Another appearance from the giraffe

Here's that Giraffe again, but this time I've stuck with a yellow and brown background to complement the little lad himself!

By the way, if you pop over to the Little Claire's blog you will see loads of cards featuring this little fella and one very imaginiative one where he has been changed in to a football fan!

That's all from me today!

Sharon

Apparently Giraffes Like Christmas too!!

Here is a lovely new stamp from Little Claire which features of all things, features a Giraffe at Christmas!

Here'sa card that I made using the stamp and accompanying greeting and some paper which I printed from a Crafter Companion CD.

Thanks for looking.

Sharon

Anyone having trouble posting pictures?

Hi,

I'm feeling a bit frustrated right now as I have just tried to load a picture on my blog and they have changed the format for loading. I have  tried to load up a pic but all Iget is this little 'wait' circle  as if it's loading but it just goes on forever and still no picture.

Is anyone alse having a similar problem, or does anyone know how  to get around this?

Yours frustratedly!

Sharon

Magnolia in 3D

Today I thought I would post something which, I have to admit, is out of the archive, but looking back at it I'm still quite proud of it, so I thought it was worthy of a post.

This was a special card that I made for a friend's grand daughter who was mad about horses. I wanted to make it really spcial so I made a 3d pop up card, and went for the full works by making a detachable rosette and a presentation box. Afterall the effort that went in to this one, I found it quite hard to let it go, so I'm glad that I took some pictures.

I coloured this with the old faithful Tombow pens, using a water colouring technique.

Thanks for looking and I hope you like it.

PS - If anyone has any ideas on how they decorate the front of a card when they are putting a pop up inside, I would love to receive your comments.

Sharon x

My second blog award!

I am so pleased to have received another blog award from none other than the lovely Kay Carley, and here it is!

As the lucky recipient of this award, I have to thank the person who gave it to me - so thank you very much Kay!

I have to post the award on my blog......ta daaa!

I have to list three things I like about myself.  Hmmmm

• I like that I am left handed - it's good to be a liitle different.
• I like that I am a mum (my boy is everything to me!)
• I like that I am a big softie (although it can be embarrasing as I will cry at the silliest of movies - including when King Kong fell of the Sky Scraper!)

I have to post a picture of myself that I like.....This is quite hard as I don't like myself in pictures, but I like this one as it is kind of quirky. It was taken in the caves a Cheddar Gorge.



Finally I get to pass this award on the 5 deserving bloggers so here goes. I have given my awards to people who come to visit my blog and leave lovely comments, which is an honour as their blogs contain some fantastic work. Take a look and you will see what I mean....

http://craftinghelen.blogspot.com/
http://maryscardworld.blogspot.com/
http://carolscards.wordpress.com/
http://littleclairesdesigns.blogspot.com/
http://craftiegoddess.blogspot.com/

Sharon x



Time for a little Magnolia

I  don't think I have posted a Magnolia card on my blog yet, so I thought I would post one for you today.

I love these little stamps and you would be amazed at the size of their range - there are literally hundred of them.

Unfortunately today's picture is a little bit blurry but hopfully you will get the gist. I wanted to break up the edges of the topper a bit so I did this by dabbing my markers randomly around the edges of the white card with a couple of different colours, and then I dabbed some of them with a blender pen which fades the colour a bit more and adds more variation.

I hope you like the result!

Thanks for looking

Sharon x

Another of my favourites - Stamps by Judith

I thought I would introduce another of my favourite stamp ranges today, which is Stamps By Judith. They are a really quirky range of images from America and they include an excellent item called a stubbie which is basically a wooden stick with a little image on the end. These are only a couple of pounds each and they are worth their weight in gold as you can use them to create borders, backgrounds and all sorts.

For this card I have used the dog and the small flowerpots from the range and I have used stubbies or sticks (which are smaller versions of the stubbies) to create the flowers, foliage, bones and 'Woof'. The Happy Birthday was just another greeting stamp that I had. I coloured this using Tombow pens and stamped all the flowers and foliage using dye based ink pads. These stamps are so versatile as you can make some great little scenes with them.

You can get these stamp at Stamp Addicts and I beleive they now have them available  on their website, so it's well worth having a look.

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

A little more popcorn - but without the calories!

What can I say - I'm a sucker for cute bears and Popcorn fits right in to that category!

So today I thought I'd post another Popcorn card, but this time with a stamped image......

The stamp is from the Popcorn Romance range and the paper comes from the coordinating CD. The image is quite large, and I haven't really tried colouring images of this size with alcohol pens so I have gone for Lyra aquacolours for this image as they are great for covering large areas and they blend really well to give you some nice shading.

Hope you like this one! Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

Back to School

So I think all the kids are finally back to school now and things can hopefully get back to normal again.

Luckily my son went back to school with no trouble and seems to have settled back in to the routine, although he's not to impressed with having homework on the very first weekend!

In recognition of the school term beginning I thought I'd post a card that we actually used to go with the goodbye gifts for the teachers fom last year. There's no stamping involved in this one though, as the decoupage and the backing papers all came from the Popcorn Kids CD from Crafters Companion.

The main departure for me on this card is the green ribbon, as Joshua wouldn't entertain any 'pinkness' on a card that he was giving away! (typical boy!!)

Anyway, here's the card - hope you like it.....

Sharon x

Cute new Owl Stamp from Little Claire

Little Claire's have just released a lovely little stamp called 'Night Owls' and it's a real bargain at only £2.99!

Here are a couple of cards that I made using the stamp. The first is made using the stamp exactly as it comes and mounting it on to some lovely moon and stars paper which I printed from a Cute Compnions CD.

For the second card I did something a little bit different. I embossed the tree using a Cuttlebug embossing folder and then filled the indented side with glue so that I could glitter the tree. I then cut out the owls moon and stars from the stamp to add as embellishments. Unfortunately the picture doesn't show this as well as I would have liked, but the glitter effect is quite subtle on the real thing because of using translucent glitter on a dark card stock. I takes a little time to do this but I would recommend giving this a go if you fancy something a little different. I think it would also look really nice on some ofthe other Cuttlebug embossed backgrounds too. Anyway, after all that waffle, here's the card....

My first blog award!

Helen (fellow Little Claire's DT member) left me a comment yesterday to ay that she had left something on her blog for me, and I was really surprised to see that she had passed on a blog award to me. It was a lovely surpise as I haven't received a blog award before, so thank you very much Helen. xx

So here's the award and the rules are that I now have to say why I started my blog and pass the award on to 10 other deserving bloggers.

Well the reason I started my blog was after some encouragement I received from a few fellow craft friends. I gave craft making 'superstar' Kay Carley a card that I had made to thank her for a lovely day crafting spent with her, which she published on her blog. I had told her I was thinking about starting a blog and she asked me a number of times if I had done it yet. My other carft friend 'craftnut' was also telling me to get on and do it, and after I recieved some lovely comments via Kay's blog I decided to go ahead and do it!

So my first two awards will have to go to Kay and Tracy (aka Craftnut)

 Tracy - http://craftnutdesigns.blogspot.com/

 Kay - http://www.kaycarley.blogspot.com/

Dawny P - http://pinkpiggywiggy.blogpot.com/

I'll be back later with my other nominations..

Little Claire's September club release

Getting Ready for Christmas

The September Stamp Club set from Little Claire's is now available and I recomend that you go over to their website and have a look as I think this set is really good value for money! There is a variety of images to suit every christmas taste but I have to say my favouriate is the cute little penguin! I made a card using the Ponsettia earlier this week but haven't had a chance to photograph it yet, so will post it in the next few days.

As usual I have used my current favourites - Copics and Promarkers to colour these designs, and I think the bright colours are just perfect for these designs.

 PS - in case you fancy  picking up a set of these stamps, here's the website for you - http://www.littleclaire.co.uk/

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

A little indulgence never hurt anyone.....

Hi all. We've been having a little trouble with our internet over the last few days, so I haven't been able to post anything, but we seem to be getting back to normal so fingers crossed! Here is a card that I made for my sister recently after she kindly baby sat my son (no mean feat keeping a lively 8 year old boy occupied!). After all her efforts I thought she  would probably need some relaxation time so I gave this card to her along with some fragranced bubble bath. This stamp is from the Joanna Sheen Diva range, which I coloured with promarkers, and the papers were printed from a CD ROM (Wild Rose studios I think!).

As you can see, it's an easel card. I love making these but only give them to people if I can hand it to them personally. I always worry that if someone gets one in the post, they won't know what to do with it....... the trials of being a crafter!

Until next time.

Sharon x