Hand Crafted Memories

I'm here again. I've been all over with work, Greenwich, Yeovil and Devon, meaning that I haven't had chance to do any crafting it has been one endless round of packing, travelling, unpacking washing, ironing and repacking.  Today I was determined to have some me time and make a card for my bestie's husband. He is 60 this week and I needed a very manly card for him. No cutsie stuff he's a mans man.  This is what I came up with Its a large card 8x8 but you need something this size for a special birthday. Tomjorrow is our monthly scrapbooking class at the Craft Box and we have a lovely beach themed page. Come back tomorrow to see it.

I often find when I make a card that I am critical of it and think there's something not right. But sometimes I make a card and its just right, there's nothing I want to change. This week was a very stressful week for a number of reasons, so I thought a little card making would help it out. This card cam together perfectly and I'm so pleased with it I don't want to give it away now. Perhaps stress around me is the missing element from my cards and projects.

The weeks at the moment seem to be flying by, where is the time going to? I remember when weekends seemed to be so long and boring.Now I find I am no sooner walking out of the doors at work on a Friday at 5PM than they are open and I am going back in on Monday at 9AM. Here it is two weeks since I posted and to be truthful I've not done much crafting either. This weekend sees me teaching my first scrapbook class at the Craft Box , I was really nervous but now I'm excited. I hope the ladies like the pages. In the mean time here are a couple of cards that I did manage to make, I bought the stamp set from Stampin Up a while ago and it has taken some time before I used it. I love the images and they are great for men's cards.    

I can't believe how long it is since I posted. I took this week off work as it was my birthday last Sunday, I usually have to week off the relax. Last week I was working in London for a couple of days,  when I returned home walked into my house I decided I didn't like the colour of my walls anymore. Just like that still in my business clothes and heels I moved all the furniture into the middle of the living room and decided it was time to paint. The next morning I admit to thinking I must have lost the plot. So my week off has been spent decorating my living room, but I love the results. I also had two new windows fitted and some cavity wall insulation done, so all in all it was a very productive week. Just when I thought I'd got things all back in order I realised my car was a little poorly, it turned out I needed a new clutch. So today while the car was being fixed I finally chilled out and made some cards. I had some stamps that still haven't had ink on them so to...

I'm playing along with A Trip Down Memory Lane's cybercrop, I am planning to make all of the scrapbook pages and skip the mini books. I have so many of them without photos I didn't want anymore kicking around. I have to say though I do keep going and looking at them because they look so lovely. I may have to reconsider. Class 4 was set by Karen Cole and it was to make a set of note cards. I decided to make a set of birthday cards. I needed a few more because about a third of our  company have their birthday in July. This was the perfect class for me to make a batch of them all the same, here is my take on the class.

Everytime I put the TV on at the moment its football. I get it, there's a major competition on, but it does make it difficult to keep up with my favourite programmes, you have to hunt down the new timings. I thought that as we had football everywhere I'd continue the theme. Again this is one of the lovely Lili of the Valley stamps that I bought recently and another excuse to practise my colouring techniques. I think this was my favourite of the stamps that I bought

The European Cup has started and that means the TV schedule has gone to pot. The advantage for somebody who has no interest whatsoever in football is that it means I can do more crafting, who needs anymore of an excuse. I have a few more male birthdays coming up in July and with football all around us at the moment , I inked up another of my Lili of the Valley stamps and made up this on topic card.

I recently bought a few stamps from Lili of the Valley and this week I got around to stamping and practising the colouring techniques I learnt at their recent workshop. I have fallen in love with this little stamp, so much that I ended up making four cards up with him. The thing that surprised me was how each card looks so different but the main difference is only the colour combination.

I bought a stamp at the weekend that I wasn't really that sure about. Sometimes I get a bit caught up with buying something and wondering why. Well now I'd bought it, I'd better use it. So I stamped and coloured and still wasn't sure why I'd bought it. Then I made the images up into a card, well I might as well, they would do for work. Then surprise, I loved the cards. I now love this stamp. Oh and look at that lovely border, that was another purchase, I thought would be pretty, but it is just gorgeous.   I guess this is what is called a happy accident. I happily bought the stamp, then thought it was a mistake and without planning I accidentally made two of my favourite cards!

I hate when I get free time that I can dedicate to crafting and I end up getting distracted by everything else.I am such a serial tidier, I found every time I made a card I tidied up. Honestly I was driving myself nuts. I did manage to make some cards and do quite a bit of tidying. Here I used a new stamp I got from Stampin Up. I got it a few weeks ago and have only just got round to using it.

If you would like to design cards using fabulous products, then go to Craftwork Cards Blog. They are looking for 4 new team members, go here for the details. Give it a go, you never know.  Here I'm showing another quick card to use up my coloured images, I was given these stamps by my lovely Scrapstars buddies Caroline and/or Lesley . I don't know who gave them to me but they are perfect for the high demand for men's cards that I have.

I have just got back from a fabulous class at the Craft Box where we used the lovely new stamps from Molly Bloom s. I haven't laughed so much in ages, they were such a good crowd. I didn't finish the project but have  it all laid out in my craft room and I am sitting ready to watch Dancing on Ice and continue crafting. I haven't posted in a while, I made this card a couple of weeks ago and never posted it. I'm really liking the red, white and blue theme that is popping up everywhere at the moment, I'm sure once the Jubilee and Olympics are here I'll be fed up with it again. It is great for men's cards and so is this gorgeous stamp from Penny Black. I have my eye on a couple more stamps from this range and it goes so well with the Portobello Road papers from Papermania.

A few weeks ago I  went to a Stampin Up party and ordered a motorbike stamp. I thought it would be a good 'go to' stamp when I needed a mans card. Well it arrived and I love it! It doesn't need much doing to it for it to look great on a card. I love that Stampin Up have some single stamps for sale, you don't always need 6 stamps on a theme, cos you will always get one or two that you don't use.   I've also made these today orange cupcakes with orange frosting, yummy. I'm just waiting for my friend to come over so we can eat them.

Where did January go? I blinked and here we are on the 28th January, I have hardly done any crafting this month. Fortunately I've got a few crafty social events planned so this lack of crafty posting should end soon. I recently posted about a mammoth card making session, so today I'm posting one of my favourites. I'm not sure why, I think its the colours that draw me to this and its featuring a stamp from one of my favourite stamp companies, Molly Blooms .

I think this looks like its going to be a year of posting only weekly. Seriously I like to post more often but life is busy at the moment and blogging is suffering. Last weekend I went on a cupcake making course, well I thought that's what was going to happen, in fact we ended up decorating them only. I won't say anything about the day as my feedback ended up with the lady throwing her toys out of the pram and refunding us our money, even though she agreed with everything I'd said. Shame really because we learnt how to decorate beautifully, we just didn't make anything. Tomorrow I plan to practise and use my own recipe for the cupcakes. My friends niece is just getting into card making so she is coming for the afternoon to learn some techniques and I'm going to test my cupcakes out on her. I recently bought some embossing folders in one of the New Year sales, I can't remember where I got them from. I bought them with mens cards in mind and on my recent mammoth c...

I have re found my love for card making this week. I like to stamp out some images and just colour them in and cut them out. I will then make them up into card toppers and keep them in a box until I need a card. It makes it so much quicker when I suddenly realise I need to get something in the post. I recently posted that I needed to make some more cards for the boys at work, so a flurry of creativity ensued in my craft room. This resulted in apile of around 20 cards, plenty of posts will follow. I also think I need to add some of my cards to the challenges that go on and I look through regularly, I haven't entered anything for quite a while now. Over on the Allsorts challenge blog this week the challenge is about paper piecing. It so happens that this week I had made a couple of cards using this technique.I paper pieced the van on this card.   This is one of my favourite Molly Bloom stamps, its perfect for men's cards. I've teamed it up with two ranges of papers from Craft...

I just love the Molly Bloom stamps, I've had this card in mind for a while and just needed time to sit and work it out. One of my favourite things to do is stamp a few images and colour them in using my Promarkers. Yesterday I did this for the whole afternoon while I had a film on. This card I'm going to give to either my brother or nephew, it has given me quite a few ideas for other cards.

Here we are in 2012 and ready to go back to work tomorrow, where did Christmas go? The decorations are down, the cards have gone for recycling and  everything is ready to begin again. I have another 30 odd male birthday card ideas to come up with again. This month at work we have four male and one female birthday, it is also my brother and youngest nephews birthdays. Making a total of 6 male and one female card to make for this month. My last day of holiday will be spent getting January's cards ready.  Here is the first one I have come up with.

I was recently introduced to Molly Blooms stamps, and I just love them, the second one I bought was the camper van. I thought it would make great men's cards and so far it hasn't failed. I have mostly stamped and coloured it in, but then I saw a fabulous idea on Claire's blog and was completely inspired to make these cards great for using scraps of paper, this I know I will make time and again.

Today I'm revealing another project that is hopefully on its way to America as we speak. I made a few cards for the stand, although I wasn't as happy with them as I was with the other goodies I made. I did like this one though, I love the sprightly sprockets dies from Spellbinders . These were dies I already had but I knew they would work well with the Candi and the Clockworks embossing folder from Cuttlebug. Great for men's cards. Everything on the card is from Craftwork Cards. Visit the  blogs of the DT and Craftwork Cards to see more reveals over the next few weeks. Craftwork Cards Julie Hickey Lynda Morland Kath Stewart Emma Williams  Lisa Baker  Enfys Cashmore Judith Hannington Sue Taylor Debs Pincher Mary Bacon