Iceland...

Hello everyone, I've been AWOL again but I have an excuse as I've been away on a last minute holiday

It was a bit of a change for us, we went to North Iceland

It was absolutely amazing, what a fantastic place

The Northern Lights were weak and we couldn't go whale watching because of the blizzards but I think if those 2 things had gone to plan it would be my most favourite trip ever... and I've been on a few

The challenge this fortnight at AYLI is Christmas or Birthday and I went with Birthday.  I love making Christmas cards but because all our family birthdays and anniversaries are spread between December and March I don't usually get chance to make any until those are all out of the way.

These stamps are a bit different for me but I needed a couple of cards and didn't really want cute, it's a set from HunkyDory…

The sentiment stamp and scalloped border die are MFT, I use them both a lot

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You can enter the challenge and find all the details on the AYLI blog

here

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Thanks so much for stopping by and have a great weekend

Favourite shape or fold...

Good morning crafty friends, thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone is well

It’s been a funny old week, I haven’t had a spare minute yet don’t seem to have actually got anything done!

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The AYLI challenge for this fortnight is your favourite card shape or fold. I don’t often make shaped cards so thought I’d try something different

This Z fold is very simple to do and I really like it for a change…

This die is actually my favourite shape at the moment, it’s the MFT stitched tag corner stax…

…the eagle eyed amongst you will notice that they are the same fairies, I made this card and then had an unfortunate incident with a glass of wine! I managed to save them and used them on the first one

The little fairies are LOTV downloads from their Etsy store and the greeting is from the large magical sentiments stamp set

Watch out for news of the new cute Spring stamps from LOTV which we'll be sneaky peeking soon. We have some lovely new teamies too so lots of lovely ideas coming up for using the new images

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You can enter the challenge and find all the details as well as some fab inspiration from the team on the As You Like It blog

Have a great Thursday

Happy Sunday...

 

Hello, what are you all up to on this Sunday afternoon?

 

I’m doing a bit of crafting today and catching up on some TV. We watched Luther for the first time when it was on recently so I’m catching up on the box set. I have to say I’m enjoying the earlier episodes more; I’ve watched season 1 and just about to start season 2

I’ve been watching ‘the Crown’ too which I’m really enjoying but I’m interested to know how accurate it actually is

 

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I’m having real trouble posting to my  blog, I’ve always done it in Live Writer without any problems but when I go to publish it’s bringing up an error. I’ve spent ages googling it but can’t seem to fix it. So, I’m having to write the post on blogger which I hate because the spacing and text is so messy. Has anyone else had similar issue over the last couple of weeks?

 

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I have a couple of cards to share today that I made with the Copolop bears from Mama Makes. This is a Christmas set but they are so quirky I wanted to use them all year round. You couldn’t do it with all the stamps but I masked the tree from the front of the jumper on these 2 and I think it worked ok…

 

 

 

The papers are Easter from Echo Park, I love the colours in this pad they are so bright and zesty

The ‘Happy’ is also from the same stamp set

The cross stitch square die is from Swedish House Crafts, clouds are Memory Box and the scalloped border is Joy

 

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Hope you like them thanks so much for stopping by and enjoy the rest of the weekend

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pearls or Buttons?

 

Good evening lovely crafty friends, did you have a nice weekend?

 

I went to see the new Mary Poppins film with Jess, it wouldn’t have been my choice but she wanted to see it. I actually really enjoyed it – good old fashioned family entertainment!

 

We used to go to the cinema often… maybe we are just getting old and grumpy but after an altercation with some yobs who were running riot and people chatting/phone screens/bags rustling etc we usually end up deciding it’s easier to watch in the comfort of our own home!!

 

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Must mention before I get onto my card that our lovely Loti from Mama Makes is expecting a precious baby boy

To celebrate she’s offering a fantastic 30% discount across the store until Feb 1st

 

 

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The new AYLI challenge is Pearls or Buttons; which is your favourite and why?

I do like to use both but recently have been using pearl drops instead and I love them. The Nuvo drops come in a great range of colours and you can make them any size you like – no fiddly gluing them on either!

This is one of the new Lili of the Valley fairies, the colours were dictated by the papers which were in my scrap box. I have years and years of bits that I can’t bring myself to throw out so I’m trying to actually use some of them…

 

 

 

Stamp – LOTV Lily Sparkle

Sentiments – LOTV large magical set

Flowers/leaves - Simon Says Stamp

 

The pearl drops in the centres of the flowers were done with Nuvo ‘bubblegum blush’ and ‘simply white’ crystal drops

 

You can enter the challenge and see all the details on the AYLI page

 

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Thanks so much for stopping by, have a good week all

 

 

 

 

Star books…

Hello crafty friends, I do have another card with the new LOTV fairies but I thought I’d just share these star books first as it’s been a bit of a cute overload the last few posts

I was sorting through my pictures to move onto a new laptop and I’d forgotten about them, I may have put them on here before but if I did it’s a long time since

I’ve done a few of these, I love making them and they don’t really take too long. I found a tutorial on you tube for the measurements if anyone would like a link but once you’ve made a couple you can easily change the sizes

This is the front when it’s folded, it ties with seam binding dyed to match

I don’t know why but I didn’t take pictures of the other pages doh

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And this is the second one, this is using Loti’s quirky stamps which are all available from Mama Makes…

I should have really put this one on last month, I’m done with Christmas for a while now!!

Hope you like them, thanks so much for stopping by

Happy New Year!

Good afternoon everyone, a very happy new year to you all and I hope you had a lovely Christmas. We went to my Brothers which was nice. The kids are all getting partners and houses of their own now so I think this will probably be the last year we are all together as a family on Christmas day

 

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I decided to take a few weeks out over the holidays, I’m in so many groups on Facebook now and I do like to comment on everyone’s work but it takes so long that I can’t get round my favourite blogs. Before you know it 2 hours have gone by and I’ve sat on the laptop and not made a thing! So I’ve decided just to stay in the LOTV and Polkadoodles groups which are my favourites and I’ve unfollowed the rest. I halved my friend list too, if you’re not interacting I don’t see the point and I had a lot of friends who just added me because we had another 100 crafty friends in common. I’m hoping this will free up some time and if not I’ll have to re-think and maybe move my sharing to Facebook and stop the blog. I know this has been well discussed but I do like my blog, it’s a bit of a diary I enjoy looking back on and I love to visit others too

 

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It’s a new year and a new challenge at AYLI so we’re kicking off with a nice easy one - ‘Anything Goes’

 

LOTV have a new launch and they are also sponsoring us. They have the cutest new fairy called Lily and I used her on my challenge card…

 

 

The heart string is from another of the stamp sets and the sentiment is snipped from one of the new circles which I love. It’s so long since I used flowers on my cards but it made a nice change

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I have this one to share too using another of the fairies, there are 4 different images on the rubber sheet. You can see the new sentiment circles on here too, I printed this one quite small…

 

 

Sorry about the pictures, the light is so bad at the moment it’s hard to get the colour right

 

Hope you like them, the challenge is open for 2 weeks and you can enter and see all the details here

 

The new Lili of the Valley stamps are available in rubber on their website and in digi from the Etsy store

Enjoy your weekend crafty friends, thanks so much for stopping by

Christmas animals…

Good morning everyone, I’ve been such a bad blogger and didn’t realise how long it had been since my last post!

We went to Tenerife, it was lovely just to get some sunshine and relax but I’ve come back and it’s Christmas, and I haven’t done a thing!!

I promised myself I would make all my own cards this year and despite good intentions I only had about a dozen done (which admittedly is better than usual) so I’ve frantically been trying to get them all made over the last couple of days. I’m not good under pressure and when I know I have a deadline my mojo goes out of the window

These are a bit of a change for me, the challenge this fortnight for AYLI is your favourite Christmas animal so I looked at some Polkadoodles collections as they are our sponsor this time

I’ve used the images in them quite a lot but never really taken notice of the design sheets which are included. What a revelation, they are fabulous! You just print the A4 sheets and all the toppers and embellishments are ready to cut out and use, I printed the matching backing papers too and was really pleased with the results

The first one is my challenge card, my favourite Christmas animals have to be polar bears and penguins so this image is perfect…

The snowflake background I used is a Marianne die

I thought I’d share this one too as I made quite a few…

There’s still time to enter the challenge and we have a fab prize up for grabs from Polkadoodles

The bundle I used for my cards today is Winnie Winterland. The prices are very reasonable anyway but if you want to buy anything do it on a Tuesday when they usually publish a fab discount code on their blog

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Thanks so much for stopping by, I’ll be trying to catch up on all your blogs later this week when I eventually get myself sorted for Christmas