Another valentine card

It's a bit difficult to make any cards at the moment because a) we've sold most of our chattels including all the tables and chairs (I still have a bed and a sofa) and b) all my crafting equipment is packed away ready to move at the end of this month. So I was checking out the latest Splitcoaststampers tutorial, yes I am a member, and I thought well I could give that a go with out having to unpack all my kit and equipment so I did. This is the word card tutorial and this is my card;

Simply made and embellished with the first thing I grabbed out of my packed box.

Keep Well

mwah

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Blog Candy Giveaway

Wow it's February 2012 already, time goes by really fast, one minute I was 19 I blinked and "nek minit" I was 49 staring down the barrel of the big 50. Anyway I'm not talking about that today, instead I'm posting a quick link to a blog I follow, I love Amy's work  and when I grow up I want to be able to make cards as stunning as hers, I also follow her on you tube and I have learnt a lot about copics from her plus I have got to see a whole shed load more of cute stamps that I would like to own and color (thanks for enabling me Amy).

Anyway she is hosting a give away on her blog and I'd really like to win it and to be in with a chance I have to post a comment on her blog a thousand sheets of paper and then post a link back to my blog, or something like that. So anyhoo, off I go to give it a try lols.

Keep well

mwah

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One more Christmas Card

and then I'm done. I'm over Christmas already maybe I should start making the cards a bit earlier in the year then I can spread the pain over a few months lols.
So here it is my last Christmas card for 2011;

MFT dies, Bo bunny paper and a Hero Arts greeting stamp. 

Next I made a couple of birthday cards using a My Favorite Things stamp. One of the cards is colored with copics and the other is also colored with copics and then paper pieced. I'm really getting into paper piecing because it adds nice dimension to a card, I love the 3D effects you can give a card and that's what makes hand made cards special I think. 

MFT stamps and dies and a spellbinders die, Bo bunny paper, copic colored, blue liquid pearls. This image is on pop dots. 

MFT stamps and dies and a spellbinders die, Bo bunny paper, copic colored, blue liquid pearls. This is the image that is paper pieced.

Then I decided to make a few Valentine cards, I wanted to have a bit of fun with this, I love the cheeky Greeting Farm stamps, I really need to buy some more though. I wonder if I can squeeze a few more out of the budget in the next month or so!!!! 

This first card is a more traditional Valentine card.. 

I used non traditional colours for the card though, green don't ask me why, I just went with that colour. The stamp is an I Brake for Stamps stamp that I fussy cut and coloured with my water colour pencils, the petals came out very well I thought. It's very pretty IRL. I used an oval Nestabilities die and an Impression Obsession background stamp and versamark ink because I don't have any matching inks. Again I used Bo bunny paper. 

The next two cards have more nontraditional feel to them. I wanted to use the colours red and black on them, that drove my decision in how I designed the cards. 

This card is a traditional A2 size. The paper is from a wedding love stack from DCWV (die cuts with a view). Again I used Nestabilities and MFT dies, the word love is from the DCWV stack, I used black brads to attach the vellum to the card. I used black and grey recollections roses and red stickles on the scalloped border. I coloured the TGF stamp with copics and then paper pieced her clothing and added the x3 hearts as a last minute thing because I thought the card needed something else after I had finished it. 

Ha ha, I always leave my favorite card until last... 

This card is a non traditional 5.50 x 5.50 inches. The paper is again from a wedding love stack from DCWV (die cuts with a view). Again I used Nestabilities and MFT dies, the love greeting is from MFT, I used black and grey recollections roses and recollection bling. I coloured the TGF stamp with copics but this time with Blond hair and then I paper pieced her clothing but this time I gave her red stickle shoes. I think they look like Dorothy's ruby slippers IRL. She's just as cute as a button.

That's all for today.

Keep Well      =^-^=

Christmas Cards

As so many of us have, I have been making a few Christmas cards to send out to people. It's a time consuming process when you don't have any cards already made. So I've spent the last couple of weeks frantically making cards and then taking a few photographs, who knew that taking the photographs is even harder than making the cards. Plus I have a cat that gets interested every time I get my camera out. See..

Biggsy and card

Biggsy and card

The reason why he has a stump for a tail is that he was run over by a car a couple of years ago and the vet had to amputate it. He must have used up a couple of lives that night!!!

Here's a Christmas card I made for my MIL, she has a passion for sewing so I bought this die and stamp set with her in mind. 

Stamp sets are always a roll of the dice size wise and I feel that the some of the elements are too large for the card now, but it's too late, I've all ready posted this card. Usually I'm careful when choosing the dimension of stamps and dies because I prefer to make the smaller A2 size cards. I think this set would look better on a 5.5x5.5 size card, some inter net sites do not include the size of the items in the stamp sets just the overall set size and that can end up being costly for the unwary. Also my button stash isn't vast and I had to make do with a green button that was probably too large as well but I had it in my mind that I wanted a green button **sighs**. 

Here is a stamp and die set I'm very happy with..

This is a Sweet 'n' Sassy stamp and die set that I feel has the right dimensions for an A2 card, in fact there isn't much I'm unhappy with here so I'll just let the card do the talking. 

I love the stamp in the next card, I've used an emboss resist technique here, the image is embossed in gold and distressed with ranger broken china ink. I don't know if the bow will survive the posting but fingers crossed...... 

The next stamp ended up being my favorite this year coincidentally this is a My Favorite Thing stamp. I really enjoyed colouring and paper piecing it, I think it's very cute. 

I did cut the snow ball off about half way to scale the image down for the card but I feel it works very well and the cool blue of the paper just adds to the wintry feel of the card. Can you tell I love it ?.. lols

Happy Holidays

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Training.........

Sigh, I'm training for two events, the Houston (Texas) half marathon in January and the Motatapu (New Zealand) marathon in March. I've had problems over the summer with heat exhaustion and another injury that has interrupted my training. Before Summer I was consistently running 8:30 min/mile pace and now I'm lucky if I can run under 9:00 min/mile pace. Then Sunday I ran 12 miles (longer weekend run) and now I have soft tissue damage around my left ankle from the tongue of my trainer consistently hitting my ankle  for 12 miles. I won't even go into toe blisters and munted toe nails. Which makes me wonder why I do it. Heck I'm going to be 50 in June I'm a Grandmother and the grey hair and saggy skin have already started, I should be slowing down or something, shouldn't I? Any other nearly 50s out there reading this, are you training for a marathon? Am I mad?

Heck no girlfriend, you go for it 50 is the new 30.

Having said that immediately after I finish running my marathon in NZ I'm moving on to a yacht (located in the BVIs) and I'm going to sail off into the sunset on a (probably) 10 year circumnavigation. Am I mad?

Heck no girlfriend, you go for it. Next year I'll be blogging and crafting in all kinds of exotic anchorages and locations, me, my Scrubby and my cat.

I hope you get to join me in my adventures, I'm getting quite excited about it and I can think of nothing else at the moment, want to buy some furniture anyone?

My Scrubby

My shaved (because it's hot in Texas) cat

Me before going running, I don't look like that after I've been running, lols. 

Keep Well

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A three card share.

I forgot to post some cards I made for Halloween. So this is a quick post for you to catch up on. The stamps are Michaels dollar stamps, they're pretty darn cute and the paper is sweet and sassy I think it was. I inked the paper with memento tuxedo black ink to scruffy it up  a little and the black cat is again a dollar punch I got from Michaels and it was fiddly glueing it onto the paper. I need to get rid of my false nails because it makes crafting just that teensy weensy more difficult, lols.
So the same stamps used in 3 slightly different ways, I colored them in using water color pencils and not my copics, for a change.

Keep well

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Hope you can cling to .... a few cards.

In the end I didn't make as many cards as I wanted to because of my trip back home to New Zealand. But I am pleased with a couple of the cards I made. I loved the challenge and for such a wonderful cause, it was a win win situation.

Anyway, enough with the babble, here are a couple of the cards I made.

The theme for this card was circles.

A hint of pink.

All I did with this card was paper piece the kite and write Joy with a gel pen on it.

Here I used a card sketch, which I don't have the link to, for the first time and I was surprised at how easy it was. 

This stamp was incredibly hard to colour because it's a very detailed stamp with little white space on it. But, I did my best and I think it looks Ok, I tried to emboss it and again it doesn't emboss very well, it might just become one of those stamps that was a mistake to purchase and it wasn't a cheap one grrrr.

Ha, I made a huge job for myself with this card it took me hours to fussy cut and paper piece it. The background paper I used, I think, ended up being much too busy but the owl stamp set is very cute.  

Two cards using the same stamp to varying degrees of success. 

This turned out to be my favorite card and it was the easiest one to make. 

I didn't send this card in because it wasn't good enough so I'm calling it my prototype and I shall work on it some more in the future finding the right weight card stock etc to use. 

Keep Well.

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