Wednesday 24 December 2014

Penguin Party!

This is my final blog post of the year as I am having a little break over Christmas, and today I have a card and a couple of Christmas cushions to show you. 
I love penguins and have a big collection of penguin digi-stamps, but I don't colour them up very often as I always struggle with black/grey, it's either too dark or not dark enough, but I soooo wanted to use this adorable image that I decided to bite the bullet and go for it.

Please excuse the pics, as it is very dark and dismal and I've had to use my daylight lamp.

Image - Penguin Party - Sugar Nellie at Funky Kits
Papers - Warm Hearts - Just So Scrappy
Sentiment - Christmas Scriptalicious sentiments - Pink Petticoat
Tonic geared border punch - Gothic border
Lawn Cuts - Stitched snowflakes
Ribbon, gems and diamanté buckle - Meiflower

I am entering my card into the following challenges
The Sugar Bowl Challenge - anything goes with a Sugar Nellie image
Card Mania -  Christmas

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Here are a couple of cushions I made, once again using patterns and instructions from the
As I've said previously, it's been a long time since I used a sewing machine, the angel and snowman are stitched on by hand and the cushion covers are simple envelope backs, so I only had to use the machine to stitch around the edges.


I am entering the cushions in this challenge
All Crafts Challenge - Anything goes, but NO Cards

I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to everyone who has left a comment throughout the year, they really make my day and encourage me to keep on doing what I do, so thank you very much.

Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year to you all,
hugs,
Colette xx

Monday 22 December 2014

Merry Christmas Tree

Not long to go now to the big day, are you ready for it? I still have a few pressies to wrap, my meat hamper will be ready to pick up from the butcher tomorrow and on Christmas Eve hubby and I head off to the local farm shop for our Christmas veg, and then that's it, I'm done, unless something unexpected crops up, which is usually what happens LOL!

Here's a quick card I made using a Bugaboo Christmas tree digi-stamp.


Digi-stamp - Merry Christmas Tree - Bugaboo
Papers - Santa's Helper - Just So Scrappy
String of lights, and holly bauble- Little B's cutting dies Holiday 
Gingham Ribbon and metallic cord - Meiflower


I am entering my card into these challenges
Bugaboo Christmas Bingo - (Bugaboo image, Glitter - on bauble, Players choice(ribbon))
Holly Jolly Christmas - Anything goes
Penny's Challenges - Anything goes

Thanks for dropping in,
hugs,
Colette xx

Saturday 20 December 2014

Shaped Christmas Cards

Have you managed to get all your Christmas cards ready in time? if you still need a few more and don't have a lot of time, then look no further than the new Christmas shaped cards Mega Bundle in the Paper Creator store.
The bundle contains 10 shaped cards, with decoupage layers, matching inserts and envelopes and is on offer at the moment for only £5.
I managed to put together the three below in less than an hour (without envelopes). You can dress them up as much as you like or leave them as they come.

Lace - Stash
Ready made bow and red pearls - Meiflower

Lawn Fawn - Stitched Snowflakes
Flower soft on ear muffs
Charm and dazzler - Stash


Sentiment added to label before printing
Large Jingle Bells and Gold lurex ribbon - Meiflower

Thanks for popping in,
hugs,
Colette xx



Friday 19 December 2014

A gift for Nan

I'm off to see Aladdin at the Liverpool Empire tomorrow with Meg and Will, we go to the panto every year, (it's a bit of a Christmas tradition), and they are always fabulous. One of the things I love about the Empire panto is that they always have local celebrities playing the main parts so I'm looking forward to seeing Ray Quinn as Aladdin and Claire Sweeney as the genie.

Once again today I have something that is not a card to show you - a couple of weeks ago my daughter Stacy asked me if I could do "one of those pictures with all the words mixed up"(her words exactly), as she wanted me to make one for my mum (her Nan) for Christmas, containing all the names of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren along with a few other words, including Sunday dinner, as Stacy and the boys, go to my mum's every Sunday for lunch.
I made the Word Cloud in a heart shape and then printed it out, added an outline of glitter around the word Nanny and put it into a box frame from Ikea, (Eric had re-sized the mount board first), then I finished it off with some lace, die-cut rolled roses, leaf flourishes and a pretty heart embellishment I found in my stash.


Frame - Ribba - Ikea
Rolled Roses - Marianne creatables
Petite Vinery die - Sue Wilson
Lace and wire hearts embellishment - Stash


Stacy was really pleased with it so she's asked me to make a couple more, in pink, for her neices.

Thanks for stopping by,
hugs,
Colette xx

Thursday 18 December 2014

Snowflakes and poinsettia cards

Just a quick note to let you know that Bad Kitty was my randomly selected commenter from the Paper Shelter blog hop, and you can find all the details you need to claim your digi image HERE

I have two cards to show you today which I made in early September as samples for Meiflower.

For the first card I die cut lots of snowflakes from glitter card and dotted them randomly over the bottom two thirds of the card front, trimming off the overlap. I added blue gingham ribbon, tying two bows and overlapping one over the other, then added a die-cut circle of glitter card and a diamanté snowflake embellishment. I also die-cut the sentiment from glitter card.


Snowflake die - Ice Crystal 3 - JoyCraft 6002/2020
Wording - Whimsy Shapeology Collection - Holiday sentimentables
Small scalloped circle - Tonic layering dies scalloped circles
Gingham ribbon and diamanté snowflake - Meiflower

This is a very simple card, just an embossed background, (the card is a beautiful colour in real life, photo doesn't do it justice), wrapped with organza ribbon and then a die cut white poinsettia, all finished off with lots of pearls

Silver Stardream card - Craft Creations
Tied Together A4 embossing folder - Couture Creations
Die-namics Poinsettia die
Organza ribbon and pearls - Meiflower

Thanks for popping in,
hugs,
Colette xx

Wednesday 17 December 2014

Anything Goes at The Paper Shelter

It's the final challenge of the year over at the Paper Shelter today, as we are going on our Christmas Break, and as it's the last challenge of the year both design teams are joining in, so double the inspiration over on the challenge blog.
The challenge will run for three weeks and we are leaving you with the easy peasy challenge theme of
There are great prizes up for grabs!
If you are our randomly selected winner and play with a TPS image then you have a chance of winning a $30 gift certificate, any other image and you could win three digis of your choice.

Here's my card

Image - The Most Adorable Snowmen - The Paper Shelter
Embossalicious Let It Snow A4 embossing folder - Crafters Companion
Striped Ribbon - The Ribbon Girl
Flower soft - Polar White
Snowflake cut on my silhouette
Charm and large dazzler from my friend Donna


Pop over to the challenge blog and check out the fabulous inspiration from both teams, (there is lots of lusciousness to look at) and don't forget you have three weeks to enter our anything goes challenge.


We'll be back in the New Year with lots more fab challenges.

Thanks for dropping by,
hugs,
Colette xx

Monday 15 December 2014

and now for something completely different!

A few months ago I bought the Cards and Crafts for Christmas magazine, and after flicking through the pages decided I would like to have a go at making a stag's head decoration and a couple of cushions. I decided to do the stag's head first.
It's been a long time since I did any sewing and I don't even own a machine any more, but luckily my daughters boyfriends mum had one she doesn't use, so let me borrow it, and even more luckily, most of the stag's head is hand stitched, I only needed the machine to do the antlers.




I was really pleased with the way it turned out, and after laughing her head off when I told her what I was making, my daughter now wants me to make one for her!

I am entering this into the following challenge

All Crafts Challenge --- Anything Goes, but no cards

Thanks for popping in and taking a look
hugs,
Colette xx

Thursday 11 December 2014

Let It Snow!

For some reason on Tuesday a little box started to appear at the bottom of my pop-up comments window which said - please "prove you are not a robot" and asked you to type a number into a box - this was nothing to do with me! - I have always had comment moderation turned off, - I went in to my set-up and checked and it was definitely turned off. I went around visiting friends blogs and noticed that those that had a pop-up window for comments (like me) had the message and those who had their comment box as part of their page didn't, so I went into my set-up, changed my comments to embedded and voila! problem solved. I much prefer the pop-up window, so I hope blogger gets it sorted so that I can go back to using it.

Hubby is recovering nicely from his eye op, when he removed his eye patch 24 hours after surgery he could already see sooo much better, the big problem is that he can't drive or go to work for a week even though he feels and looks perfectly well, so I am stuck with him here, and by Monday lunch time he was already getting on my nerves. His outpatient appointment is Saturday and we both have everything crossed that he can return to work on Monday LOL!

My card for today uses a gorgeous image from Sassy Studio Designs called Let It Go Sassy.

I wanted to add lots of glitter and bling to the card, so I covered a 4 cm wide strip of card with strips of double sided tape all butted up against each other, added pearls, gems and dazzlers and then covered the whole thing with glitter, pressing the glitter into the sticky tape.
I also punched out some snowflakes from the white background circle before I layered it onto the blue, do that the background would show through, and then glittered the snowflakes and dotted them around the card, adding AB gems to the centres, and finally I added glitter to the cloak of the image.


Digital stamp - Let it Go Sassy - Sassy Studio Designs
Digital papers - Frozen Winter papers -  The Art Box Designs
Tonic Layering dies - Scalloped circles , Plain circles
X-cut border punch
X-cut palm punch - Snow Crystal, medium and large
Gems, pearls and small dazzles - Meiflower
Large dazzles from my friend Donna
Alphabet for sentiment - Tama Cube - dafont

I wish you could see how sparkly it is in real life.

Thanks for stopping by,
hugs,
Colette xx

Monday 8 December 2014

Baubles, snowflakes and a gift bag

A couple more creations today from the Sarah Paris Complete Cardmaking commission, this time around I have a couple of cards and a gift bag to show you.

The baubles and snowflake digital stamps, sentiments and papers all came on the Free CD included with the magazine.
 I made an easel card, colouring the baubles to match the background paper and using one of the sentiments for the stopper.

For this card I printed the sentiment onto the paper arranging the snowflakes around it randomly and colouring the word Celebrate and parts of the snowflakes red, to finish off I added a crystal gem to the centre of each snowflake

I used a brown paper lunch bag and made a lid, which slides over the handles, from Kraft. I coloured up the sentiment and snowflakes, die cut the sentiment and cut around the snowflakes before adding them to the front of the bag which I had already decorated with papers from the collection.
Nellie Snellen Pine branch die used on easel card
All ribbons and gems- Meiflower

Digital stamps and papers are available to buy from the Sarah Paris online store.

Thanks for dropping in,
hugs,
Colette xx

Saturday 6 December 2014

Winter Mittens!

My hubby is at the hospital this morning having a cataract removed, luckily for him, he only needs one eye done as his cataract isn't age related, which usually involves needing to have both eyes done, but, according to the hospital, due to an injury to the eye. The only problem is he doesn't remember injuring it! but never mind at, least he doesn't have to go through it all again in a few weeks.

Here's a quick card I made using an image from another one of the Sassy Cheryl accessory sets over at Paper Creator.


Mittens - Deck out the tree accessory set - Sassy Cheryl at Paper Creator
Paper - Snowfall for him freebie - Eve Recinella (no longer available)
 Cardstock - Buff - Papermill direct
Ribbon, button and metallic cord - Meiflower

Thanks for stopping by,
hugs,
Colette xx

Wednesday 3 December 2014

The Paper Shelter 4th Birthday Blog Hop

Woohoo! The Paper Shelter is four years old on December 8th and to celebrate we are having a Blog Hop and Challenge, it will run for two weeks with both Design Teams taking part, and if that's not exciting enough, each blog on the hop is offering one lucky commenter a TPS digi of their choice.



The Hop is our way of inviting you to join in with us and the challenge theme is

If you have just arrived from Gail's blog, then you're heading in the right direction - if not then you'll want to head on back to The Paper Shelter Challenge Blog to start again, as you won't want to miss out on this one!

Our Design Teams have worked very hard and are showcasing the gorgeous images available from The Paper Shelter Website.

 Check out The Paper Shelter Challenge Blog for all the details of the hop, the challenge and the prizes



Digital Stamp - Faery Emma - The Paper Shelter
Papers - Little Lady - Just So Scrappy
EK Success border punch
Dragonfly charm - Stash
Ribbon and Gems - Meiflower

From here you will need to hop over to Eva's blog..

 Before you go, don't forget to leave a comment for a chance of winning your choice of one of the fab digis available in store.

Hop! Hop! Hop!

Good luck and hope you're enjoying is so far

Hugs,
Colette xx

Monday 1 December 2014

A couple of Christmas cards

Today I have a couple of Christmas cards to show you which were part of my commission for the September edition of Complete Cardmaking magazine.
I was given a Sarah Paris kit to play with which contained several papers and a good selection of bauble, snowflake and sentiment digi stamps.

For the first card I merged together the snowflake string and the bauble in Photoshop before colouring to match the background paper I was using. The right hand side of the card front is acetate, and the bauble is fixed to this so that when the card is open the bauble looks like it is dangling. I coloured the "Merry" of the sentiment to match the bauble.

digital stamps and paper - Sarah Paris - Free CD Complete Cardmaking Magazine issue 52
Gold ribbon and gems - Meiflower


Papers, snowflake and Joy digital image - Sarah Paris - Free CD Complete Cardmaking Magazine issue 52
Ribbon - Meiflower

Papers and digital stamps are also available to buy at the Sarah Paris online store

Thanks for stopping in,
hugs,
Colette xx