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.

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