Hand Crafted Memories

I have had quite a productive few weeks on the scrapbooking front, there is nothing like a retreat followed closely by national Scrapbooking Day and a few challenges that get your creativity going. I mentioned previously that I was going to Scrapstars and as usual it didn't fail to deliver, it was great to meet up and catch up with everybody. Tracee Provis was one of the teachers, she is such fun and this was one of the layouts she taught.  I loved the fun colours and it was a great opportunity for me to scrap a photo from 37 years ago and my first girls holiday to Jersey. It was also my best friends birthday this week and a milestone birthday deserves a special card. She loves cakes, her garden and bling, luckily I got all of them onto her card.  

Oh dear I missed past weeks post. I have a good excuse really, I was in the garden planting for two days. After 2 days and £120 spent on plants does it look any different. Well not really. I think its going to be a year or two for these to establish and fill out. Needless to say the crafting took a back seat. But I do have this card that I made for my best friends birthday. It always has to be something special, I love making these pop up cards, they are so effective. It was a winner and took pride of place.  

I'm now hooked on the 3D pop up boxes, that my friend told me about and I have now made three. This is the one I started off with, I used the Molly Blooms circus themed stamps, I'm embarrassed to say I have had them ages and this was the first time I used them, but they were perfect for one of these cards.    

Well I'm  back from a veeeerryy looooong week. I have been working in Devon for a couple of days but the travelling by train has taken a full day to get there and another full day to get home. Its amazing how tiring it can be to just sit on a train. I was dying to just get home and have a cuppa and get into my craft room. The up side of all this is that it will only be a quick flick round with a duster as the house is tidy exactly as I left it. It was my friends birthday at the beginning of the week and as she is a card maker I had to make something a little bit different. Its a swing card with one of my favourite Molly Bloom stamps, I was really please with how this came out and the good news was that she loved it.  

For a number of weeks I have been trying to get hold of the Sizzix Pop n Cuts base die set. OMG! it was like trying to find gold plated rocking horse poo, was I really trying to buy something at exactly the same time as all other UK crafters. I know these have been around for a while but suddenly when I want one there was not one to be found. Then finally I got one. I ordered it from Cutting Edge Crafts and in less that 24 hours it was in my sticky little fingers. A++++ to them for super fast dispatch and delivery. In my excitement at fining one In stock I forgot to order any of the other shaped inserts, so for the time being its the standard set, but believe me I'm happy with what I have.  here is a card that started this NEED to have the die set, my friend Lesley let me play with her die and different inserts, therefore opening a world of ideas. She also let me have some if her lovely Lili of the Valley images to decorate it. I now want to use it for a scrap book page, watch ...

Today is my best friends birthday and each year I try to make her a special card. As Theresa is getting into card making herself, she takes the card and analyses it until she works out how it has been made. Each year I try and make a better card than the previous year, for a while I have been admiring these cascade cards and after a couple of attempts I finally worked it out and came up with this   It was lovely to watch her face as she opened the card and examined it. She has even taken it with her on holiday.Now I have to come up with something unique for Christmas.

The next challenge I took part in for National Scrapbooking day over on Scrap Whispers was to lift a card based on the Princess and the Pea fairy story. If you know the story it is about a princess who could feel a pea through many layers of mattresses. This is my take on the card posted here

Yesterday, I had a whole day with nothing to do other than craft, but what shall I make. I sat for quite a while looking at some beautiful papers but would anything come? No , nothing, nada! Don't you just hate it when that happens? Then I remember my crafting buddy Caroline had sent me a link to a ladies blog earlier this week, and on it were the most adorable chalkboard cards, so I thought 'lifting' one of these would get me going again. I love them and they were so easy to make. Although the instructions are to decorate both sides, I only did the front and I stamped my woodgrain stamp ont Kraft card, which I them embossed with my woodgrain embossing folder. This is one card that I can imagine I will use over and again for different occasions

This weekend I have my friend Julia coming to visit again, so we are having a full weekend of scrapbooking and catching up planned.We both need this weekend to find and encourage our mojos out of hiding. I recently found myself going back to cards as I couldn't get inspired with my scrapbook pages. I woke up this morning excited at getting down to doing some pages. For today's craft inspiration this card was made using a hostess gift from Stampin Up . I fell in love with this set when I saw it recently and my lovely friends Lesley and Caroline made a present of it when I had them over recently. I love this set.

Today is my best friends birthday, we don't buy each other gifts, instead we spend a day together doing something. We've been for spa days, cup cake classes, for afternoon tea. Anything goes its just what ever the birthday girl fancies doing. At the moment she can't decide what she wants to do, we'll just arrange something when the idea is there. I have made her a card, I used an image mt friend Lesley stamped for me. I was a good excuse to trey and practise my colouring. I hope she likes it.

On Saturday monring I wne to the open day at Lilli of the Valley and attended a workshoip to learn the correct techniques with my Promarker pens.  I've never been shown and always thought I did pretty OK, but now I've been shown and had time to practise I'm enjoying playing with my colours. We were shown how to colour using the lovely P om Pom image, I have since made it up into a card. Today I will be colouring with plenty of coffee breaks and Bank Holiday television viewing in my craft room. My Do Not Disturb sign is well and truly on display today.

Each week I make my friend her dinner on a Wednesday night, and recently she has become interested in colouring in some images to make up into cards. I'm sort of self taught with Copics and Promarkers but I do like the effect i get when I use them. I've shown her what I know and she has bought herself a few pens. So now when she comes for her dinner I usually set her some homework or a challenge,I stamp out some images for each of us and we then colour them in and make a card up. The following Wednesday we admire each others handy work and then she goes home with some more images. Last week I stamped Molly Bloom with a watering can and some sunflowers, this was the card I came up with.   It took ages to cut out all those plant posts and sunflowers but I think it was worth it.  This morning I made some chocolate cupcakes with ganache centres ans vanilla frosting decorated with mini eggs. They were a trade with my brother and his girlfriend for a roast dinner. It was a brillian...

I haven't any specific plans this holiday weekend, so this morning when I got up, for some reason I started to pull out crafting stash that I know I will never use. I'll pass it on to my friend. There are now 2 bags full of stash for her and some stamps sets on eBay. Can I see a difference? Not on your Nelly. Of course the big tidy up isn't finished yet and I keep stopping to make cards while I think about what I am doing next. Here's one made with an image that I coloured at least three years ago and has been sitting in the bottom of a box of scraps. It is now in my box of stock cards.

I can't believe my weeks holiday is over and I have hardly done any crafting. I have managed to get a lot of  those jobs done that are always left for later and my house is gleaming. Today it seems is the last day of our gorgeous weather so I have my bed linen drying in the lovely spring sunshine. When I realised I hadn't done any crafting I awarded today the day to craft. I have quite a few images that have been stamped and coloured laying on my desk, so I have gathered them up and made them up into very simper quick cards to add into my stock of cards. Here are the first two  

It looks like I am fast becoming a weekend blogger, eaxh time I Blog I proise I'll add more frequent posts and then the next time I sit to blog another week has passed. I hope to post a little more this week as I have a whole 9 days off work. I am praying for lovely weather so that I can spend some time in the garden tidying away the winter. I would also like to make a dent in some the crafting ideas going on in my head and maybe just maybe I can tidy the craft room up a bit.  I did make a start last night on the tidying and like many crafters I ended up crafting, I made this little card, at one time I used to make a lot of this style. I loved how it came together so quickly and love the colours.  My lovely new Project of the Month from Craftwork Cards arrived yesterday, so that will definatly get some attention. I loooove the chevron Cand i so I need to make sure that is used.

I love Websters Pages, I've got a pizza box full but I end up stroking them more than using them. Tonight they gave away a fantastic prize of $500 to spend on anything you wanted from their products, can you imagine? I would have loved this prize and I'm happy to say a Brit won!  This video has wetted my appetite for some of the new range, I especially love Palm Beach. I so wish I could find a stockist here in the UK where everything form a range is stocked and not just the odd sheet of paper. I have a weekend of lovely crafting planned and on Sunday I'll be playing with the latest Molly Bloom stamps at the Craft Box with my best friend, I can't think of a nicer way to spend a day.Here is a card that I made and haven't posted, I think this is probably one of my favourite Molly stamps and sooo fits in with my current love of baking.  

Over the last few weeks I have been awarded the Liebster Blog award twice. Now I'm not really one for awards and don't really pass them on but I was awarded this by Caroline and Kate , so I feel its only right that I link back to them. you then have to put a link to five other blogs with under 200 hundred followers, well there lies the problem, most of my favourite bloggers seem to be the same as others and so are very popular but I thought I'd give it a go. I start off with Emma  a fellow design Team member for Craftwork Cards. Lesley Anita Lynn Becky All of these ladies have left a comment on my blog at some time and I have visited theirs in return.  Yesterday I made orange cupcakes and kept the theme going today with this

I hate the snow, I love it when I'm inside looking out and I don't need to go anywhere. I thought this year we were going to escape, but no. I went to a Stampin Up party at my friend Carolines on Friday, then I was staying over and three of us were going to spend the next day crafting. All was fine until lunchtime on Saturday and then it came. We decided to pack up and because we had that much stuff to pack, by the time we had loaded our cars we had to clear the cars and it took us about 30 minutes. Caroline took some pictures of us, and this is begging to be scrapped. (photo courtesy of Caroline ) We made a card and a little tag as a little make and take at the party, I loved the colours. I like the Stampin Up products and it killed me to try and stay within the budget but as I'm going to the Scrapstars retreat in April and I still need to pay for it I showed restraint. Here is the card and tag.  jut noticed the greeting doesn't look straight on this.

I posted last week that I had just had a mammoth card making session and here I am a week later and I haven't posted any more cards. I have been to Cambridge with work for a couple of days but there's plenty more days in the week. So here we go with another card from the session. This is for a friend of mine who is having a birthday this week. I am still enjoying playing with my Promarker s and think I'm now improving the shading technique. I also called into Paperchase this week, just for a nosey and came across some lovely paper tapes, so I stocked up. There are others on the market but I thought this was a good selection, only £3 for 15m. Its gonna last a while I think. Now I've just got to find something to use it on.

I recently needed a fiftieth birthday card for a friend and had a pi;e pf scraps from my favourite Sweet Meadows papers from Craftwork Cards . I love these colours and the lovely blooms. . The card came together quite quickly and was loved by the recipient.