Less is more week 257-colour

Happy New Year to all my crafty friends and followers! I wasn't expecting to blog before tomorrow but I saw the LIM challenge this morning and was tempted by the theme, come and see:

Today we are at the start of a New Year, with a new challenge and a new sponsor!

We are delighted to welcome Kylie from 

Happy Little Stampers

as our New Sponsor for 2016

For the first colour challenge of the year we have chosen 

NEUTRALS

So we would love to see, creams, beiges, greys etc as the colourways of your creations.

                                                               And here is my card:

I used SU Hardwood stamp for the background and SU French foliage for the leaves and splats and the inks were Crumb cake and Soft Suede.

Hope to see you all tomorrow!

Probably the last post of the year.....

Afternoon everyone, although I seem to have lost a few followers, blogger playing up no doubt! Or maybe they were just bored!!!
Anyway back to today which is my OH's birthday so I have a card to show you and a few last minute Xmas cards that I made:

We usually buy him jumpers, trousers etc but he's been working on a lot of projects this year so we thought we'd update his tools hence the biirthday card. The strange thing was he opened it on it's side as if it was a normal card, MEN! 

One of my Xmas cards won the prize over at Stamping Sensations which was £60 of Be Creative goodies which I should receive soon, so exciting! You can see it here

We are spending Xmas in Portsmouth and the cards I made for Charlie and Phoebe were these:

and here are a few more

Finally a card made with Craft Artist for my great nephew Archie who is a Star Wars fan

Wishing everyone a Happy Christmas and New Year and may 2016 be a very good year for you all!

The dreaded one layer.......

Evening everyone I hope you're not suffering unduly with this awful weather.
I've just popped in with my card for this weeks LIM challenge which is

ONE LAYER 

cards again this week and we have a super fun theme for you to adhere to!

It's SANTA!

Apologies for the photo quality! I drew and cut out a bell mask and used a grey ink through it. I stamped my Santa and glittered his hat and added some red berries with a paper pen. The sentiment is embossed in silver. The card stock is white linen but I will try for a better photo tomorrow!

Last weekend we had a big family afternoon tea party to celebrate my SiL and BiL's 80th birthdays. It was a lovely weekend and I'm just sharing a couple of cards with you. My BiL's card is on my previous post but this box card held their present and the centre stepper card was for my SiL.

The last card was for my BiL Tony, Karen's husband who was 70 last week.

Well that's all my news for now

TTFN :0)

Another Christmas card!

Lots of opportunities at the moment for making Christmas cards for various challenges and I thought I'd take part in the latest one over at Stamping Sensations.

******Festive Flowers and foliage******

With so many lovely Christmas floral stamps not to mention all the lovely holly ivy and other seasonal foliage ones available you should not be lost for choice this month. And of course you can use any design papers you wish, you don't have to have those used by the design team.

I loved the freebie stamps that came with the latest issue of Creative Stamping and so here is the card I made with them:

I have gone for a frosty look using blues and greys and some white glitter.

We have 4 birthdays this month, it was my friend Michele's last weekend and also my brother in law who was 80!

I used triple embossing on Michele's card which made a change from triple stamping.

My card for my brother in law was created in Craft Artist

We had a very busy weekend, Keir, Lara, Charlie and Phoebe arrived on Friday morning and I held a lunch party for 12 so that our friends could meet Phoebe. She was a little star and has been sleeping through the night ( 11 hours ) and hardly ever cries. Charlie was a joy and on Saturday we spent the day at a local zoo/theme park which he thoroughly enjoyed and the weather was lovely. 

Dreadfully grey and wet this week which is perfect for crafting!!

Less is More week 248 - Paper piecing

Morning everyone, I'm so excited today as I have been asked by Chrissie to be Guest Designer for this weeks LIM challenge!! Such an honour and I was delighted to accept.
The challenge this week is Paper Piecing and as always there must be lots of white space and few embellishments.
Decisions, decisions! Eventually I decided to go with one of my Acid Drops and Whatnots stamps. They are always such fun, stylish images and the ladies lend themselves to paper piecing, come and see:

I used some paper from a springtime pad which had a floral design that worked well with the stamp. It was double sided paper with a plain side that I pieced the hat with. The corners and sentiment are part of the stamp set and I just added a tiny black heart to the sentiment flourish.

I thought I'd make another card using this technique and a stamp from Imagination crafts.

Very simple, just stamped onto some oriental card, fussy cut and a little wink of Stella on top. There are actually two little ladybirds as well but not very visible on this photo!

I hope you are all inspired by the DT's cards and I look forward to seeing your cards in the gallery.

Less is More week 247 - sketch

Two posts in two days, scary eh?! Decided the sketch over on this weeks LIM challenge would be perfect for a new die that I haven't used and another Christmas card to add to my collection! Come and see:

The die is called over the Mantlepiece and is really lovely. I used the freebie stamps from this months Creative Stamping Magazine to embellish the baubles, coloured the swag and added little red berries with a Paper Pen. The sentiment is stamped in gold, believe it or not!

Here is the sketch that I followed:

Poured with rain overnight and stopped about 11am and we now have a glorious afternoon! Hope it's nice where you are :o)

Celebrations!

Afternoon and it's a lovely sunny, warm autumnal day unlike in Somerset where it is my sister Karen and her husband Tony's Silver wedding anniversary! Such a shame as Karen says it's wet and windy!
Come and see the card I made for them:

So difficult to photo anything with mirri card but you get the idea! I used SU Everything Eleanor stamp set which is a favourite of mine and one that was a present to me from Karen!

I also made a celebration box frame with their details and photos in but I forgot to take a photo!

I'm looking forward to Friday as Keir, Lara, Charlie and Phoebe are coming to stay for the weekend and we have lots planned including a lunch party for friends to meet Phoebe.

I have the pumpkin ready and have made a Halloween lantern for Charlie as well.

I saw these on the DoCrafts post and they are so effective with battery night lights inside.

I hope Phoebe will be attracted to it as well and here is a photo of her having a laugh! Can't believe she is 8 weeks old tomorrow.

I'll be back on Saturday with some exciting news!

Less is More week 246 - Theme

This is the first time for ages that I've taken part in a challenge as I was accumulating so many cards and I do like to make personalised cards for friends and family. Anyway after my crafty refurb I thought I'd get back in the groove and of course it had to be a LIM card! Here is the criteria:

Autumn has decidedly started to make an appearance here in the UK.
There's a definite nip in the air and the trees are really starting to show off their autumnal beauty! 

There were some lovely cards in our gallery reflecting this last week too.

On to this week and our theme is simply

MASCULINE

I double checked and it doesn't specify birthday so I thought I'd make a Christmas card, come and see:

I used a new MB die and the freebie stamps that came with Creative Stamping magazine this month which are lovely.

I have a couple more cards to show you, the first is another pop up box baby card for my friend's great neice

This was a card for my talented goddaughter using the cute House Mouse.

An anniversary card for my OH which it seems was our

 Sapphire ( 45 )

Finally I mentioned in my last post that I was going on the BB afternoon tea tour and thought I'd show you a couple of photos, we were so lucky with the weather, great afternoon! We had front seats upstairs.

Now it wouldn't be right not to show you Phoebe!! Here she is looking gorgeous 

And here is proud grandad with his best friend Charlie :o)

Sorry it's been photo heavy that's the trouble when I don't post regularly!

A couple of cards and of course Pheobe.....

Hi everyone it's been a little busy and I haven't managed to post anything for a couple of weeks but I have a couple of cards to share with you and of course a photo of Phoebe!

My first card was for Lara's mum and I used all diecuts in black and white although because of the angle of the photo and it's centura pearl the colour looks weird!!

My 2nd card was for my very good friend, Jackie, once agian using diecuts.

My 3rd card was for my cousin and was generated on Craft Artist using a digi stamp.

My 4th card was for my god daughters eldest daughter and I used Craft Artist to create a scene and use a photo of her with her horse in it.

Finally a couple of photos of my gorgeous granddaughter Phoebe:

Not sure what she's dreaming about!

Eyes open!

My friend and I are having afternoon tea on a converted London Routemaster as it does a sightseeing toour of the capital on Monday, should be good! We are going down to Portsmouth for the weekend as it's Lara's birthday so I'm in for lots of cuddles :o)

Isn't she lovely, Isn't she wonderful, Isn't she precious, Less than one week old.............

Hi everyone and apologies to Stevie Wonder for changing the lyrics! Phoebe is gorgeous!! She's so dinky and although she weighed 1oz more than Charlie she is so petite with a cute little head and lovely dark hair.

Lots of cuddles and a lovely time at the wedding on Friday where everyone wanted to have a photo with her :o)

This is the card I made for Keir and Lara and is inspired by Monia who makes gorgeous cards:

Yesterday we took Charlie to an open day at Southsea Fire station which was a big hit! Lots of engines to sit in as well as police cars and ambulances. Firemen absailing up and down the tower rescuing people, great fun.

Very serious being a policeman!!

Cheesy grins at lunch, it's catching!

Lovely day here today but I had to have the heating on when we got back last night! Definitely autumnal.

It's a girl!

Hi everyone just a quick post to introduce you to my beautiful new granddaughter!
Phoebe Jane was born on 1st weighing 7lbs 11ozs and mum and baby doing fine.

We are going down tomorrow morning very excited to meet Phoebe! 

We will all be going to the wedding on Friday and I think Phoebe may take some attention away from the bridal couple ! 

Here is the wedding card I've made which is another tealight one:

 

I'll be back to show you more photos of Phoebe and also the card I made :0)