Simplicity - a sweet wee card for Sunday

Hello Everyone ...

... and a very happy Sunday to you too.

You may have noticed that I've been missing for a few days. On Thursday my daughter and I tootled up to Glasgow SECC to the Creative Stitches and Hobby Craft shows ... lots of photos taken which I'll include in a post soon. On Friday we drove our son-in-law to and from the day unit at Crosshouse Hospital ... he had a wee operation on his elbow ... the patient is doing well. Saturday was spent recovering from Thursday and Friday!

Today I'm fighting fit again and I have this little card to share with you.

Pink and green ... one of my favourite colour combinations ... taken from the patterned paper, Parisian Dreams by Jenny Ellory for Quick Cards, used to cover the front and decorate the inside and back of the card.

The topper is made from three ovals, cArt-Us Oval dies, using a snippet of white card, for the stamped image, pink sorbet from PaperMill Direct, and the delicate pastel green card, a gift from my lovely friend, Di.

I combined two stamps, the Penny Black vase of greenery, Simplicity, and the greeting from Inkylicious' set Sentiments 1, stamped with a grey ink, Memento London Fog, and coloured with ProMarkers, Lime Zest, Leaf Green, Ice Grey 1.

To give it a pretty pink edging it's been sponged with Ranger's Spun Sugar distress ink. And just to be little different I placed the three layers off to the right side ... leaving the perfect margin for placing the butterfly, that was cut from the pink sorbet and using a freebie die from Simply Cards & Papercraft, then decorated with Stickles Cotton Candy and tiny pink gems, Anita's.

Pastel green satin ribbon from Papermania Spots & Stripes Festive Assorted, and narrow cream cotton lace from Marianne were used for the trimming on the card.

I'm submitting this card to the following challenges:

Hazel's Craftyhazelnut's Patterned Paper March challenge - using up patterned paper on the front

Di's Pixies Crafty Workshop - Week 115 - the white card for the stamped topper, the pink sorbet card for matting and the butterfly were from the snippets box.

Right, I'm off to check my pots for water ... some have little seedlings popping through already ... so exciting :) Then I have a long list of crafty things to be getting on with including post all the fab pics taken at the craft show on Thursday ... I don't know, I take a few days off and the list just gets longer :)

Hope you are having a wonderful day.

Happy Crafting,

WOYWW - What's On Your Workdesk Week 248

Hello WOYWWers, Followers and All,

Time to join in with our weekly snoopy treat. And I can't believe that Julia has been hosting this great get-together, namely What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday,  for almost FIVE years now!!! Week 260 is certainly going to be reason to celebrate :)

So, without further delay, here's the state of my desk this morning.

Photo taken late Tuesday evening and looking exactly the same  this morning ... and it's not too bad ... it's certainly looked a lot worse some weeks! I'm still on a mission to use up as much of the patterned paper I have stockpiled as possible. Like the paper pack lying on the guillotine, and matching die-cuts, that are out on the desk today ... a magazine freebie that just got shoved in the drawer and forgotten. The two cards you can see were completed yesterday evening ... it's something of a record for me to make two cards in one evening. One using papers from the pack and the other from another, not seen, and using the pink and green cardstock lying underneath. Other items out, scissors, tape glue, reels of red super sticky tape, the greeting stamp set last used and some scraps of beading

In fact, I didn't get to the craft desk until late yesterday because there's another table I'm working on at the moment.

It's seed sowing time so the potting tray, compost, gravel, vermiculite, pots, etc., are out. The race is on to get all the seeds sown and either into the propagator or our brand new mini-greenhouse.

And here's what the postie delivered yesterday.

No, not crafty goodies but garden goodies instead ... twenty tiny lavender plug plants from a nursery in Fife. I'm always amazed at how well plants travel and survive in the postal system!

And here they are after being tucked into their new homes. Hopefully, they will settle in happily and be ready to plant out at the end of spring ... I've got a plan to edge the new winding path the EM constructed recently.

So that's what's on my desk today ... what's on yours? To join in just visit Julia at Stamping Ground, you'll be made most welcome, and you will find lots of links to the many other interesting and inspirational desks and crafts on show.

Remember to Explore - card using patterned paper

Evening Everyone

I trust this finds you all well and happily crafting the evening away :)

I don't think it is any secret that I like patterned paper. In fact I have amassed a huge collection over the last few years - to the point of being ridiculous! Which is why I was delighted to see that Hazel - of Crafty Hazelnut fame - has started a new monthly challenge, Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - just the thing to force encourage me to use up that stash. The challenge is easy - anything goes as long as you cover your card blank with patterned paper or card ... I think I can do that :)

So here's my first entry.

For this card, I've covered the front of a square Kraft card with one patterned paper and decorated it with clocks and compass images fussy cut from another sheet from Docrafts Papermania Chronology 8x8 pack. All the paper edges were sponged with Ranger's Black Soot distress ink.

Next, I stamped the Remember to Explore sentiment (using Memento Tuxedo Black ink pad) from the Life's An Adventure set from Get Stamping in the bottom right corner.

To make the topper, a scrap of white card has been stamped with Docrafts Papermania Urban Stamps Chronology - Looking Glasses - with the same ink pad as used for the sentiment. This was then matted on to a layer of buff cardstock (Papermilldirect), and then some brown string (Docrafts Papermania again) was wrapped around it several times and knotted before being attached to the card front with glue gel.

Gold card candi completes the front embellishments.

I used the leftover scraps of patterned paper to decorate the inside and back.

So that's two sheets down ... just a few hundred to go then! I suspect I'm going to be working my way through all my lovely stash for some time to come. Happily, Hazel's challenge will encourage me to keep it up and who knows, I might be able to start treating myself to new papers in 2015 :)

If, like me, you have an abundance of patterned paper do consider participating in Hazel's challenge too.

I'm also submitting the card to Pixies Crafty Workshop - Week 114 - that's two days on the run - the white card used for the topper came out of the snippet box.

Off to watch the next exciting episode of DCI Banks - I love a good police drama, and Stephen Tompkinson has long been one of my favourite actors.

Hope you are having a great evening too, whatever you're doing.