NEC Birmingham

Bit self indulgent, I know, but I just had to show you one of the display boards that was up at the Joanna Sheen stand at the NEC last weekend.

I was absolutely amazed, delighted and proud to see that it contained seven of my cards!  What an honour!  I thoroughly enjoyed my five minutes of fame!

Doggy Christmas Card

Hi
Just wanted to show you a Christmas card I have just made with a cute dog decoupage which was a bargain at the NEC.  Each sheet of decoupage has about three images on them and they were just £1 - amazing value!

For this card I layered some silver mirri onto an 8x8 white card blank, and layered onto that another square of white card, leaving a thin silver border.  I cut another silver square approx 1/4" smaller and again layered that with more white card.  I repeated this again for the final layer, only using a snowy background paper this time on top. 
On the largest white square layer I used my Teal Sky Cosmic Shimmer PVA glue to form pearls around the edge.  On the middle layer, I pierced a small hole at regular intervals, using the Tim Holtz ruler.
I cut out a bauble shape with a Spellbinders die and embossed it with the Cuttlebug snowy folder and edged it with blue glitter glue.
I decoupaged the little dog and added a Christmas message with peel offs and attached him to the bauble which had been stuck onto the card using silicone glue.
Finally I cut a branch from silver card and attached it to the top.
Thanks for looking and I hope you like it

House Mouse Poppy Pillow

I thought you might like to see a card I made recently with the brilliant decoupage image of a House Mouse asleep in a Poppy flower head.

The decoupage is from Joanna Sheen's House Mouse Project Book, for which I was lucky enough to be included when making the project samples.  This actual card isn't in the book and is one I made after it had been published.

The image was decoupaged and stuck to a flat piece of card which was covered in the backing paper that came with the book.  Another piece of card, slightly wider than the first had an aperture cut out the middle and this was layered with red shiny paper, cut around the edges with a Martha Stewart punch around the page punch and also had an aperture cut slightly larger than the first.  A frame was then made from another piece of white card to fit over the red paper, just leaving a narrow border all around and embossed with the swiss dots embossing folder.

A piece of wide red ribbon was secured around the white frame before attaching it to the card.  The ends of the piece of white card which was slightly wider were folded back and attached both sides behind the decoupaged piece to form a dome shape over the picture.

Two large silk poppies were attached to the front of the card with silicone glue and a bow, tied from the same wide red ribbon was attached over the top of the stalks, where they met the ribbon.

Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoyed the card

I have entered this card in the following challenges:

Joanna Sheen Challenge Blog Daily Talent Spot - 'Layer it Up'
Bearly-Mine - Anything Goes

The First of Many

I have been meaning to set up a blog for more than I can remember.  I spend a lot of time looking at other peoples for ideas and interesting tit bits and have always thought 'I would like to have a go at that', so here goes....

Please bear with me while I get it up and running, tweaking how I would like it to look etc and generally learning what I am meant to be doing!  Hopefully it will all start to take shape slowly.

Just as a bit of an experiment, and to start things off, I thought I would show you a card I made for the Royal Wedding, which was lucky enough to win first prize in the Crafters Companion competition.  I know, the wedding was sooo last year but hey, I've got to start somewhere!

It was made using my trusted Cricut as an easel card.  The instructions for the competition entry was to use an image from Crafters Compantion, so I used the Swalk 'I Do' rubber stamp and made the middle, with the image into a shaker box with small blue heart confetti pieces in the shaker box.  I suddenly hit on the idea to use a large blue gem and surround it with small clear gems to represent Kate's engagement ring.

This is all a bit basic, I know, and I do apologise for my lack of experience in the blog world, but I promise things will improve!  More cards will follow with better write ups, which I hope you will enjoy, but in the meantime, thank you for looking.