Clean and Aussie

Hello all! I'm so ready for spring, aren't you? All this mucky, grey weather, horizontal rain and rubbish light levels. Pfft. I'm trying to encourage it to get things moving by going from Christmas to spring in one post. Hehee.

Less Is More's challenge this week is "down under". I got this darling stamp when we were living in Perth, WA, and that year many people back home got it on their Christmas cards from Australia. Since then it hasn't seen the light of day - it's so distinctive that you can't really use it two years running, and the year after we came back to the UK. I've made a few of these all the same and this Christmas I'll be sending them to some of my Aussie friends to give it a new lease of life.

ETA: While I was leaving comments on other people's cards, I came across another challenge site that I haven't seen before: Crazy 4 Challenges also has "down under" (C4C321) as this month's subject, so I'm entering it there too, thanks to Laurie.

CASology's current challenge is "adore", Cute Card Thursday's is "ladies only" and Simon Says Stamp's is "anything goes". To that end I created this:

I need to explain it a little, because I spent 10 minutes faffing around with my camera and I could NOT get the gold to show. It's a gold outline sticker matted on gold mirror board. Honest. I coloured it with Copics. I hope there's enough white space for it to be classed as CAS.

Have a good week, and roll on spring.

Resolved?

Hello and a Happy New Year!

Yes, yes, I'm a bit late. As usual. But there's a reason. I gave up making new year's resolutions ages ago - I knew I would never be able to stick to them so I didn't bother trying. Then last year in that post-family-Christmas-visit, house-is-a-disaster-zone, still-flippin'-working, hate-this-dark-wet-dreary-weather feeling of miserable anti-climax, I realised something quite ridiculous. I have done virtually no crafting for myself since I went back to work in September 2013. That's 16 months ago.

Not that I've been idle. In 2015 I made: one frantic, massive, 50-page scrapbook for the departing vicar. 48 birthday and anniversary cards for everybody else. 54 Christmas cards to send out. 20-odd candles for the church. 130-odd hearts for the church. And for me? A handful of candles. WHAT?? What's happened to ME? I've disappeared - got buried under a heap of the rest of humanity's needs and requests. Look, even my blog still has last summer's background photo on it. This has got to stop!

So for 2016 I HAVE made a new year's resolution, for the first time in years: to stop saying "yes" to others, if it means saying "no" to myself. I'm going to craft. I want to get back into scrapbooking, but not doing DT work and setting challenges and administrating stuff for others. I'm going to scrap for myself. Cards are for other people of course, and I'm going to continue to enjoy making them and sending them out. People who don't reciprocate will be taken off the list, sent bought cards or birthday wishes on Facebook.

My goodness, I'm sounding HARD! Too harsh? NO! No, I'm going to stick to this. (Besides, the church has enough candles and hearts to keep them going for a while...!) It's going to take a while to get back into it though. Today (day off) I decided to make a card for a few challenges, as I used to do regularly. It took 3 sittings, with me getting up and down, frustrated with an aching back and playing hide-and-seek with my mojo. I don't even know whether I like what I've created, but it's done now, and ready to send.

Less is more: the kissing technique. I "kissed" the clouds, the leaves and the tree stump, although only the clouds were completely solid stamps. The green ink I used on the leaves didn't work very well.
Simon Says Stamp: Create with critters.
Stamping Sensations: anything goes with a die.

Oh man. I've just realised that foxy looks as if he's got a tree trunk stuck up his... drat, drat. I'm so out of practice at this...