I'm back !

Hi Everyone, hope you are all having a crafty time. I have returned to Blogland after an industrious time creating items for my stall at a Charity Coffee Morning in aid of Macmillan Cancer. It went quite well for a small event in the local Breakfast Club hall at a nearby school. We had quite a lot of visitors buying cakes and coffee and looking at the stall. I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the stall at the venue but here are a couple of pics of my practice layout on my kitchen table, lol, the night before.

Excuse the dresser and cups in the background, but I wanted to have a practice go and see what it looked like. As you can see I have been quite busy. Most of my Christmas packs of cards sold in no time and lots of the covered notepads and Post It note holders sold too. The bundles of Christmas tags were very popular, I wished that I had made more of them. Well, it all turned out ok and we raised quite a bit for the charity so I was very pleased as this was only the second time I've had a stall, I'm quite a newbie at it. Here are a few close ups of some of my items....

 

 

Some 4 x 4 cards sold in packs of 6

 

A6 cards sold in packs of 4

 

Decorated Trinket Box

 

Wall Hanging

 

Door Hanger

 

 

I really enjoyed making some different things. I usually just make cards and it was very inspiring to venture in to other areas of craft  and jewellery making for a change. Now I have quite a bit of catching up to do visiting everybody's blogs, so I will see you there.

 

Lorraine

Sweet Magnolia

Hello crafters,

Hope you enjoyed your weekend. We had a lovely day here in East Anglia, much better than predicted.
In between family and housework my craft room kept calling me and so I managed to make this sweet Magnolia card. I used my Spellbinders and Memory Box dies to make the frames and accents. I thought I would also decoupage the image too just for a change.....    and it's in blue again :/ If you remember me saying a while ago, I don't usually go for blue but here it is, maybe it's a sub conscious thing to get away from all the red and green Christmas items I have been making lately.



 

See you next time

Lorraine

M.I.A.

Phew where has this week gone?...
Sorry I've been missing in action this week, it's been very hectic in our household. I've also been beavering away in my craftroom trying to make lots of things for a stall at a Macmillan Coffee Morning that I have been kindly asked to attend. The only thing was that it was very short notice and I did not have many items to sell. So many hours later, I now have Christmas tags, packs of cards, a few items of handmade jewellery, notebooks etc to take next week. I will show a picture soon of my table set out.
For now though, I would like to enter this card in two challenges:

Through The Craft Room Door - Anything Goes

Papertake Weekly Challenge - Make It Sparkle

 

 

 

 



Firstly, I die-cut the reindeer and tree line and then heat embossed them with black and white embossing powder. the starry night background was inked using Distress Inks -Stormy Sky and Chipped Sapphire. I had already dry embossed the cardstock with a snowfall embossing folder so I then high-lighted each 'bump' with stickles. the moon was punched out of pearlescent card and two snowflakes added to the corner.

Hope you like.

 

See you soon

Lorraine

Clearly Besotted Challenge

Hi Crafters,

Today I am entering in to a challenge over on Clearly Besotted Stamps. The rules include stamping your own background and as I've just received my first order of these lovely stamps and dies I decided to make a baby card....

 

I used two of the stamps to create my background, matted and layered on to glitter and plain cardstock then stamped and die cut the pram, bottle and dummy. I tried some shadow stamping too on these elements. I finished the card off with a large yellow bow and used the die cut safety pin to add interest. Here's a close up....

 

 

The dies cut perfectly and released the cardstock with no trouble, I was very pleased with my purchase and will definitely make another visit to the shop soon.
Maybe the bright yellow of this card will cheer us all up as we seem to have entered winter already.
The weather today here in East Anglia is cold, windy, overcast and decidedly dreary, somehow we have leapt from August to November over the last couple of days.

See you soon

Lorraine

New Card Candy

Hi,
Hope you all had a brilliant weekend!
Just a quick post today as I'd like to tell you about my new Card Candy that I have just listed in my Etsy shop.
Do take a look as I will be listing some Christmas Card Candy soon too.

                          Set 1                            

 

Set 2

Set 3 

 

These are handmade 3D embellishments for your cards, scrapbook pages or projects.

 

See you soon

 

Lorraine



You're Cute !

A sweet little card today with oodles of cuteness.

 

I thought that I would give my Promarkers an outing today, I haven't played with them for a long time. I've been watching some tutorials on You Tube and picked up a few tips, so this is how it turned out.

The cute kitten is a Lili of the Valley pre-stamped image that was part of a collection free on a magazine quite a while ago and this is the first one that I've coloured.

The papers are scraps that I had left over from other projects and are of various origin. I used my Spellbinders scalloped oval die, some seam binding, a beautiful cabochon I acquired from Ebay and some self-adhesive pearls.
I'd like to enter this card in to the following challenges:

Crafty Little Fairies - Cute 'n' Cuddly Critters

Country View Crafts - Layers

Bearly-Mine Challenges - Anything Goes

Through The Craftroom Door - Anything goes

 

Thanks for stopping by,

See you soon,

 

Lorraine 

The Mighty Oak

Hi, evening everyone,

This is my latest card....a masculine card...I struggle with these. I like putting lace and flowers and trims and glitter and pretty things on my cards but guy cards don't allow any of these and that causes me to ponder and scratch my head about what to embellish it with. However, I finally finished it and I'm quite pleased.

The lovely oak tree stamp is from Sheena Douglas which I have heat embossed with black embossing powder and then created the background with my distress inks. A few patterned papers matted and layered to create a staggered background and a banner sentiment. Doesn't sound like much but I spent hours swapping and changing things around until I thought it looked ok.

I'd like to enter this card in to the Papertake Weekly Challenge - Anything Goes

See you soon

Lorraine

Clearly Besotted Stamps

Hi,
I was browsing blog posts yesterday and came across a company that I had not heard of before, although I'm sure lots of you out there have, it was Clearly Besotted Stamps . I really liked their stamps and dies so I placed an order. The service I received was exemplary. I ordered yesterday afternoon at about 3pm and my goods were delivered this morning. They were packaged in pretty pink tissue and with a hand written note too. I was extremely pleased, it is very rare to get such service nowadays. I emailed Stephanie, the owner, and told her how pleased I was.
I can't wait to start playing with my purchases and I will show you what I have made in a few days.
In the mean time hop on over to the shop and the blog, you won't be disappointed.

Off to play !

Lorraine

More Tags !

Last batch....I promise.

This is going to be short and sweet tonight...
Four Christmas tags in green.

These are self explanatory I think, I've just heat embossed the design in black embossing powder and inked with Tim Holtz Distress ink in Mowed lawn. Added a few trims and voila!

These are also in my Etsy shop.

Thanks for tagging along....pardon the pun, lol

Happy crafting

Lorraine

Santa Christmas Tags

Hi folks,
Hope you all had a great weekend.
Yesterday I posted my first Christmas tags creations of this year and I've been busy this morning making some different ones.....

 

 

I bought this lovely Santa stamp from Creative Expressions and I couldn't wait to use it and I think it turned out ok. The construction of the tags is the same as before but this time I added punched holly leaves and tinkling bells to the ribbon bow. I'm really pleased how these look. There is a space on the back for writing your message and a red twine loop for attaching to your gift. These will also be in my Etsy shop.
Here is a close up view...

My creative juices are flowing now I can think of lots more ideas, it's just having the time to fit it in, lol.
Well I hope you enjoyed my little blog post for today, I would love to have a few more followers stopping by but I have only been blogging a month so it's early days.
Happy crafting everyone.

Lorraine

Christmas Tags

Hi,
Is everyone enjoying the last little bit of summer before autumn sets in? I'm trying to but I thought I'd better get started on making some Christmas items as it's only 115 DAYS ! Yikes, I need to get a move on. I have made a few cards already but I also like to make tags for some of my presents too. This is what I came up with today...

These four are going in my Etsy shop, the rest are reserved for family presents.
I began with Blue and White cardstock and stamped the filigree pattern in Broken China distress ink randomly around the edges, then I went back and stamped the same stamp in Versamark ink and embossed it with Cosmic Shimmer 'Aurora Crystal Sparkle' embossing powder. Here is a close up...

It doesn't show up on this picture very well (note to self... Ask Santa for a decent camera this year...) but it gives the edges a lovely twinkling festive sparkle. Lets try this picture.....

 Then I added some Martha Stewart punched snowflakes, gemstones, organza ribbon bows, and a beautiful silver snowflake charm. There is plenty of room to write my Christmas messages on them too. Tomorrow I'm hoping to create some Santa themed ones so look out for that post.
Hope you are all getting your Christmas items made too....don't forget, only 115 days!
See you all soon

Lorraine