Wake up and Smell the Coffee

The current challenges at Addicted to CAS and Casology are both Coffee - I don't have much in the way of coffee related stash, being a tea drinker, but I DO have a fun set of stickers that Darnell sent me which I've used on this card.

For the cup of coffee, I've used one of the stencils that are meant to go on top of a cappuccino to shake the chocolate through. It's in a coffee bean design, and I've used Starlight paint to stencil it on to a scrap of very special card. I bought it at The Eden Project some years ago, and the swirly pattern on it is made with actual used coffee grounds (Fairtrade, I hope!) embedded into the fibres of the card. I thought this was my very last scrap and have been eking it out, but yesterday I was rummaging through my box of card for something else and found one more sheet. Having waxed lyrical about how special it is, I suppose I'll go and check ebay after posting this and find dozens of sellers listing it at about 5p a sheet - but whether or not that's the case, it's special to ME as it's a souvenir of a lovely few days away.

Autumn leaves again

So, we were meant to be on our way to the Cotswolds now but there's been a slight hiccup on the health front and we're still here for now, so I'm back with another make.

Last weekend I tried using peel off waste as a stencil, and this time I've been playing around with using actual peel offs as masks. After all I still have a massive collection of peel offs from my early crafting days, it's about time I put them to some use!

Here is one of my makes. I used the peel off Leaves sticker on plain white card, then sponged Starlight paints in gold, green and rust over the whole thing and removed the sticker. With hindsight, I should have peeled the sticker off while it was still wet - leaving it until the paint was dry meant rather a lot of tweezer action.

Then I took a sheet of Tando die-cut leaves and, while still in the sheet, sponged over them with the same combination of paints before popping them out. Finally I assembled them all into this card.

I am sharing this with Just Us Girls - Rust, Gold and Olive

Halloween or Thank you at Cardz 4 Guyz

This week we have a choice of challenges for you at Cardz 4 Guyz - Boo! for Halloween, or a Thank You card. So if you don't celebrate Halloween, you can still join in! The challenge starts at 09.00 (BST) today, but I'm posting this a little early as I'm probably going to be offline for a day or two.

Although I'm not a big fan of Halloween I still decided to go down the Halloween route, using this sweet vintage topper which is from a set I won in the sadly now-closed Suzy Bee's Blooming Challenge. I don't have a pumpkin die, so I made my pumpkin by cutting 5 ovals with the second smallest die of the Nestabilities small ovals set and layering them together, with a snippet of green for the stalk, and some die cut ivy (a Marianne die) to look like the vine the pumpkin grows on.

I am sharing this with
Glitter 'n' Sparkle - Anything Goes
Cut It Up - Pumpkins
Dies R Us - Fall/Halloween
The Male Room - Halloween

Christmas Cuties

The new challenge at CD Sundays is "Paws"  - I was just about to turn to my La Pashe CDs where I know there are lots and lots of cat and dog themed images, but then I decided to have a poke around among some of my less-frequently used CDs.

When I get a CD with a magazine, I tend to use it a few times while the magazine is new, and then stick it on the shelf to gather dust, so I spent an interesting few hours rediscovering images I'd forgotten all about. I finally settled on this image and paper from the Barkley collection on Crafters Inspiration CD #3.

The trouble with it is that the image is HUGE  - it almost fills the front of a large 20cm square card, and it's very hard to be really creative with something that stands alone like that. The design sheet includes some extra images to layer over three of the pictures, and really all that was left to do was add a background, a bit of matting and layering and a few die cut snowflakes.

That left over butterfly.....

OK, a few days ago I promised to share what I made with the left over cyan butterfly that I cut when I made this card - well, it's been looking at me ever since, so today I have finally relelnted and used it, along with the rest of the snippets from the sheet of cyan card and a snippet of checkered paper.

The butterfly and Thank you are Memory Box dies and the layers made with one of the Spellbinders Labels sets (I can never remember which is which)

I'm sharing this card with
Butterfly Challenge - Cyan or Checkered
Pixies Snippets Playground - week 251
Cuttlebugmania - Thank You
Cardz 4 Galz - at least one die

Christmas Cuties

The images and sentiments I've used on this card are some that were sent to me in an image swap - I think they are Lawn Fawn ones from a couple of Christmases ago. The die cut trees were part of the same swap.

I've put them together into a little scene with a snowy sky stamped with snow from the Creative Expressions snowdrop stamp set, a touch of colour on the images and a little Stickles "snow" behind the snowbunnies.

I am sharing this with
52 Christmas Card Throwdown - Christmas Critters
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Cute or atg

Roasting Chestnuts

Over the last few days, Mark has collected, prepared and frozen around 1kg of sweet chestnuts, ready to use over the Christmas period in stuffings and with Brussels Sprouts. I think he's adding some to a beef casserole tonight too.

I just thought I'd mention that, since the theme of this card is also chestnuts. Although the people are presumably roasting sweet chestnuts, the only chestnut stamps I have are for the leaf and nuts of the Horse Chestnut, or conker. I do hope they aren't planning to eat some of those, or they'll go to bed with tummy ache. And just digressing again, I heard on the news at lunchtime that our Horse Chestnut trees here in the UK are falling victim to a leaf miner beetle so fast that within 15 years there may be none left - our great grandchildren may never know the joy/painful knuckles of a game of conkers.

The topper is one that I won in the now-defunct Suzi Bee's Blooming Challenge, one of a set of reproduction Victorian Halloween cards. Just in case you can't read the text in the photo, it says "I wish we night always roast our Hallowe'en nuts together." Which might not have been quite so much of a double-entendre in Victorian times as it is now - it certainly leaves me chuckling! And for that reason, I am entering it into the Naughty category at Naughty or Nice - Spooky Sisters and Wild, Wild Women.