I am sailing.........

Well not really - I don't even like boats!
But my friend's DH love them and pictures of them too. When we were on holiday in Tenerife he took us into a neighbouring hotel to show us a painting he'd noticed by Roy Cross, the man who designed the artwork for a lot of the original Airfix kit boxes. So when his birthday was approaching I hit on the idea of finding a Roy Cross picture and making it into a birthday card for him, this was the result and I'm pleased to say he was delighted with it. It was fairly easy to do I just had to match the blue/grey from the picture to the backing gemstone cardstock and sentiment that I printed directly onto the card.

 This card looks fairly simple to make too but it caused me a bit of problem. My best friend & I have always looked out for special cards for each other's birthdays and I was torn between shopping for a really nice one or having a go at making one that looked good enough. I opted to make.

As ever, the harder I tried the worse it got, I lost count of the number of pieces of paper that I cut and then stuck wrong but eventually, just as time was running out, this was IT. The image is a Lily of the Valley die cut, (wasn't going to risk my own colouring!), the papers Pink Petticoat and some lovely green dotty bazill. I used a MS corner punch and some papermania glimmer dots and flowers to trim. The sentiment is a stamp the lovely Melissa sent me as a gift and I think it works well with the scalloped circle.

Thank you for reading this far.......

I Won!

Here are the photos I promised of the lovely prize Toni sent me when I won the draw on the last MSE challenge KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. I was delighted to win just for the sake of it but was over the moon when my prize arrived. There was a lovely card and loads of colour co-ordinated stash in a beautifully decorated box - I'm not sure my pictures have done it justice. Thank you so much Toni I've used some of the stash already! Can you tell me what the paper is on your card please? It's gorgeous.

On the same day I also received a card and some super stamped images from Sarah, a card and some papers from Debbie that she'd sent as a surprise exchange and some pretty cut out butterflies and a card that Jenny had made for me so it was like Christmas in April - well better than, really, 'cos I don't care much for Christmas.

Thank you all ladies for your generous kindness to me.

Here's a picture of the cards......L to R Debbie, Sarah, Jenny

Hello again! Here are my latest makes and I have to say I think I am going backwards.  The next birthday girl on MSE may, ....... dare I say it, have a bought card if things don't improve very quickly.

The top card was a luckily a pre coloured image and cried out for a pretty 'look' so I used some dotty papermania papers with ribbon from crafty ribbons and tried combining the dots because it's a look I like. I think I tried to get too much on one card.

The other one was me trying to do 'elegant'. I embossed plain card with my new folder from Little Claire, stuck on all the shiny gems, then found the whole image was a bit too tall to fit on the card blank with an even border so I chopped it down a bit and tried to get it central. I added a sentiment from Craftwork cards which I chalked to give a bit of contrast to all the white. The best bit on the card was the green backing paper Bazzil basics which was already slightly textured with a swiss dotty pattern that I'd not seen before.

Then I compounded the sins by taking carp photos.

I do hope the recipients read this blog and know that in this case the thought really did count for far far more that the finished atricles! ATRICLES??? I meant articles.

Two Posts!

Two Posts in one day! What's wrong with me? Nothing! just  a bit of time so thought I'd share some of my Easter card makes with you.

This was the simplest one I did & DH claimed it for his niece's family. The image was a die cut from LOTV, the blue backing & card candy from craftwork cards.

Next .....

This was the same LOTV image but a bit smaller & needed a bit more work. I trimmed the blue card with MS doily lace punch - it was very tough to cut! Then I just had to add what seem to be my trademark punched flowers punched out of the offcuts of the same blue card to create a sort of contrast effect.

Last but not least.....I thought I might have been able to use this for Toni's MSE challenge but the only bit of texture is the ripple on the sentiment! Back to the drawing board.... The image is, I think, a Pollycraft freebie.  The papers were downloaded from I can't remember! I punched slightly bigger flowers this time, trimmed with card candy & sent it poste haste to my Godson & his fiancee. Given a bit more time I might have ruined it with some glitter or glossy accents on the spots on the egg. Phew!

Thank you for looking!

March ATC

For the Crafty Place ATC swap in March I was paired with Trish. The topic was 'By the Cute & Furry'. By her own admission, Trish isn't too fond of animals so that ruled out kittens, puppies, bunnies etc so I went for a teddy bear in the hope that it would 'fit the bill', I thought it was cute. Here is a picture of my attempt.

In return I got an exciting parcel!
It contained not only Trish's lovely ATC but a pretty fatpage, an Easter card and a super Easter basket of chocolate goodies from her granddaughter Kaitlyn. I consider myself very lucky to have received such a fabulous gift in exchange for my humble effort. Here's a picture of them on my mantlepiece so you can see what I mean. Aren't they lovely?