A few little projects

Hello again crafty blog people!

I'm patiently waiting for my delivery of awesome toys from the new catalogue. Well, by patiently, I mean looking out the window thinking "is it here yet?!?". I think you all know what I mean.... waiting for a parcel you know us coming is torture! I've got a few bits and pieces from my preorder, but I can't wait for the rest of it to get here...I've got so many ideas I want to try!

In the mean time, here is a quick upload of a couple of cards I made a couple of weeks ago, just because I can!

And fingers crossed I'll be investing in a new computer soon... so I'll be able to do some updates properly :) Woot!

There is a Blogger app...who knew?!

The era of no updates has come to an end! Hurrah!! Since it's been pretty tricky to steal the husband's laptop lately, I have been attempting to browbeat my iPad into uploading photos...obviously that worked REALLY well. Anyway, fast forward a few months and someone mentions the brilliant idea that I should download the blogger app, cos it can do all that fancy stuff...like post blog entries and pics. So here I am... attempting to do just that! And for my first trick, I will show you all a sneak peek of some of the cool stuff from the new catalogue....THE NEW CATALOGUE people!!!! It's hitting the interwebs on September 1st :)


Oh, and in my absence, I've finished my craft room too!! Isn't it awesome :)

Damn technology!

Once again, things are a little quiet in minks land. This is due to my computer deciding its time had come to go meet the great motherboard in the sky. I fear its untimely demise may have actually been the result of a lingering illness caused by one too many liquids finding their way onto the keyboard - i blame the kids!! I'm not that much of a tech head that I thought I'd have trouble without a computer, I mean there are other things to do, right? WRONG! I'm going insane! I have to check my email on the iPad, or my phone...I know! How can I possibly cope living under these conditions? Well, as has often been said to my oldest "suck it up, Princess". Hopefully mr tax man will be nice to us and I'll be able to get a new laptop soon... or should I say, my husband will get a new laptop and I'll inherit his old one (unless I'm banned after last nights teensy little accident where the twins may or may not have knocked my glass over his keyboard. But it was ok, we've learned our lesson and it had a plastic keyboard protector on it!). Aaaaanyway, I can't figure out how to get the bloody iPad to put the photos here, so once I've done my probation I'll steal the hubby's laptop and post some pics!

Absolutely nothing to do with stamping...

but I just had to show this little project I made for my husband to hang on the wall in his office.

For those of you who may not recognise it straight away, it's Roy & Moss from The IT Crowd (awesome show!), and Roy's opening line to almost every phone call he answers.
My John works in IT (doing something tricksy with computers that I don't understand) and has spent more than a few hours doing tech support for numpties like me in his career. And since he still has to do tech support for this particular numpty, I thought this little pressie might give him a chuckle :)

I found the pattern for it on a very cool blog called Dork Stitch, and even better, it was free! Now who doesn't love a free pattern? Huh? ;)

I'm planning on a couple of Harry Potter projects for my older boys next, and then I think I'll have to do this one, also from Dork Stitch! My oldest has this on a t-shirt, so I *have* to make it for him :)

So if I'm a little slack with posting my stamping creations, it's because I'm busily stitching away. But don't worry.. my craft phases never last for long, so I'll be back!

Paper Players #93 & Mojo Monday MOJO239

Can you believe I found some time to make cards this week! OMG! It's all thanks to my friend Jo (hi Jo!). I was planning to spend Tuesday catching up on some housework, but Jo caught me in the car park at school after I dropped the big boys off. Conversation went something like this:

J: What are you up to today?

L: Nothing much, just a bit of housework.

J: Oh, do you have to?

L: *snort* NO! What do you have in mind?

J: I feel like making cards.

L: Ok... let's go!


I've come to the conclusion that I'm really not very dedicated to my housewifely duties, and will abandon them with the slightest provocation :) Yay me!

Anyway.. we did manage to get a bit of card making done while our three little terrrors ran around harassing  each other (well, it was more like my two terrors harassing her's), and eating rice crackers.

Here's what I ended up with for the challenges I decided to enter (and it will be a birthday card for my Nan, so bonus!).

The Paper Players #93 had a tic tac toe challenge - to pic three squares from their challenge board and include those elements on your card. I chose square card, ribbon and designer paper. The DSP I used was the gorgeous Sale-A-Bration paper Everyday Enchantment (love it!) and I used the organza ribbon from SAB as well.

I combined these elements with the sketch challenge over at Mojo Monday - Round or Square.

I'm hoping to get some more work done on my craft room this weekend, but it's not looking promising.. unless this rain keeps up and saturday morning soccer is cancelled ;)

My first award!!

So it seems that while I was absent from blog land, the lovely Kylie over at Scrappinstamp has decided my little blog was worthy enough to be included in her Liebster Blog Awards!



I think these sorts of awards are great... the Liebster Award is aimed at smaller blogs (less than 200 followers), and can really help a blog author to feel they are not alone in their own little crafty universe :) The idea is that if you receive a Liebster award from someone, it would be nice to share the love and pass one of your own awards onto 3 - 5 other blogs you love. And don't forget to link back to the blog you received your award from!

Here are some blogs that I enjoy reading and getting inspiration from:

Mae at Mae's Cachet

Kathy at Stamping Still   (sorry Kathy! I know Kylie linked you too, it must be nice to be so loved :))

Ally at Stamping and Crafting with Ally

Delys at Little Scraps of Paper

Helen at H2 Designs

Go check out their blogs and share some comments... we love to get comments!

Finally a new post!

For the hundreds of you who breathlessly check my blog every day, wishing and hoping for a new post.. TA-DA! Here's a new post!

Ok, I may be a teensy bit delusional thinking that there are hundreds of people awaiting my next post, but a girl can dream, can't she? Maybe one day... but for now, thanks to the 10 people who do read regularly (because I make them) for sticking with me during my recent silence. Things have been so crazy lately that I just haven't had the time or energy to do a lot of crafting. School, work, home and my twin cyclones of destruction have been dominating my life, and sucking my will to live (anyone get the Wayne's Word reference? Anyone?) Anyway, hopefully things will settle down a bit now and I'll be able to get a few more things made - clear out some room in my brain for new ideas!

So here is my latest creation:

I bought the Flower Fest stamp set a few months ago, and this is the first time I've taken it for a spin - and I'm really happy with the result. It does look better in real life (I feel the need to point out that I *didn't* take these pics...), and the white embossing really makes the flowers pop. I quite liked the idea of giving someone a bunch of flowers as a thank you card, it's kind of like "the flowers you give when you can't actually give flowers. I hope the recipient likes them... she made a lovely meal for the kids and I the last time the hubby was away for work and I thought that was an act of kindness deserving of a bunch of flowers :)

pretty new stamps!

Just a quick one to show a thank you card that I'm quite proud of... my very first solo attempt at the baby wipe technique! My upline (Mae Collins) demonstrated this technique at her last class, and I was amazed at how easy it was.

I added a bit of pearl shimmer paint on the flowers, but it may be a bit tricky to see in the photo.
I haven't invested in too many of the ink refills, but I think I'll have to start getting some more. This technique is so easy, and I think it looks quite effective too!

Card: Crumb Cake, Baja Breeze, Very Vanilla, Soft Suede
Inks: Soft Suede, Crumb Cake, Baja Breeze
Stamps: Elements of Style, Teeny Tiny Sentiments, En Francais
Other: Antique brad, Chantilly Lace, Pearl, Pearl Alcohol Ink

Bye-bye Sale-A-Bration

*sniff* I am very sad to say goodbye to the lovely stamps and DSP from this year's Sale-A-Bration catalogue. I especially love the DSP, and I can see myself torn between using it on everything, and being really stingy with it so I don't run out!

Here is the last card I made using these awesome products:

On a completely different topic... OMG do I need to learn how to take better photos! I guess it would help not leaving them all until last thing at night... but with all my "helpful" children running around during daylight hours, getting any photos taken would most likely never happen!

My usual trick is to try a few pics, say "oh these look rubbish!" then ask my darling husband (and amateur photography enthusiast) to take them for me :) Unfortunately, he has yet to return from his latest jaunt to the US, so you poor unfortunates will have to make do with my efforts!

Easter treats!

It's only a week away... the visit from the fluffy white Easter Bunny!! Here are the cute little treats we made at my Easter workshop last weekend - I know, how very slack of me having taken nearly a week to post them!

These little toppers were pretty quick to make - and everyone at the workshop got to make 6 of them! A few M&Ms inside and they're ready for the kids to find on Easter Sunday. I can't take credit for inventing these myself, but there are so many floating around on the interwebs that I'm not sure who to credit the original idea to. I think I took some elements from a few different sites, and made up a few of my own because I didn't have the right punches :) But isn't that how it all works?

These little cuties I found on Jill Coleman's blog, and I thought they would be a really quick addition to the workshop. Great to put a few mini choc eggs in and have at the table for the big family lunch :)

I wish I'd remembered to take a photo of the cute little basket I made for the door prize... some more punch art, but a cute little chick hatching out of his egg this time! Oh well... maybe next year I'll remember!

An exciting footnote: my new craft space is almost ready!! Well, by "almost ready" I mean that it's been framed and the plaster has been put up, and the extra lights & outlets have been added. So all that's left really is painting, floor covering and moving all the stuff back in. It'll be done in a jiffy!*

*that's a Dalton jiffy (approximately 3 months), not the technical one the brainy people use (In astrophysics and quantum physics a jiffy is, as defined by Edward R. Harrison, the time it takes for light to travel one fermi, which is the size of a nucleon. One fermi is 10⁻¹⁵ m, so a jiffy is about 3 × 10⁻²⁴ seconds.) Thanks Wikepedia!