Sheena's Birthday Card

This little lovely is for one of my KraftKrazy forum friends, Sheena.

As hers is a December birthday I toyed with the idea of a winter birthday card but decided to use that one as her Christmas card instead when I suddenly remembered this fabulous image I just had to have and had already stamped out with Sheena in mind!

I come from a motor racing family so was quite sure I would get a lot of use out of this stamp, and knowing his much Sheena loves the F1 (especially Ferrari!) this was a must for her card too!

Tilda's outfit is coloured with Black and Berry Red Promarkers and her hair is Spice. The backing paper is from a K & Co stack and a small off-cut of a Black Magic Coredinations paper embossed with Swiss Dots, which was used on a Christmas card but just seemed to work well with this card!

A simple peel off from Craft Creations, some flowers and brads from my stash and some sticky backed gems (Crystal Stickers) which I bought at the NEC just finished it off nicely!

Christmas Robin #1

This gorgeous Christmas image was sent to me by a lovely lady known as ChrisAndCat on the DoCrafts forum.

The robin is coloured with Berry and Shale Promarkers with Gold Promarker legs.
The boot is coloured with Cocoa and the sole with Caramel Promarkers.
The holly leaf was coloured with Holly Promarker (not a huge surprise!!) and the snowdrop leaves with Forest Green.

The whole image has been lifted with Star Dust Stickles glitter glue, an absolute favourite of mine all year but especially at Christmas!!

The image was sent in response to a request I posted as I needed a traditional Christmas image for a card order and didn't really want to go to the expense of buying a stamp that would hardly be used. When I eventually get round to blogging all my ordered cards you will be able to see what I did with this image!!

A duck for Christmas

The thing with commissioned cards is that you can be asked to make absolutely anything! This card was for one of the children in Joseph's music class to give to his grandparents. The initial request was for a little boy and a duck in traditional Christmas colours. When this proved to be a little beyond possible the mum said anything cute would be fine! At the NEC I picked up this cute stamp (the duck has a duckling on its head!) from Stamposaurus and felt it was one I would be able to use again so it was worth paying out for! He is stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and coloured with Summer Sun Promarker from the Summer 2012 Limited Edition set, and Mustard Promarker. His hat is red card from Papermania with everyday cotton wool stuck on it!!!!

The duck is sitting on an image which was a free card blank with some Forever Friends chipboard shapes either last Christmas or the one before, mounted on Dovecraft / Trimcraft Christmas paper with ribbon from Wilkinson's.

A very special card

This card was made for a friend to give to her new foster daughter. She was amazed to find that even the fostering and adoption society don't sell cards for carers to give to children and yet they are expected to give cards to the children! This is where handmade personalised cards definitely have a place!!!

Tilda has been coloured with Pink Carnation Promarker with highlights using the pink metallic pen from set 2. Tilda's hair is coloured with a combination of Burnt Sienna and Sandstone. There is lots of Star Dust Stickles on the card as the little girl is 6 and very much into pink, pretty and girly!!
The flowers are from Prima, the butterfly is from Syntego and the wording was done on the computer using Angelica font, written over with the pink metallic Promarker and then with Star Dust Stickles on top.

A child in need

After hearing how much money some people working for Children in Need get paid, I have decided not to donate to them this year but instead to donate directly to one child who is in need. Evie is one of my Rainbows, she is 5 years old and has Cerebral Palsy. As a result of this she cannot walk and relies on a wheelchair. Her family, friends and supporters have been desperately raising money to enable her to have an operation which will hopefully enable her to walk. Unfortunately, just as we were approaching the £30,000 needed for the operation, Evie's mum received the awful news that the surgeon who had agreed to carry out the operation was moving on from the hospital where he worked and would no longer be able to help. This left only one option, to turn to the USA. This meant resubmitting an application and a very nervous, worrying time for Evie's amazing mum, Donna. After an agonising week or 2 of anxiously checking for emails from America, Donna received fantastic news yesterday...Evie has been accepted for the SDR operation at St Louis in the USA! Now we just need to meet her new fundraising target of £50,000 to get her there!

If you can join me in making a small donation to a child in need today, i would be very grateful. Thank you.

4 forum members, a sister and a friend!

This is the other reason for going to the NEC last weekend - to meet some of my lovely forum friends from www.kraftkrazy.proboards.com (we used to be the forum members on MadAboutCards but after it closed down we created our own forum so we could keep in touch!)

We met up at the end of the show - myself, my mum, Sheena, Chris and Chris' friend Carol - and headed back to our hotel with all our goodies!

Later on we met again and went to Frankie and Benny's, joined by Sheena's sister Sinead and part-way through our meal Linda and her sisters popped in to say hello before heading out in town!

This photo is the only one I have of us all - Linda, me, Sheena, Sinead, Carol and Chris so I thought I'd share it! We all had a fantastic time and the staff in Frankie and Benny's couldn't believe this was the first time we had all net face-to-face as we got on so well! Luckily the accents (2 from Northern Ireland, 2 from the North West and 2 from the North East!) didn't cause too many problems either!!!

NEC 2012

Well what a busy day yesterday was!

We left home at about 9am eventually and arrived at the NEC just after 10:30. We soon realised just how busy it was going to be and changes our initial plan of starting on the left as everyone else did and instead headed over to the far right hand corner where all the workshops and demonstrations were! This was the side where all the art materials were so we had a quick look and then found the decopatch make and take stand so mum and I joined the queue and had a go at decorating a heart each - great fun and I kept finding glue varnish on my hands all afternoon... Brought back memories of primary school and peeling PVA glue off hands after arty activities!!

After that we braved the crowds and started our purchases! There were some bargains to be had and we picked up a few of them! I got lots if things that were on my wish list... And a few that weren't and discovered some new retailers to buy from in the future!

I got quite a good assortment of goodies (as you can see from the photo!) and still came home with some money in my purse so may have to pop over to Lili of the Valley (who are offering show offers until tonight on their website as they didn't go to the show!) for a last little spend!!

Kate's birthday

My friend Kate loves Tatty Teddy and this year I decided to make her a Tatty Teddy card instead of the Halloween-themed cards she's had for the last 2 years (her birthday is October 31st!) and here it is!

I used a 13cm square card (slightly bigger than 5") and inked it with Stampin Up's Pool Party ink which matched very well to the turquoise shade on the image which came from the first DoCrafts Tatty Teddy papers pack.

The image was mounted on yellow card which also matched the shade of yellow on the image.

The sentiment was stamped in Pool Party onto a small piece of the same yellow card and punched out using an SU punch, mounted on 3D foam pads with 2 lemon pearls stuck on the ends.

The large flower in the bottom right hand corner was coloured with the Pool Party ink with a lemon pearl stuck in the middle and the 3 lemon rose buds were bought in a sale at my local craft shop, The Craft Bug in Chirk.

Jack's 2nd birthday

You can't have one without the other, so here's Ruby's brother's card as well...

Unfortunately there isn't a lot to say about Jack's card. The backing paper is a piece I took out of a little-used pack of football themed papers which I sold on EBay.

The Happy Birthday is a peel-off paper ribbon (I think it's a Kanban one) and the lettering was bought a few years ago when a friend of mine ran a craft shop. The image is a Wild Rose Studio stamp, coloured with Promarkers, on white card with the corners rounded and the edge inked with Stampin Up ink in Red Riding Hood, layered on 3D foam pads to add some depth and interest!