Ready For The Beach

Time to slow the pace down a little….

 

 

 

Make mine a Mai Tai.  Back in a few!

Sparkles Forum Challenge ~ For A Special Lady

Hello everyone and welcome to another fun challenge at Sparkles Forum.  The lovely Amy picked the theme for this month, and that’s For  A Special Lady.  We just had Mother’s day in the US on May 11 and I made my Mam one of those “card in a box” cards that are all the rage at the moment, it fits in with this challenge just perfectly.

I used a sheet of Bazzil card for the blue base and pieces of DP from My Minds Eye and Pink Petticoat, everything else, and I do mean everything, came from the scrap box, so this is a fantastic project to use up all those little scraps of card and DP we keep.  A lot of the embellishments were already cut, extras from other projects.  The only pieces I cut were the Memory Box butterflies at the top left.  The flowers are all from Prima, and the cute image is a Penny Black one that I coloured with Prisma Pencils.

These little projects are such fun to make and very easy to a construction challenged person such as I!!  There might be another one in my future, lol!

We’re sponsored again this month by the amazingly generous Marianne Designs Company

We hope you have time to join in with this month and celebrate those special females in our lives.  Pleas pop over to the main Sparkles blog for all the fine details and to see the wonderful projects from my fellow DT’s.

 

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Challenges:

Pixies Snippets Playground ~ Use Up Your Scraps

Sister Act Card Challenge ~ Anything Goes

Penny Black & More @ Allsorts ~ Anything Goes

Penny Black Saturday Challenge ~ Use Your Favourite PB Stamp (I do love this little one and have used it a number of times now)

Bearly Mine Challenges ~ Flowers

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday

Well, here we are again, back at our desks for another show and tell that is What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday.  This will be my last one for a couple of weeks as we’re heading out for 10 days on a warm, sandy beach in the Caribbean.  In just a few days Andrew and I celebrate our Silver Wedding Anniversary, I can’t believe 25 years have gone so fast!

So I’m hoping my view from Saturday will look a lot like this…

The view of my desk this week is looking like this, I finally got my head around a couple of things I had to get done and so I cleaned up a bit and put away all of those things that I’d left out for weeks.

The white paper under the ruler is tissue paper as I had to parcel something up, and the card on the mat needs an insert and will then be in the post for my nephews 16th birthday.  The mug has been there since Sunday, I meant to retrieve it after I took the photo on Tuesday but I’ve just realised I’ve left it there!  And centre stage are my new reading glasses, the first I’ve ever had and boy did they make a big difference when I was colouring an image on Sunday!  I can actually see the black lines properly now!  And I don’t have to do that trombon-ing action when I’m trying to read something, that’s an especially embarrassing thing to have to do in a shop!

We’ve had an interesting week weather wise so far, it got really warm suddenly (80F) which has fired up those nasty afternoon thunderstorms we’re prone to at this time of year.  In fact, loads of us spent almost 1.5 hours in the tornado shelters at work on Monday afternoon, there were two verified tornadoes but no injuries.  Then Tuesday, just before I left work to go to the dentist, a short but very violent thunderstorm blew through, uprooting trees, bringing down power lines and flooding roads with 1/2″ of rain in 15 minutes.  I got diverted on my way to the dentist due to road closure because of the flash flooding, it was a mess, but I finally arrived for my filling!

I hope we get calm weather in Mexico for our holiday!

So, all that’s left is to tell you to hop over to Julia’s for all the details of WOYWW, and to wish you all a happy and crafty couple of weeks, and have fun all those people taking part in the ATC swap too.   Chin, chin.

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday

A mess if I’m honest.  It contains EXACTLY the same stuff as last week AND the week before, all I’ve done is add a bit to it!  I don’t know why I’m procrastinating, I’ve got stuff to do but I’m just not doing it!

Anyway, the new stuff is two lovely skeins of Alpaca sock yarn.  As I’m knitting many more patterned socks now I need yarn that can show off stitches nicely and not swamp them with lots of colours or quick colour changes, and that means solid, semi-solid or tonal yarn.  I got those two on Monday after work at another little yarn shop in the area.  Beside the yarn is a free sock pattern that they popped in the bag too, and underneath that  is a little pile of stamps that arrived on Tuesday in a little love parcel from the home front!

The other small ball of yarn is one I’ve listed for sale or trade on Ravelry, it was given to me but I can’t think of a single use for it!  Maybe someone will want it.

We had our first camping jaunt of the season last weekend when we went over to the SW side of Michigan.  We were at a race track with the Vintage racers that we’re friends with on the Saturday, it was fun but really cold, wet and windy.  Sunday brightened up and although it was still cold at least the sun was out, but the breeze right off the lake was mind numbing.  Still, at least we got out somewhere!  Roll on summer, lol!

That’s me this week.  To find out about this weekly desk lark head on over to Julia’s at The Stamping ground for all the info.

Sparkles Christmas Challenge ~ Baby It’s Cold Outside

Hello and welcome to another fun challenge at Sparkles Christmas Forum.  Our winner and Top 3 from the previous challenge have already been posted so make sure you check to see if it was you!

It’s the first of the month again and that means it’s time to set a new challenge for you all.  It’s my turn to host this month and I have picked the theme of “Baby It’s Cold Outside”, so we want to see your cards featuring outdoor gear like coats, hats, gloves and scarves etc.   I picked this theme back in January when it was brass monkeys outside and we had 40″ of snow on the ground!  I had to get bundled up every day as it really was cold outside.

We’re sponsored again by the very generous Marianne Design Company.

My card this month features one of the cute Penny Black hedgehogs.  He’s obviously been caught a bit short and has “borrowed” a hat to keep him warm from Santa’s washing line!

The backing pieces is embossed with a ProvoCraft Holly embossing folder but it’s very difficult to see.  I really liked the sketch this week at Sketch Saturday and have used that for my LO.  The Christmas papers are all scraps, the centre one is by Stampin’ Up and the rest are all DCWV.  I used a little EKSuccess snowflake punch on the ends of them.  The image was coloured with Prisma pencils and Stickles and mounted on to a scrap of red card and popped it up with foam tape.

The sentiment is from a Fiskars clear set and it’s stamped in Versamark Brilliance Cottage Ivy and edged with DI Festive Berries as are the papers and the embossed piece, it was also popped up with foam tape.  Finally, I added a little strip of backers twine.

 

I hope you have time to join us this month and please remember to pop over to the Sparkles Christmas Challenge Blog for the other wonderful inspiration from my teamies.

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Challenges:

Sketch Saturday ~ Current Sketch

Jingle Belles ~ All Bundled Up

Pixies Snippets Playground ~ Use Up Your Scraps (the stamping card, the red mountning card and the strips of paper)

Crafty Hazel’s Christmas Extra Challenge ~ Anything Goes

Sister Act ~ Anything Goes

Completely Christmas ~ Anything Goes

52 Christmas Card Throwdown ~ Glitter

Christmas At Sweet Stampin’ ~ Glitter

Christmas Fun Challenge ~ All That Glitters/Anything Goes