Festive spray

I used to hate making one layer cards - now they are often my cards of choice. They are very unforgiving though - there's nowhere to hide a mistake and this is my second attempt at this card.

All the stamps came from a recent issue of Creative Stamping. First I stamped the poinsettia, then I masked it and used the foliage stamps to stamp the sprays around it, following the positioning of the inner petals. This is where my first attempt went wrong - although the flower has 5-way symmetry, I stamped 4 lots of foliage, one pointing to each corner. With the mask in place it looked fine but once I removed  the mask, the 5 and 4 jarred horribly, making it look very unbalanced. Heigh-ho, I can chop those bits up and use then on  other projects.

Once the stamping was complete, I used a pencil  to add a few strokes of red to the centre of each petal (yes, I know that technically they are bracts, not petals,  but this is a craft blog not a gardening one!) and finished the centre with a few dots of gold Liquid Pearls.

I am sharing this with

Fab'n'Funky - Christmas 

Inkspirational - mask 


Less is More - One layer, Winter Flora 

Poppies for rememberance

I live quite close to the military town of  Aldershot, so Remembrance Day is quite a big thing here, and of course a lot of forces veterans have settled in the area. So poppy themed sympathy cards  are very popular, especially as those who served in the World Wars get older.

This card has the poppy theme and also a background paper of postcards from other countries, to reflect the fact that the serviceman may have served almost anywhere in the world.

The poppy stamp is an umounted stamp that I got in a grab bag when I first started stamping, about 25 years ago. I coloured them in with Promarkers using very delicate strokes because of the fine detail.

The paper, too, is very old. It's a K&Company one - I think it was called Life's Journey - and is probably around 20 years old.  The sentiment is a clear sticker.

I am sharing this with

Make It Monday - Poppies 

Alphabet Challenge - P is for Pumpkins or Poppies 

Passion for Promarkers - Something Old 

Double the Joy!

I've got a bit of a twofer for you today - two very different cards made with the same die.

The first is very CAS. I sponged blending ink onto the base card through a circle stencil then topped it with a die cut medallion. I then die cut the word JOY and added it to a strip of blue card and mounted the whole thing over the background.

I am sharing this with CAS on Friday - Big Sentiment or word 

The second card is still bold but not at all CAS!

I used heavyweight watercolour paper to create a smooshed background, smooshing first with Twisted Citron Distress Oxide, letting it dry and then smooshing with Festive Berries.  Then I used a clear sparkle embossing gel from Nuvo to stencil the mandala quadrant on the top right of the card. I ran a black inkpad around the edge and then added the die cut sentiment with an extra but of bling to pick out the centre of the snowflake.

I am sharing this with

52 Christmas Card Throwdown - Smooshing 


Allsorts - Make your own background, no DPs 

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Anything Goes/Make your own background

Cards 4 Galz - Something beginning with S (Sparkle, Stencil, Smooshing)

RECIPE: Cheese and Guinness Scones

I know, I know, it's absolutely AGES since I posted a recipe. It's not that I'm cooking any less, far from it, but that most of it is from other people's recipes or ones of mine that I've already shared.

Anyway, over the weekend I've been doing some pre-Christmas cooking - the cake, the mincemeat and the pudding.  Like many people, I like to put some Guinness in my Christmas pudding. But it only uses about a quarter of a bottle, and neither of us likes drinking Guinness. I usually use up the leftovers in a beef casserole, but I fancied trying something different with it this time. A friend on social media pointed me to this recipe  which looked great but is written very much for an American audience, so I have "translated" it for British readers and adapted it slightly to suit my tastes and what was available in my kitchen.

Ingredients:

280g plain flour
1 level tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon salt
85g cold butter, diced
100g finely grated Cheddar cheese
left over Guinness - about 250ml (tip: it is easier to pour and measure if it is slightly flat, so leftover Guinness is a lot easier to handle than freshly opened stuff)

Pre-heat the oven to 220 C (200 fan), gas mark 7, 425 F

Line a baking sheet with non-stick paper

Sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarb soda and salt. Stir in the cheese then rub in the butter. Gradually blend in enough Guinness to make a very soft dough, just firm enough to handle.

Pat out on a floured surface to about 1.5cm thick and use a plain scone cutter to cut into circles.  I found it made 10 scones.

Place on the baking sheet and bake for 14 minutes until risen and lightly browned. Eat warm or cold, halved and spread with butter.

We found them absolutely delicious. They didn't taste "Guinnessy" at all - more Marmitey than anything, and although they are already packed with cheese they go beautifully with MORE cheese! The Guinness in them makes them incredibly light.

Scones tend to go stale very quickly so make sure you freeze any that you don't eat within 24 hours, or eat stale ones toasted. I rather fancy a toasted one with black cherry jam, or perhaps topped with cream cheese and some sweet chilli jam.

Anything Goes at CD Sunday Plus

It's time for another of our Anything Goes Challenges - where you can use a CD, a download or an USB - at CD Sunday Plus but this time the team have a little extra twist: earlier this year we were all very kindly sent some CDs to use by the lovely people at Debbi Moore Designs  and today we have all  made our inspiration cards using these CDs.

I've used papers and a topper from the beautiful CD "Sunflower Dreams".

The current challenge is, as usual, Anything Goes, but it would be really lovely if some of you were to use a Debbi Moore product in your work. The website has lots of CDs, USBs and Downloads to choose from and some of the downloads are free - what a great way to try the products if you are new to them!

One last cat post - for now

I had such crafting plans for today  - until I realised how much else I had lined up to do. And since there are only 24 hours in a day (well, technically if you live in the UK, tomorrow is 25 hours long - don't forget to put your clocks back!) I'm sharing these cards I'd already made but not shared instead. I gave the grandchildren a kit of papers and die cut decoupage to play with, and these are the cards I made to inspire them with ways to use the goodies. 

So this is my final entry to this year's Cat Lovers Hop at Her Peaceful Garden - it's been a lot of fun! I'm sorry I've not had time to comment on every entry but I've loved scrolling through the gallery   and visiting as many of you as possible. And the hop may be over but thanks to all the inspiration I'll be back with more cat cards soon. 

Christmas Cat for Rudolph Day

It's day 5 of the Cat Lovers Hop and it's also Rudolph Day (I hate to rub it in but that means it's only two months to Christmas) so I decided that today's cat card just HAD to be a Christmas one.

I seem to have two recurring designs for cat Christmas cards and I wanted to get out of that rut, and remembered that tucked away somewhere I had a booklet of  Christmassy cat decoupage  papers and designs. Everything is pre-designed, so it's definitely craft rather than art - but that's perfect for a busy day when the imagination seems to have gone AWOL.

I chose this design partly because it reminds me of my beautiful late cat, Charlie, and partly because the decoupage is very easy and it's a very long time since I did any really detailed decoupage. I might do one of the more complex ones before I put the booklet away again, just to remind myself how satisfying it can be.

I'm making another trip to Her Peaceful Garden to play in the Cat Lovers Hop again


And also sharing with

Rudolph Days at Scrappymo's

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - use a flower or anything goes

Watercooler Wednesdays - All about Occasions 


Jingle Belles - Rudolph and friends