Make one, get one free

I've seen lots of card recently that have looked like a sort of vertical easel card, I don't know the proper name of them but the front panel stands up and tucks under an embellishment on the back one, like this:

The panel untucks, of course, and folds flat for posting. I thought one like this would look good with a circular front panel, so I mounted a rose topper from an old Hunkydory kit onto a lace doyley - then realised, that even when backed with a circle of card, the doyley wouldn't have enough strength to hold the card up, so I mounted the whole thing onto a scalloped square from the same kit - but then it was so big that it obscured the rest of the card, so that was no use either!

I had prepared the base card by cutting a 6" x 12" strip of fawn card, scoring at 3" and 6" and folding. I cut cream card to fir the back panel, embossed it with a script embossing folder then lightly inked with Walnut Stain distress ink, wrapped it with ribbon and stuck it to the back panel of the card. I decorated the front panel with ribbon, lace and pearls.

So I had to rethink the topper. There were some pretty vintage childhood designed papers with a copy of Making Cards earlier this year, so I die-cut one of them and die cut a piece of the fawn card to mount it on. Then I stuck that onto a lace-printed vellum panel and mounted the whole thing onto tan card, which had the strength to hold the card when standing up. The rose and butterflies are from the Hunkydory kit I had started out intending to use.

But them I had my rose-and-doyley topper left. It is so big it filled the whole of the front of a 6" square card,  so with a bit of inking, a few flowers and some pearls, I ended up with a second card made from the bits I'd planned to use on just one card.

I'm joining in with Make my Monday, where the theme is Vintage.

Little Robin Redbreast

These cute little robins sitting on a branch are stamped with a free cover gift stamp from a magazine a couple of Christmases ago. They look super cute although I did wonder, when do you ever see three robins at once? They tend to be pretty solitary birds with a carefully guarded territory. When you see two together it generally means they are thinking about making baby robins, and as far as I know, the bird world doesn't go in for threesomes. Maybe I'm thinking too literally though -after all, when do you ever see robins wearing scarves and hats?

Sticking card onto glitter card can be a nightmare, so I've used Pinflair glue which sticks just about anything to anything. Some people suggest sanding the glitter down to make a surface that sticks, but this lovely glitter card is so well made that it won't yield to sandpaper!

I'm joining in with:
Winter Wonderland - Pick and Mix (I've used ribbon, snowflakes and gems)
Completely Christmas - Add a Robin
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Sparkle
White Lily Green - Homemade Thursday

Sausage and Cider casserole

A food post! I'm sorry there have been so few over recent months, but my current health problems make it hard to feel enthusiastic about food, especially as I'm currently supposed to be following a very low fibre diet, so many of my favourite foods are off the menu.

However with the weather having suddenly turned much colder, we needed some comfort food - and my usual favourite winter warmer of sausages with lentils and parsnips was going to be too fibre rich, so I came up with this comfort-food alternative.

It isn't an expensive dish to make, but you could push the price down even further by using economy sausages and mushrooms, bacon scraps and the cheapest cider you can find. Not that bargain basement white stuff though - I once tried cooking with a can of that (I'd bought it in order to enter a competition and couldn't face drinking it) and it had no cider flavour, just an unpleasant metallic bitterness. On the other hand, if you used your butcher's premium free range sausages, wild mushrooms, pancetta and an artisan cider, this dish would be great for entertaining.

To serve 4

Pork sausages, 2-3 per person depending on your appetites.
1 large onion, quartered then thinly sliced
150g small flat mushrooms, wiped and quartered
6 rashers thin cut streaky bacon, cut into small strips or lardons
1 tbs sunflower or rapeseed oil
20g butter
440ml can dry cider
1 rounded tbs plain flour
1 tbs tomato purée
1 tbs Worcestershire sauce
1 bayleaf
(optional) a beef stock cube

Heat the oven to 150 C (130 Fan). 300 F, gas nark 2. Heat the oil in a flameproof casserole and briskly fry the sausages until browned, then remove them from the pan and keep warm.
Add the butter to the remaining oil in the pan, then add the onions and bacon and fry for a few minutes until softened. Stir in the mushrooms and fry for about 5 minutes more, then reduce the heat to very low and blend in the flour. Gradually pour in the cider, stirring constantly, increase the heat and stir until boiling. Add the remaining ingredients, seasoning well if  you choose not to add the stock cube, and then cook in the oven for 1-1½ hours (it's very forgiving about time), stirring occasionally.

Lovely served with mashed potato - I added some marrow in cheese sauce, too.

Because this is so cheap to make, I'm joining in with Credit Crunch Munch which this month is being hosted at My Little Italian Kitchen  and as always is looked after by Fuss Free Flavours and Fab Food 4 All.

I'm dreaming of a Teal and Orange Christmas

It doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it? But I think this delicate filigree Christmas tree die works best when there is a strong contrast between the die cut and the background, so when for tis week's "Non-traditional Christmas Colour" challenge at Less is More I had a good rummage through my bits box  and found these scraps of very powerfully contrasting teal and orange card, just enough to cut the tree and layer it with. All the card really needed - indeed, all it could possibly stand,  in the light of such vivid colours, was a simple greeting stamped in a matching teal ink.

I'm joining in with

Less is More - non-traditional Christmas Colours
Christmas Cards All Year Round - No Patterned Paper
Christmas Card Challenges - No Embellishments
Pixies Snippets Playground - week 149
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra - November  

Coffee, peach and cream

No, not a lazy summer breakfast (I wish it was!) but the latest challenge at CD Sundays.  I usually have to stop and think and have a search through my CDs when a new challenge is announced, but this time I knew exactly what I was going to use - some of the lovely papers from an old Funky Hand CD, "Now that's Funky". There are several design sets on the CD that would have fitted the brief, but the one I thought included the most coffee-like brown contained a lot of white too, so I printed it out onto cream card to get the effect I wanted.

The doyley and flower are actually a much lighter shade of brown than they look in the photo - I'm afraid it's reached that time of year when most photos need to be taken using electric light and flash, and it ruins some of the colours!

The sentiment was part of an Indigo Blu stamp sheet that was a very generous cover mounted freebie on a recent magazine

Toys for the Boys at Cardz 4 Guys

This week our challenge at Cards 4 Guys is "Toys for the Boys" and we want to see cards for boys young and old - it could show something like train sets or computer games for a young boy or teenager, or cars or computers (or indeed train sets or computer games) for adults!

My DT card is for an adult, using a computer themed decoupage from the forthcoming CD "The Best of La Pashe 2014 " and also available as an individual download in the "Precious Moments" range at La Pashe.

For the background, I've used papers from a lovely surprise bundle of goodies I won last week from the Quick Cards Made Easy Facebook page.

Lots of the papers and card are perfect for man-cards!

I chose the black chevron patterned paper and the all over number patterned paper to give a computer screen effect. If you look very closely, you will spot something slightly odd about the number paper - a few of the columns of numbers towards the left are printed back to front! I have no idea whether this is by accident or design, and it took me ages to work out why the paper didn't look quite right!

I know computer monitors seldom have knobs on the front these days, but I used a bit of artistic license because I thought the shiny Candi would look smart on the card. So let's just pretend it's a twenty year old computer!

I've finished the inside with some of the leftover papers and a spare image from the decoupage sheet.

 

 

I am joining in with
Allsorts Challenge  - week 283, Masculine (my first visit to this challenge)
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - November

My Blog Candy - the winners

Thank you to the 56 of you who joined in and entered for my Foil Play candy. Here are the winners - I will be emailing you to get your postal addresses, then Gill from Foil Play will send your prizes.

Now, I couldn't work out how people manage to embed the Random.org results window into their blog, but I've used Random.org to draw the winners and it has come up with entry numbers

 9 - Vohn
18 - Andrea Hall
26 - Mummy of Two
56 - Sam Grabham
3 - Tracey Peach

Well done winners, look out for an email from me!