Less is More - Week 60 Recipe

As you can see from these two photos of my gorgeous 40th Birthday cake (made by my vary talented cousin at Karen's Celebration Cakes), two of my favourite things are purple and butterflies. So when I discovered that this week's Less is More challenge was a 'Recipe' challenge, I immediately knew two of the three challenges that I would be using; Week 16 Butterflies and Week 49 Predominantly Purple.

Inks: Memento Grape Jelly, Versa Color Heliotrope, Memento Tuxedo Black

Stamps: Craftwork Cards 'Springtime and Sentiments'

And this is my card. I stamped some off the butterflies 'off the edge' of the card giving me my third challenge; Week 6 Off the Edge. I needed a quick card for an elderly neighbour whose been taken into hospital so I made my second ever one layer card; I think I might be getting the hang of it!

All shopped out!

Especially for Steph at Stamping & Sharing by Stephanie, here's a pic of the goodies I bought at the Hobbycraft show at the NEC yesterday.

Doesn't look much there considering how much I spent but I did get most things off 'my list'..... and some!  I seem to have gone a bit OTT on the stamp sets but I just had to have them all! Every other store seemed to be selling Memory Box dies, obviously the 'in' thing at the moment, but as far as dies are concerned all I bought was an Xcut nesting heart die and a Spellbinders Nestabilities (Labels Twenty) to go with a gorgeous Justrite stamp set; looking forward to playing with those. There were a few things I didn't get; Inkyliscious do some lovely, excellent value for money stamp sets, but the ones I wanted all sold out on the Thursday :( Will have to wait until pay day before I think about ordering them and another Spellbinders Nestabilities die I couldn't find.

Less Is More - Week 59 Masking

This time tomorrow I will be back home stroking all the lovely crafty things I'm planning on purchasing at the Hobbycraft show at the NEC! Fortunately, living in Birminhgam, the NEC is just a short hop away on the motorway for me - less than half an hour. I've chatted to ladies at shows before who have travelled miles and spent a small fortune just to get there.  I don't think I could ever be a country bumpkin, I'd miss the convenience of surburbia far too much! Last Friday I took my 8 year old daughter to see JLS at the LG Arena, then Daddy took our 4 year old to the NIA on the Saturday to see Disney on Ice, then back to the NEC for me tomorrow for a full day of craft shopping!
Anyway, the challenge over at Less is More this week is masking. I must confess, after watching the very talented Barbara Gray making brayering look sooooo easy, I more or less demanded a brayer for Christmas from my other half! Unfortunately, I've had very little success with it and it's only been out the box twice - ooops.  So the sunset (or sunrise?!) on this card was done with distress inks and a blending tool. The masking technique I used was the old favourite "circle punched post-it note for the sun" technique. I also tore some copier paper to mask the sky whilst inking in the landscape. I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out, what do you think?

Papers: First Edition 'Desert Blooms'

Stamps: Inkyliscious 'The Coppice' and  'Take Flight - Birds'

Inks: Spiced Marmalade, Fired Brick, Brushed Courdroy and Mustard Seed Distress Inks,

Memento Rich Cocoa

Sentiment: Paula Pascual Double Sayings by Personal Impressions

Stampin' Up inspired CAS card

Have had the day off work today as my 'ickle car had to have a service and MOT. As well as catching up on housework that I didn't do yesterday (tut, tut), I managed to fit in the time to make this card for a friend's birthday. The design is based on a Stampin' Up card in the current Idea Book & Catalogue.

It's quite sad how reliant we are on our cars - I was so glad to get mine back!  Had to take the girls on the bus from school to collect the car from the garage. £3 to go less than a mile - no wonder so many people drive! Thought the girls were going to freak out when about 40 noisy secondary school kids got on, but thankfully our journey passed without event.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the lovely Mums in Bloggerland.  I was a very lucky Mommy and had 2 lovely cards off the girls (Daddy chose v well this year!) and a foot spa which I will be trying out later.  Mia, (my 4 year old), decorated 2 cupcakes at nursery which she polished off herself.  Not sure whether her nursery teacher is trying to tell me something but the one cupcake was decorated with a Loveheart sweet; how cute I hear you say, but my Loveheart said "Grow Up"!  How very rude!
Lastminute.com as usual, I finished my Mother's Day cards for my Mom just before we went to visit her today! 

Papers: First Edition New Leaf

Dies: Spellbinders Oval, Xcut Tags, Joycrafts butterflies

Punch: Fiskars Apron border punch

Stamps: Magnolia Love Letter, tea cups free with mag

Sentiment: Computer generated

Inks: Antique Linen, Brushed Courdroy Distress inks, Memento Rich Cocoa

Embellishments: Seam binding, adhesive pearls 

And then this one (my favourite of the two) is from the girls to their Nanny. It's an easel card with a post-it note pad attached to the base so Mom can keep it by her telephone.

Papers: HOTP free with mag

Dies: Spellbinders Circle, Scalloped circle and Oval

Punch: Stampin' Up Heart to Heart, Martha Stewart branch

Stamps: Magnolia 'Tilda with Straw Hat'

Sentiment: Computer generated

Embellishments: Wild Orchid Crafts paper flowers, Chocolate lace, post-it note pad

Less is More - Script

It's One Layer Card week over at Less is More and the challenge this week is to include 'script' in your project. I think this is the first ever one layer card I've attempted and to be honest, I found it quite difficult!

This is my attempt.

I stamped Magnolia's Love Letter stamp in Versamark and then heat embossed it in white. I painted over this with a Distress ink wash in Tattered Rose.  I then stamped the flower head of my stamp from Penny Black's Allegro stamp set in Worn Lipstick and sprayed with a water mister.  I then stamped the image onto my card to give a watercolour effect.  I did the same with the stalk in Shabby Shutters.

Haven't decided what sentiment to add yet so have left it as a blank card.

Less is More - Neutrals

I have been an avid follower of the Less is More blog run by the very talented Chrissie and Mandi for a very  long time. I check the blog regularly and love looking at what everyone has been creating for the weekly challenges.  However, I've never been brave enough to enter a challenge.....until now!!!

Here goes then...my first ever Blog Challenge entry!  The challenge this week is Neutrals and this is what I came up with.  (Just hope I have followed the Ladies's rules correctly!)

I used a Kraft card as my base card and added strips of First Edition patterned paper.  The stamped image (Memento rich cocoa) of two birds in a nest was part of a free stamp set with one of the card mags. This was die cut using a tag die from the X-cut Dielicious Tags/Bookplates set backed onto an oval. The sentiment is a Personal Impressions Paula Pascual design.  Hope you like!

Blogging again!

Nearly 5 months has passed since I last blogged!  I have been busy crafting, but I've just been uploading my cards to my Do Crafts gallery rather than on my blog.  However, all that is (hopefully) about to change as I want to start taking part in some of the many Blog Challenges out there, in particular the Less is More Challenge Blog.  So keep watching this space for regular blogs.

Caggy

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