...it was Alli's fault

Alli Miles made a card using the swiss dots embossing folder and score lines together - it was gorgeous, see it here. (hope that's not one of those bold hot link thingies, haven't quite got my head round that yet.)

I so need a light box tent thingy - sorry about the poor pics.

Anyhow - after spotting that I was inspired to try something similar - I laid out a few nestability dies and ran my orange card (It could be PTI summer sunrise, not sure tho' - it was a scrap) through the cuttlebug, then I scored some lines and rubed it all over with orange ink (Versacolour). Paired it up with some more of that Basic Grey Ambrosia paper and added ribbon.

I don't usually take pics of the insides of my cards but I thought this one was worth a look.

The sentiment is from PTI Mixed Messages.

Hope it tickles.

...hugs to Nancy

Just a quick note to Nancy who left no email - I am so sorry to hear about your Dad - I know how that feels. God Bless.

Claire

...thank you all

Yesterday I was reading all the lovely comments and well wishes from the folks who visit my blog and I was really touched. It's so easy to listen to the news these days and think that the world is full of badness. One thing I have discovered since I started a blog (many thanks to Lynn) is how many lovely people there are out there - and I count myself very lucky to have made such very good friends with some very special people. So thank you.

Because it was my birthday on Monday I went stamp shopping in Belfast with my BB Genevieve. I know, I know, but I was in need of instant gratification and couldn't possibly wait for a PTI delivery , tho I believe there might be one scheduled soon...

I purchased a wee set of stamps and a couple of Tim Holtz inks, new to me, which I wil have fun trying out soon hopefully. I made a little thank you card since I was feeling thankful and no, I didn't forget to colour it - I just thought it looked better that way. The stamps are wee furry animals and I think they'll be great for cards for my girlies and their friends. Penny Black is the brand. he paper is from a little Ambrosia pad by Basic Grey.

The weeny 'thanks' sentiment is PTI - mixed messages I believe but don't quote me. and there is Pure poppy and summer sunrise cardstock in there too - both PTI.

Hope it tickles.

...more of the same

Another card using my wee cottage. Are you bored yet? Lol - something different next time, promise.

Thought I'd try out a different colour scheme - see ladies and gents, I'm making a big effort to propel myself into the new 'spring' colour mode!! The papers are from Basic Grey - Sugared collection - I'm sure you are all old friends with this but my jaw dropped at the fabulousness of the patterns when a parcel of this stuff landed on my doorstep from my friend Beverly at precious scraps - incidentaly, nip over to her blog - she's looking for DT people!!!!

Olive, pink and yellow are the unlikely combination of the lovely patterned paper and I tried to echo this in my colouring of the cottage - think it just about gets away with it...

This card is destined for a very dear friend of mine, also stateside, from whom I was particularly delighted to hear from today!!

I finally got to do some stitching on a card - been itching to do that but it's such a nuisance lugging my heavy machine out of its hidey hole that I've only just managed it.

Anyhow - hope it tickles.

More news

Today is my Birthday - I have had loads of lovely wishes from many folks - even some lovely blog readers wanted to send me cards - Thank you so much - the fact that you thought about it is enough for me.

Beth wants to know what I got - so here's the 'skinny' as she puts it. My Best pal Genevieve bought me a Build-a-bear!!!! I have wanted one for ages - its a lovely huggly brown curly fur one called Coco. I also received a card from Genevieve which I have put on the sidebar.

My wee folk got me sweets!! yum. Himself is taking me out at the weekend and my mum and aunt gave me pennies - you can all guess where that's going...Lol.

In the post I received a card from Lynn - supernaturally gifted Lynn who knew it was my birthday even tho I don't remember telling her...

It's a gorgeous card with butterflies and having seen it the butterfly stamps are now first on my list at PTI - I had been thinking about them but Lynn's convinced me - the card is stunning!!

Here it is.

...a card for january blog hop

So I'm cheating again! - the challenge was to make a birthday card - and my stamps are 99% christmas sooo I thought I'd doodle a wee image to use on this card - everything else is PTI stuff tho' If you aren't familiar with the PTI Blog hop challenges - check it out here.

January's blog hop takes place this evening and I'm posting a little early but you can see the other entries by popping over to the PTI forum and looking at the blog hop thread.

This card was for my son's birthday - yep that wee round faced baby in the photo on my profile is acually two now!! I thought it would be appropriate to draw a picture of him - yes, he actually does look like the wee doodled character, complete with orangy hair. He is the cutest wee dote... but back to the card, I drew the pic, scanned it in to the 'puter and added the sentiment - he gets called big guy sometimes cos he's so little and he loves trains. The font is called giddyup but I think it was one that I purchased rather than freeware.

I made the Ocean tides background by stamping Versamark in a guidelines grid and filling it with stars from the Believe set and bellies from the Wise owl sets, both PTI - the yellow is Summer sunrise CS stamped with faux ribbon stamps in Raw Sienna.

I cut the star with a spellbinders star die out of Vintage cream PTI CS and the ribbon is Ocean tides. The brads came from Papermania.

Hope you all have a fab blog hop, I look forward to a load of inspiration tonight.

...ahhh that's better

First - let me say thank you to all the lovely well wishes I received - I'm feeling much better and raring to go - also Lynn - how could you possibly know about Monday? Lol.

Now, since I'm carding again, I realise I'm in trouble!! - I spent a while looking at the January GSS submissions the other day, (all I was fit for was looking!) and I was so impressed by all the lovely bright, springy fresh cards. I realise I'm in trouble because I have spent my whole time gearing up to make Christmas cards, thinking that that was all I was going to be interested in and now I find I'm itching to make spring cards, St Pat's cards, birthday cards, you name it I wanna do it!!

There is a huge hole in my stash! - it's roughly the size of several packs of PTI raspberry fizz/spring rain cardstock and several new stamp sets, not to mention the non existent bright ribbons!! The size of the hole is sadly matched by the hole in my wallet so it may take a while to catch up!! Lol. In the meantime I expect to find that necessity will be the mother of invention and in the grand tradition of sensible households everywhere I will 'make do' with what I have.

I can say all this rather smugly and with no real sense of pain because, Lo and Behold - there's a birthday on the horizon and I have been dropping hints like rain.

Already I have had to make something up - I don't have any St Patricks stamps and I wanted to make this St Pat's type card - so I drew a wee pic of a cottage with a black fineliner and scanned it into the 'puter. I printed it out in several sizes on PTI cream cardstock and I will probably make another few cards with the image. I watercoloured it since there is also a copic marker shape hole in my stash, and then mounted it on PTI Ripe Avocado and a couple of delicious Cosmo Cricket papers sent to me by my pal Beverly of the soon to be Precious scraps store!! can't wait!! I stamped the sentiment Kindred spirits - which is perfectly suitable given who the card is going to - a good friend of mine who lives stateside but has a real affinity for Ireland.

I know all you stamp purists will consider this cheating!! Lol, but what's a girl to do? Be nice to have it made into a wee stamp along with a few other doodles I've done and I'm eyeing up a stamp making kit on ebay, thinkin bout it.

Pssst!! all you stamp company owners, feel free to snap me up now while I'm still real cheap!! Lol.

Hope it tickles.

...atishoo

Well that was truly horrible - worst flu I've ever had! We're just getting back on our feet again and I should have something cardlike to post shortly. In the meantime, fancy a couple more Ireland pics...?

The first is Tawnyard Lough near Westport. The second is Turlough Round Tower.

...a wee tower

This was the first of the two Tower boxes I made - this one I kept for my January GSS submission over at PapertreyInk .

I love the Silent Night stamp set and I had this image in my head of some sort of Middle eastern Tower, with fretwork windows. This was what came out.

It is actually a Christmas gift box first and foremost, meant for a wee Russian doll. I often think, though, that it's a shame to have to throw these things away after the event and so I gave it double purpose by making it turn into a luminary - ONLY FOR USE WITH BATTERY TEA LIGHTS THO'.

The pale gold insert pulls out so that you can pop a wee battery tea light in and put the lid back on and put it on the mantlepiece or similar.

I made a wee shrink plastic tag to entwine into the decorative cord - which is really only old ribbon plaited with two or three strands of co-ordinating wool, but I think my favourite bit is the roof - I ran the card through a cuttlebug folder before making up the rof, then I rubbed it in versamark and dipped it into the fine gold embssing powder that Papertrey recently started carrying - Wow - I love how it melts and actally looks like aged gold!!

I am planning on having a post up soon showing how to make these boxes and if I get time I'll do a template for the roof, but It might be a week or so as we've had a really insidious little flu bug, and I'm not quite done with it yet.



As a last, I just want to say a big THANK YOU to anyone who visits this blog - I don't reply to every comment, just as I don't expect a reply every time I comment on a blog, but I do answer emails and I do edit posts with answers to questions etc. I also note when people want to know how things are made and try to accommodate that. If you have a specific request do let me know, but also - DO leave contact details. Thank you very much for all your support.

...Happy Valentine's Day

I hate to leave Christmas behind (and I haven't quite yet - few things to show you soon,) but When a box of goodies containing these glorious My Minds eye papers arrived at my door, I had to jump into Valentines mode.

My friend Beverly Nash is opening a store soon (card making/scrapbooking supplies of course) and she sent me these papers. Beverly is one of the loveliest people I know and she is working extremely had to get her store ready, she's hoping for a February opening but she also hopes to be online soon - I really hope you all pop over to her Blog and check out the IMMENSE amount of work this lady has undertaken.

Anyhow the upshot is that very soon there will be a new place for you to go if you are handy to Dover, Tennessee, and also a new place for you to go if you are handy to the internet!!

In the meantime I think Beverly is taking requests by email which you can find on her blog, or even leave a comment - I know things are hectic for Beverly at the moment so go easy on her!! I can't wait till opening day!! It's going to be fantastic and Beverly so deserves every success, she has worked SOOO hard - you folks have no idea. (Good luck Beverly and God Bless!)

Back to the pics, I had an idea for a cute gift box in the shape of a tower and I made the original for the Guest Star Stamper monthly competition over at PTI. It's in the January comp so you won't be able to see it yet, but credit for this version must go to my 8 year old daughter. She saw my other one and drew me a diagram of a Rapunzel (you know, she of the long hair) looking out the window in a tower.

I grabbed the papers Beverly sent me and got to it - I am so happy about how it turned out!! It's not that I think I'm wonderful, it's just that my daughter really, really likes it. I think it's the perfect Valentines treat for anyone's little girl, I have to make another one now for my other wee woman.

I Used PTI Dark chocolate cardstock as my base and stuck sections of patterned paper to that. I cut the wee window out of the paper and folded it out to make shutters, lining it with some of the dark chocolate cardstock that I had run through the cuttlebug in a textured embossing folder, I used this for the tower roof as well - I rubbed it over with PTI cream ink to pick out the detail.

A piece of recycled clear plastic from a PTI carrier sheet (those things your stamps come on) is the actual window and I used a 1/2 inch circle punch to cut Lavender moon cardstock to make Rapunzel's face. Same punch to cut the crescent shape that makes her wee wimple thingy and the triangle for the hat are the lovely Gold shimmer cardstock also from PTI. Her 'hair' is a random piece of yarn that was lying around here, probably for 10 years or more waiting to be needed.

The patterned papers are all from the My Mind's eye 'Quite Smitten' collection, and they are all over the card as well - beautiful papers that go so well with chocolate, mmmm chocolate - I thought I'd fill my box with Chocolate fudge brownies - I cut them into smallish squares and they stack up quite nicely in the tall box, wrapped a little baking paper around them to stop them gooing up my box.

Thought the "Be my Princess?' sentiment was quite appropriate since this was going to my wee daughter and I used the wee PTI alphabet stamp set. Since I was too lazy to line it up neatly, I used the excuse that I wanted a 'whimsical' touch, and let it wobble all over the place. Embossed it with white embossing powder to give it strength to stand out.

Scalloped and plain heart nestabilities on the card.

The 'flagpole' s a cocktail stick inked up with dark chocolate ink.

Hope it tickles - and don't forget to click over to Beverly's place!!