Christmas Decorations

The past few years I've found it hard to get excited about Christmas and decorating the tree etc, however, this afternoon we went to Bluewater and had a look in the seasonal shop.

This was one of the sample trees in store and I've fallen in love with it - so much so that we bought the garlands, spiky white things, lime green and purple sparkly feathery birds and other adornments!



Am even considering putting the tree up on Monday (my last day of freedom before rejoining the rat-race)



Again the photos don't to the colours justice as it was so awesome. Will post my effort once done.

Crafts-u-Love class with Francoise Read

This morning Lynn and I met Jill (Cardinal Colours) at Crafts-u-Love for a class with Francoise Read. We had a really good time and made the following card using Francoise's new Christmas stamps as below.

This is my effort.

I really loved the Copic Markers so treated myself to an early birthday present (bad girl!!!)

My sat nav could not pick up a signal on leaving so we tried to wing it and ended up getting lost which wasn't such a bad thing as the scenery was beautiful. We stopped on a deserted stretch of road and took this pictures quickly from the car.
They dont really do justice to the fantastic autumnal colours which were much more vibrant.

And there's more :)

Apart from this first one, seems to be a Kanban Christmas today :)

Friday Offerings

I made this card for my friends sons birthday, he is a keen Liverpool supporter so I copied these images from the website and made him a personalised card - Happy Birthday Liam!

Denise (another friend - and yes, I have more than one!) had asked me to make a Millwall Football card so below are the results
Liverpool 1-Millwall 1



Back to Christmas, the following are from the A4 Forever Friends paper pad I got recently.
The images were perfect for decoupage and are mounted onto 8x8 cards to maximise the space.

More Christmas

Managed a few more today to add to stock.

This one was from an A4 pad of Forever Friends Christmas papers. Mounted and trimmed onto an 8x8 card and then 2 other sheets cut for decoupage.

This one was a pyramage sheets from Forever Friends, backed with the top of the sheet above and mounted onto a CWC silver scalloped edge square.

These are cardstock stickers that say Noel.

This was on the same work sheet as the pyramage. I cut the robin from the leftover piece from the first card.

Finally - I've made some cards....

Finally managed to make some cards today, albeit only 3.

Early start I thought, ha ha, an hour later I began - washing, phone calls for Dad, etc etc etc.

Made with a Kanban kit, loved the way these look.

I added a concertina of black card and added the layers forward on this one giving extra dimension.

And then I had a phone call......and had to stop :)

The end of an era

A sad end to the week as Dad closed up the caravan at Bognor Regis for good.
He doesn't want to go without Mum, obviously, and the ground rent etc is quite high.
We went down Thursday and sorted out what he wanted to bring home, stayed in a Travelodge Thursday and Friday nights. Robert came with the van after work on Friday so we loaded up yesterday and came home. Some of the neighbours & Management at Copthorne caravan park came to say goodbye and I hope they manage to keep in touch with Dad - he really needs his friends to keep him going!

Today, Sunday, Lianne's boyfriend Sam was complaining of stomach pains. He then started being sick so we were quite worried. We suggested they went to the Urgent Care Centre at Darent Valley and TG we did. He is currently undergoing sugery to remove his appendix!
We wish him a speedy recovery.

Hopefully a happier week to come?

Destroying the evidence.

This is the birthday girl cutting the cake, carefully watched by Derek, my brother.

Birthday Cake

Last week my brother asked me to organise a cake for his wife's surprise 50th birthday party.
Nothing like a bit of notice as I only had 4 days!!
As he wanted fruit cake, I bought one from M&S ready iced in white and thought I'd have a go at making flowers to decorate it.

Due to the lack of time (I had 2 classes this week) I went to Hobbycraft and bought some fondant icing in pink and lilac and some cutters to make roses and carnations.

Fondant was not the correct choice I later found out to make flowers with as it "flops" :(

I used the cutter for the roses which is the same as the retro daisy paper punch, and cut 2 sizes, made indents on the smaller sized petals and layered them. I coloured some white fondant yellow and made little balls which I pressed into discs using my sieve to add texture for the centres. The leaves were made with ivy cutters and some fondant I coloured with green.

I already had letters and numbers as I used to make novelty cakes for Lianne's birthdays so I used these too.



I changed the ribbon to coordinate with the flowers and added a bow.



Not as I had intended, but it seemed to go down well :)

My Dad

How cute are these?
I'm scanning Dad's old photos into my PC and just wanted to share these.
He thinks they were taken in Bournemouth as thats where his parents used to holiday.

Will be making pages soon I hope.....

Mia's Cupcake

Denise asked me to make a cupcake for her Granddaughter Mia's 7th birthday.
I used an 8x8 card blank and added a square of green check for the background that I got from Jill's (Cardinal Colours) a while back. The muffin is made by cutting out layers from brown paper from the BG Scarletts Letter collection and layering with 3d foam. The cake case is a scrap of paper which I put through the ribber for effect. Dimensions paint and candy dots were used for the topping.

Project for the Guides

I was asked recently to organise a craft night for the local Guides so they could create Memory Books celebrating their centenary.

I was given a budget per book and asked to make up 50 kits, these include an 8x8 chipboard album with 10 white cardstock pages from CWC, 8 x 12x12 sheets of assorted paper (Papermania - Clare Curd signature range) 2 Owls and a bird plus 3 butterflies also CWC, 4 journalling blocks, 4 lengths of ribbon and a few candy dots.

This is the sample I made for Jan, the Guide Leader, hopefully to inspire them.


I began by covering the chipboard on both sides with different patterned paper then used the leftover section from the "L" to create a pocket on the inside cover.

These are the pages I created with the photographs Jan e-mailed me. The journalling blocks have been left blank for her to add her own thoughts.

Flowers were created with my daisy and retro flower punches, the owls, bird and butterflies watercoloured with pencils.

The ribbons were used to fasten the book and as embellishments within.

Sunday Lunch

Robert is very fond of Lamb but I dont like it.
We often see people cooking it on the TV and he always says how nice it looks so I bought a half shoulder in M&S yesterday.
Following something I saw ages ago, Jamie Oliver I think, I made deep incisions in the skin side, rubbed it with olive oil and added slivers of garlic and sprigs of Rosemary.
Robert decided it looked so nice that he took the following:








The result.......
an empty plate! :)

The start of Christmas '09

I began the epic task of Christmas cards today using a Forever Friends kits.

The first one was a decoupage sheet which was die-cut. I agree with Lynn that I'd rather just cut out myself as I hate the edges being white or not crisp - it takes longer as I have to trim each piece. I added some CWC pearlescent paper as a background and layered the decoupage on the inside of a card with an aperture.


The next one is a pyramage layered card with the same background sheet on a CWC scalloped 6x6 card.

The last one was a glossy rub on. I used one of the A6 cards trimmed and chalked as a base and mounted onto a 6x6 card with a bazzil mat. I added a peel off as a border.

New Baby Card

Today I made a card to go with the new baby album.
I used a template purchased last year and the paper collection from the album - Kay & Co, Brenda Waltons Small Wonders, Boy.

I highlighted each letter with and inked edged and Marvy Le Plume pens and emulated different types of stitching.

Jewells and Pearls from Cardinal Colours decorated areas along with a few BG buttons which I tied with thread.

Three ribbons were tied though each hole to secure and add further decoration.

Small 6x6cm photographs and the animal characters from the paper were added inside.