Daffodils

 Hi Everyone, Thanks for sticking with me. 

My son is home and doing OK. 

My computer is near enough back to normal. I had to reinstall my 1500 fonts, reminder to self, delete a few! A download of a new diary, which thankfully my son found on the web. That now has all my birthdays in it, that come up a month before hand, on my screen, also appointments and a few other things that I have managed to remember or had letters about. What a relief to get it back. Why I hear you say don't you write it in a dairy? I supppose because I have had this on my screen and it's the way I have worked for years.

A couple of programs have been either downloaded or adjusted to where I know their position in my files and drives. I have a new browser I am getting used to - sort of.  A few other things have been done. The SSD drive is working faster for me and my 'puter starts up so much faster. It will now do me another couple of years, I have been told, before I need a new one. Happy face.

 I have a card for you also, our neighbour had her birthday in the middle of everything, me thinking I had plenty of time hadn't done one. She had sent me a lovely one with details about March, so it gave me the idea to do similar, but very different, if you know what I mean? A rush card which had to be given the next day, so the photos were taken at night, the photo quality and colours are so different to how it actually looked, but, I hope you get the idea.

Anyhow, I had seen a card on the web with March on the front, so cased the words. I printed the front from Photoshop then die cut with a stitched die. The daffodils and small flowers were die cut and added to the front of the card. I then added clear sparkle pen to the inside of the daffodils and gold gel pen to the white flower centres. She said she liked it, so I'm relieved.

dies - daffodil/leaves Altenew, white flowers/leaves Card Making Magic 

sparkle pen - Crafters Companion

gold gel pen - Uniball

 

 

Crisis & Computer

 Hi Everyone, what a week we have had, my birthday visitors, then a few very disturbed nights with the culmination of my son admitted to hospital, coming home, then readmitted. Then my computer updated, that's supposed to be good isn't it? 

Thankfully my son is on the mend, a bit fragile, but hopefully home today. 

My computer is another story and that is why I am writing this post. I will be taking a break from everything, i.e. commenting, until I can sort things as I had them and know what is where etc. I was very lucky that both my son and eldest brother saved my documents etc on a hard drive. Although I lost all my programs, including my wonderful diary boo hoo. I had so many reminders, dates, appointments and DT details on there, which are all now gone. I know it could be a LOT worse. At least I have my document files folder intact. 

It takes so much longer for me to work as things are, due to no program to do something, or it's a new one that I have to get used to the way it works, so after I sort everything, I hope I will be back with a quicker 'puter that I know where everything is and is recognisable to me. 

I have my phone for emails etc, but I'm useless at using it for anything other than emails and the phone! Must be an old age thing? Nah! not me. 

I'll see you all as soon as I can. Keep safe and well

Happy Beanz Day?

 Hi Everyone, the card I have today is for the challenge at QKR. Our challenge is on the 1st and 15th of every month, so you have 2 chances every month to enter the challenge.

http://qkrstampede.blogspot.com/

We will select two winners each of the weeks 

1 using QKR Stampede  or Eureka Stamps image

 and 1 using any image!

Anything Goes every 1st & 15th of the month

My Niece will be 57 in a couple of weeks and I decided to use this wonderful bunny with a gorgeous bow to send her. I am in the middle of wanting cut background shapes for my cards, looking through my dies and files for them, I came across this one from 2015, by my blog friend Shirley, it's supposed to be landscape, but I decided to have it portrait. Off to my digital die cutting machine to print and cut the bunny and sentiment, then to cut the card with cut out flowers. 

I coloured the bunny with Distress Inks and water colour pencils adding a "curl" to the fur? (I wish I was a better colourist!) to match the paper, that I have had in my "little" left over bits box, which I added to the card after cutting. I added 3D glaze to her eye, nose and the numbers, that I was able to add in Photoshop. I edged the sentiment with ink. I made up the sentiment, it came to mind with the advertising slogan and the 57!  Yep! you know by now, I have strange thinking, putting my cards together! 

image - Bunny Bow QKR Stampede

Distress Inks - Tumbled Glass, Worn Lipstick, Hickory Smoke

shadows - Nuvo Brilliantly Vibrant Watercolour Pencils

cut file - Shirley's Cards Flower Deep Border Card

digital paper - Magazine freebie

sentiment - computer generated

My Birthday and a Wish

 Hi Everyone, a card today that I made in Craft Club, to show them how to stencil and stamp with hot embossing. I made it 2 weeks ago and have just realised I haven't posted it. 

It's my 75th birthday today.  I was born after the war, so I don't remember the bombing. However, I do remember queuing with my mother for sugar and orange juice, amongst other things. All requiring Ration Books. It was tough living through the hardships after WW2 and the rationing and shortages that we all had to go through. However, my heart goes out to the people of Ukraine, who are running for their lives with no food, water, or warmth in extreme danger of being killed for trying to save their own and their families lives. 

My card has the sentiment "Make a Wish", my birthday wish is - that this War and others in the world, will end very soon and people will be able to pick up their lives and build them again in their homeland. God Bless you all.

I coloured the stencil with Distress Inks, then stamped the the image, I stamped and die cut the sentiment, layered it all onto black paper to frame it. I forgot to take my antistatic powder to prevent the embossing powder sticking, so I have fly away gold flecks, but I don't mind in this instance. I also went over some of the embossing powder with a glue pen and added more gold powder in places.

stamp - Woodware Autumn Flowers

sentiment and die - Julie Hickey

stencil - Funky Fossil

sentiment card - Crafters Companion Silver Centura.

I didn't mean for this post to be a sad one, but it's how we all feel I think. Although this evening, on a happier note, my 3 brothers will be with us, one who lost his wife last July, the other 2 with their wives, travelling for hours and hubby's sister, who is caring for her dementia husband and is desperate for a break! Her daughter will look after her father for the evening. The 8 of us will talk, laugh and remember good times, it always makes my day when we get together, which as we are all over the UK, we try and do at least once a year, this will be the first time since Covid and they all decided to do it for my birthday.  AW! We will try and forget the heartbreak and worry surrounding families here and abroad. I am so blessed to have them and my darling husband of nearly 56 years.

I hope this hasn't depressed you too much. Try and have a wonderful day and do what we are doing tonight and forget all your worries. Big Hugs to you all. xx

Animals TMR

 Hi Everyone, my DT card today is for 

The Male Room Challenge

This is my favourite sheep stamp. I saw the sentiment on the web and thought my sheep could be different and here is what happened.

I stamped the sheep twice, once on patterned paper and once on plain card. After  heat embossing, I used the patterned card as the base, fussy cutting it out of it's frame, then, using the plain card as it's head, I used distress ink, shading his nose and ears, also fussy cutting it and 3D layering it onto the patterned card. I used other card from the same pad to layer the sheep onto, then computer generated the sentiment layering it onto black paper. I cut the words out and placed them onto the card. Finishing off, I edged the backing paper with Distress Inks.

stamp - Lino cut Sheep - Woodware Stamps

eyes - Spectrum Noir marker

paper pad - Craft Sensations

dies - Sue Wilson Noble Square dies

Distress Ink

Crafty Animals Challenge #59

Crafting Happiness #121

Angel QKR

    Hi Everyone I have 2 DT cards for today

This is for the challenge at QKR. Our challenge is on the 1st and 15th of every month, so you have 2 chances every month to enter the challenge.

http://qkrstampede.blogspot.com/

We will select two winners each of the weeks 

1 using QKR Stampede  or Eureka Stamps image

 and 1 using any image!

Anything Goes every 1st & 15th of the month

I have an "old" work colleague, I have mentioned her before, she loves everything angels and insists that I send her cards with angels on them. Her birthday was last week and I made this card for her. 

I took the digital image into my die cutting machine, printed and cut 3 layers. I added blue ink around the bottom layer image, coloured the top layer and added it to the second layer, to give it strength. Then I added it to the bottom layer.  I decided to keep it fairly simple without too much colour, and added 2 layers of the cut frame around the angel in white. I added gold glitter pen to the halo, wings and her hair and stamped and die cut the sentiment to finish.

stamp - Guardian Angel Eureka Stamps

inks - Distress Inks

sentiment stamp - Magazine freebie

die - Tonic

frame - Silhouette Design Store #1800017

Silhouette Cameo

You can see a little of the gold glitter gel pen here

Cute Elephants

  Hi Everyone, I have 2 DT cards today, this is for -

Critter Crazy

Anything Goes but they MUST feature a critter as the main focus

Whether Furry, Feathered, Fantasy, Fairytale, 

Scaly, or Insect, there must be a critter...

My card today is for one of my Great Great Nieces, she is 3 and I saw this group of 3 elephants in my files and had to go with it. I took it into my die cutting machine and cut 3 layers. I then coloured it with my Distress Inks and added 3D glaze. I had bought a craft box of items and used a card and die cut hearts to make a shaker. I also used the stars in the box too. I painted the heart and gave it a "distressed" look? The sentiment was left over from another project and when I posted this I looked at the sentiment and realised it wasn't quite straight, just as well I could remove and straighten it. The 3 was also cut in 3 layers, with glue and glitter, then covered with glaze. Before adding the pink card layer to the main card I stencilled it in hearts.

elephant digi stamp - Kim MacFarlane (2010) Cuddly Buddly

inks - Distress Inks 

Dies, stars, glitter, pink card - Sizzix January Craft Box

heart stencil - Julie Hickey

Insert

verse - Crafts-U-Print

elephant - Robin's Kozy Skrap Korner - Digital Scrapbook

font - Cafe Rojo