A Note of Thanks

As many of you will know, I had an accident back in June and that, combined with complicated health problems, means that I am unable to walk more than a few steps. This means that I am unable to either walk or drive my children home from school. This past week they have been collected by a new neighbour of ours who also has children at the same school. Usually, Claire would drive to pick her son up, but with her own three children in the car, she would be unable to pick my two up as she only has a 5-seat car. Because of this, Claire kindly walked to collect them each day, even though on Friday her son was not going home at the same time as my children, she still made the journey to collect Oliver and Purdey.

This has saved us a small fortune this week in childcare (plus it means that the our two monkeys came home straight after school rather than moaning about going to after school club). Claire would not accept anything for this enormous favour, so I have made her a little gift box and 6 notecards to express our gratitude. I don't usually do miniature, but it made sense as a gift to give mini notelet sized cards.

All six cards feature Pollycraft digi stamps and paper from my varied stash. The images are coloured with Promarkers and Flex Markers and then die cut with a selection of Nellies, Nestabilties and Lifestyle dies. The edges are distressed with the obligatory Ranger corduroy distressing ink and there has been a fair bit of sanding going on. There is also glitter, mica mist and stickles galore, both on the box and the cards. I made the envelopes as the cards are an odd size. I have used lick and stick envelope glue so that there is no need to use ds tape. They are still drying on my craft table, I am just hoping they will be dry soon so that I can package them up in order for the children to deliver them to Claire in the morning, along with a lovely bunch of peach coloured roses.

I would like to enter my project (which has taken about 15 hours to make!) into the following challenges:

Pollycraft's Anything Goes

The Pink Elephant's TPE123 Distressing

Papertake Weekly Challenge's Anything Goes (plus a bit of bling)

I just hope this loads as I am having hideous internet connection problems, compounded by IE8 crashing every time I try to load a page. I am using Google Chrome to try to overcome it, but still have an internet connection at the pace of a snail!

Spooky Goings On

This week, my children (well, two of them, my 7 year old son and 5 year old daughter) have been in a frenzy of Halloween excitement. I've never really paid it much attention myself, but their excitement is quite infectious. My daughter asks me about 5 times a day how many days left until 31st! I am not keen on them 'Trick or Treating' though as I know that many people do not 'support' Halloween for a variety of reasons and would feel uncomfortable opening their door to hoards of unfamiliar children on the trail of chocolate and sweets.

I am happy for them to carve a pumpkin - in a happy face though as we also have a 2 year old son and I am trying to keep the event as 'unscary' as possible. Our pumpkin is usually more about the autumn harvest than celebrating anything spooky. We'll let them dress up too, but in fairly benign costumes (most likely as a princess and Batman, rather than gore or horror - they are only little!), but instead of Trick or Treating, I have suggested that they visit the neighbours we know to deliver an edible gift. I'll warn the neighbours to expect them though. Our son has Asperger's syndrome and I know that he will not cope very well if every door he knocks goes unanswered!

My parents usually host a small gathering for all of their grandchildren at Halloween, complete with apple bobbing and eating doughnuts off of a string. This year, they are unable to host it as my Gran is very ill and they are visiting the hospital every day. Instead, I think my Mum is buying up half the confectionery aisle at the supermarket for the Grandchildren to share. I think my children will have enough sweets from them that they certainly won't need to Trick or Treat!

As we'll will be delivering little treats to our neighbours, my daughter told me firmly that I needed to make cards as well. I've made a few as I would never hear the end of it otherwise! I have to say that I have enjoyed it though, even if I am a bit of a Halloween humbug! In my defense, it comes from being at a birthday party on Halloween when I was 6 years old and the outside of the house was pelted with eggs and flour bombs as we left the party to go home. I know now that it was just mindless yobs who attacked a party of little children, but I was terrified at the time.

Anyway, on to the important bit of my rambling post - the card! It is made using the cute L'il Spook digi stamp from Pollycraft. Instead of my usual Promarkers, coloured this one with Aquamarkers and Stampin' Up! watercolour pens. I added doodling with a Letraset fineliner in black and a white gel pen. I layered the image on to textured yellow card cut using my lovely new Grand Nestabilities (I know I keep saying it, but I love large cards and large dies!). Again, I doodled stitching around the edge of the die cut. I made an A5 base card from purple card and covered the front in strips of patterned papers. I punched a star border along one edge of each strip and overlaid each one on the layer below so that the 'holes' revealed the colour below. I ruffled the edges of each strip a little bit to add texture too. The card was finished of with a double cross-over wrap of yellow elastic, a little green tag and a trio of yellow buttons.

Unusually for me, I would like to enter my card into a few challenges this week. Pollycraft's 'Spooky Goings On', Crafty Boots 'Autumn or Halloween', Daisy Doodles 'Halloween', Crafty Cardmakers 'Cute with a dark twist', Paper Creations Ink 'Halloween' and Top Tip Tuesday 'Trick or treat'. I only usually enter one at a time, but thought I would go mad today!

Girls, Girls, Girls!

Girls, Girls, Girls! That's the title of this week's challenge on the wonderful Pollycraft challenge blog. Cazza has set this week's fun challenge and has inspired me with her fab creation (as ever!!). The prize is sponsored by Sew Sweet who have a really great online shop for those of us who love to sew as well as play with paper.

As I had to make a card for a friend's birthday this week (hi Melissa - happy 21st!!), I thought I would also use it as my entry into the challenge. I am almost twice Melissa's age, so I guess our tastes are quite different. I hope she likes it.

I have used one of Paula's amazing digi stamps from Pollycraft- Cherry Kisses Li'l Miss Attitude. Not because Melissa has attitude, but because the gorgeous Cherry Kisses girl has beautiful curls just like Melissa. I envy those natural curls!

As usual, I have made a large card - this one is 8x8. I have coloured the image with a mix of pencils and promarkers and mounted it on a panel cut using one of my new Grand Spellbinders super-large dies (thank you, wonderful husband!). The lovely bright butterfly paper is from Echo Park and the russet-red flower burst behind is from one of my favourite paper stacks - the Green Stack from DCWV. The muted green cotton lace is from American Crafts and the flowers are Primas with some glass floristry beads glued in the centre. The sentiment is based on a blank top-note shape from SJ at Little Musings, which I added my own words, texture and colour to.

These colours are far from my comfort zone, but I wanted something really bright and cheery, not pink and fluffy. Melissa has had a tough year. She is a super hard-working single mum at just 21 years old, juggling caring for her toddler, working full-time and running her houshold. She is my carer and nothing is too much trouble for her. I look forward to her daily visits, which is why I decided on a bright zingy colour palette to bring a bit of cheer and colour to her day.

I hope she likes the card and has a fab birthday.

Swirls and Pearls

Swirls and Pearls is the theme of the challenge set by Anita on the Pollycraft challenge blog this week. I have chosen to join in using this great Luna Bitterfrost digi stamp designed by Pollycraft's very talented Paula Lee. I coloured it with Promarkers and Flex Markers, grounding the image with the palest of pinks.

For my swirls, I have chosen paisley with funky skull and crossbones in the middles to represent the posion symbol of whatever Luna is working on. The paisley shapes were cut by hand from a matt-stack (Rock Star by DCWV). I love this image of the scientist as I studied Chemistry and worked as a research chemist before my children were born. Perhaps Luna is a prettier version of me in my lab-coat wearing days, even down to the plaits! Not sure my glasses were quite so funky though, just standard eye-protection! I have given her my colouring too, but her lab coat is most definitely cleaner than mine ever was.

For the pearls element of the challenge, I have used a little artistic licence and used Liquid Pearls instead of actual pearl embellishments. Cheeky, I know, but I think that chemist Luna would approve of the use of a synthetic liquid compound instead of solid pearl embellies, don't you?

The very tactile pin dot paper in muted teal and black is from Papermania's Chatsworth Signature A5 range. This paper has a suede-like feel to it and is really nice to handle. I have used other papers from K & Co's designer 6x6 series to add layers and to make the paper-ribbon stripe behind Luna. The overall card was covered in paisley paper from Papermania. The ribbon tied across the card is from Maya Road. It is so thick, it is actually a little like shoe-lace.

My finishing flourish is the 'fumes' from the top of the test tube. I made this using a piece of pink net fabric which I gathered and threaded onto a safety pin before fastening it to the page. I can't say that I ever worked on anything which gave off nice pink coloured fumes, but it adds to the image!

What's New Pussycat?

Until I started taking part in papercraft challenges (just 3 weeks ago), I had never made a card using a sketch as the outline idea. I been making cards for 13 years, but have always used my own ideas or used other cards for inspiration, but more in the sense of the overall feel rather than the positioning of the design elements. This is only the third card I have made based on a sketch, but I think I may be hooked!

I am still just finding my feet in entering challenges, so I have only really entered one card in each challenge and used each card for just one challenge so far. With this card, I am going for it - two challenges with one card! I would like to enter this card in Fetch-a-Sketch challenge 6 as well as the Charisma Cardz challenge on the theme of 'inspired by a song'.

The digi stamp of Lil Kitty made me think of the Tom Jones song as soon as I saw it on the Pollycraft site, so when I saw the Charisma Cardz challenge, I knew I had to use it. My daughter loves this image and had to have her own copy to colour too. The stamp is coloured using Promarkers and is mounted on an iridescent scalloped circle, layered onto a ditsy print paper. As with my Alien Adventure card, I have double embossed around the central panel on the white 8x8 card base and infilled with Flexmarker colouring to make the image 'pop'. The scalloped dotty strip is from Polkadoodles 'Double Sprinkle of Kraft' CD. The two scrunched paper flowers are made from scalloped circles cut from the Financial Times, coloured with Promarkers and glazed with silicone glue, which also stiffens them and holds them in shape. The sentiment is stamped onto a chipboard circle and the card is finished off with a circular tab at the top left. Phew! Lots of the detail of this card, such as the double embossing, don't show on the photo, but they make it look 'high quality' close up and hopefully let the recipient know that we care for her very much.

I would like to thank the designers who have set these challenges and, of course, the prize sponsors. You are helping to keep my hands and brain occupied at a very stressful time in my life!