Mixed Up Saturday featuring Michele's Magazine review

 

Good Morning Ladies,

Lots of lovely craft goodness to share with you today....

First up is the 'Family Portrait ' that Sophie drew for Paul's birthday,  our children along with Paul are Walking Dead (tv show) fanatics.  So Sophie came up with the idea of drawing all of us a Walking Dead Characters, as always she had done an incredible job, the portraits are so life like, from left to right it's: Becca, Sophie, Lucy, Paul, Me and Matt, all so easily recognisable even in character.   Paul still hasnt got clear enough Vision to fully appreciate it,  but is seeing more all the time.  We are so incredibly proud of Sophie's talent. 

Next up we have: 

Janet

Janet has kindly shared her latest Embroidery pieces,  Oh Janet I do love these scenes, i think the sea is the perfect place to rest, recuperate and reset your mind, I am desperate for a seadide holiday right now! 

Janet's designs are from Annie Morris Contemporary Designs, I think they are oerfect, so unusual too. They also look so much like a picture from a distance.                                                                Thanks so very much for sharing them with us XXX 

Karen

Karen I just love your latest finished Crochet piece,  the Yarn may be 30+ years old but is is gorgeous,  I love the sparkle! You are so incredibly talented 💖 

Karen's Description:

I finished crocheting this a couple of weeks ago but needed Alan to be out of the way so that I could “block” them on the carpet without risking him stepping on them 

Alan found this machine knitting yarn when having a clear out 

So a scarf that I’ll wear with point at front

the shawl is over 60” wide and probably the same deep

The shawl is called “Lost Souls” I followed a brilliant tutorial by Fiber Spider

Can you spot the skulls I saved a version on Pinterest years ago determined to try it out I thoroughly enjoyed making it Very relaxing and was easy to convert to English terminology

Thanks so much for sharing your scarf with us Karen, I absolutely love seeing your designs XXX

Michele's Magazine Review 

Hi Ladies, 

Simply Cards & Papercraft has a gorgeous set of Stamps plus a additional Die this month.

Here’s some ideas of what’s inside the magazine.

First feature using the free gifts.

More inspiration using the free gifts.

Another article using the free gifts.

Great card ideas-modern design that could be used for many occasions.

Interesting feature-Stamping on glossy card stock.

Watercolour stamping-this produces such a lovely, soft effect.

More watercolouring but this time it’s used with dry Embossing.

How to create your own custom made stamps.

If you’re interested to see what else you can use the stamps to create then check out these YouTube Crafter’s....
PaperInkStamp
Crafting with Quilling Lady
Handmade by Karola
Shiny Silver Treasures

They all use the stamps to create very different projects.

Happy Crafting
Love Michele

Thank you so much Michele,  I bet these magazine companies have seen a dip in sales since your reviews have stopped.!!!!😉😜

I absolutely love trees and all things Autumnal so this magazine and its freebies are right up 'my street' (wonder where that saying originated from)?!

Some brilliant Techniques featured too, thanks so much for taking your precious time to write this awesome review my lovely, I genuinely am very grateful for your input and support XXX ❤

Michele's Shopping 

Shhhh (She is actually decluttering) 😉😜🤐

But who can resist a BARGAIN???!!! not me that's for sure!!  

Michele just went for a browse on Craftstash and these just happened to fall into the basket!! 

I love the Christmas scene die and those square frames too.

I have always wanted to try Calligraphy/lettering but I know it would be s disaster!.

Michele's Description:

Two sets of Dies were in the bargain section at £5:00 each. Magazine is for me to try something different.

Thanks Michele for sharing your bargains,  I need cheering up so I might go for a browse!  XXX 

That's all for today Ladies, I hope that you have all have a lovely weekend, 

Love and hugs to all, 

Sandra

xxxxxx

Your Next Challenge

 

Good Morning Ladies,

I can assure you that I am glad that this week is over, in fact I can honestly say that I will be relieved when we are into October!  

Our journey to Essex was a success, we got Mum's funeral arranged and went and looked at possible plots at the village Cemetery, it maybe odd but I find looking around them fascinating, we were there a good hour or more, looking at the graves of people from our past, from school dinner ladies to Sunday school teachers, sadly even childhood friends, there is such a vast array, Mum was always fascinated by the Pirate graves at the back of the Cemetery, it was from the 1700's and has a Skull and Crossbones carved into the head stone, that area is really uneven, some of the graves looked really damaged, I guess the ground is subsiding. We chose a few spots for Mum, fingers crossed she gets one of them.  

Your Next Challenge

I hope you don't mind that I decided to go with a TicTacToe challenge this week, after around 17 calls yesterday I didn't end up getting around to setting the challenge until 23.15pm!

I quite like this Challenge it has a good selection of categories and is one we definitely haven't done before!

I hope that you enjoy it my lovelies,

Fingers crossed that we can all have a nice peaceful weekend,

Sending lots of love and many hugs to all of my dear friends,

Sandra                                                                                                                                                    xxxxx

My Beautiful Birthday card from Lilian

 

Good Morning Ladies, 

I hope that you are all well, this week seems to be whizzing by but thats probably because we have so much to organise and think about at the moment. Yesterday was a full day,  we were all mentally and physically exhausted by late afternoon.  

Today I am sharing the beautiful Embroidered  card that I was lucky enough to receive for my birthday from Our Lilian, it has so much beautiful detail, I am going to pop it in a little frame and put it in my craft room. The background card that Lilian has used really picks out all of the shades of blue.                                                                              Thank you so much for Lilian for such a beautiful gift XXX 

We are having haircuts today, that's all we have planned though, I will have to make a lot of phone calls to let everyone know  what date Mum's funeral is. 

I hope that you all have a lovely day, 

Love and hugs to all of you, 

Sandra                                                                              xxxxxx 

My Beautiful Birthday Card from Sue

 

Good Morning Ladies, 

Today will be a very long and emotional day for us, we are making the 360 round trip to Essex to go to Mum's to choose her 'outfit' for her final journey,  we are going to sort through some of the vast amount of poorly filed paperwork,  we used to laugh at Dad as he hardly ever opened mail, Mum laughed too,  it appears that she decided to follow his thinking.  So goodness knows what we will discover,  I know that she was almost paranoid about paying bills so I know for sure that the Gas & Electric are very much in credit. There are very few other bills to sort out apart from TV Licence,  Council tax etc. 

I love seeing the important nostalgic pieces of paper, Birth certificate,  their Marriage Certificate too showing that they were just 17 & 18 when they were married, so young!  I'm not convinced that 17 & 18 year olds today could run a home and raise a family. 

We have to go to the Funeral Directors to set a date for Mum's funeral and organise the arrangements,  fortunately she left details of her wishes with her solicitor which makes some of the tougher choices easier.  

Hopefully all will go straightforward! 

Today's card is perfect for this weeks challenge as it is totally flat/1 layer.

Sue used her Groovi plates to create this stunning card, the design was by Ronk Langton at the Groovi class that Sue Pat and I used to go to. 

Sue made the brilliant decision to mount hers on an Octagonal card base, using layers of Green card, that works beautifully. 

I absolutely love my card Sue, thank you so much for the beautiful gift, I will treasure your work always XXX 

I believe that today is the last day of this unseasonably good weather,  so enjoy it ladies.

Love and hugs to all,

Sandra                                                                              xxxxxx 

An 18th Birthday Card

 

Good Morning Ladies,

I hope that you are all enjoying this unexpected but delightful weather, we were able to sit outside in the garden and read our books for a while yesterday afternoon, at the moment we are taking every opportunity to make the most of a quiet few minutes, which I really feel I need at the moment.

We are travelling over to Mum's tomorrow to sort a few things out, we have an appointment with the Funeral director, we are also going to Mum's chosen place to choose a spot for her ashes.  Paul is still unable to drive so thankfully our Becca is taking the day off to drive us over, I will be relieved to get these things done but I am very apprehensive about going to Mum's house, we have to choose her outfit etc which is going to be really hard, although there is no shortage of choice, to say Mum had a 'thing' for clothes is an understatement.  We will have an awful lot to donate to charity, I bet at least a third of it will still have tags on. Luckily my sisters will be there so we will go through things together, hopefully having a giggle about some of the things we find.

Today's card is an 18th Birthday card for a girl that isn't really 'girly', so no Flowers, shoes, handbags etc, I remembered that I had some lovely card from SU a few years back that had almost a 'Camoflage' pattern with peachy pinks and gold, so I used that and some gold Mirri card to mat and layer and die cut some of the numbers and letters with, I couldn't really capture the shine on camera but it looked really effective, so I was pleased with how the card turned out. I will say that I love these new label shapes from Stampin Up!

I hope that you all have an enjoyable day,

Love and hugs to all of you,

Sandra                                                                                                                                                     

A flat/1 layer Card for Challenge

 

Good Monday Morning Ladies, 

I hope that you are all well and have had a good weekend.  The weather is forecast to be lovely which is a huge bonus as today is our 29th Anniversary,  we have no plans really, due to circumstances but we hope to go out for something to eat later.  The girls have kindly offered to take us and pick us up, which we are very grateful for.  I cannot begin to tell you how blessed I feel and have felt every day of those 29 years, Paul as most of you know is the kindest most caring husband any girl could wish for, he is my true Soulmate 😍🥰❤

I used the 'Sepia Watercolour' technique, although I used purple tones instead of brown.

I took a 4 1/4 × 5 1/2 piece of watercolour card, used a waterbrush to coat the piece of card in water, I then added a little water to some Elegant Eggplant (purple) ink and 'washed' it across the paper, having the water on the card helped the colour disperse easier. 

You can dry the card and add another layer if you like   i then stamped the flowers in Versafine Clair ink and dried it,  I went back to the Purple ink to colour in the flowers, adding colour to the centre and washing it out up the petals, adding more ink if necessary. After I was pleased with the colour I dried the whole piece. The next step was to get some bleach and a fine paintbrush and painted around the very tips of the petals,  this bleaches the colour out and adds almost a highlight to the edges, lifting them from the background. 

I then used Gorgeous Grunge stamp set to add some texture to the background, stamping in the purple ink and versamark ink and white embossing powder.  I even used some sentiment/word stamps to add interest too.

To finish the card I inked around the card and lastly added some little white dots with a Posca pen.

I am looking forward to seeing your cards.

Have a lovely day my lovelies,

Love and hugs to all of you, 

Sandra

xxxxxxx 

Your Challenge Cards

Good Morning Ladies,

I hope that you are all well and enjoying the weekend, we had a lovely day yesterday, we went to the Wildlife Park and then onto Becca's restaurant and pub, they were having a festival so it was really fun.  I think that we were all exhausted by the time we got home as it's been quite a week!!

Lilian

A beautiful Poinsettia card from Lilian for this weeks challenge, those gorgeous poinsettias have been stamped and embossed with Gold embossing powder. The colours are so bright and vibrant Lilian and the lattice work over the aperture is a great textural addition. 

Thank you so much Lilian for taking part in this weeks challenge, I hope that your new kitchen is coming along nicely, did you take 'before' shots?  I would love to see before and after XXX

Janet

Three beautiful cards from Our Janet, all absolutely beautiful, I love they individual style of all of them.

Thank you so much Janet for taking part in this weeks challenge XXX

Maria

Maria has made an absolutely stunning Christmas card for the Christmas Flower challenge.  I love the pine cones in the background, the poinsettia die cuts that you have used the flowers are beautiful, I love the added twigs and foliage too.

Maria's Description:

''I love poinsettias at x-mas so that is what I used on my card.

Pretty paper, some leafs and branches with a sentiment

in the middle finished it off. 

Thank you so much Maria for such a beautiful challenge card. XXX

Sonia

Wow Sonia I really love a wreath style card and both of yours are stunning, the difference between the two cards is huge, they are both stunning though.  I love the rich opulence of the first card, the second card is bright and clean and just perfect.  

I also love seeing you use the Sue Wilson 'California Collection', I bet that most of us have these dies but never use them, I know i have and I will say that it hasn't 'aged' at all, it looks as amazing now as it did back in the day.

Sonia's Description:

Both cards were made using Memory Box, Sue Wilson and Britannia dies. Sentiments from LOTV and my stash.

Thanks so much Sonia for taking part in this weeks challenge, your cards are stunning XXX

Sue

A beautiful Christmas Wreath card from Sue for this weeks challenge, I love the embossed wreath, your shabby, torn edges add real texture to your card and those stunning poinsettias are just the perfect finishing touch.

Thank you so much for taking part in this weeks challenge XXX 

Karen

Karen has made two gorgeous Christmas cards for this weeks challenge,  one in all White, one in traditional Christmas colours, using that lovely Red velvet card for poinsettias gives such a stunning effect and works perfectly with the gold. I have to say that I am really loving the 'All white' cards at the moment. 

Karen's Description:

Here’s 2 cc I decided to try 2 variations of same layout 

'All Sue W EF and dies

Now I’ve seen photos I wish I’d edged the red velvet card with a matching marker'

Thank you so much Karen for taking part in this weeks challenge XXX 

Michele

Michele has made a beautiful Christmas card featuring a Holly Wreath, the gorgeous Embossed background really sets the whole card off, the pretty red gem stones really finish the card off beautifully. 

Michele's Description:

 Made using a magazine freebie which includes the Embossing Folder & Holly Die. I just added Glitter glue, gemstones & a sentiment.

Thanks so much Michele for taking part in this weeks challenge XXX 

Pat

Two stunning Christmas cards from Pat for this weeks challenge, both cards Pat has made using her Groovi plates.  The first card Pat used snowflakes to decorate her card and the second features the 'Twas the night before Christmas' verse and I love the border you have used Pat and the Christmas stockings finish the card perfectly. 

Thanks so match Pat for taking part in this weeks challenge XXX 

Ladies,  as always you have done an amazing job, your cards are all absolutely stunning.  What an amazing display!  

Thank you all so very much for taking time to support the challenge,  I am so grateful XXX 

I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend, 

Love and hugs to all you, 

Sandra 

xxxxxxx