All Dressed Up at sea

Hi guys,

In this post I have another All Dressed Up inspired Christmas card. The card is based upon the following sketch from Sketchy Colours:

I used the same three patterned papers as in my Iris folded card, but instead used them as the layers on the sketch - with the snowflake paper at the back, layered with the green holly paper and then the red tartan paper to finish, all layered on a simple red base card. The All Dressed Up Bauble was coloured using promarkers and then layered onto a green mirror card scalloped circle die-cut, and attached to the card. Finally a Poinsettia was die-cut using Brittania medium poinsettia die and red mirror card, and adhered as the central circle, with felt holly leaves making the smaller circles (with rhinestone berries).

This card is being entered into the following challenges also:
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge and Completely Christmas - Anything Goes
ADU #16 Favourite Colours
crafting by designs Get ready for Christmas
cute card thursday - use dies/punches
Winter Wonderland Layer it up
Catch The Bug - Photo Inspiration  (i saw this as holly)
Crafty Hazelnuts #196 Make it colourful
Glitter n Sparkle Use some flowers (poinsettia)
ABC Christmas Challenge S is for Something Festive
Creative Moments #52 Use three layers
Art Impressions #145 Holiday Sparkle (Metallics on bauble and rhinestones on holly)
Fussy and Fancy Main colour red
Simply Create Too #71 Special Occasion


BOOK REVIEW - 'Cold Grave' by Kathryn Fox. This is a murder mystery/crime novel based on a cruise ship between Hawaii and Australia. A forensic physician, Anya, has been bought a cruise holiday for her, her son and ex husband, as a thank you for solving a previous crime. However, at the beginning of the journey a teenage Chinese girl is found wet through and dying in a towel closet. Anya and her ex are the first there to try and help the girl and Anya ends up trying to find out what happened. Amidst the atmosphere of booze, sex and drugs, there is also something darker, as is established when, within a few hours, a crew member is knee capped. Anya and the head of security have to work together to figure out if the cases are related or separate and try too bring the guilty to justice.  I had never heard of this author before picking up this book and thoroughly enjoyed the read. I found that it had a good combination of intrigue, suspense and real life situations, as well as looking at some interesting facts about how crime may be difficult to stop between borders.

Iris Folding in Mesopotamia

Well hello again.

We had the 60th Wedding anniversary this weekend just gone, and surprise, surprise I did not get the present finished. However, I am still working on it everyday so hopefully it will get there before too long. It was a lovely day and a lovely meal, but unfortunately I did not take any pictures :(

I am now full of man flu (more annoying than a cold and comes with sore muscles), which is really lovely when I want to use the last of the light evenings to sort the allotment beds out and get the last of the crops out of the ground.

Here is the first of the Christmas cards I have made this week, trying iris folding for the first time. I used three different patterned papers - two from the Papermania First Noel paper pack and one from a free paper pack 'Merry Berry' by Jennifer Ellory - and used a basic square layout. The ribbon is also papermania and the bauble image is from All Dressed Up and coloured with promarkers. To finish I added three papermania buttons to the top corner.

This is being entered into the following challenges:
Modsquad Holiday challenge
Suzy Bee #48 Use some red twist
Crafty Ribbons #103 Ribbons and Buttons
Jingle Belles We Three Kings challenge (three patterned papers)
and obviously the ADU challenge #16 Favourite Colours (Festive Red and Green).

Finally for the Audio book review - This time it was Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie. This is written from the point of view of a rather prim nurse who is asked to help out at an archaeological dig accommodation as the wife of the boss is 'nervy'. The first few discs take you through the meeting of each of the main characters in the story before the murder is committed. Poirot is then called in to investigate the matter as he is rather conveniently in that area of the world. There are a lot of different angles to this story, typical of Agatha Christie, which keep you guessing right to the very end.  You think you may have the culprit and then something insinuates that they cannot really have done it. Poirot also expertly uncovers another criminal among their group. It is only after a second murder that Poirot realises what has happened, after thinking over a clue left by the second victim. As usual this is a very interesting story and very good to listen to on long journeys.

Hugz Tinz

Nautical treats

My challenge to myself for today (as a change from stitching this wedding picture which I am doing everyday at the moment as it needs to be finished by the weekend - not going to happen) was to create a nautical ATC collection, which featured something from the kitchen also. This took quite a while to come up with the ideas but I managed it!
They all use tattoo flash as the main nautical image, using popular sailor motifs of swallows and anchors. Some stamps I got free with a magazine were used for the cupcakes and strawberries, which were my theme for the 'from the kitchen' part of the collection. These were coloured using the 'hues' and Ltd ed. Autumn sets from Letraset.

The challenges that they are all valid for are:
Live&Love Crafts #27 Things with Wings
Country View #19 Nautical
Hanna and Friends #205 From the Kitchen
CASology Flutter Cue Card

So here it is, Nautical Treats ATC collection:

ATC #1

For this one I used white card and added two green and one purple skeleton leaf to the bottom left. Above this I added a strip of lace and then the swallow flash. A strawberry and cupcake finished this design off, making the swallow about to put the strawberry on the cake??
Crafty Calender Leaves and Lace September challenge

ATC #2

This simple card uses two mirror image flash swallows holding a strip of ribbon in their beaks, which is connected to a stamped cupcake.

ATC #3

For this final, and slightly less simplistic ATC I used a lilac base. The strawberry was stamped direct several times to create a decorated edge, and then green circles ribbon next to these. To the bottom of the ribbon a deep purple bow and then an orange polkadot bow were added. A swallow with anchor flash was coloured and added to this ATC to finish.
V's Sweet Ideas #27 Circles and Dots
Sweet Stampin' Ribbons and Bows challenge
MIM Autumn Colours Challenge
Delightful Sketches All Fall Down (Fall Colours) Challenge
Simply Create Too #70 Fall/Autumn

Sorry for the slightly blurred quality of a couple of the photos - the camera was about to die!!

As serious as .... School???

Hiya everybody,

It looks like summer is still having a peek through these miserable days - it was lovely yesterday! Hopefully there will be enough sunshine to ripen my tomatoes. I was thinking of splitting my posts down into the separate categories, rather than all in one post, but the only time my blog is viewed is when somebody clicks on the photo on the competition links - so for now you will have to put up with everything under one post  :)

So firstly here are my recent cards. There were a couple of themes I tried to fit both cards into and then a couple that were unique to the card. The image used for both cards was a free clip-art, but unfortunately I cannot remember the site that it came from.

Those entries that cover both cards are for:

Passion for Promarkers - Make it digital

Anything Goes - Suzy Bee ; A creative romance; avenue 613

Hobbybook Designer - Embossing

crafting by designs - Childhood memories

crazy4challenges C4C253 School

Card #1

The inside of this card was based on the CTB Stellas Sketch #214 below:

A free stripy patterned paper in pinks and browns was the background layer, with core-dinations card stock embossed with a Sizzix embossing folder of flowers in circles and then distressed using sandpaper, was used for the next layer. A pink, crinkle ribbon was added on top of these. The image was coloured n using promarkers in cocoa, cinnamon, Twilight Sky and Apple Cider blended and Budding Rose. This was then layered onto a brown, office-type backing paper and a pink card with gold polka dots, and all was layered onto the base card. To finish brown square diamantes were added to finish the sketch, with the lower ones being rotated to fit my card design better.

The front of the card was design to represent a school desk - of the variety that were in use when I was in primary school - inkwell in top corner and lift up lid etc. I struggled to find inspiration to get this looking like an actual desk lid, so added soe graffiti (no desk is without it) and some lined paper. Any tips for future would be welcomed.

This card is being entered into the following challenges:

Crafty Little Fairies - Sparkle and Bling

Artistic Inspiration - #106 Add some Bling

2 cute ink - #115 Fall

ilovepromarkers #237 Feeling Distressed

creative moments #51 Fall Colours

A little bit crafty - Distress it

CRAFT #277 Brown, aqua and pink

Simply create too #70 Fall Autumn

cute card thursday Awesome Autumn (colours)

Card #2

This is a one layer card.  The image was printed onto purple cardstock, which is square when folded. I then coloured it using Plum Preserve, Tequila Sunrise and Lamp Black Promarkers. 'Good Luck' was stamped using a Personal Impressions stamp and heat embossed with sparkly black embossing powder. To finish the edge was trimmed using edging scissors.

This card is being entered into these challenges:
OLS #9 - Hip to be square
aud sentiments #115 For the men in our lives
art impressions #144 Purple, orange and black
addicted-to-stamps #87 For a man or boy


ANIMALS
I found out last week that my kitty is hyperthyroid, but she seems to be getting on well with the tablets - especially as she gets them wrapped in cheese, which seems to go down well with all involved :)
Timmy mouse managed to get himself out of his cage onto the top of Bubble's cage and I came back to find a fat Timmy with blood on his tail and his chest with no clue to where that on his chest had come from, until I checked Bubble. The poor little guy has been beaten up all around his nose :(  He has a lovely bruise this evening, however the swelling has gone down nicely. Poor little guy - but he could have moved into his cage AWAY from Timmy!!! Silly boy.

AUDIO BOOK
'As Serious as Death' by Quinten Jardine - This story is based in Spain and revolves around an airline. Primavera has lost her close partner and has taken on looking after his kids when their mother also died. She lives in Spain with her lover, who leaves early in the story to finish his book, after they have had an argument. Shortly after he leaves she bumps into an old acquaintance who gets her to work for the same airline company that he is security manage for. He is in Spain looking to find out who vandalised two aircraft and Primavera is to help him. Unfortunately things go awry as first his car is blown up and then he is blown up in a restaurant toilet. The government make a cover-up to avoid terrorism panic. Primavera and Hector, who she hires to help look after security, have to investigate themselves. They manage to find out the answers they need, and the journey there is extremely interesting and I really enjoyed listening to this book. If you like crime fiction then I would recommend this book!

Thank you for looking,

Tinz

CAS Poinsettia

Well I am now at the end of my week off work and I feel worse than I did at the start. We had the in-laws over to help put a new roof on the 'sunroom' (not really a good name now as the roof is solid). So my relaxing week off work went out the window. Not a single lie-in all week and constantly being told 'do this, do that'. I took the week off work to relax and get some stitching bits finished, but that did not happen, nor has any of the chilli jam been made yet - so that is todays job!!  I am really not impressed at all - but at least the sunroom should not leak anymore.

Anyway, onto my Christmas card for this week. I followed the sketch from Jingle Belles, which was a pretty CAS design:


So here is the card I came up with:

I covered the base card with poinsettia paper from a Papermania paper pack. I then used gold ink with 'The Night before Christmas' sentiment which came free with this issue of Stamper magazine. I only inked the top two lines, and added the mouse stamp above the main poinsettia. I coloured the mouse using basic colouring pencils and added an Anita's poinsettia topper to finish the card.

I am entering this card into the following challenges (as well as the sketch challenge):
open-minded crafting #19 Roll out the red
Alphabet Challenge P is for Pretty Petals
ABC Christmas R is for Red Poinsettia
ooh-la-la #164 Clean and Simple
Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas 194 Silent Night (Sentiment)
Completely Christmas #29
Delightful Sketches Simple Times (CAS)
Crafty Catz #246 CAS
CRAFT #276 Christmas
CASology Three (three elements - patterned paper, stamps and topper).

Anything Goes @ Scrapbook Stamp Society; A Creative Romance; avenue 613; Divas by Design and Crafting by designs

Purple Owls

Hi Guys,

Just a card to share with you this time. Although I am off work this week and was hoping to get some crafting done, we are instead sorting out the sun-room and so my crafting time is reduced to less than hat it would normally be if I was working!! Boo-hoo :)

However I have managed to make a card, for which I decided on a tri-fold design, following this sketch from Card Maniaas the main design (when the card is closed).


So here is my version, using a tri-fold design and this sketch, using diamantes as the flowers (as well as a butterfly) and swapping the orientation of the image and backing paper:

So for this card I made a tri-fold blank from white card. I used a Henbury Lane butterfly and rose patterned paper, carefully cut, for the main areas on the card. I used an 'especially for you' printed paper from the same stack for two of the bottom panels and yet another paper for the remaining panels. This paper is accented with glitter, apart from the sentiment paper. A papermania pre-cut label shape was used for the background for the main image and the image from Di's Digi Stamps was coloured in promarkers and cut close to the design (the old-fashioned way - using a craft knife). I then added the diamante embellishments and the butterfly, and a strip of glitter ribbon across the bottom to finish.

I am entering this card into the following challenges:
Stamping Boutique - Glitter it up challenge (glitter papers and ribbon)
Glitter n Sparkle - Challenge 101; Use a Digi
Craft-room - Something old, something new challenge (old being the Henbury Lane paper set, new being the digi stamp from Di's Digi Stamps).
alphabet challenge - O is for Ombre
Fussy and Fancy - #122 More than one fold

Thank you for looking.

Hugz Tinz

Floral beauty in the Rye?

I have been crafting ATC's again this week. I have done a floral beauty collection this time, using the same techniques for each card, but a different sketch for each. The main image is a quilled flower in each of the cards and purples and oranges the main colours.

ATC 1 is based upon the sketch from sketchandstash:

A purple patterned paper was run through the big shot in a floral embossing folder and attached to the centre of a red base card. A papermania orange floral ribbon went across this with matching bows at each side. A square of orange paper was run through the big shot in a butterfly embossing folder before layering onto the card. Purple ink was used to highlight a couple of the butterflies. Finally five quilled petals were added to the square to make a flower and the edges of the petals dabbed with the purple ink.

ATC2 is based upon the sketch from Sweet Sketch Wednesday Sketch 26:

A purple papermania die-cut was run through the Big Shot using the floral embossing folder. Before attaching to the base card a speckled background stamp was used with orange ink. A purple ink was dabbed into the centre and then blended into the orange. A rectangle was cut from the orange paper embossed with butterflies and attached to the card. Purple ribbon edged with silver decorates the left edge and bright butterfly diamantes attached in place of the flowers on the sketch. A silver bow decorates the bottom right and the quilled flower adorns the top of the rectangle.

ATC3 is based upon the sketch from Sketchy colours:

Again the purple paper was used after embossing with flowers. The orange embossed paper was die-cut into a floral circle shape. A deep purple wide ribbon was added to the bottom of the red base card, overlapping the orange embossed circle. The quilled flower was stuck to the top of the circle and a rich purple bow to the top of the ribbon. Small green diamante butterflies were added down the sides of the ribbon. The purple patterned paper was cut to have an empty space and a flower to the left, and 'What's new?' was stamped into the space using orange ink and then this was added according to the sketch.

The following challenges are also to be entered with the cards from this collection:

Crafting by designs - Anything Goes

Card Mania #54 Butterflies and Bows

CCM #122 Dry Embossing

Scrapbook Stamp Society #49 Anything Goes

Love to Create #131 Colour Inspiration (Purples and Orange)

MIM Indian Summer (Bright Colours)

Ink on my Fingers #323 Mr Brightside - Bright Colours

Audio book - The Burglar in the Rye by Lawrence Block. This is a mystery story with a twist - the main character is a good criminal! This humourous story follows bookseller come burglar Bernie as he discovers a dead woman in her room, whilst searching for some letters to steal, and then works to establish who killed her, and therefore who has the letters in question. He gets a lot of information from sneaking around, that the police would never have been able to get. My only complaint with this audio book was the quality of the final disc - I know who did it, but I have no idea why because the first few tracks just kept jumping and skipping!!! Grr. I will now have to find the book so that I can read that particular part to fill in the gaps!

Cross Stitch update - fishes @ 64 hours.

Thanks for looking,

Hugz Tinz