Moo-ry Christmas

I am still beavering away with Christmas cards and now that my two fundraisers are out of the way I can turn my attention to making my own cards.  So between now and Christmas I will share some of them with you as I have got some new Penny Black stamps.

This is my new favourite Christmas stamp and he was quite popular at my last fundraiser

You wouldn't normally associate cows with Christmas but I think he is so cute.  I will definitely be making my Dad a card using this stamp as he use to live on a dairy farm.

Production Line Christmas Cards

When I am getting close to a fundraiser I have to set up a mini production line to get a lot of cards made in a short space of time.

First I stamp out loads of images

Then punch or die cut mats from cardstock

Then watercolour the images and add glitter glue

 

 Cover card blanks in Christmas papers  

Add stamped topper to card blanks with other embellishments and a stamped greeting and before you know it you have a huge pile of cards to sell

Every year I host an open house Avon party in aid of Children with Cancer Fund and I also sell my cards at the same time.  This is just the Christmas cards that I had for sale, I also had birthday cards and cards for many other occasions.

Anita's November Class

Another month and another lovely class from Anita.

This month we used Bo Bunny Mama-razzi

I changed one of Melissa's cruise photographs to black and white and it works really well on this layout.  This is her on the Black Watch with her grandad.  Anita's layout featured ribbon stitched right across the layout but as I am rarely in the mood for sewing on my layouts I just did some cross stitch.

Thank you Anita for another lovely class.

Penny Black Saturday Challenge Week 128

This week on Penny Black Saturday Challenge there was a sketch to follow

This was my take on the sketch

I used the leftovers from last December's Sarah's Cards kit - My Mind's Eye 'Colourful Christmas.  I painted the Maya Road chipboard snowflakes with acrylic paint and then glittered them with Stardust Stickles.  The image is watercoloured with Derwent watercolour pencils and then glittered with Icicle Stickles.  The fancy cut mat for the stamped image was cut using a Nellie Snellen die.  The sentiment stamps are Hot off the Press.

A close up of the stamped image

Thankyou for looking.

Scrapology November Challenge

Once again the girls on the Scrapology blog have chosen a lovely sketch for this month's challenge.

I used these photos of my sister's lovely dog Toby doing his 'yes I know I'm so cute' face.  It was a rare occasion to actually be able to take a photo of him stationary - usually he is tearing around like Dill the Dog (from The Herbs - anyone remember that kids show?  LOL I am giving away my age here!!).

I used Basic Grey Wassail and co-ordinating Bazill cardstock.  The flowers are punched using two different sizes of EK Success retro flower punches and a EK Success double flower punch.  The leaves are a Martha Stewart Frond punch.  I have glittered around the edge of the layout with gold stickles and also lightly edged the punched flowers with gold stickles too.  The flower centres are a mixture of red dewdrops and flower shaped bling.

Here are some close ups of the punched flowers

And a close up of the journalling

I'm looking forward to seeing what next month's challenge is.  There is still time to take part in this month's challenge as it doesn't close until the 4th December.

Dizzy Dots go Mad in Herefordshire - Part Four

On the Sunday morning we quickly did some group shots before the Dizzies started packing up to go home.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

Helen's husband has very cleverly photoshopped Susie into our group picture - its fab!!

When I get round to it I will photograph some of the cards I made over the weekend - I hope we manage to get together again next year as it was the best weekend away that I have had this year - thank you Dizzies you are all wonderful and it was great finally meeting you all.

Dizzy Dots go Mad in Herefordshire - Part Three

These are the lovely ladies that make up the Dizzy Dots

Our lovely leader Lynne (who was also my chauffeur for the weekend and my roomie- thanks Lynne!)

Jules who found us the lovely barn to stay in and organised all the finances

Tara who very quickly became chief entertainments officer, she never fails to make me laugh

The lovely Helen

The lovely Dee

The lovely Em

The lovely Diane (who is joint with Dawn as the quietest Dizzy Dot)

The lovely Dawn, the other quiet Dizzy Dot

And moi, not quite the noisiest of the Dizzy Dots but possibly the one that chatters the most

Last but not least is our absent Dizzy,  Susie who lives in Bali - thankfully we were able to talk on msn with her on Saturday morning.  The only downside to the barn was the internet connection was not great.

Later I will share some of our group photos with you

Dizzy Dots go Mad in Herefordshire - Part Two

As promised yesterday here are some inside shots of the wonderful Meadow Barn

The lovely cosy lounge with wood burning stove

 

 

The upstairs lounge on the mezzanine floor which overlooked the dining room and kitchen

The kitchen viewed from the mezzanine

Views of the dining room table from the mezzanine

I don't think anyone took any photographs of the lovely bedrooms - there were six and all were ensuite.

Be back tomorrow with some photographs of the Dizzy Dots.

Penny Black Saturday Challenge Week 127

This week the challenge on Penny Black Saturday Challenge was All My Favourite Things.

I did a card for a winter wedding anniversary

I have used my favourite colour pink and my favourite of my new xmas Penny Black stamps - this delightful hedgie couple is from Jolly Friends t for transparent set.  They are so cute and I have a feeling that they might end up on DHs Christmas card this year.  I don't make many easel cards but I was impressed with the wonderful scalloped circle Christmas cards that my team mate Diane was making at the weekend and borrowed some of her large circle cutters so that I could make some of my own (I hope she might show some of the cards that she made at the weekend on her blog soon - they were really lovely).  The ribbon threading die was also borrowed from Diane and I think it is a Marianne D die.  The little snowflakes are punched from pink glitter card with a Martha Stewart border punch.  The congratulations is a HOTP stamp and I used Stampin Up punches to mount the stamped greeting on.  The pink swirly paper is from Craft Creations.  For the snow on the umbrella I have used Woodware Fluffy Stuff which was lightly glittered with Stardust Stickles, I used Icicle stickles under the hedgies feet.  So lots of faves included in this card - the stamped image, colour pink, stickles and glitter cardstock.  The card is very sparkly in real life but sadly has not been captured by my photographs - if there is a knack to photographing glittery things I certainly don't have it LOL!!

A close up of the watercoloured image -

Thank you for taking the time to look.

Dizzy Dots go Mad in Herefordshire - Part One

I have recently returned from a wonderful weekend away with my UKS team The Dizzy Dots.  There are 10 of us in our team but sadly Susie who lives in Bali was not able to come over - though she was there in spirit and we managed on the Saturday morning to chat with her on msn.

We stayed in this fabulous barn conversion - Meadow Barn - it was just perfect for a large group.

Close up of the entrance into the dining room

Rear view of the barn

The gardens

View out of the back dining room doors - just look at the mistletoe in the trees, they were all absolutely loaded

I will be back tomorrow with some inside photographs

(A big thankyou to Lynne, Tara, Dee and Jules for taking all the photographs - I must be the baddest scrapbooker in the land.  I had my camera on my table for the whole weekend and didn't take a single picture - I will go and put myself on the norty step now LOL!!!!)

Cheats' Mince Pies

I am not a huge fan of dried fruit so have never really liked mince pies until I started making my own.  I like to jazz up plain boring mincemeat by adding loads of dried cranberries, chopped glace cherries and a big glug of Cointreau.  I usually make it the night before I need it so the mincemeat has time to soak up all the alcohol.  I then cheat even further by using frozen pastry.  Once upon a time I did make my own pastry but now due to health issues I just don't have the time or energy to mess around like that.  Last year I bought some fab mini morsel baking tins from Lakeland to make mini bite sized mince pies.

Here are some I made last week

Ready for the oven -

Freshly cooked -

And a layout that I did last year about my Cheats' Mince Pies

I used one of my favourite kits last year from Sarah's Cards - Cosmo Cricket Early Bird.

It is that time of the year now when I will be making loads of mince pies for the freezer ready for Christmas.  People seem to get offended if I turn up over Christmas and I am not clutching a container of mince pies LOL!!

Wedding album Part 4

This is one of my favourite layouts in my wedding album

I belong to the Twilight Addicts Social group on UKS and last March we did our own mini cybercrop within the group.  It was great fun and we all took it in turns to set challenges.  Lisa asked Rachael Elliott to do a class page for us - you will find it here on Rachael's blog.  I didn't have any of those papers so used Basic Grey LillyKate.  The photo is of R and I with the fab vintage rolls that we had for the day.  I was lucky as I got to ride in it to church and as our wedding reception was a few miles away from the church we had a decent ride to the wedding reception and the driver got lost as well so that gave us an extra 10 minutes in the car.  The funny thing was that loads of people followed us in the car so that they went to the right place, so when the driver finally found somewhere safe to turn around he had a convoy of about 20 cars behind him who also had to turn around.  Shame no one got any photos of us laughing and waving madly at everyone.