My Zombie valentine

I've said before, I don't have a romantic bone in my body. Yes, I do make some romantic themed cards - because I give the cards I make to charities to sell, and lots of people want to buy romantic ones, but I do tend to struggle when it comes to Valentine's Day.

So when I saw that this month's Naughty or Nice challenge is Love is in the Air  I decided to take the Naughty route, but I didn't want to make it an X-rated card. Eventually I came up with the idea that a zombie might love you for your brains rather than your body, and computer generated a suitable sentiment. But where was I going to find a Valentine's Day Zombie image? A bit of Googling took me to Free Dearie Dolls, a blog that publishes free digis on an almost daily basis (I've followed them and am sure I'll be a regular visitor now!) and this image - perfect for my plan!

I couldn't really use the optional colour palette - a pink zombie just wouldn't look right - although I have incorporated plenty pink and red in honour of Valentine's Day. Before tearing out the sentiment, I sponged it with some slime green ink and stamped a speckle background stamp in red over it to look like blood spatters. I've added the same blood splatters to the slime green background paper.

NOT Robins

I've been playing with the lovely Woodware robins stamp set that I won in the Playground this time last year. I thought at the time that it really didn't need to be used just for robins, but I've never quite got round to using it any other way.

However last week I spotted this  pin on Pinterest where the stamps were used for paper piecing, and I thought this would be a great way to use snippets. So here is my CASE of the idea:

I drew the "ground" using the edge of a deckle edged tearing ruler and added a sentiment stamped with a Studio G mini set. Then I stamped a line of "robins" stamping each again onto a snippet of patterned paper and pieced each one onto its image.

I am sharing this with
Pixie's Snippets Playground (of course!)
Allsorts Challenge - Paper Piecing
Little Red Wagon - How Tweet it is
Fab'n'Funky - Birds   

Sisterhood of the Snarky Stampers challenge 77 - O for Outrageous

Edna is looking pretty outrageous today

Apparently that thing on her forehead is a "bagel forehead",  fashionable in Japan and Canada, a temporary feature created by saline injections. If you are  - or were - eating this while munching on a bagel, just think how many calories I've just saved you now you can't eat it!

Which is a very roundabout way of telling you that the new challenge at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers is O is for Outrageous.

I've chosen a rather outrageous sentiment from one of my beloved Dylusions sheets, but contrasted it with a shabby chic style which I think highlights the snarky sentiment,  because it exaggerates the outrageousness. And it's just the kind of thing that two elegant society ladies of the 1930s, who secretly detested each other, may well have said, even if it was only in their imaginations. 

The image is a large stamp I won from a magazine, I've had it for a few years and it doesn't say the brand name. For a sepia tint effect, I stamped it with Memento ink  then coloured it by blobbing some Walnut Stain distress ink on an acrylic block and then using a water brush and varying amounts of water to dilute it to several different depths of colour and paint the stamped image. The papers are from a Victoria and Albert Museum pad.

Now how about hopping over to see what the other Sisters have made, and link up your own acts of outrage - you could be our next Queen or Princess of Snark! And if it's anything like our last challenge, you have a great chance of that crown as we only had one entry. Please join  in - we don't bite! (Well, at least, we only bite if you ask us to....)

I am sharing this with
Addicted to Stamps and More - Make Your Mark
Classic design team Open Challenge - February
Shopping Our Stash - Days of Yore   

Lots of owls

When I saw a taster for the latest edition of Making Cards magazine, I absolutely fell in love with the papers enclosed with the magazine - there are two sets, along with a sheet of clear sentiment stamps, but the set that had me racing to the newsagent to grab a copy were the owl themed papers with a Native American feel to them.

I had to set to immediately  - I roughly followed the layouts and design suggestions in the magazine, because  they work so perfectly with the images and papers.

The stamped sentiment uses one of the very useful stamps from the sheet in the magazine. The stamps alone make it a great value mag - these wonderful papers really delighted me too and were a joy to use.

RECIPE: Mushroom and Cheddar turnover

If  you look back over my Kitchen Clearout recipes, you might notice that half a pack of puff pastry crops up quite often. There's a very good reason for that. There are only two of us, but one pack of ready rolled pastry is far too much for two. So every time I cook with it, there's half of it, usually in the form of squished together trimmings, left in the fridge. And I end up rummaging through the fridge to see what might turn it into a meal.

This time I really nailed it. In fact we've already decided that in future we'd be happy to buy the ingredients to make this again, rather than making it from leftovers. My fridge dive yielded

Half a pack of puff pastry, squished trimmings as mentioned.
Half a small pack of chestnut mushrooms
Half a beaten egg
A lump (I weighed it, it was 60g) of Cheddar cheese

To this all I added was a very small knob of butter.

Wipe and slice the mushrooms. Melt the butter in a frying pan and fry the mushrooms briskly until cooked. Set aside to cool.
Roll out the pastry into a circle, to a depth of about 5mm. Grate the cheese.
Spread the mushrooms over one side of the circle, leaving about a 2 cm border. Pile the cheese on top then brush the edge with beaten egg and fold over to create a giant pasty shape and crimp the edges. Cut slits in the top, brush with beaten egg and place on a baking tray lined with non stick baking paper. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 220C (200 fan) 425 F gas Mark 7 and bake the turnover for around 25 minutes until risen and golden. Serve immediately. I baked some halved tomatoes alongside it to make a tasty accompaniment.

I am sharing this with

Kitchen Clearout at Madhouse Family Reviews


and
Recipe of the Week at The Flexitarian
 

Cameleopard

Did you know that cameleopard or camelopard was the ancient name for a giraffe? Well, you do now!

For this card I've used a Katzelcraft giraffe stamp, stamped and then cut with a Gummiapan stitched ovals die. The animal print papers are from a Zeeman pad and the hessian and yarn scraps from my bits bag. The whole card only took about 10 minutes to put together - and a fair bit of that time was untangling the yarn from the mess at the bottom of the bits bag, where it has been quietly tangling itself up with everything else for several years!

I am sharing this with

Use Your Stuff - Animals
Country View Challenges - 30 minutes or under
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - February
A bit more time to craft - Anything Goes
Crafty Creations - Anything Goes
Love to Craft - Anything Goes

A Krafty Christmas at Sparkles Christmas

It's my urn to choose the monthly challenge at Sparkles Christmas and this month I've chosen A Krafty Christmas so we would like to see some kraft somewhere on your card.

For my card I've used a Stampin Up punch  to cut three gingerbread men from kraft card. The punch comes with matching stamps, but I wanted a more "homespun" look so instead of stamping the little fellows, I used a white gel pen to add their features and give them a faux stitched outline. I added faux stitching to the background and the mat for the sentiment, too. The candy canes for the background and the sentiment are both old magazine freebie stamps.