Busy Week

Well, I hope you are all coping with the heat. It's a bit of a shocker after all the rain this week, but it's so lovely to finally have a bit of summer.

It's been quite a busy week and I haven't achieved much in the card making department. The only cards I have made were for Thursday. The first was for a friend's daughter who was sixteen. I used the Craftwork Cards range of Fruit Scoop. It's quite bright, so am definitely adopting the "less is more" approach.

The second card was for my daughter Emily who also turned sixteen on Thursday. I can't believe where the time has gone, it just doesn't seem possible. She's a massive Mighty Boosh fan hence the pictures. She really loved it.

So the week was spent getting ready for her birthday, preparing for the family party yesterday, taking the dog for her training etc etc. Work has been a bit rubbish again, roll on the end of term.

Today I have been making lots and lots of cupcakes to take to work on Tuesday for my birthday. I always make life more difficult for myself by making some for my class as well as the staff, but they do appreciate it, so it makes it worthwhile.

I have realised that this is my 200th post and am thinking of having a little giveaway (if I can work out how to do it on blogger - any help greatly received). I will have a little think about what I can do.

Hope you all have a really good week.

Take care

M x

P.S. Started a new crochet project even though I have a couple still on the go, just couldn't resist! Watch out for some photos soon :)

P.P.S Booked my Harry Potter cinema tickets for Friday 15th July - can hardly contain my excitement :)

Final Blossom for the Week

These are the last two cards that I have made using the Blossom kit. Again, really simple, quick cards. I don't like over fussy cards and I quite like to have a lot of white space left.

I haven't had the best week at work this week - won't go into details but have felt really under valued - not a nice feeling. But hey, it's the weekend! We had a lovely family evening last night, watching Toy Story 3, such a good film, still brings a tear to my eye.

At work I was tasked at very short notice to design a Fathers Day card for 11 year olds to make - I'm talking about an hour's notice! I remembered those origami type folded shirts that everyone is making. So I had a quick hunt on YouTube, had about three attempts until I was completely happy, then set about cutting 30 square cards and numerous rectangles of paper for the children. When it came to making them, I had the children in groups, sitting around a very large table, following me doing a step by step demo, and surprising it was very successful. The cards looked great, the children were surprised that they were able to make the shirt and I was relieved that it all worked out!

I've got to make a couple of birthday cards this weekend. My daughter Emily will be sixteen on Thursday (pretty scary!), and a friend's daughter will also be sixteen on the same day. I can't believe that Emily will be that age - I really don't know where the time has gone. She's so hard to buy for at the moment, so apart from a couple of DVDs and T-shirts, I think we will be giving her a cheque for a clothes shopping spree when she feels like it.

Hope you are not too stir crazy with all this rain. Let's hope for a better day tomorrow.

M x

More Blossom

Here are some more cards made with the Blossom kit from Craftwork Cards. The cards themselves are quite small, approximately 10cm x 10cm with a fancy edge. I wasn't sure about these edge cards to start with, but I really like them now, and the beauty is that you can have the decorative edge along the bottom or up the side.

These cards are very simple, just a thin strip of paper, a sentiment and (although you can't see it) a small amount of glitter. Actually it's more of a shimmer - I use a Sakura gel pen for this. It's one of my most used pens. Bit more subtle than glitter glue, although I do love glitter glue too!

I have just discovered a lovely new magazine called Mollie Makes. I've seen it mentioned on other blogs but had not been able to find it. Unfortunately I have missed out on Issue 1, but Issue 2 is gorgeous. I heartily recommend it. In fact, there is a really good subscription offer which is very enticing!

Hope you are having a good week. At least the weather has improved. I have had Edward's cricket whites permanently in for soaking or so it would seem, as he has had so many cricket matches in the last four days. Tomorrow he has an all day cricket tournament for the school. Why don't they make the cricket uniform a more practical colour - green for example!

M x

Blossom

How has your Sunday been? The weather has been appalling today and we have been rather housebound. Poor Chloe doesn't like the rain, so we have to physically evict her out into the garden at regular intervals.

I have a rather poorly teenager on my hands - Emily. She went to the doctors with a raging earache on Monday and has been on antibiotics and pain killers since then, but neither of these are making any difference. So after a miserable night where she couldn't sleep at all and was crying with pain I took her to the Out of Hours Doctors' Service early Saturday morning. She is now on heavy duty antibiotics and painkillers and if there is no improvement on Monday, she may have to go on IV antibiotics!! Well, today she has done nothing but sleep, which really is the best thing for her, and I'm hoping there will be some improvement tomorrow. Earaches are miserable things aren't they, and Emily has been prone to them since she was tiny.

Well, because I have been housebound I took the opportunity to make a few cards, two of which I want to share with you. I am trying to use up kits that I have had for a while, in a desperate attempt to make more space. So the kit I am using up at the moment is called Blossom and it's from Craftwork Cards (no surprises there I guess, as you know they are my favourite company). I really like the pink and brown combination, Mark commented that the brown paper would make lovely wallpaper for a feature wall.

The cards are a large square, measuring 145mm x 145mm, they came with the kit, as did everything I used on the cards.

Hope tomorrow is a better day.

Take care

M x

Sculpture Trail

Last Saturday we took Chloe for a walk in the woods near to where we live. It's a lovely place with plenty of different length walks available. We decided on the shortest walk along the Sculpture Trail. All the figures have been carved from wood, and are positioned in quite an unstructured way at various points along the pathway.

We had a lovely time, just a long enough walk for our little puppy.

Just in case you are wondering, yes Emily was with us but she hates her photo being taken and I had to promise her that I wouldn't post any photos of her!

The weather has not been too great this week for long dog walks en famille, so it's been down to Mark and myself - who could have predicted that!!

M x

New Cards 2

I'm on a roll now! More cards to show you.

These are very simple too and didn't take very long to make. I cut a panel of coloured card and embossed the bottom half with a Swiss Dots embossing folder through the Cuttlebug. Then I cut various circles/scallops with my Nestabilities and stamped some images and words from Paula Pascual's range of stamps with Stazon ink.

I really loved the embossed bit of the card. I mainly use my Cuttlebug for cutting shapes, but I think that there will be more embossing on my cards from now on.

Hope you are all having a fab weekend. We are off to take the dog for a long walk. See you soon.

M x

New Cards 1

Here are a couple of cards that I have made recently. I used Paula Pascual stamps called Simple Flowers and my trusty Cuttlebug and Nestabilities to cut the circles. The beauty of these cards is that they took minutes to make, and that they are very inexpensive. I finished the centre of the large flowers with foiled Candi from Craftwork Cards, and added a little bit of glitter glue to the centres of the smaller flowers.

I'm feeling very happy today as I have a new toy to play with - an early birthday present. It's a new laptop. My old one was a cast off from Mark's job and was painfully slow, sometimes it wouldn't boot up at all, other times it would just switch off with no warning - totally unreliable. Not helped by the fact that Chloe had bitten off one of the keys! Anyway, all my family are clubbing together and I am feeling very lucky indeed.

Take care everyone.

M x

Puppy Photos

I thought it was about time I put some more photos of Chloe on my blog. My goodness how she has grown. She is now twice the weight she was when we had her weighed at 8 weeks, and suddenly she seems all legs.

The first couple of photos are when she was about 10 weeks old and she looks like such a little thing - sort of chubby yet tiny.

She has a thing for shoes, any shoes, she's not fussy. She likes to pair up my Crocs in the flower bed (slightly OCD methinks!).

And this is her at 13 weeks, she is thinner and sleeker, and definitely leggy. As you can see, she loves her comfort - cushions and crocheted blankets. She particularly likes my Rowan Cashsoft blanket that I made last year.

She's not been very well this week, has behaving out of character, so tonight we took her to the vets and it would appear that she has a bladder infection. So now she is on a course of antibiotics for a week and we have to go back next week for a check up. At least she has no problems taking her tablet - pushed into a little bit of cheese, it didn't touch the sides. So different from giving tablets to a cat - what a palaver that was. Of course going to the vet is a licence to print money. I hope this isn't the start of things to come.

It's half term this week and all my grand plans of card making haven't exactly come to fruition, although I have made some today. I haven't got pictures yet as our main computer is down so I can't scan them. Hopefully I'll get some decent photos tomorrow.

I downloaded a blank Promarker colour chart from the Letraset website and had fun colouring in the squares of the colours I have. I have 66 pens including a blending one. Still loads to get!! Although after the vet bill, not for some time!!

The other day I felt the urge to do some painting. I used to love painting when I was doing my O and A Level art and I haven't done any for ages. I am inspired by Dyan Reaveley at Art From the Heart (here ) also a blog called Luna ( here ). I've only drawn the image so far and painted the background, but I will show you soon.

I hope you are all having a lovely week, nice that the weather is picking up. Back to work on Monday and another stressful week of my daughter doing her GCSEs. I know I haven't mentioned much about that but yes, we are in the throes of them, and I will be so glad when they are over. There are four next week - 2 maths, 1 history and 1 Italian - wish us luck.

Take care

M x