And Finally ............ well for today anyway

My Darling Daughter announced the other day that she and her fella are engaged. She has had a rough couple of years as she had an earlier stressful marriage.

This new bloke seems Top Brick material to me - you know the sort who would give you the top brick off the chimney! Well I like him anyway!

So I made them this card.

I combined two Tiddly Inks images into one as I loved her gothic styling, but the only couple she had were in wedding gear and they weren't quite what I was aiming for.

I have made the card in deep shades of purple as purple and gothic always seem to me to be ideal.

The gorgeous flourish is cut with one of the new Tim Holt dies, the larger flower is a stunning prima one and the three smaller were just from my stash as were both bits of ribbon. Papers are from Basic Grey's Wisteria collection, mats courtesy of Nesties and coloured with promarkers, with a touch of distress ink for the shading on the background, and more promarkering for the edge of the mats.

Hope to be back later in the week with a challenge or two, but I do have the dentist on Monday, wish me luck.

Lin

Rodley the Very clever Panda!!

I have been looking forward to posting this next creation.

As my friends over on Craft Telly know I have turned into a Charlie Bears nut!

I should like to take credit for this design but it was all Rodley's own work. Rodley being the beautiful green and white panda pictured here.

I took some photos of Rodley hard at work and the finished card he made. Hope you like them.



He coloured in this Sassy Cheryl image with promarkers and mounted it onto a postcard style card which he cut with Go Kreate dies into this lovely shape.

He used some digital papers from my stash, cheeky wee boy!

He seems to have an eye for colour, and obviously he was aiming for a self portrait.

I think he did quite well, hope you agree.

In the first picture he is looking for materials, the next ones are of him hard at work colouring and the finished result and then finally he is having a well earned rest.







Well, as he explained to me, this cardmaking can be exhausting, a boy has to put his feet up!!!

Look out for more of Rodley's creations in the future as he is now taking commissions from the other bears to make portrait cards of them too!

Lin

PS Don't forget my blog motto............. but this time it's not me that's cracked, it's the cute little Panda!

Two down, three to go

Almost half way through my post catch up.

I made this for my Friend's Daughter's birthday. She apparently loves pink, so I obliged, but she doesn't like fussy. Hope it met with her approval.

The background paper is WRMK Tiffany's and the pink side of a sheet of Core'dinations whitewash, run through the BS with a bug folder.



The stamp is a Mo Manning one called Sorry Shana, and she just looks so sweet and innocent, a bit like my Friend's Daughter ... NOT!! Coloured with promarkers. The two corner pieces are from a MME flower pad.

Lin

Brother In Law's Birthday Cards

These are a couple of cards I made for my Brother-in-Law's birthday. I find making for men so difficult as you cannot really add all manner of pretties to them to finish them off.

One was quite simple, no stamping, but it had some complicated (at least for my poor brain) folding which I did on my brand new Hougie Board, loving that board it's so precise and I love the even spaces, plus I can get my favourite 12x12 papers on there.

The focal image is a gorgeous dufex topper which I was drawn to when a friend sent me the same image on a card for me and does perfectly for male or female. My Daughter immediately told me half a dozen people who would want the same, but I couldn't get any extra supplies!
The stamped card I used my new Joanna Sheen Country Scenes stamps, which I coloured with promarkers, and went over the water with diamond glaze to give it life. The swirls were cut from a marianne die. This is the only marianne die I have been able to successfully use so will sadly be steering clear of them in the future.

Lin

A month since I posted

Wow another month has just slipped past. Where on earth does the time go. In my defence I have recently been diagnosed with diabetes and I am having a few issues of suddenly feeling quite peculiar. Hopefully that should settle once I get my dietary requirements sorted out and they decide if I can continue without (I pray) insulin. On the plus side, or should that be minus; I have lost a stone in weight. Up until a week or so ago I couldn't really see where it had gone from but suddenly I can see a definite difference in my shape and I am sitting here in a skirt that nearly cut me in two 6 weeks ago. Anyhow enough of my moaning. I haven't been idle and have still completed a few projects so here is the first.

My Sister recently celebrated her Silver Wedding Anniversary. This was hilarious as last year she tried to celebrate it then because she had muddled up the dates. WOW I just realised I missed my first anniversary of my blog. Can't believe I have been doing this for a whole year now.

So back to my Sister and her 'official' 25th Anniversary.

I made a couple of cards for her one from me and one from my Daughter.

The blue one is the one I had in my mind for last year. In fact it was almost done and it was searching for the photo to go in the middle that made me realise she was jumping the gun datewise.

It's mainly DCWV cardstock overstamped and embossed with various swirl/flourish stamps, the two hearts are an Elusive Images stamp embossed and cut out.

The purple one has some lush Kanban cardstock as it's base with a Mo Manning stamp for the image, coloured with my promarkers.The hearts were punched from silver mirri with my lovely new SU punch, thanks Fab, and embossed through the BS with a bug folder then I coloured them with promarkers to tone in with the card.

This is my first card I have put on my blog with promarkers, I have done a few now and am getting to love them more and more, although a part of me still thinks that I personally can do a better job with distress inks or prismas. But for the moment I am enjoying getting to know them.

Will be back later with a few more cards.

Lin

Crafty Catz Design Team Samples

I have recently finished some samples for a new CD by Crafty Catz due to be aired on Ideal World/Create and Craft on Tuesday 27th April at 10am. The CD is called 'Got It Covered' and you can find more examples and information on www.craftycatz.co.uk - the gallery can be found here.

CD crafting is not really something I am used to and I found this an interesting challenge, and a bit of a departure from my normal style of cards, although I did start out with stitching cards and it was nice to revist that medium again for a couple of the cards.

Lin

Full of cold, everyone say ahhhhhhhhhhh

Haven't blogged for about three weeks again, grrrrr. I have been working like a demon getting some sample cards ready for someone and then I went down with this hellish cold and for a couple of days there I thought I must have had a sex change cos all I had was flu but I thought I was dying ;-)

Anyhow, cold/flu still hanging around, but I do feel better in myself so I have finally managed to get back to crafting.

Before I whitter on about the card I have made, I was thrilled to discover I had got a Top 5 award over at ABC cards for my easel card a couple of posts down.

Anyhow enough of 'woe is me' and 'look at me how clever I am' and down to business.

As it happens I had to make a birthday card for my Sister and I am somewhat ashamed to admit that even though I had some ideas in my head I thought I would see if I could make her a card and enter a challenge or two at the same time.......... is that like some kind of addiction do you think? So first

Cupcake Crafting wanted Childhood memories, and whilst I don't claim to have ever been a fairy (well maybe a fairy elephant), I do remember we had a place called 'Deep Ford' and in the summer I loved nothing better than to wander off with my big sister and dip my toes in the cool water, and the memory is one of the things that attracted me to these Mo Manning digis........

Creative Card Crew wanted a Happy Birthday theme, which ties in nicely with my card.

Papertake Weekly's theme is Cutie Pie.... I think these fairies are cute

ABC Challenge theme is S for sparkle and I might have gone a bit overboard with it here, leaves, dragonflies, fairies wings........ all sparkling away like mad.

Flutterby Wednesday as usual require a butterfly or fairy for their challenge.

Cute Card Thursday wants 'Touchy Feely' - hope my flowers make the grade

Stamp Something want something Layered, to be interpreted anyway you think fit, so I think an easel card counts as layered in itself.

and finally

Secret Crafter's theme is 'A Day Out'..... so there we are back to the beginning and my memories of lazy days spent down the ford dipping my toes in the water.........

Dern good job my Sister doesn't blog, she would get to see her card a few days too soon.

Background papers are Basic Grey's lush new Kioshi pad, fairies are Mo Manning's digis, flowers are from stash but sprayed with glimmer mists to get the colours I wanted and leaves are cut from the new Marianne Creatables dies, dragonfiles are from stash and the sentiment mat was cut from Kanban card with a giant flower punch.

I hate photographing easel cards they either catch the light too much, or not enough!I have shown the card in two different light sources, in one it's warm and sunny and the other cool....... but the warm one does show all the sparkle as it looks in real life, although it's not that yellow looking. David Bailey I am not!

Now unless life gets in the way again I am looking forward to some more crafting.

Lin

PS Notice lots of folks are copyrighting their images so check out the new signature on my images created with a fancy new font