Wednesday 24 April 2013

patriotic cupcakes please

This card is for my mother-in-law, whose birthday is on May 1st - the same as mine actually, but thankfully this has never caused problems!

And how's this for making my day? I always listen to Classic FM while I'm scrapping or card-making, and I just sent a text to Jamie Crick asking for any of Vaughan Williams' folk music, and here I am writing this post, and what is playing? His Folk Dance Suite! I have no idea whether it is in response to my text or whether I'm just psychic, but that's what they're playing. Hehee! 


It is for these challenges:
Charisma Cardz: the colour of your country's flag which is, of course, red, white and blue
Creative Card Crew (2nd entry): handmade flowers
Cute Card Thursday: cakewalk
Pixie's Crafty Snippets Playground: more snippets, and thanks for the heads-up about the extra entries! Mwah!

Tuesday 23 April 2013

April showers bring forth...

We have flowers in the garden already; a pink flowering redcurrant, yellow forsythia, daffodils, blue anemone blanda, the primroses are all over the lawn like little patches of lost sunshine, and as for our magnolia tree... it is simply stunning. It is so very white that at night the street light reflected off it actually lights up our dining room.

This time of year is delightful with the little birds flitting around, all busy and singing. We have at least two pairs of black-caps nesting in the hedge, and one pair of long-tailed tits, and umpteen blue-tits and great-tits, as well as robins, wrens, blackbirds, dunnocks, chaffinches, siskins, goldfinches, pigeons (of course) and the ever-present noisy pheasants. We have Mr and Mrs Pheasant, as well as two distinctive male pretenders; one very pale slender one that we call the juvenile, and one adult male with half his tail feathers missing, bless him. These make constant attempts on Mrs Pheasant's delicacy, and have to be chased off by hubby. He is very glamorous and proud, she has the grace of an agitated chicken, and always makes us laugh.

Here is Mr Pheasant. He just popped through the hedge one day last week and came face to face with Mrs Deer. They had a brief, slightly startled face-off, then each decided that the other was no threat, and he walked round her to hoover up the bird-seed under our feeder, and she went back to pruning our shrubbery. How lucky am I?


Anyway, on to today's crafty stuff. This is a card that I made from using up bits from my scraps file. Even the vase is a cut-down oval die, and the greeting is made from a label die but cut using the two opposite ends without the middle. If you see what I mean.


I'm entering it into these challenges:
Creative Card Crew: handmade flowers
Simon Says Stamp: April showers bring spring flowers
Pixie's Crafty Snippets Playground: snippets (and the BEST prize this week, I would LOVE to win this!)

Friday 19 April 2013

Clean and simple owls

I like owls. We have a lot of tawny owls living in the woods behind the house. We can hear them calling to each other in the evenings, and bat-eared DH has identified 15-20 different birds. We've seen them flying past the window in the fading light - it's such a satisfying feelings knowing that they are so close.

It was DH who bought me the Basic Grey owlets mini stamp set, and also the stitchery one, and I have to admit there are some stamps in the set that I hadn't used until today. Look how beautifully they have all come together though!




These are for the following challenges:
CASology: Word
CASual Fridays: birthday (it's mine in two weeks too :-> )
Basic Grey: Clean and simple
Less Is More: One Layer Card and a film - I'm going with Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

I don't know whether I'm going to be able to give these away.... haha!

Tuesday 9 April 2013

Scrap Whispers Challenge #136 - round the corner

We're powering through the latest Scrap Whispers game, around halfway through, with everyone pretty much on schedule and having lots of fun.

While the game is going on, the weekly challenges continue. These are open to everyone, not just the players, and there will be a prize pack awarded to a random winner at the end of the game. Why not play along?

This week's inspiration is from our Guest Designer Steph McBryne's innovative use of titles. Here is her page:

And the challenge is "round the corner" - to create a page using her title design. Here is what I came up with:


Isn't it effective? Why not join in the challenge as well, and be in with the chance of winning a prize pack? Pop over to Scrap Whispers and take a look around.