Last minute Christmas cards

I thought I'd finished but found I still had a few to do! I used the free papers that came with this month's Simply Cards and Papercraft for these, the first two are A6, the third one (which I was particularly pleased with) is A5 - sorry the silver hasn't scanned terribly well. I think I definitely have finished now - I'm quite glad the current issues of the cardmaking mags coming up are full of non-Christmas things, I definitely want to leave it a while before making any more Christmas cards!

ATC Swap

A little while ago I sent some ATCs to Rosemary, who attends the Church where I used to go when I lived at home, and where my Mum still attends regularly. I had a nice surprise this week as she sent me my three by way of swap :-) They're really pretty so I thought I'd show them to you

Apologies - and a great digi-link

Apologies for the gap in blogging, what with Christmas preparations and various bits of illness for all of us over the last week or so (culminating in me having a really nasty sickness bug this week which has only just passed), I haven't had too much to blog (that you'd like to hear about anyway!) We did put the Christmas decorations up on the 1st December, even Sharna helped as you will see!

For all you digi-scrapbookers out there, I have my dear friend Kim (she always finds such beautiful things!) to thank for a wonderful find. If you go here you will find links to the the most wonderful collection of Christmas digi-treasures! But hurry! You've only got until the 16th December to download and there is a LOT there! Update - the deadline has now been extended to 24th December - still not long though for all that is there!

Shopping and cards

Been Christmas shopping today in Brighton with Del, Bel and MIL, made a reasonably good start which is just as well as its coming round very quickly! Managed to pop into Sussex Stationers, ESK and Poundland for some bargain craft shopping too lol

Had two cards to do when we got home, sadly a sympathy card for a family friend whose Wife passed away in the week and a Birthday card for a friend's elderly Father. I had a good idea what I wanted to do with the sympathy card - I was going to use a googled image for the lily but was lucky enough to find the 3d sticker in ESK! The man's birthday card I was completely stumped with - I've made cards for the same gentleman before and am running out of ideas! Finally came up with the idea of a "pyramaged" train image and I ended up really pleased with it! Funny how ideas suddenly seem to come from nowhere.... The sympathy card is made with pearlised card and both have silver card on, neither of which have scanned terribly well, added to my usual wonky scanning you can imagine they actually look better in real life!

Vintage and another black, white and red one

I'm still not 100% but much better and feeling up to a little fiddling around with PSP and then making cards with the results! The images are again from the Crafty Computer Paper Vintage Graphics' cd, the backing paper on the little girl one is made with a little PSP magic from the roses the girl is holding.

Also before I forget, Del got me some double sided tape the other day from Poundland, I know I've heard another people mention buying it before from there - £1.00 for four rolls, I've just been using it and its as good as some of the more expensive ones. There, that's my cheap Pixie tip for the day! lol

Crafty Bits

I did manage a little crafting over the weekend. I finally got round to making the box for Del's Nan's birthday card which I made a few weeks ago

I also made this little card

I also made my five cards for the Forum Secret Christmas Card swap - but obviously I'm keeping those secret!

Freebie time!

To make up for not being around over the last few days, here's two free baby boy 3d sheets and matching vellums.

The images are from the copyright free cd which is available (free!) when you sign up for the mailing list from Crafty Computer Paper. To go to their site just click their banner on the left of this post, they have some great things on their site.

To download the freebie sheets just click below and then click the download button

Baby Boy Sheet number 1
Baby Boy Sheet number 2
Baby Boy Vellum number 1
Baby Boy Vellum number 2

I'll put the matching baby girl ones on here in the next day or so. Have fun!

My Chemical Romance

Sorry, there's been nothing from me for a few days, for various reasons. The first one was that last Thursday we went to see my beloved My Chemical Romance at the O2 Area. Wow! A great venue and a great evening, they were as good as I knew they would be. The only sadness was that they were two members short, drummer Bob Bryar has ongoing serious wrist problems and guitarist(also my beloved!) Frank Iero has had to return home due to family illness. Their replacements did them proud though and it was brilliant (and I didn't feel too old :-) !) It was great to meet fellow obsessed fan Kim from the forum too, she was as lovely as I knew she'd be from the all the long (and often very silly) chats we've had! We were so lucky to get about six rows from the front too, amazing as there were 20,000 people there! Anticipating most people reading this are cardmakers rather than MCR fans I won't go into any more detail, except to say it was a brilliant evening. Unfortunately I had a message from Kim a few days after the concert to say she had flu, and since yesterday so have I! Not surprising with so many people close together that germs get passed around I suppose.... least we were both fine on the evening and able to sing (loudly), scream, jump up and down etc. Disgraceful behaviour for two grown women!

Playing

Just having a play and came up with this one - quite pleased with it especially as I sat down with no idea of what I was going to do! The image is from Karen's Whimsy- some lovely images on there.

Dolphins

Another 3d and vellum for you, dolphins..... As always you are free to use it however you wish (except selling the sheet of course), the photo was taken by me.

Just click here to download

Dolphins 3d sheet
Dolphin Vellum

Have fun!

Thank you!

Well we had a good weekend, a friend Del works with had a fireworks party on Saturday night which was good and Bel thoroughly enjoyed. Managed to get a bit of crafting time yesterday. I thought I'd make a few thank you cards for Bel to send after Christmas, with her dyslexia its less stressful for her than having to try and write several letters. I made five, but will just show you three, as you can see they follow the same theme!

Another 3d sheet

I made this little bear a while ago, playing with Paint Shop Pro. You're welcome to use him in anyway you like - if you let me see what you come up with I'll put it on here for everyone else to see too!

Click to download

"Pixiebear" 3d sheet
"Pixiebear" Vellum

Tap!

Well after weeks of waiting.... the tap results arrived today! I got a B which is counted as a merit ("reflecting a very good standard of achievement overall")... me? lol. We all got Bs, except one lady who managed an A! I'm just happy I passed to be honest! :-)

Cardmaking Friends Challenges

New challenges on the Cardmaking Friends forum this week. The challenges were "Oriental", "Remembrance" and "Retro". Here's what I came up with last night

I might have another go at the Retro one, I'm not quite 100% happy with.... Its come out rather "busier" than I intended.... oh well good excuse to play I suppose :-)

3d threebie .... I mean freebie

Well 4shared seems to work a treat, so I thought I'd put another freebie on here for you, this time a 3d sheet and matching vellum. The image from this came from a vintage graphics cd I bought from Crafty Computer Paper. All the images on the cd are copyright free so you can use them on cards for sale and I did check with when I first started making sheets quite a while ago now that it was OK to make them into sheets and let other cardmakers use them. They have some brilliant stuff on their site,things to download etc and some very unusual papers (have you ever wondered where you get the stuff you use to make temporary tattoos with? lol), all in all some great things for all sorts of craft projects. If you'd like a look at their site, just click their banner on the left hand side of this page. Incidentally, I bought the cd from them a while ago, but they are now offering the cd free to anyone who signs up to their mailing list!

Nearly forgot about the sheets! Here they are

Click on

Art Deco Lady 3d sheet

and

Art Deco Lady Vellum

to download.

Enjoy!

Incidentally, I'd love to see any cards you make with it and I'll put them on here for everyone to see! Just click here to send me an email

Allsorts!

Someone on the forum was after a liquorice allsorts paper (I'm sure someone does sell one, but Google failed to come up trumps on this occasion) so I used it as an excuse for playing in Paint Shop Pro (I never need much of an excuse!)and this is what I came up with

I've wanted to test out the 4shared file sharing programme for a while so if you would like the liquorice allsorts paper click on

Liquorice Allsorts

to download - its free to use, but a comment would be appreciated :-)

Relaxed Saturday

I got up at 6.00 this morning (mad I know on a Saturday) but at least it might I finished my typing job nice and early :-) Then Del took his Great Aunt down to Comet to help her choose a new tv and back to hers to set it up for her, then down to his Nan's who lives on the floor below to set up his Great Aunt's old tv for her! When he got back we popped down the town for a wander round - I managed to find a pair of black cargo pants that actually fitted - I'm cursed with a size 14 waist and size 16 hips so generally if anything fits on the hips its too big round the waist, and if it fits round the waist, its too tight on the hips, but these are good, and nice and long too which I prefer. I also bought a pair of pair of pink baseball boots (don't ask why, I just liked them!) a new black eyeliner, black nail varnish and red hair dye! lol So with my MCR t-shirt and sweatshirt I'm all sorted for the 15th.

I might even let you see a picture at some point :-)

Del part exchanged a couple of his X-Box games for the new Simpsons game - we had a little go earlier and its brilliant! The graphics are really good and looks like there's loads to do on it. We're Simpsons' fans anyway, Marge is my favourite, I sometimes see a little bit of myself in her (or a bit of her in me!)

Anyway, tomorrow I have to catch up with the housework and we have to clean the fish, (we've just cleaned Hammy the Hamster) which should leave Monday when I get home (especially as Bel will be at ballet) free for some crafting. Which reminds me, one of the things I went to the town for was doublesided tape. And what did I forget to buy.....?

Going digital

I haven't got much crafty to show you as I've had some extra typing from work to do in the evenings this week. Actually its quite good as it gives me a bit of extra money - I need to buy myself some new clothes so that when I go to see My Chemical Romance (a fortnight today woo hoo!) I don't look like a 40 year old Mum... well I know I am a 40 year Mum but I can take one night off can't I? lol Coincidentally, yesterday,as well as being Halloween, was My Chemical Romance's guitarist Frank Iero's 26th birthday. I have the band to thank for getting me into digital scrapbooking, I'd thought of doing a scrapbook of MCR pictures a while back but had trouble finding suitable embellishments etc and so digi seemed the answer. Just so as I've got something to show you (its looking a bit plain with no pics for a few days!) here's Frank.....

ZZZZzzzzzzz!

Its been a while since I updated you on Del's medical saga! For those who don't know, he had what was then a suspected heart attack at the beginning of August... After all sorts of tests (during which time he was unable to work) they decided it wasn't a heart attack, but they think he may be suffering from sleep apnea - he's always snored badly, and basically they reckon he stops breathing for a few seconds every little while at night and then wakes himself up. He does make some odd noises during the night and often says he wakes up still tired so we thought it would be great to have that sorted out....... however, it is a condition which is reportable to the DVLA in connection with his bus licence so he was still unable to go back to work, at least as a driver, which has not made things easy! Fortunately his employers have been very good and after ten weeks off on less than full pay (not good during the Summer holidays :-(), during which time he felt like something of a fraud as he felt fine(!), he is now back at work, going out with the Trainee drivers when they first start and teaching them the routes (basically sitting on the bus being driven round all day!

He's been waiting absolutely ages for an appointment where he'll stay at hospital overnight and be monitored whilst he sleeps (personally I'd never get off to sleep (a) in a strange bed and (b) knowing I was being monitored but he does have the ability to sleep anywhere so I guess he'll be OK!)

Then out of the blue this morning he got a phone call from the hospital this morning to say they have had a cancellation and can he go in this afternoon at 4 p.m.!

Not sure how long it'll take them to come up with a "result" (they told him there is a mask he can wear at night which helps alleviates the problem if indeed he is confirmed as suffering from it) and how long after that it'll be before he's signed back on as fit to drive a bus but at least its a step forward!

Blue.... in a good way!

Circumstances mean I'm sometimes crafting on a budget so I tend to keep my eyes open for bargains! I forgot to say the blue card I used on Bel's halloween card was the best bargain of all - free! The office I worked for merged with another one a while ago and we had a name change, so we had to stop using everything with the old Firm' name on. We were doing some tidying up the other day and found a box of folders made of dark blue "leather" effect card, a lovely thickness which were due for the bin.... I said I'd take a few and was persuaded to take the whole box! I think my theme for the next little while might be ..... blue!

Halloween

On a Monday I drop Bel off at ballet at 4 o'clock, then come home for a couple of hours until my dance lesson at 6.15 and we come home together after that. It gives me two hours of "me" time! Bel commented the other day we never do much for halloween so I decided to at least make her a card this year

I got the images for this one from this site http://www.card-making-world.com/index.html, you have to sign up to register but there are lots of freebies and hints and tips on there. The pumpkin is on a "spring" so it comes out a little way from the front of the card

Check out my Slide Show!

Just found out how to do this lol! A few of my cards/layouts - some have been on here before and some haven't... If you click on the little "loudspeaker" the music is "Helena" by My Chemical Romance (who else!) lol

Cheap Pixie tip!

I'm terrible for making cards and taking ages to get round to doing inserts and bagging them up with the envelope and I used to have a problem finding someone to store them where they didn't get bent. I've now found a cheap solution! The plastic tubs that washing liquid "liqui-tab" things come in are a great size to store cards up to A5 size. (The brand doesn't matter!)

BEFORE

AFTER

So it may not be posh but no more bent cards - and they smell nice too!

Off on a tangent!

Um.... I started making round tags last night... and ended up making this little card. Not sure where that came from! lol

Finding time....

Most days I only work til 3.00, but on Thursdays I work til 5.30 and then go straight to tap so I'm not home until after 7.00 - of course, if I have an idea for something to make it will always be on a Thursday when I don't get a lot of crafting time! I'm just dying to have a go at some more tags, different shapes this time... Bel's being picked up early today by MIL as its half time so I'll get three quarters of an hour before I have to go to work - I might cut a few bits out on the Cricut :-)

I did get something done last night, I set a challenge on the forum this week to make a card using an item which isn't a usual part of cardmaking stash - and then found I had no ideas at all lol. Then I was sitting at Del's desk and was struck by an idea! The circles are covered with foil from chocolate biscuits and the black mat they're sitting on is part of the packing from the biscuits (yes, the biscuit tin was on the desk). It then occurred to me I had some wire which had been round a wine bottle which I had squirreled away a while ago on the grounds it might be useful so that is on there too, plus the fibres were wool from a scarf I knitted last year! Not sure I'd be brave enough to send it to anyone but.... Challenge completed! lol

Apart from that I've just realised its three weeks today that I go to see My Chemical Romance! Woo hoo!

Tags - and temptation!

Had great fun at the beginning of the week making these Christmas tags

They're great for using up those little scraps that are too small to use for anything else. Yes, admit it, we've all got them! Think I might do some non-Christmas ones to use throughout the year (which sounds far too organised for me!)

I've also been seeing what people on the forum have been making with their Bind-it-alls, have to say I'm very tempted - I think I'll ask for money for my birthday in January! :-)

Sorry!

What have I been doing for the last ten days? Um...not blogging anyway, for which I apologise - I am still here though, been doing craft bits in the evening and finishing a bit late to blog, then next day its getting up and off to work and the day's gone again!

Only problem is I've got to remember now what I've shown you and what I haven't!

First of all is this card I made for Del's Nan, its a sort of A5 concetina. The "dangly bits" on the front are from a necklace I was given and decided I'd probably never wear... well I definitely won't wear it now!

Next are the ATCs I mentioned as part of my monthly personal challenge - I love ATCs but I couldn't seem to get motivated for these! I went back to an old favourite, the Art-e-zine website, for the vintage ladies. I also painted them with 3d gloss - I put it on slightly thick on one of them and its cracked - I'm actually quite pleased with the effect, it makes it look more "vintage-y"

These couple were for challenges on the forum, the first one was for a photo challenge I set. I had great trouble finding a template for the ivy leaves and I ended up having to pick real ones and draw round them - Bel thought I'd gone mad! The second one was one Shell set for a card using ripped paper - little did she know that I find it a struggle NOT to use ripped paper on everything. Bel has been known to say to me "I know you like torn paper Mummy but you don't have to use it on EVERYTHING! I also used another "wombled" bit of necklace!

The last one was just me playing last night. I used to find "girly" cards very difficult to make but I was quite pleased with this one. I tried to do something a bit more imaginative with the shape at the front.

Challenges!

I've had good fun this week doing some of the challenges on the forum - I've made some bits I'm quite pleased with that I wouldn't have normally made so I've surprised myself a bit! The challenges were as follows

Colourwheel (spin and use the three colours it gives you)

Swirls

Autumn colours (I took this a bit literally!)

Man/Boy's card

Butterflies

Have to say I really enjoyed doing these! I was helped timewise by the fact Bel's school had teacher training on Monday so I had a day off. It was lucky I did, during the morning there was a ring on the doorbell and it was DHL with my laptop! So am I a very happy bunny. I'm slowly restoring everything to where it should be on there, starting with changing the fairly attractive wallpaper of an Autumn scene it came back with (no, not the photo I used for my Autumn card!) to an even more attractive picture of MCR guitarist Frank Iero. Sigh........ !!!