Sad news

Sweet Dreams Bonnie

Haven't been in blogland for a bit folks. My lovely little Heinz 57 dog of 15 years became really unwell at the start of February. First she had a scratched retina which took away the remainder of her already poor vision and then she developed a water infection, and the vet thought the cancer she had been treated for last year had probably returned. Finally last week my Daughter and I took the painful decision to have her put to sleep. Now I have a hole in my heart where she should be and the house just seems to empty without her.

Here are just a couple of pics of her. The first one is actually a card I made for a swap on the Craft Telly forum whose theme was 'precious' at the time she had just had surgery on her hip to remove a cancerous tumour.
The next are a series of pics of her licking clean a chocolate mousse container! She clearly loved that!










Then sitting on the sofa slightly sleepy having munched through that mousse.







In one of her favourite spots, the dirty laundry! I guess it's one of the best places to remind a dog of the smell of it's owner in their laundry. Strange little creatures aren't they.








Finally, and sadly this one is not the best photography in the world, think it might have been taken on my mobile phone, also didn't have time to bother with light etc., as her safety was at risk. We hadn't long moved into this house and the garden was a disaster area. Looked like a bomb site with rubbish strewn everywhere. We heard this tapping at the back door and there was Bonnie trying to get her head up over the doorstep, but it just kept catching on the threshold. She had her head firmly wedged in what looked like an old diver's helmet or some freaky space helmet. It actually turned out to be one of those terrarium, or bottle garden, thingys that you grow cactus plants in! Anyhow, there she was wedged. We reckon a frog must have been sheltering inside it and nosey parker poked her nose in a little too far and got firmly jammed. We couldn't get her out. Now this thing was made of glass so naturally we were concerned for her face. Finally I had the bright idea of stuffing it full of tea towels, around her head and breaking the glass with a rolling pin. It took my Daughter to hold her down and three bashes with the rolling pin before it finally shattered and she was free of it! As you can see in the picture, she is not a happy looking doggie.
Normal service will be resumed either later today or tomorrow, but if you have been reading this, thanks for taking the time.

Lin

An Elephantine challenge!

I started off this challenge card by popping over to Mo's Digital Challenge Blog, where the theme was shades of grey. I have this gorgeous digi of her's called Monkey Hug, which was perfect to be coloured grey. From there it snowballed, I remembered a couple of challenges were asking for baby themes and the elephant is hugging a baby monkey. Once I started I was whizzing around the various blogs trying to see what other challenges I could incorporate into the card.

So here we have it, my entry for:-

Creative Card Crew - Punch It - Punched and embossed border - I did enter an earlier card for this same challenge, but the rules said it was okay to enter more than once as long as it was a different project. 

Raise The Bar - Old - In fact the older the better. I have had the DCWV Old Worlde Stack for several years, I used that for the nestie mat and the punched border; and I have had the Basic Grey ambrosia paper for a long time also and not used it, and it forms the base of my card; which brings me to 

Basic Grey - Animals, and must have a Basic Grey element to the card. See above. I ran the paper
through my printer before using it and printed onto it the words 'Big Hugs are the best' in the corner. 

Simon Says - New Baby which could be a baby animal if desired and the monkey looks like a baby to me. 

Stamp With Fun - Also a baby. Clearly from the gorgeous DT cards here they also used baby animals for some.

FINALLY 

Spoonful of Sugar - Freestyle....... lovely can use anything you like. 

PHEW. That was some challenge. Hope you like it.

The elephant I started to colour with prismas, but for some reason it just didn't want to blend so I resorted to a Memento inkpad called London Fog and painted the elephant in with that instead. I dusted around the image with a grey/beige chalk before matting it up with nesties onto some DCWV paper. No idea where the floral paper came from, just found it unloved in the bottom of a pile of 8x8 papers. I finished it off with a nice corner peel off, and a small elephant charm.

Lin

New Sugar Nellie Stamp

I received three new Sugar Nellie stamps this morning courtesy of a subscription to Craft Stamper magazine. Well it would have been rude not to as they were practically giving away the magazine if you took the cost of the stamps off. Anyhow I decided to put one of them to good use and put it on a card for the latest Sugar Bowl Challenge.

I followed their sketch below, but flipped it to the right.

The added requirement was distressing. All of the papers are Basic Grey and apart from the bottom one are all from the Indian Summer pack.

The stamp is one of the Gorjuss Girls and is called Bear Hug. I coloured her, as usual with prismas and OMS.
 
The flowers are from my stash, the inners hair clips that I separated and used to simulate roses. The leaves are a punch a friend lent me. Nearly broke my wrist punching them all out, but there should be enough there to do me for a while yet. I do wish the yummy roses I have my eye on at Wild Orchid would come back into stock.

Lin

A plethora of challenges

Today I sent myself nearly mad with the logistics of trying to get my card to fit the respective challenges of six seperate blogs. I know that is chicken feed to some of you experience bloggers and challenge makers but to my ME fuddled brain it's like trying to plough through old discarded engine oil with my welly boots on back to front!

I hope my card meets the challenges of the following sites

Sketch Saturday - Sketch
Creative Card Crew - Punch It
Simons Says - Punch It
Papertake Weekly - Mainly Pink
Flutterby Wednesday - Any Fairy or Butterfly stamp and Embossing
Cute Card Thursday - Any Fairy Stamp

I followed the sketch below from Sketch Saturday.
As requested by Flutterby Wednesday my card includes a fairy and embossing. The back layer is Core'dinations whitewash run through the BS with a texture plate and sanded off to reveal the pink beneath. The card is mainly pink as requested by Papertake Weekly. All the various matting papers come from Kanban's Seasons Spring collection, including the flower. Which was punched as required by Creative Card Crew and Simons Says. The back layer is also punched with a Cosmos Punch as is the small border on the right hand edge of the card. And of course, because it has a fairy, coloured with my polychromos and OMS it meets the Cute Card Thursday challenge.

I need to go and lie down in a darkened room now cos my head hurts, lol

Don't forget to go and check out these gorgeous blogs and the DT blogs linked to them.

Lin

Stampavie Birthday Boy

Today I completed my first ever easel card. I feel like such a dinosaur. How I didn't spot this trend is beyond me. I must have had my eyes shut for the last couple of months! Maybe it's because before Christmas I hardly came near my own, nor anyone else's blog being busy with Christmas prep!

Anyhow although an easel card was last week's Challenge theme for Stampavie and More I thought I would incorporate the style into this week's challenge which was a boy birthday card. Not sure if this means a card for a boy, or a card with a boy on it........ so mine, hopefully, covers both ideas.

I actually found this quite hard...... choosing papers that would co-ordinate at an odd angle, whilst not swamping the main focal point. Hopefully, now I have done one, it will get easier as this style of card is very attractive and gives a bigger area to decorate. Maybe I picked the wrong theme for my first one as boy is it hard doing a boy card! No flowers, no bows, no frilly bits. Why can't boys be more like us!

Anyhow enough of my drivel.

I chose a paper from Kanban's seasons' collection, and to go with it another sheet of the WRMK's Tiffany pad, well I had it out for the last card I did and the colour went really well. I put it through the BS with a leaves texture plate to tone in with the Kanban paper.The ribbon is from my stash and the birthday label and little tree which holds the card upright were also from Kanban's Seasons' collection.

The little frog is a button I thought went great with the stamp. He is called Froggy Gift from High Hopes and reminds me of a prank my neighbours' (now grown up) sons played on me when they were much younger, hiding three frogs in a watering can, on account of the fact I made the mistake of telling them how they terrified me! BOYS!!! Hideous little creatures, lol. I can still see their innocent little faces pretending like they didn't know how the frogs got there. Anyhow coloured with prismas and OMS, and matted with nesties. What did we ever do before nesties?

I included an extra pic of the front as that was another problem I found with this style, photographing it so it looked in proportion and not too dark.

Lin

Mo's Challenge 14

Hi This is my entry for Mo's Challenge Blog 14. There is a sketch to follow, which I flipped as shown, plus of course one of Mo's gorgeous digi stamps. The latter is not difficult as there are hundreds to choose from. In fact I had been a good girl and not bought a thing since the beginning of December, but I spotted a couple of new images I didn't have, popped on over to her website and I was doomed from that second as I ended up buying 9 new images. Four of them I had longed for since they were released, but you know how it is, Christmas was coming and craft spending had to take a backseat! PUH!! So now I made up for it. However, for this card I used one of the very first digis I bought from Mo's site. She is called 'Rae with Journal' and is from a set 'Dani and Friends', which I believe, for you diehard rubber and acrylic fans, have recently been released with Stampavie in clear photopolymer stamps too.
So to my desgin. I used the gorgeous WRKM Tiffany Paper pad, and picked a particularly large and garish pattern as the background. Sometimes I pick out a paper and then colour accordingly, and sometimes I colour and then pick out the paper. This time I had already coloured, and as luck would have it, the right colours were in this sheet of paper, and even better it had toning plain sheets for the mats.
Wouldn't you know it, I meant to run the mats through with a Bug embossing folder and completely forgot! Call it an age thing. Who knows, it might have ended up looking too busy. The flowers are in fact three lovely green buttons from Autumn Leaves, and on top I stuck three gems which I coloured orange with a marker pen.

The stamp is coloured with chalks, Pitt Pastel pencils. I don't have many colours so was a bit limited for choice. Note to self, must look out for bargain bigger pack. The tiny butterfly was coloured with Sakura Stardust pens. It was difficult blending the chalks and I used Q-tips but there must be a better method out there, as they are quite large for small areas. If anyone knows of anything better, stick a comment under here please.....

Hope you like it.

Lin

Fluttering By

This is my entry for the Flutter By Wednesday Challenge 92 and I have combined it with Papertake Weekly 32.

The sketch comes from Papertake Weekly as follows:- Flutter By Wednesday was an open challenge as long as a butterfly, fairy or angel were included in the project.

I have had this gorgeous new stamp from Graphicus for a while now and nowhere to use it. It's very large almost 6" square and so pretty much covers a standard card. I stamped it with versafine and embossed with black sparkle powder. Unfortunately the camera has not captured the lovely sparkle of the black areas of the butterfly. I coloured it with Inktense watercolour pencils. The butterfly has curled beautifully due to the watercolouring and looks like it is fluttering off the card.

I used a 10x7 card and chopped it down to 7" square, covered it in some paper that was a freebie with Creative Cardmaking Magazine and also the three mats on top came from the same issue. Before I assembled it I realised that I didn't like the colour of the bottom layer of paper so I tinted it with Memento Inkpads and also used the same inkpads, different colour, to edge the top three mats and the central mat, which I had previously run through the Big Shot with a texture plate of butterflies.
The paper ribbon trim comes from K&Co's Que Sera range, and the three small butterflies are chopped from a length of butterfly ribbon. I created the sentiment on my pc and cut it out with a small nestie label.
After all the snow it's nice to think that spring is around the corner and we might soon be seeing butterflies for real, although not this size I hope!

I'm off now for a trawl around the Flutter By designers to see if I can locate the gorgeous blog candy they have on offer.

Lin