Mouse with Books note card

Woke up this morning and it was zero degrees outside - brrrrrrrrr!

It's a big day here in Ayr - the Christmas lights are switched on at 4pm. I'm told it's a star from the X-Factor who is going to be doing the honours but as I won't be going down to watch I'll have to wait for the local paper to find out who it is.


In today's card I've used the cute little Library Mouse, drawn by Elizabeth Dulemba, a children's book illustrator.  Her blog is a wonderful source of free digital cartoon images and well worth a visit, especially if you are involved with children's education in any way. 

This was a quick and easy note card to make using a gingham backing paper and trims from the SWALK Series 1 disk from Crafter's Companion; some taupe coloured card, the image coloured with Promarkers. For me the advantage of printing paper from a disk like this is that I can adjust the colour to match whatever I'm working with as I did here. I took the paper over onto the back of the card but this time didn't decorate the inside as I planned to write a paragraph or two in it. 

As I said simple and quick to make. I cut the circles of card out using one of the sheets of scrapbooking templates I have had for some time. Even though I have a Cuttlebug and so could use dies to cut these shapes out I do like using templates - for one thing, they are cheaper than dies and, I don't really like the damage dies do to my Cuttlebug plates. Is it just me that feels this? I know that it's not supposed to do them any harm but I can't seem to get over it, although I love using my Cuttlebug for embossing. So here is my latest template purchase, Baby Nesties by B-C-E , which arrived in the post yesterday.

Love the fact that they have a scalloped edge and a plain edge and that there's a range of shapes and sizes in each pack. They are transparent so they can be positioned just where you want them and I think I will be using them a lot.

Yesterday I bought the latest edition of Craft Stamper - lots of interesting techniques to try out in this magazine - and Docrafts Creativity and guess who get's a mention, moi! There's a really dreadful photograph taken by my husband at one of our favourite places, Loch Doon - not his fault it's dreadful, it was just a bad hair day for me, all windblown and sans make-up.  It's in reference to the Craft for Live win I received a few days ago.

Inspired by an idea in the Craft Stamper I'm off to get my fingers dirty.

Bye for now.
Elizabeth