Ta-Da!!!

Exciting stuff to tell you today!

We're at the end of June now and boy but it's been the busiest and best month ever, filled with lots of exciting times and good news.

My heartfelt thanks go to my friends and family for all the birthday wishes, beautiful cards and very generous gifts...I was thoroughly spoilt rotten...VERY thoroughly.

My home is filled with the most beautiful handmade cards, and I got lots of new crafty stash to play with.

I also got some very, very exciting news...

I am now officially a Tildarette on the Totally Tilda Challenge!!!

I was more than a little stunned to be asked but absolutely delighted.

It's a fantastic team to be on and all the ladies are so much fun (as well as amazingly talented) though some of them are very naughty...mostly the ones I already know so I feel perfectly at home!

I will start by joining in with  the next challenge in a fortnight but there is a new challenge today with the theme of "Tomboy Tilda". The sponsor for this challenge is the very lovely Nikki, owner of 

With the prize from Bunny Zoe's Crafts being...

Please bob on over to the Totally Tilda blog to see all the amazing cards from the Tildarettes.

I also won a candy last week! It was a huge shock as I couldn't win a bag of sand in the desert so I nearly fell off my chair when I found out my name had been picked for this....

Thank you very much La-la Land Crafts and Irina, I will be stalking the postie :)

I'll be back tomorrow with a card...at long last!

Thanks for looking.

Love

Celebration Candy ~ Winners!!

A big thank you to everyone that entered my candy.

Mr Random has picked out the winners:

The first number picked is for...

A £25 voucher to spend at Dies to Die For which goes to....

Jasmina

The second number picked is for...

A £25 voucher to spend at Live And Love Crafts which goes to...

Amanda.

Now...Amanda happens to be one of my BFF's. 

So with that in mind, I have an additional winner...

Netty.

Netty...your candy is going to be a surprise, you'll find out what it is when you get it, but I'm sure you will like it :)

The voucher prizes are e-vouchers to spend in the store, so I will require your email address's to enable the vouchers to be sent to you. 

 *Please remember to check on the stores site for the postal charges to your country*

Jasmina, Amanda and Netty, if you can all please EMAIL me and I will get your prizes sent to you asap.

(also remember to check your spam folder on your emails if you haven't bought from these stores before)

I am being taken out tonight for a posh dinner, and tomorrow will be my birthday celebrations so it may take a day or so before I get back on the computer.

Thanks for looking.

Love

Celebration Candy ♥

Apart from December, June is the busiest month of the year in this household, with so many occasions to celebrate. My Mum and Dads anniversary, my favourite brother-in-laws birthday, my Dad's birthday, Fathers Day, and whole host of friends birthdays, and in amongst them is my birthday.

I was out all but one evening last week, and next week isn't any different. It's always lovely to catch up with friends and family and I've had the best week ever, but there are some bad points to all this socialising.

Dining out 4 nights in a week is not at all good for the waistline and I've got a Buddha belly.

I've not been home much so no crafty stuff has been accomplished and I've hardly had a chance to even turn my laptop on all week.

Next week will be no better.

No cards to show but I do have a little celebration candy.

I couldn't think of anything new and amazing to offer as candy so how about a gift voucher?

The hardest part was deciding which shop to offer a voucher for. 

I have 6 shops that are my personal favourite places to go and fill my basket but for obvious (financial) reasons, I can't give vouchers for them all...or the boy would be eating boiled/fried/roasted string for the rest of the month.

And so for this candy I've chosen two shops (in alphabetical order)

One winner chosen at random will win £25 in vouchers to spend at Dies To Die For.

Tracy has the best selection of dies to be found anywhere, and also stocks a wide variety of stamps, papers and embellies. Most definitely a fabulous shopping experience.

And one winner chosen at random will win £25 in vouchers to spend at Live And Love Crafts.

If you love vintage and shabby chic embellishments then you're in heaven here. I buy the embellies just to look at and stroke! And then Sandy has the most delicious papers to drool over :)

I'll leave the candy running a little longer than usual, in the hope I get the time to actually make something in the meantime.

If you have a preference as which voucher you would like to win then please feel free to leave that in a comment.

Candy is open to my followers...just click on the blue froggy to enter.

Thanks for looking and good luck!

Love Elaine xxx

A Very Fancy Little Lady.

Well my socialising is over and done with for a while...I don't think I've been out for so many nights in a fortnight since I was a teenager! It's been a fabulous couple of weeks but I've missed my craft room, ink and rubber. It's been so long since I sat and made anything and I was going a little crazy, so I made sure I had a little playtime set aside over the weekend.

My neck is considerably better but it's still painful when I sit colouring for any length of time...I think my desk needs to be higher so I'm not bent over so much.

This little cutie was sitting patiently waiting to be inked up...she does have impeccable manners, and she is a delight to colour.

Fancy Marci has been coloured with the usual mix of DI re-inkers and markers.

The gorgeous papers are Maja Design Vintage Spring basics...yet again.

Sorry but I absolutely love them and there's still some left in the pad so you can expect to see more of them.

Not much in the way of embellies...just for a change lol.

Just a few pearls and a sentiment from PTI stamped onto MFT Mini Tabs.

On another note...since Sky changed their email to Sky Yahoo I've had nothing but trouble.
The last straw came when all my email contacts disappeared last week, so I'm using gmail now.
I have the odd few contacts in my gmail address book but I've lost the majority of my friends email address's....though that might be good news to some of my pals lol!

Thanks for looking.

Love

Happy Birthday ♥

Happy Birthday to my lovely Dad...85 today ♥

Wishing you the most wonderful birthday...love you to the moon and back Dad.

He's probably the reason why I didn't get married until I was 29 (almost 30 to be precise).

It was on the scale of Mission Impossible trying to find a man to measure up to the greatness of my daddy.

All my love Always xxx

60 Years Ago...

Last week didn't turn out quite as planned, though when does life ever follow the script?

Phil ended up working the Saturday through to Tuesday, but we made the most of the rest of the week. 

We had lunches out, did some gift shopping, got some jobs done at home etc, nothing too exciting but we enjoyed the time spent together. 

There wasn't much time left to play in my craft room but I did get a bit of colouring done...now if only I can find the time to make it into something! 

I did make one very simple card...

White cards are so difficult to photograph - It's lovely and sparkly in real life!!

I wanted something simple but classy for this occasion, and so lacking any imagination myself, I totally cased the card from THIS talented lady, after spying the card on Pinterest, and having one of those light bulb moments..yes, I have those stamps, so let's use them!

I took the advice of my wonderful Facebook friends and bought pale grey ink, and stamped it off on scrap paper first to achieve a lighter shade (thank you Dena!)

The stamps are Stampin' Up Hearts A Flutter, the sentiment was computer generated as I was seriously running out of time, and the crystals are Swarovski.

The card is of course for my Mum and Dad, who despite having 3 horrible children, have managed to stay married for 60 years!

I did buy them a card which I posted so they would have it today, and made this one to take over on Saturday when we are all going out for a family meal.

I will try to remember to take some photos of the occasion, I forget in all the excitement.

Happy Anniversary Mum and Dad ♥

Thanks for looking.

Love