Easel Card for Granddaughter's 8th Birthday

Good Evening,

My youngest grandchild, Shari-Ann will be eight years old tomorrow and I do not know where the years have gone and how she got to be so old! It seems like just yesterday she was born, but she is still our little pride and joy : )

For a birthday treat we took her to the biggest book shop in Ayr town where she had her pick of the books. We had a lovely time browsing there and here she is in the coffee-shop afterwards. Shari-Ann loves animals, her ambition is to be a zoo-keeper when she grows up, so not surprisingly her final choice of  books featured animals, one is about two kittens and another is about a dog called Best Mate.

After the visit to the bookshop it was on up the coast to Largs to enjoy her first experience of tea at Nardini's.  Here she is with her dessert - a horn of plenty filled with all sorts of luscious things including black cherries. The weather was a bit miserable but we had a most enjoyable day.

And here's the card I made for her. At one time everything had to be pink but her taste in colour is developing so I thought I could be daring and give her yellow and lilac. Because her birthday comes shortly after the longest day I went for a really summery theme. The Tildas came from my stock of images coloured on holiday and the gorgeous design papers are digitals from Bearly Mine Designs.

The toppers with the birthday greeting and her name were computer generated - the number 8 and alphas are from a freebie set from Scrappy Bug at Free 2 Scrap - a wonderful digital resource if you have not already discovered it.

I made the flowers using yet another freebie, a button flower stamp given away with a magazine. After stamping, using a purple ink pad, on to the leftover DP, I cut the flowers out, pinched the petals, layered them and adhered a button to the centre - a simple and inexpensive way to make flowers.

Shari-Ann loved the card and plans to keep it out on display in her bedroom forever!

I'm submitting this card to the following:

Bearly Mine Challenge No.13 - Summer is Here
Deep Ocean Challenge Blog #2 - Flowers
Magnolia Stamp Lovers Challenge - Buttons

Materials used:

Papermania textured card, lilac (base),; pearlescent card, yellow (layering); Bearly Mine Design digital papers, Spring Blossoms lilac floral & Simply Dots yellow dotted; Scrappy Bug Digital Kits (free) Alpha from Sky's the Limit set; Stamped images, Tilda with Cute Skirt & Cherry Tilda; ProMarkers; Flower stamp (free with a magazine); Whispers ink pad, Rio Purple; Anita's Christmas Ribbon, lilac; Yellow & lilac buttons from stash.

So that's it - after a lovely day I'm off to plan what to do next and find some time to check out a few of your blogs. I hope you have all had a lovely weekend whatever you've been up to and that the week ahead is a good one for you.

Happy Crafting to you All,

Berry Sweet Tilda - Challenge Card + The Lang Scots Mile

Good Afternoon,

It's some time since I made a Tilda card but when I saw a couple of the challenges this week I decided to re-visit the little lady. I've had this stamp for ages but never had a suitable project for it before however it is ideal for this card.

A tip I'd seen somewhere, sorry can't remember who's blog but thanks to whoever you are, was to dab Tilda's cheeks with a white pen as a highlighter, after colouring with Promarkers (I'll add a list of the colours used, together with the materials, to the end of post). Tilda is adhered to the card with dimensionals so that she stands out against the heart-shaped doily (another item that had been around in my stash forever) and the trim.  The strawberries got the white ink dot treatment too.

I made this topper by printing out a digital stamp twice and colouring with Promarkers, then dotting the fruit before covering with 3-D Clear Gloss Finish - like Glossy Accents but a bit runnier. When the gloss had dried I cut round the images then intertwined them and used a glue dot to make a little bunch of fruit and flowers. Yellow gems are added to the centre of the flowers as a finishing touch and the finished bunch has been adhered with dimensionals to the card.

The two beautiful design papers come from Bearly Mine Designs and I created the sentiment stamp using them too. With the digital cutter in the graphics software I grouped together a bunch of strawberries placed in the centre of a scalloped circle taken from the vintage style paper and the text shaped into a circle - making two small stamps and one large one altogether.

It was a bit of a fiddle to cut round the scallops but I did it whilst listening to Desert Island Discs and it was done in no time : ) The large sentiment was adhered to the inside of the card and the remaining small one went on the back.

Materials used:

• Cardstock: Stampin' Up, Wild Wasabi
• Digital Design Papers: Bearly Mine Design, Delicious Delights #19; Vintage #05
• Stamps: Magnolia - Tilda with Flowing Hair; Clear Dollar Digital Stamps - Little Strawberries (glossed with Anita's 3-D Clear Gloss Finish) 
• Embellishments: Twine from The Ribbon Girl; lace punched trim, heart-shaped doily and yellow gems from stash

Promarkers: Burgundy, Cardinal Red, Ruby, Poppy, Olive Green, Pear Green, Pastel Yellow, Cinnamon, Caramel, Apricot, Oatmeal, Vanilla, Blush, Pastel Beige, Ivory, Ice Grey 1, Blender

I would like to submit this card for the following challenges:

Totally Tilda Challenge Blog - Challenge #17, Fruity Tilda (the strawberries)

Bearly Mine Challenge – Challenge #5 - Birthday Cards ( suitable for a summer birthday)

Papertake Weekly Challenge – Anything Goes with option for something old (I've had the Tilda stamp for quite some time, ditto the doily)

Docrafts - Hazel’s Tilda Three Stamps Challenge (1 Tilda stamp, 2 Little Strawberries stamps and  sentiment stamp I created myself) 

I just love strawberries, can't wait for them to be plentiful in the shops again, so this card was a real pleasure to make. The days are starting to draw out again and there is a real feeling of winter passing. We've had a few sunny days recently and the garden is greening up - I can see buds on the honeysuckles and there are flowers and touches of red on the pieris. And the birds are much in evidence at the feeders.

For those interested, and many thanks to all of your kind good wishes after my recent bad bout, we did attend the first of the two workshops for pain management and we're looking forward to attending the second. So far we've looked at what pain is, how it affects us, the value of physical exercise, stress, relaxation exercises, the value of setting goals. The hypnotic effect of the relaxation exercise we were taken through had us chuckling - the Estate Manager actually fell asleep and had to be nudged awake at the finish!

Setting our goals was revealing too.

I had not really realised how housebound I have become - walking anything but a really short distance has come to mean several painful days to follow. I used to be a very active gardener but now anything more than 10/15 minutes pottering leads to more debilitating pain. So my goal is to get out more in the fresh air, still keeping the walking to only short manageable distances, taking my camera to record my year in my scrapbook and on this blog.

The EM is really going for it - his ambition is to walk The Lang Scots Mile by the end of the year. The Lang Scots Mile is marked out along the promenade here in Ayr and it is based on the old Scottish mile which apparently is longer than the one we all use today.

His plan is to work up to it by degrees, a quarter of the distance to begin with and as he gets fitter he will walk further until he can walk the entire length - and then back. Ah, that will involve walking 2 lang miles! I've told him I'll be waiting in the car : )

So things are looking up in the Worthington household with lots of fun stuff planned for this year. I'll let you know what the 2nd workshop teaches us and keep you posted on our progress.

In the meantime, I'll just pop downstairs for a cup of tea and then start on my next craft project.