Whoops ...

Forgot to show the card I made for Mum's birthday a little while ago.  Shame on me for leaving things till the last minute and having to put together a quick card for someone so important.  Thank goodness for CD art where you can flick through till you find someone's favourite flower - print it - stick it and Bob's your Uncle or in the words of a famous friend of mine 'Bish, Bash, Bosh - job's done'.

This image with the script and rolled up paper effect was taken from Joanna Sheen's CD Floral Fantasy as was the backing paper.  I overlayed the backing paper with vellum as I love the soft effect that brings.  

Beautiful CD and even better when purchased in the Special Offers section of Joanna's website.  Love that section.

Another great thing about CDs and printing papers out is that you can easily make the inside of the card special too.

There are complete inners ready to print out on the CD, but I do like to do things my own way so I just printed out the panel of roses and a verse from Hallmark Card Studio as to my mum a card is not a good card if the it doesn't have a soppy verse inside.

I know I haven't made this card especially for a certain challenge, but it does fit some of them rather well so I'm going to enter it for the following...

• Sentimental Sundays - birthdays plus a sentiment - if you haven't looked at this challenge blog please do - the free quotes/ sentiments this week are just lovely.
• Crafty Calendar Challenges - Birthdays

Have a great start to the week everyone.

Ann xxx

Keeping busy...

A very special aunt of mine died this weekend so as you can imagine everyone has been really upset. I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm feeling low I find that crafting takes my mind off things and helps enormously.

Last week Joanna Sheen added some gorgeous House Mouse canvas bags to her online shop.  I couldn't resist and at the time of ordering I thought I might as well throw the matching stamp set into the basket too.  I was thinking that I might be able to do a bag charm or something like that to make the bag extra special.

Well somebody has stolen my shrink plastic or it could be that it's just been put in a safe place somewhere.  I haven't checked the fridge yet, but I've looked in most other places and have not tracked it down.  However, during the search I found some plastic badges that I bought ages ago from WH Smiths so I decided to use one of those to make an addition to my new bag.

The mouse was stamped on to a nestie circle along with the matching sentiment.  I coloured the image with Promarkers and touched up the edges with brown chalk to give a softer effect.  Then I mounted the circle on a scalloped red nestie and sprayed with Crafter's Companion glitter before putting inside the badge holder.  My daughter suggested the addition of the brown ribbon.

Hope you like it and if you see my shrink plastic anywhere around please let me know!!

Ann xxx

Happy Halloween...

I'm working all weekend so thought it might be best to upload my Halloween creations now and also wish every one a fun day on Sunday.  My 'BOO' card was made for a forum friend as part of a card swap with the theme of Faces, Distressing and Spooky!  Well, I don't think it's all that scary even for a wimp like me, but I've got lots of faces in the shaker aperture sections of the word.  I know for a fact that it was certainly 'distressing' for my poor friend, who got caught out by all the skulls that fell out of the envelope when she opened the card.  So sorry about that Ann - at least Tom got a good laugh.  Eeeeeeeeeeeek you might get your own back on me soon - must remember to be wary when opening my post!

The letters were cut out on my Cricut machine and the witch is a fabulous wooden embellishment I bought in a sale years ago.

My second Halloween project is for my daughter Laura - it's not pink, but it is full of chocolates so all should be well.

A Swiss Dots background and an embossed Halloween sentiment sets the scene for the wooden Halloween cat, which was bought at the same time as the witch one on my card.  They are actually fridge magnets so I suppose they could be recycled.  

My projects are for the following challenges...

• Daring Cardmakers - Trick or Treating!
• Rainbow Lady - SPOOKY AND SCARY 
• Tuesday Taggers -a Halloween theme and they must include Deep Purple
• Cupcake Craft Challenge - Sweet Treats with a Halloween Twist
• Dutch Dare - Halloween

Ann xxx