Happy Christmas Auntie...

Eli may be only 6 months old, but already he knows that Grannie Annie will make him all the cards he needs to send out at a very good price - FREE!.  He's even conned me into buying all his gifts too, but he's just so cute I really don't mind at all.

This card is for him to send to Auntie Laura, who is quite famous for being rather fond of pink and bling so I'm hoping she will love this 8" x 8" card.

The stamp is a Nellie Snellen cutie that I treat myself to last week from the Joanna Sheen Special Offers section.  I'm always popping in there as you can pick some amazing bargains.  At the moment she has some fabulous silhouette stamps on offer at way less than half price.  I coloured the stamp with my new Fleximarkers alongside original Promarkers.  I must say I love the new brush tip.

Other materials used...

• DCWV papers from way back when
• organza ribbon and gems
• Xyron Design Runner to create personalised sentiment
• snowflake dies 

Challenges...

• Joanna Sheen Challenge Blog - Christmas Wishes
• Crafty Ann's Challenge - Bingo and my line is glitter, presents and ribbon (the present is the star for the squirrel)
• Raise the Bar - Christmas
• Hanna and Friends - the sketch.

Thank you for looking and for all the very kind comments.  It so great to know that somebody out there likes what you create.

Christmas hugs - only 22 days to go!

Ann xxx

Bah! Humbug! Day ... Using CDs...

Phew, just had a very busy week at work so I've had to snatch an odd hour here and there to take part in our great new challenge at Bah! Humbug!  This week we are asking everyone to be creative using CDs or even create something to hold a CD gift.  Tons of scope in this theme and I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with. 

For my first project I decided to use a CD on the front of my card.  Love the reflective shine even if it is horrendous to get a good photo of. 

Materials used...

• Holly face rubber stamp by American Art Stamps - Paula Best design
• green corrugated card
• green mirri card and holly printed mirri card
• silver peel offs
• die cut spiky circle - Nellie Snellen die
• silver brads
• Promarkers

Additional challenges...

• Rainbow Lady - Use and old CD
• Cute Card Thursday - Shiny Happy Cards
• Fab's Big Christmas Card Challenge - Use Peel offs

My second project has been a nightmare to complete and I'm not very happy with it at all.  It just went so astray from my original idea, but oh well these things happen.

I bought an CD clock with 80s graphics on it's face from one of the Pound shops in Leeds some time back intending to alter it.  I thought it would be a relatively easy task - hmmm think again!  My original plan was to have a pink and silver theme so off came the red second hand, which is a bit of a shame seeing as I ended up using red in my design.

Another sad thing was that as the face of the clock was already so patterned I couldn't use take advantage of the mirror quality of a CD.  I did try to dismantle the clock with the aim of adding a blank CD, but I hadn't got the right tools.  Sigh, the only thing I could do was use the CD as a base and cover it with papers. 

Materials used...

• Joanna Sheen House Mouse stamps
• Nellie Snellen dies
• white card, silver and red card
• Promarkers
• self adhesive gems
• computer generated sentiment

I'm not happy with the finished clock at all and if I were starting again I would do the whole thing completely differently, but we learn by our mistakes and I do think that part of the fun of crafting is trying new things and experimenting. 

Additional challenges...

• My Time to Craft - Going round in circles
• Papertake Weekly - Putting on the glitz
• City Crafter - Cute Stuff
• A Spoonful of Sugar - Anything but a card.
• Totally Stampalicious - use some glitter or bling on your card

Have a wonderful Friday everyone and do pop over to Bah! Humbug! to check out the challenge for yourselves.  Max has found some fantastic links to tutorials for making all kinds of things using CDs.  I think I'm going to try some of them out myself this weekend. 

Ann xxx

Bah! Humbug!...

I'm sorry, but the snow I like is glittered and on Christmas cards.  The real stuff is also okay for the occasional country walk, sledging and building snowmen, but on no account should it fall when people need to get to work or even worse know that they have a huge parcel from Graphicus stranded at the Post Office and there is no way they can get their hands on it.  Eeek!

Anyway grumble over and on to more fun things such as this totally cute House Mouse stamp from one of the sets on the Joanna Sheen website.  How cute is he?  I love him to meeces!

I missed the last challenge at the House Mouse and Friends Challenge blog and was determined not to miss this one which is all about the 'envelope'.  To compensate for missing out last time I did a card to match the envelope.  Actually not sure which came first - a bit like the chicken and the egg query really.

The envelope was stamped with the mouse and then using another stamp set in my collection I stamped the ground and the snowballs using a bit of masking and a pen to join things up.  I coloured the image using Promarkers.  I was a bit unsure as to how they would blend on the envelope paper and I must admit I put an protective piece inside the envelope just incase the ink went through, but it all seemed to work fine. The snowflakes are one of the really tiny corner stamps by Clarity bought at a show years ago and were stamped in Versefine Sepia.  I added the address to the photo only - I don't really know Maxwell's address!

My card is a really simple one with the mouse image mounted on a fab die cut by Nellie Snellen and then matted on some of my favourite wording paper by DCWV.  Organza ribbon, die cut tags and corner peel offs have been added for a touch of oomph.

My card and envelope set is perfect for the following challenges...

• House Mouse and Friends Challenge Blog - Envelope Art
• Crazy 4 Challenges - Script (background paper)
• Promarker Challenge - Old and New (new is House Mouse stamp - old is DCWV paper and snowflake corner stamp)

Well, I'm off for a walk in the snow.  I must be mad, but I do think that it will be really beautiful on the pastures near us and am hoping to take some good snowy day photos.  Also hoping that Pasture's Lodge is open too as I think on a cold day their lasagne, garlic bread and chips meal would go down very nicely accompanied by a glass (or two) of red wine.

Have a good day all and keep warm and safe.

Ann xxx

Pink Elephant Day ...

Time for a sketch challenge at The Pink Elephant and wow what a sketch!  So different and really inspiring.  Such a shame that one of the DT needs to hang her head in shame - ME! I'm not one bit happy with my contribution for this challenge.  This is the other card I made in a hurry for Shelley's birthday on Friday.  It had to be purple and black as they are Shelley's favourite colours and I must admit she loved the card, but I don't, even though it does look better in real life than on screen. 

As you can see the Nellie Snellen die came out again.  I'm addicted to that at the moment - it seems to be appearing on every card.  The small circles were cut using Nesties and the letters were cut on the Cricut using half and one inch lower case letters.

Have a great day everyone and if you want to see some amazing designs by my fellow DT members do pop over to The Pink Elephant where the rest of the team have entered some fabulous creations.

Shelley's Birthday...

Yesterday was my daughter Shelley's birthday and when did I make her cards - yep you guessed it - yesterday morning!  I've just got to get myself more organised.  I actually bought myself a new stamp set to create something special for her, but because I was in such a rush I had to keep the card fairly simple.

The beautiful fairy is from a stamp set by Sweet Pea Stamps.  I coloured her using Promarkers and then using the Nellie Snellen circle die created a frame and acetate overlay.  The frame is attached over the image with foam pads.  I did consider putting glitter in as in a shaker card, but decided against as I didn't want to hide the image in any way.

The heart corners were punched using my new Woodware punch (another Mother's Day present - my daughters are well trained) and the patterned paper was part of a fantastic blog candy prize sent to me by Vicki at Blue Jelly Too. I seem to be having a really lucky time at the moment - I must buy a lottery ticket today!

Shelley loved her card and the one I made for Gran to send her - also made in the mad panic yesterday morning. 

My card is also for the challenges at...

• Rainbow Lady - Acetate overlay (without the Christmas option)
• Die Cut Dreams - Two punches - (heart corner and small tag are both punched)
• Magical Crafts - Things with Wings

Bah! Humbug! Vintage Theme...

This week the theme at Bah! Humbug! was chosen by Irene, who is a great fan of the vintage look on cards and projects.  I must admit than when I first thought about this I wanted to go wild with pearls and lace and flowers, etc, but that 'going to work' element came into it and I only had time to do a fairly simple card.

I did get chance to use my Nellie Snellen die though and infact this is the shape I cut out the other day when I used the left over bit to make a frame for the stamped tree.  I really do like these dies as there is so much you can do with them. 

The paper is from one of Joanna Sheen's backing paper pads and is one of the sheets a friend gave me.  Thank you Irene.  I used part of the backing paper to created the central image.

Additional Challenges...

• Winter Wonderland - Victorian Christmas

Have a fantastic weekend everyone and see you on Monday for The Pink Elephant challenge.

Ann xxx