London Days

Today my card is for the 'toot your own horn' challenge over on Cas-ual Friday. The idea is to create a card inspired by your blog header. I don't have the conventional blog header so decided to take the inspiration from my blog title-London Days.
As, this card is both inspired by my header and my CAS style, I will also enter it into the 'show your style' challenge on Hiding in the Craft room

I love living in London. So many things about this great city inspire me and now after the Olympics I couldn't be prouder to be a Londoner. So this challenge was a lot of fun for me. I had to go with the London Skyline and this is what I came up with:

I printed off a skyline image from the web and very carefully cut it out. Then I cut the front of the base card down and attached my image. I thought a 'thinking of you' sentiment would go perfectly as I could send this to a friend abroad or, if I am away, to a friend at home.......I am sure they will get the double meaning???
This is an interesting challenge and it is fun looking through how other crafters have been inspired by their own blog headers.
I am also going to enter this into the 'CAS' challenge on Dutch Dare challenge blog.

Happy Sunday x

All I want for Christmas......

.........is shoes!!

Yes I do love to get new shoes and not just for Christmas.

My card today is for the 'shoe' challenges on Casology and Ooh-la-la-creations.

I was looking through my shoe rubber stamps then remembered I had this Pink Petticoat digi Xmas shoe image so decided to make a CAS shoe card. I coloured the image with promakers and embossed the background. I like the crisp look of this card so made a few. I know a few of my girlfriends who will enjoy getting this in the post at Xmas. And lets hope some of us get the real things under the tree this year!!

Seeing Spots

Happy Tuesday,

I have a card today for you that was inspired by this photo on the Runway Inspired challenge.



The blocks of colours, the bright blues and the reflections on the floor-which to me looked like a mirrored floor-were the things that inspired me. However these ideas have been spinning in my head for a few days now but when I saw the photo below on  Moxie Fab's Trigger Tuesday , the blocks of colour were converted from rectangles and lines to circles and spots!



 And from these inspirations I came up with this card. This is a PTI stamp. I have punched a circle in the second spot and added a mirror behind it, to represent the mirrored floor. Quite hard to take a photo so you can see the mirror without getting a reflection of me! One spot is yellow as in the Runway photo the 'man bag' gives a splash of colour and when I look at the spots in the Moxie Fab photo the yellow spots stand out as strong.

I think this is a funky, fun card that would be great for a guy and therefore I am entering into hooked on crafts 'cards for men' challenge.

White Christmas

Gosh crafting chums, 2 posts in one day! Another new one for me.

I have been thinking all week what to do for the 'white' challenge on Casology and just couldn't come up with an idea. Then I saw the CAS sketch on Retro sketches and an idea just popped into my head. Don't you just love it when that happens. I flipped the sketch and came up with this card for both challenges:

I haven't used this embossing folder for ages but I knew I wanted to dust it off for this card as it reminds me of snowflakes. This sentiment is another new toy for me from PTI and my new 'love letter' memento ink.

A fun way to spend a rainy Sunday morning in London. Now I must stop having all this fun and get on with the ironing!!

A Casual Play Date

Oh what joy, I have had more inky time creating a CAS card for the 'Fall' challenge on Cas-ual Friday and colour challenge The Play Date Cafe.

I saw a card on less is more site by Marian and was inspired by her use of script and blending. Check out her fab card here.
So with this card as inspiration I got to work. I doubled up a script stamp inked in a yummy chocolate colour, masked it off and blended some honey coloured ink to cover the script. Then added a few leaf stamps blending a red and orange ink to give the 'flamingo' colour and finished off the stamp with that choccy colour.
I know.......I am on a blending ink kick at the moment but I make no excuses as I am loving it.
Enjoy the rest of your day x

CAS makes a come back!

Happy Saturday crafting chums,

My CAS creativity took a little vacation but today it decided to return in style (well I hope you think so).
I feel refreshed after making this card. I used the 'Turning a new leaf' stamp set from PTI. I tried to incorporate the idea of movement and repetition principles I have been reading about on Moxie Fab. And will be entering this card into the  Moxie Fab rep challenge and the Moxie Fab Movement Challenge
And, as this card is full of those gorgeous Autumn colours, it is ideal for the 'Fall' challenge on Eureka Stamps and the 'leaves' challenge on 4 Crafty Chicks.......gosh a lot of challenges, so CAS really is for me!

I am showing you 2 photos as I have embossed the brown card but found it hard to show this-really because I didn't emboss it with enough pressure. You can just see it in the first photo and in the second photo you can see those warm Autumn colours more clearly:

Have a good weekend x

Traditional Xmas Card!

Hi crafting chums,

I am popping in very quickly to share my first traditional Xmas card, no purples today!

What is Xmas without a bit of sparkle, gold, a tree and some snowflakes........yes, my snowflakes are black but I don't do too traditional!

This card is for the challenge on Retro Sketches. I flipped the sketch and came up with this:

I tried various ways to stop the gold glare but not with too much success!!
Here is the sketch:



The last 2 days I my cards have not been my preferred style but they just came out like this.....perhaps my CAS creativity needed a little rest BUT look out for tomorrow's post as I think CAS is feeling neglected and is making a come back!!

More new crafting toys!

Hi crafting chums (how British!),

I have for a long time now only had a few ink pads and finally last week decided to buy a few more colours. Today I got inky with the orange 'tangelo' memento ink. Such a cool name I had to try this one out first. I also ordered the red 'love letter' ink really because Christmas is just around the corner and my Mum had been telling me how she liked the traditional Xmas colours and not the purples and blacks I have used so far for my Xmas cards. So the red ink is for Mum and she will get a very, very red (and probably green) Xmas card...........or shall I shock her with a contemporary bright pink and orange card??? Guess it depends on if I want my Xmas dinner or not!!

My card today is for the 'black, white and one other colour' challenge over on Cas-ual Friday and the 'less is more' challenge on Stamptacular Sunday.

It was a bit tricky cutting out the orange flowers but I like the way they overlap the black flowers and the edge of the white card.
I have embossed the white card with the PTI linen impression plate although it is hard to see from the photo. The flower stamp is also from PTI. The sentiment is from Paper Smooches

Have a good Tuesday and for you US bloggers, you are nearly had 'hump day' (that name is just so wrong!) x

Warm Autumn Thoughts!

Yippee I hear you all say across the nations......Friday is finally here!

Time for relaxation and lots of warm, autumn thoughts for friends and family. Today is my sister's Birthday. So I have already given her this card but today I will send her warm thoughts via blog land!

My card today was inspired by Angeline's card for the Paper Smooches Sparks challenge. I loved her one layer take on the sketch and decided to give it a go.

I had a go at blending the inks to show the different colours that leaves go as Autumn moves on. I tried to do the same with the sentiment. I masked off the inked area with post-its and then sponged yellow ink to give the card a warmer feel. I had a lot of inky fun doing this and loved adding the red Paper Smooches dots under the sentiment as, without these, it just seemed too bare.

I am also going to enter this into the 'one layer card with foliage' challenge over on Less is More and the 'Fall' challenge on Scrapalicious USA

Have a good weekend and Happy Birthday Tina x

Movement and Colour

Happy Sunday to all,

Yesterday we had a great day out at the London 2012 Paralympics. We watched the sitting Volleyball. To sum up-truly amazing athletes, fantastic organisation and most of all, a fun and friendly atmosphere! Check out the photos later in this post.

My card today is for the Moxie Fab Movement Challenge. I had been directed to this from a few of the blogs that I read and wanted to learn more about 'movement' in design. Movement is the way the different features of the design, such as the shapes, lines and textures, cause your eyes to move around the design. I was fascinated by this and decided to give it a go. A real challenge but interesting. What made it more of a challenge for me was to use the Colour Q combo of coral choc chip, saffron, sky blue and white. I found this combo a bit freaky but, after a bit of playing around, did manage it!

The movement I have tried to show through the flourishes to the ribbon (led by the blue gems) to the sentiment and then to the bottom of the page, again led by the gems. I hope it works!!

And now for some photos of us enjoying the Paralympics

Me, before the game, proving I was there!

Actually in the stadium before the Brazil/Egypt match

Hubby, not being very athletic, eating pizza!

 And me on the journey home doing the Mo-bot (is that what it is called??)

Have a great Sunday x

Thanks

At last its Friday and time to kick back and chill.

We are off to the Para-Olympics tomorrow to see the seated volleyball. I am so excited. We plan to get the river boat from the London Eye to the Excel Centre then the new cable car across the Thames to get back. I have my London 2012 T-Shirt ready to wear and intend buying a Para-Olympic sweatshirt whilst I am there. I will post some photos next week.

I was looking through some notelets that my cousin Lynn gave to me when she came to visit this year. I loved this one notelet that had a variety of stamps on it and I remember her telling me the principles of how to make a card like this (stamp the biggest image first etc). Her advice, at the time, was to try stamping simple things first until I got more comfortable with stamping and then try something more complicated.  I have been trying over the last few months to stamp more and so decided today was the today to step out of my comfort zone.

I saw this picture on Inspired by Stamping and loved the sunflowers combined with the blue so used this as my inspiration to enter thier colour combo challenge. I also decided to enter the 'Thanks' challenge at A Passion for Papertrey as I knew that I wanted to use my new leaf PTI stamps for this card.



I decided to go all the way and use 3 sets of PTI ('turning leaves', 'grunge me' and a 'garden of life' stamps and came up with this:

I had a lot of fun doing this and I just love the little blue birds that seem to give movement to the whole card.

Have a great weekend x

Love across the Nations.

Ever had a holiday romance or fallen for a guy who lives far away in another country??

Most of us have but usually it only lasts for a short time, although memories may last longer!

Today my card is for a couple who are celebrating 45 years of marriage. 2 people from different countries-Italy and Canada- who managed to make that Summer romance last a bit longer than 2 weeks!

I wanted to make a card that recognised their respective Nations. It has taken me a while and lots of searching on your blogs and the net for ideas. Then after making this card the other day (originally inspired by Angeline's card) I thought why not do the same thing but use the Canadian and Italian Flags. And with the help of my PTI impression plate, I came up with this:

This will be entered into the 'heart' challenge over on Card Makin' Mamas and the 'Anything goes' challenge on Stamp and Create

Enjoy the rest of your Thursday and here to love across the Nations!

Sisters

Happy Wednesday (or, what is it you call it in the US...hump day??)

I am just popping in to share a card I made for my sister's Birthday next week. Tina (my sister) and I go away with my Mum and Dad in October. I am very much looking forward to it, although Tina is pretty active and I am not sure I will be able to keep up with all the hiking she will have planned! My card was inspired by the challenge photo on Jay Gee Nook's  blog.



I was immediately drawn to leaf designs on the cushions and the soft colours in all the photos. I used my leaf dies and stamps from PTI and came up with this:

I also am going to enter this into a new challenge site for me Cas-ology, who challenge us to make a CAS card focused on 'family'. This site is great for us lovers of CAS designs!

 Have a happy Wednesday (hump day just sounds so wrong to us Brits!)

The sentiment is from Desert Diva

My Favourite place to be!

This coming Sunday is my seventh Wedding Anniversary and today Runway Inspired challenged us to make a card taking inspiration from this picture:





It was the bright orange and blue combo blocks that caught by eye and then I saw Angeline's card here on her blog and immediately I knew what card I wanted to make for hubby. I already knew the sentiment I wanted to use from Paper Makeup Stamps but had been struggling what design I could use to match the gorgeous words. Well, thank-you Angeline for the inspiration!

This took me ages to make as I kept getting the hearts placed wrong but after my sixth attempt I managed it BUT then I realised that the sentiment has the US spelling of 'favourite'.  However hubby is worse at spelling than me so I thought you would probably not notice (lets wait and see!!).
And the sentiment is very true, being with him is my favourite place to be!

And here is my card:

I will also be entering this into the 'Boys and Men' challenges at:

By Cute and Girly
Hooked on Crafts

Back to School time!

 Cas-ual Friday this week challenged us to make 'Back to School' cards. All over blogging land there seems to be 'back to school' challenges. I am not a Mum and so had not really thought about entering any of these until I saw Laurie's card here (and at the bottom of this post). Laurie's card inspired me to play along-Mum or no Mum! Also her card reminded me how much I wanted to use my new PTI text stamp and thought I would combine this with the digi blackboard 'thank-you' from Create with TLC

And for a bit of background...from a little girl I always wanted to be a teacher and would play with my blackboard, calling the register for hours. And yep I did become a teacher but only lasted 2 years. My dream job was not what I had imagined from being that bossy little girl!

Dreams don't always work out but I managed to draw on my experience of writing on blackboards to come up with this card:

I will be entering this into the 'Back to School' challenges at Cas-Ual Friday
Do You Stack Up
4 Crafty Chicks
Digi designs
And here is Laurie's card that inspired me:

Time for a Play Date!

Yippee its the weekend and time for me to play along with the The Play Date Cafe colour combo challenge.

It is my Mother-in-Law's Birthday on Monday and we are off to have lunch with her tomorrow. I had already made her card but hubby came home yesterday with a bag of jewellery for his Mum. I decided in these times of austerity, rather than buy wrapping paper, I would decorate the shop bag to match the card I had made. All I needed to do was cover over the shop label with my own design.

So out came my PTI goodies and lots of ink, matched the colours to the Play date challenge-a bit different than the card colours but close enough!

I had a lot of fun with this and like how it turned out, especially next to the card. And naturally saving a bit of money can't be bad whilst playing!!

Here is the bag in the Play Date colours:

And here it is next to the card:

 I'm hoping MIL likes it-I know she will love the jewellery especially as her little boy picked it out for her!

Enjoy your weekend x