Emerald Anniversary (1)

Hi,
This has been a very mixed week of emotions- up and down like the proverbial yoyo! I had the pleasure of having my sis from Scotland stay for a few days. We didn't do very much which is what she really needed as she works hard, but it was lovely having her company and nice long chats. The weather stayed really good and we were able to use our new decking area to lounge about on and to eat our meals. This area has been a very welcome addition to our house.
Also on the positive side was my daughter's birthday on monday- she loved her 'big boots girl' card (see previous entry for details) and she's looking forward to her teaching term finishing soon to go on a well deserved holiday.
It was also my friend Elaine's birthday this week. She is a very special crafting friend who is very generous with her time and helps me sort out my blog problems etc even though she's new to it all herself (I think I must be a slow learner!!)
On the downside, wednesday saw the 1st anniversary of my Nanny passing away. She was a very remarkable lady who managed to reach her 100th birthday 2 months before passing. She was blessed to have all her faculties intact and lived life to the full- infact she had a better social life than I did!!! I still miss her terribly, but thank God for her life and the special times we had together.

Todays card was a commission for my mum's dear friends, Anita & Mickey. 55 years is quite an achievement. This card is to be sent by my mum.
It is quite a basic A5 white card and punched using 2 of Martha Stewart heart punches and some lovely green hologram card.
The green square is a hologram peeloff and the heart charm is from Craftybitz.

I am going to enter this into Michelle Perkett's challenge of fancy cutting
I made 2 other emerald anniversary cards and will post them in the next couple of days.
Hope you all have a lovely day, especially if it's spent crafting.

Hugs,
Trish x

Feeling my age!!

Firstly can I apologise for not posting regularly. I have many health problems which mount up at times and generally floor me for a while. Hopefully those who have chosen to follow my blog will have compassion and understanding- thank you for this. As I have previously mentioned, I appreciate you taking the time to look at my blog and all the comments are very welcome and help build up my confidence to try different things.

Todays card is for my daughter, Ruth. Her birthday is on Monday- the longest day. I always say that I was very well aware it was the 'longest day' when I was lying in the maternity hospital- I thought the day was never going to end LOL!! That was nearly 24 years ago and it honestly feels a lot less. So much has happened in those 24 years, much of which I can't remember, yet I can distinctly remember giving birth to her. I thank God every day for my children, Ruth and my elder son, David.

When Phindy released this digital image, I knew I had to buy it, as it brought back memories of my daughter when she was about 4 or 5 years old and she came shuffling out to the garage where we were at the time. When I looked down she had her dad's old work boots on her feet, with untied laces dangling- what a sight! We actually have it captured on video, but unfortunately I don't have a photo of her as I would have liked to show you just how alike this image is of her.

Items used;
Phindy- 'Big boots girl' digital image
8"x8" square white scalloped edge card- Craftwork cards
Hot pink & lime green card- Hunkydory
Circular flower die cut, flourishes and ribbon border- Marianne creatables
Hot pink ribbon- old stash
Coloured using promarkers
Layout using Card patterns sketch 68
Happy birthday sentiment- Craftwork cards

Entering this card into the following challenges:
1) Bee crafty challenge 31- Bloomin marvellous
2) Card patterns sketch 68
3) Donna's den of Crafts- This is the 1st challenge... Happy Birthday theme
4) Paperplay week 24- Something old (My ribbon- it's so old and part of a kit I bought about 4 yrs ago!!)
5) Phindy's Friday challenge number 9- One for the girls

Hope you all have a great weekend and that the weather stays nice here in the UK.
Hugs,
Trish x

Feelin Ruff!!!

Hi,
Hope you are all enjoying the long weekend here in the UK and Memorial weekend for my friends in the USA. If you're lucky you might even get a chance to lie on in bed for a little longer, unlike me who hasn't slept much. I went to bed exhausted around 10.30pm and fell asleep while reading my new Magnolia Ink magazine (which I'm loving, by the way- even though I don't pocess any of the stamps,... YET!!!! LOL) Unfortunately, I woke up at 2am and couldn't get back to sleep again, so spent the evening catching up with emails/ blogs etc.

Todays card is for my best friend, Mel, who is recovering from having her Gallbladder removed- I thought this might help cheer her up! It is the first time I have used the 8"x8" size card. At first I thought I would never really be able to fill the space, but there was no problems re this at all. I followed a sketch from a challenge blog called Stamp for fun (challenge 60) I enjoyed using this layout and will probably keep it for future reference. Unfortunately I am too late to enter the challenge as I missed the deadline. I can't get my head around the time differences in America & here- something I need to work at.

Items used in today's card:-
White 8"x8" scalloped white card- from Crafts superstore at a very good price for this size
BP's- Matts are lilac pearlescent papers (own stash)
- Printed papers from Papermania CAT collection!!! (even though I used it for a dog image, some were very suitable for this!!)
Circular scalloped frame & Flowers are using dies from Marianne design Creatables
Gorgeous pearl brads- The Hobby house
Dog & kennel brads- The eyelet outlet
Pink striped ribbon- My own stash
Jasper the dog digital Image- I won from Michelle Perkett. She set a challenge for her followers to name a new dog image she had created. I named him Jasper after my own gorgeous dog and I won the challenge; she sent me the image as a prize. Michelle is very generous and a really talented artist and we do have good fun on her site.
Jasper was coloured using Promarkers. Although the real Jasper is B&W, I'm not clever enough to know how to colour him properly and found I was able to do shades of brown easier... so for today- Jasper is a brown dog!!

I am entering this card into the following challenges;
1) Michelle Perkett- Challenge 31- Circles & Ribbon
2) Charisma Cardz- Week 21- Going round in circles
3) Crafty Creations- Challenge 69- Use your favourite stamp (It has to be Jasper, of course)
4) Passion for Promarkers- Week 53- Anything goes (This is my 2nd entry for this)
5) Pixiedust studio- Challenge 24- Going round and round

Going to try to get a little sleep before my son & DIL come round. Susan & I are going to watch the film 'My sister's keeper' and apparently I will need a box of tissues beside me!!

Hope you all have a lovely day however you spend it.
Hugs,
Trish x

Why are men so difficult!!!

This is the cry we hear constantly in the crafting circles!! As a girl we tend to like 'blinging' things up, but I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed making this fishing card. It will be going to my friend Amy's husband who has just got home from hospital after having an operation. Hopefully it will help cheer him up.
Talking about operations- I found out, after a hospital appointment this week, that I need to have an operation myself. It will probably be a couple of months on the waiting list before it happens. Anyone that knows me, knows what happened at my last op and that I am really scared of this one. (If you read my profile, you will understand this a bit better) I will be doing a lot of praying between now and then.

Back to my cards, the first one is a fishing get well card made using the following:
BP's: Making Memories- Ethan collection, also
K & Co- Hopscotch
Digital Image by Phindy- fishing.
The frame was cut out using Nellies muli frames- squares
Coloured using Promarkers
Sketch I followed was this week's Papertake Weekly Sketch No 41

I will be entering this card into the following challenges;
Phindy's Friday challenge
Allsorts-Use a tag/label
Dare you to Digistamp: Challenge 38- One for the boys
Papertake weekly Challenge, Sketch 41
Passion for Promarkers, Week 53: 1st Anniversary: Anything goes

The 2nd card is a bookatrix wedding card that was ordered. The lady loved it, so that made me really happy.

There is a great blog candy giveaway over on Lili of The Valley challenge blog. One lucky person will win a complete set of gorgeous new stamps that are not even available to buy until 1st June. Do take a look if you get a chance as they are sooo cute! Hopefully this link to it will work....
http://liliofthevalleythursdaychallenge.blogspot.com/2010/05/extra-special-new-release-blog-candy.html

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at my blog and leave such really lovely words of encouragement.

Many hugs,
Trish x

Flower power!

Hi folks,
Hope those in UK are enjoying this incredible weather. I know it's just a freak few days and they're forecasting it to become cooler from tonight. I do like the sun, but my poor dog Jasper really struggles in it and tries to find the coolest spot available!
I spent today making this card to enter into Michelle Perkett's challenge which is entitled 'Flowers galore' The image of a vase of flowers usually comes with a Thank you sentiment which I didn't want to use on this particular card- hope Michelle doesn't mind. I needed to make a couple of special birthday cards as orders- this will help with one of them.
Please excuse the colouring of the cards in the 2 photos. The close-up is more like the real colours. I messed about in Corel photoshop with the other image as there was a very bright sheen that I didn't like, but I didn't realise I had totally changed the colour of it- sorry!
I followed the Card Patterns sketch No.65, I really like these sketches as they aren't too difficult to follow for a beginner like myself.

Ingredients used to make this card:-
Pink solid and pink floral BP's-Making memories (Kate collection)
Image-Michelle Perkett and cut using Spellbinders Labels 1 nestabilities
Border-punched using a Fiskars floral punch
Birthday tag-Eyelet outlet
Bling-stickles
Crocheted flowers/brads/flower charm/flowers- all from my own stash (I wish I knew were I got those gorgeous crocheted flowers from as I'd really love some more!!)

Going to enter this card into the following challenges:-
Michelle Perkett- flowers galore
Allsorts-Use a tag/label
Card patterns-Sketch 65
Charisma Cardz challenge-Week 20-Theme is 3D (I have used the floers)
I love digi challenge 7-Charms
Papertake weekly-Say it with flowers
Stamp something-" of something (I used 2 colours, pink and white and 2 papers pink solid and pink floral)
Totally Gorjuss-Bling (Blinged the centers of my floral paper)

Since I'm in a flower theme, I thought I would show you a gorgeous flower that I grew from a bulb. It's an amaryllis and was a christmas pressie from my lovely friend Audrey. I am so pleased with it... it's stunning I think, but sad that it doesn't last very long in this full bloom state.

That's all for now, hope you like what you see and thank you for the kind words of encouragement, I do really appreciate it.

Hugs,
Trish x

Christmas come early!!!

This week over at Phindy's she and her DT have asked us to think about a challenge which I would normally never think of doing at this time of year 'Christmas in Spring'.... Think I'm going mad!!

Ingredients;
Large card bought from C&C in their Jan. sale
Image- Digital image from Phindy, cut using nestabilities labels one and coloured using Promarkers
Ribbon-Gorilla crafts
Gems, flowers etc from own stash

Going to enter this into the following challenges;
Dare you to Digistamp (anything goes)
I love digi challenge
ABC challenge (unused stash.. christmas charms)
Papertake weekly (say it with flowers)
Cupcake craft challeng (bloom and flowers)
Card patterns (sketch 64 sponsored by Gina K)

Thank you for taking the time to read this and leaving such encouraging comments
Hugs,
Trish x

The Biggest Card

Yesterday was my DIL Susan's 30th birthday and my son asked me to make her a special card from him. I had previously bought this gorgeous Kanban art deco lady card kit from QVC and it had a couple of really big A3 size cards. I have never made such a big card before. There were quite a few layers which I was able to shape and decoupage using silicone glue. Unfortunately my photography doesn't show this, but believe me, it's even nicer in real life!!
The insert due to its size, wasn't able to be printed out the normal way in my verse editor, so I typed it into word, resized and printed it onto A4 size paper. I then used a Kreaxtions punch for the top 2 corners and Martha Stewart punch for the bottom border. This was then backed on to black card which really made the design pop.

The lovely handbag card was printed from a CD which was made by a very talented lady called Wendy. You can get this CD along with many other designs and some downloads from her website www.theclipartfairy.com It's well worth a visit and tomorrow she's releasing a brand new CD on book easel cards- these have to be seen as my description wouldn't do them justice!

The handbag was printed on white linen card which gave a lovely texture. I then decided to make a handbag charm to help decorate it. I used what I had lying in my craft box and was delighted with the result.
I got a phone call from Susan to say she was very pleased with the cards, so that made me happy. (I know it doesn't take much!! LOL)

Have a good day whatever you're planning to do.

Hugs,
Trish x