Bee Happy!

Hello lovely people,

Well, I've only worked 2 days this week (yesterday and today) and I'm ready for the weekend already, but before we get to that, I have a Dies to Die For DT card for you and I've been making punny cards again :-)

These sweet little bees were the only thing I splashed out on from the latest MFT release...I know, that's un-bee-lievable!

Now, I will just point out that pretty much every cartoon bee EVER has a yellow face...but real bees have black faces, so I tried both and decided that I liked the black better...well, as close as I could get to black whilst still being able to see his eyes!

I have a straight stitch line die which I have never used but suddenly realised how useful it could be to add the horizontal stitch lines on the yellow DP here.  I cut those first, then cut the strip with the large rectangle die to get the vertical edge stitching.  One tip though...you have to be careful that you don't get the stitches in the corner lined up such that they cut out a tiny square from your panel!

I think you can just see in the photo that I heat embossed the trail and the bee is popped up on a foam pad.

If I've tempted you with any of the lovely supplies I've used then you can go straight to the individual products via the links at the end of my post or just pop over to Dies to Die For and have a little browse around!

I hope you have a bee-yoo-tiful day!

Thanks for visiting and I really appreciate any comments that you leave,

Copic colours;
Bee body: Y15, Y35, Y17
Bee face: T3, T4, T6
Bee wings: C00, T0, blender

Lovely things I've used from Dies to Die For;
Meant to Bee stamps - My Favorite Things
Meant to Bee dies - My Favorite Things
A2 stitched rectangle STAX 1 - My Favorite Things
Itsy bitsy polka dots pastels 6x6 paper pad - My Favorite Things 
Blueprints 13 by My Favorite Things (for the single stitch line)

Me love you

Hello lovely people,

I don't think I've posted on here since my last Dies to Die For DT card but it seems to be Friday again so it's time for another one, and I thought I'd do something non-Christmassy for a change!

Well, these guys are super adorable aren't they?!

I just love that cute sentiment and it fitted so beautifully onto one of the MFT speech bubbles :-)

If I've tempted you with any of the lovely supplies I've used then you can go straight to the individual products via the links at the end of my post or just pop over to Dies to Die For and have a little browse around!

I'll be back to Christmas next time I think because my Stamping Bella Christmas stamps have arrived - squeeeeeee!!!!

Thanks for visiting and I really appreciate any comments that you leave,

Copic colours;
Skin: E000, E00, E21, E11, E04
Cave girl hair: E50, E53, E55
Cave boy hair: E53, E55, E57
Cave boy loincloth / Cave girl bone: W1, W3, W5
Cave girl dress / flower: R81, R83, R85
Stem / leaves: YG61, YG63, G46
Ground: W00, W0, W1, W2, W3

Lovely things I've used from Dies to Die For;
Cave couple - Stamping Bella
Inside and out stitched square STAX - My Favorite Things
Essential speech bubbles - My Favorite Things

Other ingredients;
Devoted 6x6 paper pad - Carta Bella

Thoroughly Modern Misses from LOTV

Hello lovely people,

I have something very exciting to share with you today...we have NEW images on the way from LOTV so myself and the rest of the Design Team will be sharing some sneak peeks with you over the next week until their launch on Mon 23rd October.

We are introducing the Thoroughly Modern Misses; there's one for each month of the year so I thought it appropriate to start with November!

WARNING!!!  They are a little bit different so I'll just show you my card and then we can talk...

Now, I know some of you will be a bit taken aback by the lack of facial features other than eyes but I have totally been won over by the gorgeous modern style of the images and the fabulous clothing and am loving them.

I've given this little lady a long coat but it could just as easily be a jacket over a skirt/dress, and you could give her tights instead of bare legs...so many choices!

Oh my goodness...I nearly forgot to mention that there are some beautiful new sentiments coming out too, and you can see one of them on my card here.

Watch this space for more sneak peeks and do check out the samples from the rest of the DT too.

Thanks for visiting and I really appreciate any comments that you leave,

Copic colours;
Skin: E000, E00, E21, E11, E04
Eyes: B0000, B000
Hair: E50, E53, E55
Coat: E41, E42, E43
Scarf: YR21, YR23, YR24, & R05/E07 for stripes
Pumpkin: E97, YR24, E99
Jumper: B91, B93, B95
Hat: YR21, YR23, YR24, YR27
Shoes: E42, E43, E44
Ground: W00, W0, W1, W2, W3

Lovely things I've used;

Thoroughly Modern Miss November and sentiment - LOTV (coming soon!)
Autumn Spice 6x6 paper pad - Lilybee Design
Stitched jumbo fishtail banner STAX - My Favorite Things
Ivory hemp twine - The Ribbon Girl

LOTV: Christmas woodland scenes

Hello lovely people,

It's release day at LOTV so from midday you can get your hands on a huge range of stunning new Christmas images, available as rubber or digi stamps, or simply print sheets.

So I have my final Design Team creation for you, or should I say creations because I got carried away and ended up making a trio of cards!

I have used the Woodland Scenes collection and I've teamed them up with some of the newly released digi papers.

I think a lot of people are delighted to see the beautiful LOTV papers back in digi format, and the Kraft ones were always popular...well, they are so stylish!

This first card is 12.5cm square and uses one of the robins from the collection...

I've used my stitched dies together to create the circular aperture within the square.  I just lay the square and circle dies down, measure to make sure the gap around the circle is even on all sides and tape them together so I can run them through my die cutting machine as one piece.

This is the other robin in the collection...

I have used the digi stamps for my cards, but have printed them at the rubber stamp size so you can see what size they are.

For my last card, the image is a little bigger so I adapted the design slightly to make a 11.5 x 15cm card and added a sentiment on this one.

The new sentiment stamps are fabulous but I have to say that the sentiment tags are ones I go back to time and again, so if you don't have these I highly recommend them....sorry, I know I'm enabling again - lol!

I haven't even shown you the gorgeous little fox and squirrel also included in this set!

I have now got the rubber versions of these so am looking forward to using some of them together to create a scene...how cute will that be?!

I know I could create a scene by merging the digi images too, but it takes me a while and I just prefer to do it with the rubber stamps!

Thanks for visiting and I really appreciate any comments that you leave,

Lovely things I've used;

Woodland Scene digi stamp collection by LOTV
Krafty Christmas digi papers by LOTV
Christmas sentiment tags by LOTV
Circle STAX 1 - My Favorite Things
Inside and out stitched circle STAX - My Favorite Things
Inside and out stitched square STAX - My Favorite Things
Blueprints 13 by My Favorite Things (for the large rectangle panel on the owl card)
Twine, Crystal Glamour Dust from stash

Copic colours;
Robins / outer edge of owl: E23, E25, E47
Face & tummy of owl: E30, E31, E33
Wood: E30, E35, E55
Leaves: YG61, YG63
Snow: B0000, B000
Red details: R24, R27, R39
Green details: YG61, YG63, YG67

Simply snowflakes

Hello lovely people,

Bank holiday weekend...woohoo!!!  Except that I am working on Monday but hopefully not all day so it's still good.

I thought it would be good to share another couple of cards I made using some of the brand new LOTV stamps before the next lot are out...yes, that's right, there are MORE gorgeous Christmas designs on the way!

I wanted to do something a little different using the tiny snowflakes and some coloured ink pads.

I've stamped a strip with various snowflakes and mounted it on the card front then layered white card above and below on foam pads.

I added little crystal dots to the centres of the larger snowflakes.

While I had the snowflakes inked up I decided to attempt something a little more adventurous and made a wreath design.

I drew a faint circle to guide my stamping, which can easily be rubbed out afterwards, once the ink has fully dried so you don't smudge the snowflakes!

The sentiment on this and the first card are from the new stamp sets; there's such a variety of styles that there really is one to suit every card!

I mounted the wreath onto co-ordinating pearl card and again, I added crystal dots to the larger snowflake centres.

I hope you are all having a great weekend, whatever you are getting up to!

Thanks for visiting and I really appreciate any comments that you leave,

Lovely things I've used;

Retro Christmas Greeting by LOTV (I cut the snowflakes out to use individually)
Merry Christmas Greetings by LOTV
White Blizzard Crystal Nuvo Drops by Tonic Studios

Card-io silhouette blooms

Hello lovely people,

I am swinging by with a really quick post today to share a card I made using Card-io stamps.

It's a bit different for me, yes?!

I played around for absolutely ages and this one card is all I came up with, but hey, I had fun!

It's hard to see in the photo but I have smudged a little lilac ink upwards from the bottom of the stamped panel and added tiny dots of Crystal Nuvo drops randomly all over the image.

Thanks for visiting and I really appreciate any comments that you leave,

Lovely things I've used;

Dragonfly dreams Majestix stamp set - Card-io

A little sentimental - Clearly Besotted

White blizzard Nuvo glitter drops - Tonic Studios

Tuxedo black - Memento

InLinkz.com

For a tea-riffic Mum

Hello lovely people,

After working at the weekend, I had yesterday off and spent most of it ignoring the cleaning and pottering about in my craft room instead :-)

It's back to work today but of course I then have my usual Wednesday off and I'm excited that I will be spending it with my awesome buddies Sue and Debs!

I thought today I would share the card I sent to my Mum for Mothers' Day.

I have to admit to using the tea theme on more than one occasion for her but she really does love tea so I'm hoping she will also love this card!

The dies and stamps are by Stampin' Up but no longer available.

I hope you all have a good week :-)

Thanks for visiting and I really appreciate any comments that you leave,

CAS floral card for Mum

Hello lovely people,

I'm flying by with a DT card this morning...

It's time for a new challenge at In The Pink and our theme this is...

SPECIAL LADY
Don't forget we want to see more pink than any other colour!

Our fabulous sponsor this time is...

I made the MUM up from some word dies that just happened to include an M and a U...very handy!

I promise that IRL the letters are all straight (I used a ruler to line them up!), but I think they have gone wonky looking in the photo editing process.  I am extremely good at taking wonky photos so have learnt to stretch the photo corners so it's all nice and square...however, in this case I think that made the lettering go wonky - oops!

I am so much happier making CAS cards than I used to be and I think it's all about having the right stash...any excuse to buy more things, right?!

In the case of this card, I do have a few flower dies but decided you can never have too many so I got a few Sue Wilson sets.  I use one set on this card, and they are fab because there are lots of different sizes of flower, so are perfect for layering :-)

I also seem to have got the card to look a totally different pink in the 2 photos; the light was awful when I took the photos and the different angles have affected the colour loads!  I think the first photo is closest to the real pink.

If you haven't already done so then do pop over to In The Pink and check out the gorgeous creations from the rest of the Pink Ladies.

Thanks for visiting and I really appreciate any comments that you leave,

Lovely things I've used;

Game of Colours by Galeria Papieru

Camellia complete petals - Sue Wilson for Creative Expressions

Stitched hillside borders by Lawn Fawn

Words for friends - My Favorite Things

InLinkz.com

I like how you roll

Hello lovely people,

Happy Friday to you all!

I have a Dies to Die For DT card for you today.

I may have already mentioned that I have the extremely nice problem of having sooooo many new MFT goodies that I hardly know what to use next!

My faves are always the cute critters though, so I decided on a hedgehog for this card, and it might be the speediest card I've ever made as it just all fell into place really quickly.

I had a few ideas about how to colour the hedgehog but settled on a flicking type of colouring to try to capture the spikiness and I think it worked ok.

I could have stamped him direct onto the white circle but hey, I have the dies so I am going to use them!  It's nice to add a little dimension by popping him on foam pads too.

If I've tempted you with any of the lovely supplies I've used then you can go straight to the individual products via the thumbnails at the end of my post or just pop over to Dies to Die For and have a little browse around!

FYI: there's a brand new MFT release available, but I take no responsibility for the temptation you may feel if you go and take a peek - lol!
I may already have given in to temptation myself ;-)

Thanks for visiting and I really appreciate any comments that you leave,

Copic colours;
Hedgehog bristles:
Hedgehog tummy / feet / ears: E40/41/42/43

Lovely things I've used;

Sweet celebrations by My Favourite Things	Happy hedgehogs by My Favourite Things	Happy hedgehogs dies by My Favourite Things	Stitched hillside borders by Lawn Fawn
Circle STAX set 1 - My Favourite Things	Circle STAX set 2 - My Favourite Things

InLinkz.com

Up, up and away!

Hello lovely people,

Uh oh...Monday again!
I had a most relaxing weekend but it never seems long enough :-(

I made several cards over the weekend but before I get into those I wanted to share a card I made a few months ago for a work colleague who was leaving for a new job.
For one reason or another I just haven't got round to sharing it, but I think it's too cute to stay languishing in my archive so see what you think...

The basic idea for this rather CAS design popped into my head one night as I lay in bed!

I die cut the elephant using the matching die set and added him with foam pads and I also used foam pads for some of the balloons...I have to say that I love these cute patterned balloons :-)

The sentiment was computer generated; as you know, I love the typewriter style, and of course, it was an easy way to personalise the card.

I do hope you all have a good week ahead :-)

Thanks for visiting and I really appreciate any comments that you leave,

Card recipe;

Image: Adorable elephants stamp set - MFT (and matching die set)

DP: various scraps from stash

Sentiment: generated on computer

Copic colours;
Elephant body: T1/2/3/4/5
Elephant ears / toenails: R0000/000/00