A nice surprise

I'm really pleased this morning to find one of my Folksy items has been featured by Aleximo on FolksyFinds.com here. The post is fruity themed and there are some gorgeous makes included with my little apple. I also found this great 'zine created by Leanne Woods. If you want inspiration go here! I love the cupcake recipe.

I made a gift box for my apple from one of Lauren Meader's Timeless Templates. I love making them and have quite a collection - some I haven't even tried yet, so watch this space.... I think my shop needs a bit more stock!

Creative Weekend

I love the face of this Painted Lady butterfly I snapped in the garden yesterday. It was very hot in the sun and the pink geranium is rather over exposed but I really like the way you can see its 'tongue' sipping nectar. Hard to believe this fragile creature migrates from Africa to spend the summer in our gardens. I believe there has been a huge explosion in their numbers this year and you can find out why here
I really enjoyed Springwatch this year - there were some beautiful films and some of it came from here in North Wales.

One of my great-nieces is 3 tomorrow and I knitted this little bag for her. Little girls always seem to like bags and purses. The stamps on the tag are from Claire's Gingerbread set at Waltzingmouse Stamps. I wanted to put a gingerbread man inside the bag but didn't have time to bake some and couldn't find any in the local shops, so she has a chocolate shortbread cookie instead.

I've been quite creative this weekend as a friend had asked me to make her some wineglass charms (she's posh and entertains a lot - nothing like me!) and I hope she likes them. I've had these plastic beads for about 20 years and they were just waiting for the right project. I wound the silver wire round a very thick knitting needle to make the ring and used a head pin to attach the beads. Then I formed the hook closure with a pair of round nosed pliers. The container had hair clips in it and I sanded the top to remove the maker's logo. The circle stamp is from a Papertrey set - Holiday Tags.

Three Challenges!!!

The only way I can keep up with challenges is to combine them - I do hope its not frowned upon by those lovely people that set them. Anyway I've just managed to finish this card in time for The Next Level's sketch challenge this week and I'm also going to put it up for the Copic Colour Challenge (Rose Red, Holiday Blue and Cadmium Yellow - my nearest matches) and the A Passion for Papertrey Challenge (use at least two flowers).

I've used the small flower from the Everyday Classics PTI set to make the patterned paper and and small flowers are cut out from the centre of the same stamp. The image is yet again from my copyright free books and the sentiment stamp on the tag is Stampin' Up.

2 Challenges - The Next Level & Copic Colour Challenge

Here's another double challenge card! The Next Level challenge is to use this ribbon technique created by Claire Brennan (a very talented lady). I haven't seen it before and really like the pretty frame effect. I'll be using it again. The Copic colours are Yellowish Beige, Pink and Blue Berry - I don't have the exact colours but I think these are a fairly good match. This is another vintage image from my Dover copyright-free books. I've added the Papertrey sentiment.

Isn't this crochet flower great. Its from a brilliant post on Nichole Heady's blog here. Honestly, I could spend the whole day on her blog. There's so much inspiration there from Nichole herself and all her wonderful design team.

I hope you like my card. I have to admit my style is much simpler than the current trend so it always looks like I haven't put so much work into my projects as other crafters. But I feel much happier with "less is more" - my excuse anyway :-).

A Passion for Papertrey Challenge 7

This challenge is to make a circle card and I hope this isn't cheating as I've attached the circle to acetate to make it stand up. I've used my newest PTI stamp set acquired with the help of my lovely new friend Sunny in Kansas - thank you Sunny.

For some reason I've had real difficulty photographing it so I had to snap it outside and its still not perfect.


On the inside is a petal card which holds one bag of my favourite Lady Grey tea. Its a new home gift for a certain person who has recently found a new place to live (and who reads this blog!)

Next Level Challenge 1, Copic Colour Challenge - OH! and My Mum's Birthday!

I thought I would try to 'kill three birds with one stone' here and as well as making a card for my Mum's birthday on Sunday I've entered it for two challenges as well. Rather pleased with myself for that! The Copics for the challenge were Yellow, Pink and a colour called Leather - a browny shade and I wouldn't have thought to use them together but I really like Leanne Ellis's stamp in these colours. The Next Level challenge - their first one - was to make a card with an aperture and also make and decorate it with a Lollipop Flower - never made one before and I'm happy with the way it turned out. The sentiments are Papertrey and the papers Stampin Up.

And here is Mum's very unglamorous birthday present - a peg bag and pegs! As I've said before, she doesn't need anything and doesn't want anything but her pegs have seen better days and she uses the little washing line outside the back door often. So I thought I'd get her some of these colourful pegs from the wonderful Lakeland store in Chester and they match the colour of the fabric I used for the bag. I made the pattern up myself from a photo I saw in a magazine. I hope she'll like it.

Here come the girls

Its my Mum's birthday next week and I'm adding to the digital scrapbook I made for her a couple of birthdays ago. She's 85 this time and there's nothing she really wants or needs. She leads quite a quiet life as her health is not 100% - and I love doing these pages for her! I have the images printed at a small local shop and I must say its quite an expensive process as they have to be printed on A3 size paper to fit the 12x12 size page. There's another gift I'm in the process of creating and perhaps will post it here later.

Mum dotes on 'our girls' (her grandchildren and great grandchildren) and this is a great snap of four of them together earlier this year. I love this alphabet - I think it really suits the page - its Freehand Alpha by Tia Bennett at twopeasinabucket.