It was all about love...

... and marriage in our house on Monday when MrJoFY and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary.

The card was made, as requested by MrYoung, with one of my new stamps - one of the non-christmas christmas stamps.. mini22 the textblock heart... I love this little block of romantic words - great for wedding anniversaries, as I've used here, or for valentines day (come on you old romantics out there...) or just to tell someone you care... the choice is yours...

The card has hearts punched from card coloured with 'Barn Door' Distress Ink - 1 heart for each year we've been married (as I mentioned last year this is a good idea now but the longer we've been married the trickier its going to be to accommodate the hearts... smaller hearts/bigger card may be the answer...) .. .anyhoooo ...the background is blue check as MrJoFY does love blue check :o)

Love you Matt!

Frosty the Snowman....

... isn't quite the snowman that you might expect... he's feeling a little under the weather....

The tickets/labels on the this panel make me chuckle - this snowman probably dreams, hopes and wishes he had a head (in its apropriate place!)

The canvas in painted with Baltic Blue and Sky Fresco Finish paint, touches of snowflakes (seems apt!) and Metallic Glaze.  The punches are Martha Stewart (LOVE that big snowfake)



AND:

Thank you so much to everyone who has posted a message, or tweeted me, or emailed me about the stamps - it is so nice to get feedback and messages.  Its all been very exciting - the stamps sets are going far and wide- as far as Australia and Japan!! 
So, thanks very much for taking the time, I really appreciate it... and I hope if you've bought the stamps (or won them!) that you are having fun with them.

Yours festively

New Classes at Imagine That Papercrafts...

I'm teaching these two new classes at Imagine That in Upminster in February and March....

Butterfly Dreams:
03 February 2011 : 10.30-12.30
05 March 2011 : 10.30-12.30
25 March 2011 : 10.30-12.30
Card making class, with distress inks, stamps, and a bit of sparkly stuff!

Winter Joy:
03 February 2011 : 13.30-16.30
05 March 2011 : 13.30-16.30
25 March 2011 : 13.30-16.30
Making a gorgous (even if I do say so myself) scrapbook waiting to be filled with lovely christmas moments - die cuts, stamps and sparkly stuff (well it was christmas it would be rude not to have sparkly stuff!)

Call the shop to book a place.  Hope to see you there!

Winter Cottage...

In my first post of the year I mentioned projects, & said I would show you... & I haven't (sorry!) ... well now I am!
Better late than never.... here is 'Winter Cottage'... it was a while in the making 'cos ...erm .... well... other things took precident.... & I couldn't decide how to finish it... blah blah blah

... on the bright side, & with a view of excellent planning (ahem) I've started the decorations for christmas 2011! :o)  I'd actually finished it before christmas but I kept adding bits to it, taking them off, adding them again ... generally faffing about with it really!

The cottage is quite small (as normal!) about 12cm tall.. & created with all sorts of dies (Tim Holtz' snow flurries & paper rosette; Quickutz scallop border) & punches (Martha Stewart snowflake)(had a lot of use out of that punch this christmas! lol) There's also a liberal sprinkling of 'frosted lace' Stickles ... snow snow snow

oooh baby its cold outside... so I've been staying in and making stuff....

I'm in Essex and I realise we don't have half the amount of snow as the rest of the country - yesterday on my way up the garden to feed the birds I stuck a ruler in the snow, when M told one his colleagues (based in Pickering, Yorkshire) how much snow we had the colleague scoffed a little & said "call that snow we've got 3ft's worth!"  !!

Ooh I'm glad I'm in Essex!  lol

but it looks like it warming up if these are anything to go by:

and below is the mother of all local icicles (from neighbours guttering) which is getting longer as the day goes on, thankfully its not anywhere that people could be walking under as it could do someone serious damage! (as anyone who has watched Grey's Anatomy knows! (remember Christina & the icicle!!) ouch!)

and one more snow picture:

small spiders web - I tried to find bigger ones but with no luck..... I wish I could remember where I saw a photo of spiders' webs on traffic lights - very cool - on someone's blog -sorry I can't remember who's it was (EDIT: it was Angela Weimer's blog! - go take a look: http://pagesbythesea.blogspot.com/2010/11/its-begining-to-lok-alot-like-christmas.html  its a really great picture...)

Aaaaanyhooo, enough about the weather...

I made this for M, its an advent thingy-ma-jig and each little box contains little notes or treats.  Made out of matchboxes and coasters, its small- measuring just under 10x10x10cm. The little boxes' labels work as a tab to pull them in & out and text was created on the PC. 
Papers are My Minds Eye, snowflakes are Nestabilities and Martha Stewart, ticket stamp is Purple Onion.
I'm pleased with how it turned out but next time I'm going to use sturdier and bigger matchboxes! lol

(if you want to know how to make one of these look in back issues of Craft Stamper (I'll look back when I get a minute and let you know which issue).

November!

A pinch & and a punch for the first day of the month! by that I mean a pinch of embossing powder and a Martha Stewart punch - of course - what else could it be?! {chuckle}

The pc is now mended - yay - though after the tower was fixed the screen died! ......

So, I like a tag, or several, they're great for using up scraps from the desk, or testing out new stamps and/or techniques - whatever the reason - I like tags!! (and now I've bought Tim H's big tag die I'm liking them all the more because I can cut them out of all manner lovely cardboards, acetate, paper etc etc etc - the list could go on!

This tag was created with a plain luggage tag & a piece of leftover corrugated cardboard - love the HotPicks PaperArtsy stamps : the flower head is from HotPicks 1005, long 'branches' 1008, & words are from HPXT04.  I liked how this turned out - especially as I am continuing to embrace yellow (if you've been reading my blog for a while you'll know that I'm really not keen on yellow but now I coming around to it)(when I find the photos I'll show you my recent ArtsyCrafts project - lemon&lime!! bring it on!)

You'll have to excuse the wierd angle of this photograph (in the folder its landscape oriented but on screen Blogger seems to think it would look better portrait! gggrrrr) aaaanyhooo - I wanted to include it to show two level of black image stamping - I stamped the long branches, dried them, and then stamped the flower heads & added embossing powders and heated.  I liked how it made the flower heads 'pop' as they are now 'shiny'. (you can just about see that in the photo - tilt your head to the right.....)

Edit:  I altered it in Photoshop - yay for me! lol - see you learn something new every day!!

This tag is again using a parcel tag & another piece of leftover corrugated cardboard - there's a lot of that on my desk at the moment! lol  These dimensional paper flowers are all over crafting projects at the moment - I think this is first/second one I've made and they're really easy to make - though to glue them in future I'm going to use hot glue.. Leaves are PaperArtsy dies, the loopy border strip is a Martha Stewart punch (punching atlas paper) and the wording is a Tim H stamp.. oh and there's a little Sizzix flourish die in there too.. & some distress ink, silver versacolor & a scrap of book text....

Take care

been 'busy'....

.. I was having a quick look back through my recent blog posts and its been a while since I posted pictures of my actual work - it all seems to have been pictures of my desk (which is fine), or things I've found inspiring or just generally pretty pictures ... but none of my work.  Sometimes this is because I can't show it for one reason or another ie magazine work, dt pieces, samples for teaching or I'm working on pieces that will go for sale ... etc etc etc

aaaanyhoo enough is enough - lets put this right:  here are some pic's of a couple of things I made earlier today:

playing with my new favourite punch - the bird/branch from Stampin up.. they've got a great new stye of punch- nice and flat and stackable and much kinder on the hands.

and another card made using quite a few of my favourite things - sewing, punchouts, sewing, and the gorgeous 'brook' paper from Crate Paper.

Thanks to the everyone who left a comment about Bertie and his debut on WOYWW but before you all get too taken in by those 'butter wouldn't melt' cute looks of his check this out.. this is what I have to contend with - the little furball has no manners! lol I spend a lot of time picking him up off the desk and putting him back down on the floor... he's like a jack-in -the-box... gotta love him though- its all part of his charm... apparently!

Something from {almost} nothing...

...is Shimelle's new class.  I like taking her online classes - and on Friday I met her at the Twisted Thread show at Olympia.  I wasn't planning on going to the show (more thread/wool than paper) but as I was in London I thought I might as well...

I knew Shimelle was running a workshop (which I'd like to have done but it clashed with my hospital appointment) and I waiting for the lift and wondering where she'd be so I could swing by and say hello (she's a fellow Banana Frogger afterall- it would've been rude not to) and when the lift doors opened she was standing inside! spooky! (and convenient.. lol)

Really nice to meet her - here she is on her stand where she had some really nice products - I had to resist the papers (I have too much already) but I couldn't resist some of the American Crafts Fabric Alphabets - mmm v nice apple/lime green in a font which is little bit like the 'Captain Howdy' font. Like I say - too nice to resist.. but I have to remember that things aren't too nice to use...

Next to Shimelle's booth was a knitter/ crocheter (card is downstairs so will fill in her name later) who had the hugest knitting and crochet needles - the crochet 'needles' were like spears! lol  If I had time to sit and crochet at the moment I'd have bought one to try it out... (Yvonne P would have loved these.) ...  These would build up crochet pieces lovely and quicky and would create great throws (as displayed on her stand)

Around the corner there was another knitter with great hats and bags - kicking myself for not getting something from her (like the hat on the left hand side of the photo - the wool was lovely.. and my mum and my m-i-l are both good knitters so they could knitted the purchase for me - and look at those lovely wood buttons! Now they're what I call a button - if you're going to have a button have a really big one!  May have to speak nicely to my Dad - he's turned big buttons (on his lathe) before for floor cushions so one for a hat shouldn't be too hard for him.. :o) 10 inches across were the biggest ones this seller had... Lovely

So, like I said way back at the top of this post, I'm doing Shimelle's class which encourages you to attack your stash (eek) rather than buying new (thats how I'm interpreting it)- revisiting all the things you have and may have forgotton about.. so with that in mind I made this quick little card - circles punched from scraps - 'cos we all have those don't we!, and a free stamp (craft stamper, v cute owl) and a greeting stamp - OK that might be relatively new but only because I 'needed' a greeting stamp to go with the little owl... honesty guv ... :o) 
Photo quality's not too good - sorry - the colours are stronger in real life.

OK, so this isn't the most sophisticated card I've made - but I like it - the owl makes me smile!