Coffee Morning Wash-out

Well we did everything we could to get people to come in, but unfortunately only two people showed up apart from family. They did however like what we had done and were very impressed and would put the word around at their groups they attend, so hopefully better luck next time.

These things although disappointing are actually a great learning curve and you find out what to do next time or what not to do next time. We know how we would like to set up our products and we also found that we had more stock than we actually thought we had, Mums living room was rather small for it all.

We took lots of photo's but they didn't turn out awfully well, I manage to get a few that I could use to show you what we had available.


Book bug Bookmarks for early readers



Boxes of 6 cards and envelopes, plus 6 gift tags




I designed this card for a recent challenge and wanted to try it out using different coloured mirri card. The silver for 25th Wedding Anniversary and the red for 40th.


Now for Lynns' talents:




She had a very impressive display of her knitted products that have taken her months to complete.

There was one good thing about the lack of people coming in..........





we had lots of cakes to eat. My sons girlfriend made these fantastic cupcakes they were really too good to share.

Well here's to the next one, this was a good practice run and we did have a lot of fun anyway.

Craft Sale and Coffee Morning

After so long me and my mother in law are actually going to have a craft sale at her house. I'm selling cards and gifts and she is selling her knitted toys etc. We have both been crafting away like mad these past few weeks to get enough stock together and enough different things to cover peoples different tastes.

We have been talking about it for so long now and we have finally bit the bullet so to speak. We set the date and put up posters around the village and family members who work in the local shop have been telling everyone what we are doing so everyone should know where to go and what to expect.

All that's left to do is to pack things up and have a last look to see if we need anything else and to get making the cupcakes to go with the coffee while they take time to browse all our wares. We are also taking orders for things so that we can give a personalised service to customers.

If this goes well then we will probably have more, we are really nervous about the outcome, but really excited as well. It's so nice to do things all together as a family and see how many different ideas we have between us.

So keep your fingers crossed that all goes well and I will put some photos on here of the day, good or bad.

Here are a few things that I have made over the last couple of weeks.






A box of six, C6 cards and envelopes with stamped decoupage images from Polka Doodles and two other misc stamps. The photo doesn't show it, but the card used for the box and card is a lovely hammered effect which I found went well for chrismas cards. The designs have been coloured using a mix of ProMarkers and Flexi Markers then glittered.




I have had these small notebooks for ever, I picked them up really cheap one day and thought I would decorate them, but I put them away and they haven't seen daylight since.

In one of my mags I saw this design of a japanese style girl, she was gorgeous and thought I would try to replicate this with my own twist and this is what she turned out like. The thing is if you are going to cater for the girls you have to be fair and cater for the boys too, so I came up with the little boy with his dungarees. They worked out to be just the right size for my mini notebooks, so on they went and now they are ready for the sale.

The only trouble with doing these I have now had more ideas and made bears also, I will add photos soon.

Noel

Here is the second card made from Nikkis' papers.

I've taken a section of an A4 design to make a square card and matted onto black then white card to tie in with the matching Noel topper. All the swirls have been glittered both on the backing paper and topper, then embellished with black and white spotty ribbon and bow.

This card has been entered into the Polka Doodles challenge - Ribbons and bows.

Cold hands warm heart

This is one of two cards I made using the lovely papers by the guest designer Nikky Hall in this months making cards magazine. I love this cheeky little snowman and the colours are so scrummy.

Using lots of matting and layering and faux stitching again,( just don't seem to be able to stop myself) the papers really don't need a lot done to them to create a beautiful card.

I've entered this card into the Willow Sketchie Challenge.

Using handmade flowers

I've made this card for the Week 40 Polka Doodles Challenge - Handmade Flowers.

This time instead of using the large flowers we are all making at the moment, I thought it would be nice to use small flowers that I used to make a while back before we had the intricate dies we have now.

To make the flowers you will need a medium and small daisy punch. With the medium, punch out two daisies in pink and with the small one punch out two daisies in yellow. Glue the two pink daisies together so that it makes a filled in flower and do the same with the yellow daisy. Next you need to take a pair of tweezers and pinch each petal up with the tweezers pushing down in the middle, do this for all 16 petals and do like wise with the yellow flower which ,when glued to the pink flower will help make the centre. When each one is dry you can ink the edges and add a pearl to finish.

These flowers would also look nice as the centres of some of our larger blooms or great as a more delicate touch.

all I want for christmas is.........

All I want for christmas is U card created using papers from the HOTP Forever Christmas Cards Paper Stack and the downloaded image of Walter the owl.

The matts and layers have been stitched together and inked with brushed corduroy. Walter has been decoupaged with one layer and had the white fluffy bits on his hat glittered. I have embellished with three snowflakes that have been glittered and a gem in the centre. The 'U' is a wooden letter coloured with promarker and sprayed with cosmic shimmer.

I have entered this card into the 6th October Willow Sketchie Challenge.

40th Birthday Card

Thought this image would make a great 40th Birthday card a man.

Materials used

8x8 black card blank
white and black card for matting and layering of 3 strips, topper and oval backer to main picture
Downloaded image from Willow Designs
Silver peel off rosette and 40 backed onto black card and cut out
3 small self adhesive black stones
2 tool charms
black fine liner for faux stitching effect
deckle oval dies for image and black matt
swiss dots embossing folder for black matt layer

I have entered this card into two challenges this week:
Willow Sketchie Challenge and Polka Doodles Birthday Ages Challenge.