Birthday Hugs - the last snippets card of 2013

Good Morning Everyone

Just popping in with what is sure to be my last visit in 2013 to Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 105 with a little card I've made for a sweet wee girl who will be three years old on New Year's Day.

Materials used:

- White 4.75"square card base

- I used a selection of papers from Pebbles Sunny Side 6x6 paper pad. One sheet, the pink gingham, was used to cover the front surface of the card. Three sheets, one floral patterned, one pink chevron and a teal polka dot were chopped trimmed into squares, rectangles and strips and edged with a Rose Pink ProMarker. I then juggled the pieces on the front until I was happy with the arrangement before sticking them down.

- To make and colour the topper I stamped, with Memento Tuxedo Black ink on to a snippet of smooth white card, Docrafts Forever Friends Gift stamp which I coloured with ProMarkers. The bear is coloured with Satin, Oatmeal, Sandstone - he looks a tad pale in the photo but much healthier in real life :) For the present the bear is carrying I picked out colours from the patterned -Cool Aqua, Duck Egg, Rose Pink and Pastel Yellow. The whole image is outlined with Ice Grey 1. 

- Once coloured, the topper was cut out using a die from Spellbinders Labels Nine set and my trusty Cuttlebug. I then traced the die on to a snippet of smooth pink card and cut around it to create a faux Spellbinder label for matting. 

- The greeting was made in a similar way using the Sending Hugs stamp from Wild Rose Studio Love Circles but this time the stamp was cut out and the matting was punched to create a 1.5" circle.

- For the final touch to the front I chose two Teresa Collins Summer Stories enamel dots and the tiniest scrap of turquoise patterned ribbon. I've simply knotted the ribbon because I find it nigh impossible to make a bow I'm happy with when it has a pattern, as this one does, on one side only. 

- Inside is decorated with leftover strips of the paper and stamped with a birthday greeting from Hero Arts Classic Messages.

The storms have abated, albeit temporarily, and at the time of typing it's dry outside.  There's a couple of guys working on clearing our gutters ... we will now be able to stand on the front doorstep in the rain and get soaked :)

Hope it's good wherever you are too and it has been a happy Monday for you all.

Take care and stay safe.

Train Enthusiast's Christmas Card - one for CHNC

Evening Everyone

Before I go on, I'd like to send heartfelt sympathy to everyone who is suffering the aftermath of the dreadful rainstorms in the south of England. I do realise it is not like being at home but, until it is all over, I hope you are all somewhere warm and comfortable.

I'm writing this post with a storm raging outside ... it's been going on since yesterday and it still sounds fierce with no hope of a let up anytime soon. We had gusts of 102mph during the night, wrecking a garden storage box in the process. And the litter!!! The EM was out earlier with the litter-picker ... a waste of time. It's now as bad as ever. So not a day to go anywhere, even if we felt so inclined.

Instead, I've been pottering around in the craft room and cleaning up some of the files on the computer, and that's what reminded me that I hadn't posted this card yet. I thought it is perfect for Hazel's challenge over at CHNC this week - challenge 156: Last minute cards or any not shown already.

It was the card made for the train mad EM. Last minute, because it took me an age to source a really appropriate stamp - Train Postcard. The greeting stamp is an old favourite, love the font and the words, from Giordano Studio Stamps Wonderful Christmas ... I've used the greeting umpteen times and never the main image ... shame on me!

Materials:

• square Kraft card blank
• Raspberry Road Designs Christmas Collection paper pack
• smooth black card for matting and layering; smooth white card for stamped topper
• stamps - Stampendous Train Postcard stamp for topper and Joanna Sheen's Giordano Studio Stamps Wonderful Christmas for the greeting
• Versafine Vintage Sepia ink pad
• red raffia ribbon from Wilkinsons
• shiny red card candi

My plans for this evening ... I have 3 crafting magazines to read. They've been lying around since last week so time to curl up on the sofa and give them my full attention :)

 

I hope your plans for the evening are equally pleasant.

Take care and stay safe.

Christmas Day WOYWW - Week 238

No desk today ... instead I've put together a montage of just a few of the photos I've taken over the last 25 days. I hope you will agree they are full of Christmas cheer :)

That's our Christmas trees in the centre ... yes, we have two this year! Most of the photos were taken when we were out and about at the shops and garden centres ... fabulous displays, everyone of them guaranteed to get you in a festive mood.

Our new home has a fireplace. Having lived in a new build for the last few years we missed having a fire but this old house happily has one so I'll leave you to enjoy your Christmas day with a last shot taken of the garland on the mantelpiece.

Take care, keep warm and stay safe over the holidays.

xxx

Christmas Sweet Treat Bags

Evening All

Label front

It's the night before the night before Christmas and I'm almost done though fate has thrown a spanner in the works today. There we were in the car and setting off to visit out daughter and family with a boot/trunk filled with brightly wrapped presents - what could be nicer. Well, the weather perhaps, but it's warm and dry in the car. Then reversing out of the driveway I noticed a bit of a whine coming from the motor and DH muttered that something didn't seem right. Well, we got a few feet, rounded the corner and suddenly smoke was belching from under the bonnet. I've never gotten out of the car as quick as I did today. Stopping prevented further damage and we were able to rescue the presents but the car is now, courtesy of the AA, down at the garage and we are without wheels. Ah well, can't be helped :)

Label back

These bags are some tooth rotting, appetite ruining, treats I made up for all the little ones, not to mention a few of the big ones, in the family ... well, I'm a gran/great-gran after all and that surely gives me licence to spoil my grandchildren/great-grandchildren at Christmas if at no other time of the year :)

The labels were created using Serif using a Chair Decoration template and Craft Artist Christmas Crafts digital kit which is free. I had to tweak the size down a bit before printing it on to white card and cutting them out ... time consuming but well worth the effort.

All we have to do now is get our car back and deliver the presents ...

Hope you have all had a great day even if you've been doing last minute stuff too.

Take care and happy crafting,

Snowman Soup Kits

Evening All,

I hope you have all had a good Sunday.

I'm still working on some last minute stuff ... I may run out of days before tasks this year but I'm not stressing about it ... the earth won't stop turning just because I've not ticked something off that never-reducing to-do list of mine!

Yesterday I did clear my desk long enough to make up these bags of Snowman Soup. They make a delicious hot treat, especially on a cold winter's morning.

I found the recipe I followed online at the appropriately named Jinglebell Junction.

To make a bag you need the following:

• 1 individual pack of hot chocolate mix
• Approximately 2 tablespoons of mini pink & white marshmallows
• 1 peppermint candy cane
• 2 cello bags - one A5 size and the other a smaller one for the marshmallows

The original recipe also included 3 Hershey’s kisses - I searched the shops but couldn't find these anywhere :(

The pdf label is downloadable free from Love The Day site ... it includes the cute little poem with instructions which goes like this:- 

Was told that you’ve been good this year,
Always glad to hear it.
With freezing weather drawing near,
You’ll need to warm the spirit.

So here’s a little “Snowman Soup”
Complete with a stirring stick.
Add hot water and sip it slow
It’s sure to do the trick.

I thought it was a little bit of delicious fun for the children to find in their stockings.

A brief post today ... things to do still :) 

Take care and happy crafting,

A Flock of Patchwork Doves for Christmas

Afternoon All,

And it's a pretty horrible afternoon here in Ayrshire too ... more gales and rainstorms, with yet more to come. Hope you are having better weather wherever you are.

Anyway, all that horribleness does make it a perfect day for staying in and crafting.

I only intended making the one card, for someone special, but after stamping the Patchwork Dove on several different sheets of patterned paper to cut up for paper-piecing I just had to use up all the leftover bits to make 6 cards in all. They are all similar but different.

Here's the card that started it all.

This super stamp was found online after winning a Woodware voucher way back in October from Crafty Cardmakers - my thanks go out to Dorothy at Woodware, Lin at Crafty Cardmakers and, in particular, Janice at Sir Stampalot for helping me with my order.

Materials used:

• white fancy edge card or plain square edge card bases
• Docrafts Papermania Festive Frolics paper pack - love the pretty pastel colours
• cardstock - for the stamping, smooth white Neenah Solar, and pink for matting from Papermill Direct
• stamps used - Woodware Patchwork Dove, not seen but inside a greeting from Lawn Fawn's Winter Fox, warm winter wishes 
• from the snippet box - a variety of ribbons 
• embellishments - gems are from Anita's, Crystal Stickles, used to edge two of the toppers

I've been absent for a time, with a sick note, but using all the snippets in these cards merits a trip to Pixie's Snippet Playground - Week 103. What with all the preparation for Christmas, I'm thinking it could be quiet around the duck pond about now.

And over at Hazel's this week the CHNC 155 challenge is for whatever is urgent - these cards definitely come under that category :)

I'm also offering them up for Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra where, as always, the remit is 'Anything goes'.

Right, I'm off to make some snowman's soup, print off a set of family photos for my aunt in Australia - too late for Christmas but in time for New Year - and a dozen other outstanding items on my to-do list, sigh! That list never seems to get any shorter somehow :(

Hope you all have a very good evening - it's Friday, reason to celebrate :)

Thanks for looking in and happy crafting, 

Friday Smile

Hi Everyone

Don't you just love Fridays, especially when you can share a smile through Annie's blog, A Stitch In Time :)

This week it's my great-grandchildren that have made me smile. It's that magical time of the year when little ones finally meet Father Christmas in the flesh. However, they don't all react the same way to the big man in the red suit ... just look at these two photos to see how different they can be.

Rhian clearly loved all the attention and was happy to have her photo taken with him - or maybe it was that big parcel that had her beaming :)

Brodie, on the other hand, didn't seem quite so sure. At only just a year old, this was the first time of meeting Santa, and he clearly wasn't very sure about sitting on Santa's knee :)

Hope you all have something equally good to smile about today.

Wishing you a fabulous Friday.

WOYWW 237

Morning Everyone ...

.... and Season's Greetings to you all ... only another 7 days to Christmas!

Oh dear, it's been too many days since my last post - twelve days in fact - and even longer since I was last able to join in the fun of WOYWW - four weeks to be precise - shocking! Too much has prevented me from blogging, what with unpacking and settling into our new home and then didn't I go and catch one of the nasty winter bugs - various aches and pains and a head full of cotton wool :( It fairly put me out of action for a week or so but, happily, I'm now feeling much more myself again and, as you can see from my desk, able to craft too ... yippee!

Photos were taken late Tuesday evening when the light was all electric - not that there's much difference with the quality of light during the day here in Scotland. Our winter days are short, dark and, certainly recently, very stormy. Anyway, enough of that, on to what's on the desk this morning - what you see, nothing has changed. I've been using a new Woodware stamp, Patchwork Dove, purchased with the prize voucher won at Crafty Cardmakers, Challenge #100, way back in October, and paper-piecing to make some last minute Christmas cards. As you can see, the necessities of everyday crafting, i.e. stamping blocks, adhesives, pen pot, kitchen paper roll, etc., are now back out on the desk where they belong. It's been too long.

This shot shows just one corner of my new craft room. The decor is still very pink! We've not redecorated yet ... planned is a much more soothing shade of green but, as is often the way, nothing has gone to plan and it will be now some time in the new year before that shiny, glittery and very girly paper is stripped from the walls and in the meantime everything has been unpacked and found a home. The computer and printer are neatly tucked in the corner. The shelf above provides storage for my collection of crafting CDs and DVDs, the radio and a pile of audio books borrowed from the library. Under that, and on top of the photo storage drawers, is the TV - essential for watching all the Christmas movies showing at the moment :)  On the wall above that is some dinky shelving containing ink pads and glitter glues - all the very talented EM's work!

Apologies, Julia,  for the length of this post, but I have a lot of catching up to do after all those weeks of not participating.

And talking of catching up, I've missed you so am planning to visit you all today ... well, as many of you as is humanly possible.

In the meantime, take care everyone and, if I don't speak to you before, have a wonderful time over this coming festive season. And, of course,I wish you a very happy WOYWW today.

Happy crafting,

Wedding Day Thoughts page ...

... and a card made from some of the leftover snippets.

Another layout begun weeks ago and only just completed today, only because what to journal needed a lot of thought. This is a photo that always makes me pause and remember my late father. Because of the emotions evoked by the photo, I did consider making the journaling secret by enclosing it in a hidden pocket but finally decided against it ... nothing that I've written warrants such secrecy. The layout for this page is based on a sketch which, you may have guessed this already, is still packed away somewhere and, of course, I've forgotten the details. I'll add an edit note when it eventually comes to light :)

The papers and most of the embellishments used are from Papermania's Vintage Notes collection, the base is pale grey Bazzill Basics cardstock ... other materials were shopped from my stash.

Once the page was completed up to the point where I only had the journaling to write this was what was left over and, as I have vowed to use up as many scraps as possible before clearing the desk, here's a card made with a very tiny amount of the scraps photographed.

The base is tent shaped, made by simply cutting an A4 sheet of card vertically and folding in half. The strips of paper were trimmed into various lengths and given fish tails to create the banners, and edged with Shabby Shutters distress ink. The topper was created using small labels dies from Spellbinders. The die-cut trim, ribbon and gems were from stash.

The greeting inside was made with the same Spellbinders dies.

It's last minute, but I'll still be skipping over to Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 101 with this snippet card.

Above I mentioned that even now there is still some stuff packed away. Part of the problem is lack of storage space but the EM is, as I write, coming to the rescue ... he's putting up a ton of shelves to accommodate my huge collection of books, albums and folders. This will help immensely and he's my hero :)

Box of decorations update ... it's been found. We left it in the attic of our old house ... and that despite the fact that we were sure we had emptied everything out of there! So Christmas will come to the new Casa Worthington after all :))

Follow-up from yesterday's gales ... some fencing blew down, wheelie (garbage) bins were overturned and the contents were redistributed around the garden, some very big plant pots were blown over too. But we have been so lucky and the aftermath is nowhere near as bad as many folk have suffered in the east of the country, and the north of Wales ... my heart goes out to everyone who has been flooded out.

To close, I'd just like to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has very kindly sent us 'new home' cards and the Christmas cards that are already popping through our letterbox. They have cheered us up during the weeks of ups and downs we've been going through.

Time for a break before tackling the next item on that to-do list :)

Take care everyone and happy crafting,

Another Year Older Card

Evening Everyone,

Oh dear, it's so long since I last posted anything! Time seems to be running away from me right now ... is it the same for you? I'm not panicking yet but with only 19 days to the big day ...

And the weather! It's been absolutely dreadful today. We've been anxiously waiting to see if the power would go off, the long fence in the back garden would blow down and even the trees looked as though they might just be ripped up by the fearsome wind. There's some flooding in the road in front of the house. We've had everything today, gales, rainstorms, hailstones and now snow ... oh for a bit of high pressure to ease things.  

Anyway, all that aside, I had to find 15 minutes or so to make this card for a birthday happening soon (I've had 3 birthdays to make cards for this month already!!!)

The recipient is male, and a lover of wildlife, so I've kept it simple using items from the Pollyanna Pickering Collection by Lynda Chapman. I succumbed to temptation and treated myself to this fabulous collection for my birthday ... well, why not? I'm worth it :)) All I've added to make the card is slate grey cardstock from stash for matting and layering and some Wilkinson's grey raffia ribbon for the bunting.

The inside and back are decorated with leftovers from the two sheets of patterned paper and the grey card I used for the front.

More weather related news - my grandson, Josh, was due to fly from Aberdeen to Shetland this afternoon, to take up a new job there, but all flights have been cancelled. He's now in a B&B nearby and hoping to get out early tomorrow morning. His new employer does not seem to be unduly concerned at the delay and just expects him to get there on the first available flight over, whenever that might be.

Now, I'm off to have a cuppa, tick another job off my neverending and ever lengthening 'to-do' list and maybe even write a sentence or two in my Christmas journal :)

Hope you are all well and taking care, keeping out of the winds and away from the flooding - especially those living on the coast in the north of Wales and the east of the UK. 

Stay safe, warm and dry until it has all blown over.

Tiger Tiger - A Snippet Card

Evening Everyone,

Late, as ever! I don't know where the time is going these days. I'm so busy and finding no time for crafting when there's a search going on for the box of Christmas decorations ... after hours of searching we still haven't located it and fear that it may still be in the attic in our last house :(

Anyway, here's another card made weeks ago; one featuring the swiped ink pad technique.

Needless to say, after all this time I've forgotten what materials I used. The black card base was stamped with a combination of wild flower and tree stamps using VersaMark, which was then brushed with mica powders in several colours, i.e. green, gold and blue.

The topper, a snippet of white card, was swiped with blue, green and sand coloured ink pads as a base for the tiger stamp. This was then matted and layered on to white card and gold textured paper. The greeting was made from an off-cut from the topper and gold paper.

Right then, back to looking for that box of decorations.

Hope you've all had a wonderful weekend wherever you are.

Happy crafting,