And Now For Something Completely Different...

It's 21 years ago today that my sister-in-law Claire gave birth to her third child, my lovely niece Rebekah.

Of course I wanted to make her a card, but my preferred choice of cards are cute and girly and as everyone has different tastes these are not always suitable so I went with something along the clean and simple lines.

As someone said to me 'these 20 minute cards are popular at the moment' and yes, it probably did take 20 minutes to make...after I'd sat there for an hour and a half staring into space and trying to find some inspiration! 

Clean and simple is hard! 

And for someone that struggles to add embellishments to their cards, it seems that on a CAS style of card that  I just don't know when to walk away and leave well alone!

PTI Products Used.

The kraft cardstock is embossed with the Tin Type impression plate.

Large scallop border die, butterfly die, numbers dies.

Sentiment, papers (for the 21) and the matching felt (thank you Amanda )

Thank you also to Maria for the beautiful circular die cut frame.

I certainly have a lot of different embellishments in my craft stash and I rarely use them so maybe if I make more CAS style cards then I will use them a lot more though of course that defeats the object...just like me to be backwards lol!

So any useful hints, tips and constructive comments would be welcome.

Happy 21st Birthday Rebekah!!!

Thanks for looking

Love

MAJA Candy ~ Winners!!

Sheesh...two posts in one day!!

A big 'thank you' to everyone that entered the Maja Design candy, and an even BIGGER 'thank you' to Astrid and Kees for their kind and generous offer of these two beautiful paper pads ♥

So... the first number Mr Random picked is...

Sonia

And the second number chosen is...

Heidy

Congratulations ladies!! If you could both please EMAIL me with your full postal address's and then Astrid and Kees will be able to post you out your prize.

Big hugs

Sugar Bowl Challenge ~ 94

At long last I'm back with a card - I know, don't all faint at once!

And what better card to show than one for the new Sugar Bowl challenge :)

The sketch for this challenge has been provided by the lovely Sweetie Jenny, with an optional theme of "wet, wet, wet". Hmmm so which image to use for this one? Well I had a good rummage through my rubber box and decided on one that not only had snow but a brolly too!

WARNING:

Not for the faint hearted...the following card may offend the CAS style of crafters...more embellies than you can shake a stick at! In my defence, I would've happily stepped away from the card 3 embellies earlier but I was trying to follow the sketch to the best of my ability.

Ta-da!! My first (and at the rate I'm going,only) Christmas card.

I love this stamp! How cute are these two Snow Buddies?

As always, the image is coloured with a mix of DI re-inkers and markers.

The umbrella has been paper pieced...though my poor photography doesn't show the dimension on the brolly. The papers are some really old ones from Dream Street, and then there's a whole snow storm of glamour dusted die cut snowflakes and a flower tucked in there too.

As always, there is a prize chosen at random for one lucky winner, their choice of any 4 Sugar Nellie stamps, rising to 6 stamps if we reach 100+ entries.

Please pop on over to the Sugar Bowl to see the fab cards off my Sweetie sisters.

Thanks for looking.

Love

MAJA CANDY ♥♥♥

Well looky here, looky here, now what do I see? 

Two fabulous new paper pads from Maja Design..just waiting for me :)

It's Christmas Time..available to pre-order HERE from my lovely friends in The Netherlands, Astrid and Kees at Creashop Duymelot. These are due in around October 18th.

And Walking In The Forest, available to buy HERE and this pad is due in stock tomorrow or Tuesday.

If you've had Maja Design papers before then I know you will NEED these, if you've not had them before then I can tell you they are the best quality papers around, and the designs are delicious...the photo really doesn't do them justice, just wait until you have those pads in your hands...the hardest part is to - sharp intake of breath - cut them!

Of course I have got my order in first, before I tell you lot about them! Wouldn't do for them to sell out before I've treated myself to the odd pad or six :)

So....would you like to win a pad of Maja Design papers?

Astrid and Kees have very kindly given one of each of the pads as a candy, so there will be two winners. (One pad per winner)

Once the candy has ended I will send both winners address's to Astrid and Kees and they will post out the pads. Candy is open worldwide. Just click on the blue frog below to enter. It would be greatly appreciated if you could post one of the photos on your sidebar.

A BIG thank you to Astrid & Kees ♥♥♥

Thanks for looking.

Love Elaine xxx

Sugar Bowl Challenge...Ooops!

I am so sorry that I have no card to show today for the new Sugar Bowl challenge...I'm struggling through a different kind of challenge at the moment and one I am not enjoying at all ...and so my playtime has been zero, which in turn makes me a very grumpy bunny.

Many thanks to all my family and friends for their good wishes and excessive gifts for my baby's 18th birthday. He was truly spoiled and had a lovely day. It could only have been better if he didn't have to spend 8 hours of the day in college, but that's life.

I didn't have any time to make Hal a special card so it had to be a shop bought one (bad mother) and Phil was away and didn't get back until 7pm the night before his birthday, which meant I ended up spending far more time than usual in work plus I was on "out of hours" phone answering duties 24/7 which in turn meant I didn't even buy him a gift (doubly bad mother) so he had money for his birthday.

I did fully intend to buy him the ticket for next years Download festival. They announced the head liners last week and he really, really wanted to go if only to watch Iron Maiden. So 9am on Thursday I was online and poised to buy him the 5 day pass until I checked the festival date (this year it fell during college break time) but for 2013 it is a few weeks later. I thought I'd better double check with college and unfortunately the festival falls slap bang in the middle of his A level exams, so he can't go. Which also buggered up my plans for what to buy him!

Since he was having money then the least I could do was make a box to put it in.

Being a boy means he doesn't care much for flowers, glitter or anything too fussy, which was a good job since I only had an hour to put it all together from scratch. I made the box from a sheet of Kraft cardstock. The band around it is made entirely from PTI products.

(The kraft star is mounted exactly in the middle of the blue one but as usual my extraordinary photography skills make it look well off center)

And I just carried on the theme inside...again all PTI stuff.

Very clean and simple but it was perfect for Hal and looked a little better than just shoving the money in with his card, though nowhere near as impressive as the innovative way his other (Scottish) Mummy presented him with a large donation of money!! 

Thanks for looking

Love