October Week 1

Well the cough and cold didn't lift so I gave in and got a doctors appointment to get it checked out. I ended up with a course of antibiotics which have now kicked in and are helping to see this virus off. Once I was home from work most evenings were spent doing a little crochet, updating my planner and catching up on You Tube videos. Tom was out with the lads on Friday night so I had a lovely peaceful evening to myself - unfortunately it didn't last and I ended up not getting the best nights sleep due to the beer infused snore monster sleeping next to me! lol

As I was still feeling a little under the weather I cancelled my plans to go to the Cake Show at Londons ExCel centre over the weekend and instead stayed home to just potter about and take it easy. It was just what I needed to be honest and I am now, finally, beginning to feel a lot better.

Saturday was spent tidying my desk area a little as it was a total mess with all sorts of bits and pieces dumped on and around it. I also went though my Christmas stash and got rid of a lot of old and useless stickers and scraps of paper etc. I can assure you that my desk space looked a lot better than this when I had finished.

On Saturday evening we went out for an Indian meal, for the first time in a long while we decided to try somewhere different to our usual Tower Tandoori. We were recommended Indian Fusion on Tower Bridge and although the service was a little slow (in their defence the restaurant was very busy) it was a great meal. The food was delicious and the menu had so much more than just the usual tikka's and jalfrezi's. We will definitely be going back there again.

Sunday was another leisurely day, I put some diced lamb, veggies and Moroccan spices in the slow cooker as I didn't fancy the hassle of making a roast dinner. The resulting casserole was a big hit and is something that I will be making again in the coming months. I love using my slow cooker, it just makes life so easy as you can pretty much chuck anything in to make a one pot wonder meal.

I made four Christmas cards using the stamps that I bought at Ally Pally, they are all very simple but I think they are quite effective. Just need to make a few more now, luckily the colouring on these is very simple as its pretty much just a handful of the same colours for each image.

I haven't been happy with my desk/craft space for a while now, the corner style really isn't working for me anymore. I have been looking desks on line and yesterday I finally took the plunge and ordered the one below. Its due to be delivered within the next week or so, I really cant wait for it to arrive so I can get my room re-arranged and set up again.

I hope you have all had a good week and weekend. As always thanks for stopping by and reading.

Love and hugs, Jane xx

Crafting Again

Well that's the first full weekend of 2017 over with.....for us it was a nice relaxed one at home. We have both been a little under with weather with various coughs, colds and sinus problems so it was nice to stay home in the warm and just chill out.

Last week one of the guys I work with asked me to make him a birthday card and exploding/photo box for his girlfriend so this weekend was the perfect time for me to play in my craft room and produce the goods. The theme was pretty and girly and I think I achieved that on both the card and the box. As yet there are no pictures in the box, I will add these at a later date as my colleague wants to let his good lady pick which photos to put in. I am looking forward to hearing what she thinks about it although I am pretty sure she will love it as I know she likes all thinks pretty, girly and sparkly. The flowers that are on the lid are all from Wild Orchid crafts and the two large pink flowers in the box are Prima.

The card is 8x8 and I used a Lilli of the Valley pre coloured card as the image, I layered up some cardstock and paper and then added some ribbon, gems, metal corners and a die cut sentiment to finish it off. I used to have quite a collection of ready made cards but my stash is almost depleted now so I think I may spend the next couple of weekends making some more so that I always have a stock of cards ready to go. If you are a card maker do you make yours as you need them or do you keep a stock that you can dip in to as needed?

I also started trying to organize a travel planner for our USA holiday. I bought a leather binder from the sale in Paperchase and then I bought and downloaded some travel pages from Etsy. The plan yesterday was to sit down and get it all printed, trimmed to size and punched so I could start filling it
in. I managed to print and trim however the portable Filofax A5 hole punch I bought was worse than useless - it only punches one page at a time and because you have to really squeeze the two sides of it together to make it punch it scrunches up your paper around the holes leaving it looking a ragged mess. Thankfully I found a better quality one on Amazon that is currently winging its way to me so hopefully next weekend I can get going again. Feeling frustrated by not being able to set up my planner I plonked myself on the sofa with a cuppa and the laptop and did a little craft shopping with Paper Maze. They had a little sale on so I snapped up some lovely scrapping papers and Heidi Swapp planner bits, looking forward to those arriving now, been a long time since Mr Postie bought me a pizza box.

I went to Weight Watchers last Thursday for the post Christmas and New Year weigh in, I knew there would be a gain which I was expecting to be around 4-5lbs. I was rather pleased and surprised when I found out that it was only 1.5lbs! Am back on track now so that should soon come off and then I can get on with the task of losing that last stone to get me to my goal weight.

Thanks for stopping by my little blog. Leave me a little comment below and a link to your blog and I will pop over, have a read and return the compliment.

Love and hugs, Jane x

Valentines Weekend Round-Up

Evening all......hope that you all had a lovely Valentines weekend? Ours was very nice although it didn't quite go to plan as Tom ended up going to work on overtime on both Saturday and Sunday. We did manage to celebrate with a meal at our favourite Argentinian steak restaurant on Saturday night, it was a night off the diet and we both thoroughly enjoyed it, although we were totally stuffed afterwards. Tom also spoilt me with some flowers, a hamper of Champneys bath products and a new Superdry coat.  Anyway as it was freezing cold all weekend I was quite happy to be able to stay home and potter about, especially as it meant time to play in my craft room.

I have decided to try and push my card making a little bit again and I am planning to make at least a couple of cards every weekend (that is the weekends when I get to have time to play in my room). I will add them to my page on Facebook to see if they sell, but if they don't I will at least always have a nice stock of cards to pull from when I need to send a card. Below are some pics for you to see what I made this weekend, the first two are Mothers Day Easel cards which I made using odds and ends from my stash.

I made a few general birthday cards, again all made using left over stash. I no longer buy separate stash for card making, I just use all the left over bits of card stock and those odd sheets of scrapbooking paper. I also dug out my Cuttlebug for the first time in ages and I have to say that I really enjoyed re-discovering a whole Artbin full of long forgotten about dies!!

Thanks for stopping by, hope you like the cards. I did also complete a layout this weekend, I will come back later in the week to share that with you along with some pics of my very first Cocoa Daisy kit which arrived today.

Love and hugs, Jane xx

Re-Discovering my Stash

Evening all..

Thought I would pop by with a little post to share pics of some cards I made last weekend.

Apart from a few 'made to order' cards I really haven't made very many lately. In fact last week I was seriously considering getting rid of a lot of my card making stash, so with this in mind last Saturday I decided to play with some dies and stamps to see where it took me......and I have to say I actually enjoyed stamping and colouring and die cutting. So for now the card making stash stays although I do have a few sets of Stampin Up stamps that I don't use any more so they are going to go on Ebay.

The first few cards I have to share were all made using Stampin Up products, the background stamp and the large butterfly die work perfectly together. I even used some co-co-ordinating papers to make envelopes to match the cards. The sentiment stamp on these cards is from Inkylicious.

The next card is a Stamping Bella Uptown Girls image that I stamped and the coloured in using my Copics. I used some SU paper and a doily for the background and then added a large die cut corner to embellish, I finished the card off with a few gems (pretty standard for me!!).

This card is a Saturated Canary image, I think she is called Circus Trixie. Again I used my Copics to colour her in, usually I colour these images in quite bright colours but this time I decided to make it soft and muted. Again I used a doily, some die cut and gems to add a little bit of embelishment.

Hope you like the cards, there are some more pic over on my Facebook page. I do try to update that on a regular basis with my cards, layouts and jewellery...its doing really well and I currently have 120 'likes'!!

Thanks for stopping by, please leave me a comment if you like what you see. Feel free to contact me if you would like a card made for your someone special.

Love and hugs, Jane xx

Love is in the Air

Well it will be in a couple of weeks when Valentines Day arrives!

I have been asked by some of the guys at work if I could make them Valentines cards for their wives and girlfriends (seems like they have been paying attention when I tell them about my hobby!!). Today I set myself the task of making at least 4 cards to take in and I was quite pleased that I actually managed to make 6...I am pretty sure I will actually need more than this but I will make a few more during the week and them some more next weekend if need be.

I used a selection of Lili of the Valley printed image cards, Stampin Up sentiments, die cut hearts (not sure what brand they are),and a die cut wife sentiment which is from JJD Cards.

Below are the pictures of the cards, it would be great if you could leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Thanks for stopping by..

Love and hugs,

Jane

New Cards - 11.05.2013

Here are a few cards that I have to share with you, all of these cards are made by me and are available for sale. If you are interested in buying any of these cards please leave me a message along with your email address and I will get back to you with details of prices etc ASAP. I check my blog on a regular basis so you wont have to wait to long to get your hands on one of my creations.



Thanks for stopping by and please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about my crafty creations.

Love and hugs, Jane

A Little Bit of Card Making

Evening all...

Thought I would make a quick post to show you a few of the cards I made last weekend when I wanted to craft but really wasn't in the mood for scrapping. I hadn't made any birthday cards in ages but I have to say I really enjoyed my card making day. It was great fun to rediscover some of my stamps, punches, dies and inks. Plus all the papers I used were 'end of kits' or 'scraps left over' so no new stash was used at all!!

I am going to try and make at least 4 or 5 cards a month so I can build my stock right up, you never know I might even manage to sell one or two.

Anyway below are some pics for you, I hope you like what I made.



Hope your all keeping nice and warm on this bitterly cold Monday evening.....I hope it passes soon and that Spring and the warmer weather is soon with us.

Thanks for looking x x

April's First Update

Afternoon all, well here we are in April already - this year is flying past!!

Thought I would upload a few a picture of a layout I did last month and a card that I made using the scraps left over.

I have had these papers for ages, I think that are We R Memory Keepers. The title is American Crafts Thickers and the picture of Tom was taken whilst we were on holiday in Spain last year.

The card was made for my Mum for Mothers Day and is a 'Joyfold' card. I found the instructions for this on the web somewhere although I slightly adapted it to suit the size of card I wanted to make. I think she liked it!

March was a pretty busy month for us, we had visitors and a stag and hen party to go on so I had little chance to craft. This has been the first weekend that we have had totally to ourselves so I have made the most of it and spent some time in my craft room. So far I have managed 3 layouts, I will post again later to share some of them with you.

TFL - Jane x x

Valentines Sunday

Afternoon all,

Had a nice weekend so far, although I am NOT liking the bitterly cold weather we are having right now. You can keep your snow and ice thank you very much, give me the long, hot Summer days any time! On Friday night we went to Bluewater to meet up with Darcy, Ian, Jules, Tinks and Denny. We went to TGI's and had a lovely time chatting and catching up. It was so good to see Darcy and Ian as we have not seen them for over a year, it was also good to see my bestie's Jules and Denny. Ladies if you read this we are long overdue a girly play date.

I spent sometime in my room yesterday, just pottering about and having a general sort out. Re-arranged some of my storage and started a pile of stuff that will either go on Ebay or be swapped. I did manage to do one layout using up a sheet of Christmas paper that I bought in Crafts U Love. The picture of us was taken on the night we went out for our Christmas meal.



As Tom will be at work on the evening of Feb 14th we are celebrating it a couple of days early. Later this evening we are having the M&S Gourmet Dine In Meal, really looking forward to it, especially as it includes a bottle of fizz!! I made 4 cards for the guys at work to give to their partners, the pictures of those are on FB if you want to see them. The card I made for Tom is below, I used a card I found on Pinterest as my inspiration. The XO paper is from a kit I got from Truly, Madly, Crafty (will be adding a link to them shortly), the chipboard heart was inked up and then covered with crackle glaze. I then gave the whole card and seam binding a spritz of Tattered Angels glimmer mist in Antique Lace. Finally I cut 2 little tags on my cricut and added some Glizt letters. Just hope he likes it!!




Hope you have all had a nice weekend despite the weather.

Love and hugs, Jane x x

A Little Bit of Card Making

Evening all...

Thought I would pop by and share a couple of pictures with you all of some of the cards that I made yesterday. They are all for sale so if anyone is interested please get in touch.

The images were all coloured by me using my Copic Ciao pens. The 'flower' sentiment on each card is by Craftwork Cards and the mulberry flowers on the cards are by Wild Orchid Crafts.




Thanks for looking, I am planning on making a few more cards in the coming weeks so keep checking back. X x

What I have made this weekend

Evening all, hope your all well and that you had a good Bank Holiday weekend. Such a shame about the weather though, wasn't exactly good for going out and about was it?? Luckily Tom and I had no plans, we spent most of the weekend pottering about at home. The highlight was a trip to Ikea to buy an Expedit unit for the living room - now my albums have a proper home. Gotta love Ikea!

I spent a bit of time crafting this weekend, I made a load of cards to go in the raffle at the Charity event we are having in Hayley's memory this coming weekend. I also did a couple of layouts, one of which is below. The picture is of Scarlett and I used Fancy Pants papers and embellishments that I have had for quite a while. I added a few buttons along the bottom and the little alpha are by Adorn-it



I also made a scalloped circle card using my Cricut Imagine (the circles were cut and printed using the Lori's Garden cartridge). The stamped image is Glam Goth by Sweetpea and she has been coloured in using my Copic Ciao pens. Finally I added some Wild Orchid crafts flowers and some pearls from my stash. The flowers have been brushed lightly with glimmer mist to give them a little sparkle. The round sentiment is by Craftwork Cards.



Thanks for looking, more posts to follow soon.

Jane x x

More Mothers Day Cards

Just a quick post from me tonight...

Here are a couple more easel cards that I have made....




Below is the link to Crafty Ann's blog where I found the template I used. All of the cards apart from my Mums were done using a 4x8 inch piece of card. Mums card was done with 8x16 cardstock.

http://spiritofcreativitytutorialblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/easel-card-tutorial.html
(sorry cant seem to get it to work where you click on the link to go straight to the blog!).

The next couple of pictures are of the exploding box I made, I really love this one, mainly because its pretty and pink!!




Thanks for stopping by...hopefully I will get some scrapping done soon. Its been ages since I did a layout!

Love and hugs, Jane x

Mothers Day Cards

Evening folks!!

I really LOVE the easel cards that I made last week, in fact I love them so much I decided to make my Mums Mothers Day card in this style.

I made it as an 8x8 card using some navy blue card stock which I then layered with white cardstock and some old cherry arte papers. The image is a Tilda by Magnolia which I coloured in with my pro markers. The flowers and metal corners are from Wild Orchid crafts and the bling and pearls are from my stash, the Mum has been done with American Crafts Thickers. Finally I cut 2 scalloped ovals using a set of nestabilities which I then stamped a sentiment from Imagine That on. I have attached a couple of pictures for you to see....just hope Mum likes the card.




On Monday I took some cards into the office for the guys I work with to see. I wasnt expecting too much as I work with all men but they were all very nice about my cards and I actually ended up with orders for 4 card, 3 for Mothers Day and 1 for a 21st birthday. Looks like I will be busy in the PPoC tomorrow (as if I need an excuse!).

So far its been a nice weekend here. Yesterday Tom and I headed up to Covent Garden to meet our friends Liz and Andy Garlick who were visiting London from their home town of North Carolina. It was really good to see them and share a few drinks and a lot of laughs. Hopefully one day we will get to visit them in NC!

Today I paid a visit to the Craft Barn with Cath, I was quite a good girl and just bought some cardstock, a couple of inkpads, a glimmer mist and a home sweet home wall hanging kit. The CB is one of our fave shops, the service there is always fabulous and the ladies make you so welcome and are full of hints and tips. Hopefully it wont be too long before we go back.

Thanks for stopping by,

Jane x x

Something a Little Different

Evening all and hope everyone has had a good weekend.

We have had a fairly relaxed weekend which makes a change!!. Yesterday we popped over to see Dad who is recovering really well from his operation. Its such a relief to see him getting better, long may it continue.

I managed a little bit of crafting yesterday, I made 3 cards using a Magnolia Tilda stamp that I got from Sir Stampalot. For a change I decided to try something different and instead of making the usual style of card I made them as easel cards which I now love. I have attached a couple of pics for you to see them. The papers are all from my stash, the flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts and the sentiments are from Stamping Up.




Today has been spent indoors doing odds and ends, housework, washing and the like! I have also spent a big chunk of the day updating and adding to itunes - technology is not always as simple as its supposed to be!! LOL

So here we are, Sunday evening again. Luckily I have a short week this week as I am having a days holiday on Friday. I am planning to meet up with our friends Liz and Andy who are visiting from the USA, North Carolina to be exact. Liz wants to go to Harrods so it should be fun!

Thanks for stopping by and if you like my cards please leave me a comment!!

Just for You

Evening all..

As I am having another blogging moment I thought I would share a few pictures with you tonight.

The first one is of a card I have just made for a work colleague who is poorly sick right now and needs a bit of cheering up. I used my new Glam Goth stamp for the card and coloured her in with my Pro-Markers. I then added some Mulberry roses which I spritzed with some Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist (in Antique Lace). I then added a little bling swirls and a couple of butterflies which were cut with a Martha Stewart punch. The sentiment is Stamping Up. I have to say I am really loving this stamp, she looks so pretty and is really easy to colour in. Think there will be quite a few cards being made with her in the coming weeks.



The next couple of pictures are of the beautiful lillies that Tom gave me for Valenties day. Its over a week on now and they still look stunning and they smell fabulous. Just a shame my darling husband does not appreciate them as much as I do, still it was very nice of him to buy them considering he hates the smell!!




Thanks for looking..

Jane x x