Inky backgrounds

 As I said in my last post, I decided to take a trip to PDA Cards and Craft to escape the quiet house...several pounds later I emerged clutching a stack of card, some stamps and a couple of ink pads. I didn't find all the Woodware stamps I was looking for, but I did find Large Fennel, which I used on the first two cards. I now need small fennel too, having seen the samples the ladies there had made.

When I got home I thought I'd better clear a bit of the mess on my table and found some lovely bits of card coloured with Distress ink re-inkers and a water spray. If I remember rightly I used squeezed lemonade, seedless preserves and either ripe persimmon or spiced marmalade. I lay the card onto the inky wash and keep alternately spraying with water and laying on snippets of card.  The first card on this post was probably the last spray of the inks before it got too pale for me. I found one last bit  which was an almost perfect fit for this inkylicious picture perfect stamp

I'd mounted this one on the card before I decided it needed a hill in the background, so masked the rest of the card and added a hill with ink dusters. Unfortunately I managed to get a smudge on the white base card, but a well places die cut leaf soon covered it up. All stamping was done with Versafine black and then embossed with clear embossing powder.
Do you want to see what else I have been doing for the past couple of days?


These are Rhubarb and Ginger Muffins, and finally...
Soda Bread!
The Chocolate cakes raised £28 for Karate class trophies and medals this week. I was very happy with my soda bread and have decided to venture further into making bread not using a bread machine.
Thanks for looking and feel free  to help yourself to a cake  - all calorie free, lol!

More Aurora Wings Colouring

 Back in February I entered this card into an Aurora Wings Challenge on Facebook. Amazingly, I was lucky enough to be a winner! As a part of my prize I chose this image called Calla Lily Sprite.
The first one I coloured with be Creative markers and used papers on my card from the Artylicious cd Butterfly Bliss and Filigree fusion (I think - it is a while since I printed them out!) The pale gold card is pearlescent, and I used a  gold gelly roll stardust pen for the centres of the lilies.

My second card is one that I did as a sample for Be Creative's Hochanda shows last Friday. I used paper from their Nature's portrait paper pad. The bottletop and glitter glue are also from Be Creative.
Hi there to my new followers, Teri, Kate, Jo and Trudi. Great to have you here! I aim to have some Follower candy soon, as I head back to 300 followers (I got there just before Google had the clear out and wiped 14 off my total (Grrrr!)
Today I have enjoyed my belated Mother's day, with Meg being home for her Easter Holiday. I was treated to breakfast in bed, a beautiful bunch of flowers...

and some amazing home baked biscuits called Gypsy Creams (I think these might be a Dumfries and Galloway delicacy, taken from the cookbook we bought from New Abbey tea Rooms last summer)


I consider myself a very fortunate Mum!
Thanks for looking!

Warning! You may put on weight just looking!

When I asked Meg what she wanted to do for her birthday she said 'Karate', so as her birthday falls today we are both going to her regular Thursday class. We aren't going empty handed though...
Meet the Banana Cupcake...

...a light banana sponge topped with cream cheese frosting, dried banana chips and a drizzle of toffee sauce! New for me, next is the Rolo Cupcake...

 ...a chocolate sponge with a secret caramel centre, topped with chocolate and caramel frosting and a rolo! Adapted from this recipe( I left out the chopped rolos from the cake mix and added 25g more flour). Only taking 11 of these with us as we had to test one! Here are the rest though...

Finally we have the 'Death by Chocolate Easter cake' which carries the warning 'Consume at your own risk!'

This cake is being raffled off to raise funds for the Karate Club, and has already raised about £30! Hoping for a few more ticket sales when they see it for real tonight!
I have inhaled rather a lot of icing sugar and all I can smell is chocolate - can sugar get into your blood stream through inhalation?! I hope not!!!
Right, I'd better go and finish cleaning up - enjoy the rest of your day and thanks for looking!

Merry Christmas!

Fancy a mince pie? go on, you know you want one, and there are no calories in them whatsoever, lol! Thought I would just pop on and wish you all a very Merry Christmas. I have baked gingerbread, apple muffins and mince pies, as well as cooking the gammon today, and amazingly I finished all my Christmas cards before Christmas Eve!
Here is Steve's card.

I used Inkylicious trees and twigs and a clarity stamp duck. I dusted the background with Memento Inks (Dandelion, Bahama blue and Danube blue). The papers are from the Artylicious Seasons Greetings cd. Hope Santa brings you everything you wish for and you are blessed with good health and happiness this festive season.

Hope you all have a Wonderful Christmas!

            Sally x

A Good Day

Well, I have been finding it difficult to get into blog land this week, but I am finally here and I will be back tomorrow too, with the October Stamping Sensations challenge. So what has brought me here today? I have had a wonderful day so far. This morning I made a ginger cake for my lovely friend Megan, who I went to Rwanda with. Here it is:

After a fairly hectic week at home and at school I needed some baking therapy, lol! Whilst it was in the oven, I discovered who has been raiding our peanut bird feeder all week!

He was quite small, so I think he is a young one. After that I went down to the New Writers UK book fayre where I met up with my friend, Megan and daughter Megan who was volunteering there. We listened to talks by Mark Gwynne Jones, a performance poet from Matlock Bath, and Steve Dunne, a crime fiction author and English teacher from Derby. They were both very approachable and we had a good chat with them. After that came the award ceremony for the children and young peoples writing competition, where Meg was a finalist. We were thrilled to find she had won the silver medal in the 14-16 age group.

Her short story will be published in a collection with the rest of the finalists in February. As you can see I enjoyed my proud Mum moment, and came home with a pile of books to read too! Hope you are having a good weekend. I will be back in the morning with my cards. Thanks for looking!

Merry Christmas!

Can you spare a minute or two? pull up a chair then, grab a plate and help yourself to a mince pie...

or a piece of ginger cake - it is still warm....

Incidentally, I haven't eaten all of that bit! I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and I will see you again after all the festvities. I will leave you with the card I made for Steve.

 I used a set of stamps from Little Claire and coloured with promarkers. Steve loves ducks and geese, so I stamped the geese twice and added another row at the front. I am entering this into the Twelve Days of Christmas challenge at Heck of a Challenge, although it is probably more like six geese a playing in those scarves and wellies!
Thanks for looking and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Normal service soon, hopefully

After months of being seriously unimpressed by BT, I've changed my broadband and telephone provider to Virgin Media. The good news is it is so much quicker to upload photos to my blog and I no longer get cut off mid post. I am determined to sever all ties with BT, so the bad news is I am having to let everyone know my new email address... which is taking hours! If I am in contact with you by email and you haven't had an email from me yet, please forgive me. You can find my new email address on my profile page. Then there are the craft sites who send me their newsletters, etc... On top of all that I am trying my best not to watch the tennis. It is on and I am glancing over whilst trying to make my niece's birthday card, but if I get engrossed I will get all upset if Andy Murray loses!
Yesterday was our School summer fair, and thankfully it was dry for the three hours it was on. The sun came out too! I did some baking to sell at the fair, so I thought I'd share some photos with you whilst I get round to making something worth showing you card-wise.
Banana cupcakes,

 Lemon Cupcakes

 and Bran Loaf

Thanks for looking and I hope I will return your visit very soon x

Ninjabread!

This is me sporting my new red belt...

This is sensai...

Here is a bit of Kumite...

And here is Ninjabread grading!!!
I know, I'm a complete nutcase, but they went down very well at Karate class tonight! I saw the cutters on Amazon and decided to treat myself, lol!

Food glorious food at Sir Stampalot

Hi There! It's the first of the month again and time for a new Stampalot challenge. Our theme for October is 'Food, glorious food!'. Well, you know me and baking, so I set to and made...

A cupcake box! How do you know a cup cake will fit in it?...

Look carefully...

And there it is!
Now, I'm afraid I got a bit carried away, cos I went on to make...

A cookie bag as well! The gorgeous papers that I used for both of these projects was a 6 x 6 pad from Kaiser Craft called the Devonshire collection. I also distressed all the edges with walnut stain distress ink. I used a variety of nesties and the Hero Arts leaf flourish, along with waltzing mouse stamps on the cookie bag. My rose was made using Brenda's tutorial and the leaves are a woodware punch.
After that I still didn't stop, but made just a couple of tiny additions...

The stamp is a Paula Pascual one from the filled with flowers set (£4.99 - an absolute bargain!) and the nestie is Blossom 3, stuck onto a cocktail stick.
And finally the prize...

What a lot of yummy goodies, eh?

Do pop over to the Challenge blog to see my fellow teamies fabulous creations for lots of lovely inspiration!
Thanks for looking!

I'm here - honest!

How quickly is this week going?  I can't believe it's Thursday already. Well, here is my 'red' card for this week's Allsorts challenge. Hope you like my interpretation! Stamps for the main image from the Hobby Art Tuscany set and the sentiment is an old Elusive images stamp. I coloured it with aqua markers and distress inks. The paper is one I have had a while and it was just a scrap so not sure who it is by. 

Yesterday I had a fabulous day with Lisa Jane, Lynne and Megan at Batley. We spent a while in Inkylicious where the lovely Deby demonstrated her fab beach scenes just for us. Needless to say I did add to my stash rather! I came home and had a little go myself and this is the result.

Not bad for a first attempt, but I'm not sure the photo does it justice! I'm entering this into this Month's By the Cute and Girly where the theme is the Sea (Thanks Lisa!). All stamps from the Inkylicious seascape memories set and I used my ink dusters too. After craft shopping we had lunch and then had a wander round 'the Mill' shopping village. It was a great day and we will definitely be doing it again - might need to save up first though! 

I have finished off a couple of cards today and made some scones too. Whilst we were on holiday I bought some rhubarb and ginger jam, so we made ginger scones to go with it...  

There is nothing quite like a warm scone. Thanks for looking!

Weekly Blogging

Well, there was I thinking things would slow down once I'd done my reports, but I was mistaken. I don't know why it always takes me by surprise, but I can see I might only manage weekly blogging for a couple of weeks as there is so much going on. It isn't like I haven't done any crafting, but getting to post it here is a bit hit and miss. Anyway, here are a few things I've been up to. First is an 8x8 card I made for a friend who's dad turns seventy next week.

 He likes music, travelling, reading, walking and red wine, so I used an Inkylicious music background stamp, lots of hobby Art stamps, The luggage label is a clear choice stamp and the boots are from an aspects of design sheet from the Stampman. I watercoloured the lot with distress inks.
My next card is for our assistant site manager who has been doing lots of gardening with the children. This stamp (Personal Impressions) is one I haven't used for a while. The little images around the border are all various See -Dee's collections.

Finally I decided to try a new recipe today - Lime and coconut muffins topped with cream cheese frosting - very tasty, particularly whilst sat in the garden!

We have had a very productive day today with hedge-cutting, baking, marking, and card making too!

Been Baking!

Thought I would share my latest bakes with you. At work we take cake for our birthdays and I would never live it down if I bought one, so it was Rhubarb and Ginger cake (Jamie Oliver recipe)...

and a Crunchy top Lemon cake (Mary Berry recipe) that I took to school.

 Well, you should've heard Steve's protests! He needed cake too, so at the weekend I tried a recipe from a new book called 'Love Bakery' for Rhubarb and Custard cupcakes and made these...

Well, I made 12, but there are very few left now! I was quite proud of my custard frosting and the little decorations I made from ready roll icing.With these you take a core from the middle of the cake with an apple corer and fill it up with jam or stewed fruit - Yum!

Finally I did make a card for a colleague...

I used some Dovecraft clear stamps, coloured with promarkers and glittered. They were  stuck onto a gingham 'tablecloth' made with a Martha Stewart punch around the page set.

I'm entering this one into:
Moving along with the times where the theme is Have some cake and
Craft your passion where the theme is Check it out, using gingham, plaids and checks
Thanks for looking, and I hope I didn't make you too hungry!

They're not Terry's - they're mine!

Chocolate orange cupcakes that is.

And here's one just for you...

If you would like the recipe let me know and I'll post it on my blog for you. I've also made my 'Christmas cake', which this year is a carrot cake, as I'm the only one in the house that likes fruit cake. Meg persuaded me to buy sone ivy leaf cutters, and I'm so glad she did, cos it meant I could do this...

In between baking I made my niece's Christmas card and another tipsy tree one.

Only two more presents to wrap and two cards to make... nearly there! Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and I'll be back after the weekend!