Teacher Thankyou's

Here I am leaving thing's till the last minute again. LOL. As the school year approaches an end I wanted to make a little card for both the kids main teachers. I just got this Changito set with one of my birthday gift cards at Archiver's. It was just so cute I could not resist it. As you know apes are my biggest weakness.

The stamp set is called 'school for changito' and is apparently an Archiver's exclusive. Cardstock for this card was Tempting Turquoise, Green Galore and Only Orange. My buckle is a can tab (this is my way of recycling.lol) and the ribbon was from a $1 tube from Target (I shall be checking the label when I buy any of these in future as it only gave me 12 inches of this color which was almost not enough). To finish it off I put a prima with a silver brad at the edge of the sentiment. I used my Mega and Giga oval punches for the image.

Thanks for looking

Hugs

Nic

Cowboy/Cowgirl Card

I only had cowboy stamps for this swap but we had been given the option of doing a cowgirl. I liked this idea and kind of had something in mind. Someone on Joani's group had showed us how to make the little TAC Cowboy into a girl and I wanted to try this. I also wanted to try out my new marvy punches. My friend Lucy came over the other night to spend some time and to do some crafting. I was still fusing about how to finish off my card as I had everything I wanted but it was missing something. With Lucy's valuable input, we managed to figure it out and this what I ended up with.

The cardstock is blue bayou and black. The DP is from Flair Designs - Horsin' Around Collection at Archivers. The Cowgirl is the cowboy from Wild West (with hair) and the sentiment is from It's the little things (Hostess set) both these sets are from TAC (The Angel Company). The flower is from a pack my mum sent me from Wales she bought them in a Sale a while back and this is the first time I got around to using them. I also used my Scallop Circle Mega and Giga punches I managed to get them for half price from the TAC catalogue.

Thanks for looking

Hugs

Nic

Cat Card

Here I am with the last installment of things I had been waiting to post about. Finally I am caught up with all my stuff I had backed up to tell you about. This is the last thing I had on my 'put on blog' list. Now I guess I need to get in my craft room and start making some more stuff to show you.

This card was for the last swap I hosted on Gabby's group (Handmade Cards With Love). I am so very sorry the group is closing. We just didn't have enough members to keep going though. I was late with this one as my mojo has been in a state of on again off again. I just don't seem to be able to get my head straight. With this card done I am ready to say goodbye. I am all caught up on the swaps I owed to this group. I will miss checking how my friends are doing but a few of them are on another group I'm in so I guess life goes on. The swap was a cat or dog swap. You had to make the card with your preferred pet on it. I am hoping to get a kitty very soon so it seemed only right that I should put one on my card.

the cardstock I used is Purely pomegranate. The paper was in my scrap drawer. I used SU's 'The Cat's Meow' stamp set. The large eyelets are also SU as is the Wild Wasabi Ribbon. A fairly simple card. I am thankful for my Crop-a-dile it has been a life saver. I never used to like using eyelets before as they were so fiddly and noisy to use but it makes things so much easier.


I recently bought some new stamps from High Hopes (http://www.highhopesstamps.com/) after seeing them used on a couple of blogs. These stamps are just the cutest. I hope to ink them up real soon.

http://katharina1704.blogspot.com/2008/05/gorillas-just-wanna-have-fun.html

http://artfullyila.blogspot.com/2008/05/high-hopes-may-project-of-month.html

Thanks for stopping by

Hugs
Nic

Getting Ready to Sew

I have been putting off plugging in my sewing machine for a while now. Not quite sure why. But I have managed to add yet another project to my ever increasing sewing pile so I am going to have to take the plunge soon.


I decided that I don't like my living room cushions any more and I wanted to buy new. Paul suggested I go looking for a nice material and make some. I have done this before when we were living in England so I figured why not. I went to Jo-Ann's and had a wander around their material section and found a really pretty material that has all the colors that we have in our rug we have in there. Here's a taste. LOL. I only took a pic of the swatch. You will have to wait till I get them done to see the whole thing. I think they will look fab. I just need the motivation to get sewing now and I think I may have finally found it.



While I was there I strolled down the sale aisle. I have a habit of feeling the material as I go if I see something I like. If I don't like the feel of it then I won't buy it. I came to a really nice fabric it's a check pattern The colors caught my eye and ran my hand over it. It was so soft I thought I was in heaven. LOL. It was down to $9 a yard so I got 2 yards. This is the crazy part as I am not quite sure what to make with it just yet but it just felt to good to leave there.



Hopefully now I am slowly getting all my stuff in line after stretching myself way to thin. I can start to enjoy my sewing machine again. I'll keep you posted.


Hugs
Nic

Letter L Card

I really enjoy Alphabet swaps. Trying to think up something different for a specific letter of the alphabet. They are a lot of fun. Some of the letters are really tough to come up with idea's for and others you can have so many ideas you are spoilt for choice. I have done one of these swaps on Joani's group and have been slowly working through another on Gabby's. Unfortunately Gabby's group is closing due to a lack of members. It is a shame, they were a very talented group of ladies. I'm sad we are not going to make it to the letter Z but we did make it to L and here is the card I made for it.

I chose L for leaves this time around and decided to try a little something that I have been meaning to do for the longest time. I punched the whole thing. The only stamping I did on this project was the crackle background. The scalloped oval is a sizzix die I used in my cuttlebug. The tree is a punch and the leaves are a punch. I have to tell you my hand hurt for a week after making 4 of these cards. That's a whole lot of leaves to punch. I put the tree through my zyron but the leaves I used a sheet of tiny glue dots. I think I got more on myself than the leaves as it is very sticky stuff but the tree looked really good when it was finished. Cardstock colors are mainly chocolate chip, more mustard and old olive. The leaves however are a bunch of different greens too many to list. I finished it off with a circle paperclip and some real rust looking ribbon.

Thanks for looking

Hugs

Nic

Goodies For Me

Last month I was lucky enough to win blog candy on Cazzy's Blog http://cazzytime.blogspot.com/ after being the closest to guessing how many stamps she has. Last week my goodies finally arrived. It had to come all the way from England so it took a while to get here but boy was it worth the wait. The slim box she sent was like Mary Poppin's bag. So much stuff came out it was hard to imagine how it had all fitted into the box to begin with. Thank you so much Cazzy. Please go check out her blog she makes some really nice cards. Here are some pics of my goodies. There is so much cool stuff here I don't know where to start.

Get Well Card

A few things happened or got done last week that I need to catch up on here. I didn't post so that my blog candy post wouldn't get lost. Now that has been done and I am waiting to hear from the winner I can start posting all the other stuff that I let mount up. Starting with this Get well card. I have had news from back in Wales about a sick family member and a sick friend of the family so this coupled with my having just closed a Get Well card swap on Gabby's group prompted me to make this card. I actually used one of Gabby's really cool sketches that she has on the group for members to use.

The cardstock is Lovely Lilac and a mint green I found in a Michael's pack. The stamp set is Blooming Beautiful from the Stampin Up Occasions Mini. It is a lovely set. I couldn't resist it any longer and had to have it. The sentiment is from sincere salutations. I used my cuttlebug with the stylized flowers folder for the half circles at each end and I used my watercolor pencils on the image. I ticket punched the corners and added three black brads finish it. I mounted the image on dimensionals so it stood out a little.

Thanks for looking.

Hugs

Nic

Happy Birthday to ME and Blog Candy Winner

Well my Birthday is finally here. Another year older and all that. I've had a pretty great day and am off to have a nice dinner out with my family. I only got 9 responses in the end so I got my son to pick a number between 1 and 9. He chose 5 and the 5th response was Denise.

That is amazing amount of wonderful goodies.
I so like what you are doing.
I like your scrapping pages as well cards... nice to see a variety.
Thank you for sharing your talent.

Denise G

Thank you so much for your lovely comments. You don't seem to have a blog so if you can email your address to icantgetagoodid@hotmail.com I will get your goodies in the mail asap.

Here's a pic of a card I made using one of the items in the blog candy (my own set not the blog candy set.) Just to give you an idea of what to do with your goodies when you get them.



Hugs

Nic

Birthday Blog Candy

Well my Birthday is almost here and I couldn't let it pass by without sharing a little of the love so I decided I would put together a little bundle of stuff to share with one of my readers. I don't know how many readers I have so in order to be able to pick someone I need you to leave a message on this thread. Let me know what you think of my blog and the things you see on it. I would love the chance of a little feedback.

Here's the low down on what's up for grabs:

Three souffle 3-D pens & Silver outline stickers


one Set of 8 Sequin rosette toppers (from UK)


one Set of 8 silhouette motifs (from UK)


Daisy Hill Die-cut Alphabet stickers


rhinestone stickers, 3-D embellishments and Stickers.

I will be drawing a winner in exactly one week on Monday May 19th. If you too have a blog feel free to leave a link to it on your message. I am always on the look out for more inspiration.

Good Luck

Hugs
Nic

Teacher Scrapbook

I did it, I finally finished it. One twenty page scrapbook for Megan's teacher. With a picture and a note from each child on each page. Twenty pages is really hard to do when your against the clock. Thankfully I was able to do it with time to spare. I kept the pages fairly simple due to the fact I was given a very small budget to play with ... Just $15. For scrapbook, cardstock, photo developing and embellishments. I think I probably went a little over budget but even with a $5 dollar scrapbook it not surprising. Scrapbooking is not the cheapest of pastimes just like cardmaking. I did utilise a voucher or 2 which also helped to bring the final cost down.

Here is a look at my daughter Megan's page. Most of the pages looked fairly similar. I changed the direction of the DP for each page and made sure that each page was a different color. I made sure not to give any of the boys girly colors and vice versa. I alternated between 2 different DP's also but am unable to show you the other one as I used it all. However if you scroll down to my kids preschool pages I used the same paper on them to give you an idea. I put a picture of the teacher on the front page and inside the cover put a list of the names of the children as they appear in the book. I was very pleased with the outcome.

Thanks for looking

Hugs

Nic

Under The Sea

I signed myself up for a few swaps. They all appealed to me so much that I couldn't resist. I'm busy on a scrapbook for my daughter's teacher right now. But I'm hoping to get it finished in the next couple of days and get stuck into the others. In the meantime here's one I managed to get done before all the scrapbook madness started last Friday.



The swap is titled under the sea and is for Joani's MSN group. I used 2 of my favorite colors at the moment Wild Wasabi and Blue Bayou. The set I used is one of the TAC ones I bought from Joani just the other week it's called fun fish. I stamped the seaweed both on the card where I wanted it but also on a separate piece of card which I then cut out and mounted on dimensionals to give it a little bit of a 3D effect. I finished with Wild Wasabi striped ribbon. I'm still working on the perfect knot. Haven't quite got the knack just yet.

Thanks for looking

Hugs

Nic

Awesome Blog Candy Alert

I have been blog hopping and I just found these awesome blogs. These ladies make great cards. They are Mother and Daughter. It definately runs in the family. I just had to tell you all about it so you can go check it out too. Also they are celebrating Birthdays with Awesome Blog Candy.

http://artfullyila.blogspot.com/2008/05/blog-candy-birthday-celebration.html

http://trinastreasures.blogspot.com/2008/05/my-first-ever-blog-candy.html

Hugs
Nic

Ribbon, Ribbon Everywhere

Yesterday I had an awesome surprise in my mailbox. A few weeks ago I jumped on the opportunity of joining one of Emily Giovanni's ribbon share's. How glad am I that I did. Look at all this ribbon! I am so excited, all the colors are awesome. I cant wait to use them. Jake spotted a neon lime in amongst the others and wanted some. He has been reading Indian in the cupboard at school and has been longing for his own key with a ribbon. Initially he wanted a red ribbon like in the book but when he saw the neon lime he fast changed his mind. http://emilygiovanni.com/



Also I treated myself to a new toy. You saw the dry embossed card on an earlier post from hostess club well I have been wanting a light box ever since. As luck would have it this week a voucher for 50% off at Michaels came with the weekly paper. I had to take advantage of this opportunity as I would never be able afford it at the full price. So here it is my new light box. I have a bunch of stuff I want to do with these things stacking up. I hope I will have time to actually do them soon.



However firstly I have a Scrapbook to make for my daughters teacher. One page for each child in her class that's 20 pages in one week. Wish me luck.