Wednesday Once Again

Nice to be back with you all again, although I do have to admit that I didn’t miss Wednesdays while sitting on a beach on the Isle of Palms in Charleston, South Carolina where the weather was a balmy 86F!  So, so, beautiful.  Neither of us wanted to come back that’s for sure.  It’s amazing the difference 900 miles South or a 14 hour drive made! Charleston was in full summer and full bloom, with plants flowering in the gardens that we can only grow inside in Michigan, and perennials in full bloom that won’t flower here until July.  We visited historic Charleston, historic houses and plantations, toured a WWII era aircraft carrier and diesel submarine, kayaked in Charlston harbor with dolphins ans spent a wonderful few hours lounging on the beach and messing about in the Atlantic surf, as well as beach walks most mornings and evenings.  Paradise compared to “sunny” Michigan where they were still being plagued with snow and sleet showers!  But at least the daffodils are finally blooming here, but I’m incredibly unhappy to have swapped the shorts and bikini for sweat pants again!!

So, a couple of photos to whet your appetite, I will definitely be popping on a couple of holiday posts as soon as I can get the photos organized and sorted out, we’ve only just had a quick glance at them for the moment.  You can click them all for bigger pictures.

This was our local beach which took us all of two minutes to walk to!  We spent many a morning here picking up washed up Starfish and depositing them back in the sea, us a quite a few other folks too!  I have no idea how many I picked up in the 11 days we spent there but it had to be getting close to three figures!

Pelican sitting on a pier pole as we got ready for kayaking.  We went to a small island (you’re not allowed to land) where hundreds of them were busy building, or already sitting on, huge nests.

Standing on the deck of the US Submarine Clamagore, whilst behind me is the towering bulk of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown.

But, there’s a desk too, this is how I found it when I got back

Not a whole lot going on obviously.  The two tins in the foreground contained some stamped images and my coloured pencils but I never even got them out of the bag on holiday!  Too busy rescuing Starfish!  There’s also a little pile of wood stamps on the left, a treat for myself after working killer hours at the end of March/early April.  Here’s a closer view:

Five little House Mouse’s and three little PB Hedgies too!

So that’s me this week!  Please excuse me if I don’t say how nice it is to be back!!  Well, it is and it really isn’t!  Maybe next time I’ll just take my lappy and blog from the beach!

Head on over to Julia’s for many more desks to visit this Wednesday, you just never know where you’ll end up.

For Mothering Sunday

No, I’m not getting a jump on next year’s Mother”s Day, American Mothering Sunday is on May 9th and as I don’t have a British calender at home, I rarely find out in time what the English Mothering Sunday date is to make and send cards and gifts.  So in this house, it’s the American one that is observed.  Don’t think our Mum’s really mind as they both have another son and daughter each to give them cards and flowers at the appropriate time in April, and then, just as they’ve forgotten all about it, our cards and flowers arrive in early May.  So they both get two Mother’s Days in a year!  Works out quite well really!

So I made this card for a couple of challenges.  Penny Black Saturday Challenge would like you to Say It With Flowers, and Allsorts want to see Anything But a Square card, so this is what I did:

The little stamp is brand new and is called “Greetings” and I water coloured him with various inks adding a little Stickles to the daisy centre and colouring the ladybird with glitter pens.  I cut all of the shapes with  Nesties Dies and proceeded to cover the top layer with yellow inks.  What possessed me to do this I’ll never know as I’ve got a stack of yellow card that I rarely use!  Could have saved myself a bunch of time!!  The lush DP is DCWV Cafe Mediterranean and it’s all raised and embossed and the ric rac trim is actually paper not ribbon.  On the stamp the little hedgie is holding another large daisy type flower aloft but I thought it might be fun to cover that bit up with a Prima flower and a Recollections rose.  A few gems finishes it off.

I also decided to decorate the inside a bit, as this card is obviously for a special person.  Excuse the hand holding it open, I’d meant to take the picture before I stuck the two halves together but forgot.  It’s also a bit close to the light so the colours are a little bit bleached out.

The backing paper is from a really old DCWV stack, long before they got really fancy!  I generated the sentiment on the computer and then added some tiny little See-D’s stamps I have where all the shoots, leaves and flower heads are separate so you can mix and match, they’re a bit like peg stamps only they’re not in little pegs!!  Anyway, I stamped a little border in New Sprout, added a few stalks in Bamboo Leaves and some little starburst heads in Tangelo, along with a few Purple Hydrangea (ink colour) flowers.  It’s edged in Citrine ink.

I had a lot of fun with this but I now have to make another one as Andrew immediately claimed it for his Mum, and I know how much my own Mam would love this too.  Still, should be quicker second time round, and I’ll definitely be using the yellow card to make the backing pieces with!!

Card Recipe:

• Card: Canson Bristol Board
• DP: DCWV
• Stamps: Penny Black Greetings ~ See-D’s
• Inks: DI Antique Linen, Vintage Photo, Scattered Straw & Spiced Marmalade ~ Memento Tangelo, New Sprout, Bamboo Leaves & Purple Hydrangea ~ Stampology Citrine & Onyx ~ ColorBox Q Chiffon White & Rosebud ~ Martha Stewart Meyer Lemon & Hibiscus ~ Rubber Stampede Green
• Embellies: Water colour pencils ~ Gems and rose flower from Michaels ~ Orange flower from Prima ~ Paper ric-rac from Trim With Flair ~ Fiskars Glitter Pens ~ Yellow Stickles
• Tools: Cuttlebug ~ Nesties Large Scalloped Circles ~ Computer & Printer

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Challenges:

Penny Black Saturday Challenge ~ Say It With Flowers

Allsorts ~ Anything But A Round Card

Paper Play Challenges ~ Critters Galore

Hanna & Friends ~ Use a Penny Black Stamp

CRAFT Challenge ~ Animals/Pets

Simon Says Stamp ~ Spring Colours and/or Easter

Bah Humbug – Candy Canes

Tags

Bah Humbug

Candy Canes is the theme at Bah Humbug for this week….. and you’re going to need a magnifying glass to spot mine!!  I made a quick card for this last night when I should have been packing, and here I am, blogging it for when I should be packing!  I hate packing, hate it with a passion!  Last May we went home to England for three weeks and I packed the night before we left!!  We don’t leave for South Carolina until very early next Wednesday morning, so in my world, that’s absolutely plenty of time to throw a few clothes in a case!

Here’s my vintagey inspired card:

Spotted the candy cane yet, lol!!  I dug out some papers from the DCWV 2009 Christmas Stack, which has loads of vintage inspired papers to choose from.  The image is Penny Black from the Jolly Good Time clear set that I got for Christmas and I embossed it in black before colouring with water colour pencils.  The snow is Frosted Lace Stickles and the bow and the mouse’s scarf have Glossy Accents on them, and there’s Yellow Stickles in the lamp windows and Xmas Red on the mouse’s nose.  I think I’ll stick a bit of glue along the bottom and add some coarse glitter as I think it needs some more snow on the ground.  The snowflakes are also from a Penny Black set, Winter Greens & Whites, and the sentiment is from the Jolly Good Time set too.  And I think our little mouse is having a Jolly Good Time indeed!  Bit too much of the Christmas Cheer if you ask me!

Card Recipe:

• Card: Blank free from UK card magazine ~ The Paper Company red & green card
• DP: DCWV 2009 Christmas Stack
• Stamps: Penny Black Jolly Good Time & Winter Whites and Greens
• Ink: Versafine Black ~ TH Antique Linen ~ Versamark ~ ColorBox Q Merlot
• Embellies: Water Colour pencils ~ Stickles Frosted Lace, Yellow & Xmas Red ~ Glossy Accents
• Tools: Fiskars Corner Rounder

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Challenges:

Bah Humbug ~ Candy Canes

Divas By Design

There’s a brand new challenge blog on the block starting very soon called Divas By Design.  And along with a giveaway to celebrate their new blog, they’re also having a DT call, so yes, you can guess what’s coming next!  I’m throwing my hat into the ring for consideration!  Although this challenge will be fortnightly, the Design Team will be split into two teams so you only post monthly which would be absolutely perfect for me.

This is the lovely bundle up for grabs for one lucky person if you become a follower and leave them a comment:

And here are three projects of mine for the DT call, gosh, do you know how hard it is to narrow the choice down to just three???  I was stuck at five for absolutely ages!  Please feel free to look back at older posts!:

Less Is More Meets Penny Black @ Allsorts!

Back again, and look, it’s not a Christmas Card!!  Less Is More This week want to see A Touch of Red and I wanted to have another go at the PB@Allsorts challenge which was to use black, white and one other colour.  I made a card for this on Sunday I think it was, but wasn’t especially happy with it and wanted another go!  After I made and photographed this I realised I’ve actually  channeled the sketch from the previous week of LIM, it’s not even on my desk any more but for some reason it really stuck in my mind.

I had already put Penny Black Lace Flower on my desk at the weekend as I knew that’s what I really wanted to use for this and so stamped and edged it in red and clear embossed; punched a red strip with a Martha punch and added a black contrasting strip too, and finished off with a sentiment by Fiskars, also in red.  I also didn’t notice until after I’d taken the photo that the loop on the letter “k” of kindness hadn’t stamped properly!  At least it’s a very easy card to replicate if I choose to do it again.

 

EDIT: As Chrissie pointed out, the border punch on the top left is slightly mis-aligned, unfortunately it’s also mis-aligned on the bottom right as well but the image panel covers it up, but I couldn’t do anything about the top exposed edge!  I got the punch on clearance so now I wonder if it was me or the punch as I couldn’t seem to make the punched pattern align with the printed part on the punch!  Another reason to make the card again lol!!

 

Card Recipe:

• Card: Michaels card blank ~ The Paper Company card
• Stamps: Penny Black Lace Flower ~ Fiskars Latte Love clear set
• Ink: Stampology Ruby
• Tools: Heat Gun ~ Clear EP ~ Cuttlebug ~ Nesties Large Ovals ~ Martha Stewart French Scrolls border punch

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Challenges:

Less Is More ~ A Touch of Red plus Clean and Simple

Penny Black @ Allsorts ~ Black, White and one other colour

Allsorts ~ Blooming Blossoms

St Luke’s Charity Cards Challenge ~ Say It With Flowers

A WOYWWing We Will Go

Morning peeps, how are you this wet and snowy morning lol!  Spring still hasn’t fully made it to Michigan yet, but soon, very soon!!  Last week was crazy busy for me at work as it was our year end, and then on top of that we had a major hardware failure that resulted in almost 21 terrabytes of data having to be restored.  If you think of that in terms of your own pc with perhaps 120 gb hard disk, we “lost” 210,000 gb that had to be recovered once the hw was fixed!  Anyway, mostly back to normal now but I’m playing catchup with all the things I should have been doing last week at work so it’s still busy but not crazily so.

This will also be my last WOYWW for a couple of weeks as we’re fed up with our “Spring” and are heading off to the Charleston area of South Carolina for 10 days.  I do love a roadtrip, haven’t done a biggish one like this for a few years, so really looking forward to that.  We plan on leaving at ridiculous o’clock next Wednesday morning (4am!) and coming back Easter weekend.  At least it’s 70F down there.

But at least the desk got a bit of a work out at the weekend and also Monday and Tuesday as well, so it’s back to looking a bit more used.

 

So, apart from flowers what can you spy this week?  There’s a half munched biscuit (cookie) on the little plate, home made Cranberry and Orange shortbread which is a Hubby developed recipe.  The obligatory mug of black tea is there to accompany the biscuit, the other smaller mug is actually what I use to dip my brush in when I’m water colouring and is normally various shades of murkiness depending on when I last washed it out!  I drank it once too, completely by mistake, when I was reaching for my tea but not paying attention.  But don’t worry, I won’t be doing that again in a hurry!  There’s also some Penny Black Stickeroos on the left which I was about to use to make a humourous Christmas Card (posted Monday), some inks and a ribbon reel too; plus the card I happened to be working on at the time.

Short and sweet from me this week.  Head on over to Julia’s for more desks to visit.

Christmas Foliage

Lol, sorry peeps, it’s another Christmas card!  I try and combine challenges where I can so I don’t overload you with too many Christmas cards in a week, but couldn’t make that work this time round.  So, here’s a card for Crafty Hazels Christmas Challenge, who wanted to see Christmas Foliage and/or Flowers.  I also used the current sketch on Sketch & Stash for the LO.  It’s a bit bright, you might want to grab your shades!!

Did I blind you??  I have to admit, pink isn’t my first colour choice for a Christmas card but I decided to use up some bits out of the scrap box and seemed to have a lot of pink scraps for some reason.  They’ve been there forever as the paper is from a DCWV 2008 Christmas Stack and I can’t remember the last time I cut into it.  Certainly wasn’t Christmas just gone.  Isn’t the image lovely?  It was a free download from Just Inklined and I have to admit to a terrible thing here…. I’ve signed up for a number of notifications from digi sites if they have a weekly freebie, and I collect them diligently and then I never use them!  Terrible I know, especially when they’re as gorgeous as this one.  I coloured it with Whispers markers and added some Cotton Candy Stickles to the pink bow.  The greeting is Hero Arts and I clear embossed it too.

Card Recipe:

• Card: Michaels card blank ~ The Paper Company
• DP: My Minds Eye Winter Wonderland (dotty piece) ~ DCWV 2008 Christmas Stack
• Stamps: Just Inklined Christmas Wreath ~ Hero Arts Christmas Sentiments
• Ink: Martha Stewart Hibiscus
• Embellies: Whispers Marker Pens ~ Cotton Candy Stickles ~ Gems from Michaels ~ Swiss Dots Embossing Folder
• Tools: Cuttlebug ~ Nesties Scalloped Circles ~ Marvy Uchida Scalloped punch

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Challenges:

Crafty Hazels Christmas Challenge ~ Christmas Foliage and/or Flowers

Sketch & Stash ~ Sketch plus new or neglected stash ( Old DCWV paper and neglected digital image)

Charisma Cardz Challenges ~ Bling & Sparkle

Let It Snow?

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Bah Humbug

Back again with another Christmas card!  I know how you enjoy these so much!  Bit of a challenge this one was, two of the Christmas challenge blogs out there post new challenges every Friday, and last week that meant April Fool’s Days, so both wanted to see something humourous.  Hhm, that really stumped me, I looked though all my stash and found nothing suitable, but finally came up with this:

Nothing particularly humourous about that is there?  The main image is a Penny Black Stickeroo, matted onto card and then mounted on to the front of a 5″ x 3.5″ card that had been covered with snowflake paper.  The bow was made on the Bow-Easy but I have to say it’s looking a little bit funky!  But let’s have a look on the inside shall we?

Pretty much sums up my feeling about this past Winter, and here we are, early April and we still get the odd sleety rain/snow shower, it just doesn’t want to give up this year.  I downloaded a free font from Christmas Fonts called Igloo and printed it out on to card that had previously been printed with a silver snowflake paper from Mad About Cards.  It was roughly edged with a bit of TH Broken China.

So that’s my attempt at a humourous card!  I know laughable, and I’m not even talking about the card,  lol!

Card Recipe:

• Card: Michaels card blank ~ The Paper Company card
• DP: The Paper Company Country Snowflakes ~ Mad About Cards Snowflake download
• Image: Penny Black Stickeroo Snowflakes Falling
• Ink: Tim Holtz DI Broken China
• Embellies: Organza ribbon from JoAnn ~ Snowflake gem from stash ~ Free font Igloo

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Challenges:

Bah Humbug ~ Cards That Make You Giggle

Jingle Belles ~ Humourous

For Fun ~ Christmas

Penny Black – Mixed Media

Well, I seem to making up for the lack of crafty makes and blogging this week by knuckling down and (enjoying) getting on with it.  PBSC had a lovely sketch challenge yesterday and I discovered that Simon Says Stamp also had a sketch challenge too, and oddly enough, the sketches were both by the same person who is a DT member of both challenges!

Penny Black @ Allsorts kicked off a new monthly challenge on Friday too, that that was to use black, white and one other colour.  For some reason completely unknown for me I picked blue, it’s a colour I rarely work with unless it’s for a Christmas card, but as soon as I saw the challenge that’s what popped in to my head.  But I’ve got a whole month, so if I get time I can always enter it again with another colour combo.  Anyway, here’s the card:

 

 

 

The image is once again a Penny Black, Mixed Media, which I resist embossed in black with various shades of Memento inks.  The central blossom was coloured with Memento Fluid Chalk inks applied directly with paper blending stumps, and I also stamped and coloured a second one and decoupaged it for a bit of effect, adding a bit of Turquoise Stickles for embellishment.  Oddly enough, I managed to pick exactly the same piece of DP out of my 12″ x 12″ box as yesterdays card, only in blue this time not pink.  For my embellishments I decided to use a little cluster of blue flowers in place of the more traditional single flowers, and I added little flow gems to three of the corners.  The sentiment is from a Fiskars clear set.

 

Here’s a close up of the decoupaged flower, which I decided was a Meconopsis.  That’s a Himalayan Blue Poppy for those of you who don’t know your flowers!  An acid loving poppy originally from the Himalayas which grows abundantly in some of the beautiful gardens in Scotland.  I first saw this beautiful flower at Inverewe Gardens on the NW cost of Scotland many years ago.

 

Card Recipe:

• Card: Michaels card blank ~ The Paper Company black card for matting ~ DCWV Robin textured card ~ Strathmore Artists Bristol card
• DP: Hot Off The Press Blue Handmade Flowers
• Stamps: Penny Black Mixed Media ~ Fiskars Cameo Ovations
• Inks: Memento Bahama Blue, Danube Blue, Paris Dusk, Aegean Blue & Night Sky ~ Versamark
• Embellies: Jolees blue flower spray ~ Turquoise Stickles ~ JoAnn Black EP ~ Flower gems
• Tools: Heat Gun ~ Marvy Uchida Oval punch

 

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Challenges:

Simon Says Stamp Challenge ~ Sketch

Penny Black @ Allsorts ~ Black, White & one other colour

Allsorts ~ Blooming Blossoms

 

Penny Black Lovliness

Phew, what a week!  The crap really hit the fan at work this last week and I found myself staying on until 7pm, along with my colleagues, to stabilize and avert a minor catastrophe.  A couple of the others still have to go in this weekend to finish up but I got my bit done, thankfully, although the price I paid was no crafting of any sort, no What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, no knitting, no reading, no blogging and not enough sleep!  We have a bit of a wet weekend here, and for the next few days actually but I’m really grateful for it because it means I can put my feet up and relax a bit, or in my case, craft for a bit as it amounts to the same thing!

So it’s Penny Black time again and I have a lovely image for you this week provided by the equally lovely Sandra, called Dotted Petals.  I absolutely adore Lilies, they’re my favourite flower and I have quite a few in my summer garden.  Penny Black Saturday Challenge gave us a great sketch to follow and Allsorts want to see Blooming Blossoms.  Just perfect for a dreich weekend, it was nice to get the pretty papers and embellishments out I can tell you.

Love that Lily, this one’s going on my wish list for sure, you could colour it just about any colour combination imaginable.  I water coloured it with inks and pencils and added a little Stickles to the centre.  The sketch called for a few flowers or other embellishments around the oval and it took me longer to pick out the ones I wanted to use than it did to put the whole darn card together!  There’s something to be said for not having too much choice!  The pretty paper is from Hot Off The Press and I’ve been stashing it away for a special day, like you do!  The sentiment is from Fiskars.

As much as I really like this card I keep thinking it needs a bit of something else in the area of the ribbon stripes!  Just can’t decide what to do with it right now, any opinions?

Card Recipe:

• Card: Michaels card blank ~ The Paper Company
• DP: HOTP Pink Handmade Flowers
• Stamps: Penny Black Dotted Petals ~ Fiskars Cameo Ovations Clear Set
• Inks: Martha Stewart Pink Carnation, Hibiscus &  Meyer Lemon ~ Colourbox Q Warm Violet
• Embellies: Ribbon from Offray ~ Magenta Stickles ~ Prima Flowers ~ Small pink flowers from Michaels ~ Making Memories Brad
• Tools: Cuttlebug ~ Nesties Large Ovals

 

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Challenge:

Penny Black Saturday Challenge ~ Sketch

Allsorts ~ Blooming Blossoms

St Lukes Charity Challenge ~ Say It With Flowers