Hi crafty friends, I hope you’ve had a good week? It’s been a cold week here with more snow which looks very pretty from the warmth of my craft room! It’s Friday so that must mean a new challenge over at the Daring Cardmakers blog and this week our lovely Shabneez is daring us to use squares, the more the better!
I decided to go for some nested squares to show off some very beautiful papers I recently received from Craft Box UK as part of their Pretty Papers monthy subscription. The pad is gorgeous rich colours with gold leaves and it’s called Golden Leaves.
I added some gold mirror card and a Love die and here you go….
It’s a simple card to let those beautiful purpes and golds shine. I hope you like it and that you will join in with the fun!
Hi crafty people, I’m here with my first SAL post of 2021, and it’s been a productive stitching time for me. I’ve got a couple of other stitching projects on the go so my plan is to do a little update at the end of each month to share the progress with my other projects. This SAL is focused on my sunflowers project which I started back in the summer. Three weeks ago I was here….
Today I have finished off the bottom left flower and made good progress on the next flower too. I’ve done a chunk of the shadow work around the bottom corner too but still a few more rows at the bottom until it’s finished. So here I am now:
I’ve been really enjoying working on it, I think the combination of cold weather and being in lockdown have created the perfect excuse to cuddle up on the sofa for stitching in the evening. I have a feeling this lockdown isn’t going to be lifted any time soon so I’m sure this stitchy therapy will keep me going for a while yet.
This SAL is organised by the lovely Avis. who keeps us all on track (it’s always a surprise to me when the email comes in and I think it cannot be 3 weeks already!!) I just wanted to say a big thank you to Avis and all my fellow stitchers who really keep me motivated to stitch regularly. I’m looking forward to catching up with all the other blogs in this SAL group. Please give them a visit too, I’ve linked them here so you can easily find them.
Happy Friday crafty people! I’m back today with the next challenge from the Daring Cardmakers blog. The lovely Nat is our host and she informs us that it is National Bagel day in the USA! Now we are not being asked to feature a bagel but in celebration of the round food favourite feature a circle/circle frame/circle aperture as your main focal point.
I decided to use one of the circular sentiment dies from Crafters Companion. As we are in lockdown and so paper hugs are the safest I went with the Sending Hugs option. I cut it from white card and then coloured it in with my tri blend markers from Spectrum Noir to make a rainbow effect. I layered it up with circles of black and white card and then added a black heart from the Bright Rosa Heart Band set from Paula Pascual. I coloured the mini heart in with red. I decided to leave it clean and simple and let the rainbow hug speak for itself!
I hope you will hop over to the Daring Cardmakers Blog see the lovely samples made by my talented design team colleagues and that you will share your own circle themed cards with us this week. We will be back with a new challenge next Friday.
Keep well and as always I’m sending you a crafty hug
Hi crafty friends, I hope you are doing well? It’s another cold day here in Scotland and we had a little snow last night, just enough to make the pavements super slippy! I need to pop out to the post box sometime but apart from that I’ll be safe at home as we are still in lockdown. I hope you are all keeping safe and well.
I’m here today as it’s the first Aud Sentiments Challenge of 2021 and it’s an Anything Goes theme to break us in gently! Challenge 266 is very kindly sponsored by Digi Doodle Studios.
I was so lucky to be gifted Bianca Snow Digi Doodles Digi Stamp to use for today’s blog post. She is a beautiful image and perfect for our current weather! I printed her out twice, once on plain paper and once on some pale woodgrain printed paper. I fussy cut out the sledge and paper pieced it onto the plain version which I coloured with my Tri blend markers from Spectrum Noir.
I then created the card base, I used a purple card stock to match Bianca’s coat and hat. I added some snowy patterned paper and a white card snowy ground. For a sentiment I used a stamp from a magazine gift a year or more ago! I stamped and heat embossed it on velum and then layered that on a different snowflake paper and added some gems in the corners. The finishing touch was a holographic snowflake which I had in my box of die cuts, I added a gem heart to the centre and voila!
I hope you will have a go and enter this challenge, you can share any of your projects as long as it has a sentiment included! Hop on over to Aud Sentiments Challenge blog to see the fabulous projects created by my talented design team friends.
Happy Friday crafty people! I hope you are doing well and keeping safe. We have our first challenge of 2021 from the Daring Cardmakers blog and as it’s a new month it’s an elemental challenge. This simply means that we have some images for you to take your inspiration from. This month the lovely Dawn has chosen this beautiful selection of cosy images. Your card should use at least three elements from this selection, just perfect for the chilly start to 2021 here in the UK anyway!
I opted to use the wood effect, tartan and the ice skates to create this card.
To create this card I had a scrap of the tartan paper in my stash, I cut a piece and rounded the corners. The skates die is from the Tonic Studios Essentials Festive Die Set Wreath and Skates. I did some paper piecing and added some extra branches which I coloured with Tri-Blend markers from Spectrum Noir. I used the sentiment and heart stamp from the Warm Wishes Too set from Clearly Besotted. The wood effect paper is from a pad from the Craft Box UK monthy papers subscription.
I hope you will join in and share your cosy themed cards this week, next Friday we will be back with another prompt to keep your crafty mojo going.
Happy Sunday crafty people and welcome to the last SAL post of 2020. I hope you all had as good a Christmas as possible. In the UK we are under increased restrictions again as there is a new variation in the virus and it seems to be even more infectious, although thankfully not more dangerous. So we changed our plans and just visited my Mum for a short while. We packed up all the trimmings of Christmas dinner to take to Mum and some home made cookies and mince pies so we all still enjoyed the feast, although not together. We were all bundled up in our jackets and took the presents outside to be opened in the fresh air before heading home to have dinner separately and then catch up later in the day via facetime. It was pretty chilly but we were treated to some live music as we could hear someone playing the bagpipes nearby. We took a socially distanced selfie to mark this unusual Christmas! I know it’s not stitching related but I thought it might be interesting to see how this pandemic is affecting people in different parts of the world.
Anyway back to the stitching! First my confession…..last time this was where I was…..
Three weeks later I haven’t made any progress I’m afraid! However I was busy doing lots of stitching and I did say I would share what I had made now that the gifts have all been received!
The first batch of projects were a set of PDF charts which I bought from Beverly Street Shop on Etsy. The set is called a Very Covid Christmas and included 3 projects. Unforunately I didn’t take a photo of the snowman, although I am stitching one for myself on navy blue aida so I will share that when it is completed! Here are the Nutcracker and the Santa ornaments. I stitched two snowmen, two Santas and one Nutcracker for gifts.
The next two projects were gifts for two close friends who have really kept us going this year with zoom catch ups. They loved them and they made them laugh which was the aim, especially this year I think as much laughter as possible is needed! In case you are easily offended I have censored some of the “language” on these stitches, unless you are Scottish you might not understand the thistle one anyway, but please be assured, these are almost terms of endearment in Scotland!
I also stitched a couple of Christmas decorations for ourselves and they are finished but not sewed up into decorations (I just ran out of steam!) The first was a beautiful free chart I came across on Pinterest. It is called Merry Cats-mas and it was designed by Terri Carl. I have picked out some red Christmas fabric to back it but I need to pick some ribbons and or trim and I might add a bell. Here it is so far….
Finally I stitched my first (but definitely not last!) Lindy Stitches design. When I spotted this project on instagram and saw the three cats I knew I had to make this one! I adapted the colours to try and represent our 3 fluffy boys, so here is the stitched project (I think I’m going to use the mint candy cane fabric to finish it off and some green pompom trim).
And here are the inspirations….
So I hope that you will forgive me cheating with all the distractions from the fact that I didn’t make any actual SAL progress!
This SAL is organised by the lovely Avis. who keeps us all on track (it’s always a surprise to me when the email comes in and I think it cannot be 3 weeks already!!) I just wanted to say a big thank you to Avis and all my fellow stitchers who really keep me motivated to stitch regularly. This year more than ever I have been grateful to have creative outlets which have kept me feeling productive and given me hours of enjoyment at home. I think I will be using these coping strategies for a while yet but I’m very hopeful for a return to more normal life sometime in 2021.
I’m looking forward to catching up with all the other blogs in this SAL group. Please give them a visit too, I’ve linked them here so you can easily find them.
Happy Friday crafty people! This week’s Daring Cardmaker challenge is the last one of 2020 and it’s a great one if you are finishing off your Christmas preparations and wrapping some gifts. This week we would love to see your
Tags, Toppers and Labels
I love making tags, it’s a great excuse to use some of my smaller stamps. For these tags I used a Clearly Besotted Stamp set, Drink and be Merry. I coloured them with watercolour pencils and fussy cut them out.
I prepared some tags using the My Favourite Things Tag Builder 5 die set and inked the base layer to match the colour of the top layer. I added one of my little festive drinks and stamped a sentiment in the strip at the bottom. To finish off I added a few Nuvo Jewel drops.
I hope you are managing to find some time to enjoy some Christmas crafting and that you are enjoying the season in a safe way.
Happy Friday everyone! I hope you have had a good week and that you are all safe and well. Mine has been a whirlwind of Etsy orders which has kept me very busy and out of mischief! I’m nearly there as I am going to put the shop on holiday mode early next week and have a few days off before Christmas. I did manage to squeeze in a little time to make a card for this week’s new Daring Cardmakers Challenge. This time we are focused on
Animal Antics at Christmas
Make anything you’d like as long as it features a creature or two! Reindeer, penguins, polar bears, festive robins, puppies or kittens
I used a very cute Clearly Besotted stamp set called Christmas Hoot ( I think it is at least a year old, maybe older than that!) I fussy cut him out and gave him an inky background to perch in. To finish it off I added a sentiment from the stamp set, a strip of snowflake paper and a few silver sequins.
I can’t wait to see everyone’s festive animals this week, I’m sure there will be lots of cuteness!
Happy Sunday crafty people and welcome to the latest SAL post. I’ve been busy doing lots of stitching but some of it is still top secret as I’m making some Christmas gifts. I did manage to add some stitches to the sunflower and quite a chunk of the background shading in the bottom corner. Last time I shared this photo of my stitching….
Three weeks later…..
I’ll share my Christmas stitching after the big day in a few weeks 😉
This SAL is organised by the lovely Avis. who keeps us all on track (it’s always a surprise to me when the email comes in and I think it cannot be 3 weeks already!!)
I’m looking forward to catching up with all the other blogs in this SAL group. Please give them a visit too, I’ve linked them here so you can easily find them.
Happy Friday everyone, this week has been so fast and I’ve not had a chance to check in with the blog at all! But Friday brings a new Daring Cardmaker Challenge and the perfect excuse to hop on and let you know what our challenge is this week!
So share your handmade bags or boxes for Christmas gifts. I have been making some 2020 cross stitch Christmas decorations (still top secret but will share after the big day!) so I have a few 10 cm embroidery hoop decorations. I decided to make little flat boxes from craft card and decorated with some cute Clearly Besotted stamps (the set is a 2020 release and is called Baa Humbug)
Something simple but hopefully will make someone smile and being flat is very postable in case I don’t manage to see people in person.
