Cupcake Christmas

I don't get on all that well with digis, sometimes when I colour them in with Promarkers I end up with all the ink going grey and sludgy, and yet other times the print stays put and the images colour beautifully. And I'm sure I don't do anything differently!

Anyway, this image, called Cupcake Candycanes, from Bugaboo, seems to have been on its best behaviour when I coloured it, despite using non-traditional colours for the candy canes to match the non-festive backing paper I chose (from my trusty DCWV Stack 9 pad - how did I ever cope before I had that?)

I computer generated the sentiment, tweaking the RGB balance of the colour until I got a pretty much perfect match for my layering card. The gems are from the fab bargain bag I bought at the show yesterday.

I'm sharing this with

Crafty Creations - something to eat/drink
Addicted to Stamps and More - Make your mark
Winter Wonderland - Must use a Sentiment
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Use a Sentiment
Clear it Out Challenge - Food Related Digis/plaid  

Glittering butterfly

Don't you HATE it when your photo comes out looking completely different from the original? Anything with any kind of glitter or sparkle seems to come out looking totally dull and flat, or a completely different colour, especially in the winter when there's seldom enough good natural light and you need to use flash.

So you're going to have to take my word for it, the glitter I used for this butterfly is exactly the same shade of purple as the card I've used for the inner layer! Anyway, the current Butterfly challenge is Glitter and/or Grape and this card ticks both boxes.

To make the card, I made an A6 green card blank and punched a pretty border along one edge, then stamped the sentiment using one of the gorgeous sentiment stamps I won in the Snippets Playground a couple of weeks ago.

I used a Spellbinders die to cut the butterfly from double sided adhesive sheet, peeled off the backing and stuck it to the card and then peeled off the front and scattered glitter over it, pressing it in well and then gently brushing off the excess. Finally I added an A6 sized panel pf purple card behind the front, sticking it just along the top edge to allow the front panel to hang loosely in front of it.

One little dinosaur

OK, I know dinosaurs weren't actually very little, but this one stamped with elements from a Clearly Besotted set, looks as if he is a really cute little guy.

Because I wanted to keep to one layer, I coloured him in with ordinary markers rather then Promarkers, and wasn't happy with the "stroke marks" so I took a slightly damp paintbrush and blended them out. Then I masked him off and stamped the hills behind him, the sunshine and the sentiment.

To give the dinosaur prominence I decided to colour the rest of the design in very lightly and sketchily with just a few strokes of pencil.

I am sharing this at

Fan-Tastic Tuesday - Add an animal
Shopping our Stash - One is a lonely number

A day at the Make It Show

Today I spent the day at the Make It Show, a two day event held at the FIVE event centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. It's not an event on the grand scale of the NEC shows, or the recent one (CHA?) that some of you lucky American ladies have recently blogged about, but it has the huge advantage, for me, of being only 10 minutes' drive from my home. And less travelling time means more shopping and inspiration time.

Oh and inspiration was there in shedloads this year! There seemed to me to be more exhibitors than in the last few years, many of whom had demonstrations, make-and-takes and static displays on their stands. The static displays give you a really great idea of what the latest fashions in crafting are, and this year the main look seemed to be delicate and dainty (two words that don't come naturally to me) with fine stamping, subtle watercolouring and very little in the way of bling or grunge. But of course those are the products they are trying to sell us this year - what we'll actually fall in love with and BUY is a different matter!

I planned my day to start with a workshop showing us how to decorate a box from the MDF Man then did my shopping, and finished off with a make-and-take at Imagination Crafts.

OK, here's my shopping - I've not bothered to photograph the envelopes and cello bags, you all know what they look like! And many apologies, I didn't make a note of the names of the stalls I shopped at.

First of all, a fab bargain bag which will be absolutely great for crafting with the grandchildren. There are literally dozens of packs of Crafty Bitz embellishments and gems, about 6 packs of card blanks and two 12 x 12 paper pads. All packed into a strong fabric tote bag for just £5! 

Next, some dies I've had my eye on for a while, I wanted to see them in real life before deciding exactly which I needed

I was also looking for a replacement bow maker, my old one having lost a couple of teeth. The new one came with a DVD and two rolls of ribbon. The pastel paper was also on my shopping list - my only unplanned purchases were the gorgeous set of stamps, featuring London, Sydney and Paris, and the sweet little bird and nest embellishments.

Now on to my makes at the show. The Make and Take involved rubbing two shades of Alchemy Wax - a product I'd never used before - through a stencil, and finishing the card with a butterfly die-cut covered with a sparkle paint.

Uh-oh, I see one of the pearls has moved - I'd better go and fix that!

The highlight of my day was the box covering workshop. I don't usually do much in the way of mixed media, so I learned a lot, got myself gloriously messy, stuck, stamped, inked, tore and twisted to my heart's content and finished up with an item I feel VERY proud of. I was fascinated to see that although we all started with the same pack of materials, every box came out looking totally different.

I was a bit alarmed that we weren't provided with rulers, knives or paper trimmers (Elf and Safety, you know) and had to do all the cutting, measuring and getting lines straight by eye, the mathematician in me was having a nervous breakdown about the lack of measuring and trimming, but I left her in the corner sobbing and got on with things without  her for once.

the finished box

Papers for the sides and base, distressed at the edges

inside the lid was decorated with stencils, grunge paste, distress inks and mica powders

frayed hessian topped with fabric stamped with distress inks formed the base layers of the lid

cord coiled into a swirl and a ribbon-tied key to finish.

 There's not an ounce of snark in this, but I can't resist sharing it with the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers, where the challenge is M is for Mixed Media, because I'm just so blooming chuffed with it. I went about as far as I could get out of my comfort zone - and I survived!

Hooray! Hooray! It's Rudolph Day!

It's the 25th of the month, and that means it's the day we're all invited to make a Christmas card and link it up to the Rudolph Day challenge at Scrappymo's. There's a prize to help with your festive crafting to be won every month, and this month it's a dainty holly leaf border die. But you'll need to hurry - each month's challenge only lasts until the end of the month, and even though it's a leap year, February is still the shortest month of the year!

Here is my card, which I am also linking up to the Christmas challenge at Fab'n'Funky

I've used a negative die cut snowflake backed with turquoise patterned paper, twine, lots of gems and a tag made by punching a circle, stamping a sentiment on it and then using my Crop-a-dile to add an eyelet at the top. It *should* leave me with a die cut snowflake to use on another card, except that particular set of snowflake dies are all real wossnames to get the die cut out of, and as usual it has ended up in shreds. I've tried everything I can think of - wiping the die with an anti static tumbledrier sheet, using waxed paper, running the die and die cut through an embossing sandwich, and nothing seems to work.

Where are the onions, then?

I've just realised how long it is since I posted anything about food - February's almost over and I've not joined in any foodie challenges or posted any recipes this month.

There IS a reason for it, and no, I'm not sick or off my food at all. It's just that part of my New Year's resolution to declutter the home is to declutter my mountains of books and old magazines. This has meant sorting through lots of them in a sort of snog-marry-avoid marathon - cook one more thing and then  decide whether to ditch it? Take it straight to the charity shop? Award it a permanent place on my bookshelf? So most of what I've been cooking has been from other people's recipes, rather than things I've created myself.

It's led to me rediscovering some great Old Favourites - currently I'm cheerfully revisiting dishes from Delia's Frugal Food  - and also to finding books I scarcely knew I had. In fact I picked up one book called "Lemongrass and Ginger" by Leemet Tan that I can only assume was a competition prize a couple of years ago, when I was feeling too ill to think about food so set aside to read at a later date, because I'm sure I had never opened it - and it is WONDERFUL. Thanks to that book and a recent trip to Hoo Hing's supermarket in Morden, we've had some of our tastiest ever Asian dishes recently.

Anyway, just to prove that I HAVE been cooking and eating, here are a few shots of things we've eaten since I last did any food posts, and a promise to Cheryl, Helen, Camilla, Dom, Caroline, Janice, Elizabeth, Karen and many more that I WILL be supporting your challenges again as soon as my declutter is complete!

Malaysian Tofu with Butternut sauce (Lemongrass & Ginger)

Kangaroo Meatballs on ciabatta with pickled red cabbage and chopped salad (Save with Jamie)  

Beef, beansprout and straw mushroom stir fry

Crispy pancakes with creamy chicken filling (BBC Good Food Feb 2016)

Birds of Feather at Cardz 4 Guyz

It's time for a new challenge at Cardz 4 Guyz, and this week Jan has chosen

Birds of a Feather

I've chosen to use an image and papers from the Joanna Sheen CD, The Country  Diary of an Edwardian Lady. I'm sure this kind of overlapping double card has a name, but I don't know what it is!

I made the base card by trimming 1cm off the long edge of a sheet of cream A4, then scoring one third of the way along and folding it over to create a 20cm square (approximately) card blank with a half-front. The front and back panels were covered with papers from the CD, layered with a toning blue CS.

Then I made a landscape format A6 card and added the topper, layered with blue, to the front of it, bearing in mind that the fold needed to be on the RIGHT so effectively I was making the card back to front. I used more of the paper for one panel of the inside, and for the other, in order to leave somewhere to write, I cut a piece from the insert sheet printed from the CD.

I mounted this mini-card onto more of the blue CS then stuck it centrally to the back panel of the card, so that the flaps overlapped.

As there were two identical toppers on the sheet, I cut the central area from the second and added it over the first with foam pads. I did consider decoupaging just the bird image, but those swallows' wing tips and tail feathers looked like too much of a challenge!

I was pleased to find I had some really well matching Candi for a finishing touch.