Blog Candy alert !!!!

Wow the best christmas blog candy I have seen can be found right here. How cool is this pile of candy then. !!!!!!

On top of that if you head over to Charmed Cards and Crafts and place an order with Karen, you get a 2nd chance to win in her latest competition. There are also daily prizes from December the 10th so rush over there now and get your purses ready.

Baby card

I have a new Great Niece who arrived safely last Wednesday. Haven't got to see her yet as we haven't been to Brighton since she was born but hoping for Dec 6th and a nice cuddle with her.

Anyway here is the card I made to celebrate her arrival. Papers are K & Co, alphabet BG Oh Baby and stamps are Magnolias - Tilda with baby Tingla and Graffiti Edwin.

£2 challenge

Craft Diner has a challenge on (by Jill from Jilly beans) to create something using just cardstock NO patterened paper *eek*. You can use stamps and ink, glitter but no brads, metal embellishments or ribbon.

Here is my attempt in the form of a 12" x 12" LO. I used 4 sheets of Papermania textured cardstock. From it I made a double sheeted background then with 2 further contrasting colours I die cut flowers, butterflies and letters on my Big Shot. I also embossed a piece using my Cuttlebug embossing plate - stylised flowers. I pieced the butterflies together to add colour to each of them and the smae with some of the flowers.

The cardstock works out to 22p a sheet so this LO cost just 88pence !!!! Photos are from our holiday in April at Disneyland Resort Paris. The black sky was just before the heavens opened on our last day.

December

The girls love Christmas. They decorated the tree all on their own last year. (Most of the decorations went on and all the tinsel !!)

November

These photos are again taken in Florida. They do celebrations so well !!

October

These photos were taken in Florida on the Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween evening we went to. (great Fun).

Paper is Crate Paper Katlin collection, stickers are 7 Gypsies.

September

These photos were taken at the Quenn Elizabeth Country Park near Portsmouth. It's a huge area with loads of walks and things to do.

Paper is Autumn Leaves and die cuts are BG Mellow.

August

The girls love to pick strawberries and when you have a pick your own farm on your doorstep almost it makes it much easier to do. Pickwells can even be walked to. How convenient is that !!

Paper and die cuts are K & Co Sweet Berry.

July

These photos are again at Mottisfont Abbey.

Papers are Autumn Leaves.

June

These photos were taken at Mottisfont Abbey in Romsey. Mottisfont Abbey is one of the National Trust's places.

Paper is K & Co.

May

These bluebells grow in the woods attached to one of the local country parks, Westwood in Netley (that used to be a tip some years ago.) They make a lovely walk at this time of year.

April

This is another Paris photo and again was taken in the garden at Notre Dame. For early April this tree was loaded with cherry blossom.

March

This is one of the photos taken in Paris. These tiny irises were growing in the garden at Notre Dame.

Paper is Autumn Leaves, prima flowers and iris buttons.

February

Strictly speaking the snow in these pictures was the snow that we had in April this year but I figures that snow was more Feb (or Jan but that one had been done) so went with that. The girls had the time of their life playing in it until it went slushy and then disappeared.

Calendar time - January

I have been working on a calendar for my Mum for Christmas. It uses photos from the local area and of the girls mainly (there are a couple of Paris photos too).

Here is January. The photo is of the chapel in Royal Victoria Country Park in Netley. It's all that is left of what was once a huge military hospital built in 1856-1863 http://www3.hants.gov.uk/hampshire-countryside/rvcp/history-rvcp.htm

BTW - I decided to put these on as seperate posts to save all the scrolling down I would need to do to get them all on in one post lol.

At last

I have finally found time to add some of the things I have been doing recently. I have lots more but am so busy till with Christmas coming up faster than I care to think about really that I never seem to get her. These 2 cards were out of a play yesterday after finishing the first of my calendars I am making as Christmas pressies.

Darn it the damned things won't load for me so I'll be back when they will. Grrr!

Success it has now decided to work for me. Yay!!!

Well this card is made using an acetate base. I have used white card as the base for my stamped image toppers and chalked it with 2 tones of orange blending chalk. The stamped images are all Magnolia stamps built to create a scene. FIrst time for me using acetate and although I didn't find it trouble free I will be having another go at some point.

This card has lots of layers using papers and vellums in the same design as the acetate on the card above. Only thing I'd change is that I used gold mirri card (as originally it was going on the acetate card). I'd switch that to silver if I could to keep the theme going better.

Challenge LOs

This was LO 2.

Papers are We R Memory Keepers from the precious metals range and also Heidi Grace (which I cut *eek*), Punchboard - Heidi Grace, Star brads and mini Prima flowers linked together with my Jelly Roll Glaze pen. Alphas are mixed Thickers and some K & Co from Alphas to go ? box.

This was LO 1. It's a photo I have scrapped before but I like this photo and went with it again.

Papers, die cuts are K & Co Neopolitan Citrus from a scrap pad to go. Daisy D's stickers for the title and some of the words, Prima flowers

Wot No Hands

I've been a bad blogger again. Been busy though lol.

Here is my DD1 on her first day at senior school. No tie because they hadn't been given them at that point. School changed all their ties as they have introduced Communitites this year (houses to most of us) and as such presented every child in school with a free tie.

Papers, stickers and shapes are BG from the Two Scoops range. Lush !! Alphabet stickers are a mix of Chatterbox and Thickers from American Crafts.

The title just came as an obvious one due to her sleeves being too long on her blazer. Well she'll soon grow. !! This was a sketch at the CD for Sept.

Fully Loaded

Here is my entry for a fully loaded challenge on CD. The oh so talented Anita creates fab fully loaded LOs and in the absence of any forum challenges set us a challenge herself to create a fully loaded LO.

This was my 3rd go and although it isn't as fully loaded as the other 2 it was my favourite so I entered this one.

Papers, 3D stick outs, stickers and tags are Chatterbox, Flowers Prima with various brads, s/a pearls and BG buttons. Pearls help frame the photos.

Challenge time

This has to be one of my favourite recent pieces. Shell and I set up some new challenges for the girls on the 3Cs forum. We each in turn have to find a sketch then make a card, an atc and a LO using that sketch. We can make various stipulations for each item as we chose.

Well the first one to set the challenge was Carmen. This is my LO from the sketch. I stuck pretty close to the sketch and really like what i created. (Always a bonus lol)

Paper is K & Co - Mira collection, We had to hand make flowers, so I cut mine out of more Mira paper and added some glitter stickers from the same collection. The embossed word stickers are .... yep, you guessed it, Mira too. Buttons are BG, ric rac from Papermania and alpha stickers are Chatterbox.

Here is my take on the sketch for the card This one had to have a stamped image on in place of the photo.

The ATC had to have at least one of the Dottie or George downloads - (available to buy from Charmed Cards and Crafts - and reated by the very talented Lou Brigden.)

If you haven't already done so, check out her blog she is amazingly talented.