7 hearts for 7 years..

... back in 2005 I married Matt.
Here's the card I made for him this year - I always try to include the same number of heart motifs on the card as the number of years we've been married - this may get trickier the longer we've been married - I imagine the card for our 25th Anniversary will either be reeeally big or the hearts will be reeeeeally small! lol

The pattern on the hearts is quite significant - my lovely husband has over 20 work shirts in his wardrobe and they are nearly all white shirts with variations of blue check/stripes.... that man loves blue!
& I love him.

A this'n'that catch up.... Part 1

... so lots of little bits and pieces going on & being made/created and I've been a bad blogger and only been putting things up on Twitter - cos its so quick! 140 characters and its done... but that makes my blog a bit dull for you lovely peeps out there who aren't on twitter and so stop by this blog (and to be honest with you I'd get more done if I wasn't on twitter lol) - and I'm very grateful to you for popping in.  :o)

Right here's the this'n'that round up:

It was my lovely god-daughters birthday last month so I made her a bunting banner with her name on it..
It started off life like this - a lovely little dress that I bought at the charity shop (reduce, reuse, recycle!), washed and ......

 

....ta-daaa!!  its now very cute bunting for a very cute girlie. Her favourite colour? yep- pink! of course! lol

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I've started teaching a few classes at Hobbycraft in Chelmsford, only a few, its good fun... different style and products to the other classes I do.
First class was a 'Die-Cutting' class aimed at people considering buying a machine or who had one but wanted to know more.  It was a mix of demo'ing the machines (cuttlebug & bigshot) and teaching.  2 hours of fun. Lovely ladies who went home happy (and inspired) - job done!
Here are a couple of the cards we made:

I'll be doing a couple more classes soon - I'll keep you posted.

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I haven't bought stamps for a while but in the past few weeks I seem to have bought loads a few - some I've bought just because they're soooo useful - like these from Papermania - big numbers.. You don't get plain numbers like these very often do you? they're about 3 inches tall - really versatile - just the outline - great for journaling, paper piecing etc. I bought all of them (£2.00 each and buy 2 get 3rd free! kerching! love bargains like that)

so i settled down on the sofa and just doodled inside the numbers - just to see how it felt, how easy it would be to fill the numbers with just black ink. like these a lot - just good simple BIG numbers.  I'm sure there are lots of other filler patterns but they're for another day....

Thats all for now - thanks for stopping by - please 'follow' the blog - its nice to know who pops by & it'd be nice to visit your little corner of www.

xx

Demonstrating at Card Inspirations

I normally teach CI, and occasionally I demo and that's what I was up to on Saturday. 
It was a good day - played/worked with the Cuttlebug - of course!
(apolgies in advance for the slightly dodgy picture quality on this post)

After demo'ing the Cuttlebug here's some of what I created later:
I created this card using the 'flower' embossing folder and one of the cute little 'Notelets' from one of the new PaperMania ranges: 

I also worked with one of the PM clear acrylic albums.  These come in various shapes (scalloped hearts, circles etc) but I used one of the simple square shapes.  Instead of creating an album I turned a page 90degrees so the binding holes were at the top and made door/name plaques.

On 'Freya's' I stamped on the acetate's surface with white stazon, used the PM notelets again as a mat for the name, and painted a couple of chipboard flowers and of course some buttons & bling!

For 'Max's' name plate I die cut a few images from Basic Grey's Archaic range and matted and layered it up.

I really like the transparency of acetate - seeing the different layers behind and infront.

Later in the week I'm going to use a few more of the pages as album cover.... 

These albums come with 6 pages in the pack - so I'm thinking these could be used to create:

• 3 albums with acetate covers or
• 6 name plates or
• 1 12 page album (2 pages per piece of acetate - using front and back) or
• 6 panel hanging decoration (achievable because the crop-a-dile will punch through the acetate!)
• or a concertina album could be created in the same way as the above!

and there must be lots more other combinations!

Ooooh Christmas tree......

This year I decided that I wouldn't put the christmas tree up (shush now with the 'bah humbugs', and the 'oooh you've got to put the christmas tree up!')(or is that just the voice in my head saying this...) reasons being:

1. BIG christmas tree & decorations stored towards the back of a VERY full loft and M isn't here to assist.

2. over christmas we will be clearing the flat in preparation for getting it on the market to sell. so less decorations =  less to clear and sort....

3. We'll be out and about, backwards and forwards, visiting relatives over christmas

4. Small cat who thinks christmas trees are chew toys! (that'll be Bertie.  Lola learned the hard way last year that she probably shouldn't have chewed the lights wires! - lights flickered and she shot out from behind the sofa where they're plugged in!)

any hoo I gave in (mainly because the decorations at B&Q were too cute to resist, and 1/2 price last week!!) and so here is our tree:

 

I may have over estimated how big a 3ft tree actually is! lol I have some other decorations but they were too big, and poor little tree doesn't have lights - couldn't get a length short enough with clear wires (bought a 40 bulb length but I don't think you would've been able to see the tree for the lights if I'd put that on! rofl).  Its small - but i like it! (but it doesn't look as pretty without lights....)

I don't think the pressies are going under it though, do you?

More class cards - this time a PaperMania set - Joyeaux Noel.