Birthdays

Just a quick post to show you the preparations for Sophie's 4th Birthday.  I made place-mats and thank you bags using craft artist.  I have also prepped pinwheels for the children to make and decorate (along with princess hats) tomorrow - well I had to do something crafty with them.

If we survive the crafty table, party bags and party food there should be another update next month!

Not quite keeping to my New Years Resolutions

Oh dear....not sure how much of this I should write as I know my husband reads and shares these posts...now.

'Gulps'... my resolution not to spend any money on crafty items has gone since I have been going to the Stampin' Up classes (well to be honest it had gone by the end of January).  I've spent roughly £40 on new stamps and bits and pieces and I have only been to two classes. One of the new stamp sets I have purchased is called 'Flamingo Lingo'. It's a really fun set featuring flamingos, I will show you some card examples with my next blog as I haven't had a chance to play with them yet.

I have also purchased the Midnight Blush capsule collection from Papermania (via Create and Craft), from which I made the following 'Thank you' card and box for a colleague.  I stamped and embossed a free flower stamp set from a magazine onto a off-cut from an A3 piece of centura pearl card-stock. I then layered with a strip of paper and lace from the capsule collection.  I covered a tag with contrasting paper and stamped a sentiment on and attached it with a 'big bloom' paper flower.  I made a basic box for the card to fit in, and layered paper from the collection onto plain black card before decorating the box with the layers.  I stamped a large greeting onto black card and embossed with silver powder.  I die-cut several flowers and attached around the greeting, finishing with a gem in the centre of each flower. I thought they both looked very sophisticated.

I was very busy in April as it is the busiest month for birthdays - Dad's, my brother's and my niece's all within 2 weeks.


For Dad's I used a Stamps Away mask (hummingbird) and Phill Martin's texture paste (denim blue) from Creative Expressions.  It worked quite well, although I do need to practice more in ensuring the paste doesn't bleed under the mask.

I also made a pop up box card from the Grandchildren using a Hunkydory at the Seaside kit.

For my niece I used a Santoro Gorjuss card making kit for her card and used the same kit to decorate a notebook and bookmark for her.

There have been other expenditures which I decided had come for Valentine's Day and Mothers' Day...after I had bought them!

Oh well, it should give me an incentive to try and sell my cards at a Craft Fair, although I never seem to have time to build up enough stock to do this.  I must do so as I am just getting swamped with crafting goodies.  My latest purchases I have justified by saying they are for my daughters 4th birthday preparations this month.  They include a W R Memorykeepers pinwheel board and accessories and a laminator and pockets.