Mixed Up Saturday

 

Good Saturday Morning Ladies,  

What are you all up to this lovely weekend,  we are mostly relaxing,  maybe bit of baking,  I imagine some gardening will be involved too. 

My Birthday Card from Soph 

I think this is absolute genius  I love Paul long blonde hair 🤣😂

I don't know how she come up with all of these amazing ideas. It certainly bought a smile to my face. X

Gina's Amazing Gift 

It must have taken you hours to make all of those individual flowers, so many lovely styles and colours too.  The 'vase' that you have made for them is amazing too. 

Here is the card that Gina made to go with it...

So lovely,  I do love that Bunny die cut, your friend is going to feel very loved XXX

Thank you so much for sharing it with us. xx

A new tool to help my colour Themes

Part of our new challenge is getting some inspiration for different colouring combinations 

So when I made the background of the card yesterday I coloured an extra piece of card,  I added some water splats too.  I adhered it to a larger piece of card so thatvI could write the names of the colours underneath,   I did the same combination in Distress Oxides as a comparison and made a swatch for that too. 

I am going to keep them all in this cheap album so that when I am struggling with colour I can refer to the album for inspiration.   

I have also downloaded a pdf with some different colour combinations on, if any of you would like one I can send you the link. 

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I hope that you a have a lovely Saturday, 

Love & hugs to all,

Sandra xxx

A New Challenge

 

Good Friday Morning Ladies, 

We had a dramatic start to the day yesterday, it started off ok, I got my latest loaf ready and had just popped it in the oven.  It was a new twist on my usual loaf, I mixed 4oz of cold butter into the dough during the stretch and folds, this is called 'Croissant Loaf', so that went in and then I heard Milo wailing and growling, Soph heard too,  so we both got to the back door as fast as we could,  (bare in mind my lack of mobility and soph is not fully weight bearing on her sprained ankle), as we got to the patio we saw a big black & white cat on the decking and Milo was telling it to clear off, then the fighting started,  Omg the noise!  Soph grabbed a glass of water to throw over the other cat to get it to leave, but as we got on to deck the Black and white cat ran and milo chased after it, so off we went, me hobbling along with my trolley and soph doing her best to run putting minimal weight on her ankle,  by the time we got down to the veg plot milo had seen the other cat off and was scent marking like crazy, he has some nasty scratches on his nose, but otherwise seems ok,  Soph & I not so much, I ended up using my trolley (walker) to get back to the house to get Soph my crutches.  The girls bought me a smart watch for Mothers Day and it records your heart rate, mine was off the scale, it took a good half hour for me to calm down and Soph was in pain!  Bloody cats 🐈!  

On a positive note the bread was perfect , I didn't take a photo after the drama but the bread smelt just like a croissant, so buttery and crispy and the crust literally melted in your mouth,  a definite success but maybe only for a special treat due to the calories. 

Now for our next challenge.....

Next Challenge 

For our next challenge I'd like us to Experiment with Colour,  simply by trying so different combinations, I think that we all have our 'safe' colour combinations that we reach for time and time again,  I tend to go for Greens and blues.           I took three inks for the card above,  Picked Raspberry,  Squeezed Lemonade & Salty Ocean,  blending it gave purple and a bit of orange and green too.  

I did the same in Oxide inks too, which were easier to blend but I prefer the brighter colours of Distress Inks.  

By experimenting I include, pens, paints, pencils,  sprays etc too. 

I will do my best to inspire you over the coming days.  I have some different ideas to help us. 

I hope that you all have a great Friday, 

Love & hugs to all,

Sandra xxx 

A gorgeous card from Sonia

 

Good Morning Ladies, 

I hope that you are all as well as can be expected, I know our Gina is I had a lovely photo of her enjoying some time on Skegness ⛱️ Beach,   not in her bikini though, it's a bit chilly despite the sun being out,  there is always a strong 'bracing' breeze at Skegness 🤣😂 

I'm glad you were able to get away for a little break Gina xxx

Sonia I'm so pleased you had such a lovely day with Teddy & Scarlett,  so lovely that you have the weekend visit to look forward to too xxx

Today I am showing one of Sonia's stunning creations ...

Sonia's Description:

The background is a PinkFresh flower die, coloured with distress oxides using the matching 3 piece stencil. I framed it with Gummiapan rectangle dies, and added the Tim Holtz butterfly.

An absolutely gorgeous card Sonia,  the distress oxide background is stunning,  it looks so perfect with the matching die cut over the stencilled piece.  Of course the perfect finishing touch could only be your 'signature ' TH butterfly.  

Thank you so much for allowing me to share it xxx

I hope that you all have a lovely Thursday,  

Love and hugs to all,

Sandra xxx

Watercolour Thrinchie (2)

 

Good Wednesday Morning Ladies, 

We had a girls day yesterday,  Soph was having a 'painting day' (she is painting a second art piece for the wildlife park) so she was painting,  Lucy was making a Credit card wallet out if faux leather on her Cricut and I sat down to create a card that was quite a throwback for me, me desk and my while craft area looked like a bomb had gone off, I changed the colour and lay out about three times, so that was three lots of embellishments, ribbon, lace etc,  lord knows how many die cuts 🤣😅,  the girls were like "what on earth are you doing", I eventually made my mind up and thoroughly enjoyed sitting and creating with all the pretty things I haven't used in years. 

Today I am sharing the second of the watercolour Thrinchies that I made on Monday,  I used exactly the same technique as yesterday's watercolour Thrinchie.  This one I just stamped half of the flower and then stamped the plant name and the hares on top.   These were definitely a fun pair of Thrinchies to create. 

I hope that you all have a great Wednesday,

Love & hugs to all,

Sandra xxx 

Watercolour Thrinchie

 

Good morning Ladies,

I can't believe I'm saying this but 'Welcome April' !!

It means that Becca's Wedding is only 4 months away!!  That's absolutely mental, it feels like we have literally only just stopped saying that the wedding is 'next year' !!   We are off to a great start though,  it was lovely yesterday,  lets hope it lasts, our seeds are all germinating, it's getting very exciting, soon be time for planting out. 

Today I am sharing a Thrinchie that I made yesterday, well this is one of two! 

I followed a Tracey Evans tutorial, I started by stamping the flower all over the card, using a mask, then adding white embossing to create an Emboss Resist,   now came the new bit....

I used a fine tipped bottle to add drops of water in the embossed flower petals,  the embossing holds the water within, 

Next I loaded my paintbrush with watercolour ink (from my koi palette) after the brush is loaded simply tap the brush into the water droplets,  you can addca few different shades,  the method lets  the water do the blending

You can gradually build up the colour and try and leave to dry, I popped mine on the Aga top and it dried quite quickly, you can see some of the different shades i the other parts of the flower.

After it was completely dry I went between the a lilac colour paint.  After it was all done and dry I wiped over all of the embossed detail with a damp cotton bud, revealing all of the white detail,  then next I started on the sentiment stamping and cutting down, then I stamped and fussy cut the Hare and adhered those and finished with some splatters, then mounted onto a black base.

It is a fun way to watercolour, I hope you get to try it.

Have a lovely day my lovelies,

Sandra xxx

My Mother's Day card from Lucy

 

Good Monday Morning Ladies,  

I hope that you all had a lovely weekend, especially yesterday, the weather was very kind to us,  we didn't do anything super exciting,  sadly my lot were all working, apart from Becca who is skiing in Italy, the girls had a super busy day at the Wildlife park,  they almost broke their record high for sales, with the sell out day and the extra hour of work the girls were exhausted when they got in.  Paul and I popped to the garden centre for an hour or so and then had afternoon tea in the beautiful warm sunshine on the decking.  

Today I am sharing my amazing Mother's day card from Lucy,  she used her Cricut to create the whole card, even the sentiment!!  I love how the sentiment is cut out with that neat border all around it, the other thing that blew my mind was the Bee's antennae,  they are so intricate and perfectly cut, the design of the card is perfect and all of the elements are cut and placed perfectly,  I feel so proud that my girl is enjoying paper crafting just like her Mum, although her first cards are 1000 times better than mine were 🤣😂 

I hope that you all enjoy this last day of March,

Love & hugs to all of you,

Sandra xxx 

Let's look at this weeks makes..

 

Good Sunday Morning Ladies, 

I hope that all of you amazing Mum's have a wonderful day being spoiled by your family, I think of you all as Mum's and couldn't think of anyone better, you are always there to listen to my worries, offer advice when I need it and you all inspire me more than you know.  I feel blessed having you incredible ladies in my life ❤️ 

Have you all remembered to put your clocks forward?? I think most of ours update themselves, except the cooker and boiler control. 

Karen

Karen's Description:

A card for the challenge 

 The EF was a bargain bucket buy from Ally Pally and I chose lilac because it matches the little cardigan I have made The purple isn’t quite as deep for the paper piecing It’s described as Wisteria!

Love the colour, that little footprint embossing folder is so cute too.  These dies never go out of style do they. 

Thank you for sharing your card with us XXX 

Lilian 

Lilian's Description:

Here is my card for this week.

An old embossing folder from couture creations.

Stamp from Tim Holtz, Paris garden ?( not sure of the name)

Coloured with oxide inks, and going over with distress pencils.

Also used the pencils for the flowers.

Gorgeous card Lilian,  love that flower stamp, beautifully coloured too.  Those borders are amazing, they look like printed papers 😍

Thank you so much for a lovely card,  I hope you have a lovely weekend with your daughter XXX

Maria

Maria's Description:

On this card I have used a new embossing folder , looks a bit like cushions. I've used some envelope dies, a small and a bigger one and then put little hearts to fly out and love you 💋💗 😂 

I will have to change it tho......

Maybe it will be an extra card for Rick if I do it the right way up 🤗

Its a cute card, Rick would love it 😍, I have a quilted embossing folder similar to that but always forget to use it, one of mine is an A4 one by Sue Wilson,  funny how we all used to use the big ones but we don't now, our cards are smaller though aren't they, imagine the postage on those big 8 x 8 cards with the ribbon  flowers and hat pins!! 

Thank you my lovely for sharing your lovely card XXX

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I hope that you all have a lovely  Mothers Day, 

Love and huge hugs to all, 

Samdra xxx