschooling at. I wrote a little explanation of this at the end of the panel. Writing on scrapbook pages is going to be an effort for me as I am not too fond of my messy writing. In the end I think they turned out pretty well and I hope in years to come the kids will enjoy looking back at these memories.

I am very excited today. Yesterday I got my first ever order of TAC stamps from my friend Joani (http://joaniscardsmadebyhand.blogspot.com/). I have spent most of today trying to get them mounted. It is taking me a while as I have been attempting to both make index cards for them as I go along as I saw Joani do with hers. But I have also been trying to stamp the images onto the back of the foam so that when I am stamping I can see exactly what I am trying to put and where. I got this idea from a You Tube video that joani posted on her blog. This is a cool idea but very messy (that could just be me.lol) as it has to be done before you mount them so they are all floppy. Hence my fingers are just a little black. The end result is so worth it though and is going to make things so much easier to see and do. Next stop, Joani's awesome idea for storing them in CD and DVD cases. That however will take a trip to the Container Store or somewhere similar and I don't have time today. Ok better get back to inking and mounting. Thanks for dropping by.

Opps I almost forgot here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzwz01Utnbs

Hugs

Nic

Thinking Quilting

I have been saving all my son's pyjama tops for a while now. He would wear out the knee's in the bottoms and would look such a ragamuffin when he would miss match the tops with something else so we came up with the idea that we would save them and mom aka me would attempt to make him a quilt. This coming from a woman who has never made a quilt before in her life. I think I might need buy myself one of those idiots guides on how to. Still I figure it's gonna be one made with love so that won't matter right?

Well on Friday the kids had a day off from school and somehow totally not on purpose on my part (LOL) we ended up in Hancock Fabrics. We wandered up and down the sales aisles looking for a fabric that would suit Jake. We found a cool orange one (orange being his favorite color) for $1.95 a yard. It was at this point that my daughter announced that she too wanted a quilt made with mommy's love so as luck would have it right next to the orange one was a pink one the same price. I decided to get 5 yards of each in the hopes that it would be enough to be my back panel an every other square with the pyjamas. How far we get with this endeavor time will only tell as it has taken me 6 months just to get my machine out of it's box. Wish me luck.

Oh and I almost forgot I wrote on my other blog about seeing Chuck Wicks live the other night. Such a cute guy and he can sing too.LOL. It was such an awesome night I just can't rave about it enough so I thought I would leave you a link here to go listen to his current hit. Did I mention he was cute. I just love this song I get all melancholy every time I hear it. Oh and he's really cute.LOL. Let me know what you think of it if you haven't heard it before. I would love to know.

Thanks for dropping by.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtOy8R01fTA

Hugs

Nic

Dahlia Fold

I finally got around to trying out this technique. I've been wanting too ever since they put the tutorial on SCS. It was a swap on one of my groups and I thought I would give it a try. Proved very fiddly and a little frustrating. I decided to make a couple more than were required for the swap but wished I hadn't when it came to all that folding.lol. Anyway I'm really pleased with the outcome and the paper I chose. I had alot of it as I bought extra for my Christmas cards last year then never got around to following through with the idea. Oh well there's always this year.

Here's the link to the tutorial if your interested:
http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/ee/index.php/resources/tutorials/dahlia_fold/

Onto the card. The cardstock is old olive and real red. The DP is SU and called Dashing I think it was retired from the winter idea book. I used my 1 3/8 circle punch. it fitted perfectly inside a 4 square block and I had just the right amount left for the background. One 12 x 12 sheet made 4 cards. I finished the flower off by placing a colorbok silver metal dot in the middle of the dahlia.

Thanks for looking.

Hugs
Nic

Been Scrapbooking

I have been wanting to scrapbook for years. Over time I have bought scrapbooks, kits, how to magazines, stickers and embellishments but never had the guts to take the leap and try. Well, last weekend I signed up for a scrapbook class at my local Archiver's store. It's topic was School Days which was perfect for me to scrap the kids yearly pictures. We made 3, two page layouts for Kindergarten, 1st Grade & 2nd Grade. I was very pleased with the kit so I bought an extra one so both the kids scrapbooks would look fairly similar and make it easier on me who is still fairly new to this whole scrapbooking thing.



So Tuesday I sat down and put the pictures into the Kindergarten page for my son Jake. I am very pleased with the outcome and can't wait to fill the other pages. I can't take any credit for the layout as it was the same for all the ladies there. But I did change it just a little bit once I knew what pictures I wanted in it. Anyway here's my first real attempt at scrapbooking. Let me know what you think. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks for looking

Hugs

Nic

Yeehaw!!!!!! Finally!

This is another one of my swap choices for this time around. We had the Rodeo here a couple of weeks ago and it inspired me to have a western themed swap, aptly named Yeehaw. LOL. I then went on to totally blank on what to do. Well when I say blank it was more I had too many ideas than not enough and could not decide what I wanted to do. I had a look in my cupboard and picked out my Bronc Buster and Wanted sets. Then I headed to SCS. As soon as I saw this card I just knew I had to try and case it. http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/762363 It's awesome. I just loved the look of it from the moment I saw it. I followed the link to her blog and found many more cool cards http://justgivemestamps.typepad.com/ she is going into my inspiration list for sure.

So here are the details for my card. Cardstock was Chocolate Chip, Blue Bayou and a cream color I had from a Michael's multi-pack. The cowboy was versamarked and clear embossed on the cream cardstock. I then went and used my 1 1/4 punch and punched a spare piece of card. I used the hole to sponge a blue bayou moon and I used the cut out to sponge chocolate chip, close to cocoa and just a little blue bayou over the rest of the card. I then distressed the edges and ran a brown marker over them to hide the cream color. My back panel was achieved by stamping the canvas background stamp in blue bayou and the paisley from the wanted set in choc chip onto a piece of blue bayou. On a spare piece of blue bayou I stamped the star. I then sponged every piece of card stock I was using on my card to give it a well worn look. I wrapped hemp cord around the back piece and stuck it to my card base. I don't have any sponges so all my sponging was done with cotton balls. I mounted my image onto blue bayou and then choc chip. I paper pierced the choc chip piece and after punching out my star I attached it to the image using an antique brass brad. I then stuck the the entire thing to the card using dimensionals. It was a lot of work and took a few days to finish due to chores and family time but I am very pleased with the outcome. Thanks for coming by to take a look. Be sure and check out those links.

Hugs

Birthdays and Awards

I like to make birthday cards for my crafting buddies. A lot of whom I have never met as they are mostly here on the internet in swap groups. So anyway today is the birthday of one of the ladies in one of the groups I belong too. I actually made 3 of these cards as I have some more friends with birthdays coming up in the next couple of weeks. I made these cards a couple of days ago and I got one in the mail already for my friend today, but this is the first chance I have had to post a message.


I actually used this weeks SCS Sketch Challenge (SC170). The cardstock used is Rose Red, Almost Amethyst and Garden Green. Stamp sets were 'Along the Same Lines' and 'Birthday Whimsy'. I Versamarked the rose red cardstock with the present stamp from birthday whimsy and stamped Happy birthday in black in the bottom left corner. I found some cool DP that had candles all over it and mounted it onto the garden green. I wrapped some silver cord around and tied it. I colored my image using colors from the cardstock and the DP and mounted that on the almost amethyst. I am finding sketches more and more handy when my mojo goes awol.

Oh and I got another award. It's the same one as last time but this time Gabby from http://confessionsofastamper.blogspot.com/ gave it to me. Thankyou Gabby. It is really lovely to know that people enjoy seeing what I manage to squeeze into my spare time. I'm not going to pass it on this time as I already have once but would like to point out my inspiration central. These are links to all my favorite bloggers. Go take a peak. I consider them all worthy of this award.

Hugs

Monochromatic Swap

It's funny. I looked back at the cards I've made over time and a lot of them are monochromatic. But when faced with someone telling me it has to be that way I go blank. Go figure. Anyway I got it into my head that I wanted to use green. Well it is my favorite color. After much pondering and searching I found the image I wanted to use. And so this card was born.

I used Wild Wasabi Cardstock and ink. I cuttlebugged the background and then wiped my ink pad over it so that the raised image could be seen. The sets I used were Hang in There and Warmest Regards, both from stampin' up. I stamped the image in black and then colored it in using various greens. I then stamped the sentiment also in black but left room in the middle for ribbon to be tied. I still don't seem to be able to tie the perfect knot which is frustrating. I would appreciate any pointers on that one. Thanks for looking.

I got an award

It's so nice to know that someone out there likes what I do. I get so very little feedback that I wonder sometimes. I have been considering a blog candy but don't want people posting just to get it. I want people to come here because they like what I do. I will give it a little longer though. It's still early days for me in the blogging world. Anyway I would like to thank Sonya of http://sonyaslilypad.blogspot.com/ for giving me the award. I love her blog but cannot give the award back to her so must pay it forward to 3 others who I deem worthy. I noticed that a couple of my choices already got chosen by Sonya but here's who else rocks my crafting boat.

1. Joani - http://joaniscardsmadebyhand.blogspot.com/

2. Jenny - http://stampingmoments.blogspot.com/

3. Kathleen - http://kathleenh-myhappyplace.blogspot.com/

All the shortcuts to these are actually over there on the right hand side of the page but I wanted to put it here too. I need to update that as I have so many more blogs that I visit regularly these days. Hope to have time to do that soon. Right I'm off to spread the happy. Have a great day.

Hugs

Get Well Mum & Dad

I'm pretty certain what I have been suffering from the last week is allergies and a cold mixed together as the only thing that seems to be working for me at the moment is a concoction of both allergy meds, Tylenol and decongestants. Sickness seems to be spreading all over the world. My parents who are in Wales are not very well at the moment either. It's a worry for me being so far away from them. So I decided to try and cheer them up with a Get Well Card. I broke in my new set Pun Fun from Stampin' Up!

The colors I chose were Not Quite Navy and Tempting Turquoise. I couldn't find the combination on my color wheel but they seem to compliment one another pretty well. I also used a cute DP of water which suited the whale image that I chose to do. I watercolored the image using my watercolor pencils and my aquapainter. It's a fairly simple card and was embellished using a sparkly wavy ribbon. I decided to make one more of these card as you never know when someone will get sick. I embellished that using a pale blue stitched ribbon and square silver brads. I hope the Get Whale Soon sentiment makes them smile.