My other creative hobby!

One I don't have enough time for these days, but when I was at school I did GCSE Home Ec and loved cooking, sweet things mainly and when I do have time I still love to make cakes and biscuits. I have just baked my 4th Herman cake this year and having had our fill of apple and raisin versions I thought I would experiment with something else....

Chocolate and banana Herman cake!

I don't know what it will taste like but it looks ok and smells gorgeous so fingers crossed it will taste good too! Just waiting for it to cool a bit so I can pop some ice cream on top and try a bit!

Baby in bed, husband out for the night, one episode of Masterchef New Zealand to catch up with on Sky+ and then I'm off to make some cards for a change!!!

New Year's Resolutions!

Having joined in this weekend's bloghop as organised by Redrottie over on Doctafts, i had a quick look back through my posts from this year to read the lovely comments people have left, and realised i never did get round to copying and pasting my list of new year's resolutions! So here they are, a little late (in the same way that Joseph' birthday / Christmas thank you cards are!!!) bit here nonetheless...

1. Tidy my craft desk and keep it that way, with only my current project (card, notebook, photo frame, candle, etc) left on it and any bits I am still using for the project on my work mat!
2. Post more regularly on the Docrafts forum and make a conscious effort to comment on cards in galleries when I look at them.
3. Use up what I have - piles and piles of paper and every other type of craft stash and not buy any more unless it's essentials (glue, DST, foam pads, card blanks NOTHING ELSE!!!!) until I start making some money from either selling things I have made or selling unused/unwanted stash, clothes, etc on eBay!
4. Make my Christmas cards throughout the year.
5. Actively look for selling opportunities in the local area AND sell at them!
6. Spend less time on the iPad and more time upstairs creating!

So, now for a quick review...

1. Started off well and stayed that way for the first couple of weeks of January but then I started getting lots of supply teaching work and if I was working an afternoon I often had to abandon things half-finished in order to go to work, or would craft downstairs while watching tv (eg cutting and assembling decoupage) and that would all end up piled on the desk too, until such a time as I could use it for a card (there are still some sitting there now!!)
2. Again, until life was taken over by work I was doing well with this one, but in my defence there are also a lot less posts on the forum to read / comment on at the moment!
3. Oops!
4. Ooops!
5. I have been to one sale (sold one card and some car boot-type stuff!), was turned down for another event because they already had someone selling cards, and have 2 more events in June to make contact about, plus my local craft shop is going to sell my cards (with my profits being donated to www.eviesdream.org) and a friend has offered to take a selection into her office and see if they sell so not doing too badly on that front!
6. Once again, until work took over I wasn't doing too badly on this one!

I guess I should now head off upstairs and make some Christmas cards with the tonnes of Christmas stash I still have piled up around the bedroom, then I will be back on track with my resolutions!

Nothing to post for a while!

And the reason for that is this little bundle of mischief!!

Tabitha came to join us almost a fortnight ago after we lost our beautiful Tilly in February half term :-( and she is as much of a little madam as Tilly was!

If you have seen photos of Tilly you will know how scarily similar looking they are but this was not intentional! When I was told there was a grey tabby and White kitten in need of a home I immediately thought of the little one on the Whiskas cat food boxes, but I was wrong!

This little bundle of mischief, plus me working almost full time for he last 5 weeks has left mr with very little time for crafting - or anything else for that matter!

A lovely award

I have been given a lovely award from 2 of my friends, but am not quite sure how to link to it using the Ipad so please bear with me while i give it a try!

Claire is my Stampin Up upline and runs all the fantastic classes I go to on Friday mornings. She also does a quarterly all-day class and is starting a Wednesday evening class to! Any local crafters who are interested in joining one of claire's classes please contact her via her site

http://stampinupscrapper.blogspot.com/

The other award came from Andria who is a forum friend from www.madaboutcards.com/forum

And her amazing work can be found here:

http://iona-rose.blogspot.com/

Thank you to both of you, now I just need to work out how to get the actual award on here!!!

Baby girl

No reason for this one, so no personalisation on it at the moment! Another card made to use up some old stash, lots of bits of plain and patterned pink papers were sitting in my scraps box so I thought I'd use some of them up!

Dydd Santes Dwynwen Hapus!

For all my non-Welsh followers and readers, that's Happy St Dwynwen's Day (welsh equivalent of Valentine's Day) for tomorrow as I may not manage to get on here with Mums and Tots in the afternoon and Daft About Craft evening!

I was teaching Year 2 and 3 today so after we had looked at the story, done some work on the characters and used Google maps to find the setting on Anglesey, we made some cards with woven hearts in the front...

From 2 strips of paper with slits cut in the end to beautiful hearts in a few easy moves (or not so easy in some cases!)

Apologies for the poor quality of the photos...

Mother's Day #1

This is one of the cards I made using the decoupage kit I blogged about last week, from www.thecraftbug.co.uk which I was given at our Daft About Craft night on Wednesday. Sentiment reads 'Mum's Day Off' and personalisation is available if wanted.

Easel card... Something a little different!

For my non-crafting friends and followers, this is an easel card and how it stands up! This particular one is he smallest version I make; they can be made in pretty much any size and shape. Colours, images, sentiments, etc can be specified when ordering. This size is £2 with personalisation if wanted, plus postage costs, other sizes can be made at a price to be discussed depending on the cost of producing them!

Teddy bear, teddy bear

I have this stamp so can make similar cards in any colour with any sentiments, names, etc. I have used it for new baby cards and birthday cards for young children, both boys and girls in the past.

Baby boy card

Using the same image as the baby girl cards, and DCWV's Nanna's Nursery baby boy paper stack. Image coloured with Promarkers and metallic Promarkers.

Finally I have time to upload some new cards!

As the title says, I have spent this morning photographing my cards and am now ready to upload them :-)
So I will start with 3 in 1... 3 cards, all different, all made using the same new baby stamped image from Lili of the Valley. Everything else is random stash from my paper and ribbon drawers!