Birthday Card for my Crafting Buddy.

I'm well and truly hooked on the Heidi Swapp Mega Masks at the moment and I used one of the smaller circles on the sheet to create a card for my lovely friend Jo.

We met on the internet just over a year ago through our mutual love of Elusive Images stamps and our admiration of the company's owner/designer Glenda Waterworth, whose blog Artylicious, we both visited and commented on frequently. After emailing each other several times and talking over all things crafty we met irl at a Graphicus workshop and really got on well together. Since then we email each other on a very regular basis, supporting and encouraging each other in our 'crafty' endeavours. It's great to be able to discuss anything to do with craft and know that you're not boring the other person to death (as happens sometimes with my OH).

As well as emailing we do try to have craft related outings every so often and again, it's really good to be able to share the excitement of going to a workshop or a craft show with a good friend and I look forward to many more of these outings with Jo.

I know she's going to be feeling embarrased but I just have to say how much her emails lift my mood if I'm feeling a bit down in the dumps. She always manages to put something in that makes me smile and I know that she has at least one other crafty friend who thinks the same. So thank you Jo and a very Happy Birthday to you for last Sunday.

Now on to the details of the card and I'll try to be brief. I used DIs to blend a fairly light background to the circle and did position a small bird and branch mask (again Heidi Swapp) but I ended up almost obliterating it with stamping

.

All the various stamps I used are from Elusive Images (available from Graphicus) and I stamped the little bird on the branch twice so that I could make it nice and bright and then cut it out and layered it onto the card. I then used Glossy Accents to give it shine. I stamped and embossed the bird with the curly tail and then coloured it with H20s, cut it out and positioned a feather behind the tail before adding it to the card on foam pads.

I blended chalk ink on the pretty block circle stamp and cut it out with my Nestabilities and then stamped the sentiment and inked the edges. Finally, I arranged the little flowers and added a bit of bling.

I think just about everything I used on this card I bought from Graphicus except for the basic card stock and the feather and self adhesive diamante stones which were in my stash.

List of EI stamps used : Damask Blocks

Design-a-Tree

Live out Loud

Curly Birds

Sentiment is from a Graphicus Guild exclusive stamp plate.

Thankyou Sheila!

I had a lovely comment the other day from a card designer I really admire, wanting to pass on a couple of awards to me but it turns out I had recently received them from elsewhere. I thought I would still do a quick little mention on here though so that I could include a link to Sheila's blog and say thankyou. Well it's blogs really as she has two and they are both great and full of inspiration, beautiful work and amusing bits of her life.

My friend Jo and I are going to Monk's Den where Sheila works, next Tuesday for a full day's class with Sheila that she has set up specially for us covering techniques that we requested. If you live within visiting distance of the shop at Ashby-de-la-Zouche I would recommend Sheila's classes. The tuition is great and so are the laughs. We had a brilliant time on our last visit - which is precisely why we can't wait to go again.

See you on the 18th Sheila!

A Birthday Card for a Friend

This card is a bit different from my usual. It's quite simple and although it took me a while to decide what to do (I'm a very slow designer) it didn't really take long to make as there is not much stamping.

It is a card for a friend and ex-work colleague and I knew she wouldn't really appreciate anything 'arty' with lots of inking and stamping so I decided to try and do something just a mite 'chuckly'. The stamps are two by Penny Black that I got from the Paper Mill Shop last week and I stamped the first sheep, once onto semi-gloss card and once onto masking tape. When it was dry I masked it out and stamped the second sheep. I then added just touches of colour from some Adirondack inkpads and coloured the sheep in with a Sakura Souffle white pen. I gave it 2 coats using a circular motion to make the surface a bit rough and 'woolly' looking. I then cut out the image and a scalloped mat using my Nesties.

For the rest of the embellishments I used my Fiskars Threading Water border punch, some little flower punches that have been languishing at the back of a drawer for ages, my Swiss Dots CB folder and some peeloffs that I colour co-ordinated with permanent markers. I just used scraps of paper from my bit box (how good am I?) for the little flowers, inked the edges of the larger petals, layered them and added blobs of Stickles in the middle.

When I'd finished I was chuffed to bits with it and it was a big hit with my friend when I gave it to her yesterday.

Another Lovely Award

I am really lucky to have such nice people visiting my little bit of web space and I have made some lovely 'virtual' friends through it. Crafters are just the best and I've been given this award by a lovely lady called Christina all the way over in America. She has a really pretty blog with some wonderful papercrafting so please give her a visit.

I am supposed to pass this award on to 5 other people but I'm really sorry I just cannot choose five. Everyone who visits and leaves me such encouraging and heartwarming comments, plus having beautiful and inspiring blogs of their own, deserves the award so please accept it for yourselves with my love and thanks for your support.

Lots of love and hugs

Lesley Xx

Two New Awards

Just a little post to say a big thankyou to two lovely ladies who have each given me an award this week.

The first one is from Judith who has a wonderful blog here and makes the most beautiful cards. As Judith had to come up to our neck of the woods today, my friend Jo and I got a chance to meet her and we had a lovely day spent chatting, eating cake and crafty shopping. We also got a chance to see some of her beautiful cards IRL. Pop over to her blog and take a look.

The second award is from Lisa who is wonderfully encouraging by leaving lovely comments on my blog. Her blog is here and it is more than worth a visit to see her wonderful creations and equally wonderful photographs.

I have found that crafters in general, are such really nice people and are generous with their praise and encouragement and always willing to share their knowledge and experience so I would like to pass these awards on to anyone who is kind enough to visit and leave a little message on my blog as a thankyou from me.

My Mum's Birthday Card and a Doggy Trauma

My Mum is 81 years old next Sunday and I have to say I hope if I get to her age I'll be in the same sprightly condition. Somehow, I doubt it because she puts me to shame now sometimes, Lol.

Anyway, this is the card I've made for her and it's safe to post as she doesn't even have access to a computer let alone own one. She does delight in sending me text messages though, in text speak I might add, from her mobile phone.

Originally, this started out as an A4 card and I used my new Mega Circle masks by Heidi Swapp. I had just finished all the blending, flower masking and stamping and then ....................... I dropped a blooming DI inkpad onto it. The air was somewhat blue, I have to admit. The only lucky part was that I didn't drop the inkpad onto the actual masked circle so I decided to cut it out and mount it onto another card rather than waste all that work. As you can probably see from the detail close ups, I blended DIs onto the background first then used a HS daisy mask and blended some more, removed the mask and did a couple of layers of stamping using stamps from the EI DL sized Lily themeplate and the Fantasy Floral A4 themeplate. Then after cutting the circle out I distressed the edge a little and then inked lightly all the way round. I then used a complete contrast DI in Broken China to stamp the humming bird by Inkadinkado which I versamarked all over, clear embossed and cut out. Using the same contrast ink I stamped quite a few flowers in two sizes again from the Fantasy Floral themeplate, cut them out, curled the petals a little, layered arranged them onto my card before fixing with silicone glue. The pretty circle block is from EI again and is one of their newest plates called Damask Blocks along with the sentiment from their very useful new Birthday Words plate. I cut this out using my scalloped circle Nestabilities. I also punched some leaf fronds from Core-dinations card using my Evergreen punch by Floral Punch Craft from The Hobbyhouse.

Almost everything I used for this card can be purchased from Graphicus/Elusive Images, my favourite craft shop as everyone knows.

Before I finish this post I'd just like to share a little bit about the rather traumatic week we've had with our little Snoopy. On Monday evening Snoopy thought he could have a little chomp on a nice fat bumble bee and live to tell the tale. Within seconds his face started to swell and before long he looked more like a Bassett Hound than the Jack Russell/Dachsund cross that he is. The swelling was so bad we got rather worried that it might affect his airways so felt that a call to the vet was in order. Result - a quick OUT OF HOURS visit for a steroid injection to halt the swelling at a cost of £62! Well, at least it seemed to do the trick and although it took a while for the swelling to come down, by Tuesday evening we thought he was fine. Uh Oh! Thought wrong! In the wee small hours of Wednesday (3 am to be precise) we were woken by Snoopy's panicked barking because he wanted to be let out. We thought that he'd settle after that but we were wrong again. 45 minutes later he started again and when I went to him this time he had been sick (too much info I know). I spent the rest of the night on the settee having 10 minute naps then being roused by a very poorly little dog being ill.

I have never known our little bundle of energy be so still and so quiet for over 24 hours. It's taken him most of today to get back to anything like his normal self and, of course, as he has spent the greater part of the last 36 hours sleeping he has just started to wake up - and it's nearly my bedtime and I haven't caught up on the sleep I lost yet. Whether it was the poison from the bee sting (after all, he is only small) or something else entirely that made him so sick I don't know but I hope it doesn't happen again.

The first of the photos is to show what he normally looks like and the others are taken about an hour or so after the sting.

Hopefully after another night's sleep he and I will both be fully recovered in time to enjoy the weekend - I hope!

Night Night! Sleep tight!

Masked Wedding Cards

On the 4th July, Jo and I went up the A1 to Barnard Castle, the home of my favourite crafty people at Graphicus and Elusive Images. It was the 2nd of their two Open Days and the very first time I have managed to get to one of them. The atmosphere is lovely there because they are all very friendly and the demonstrations are second to none. Annette was demonstrating the die cutting machines like the Cricut but unfortunately I didn't get time to watch her (maybe next time). I did get to watch Judith making some lovely beads in the Melt Pot which was really interesting and made me want to get mine out for a play at something different.

The best for me personally though were Glenda, Lynn and Lesley, who were all stamping in one way or another and my absolute favourite of the day was Lynn demoing some fabulous Mega Masks from Heidi Swapp. If you visit Lynn's blog she has posted the samples she made during her demos and they are wonderful.

Anyway, I just had to buy these and couldn't wait to have a play with them when I got home. Over the first couple of weeks in August we have two family weddings. My niece gets married on the 1st August and my nephew gets married on the same day but away from home so they are having their celebratory reception on the 15th. I decided that I could use the Mega Heart Masks to make a couple of Wedding Cards.

Both the cards use the same format on A4 cards and the same materials, stamps and masks. I just changed the colours and altered the positioning slightly. Except for the two word definition stamps - Married and Marriage, which were from Stamp to Your Arts Content, everything else was from Graphicus. I used Milled Lavender and Weathered Wood DIs on the first card and Tattered Rose and Antique Linen on the second one. The flower masks I used are also Heidi Swapp and I bought them from Graphicus ages ago but have never got round to using them until now.

This was the first one I did in Milled Lavender and Weathered Wood.

and this was the second one in Tattered Rose and Antique Linen.

I thoroughly enjoyed making both these cards and I love blending backgrounds with DIs. I also bought the Mega Circles Masks as well as the Hearts and I have a couple of birthdays for some of my VIPs coming up over the next few weeks so I'm going to try using the circles with some stamping. Again you can see an example on Lynn's blog.