Birthday card for a dear friend

Good morning everyone, I hope that you have escaped those gales and lashing rain although I fear that not many have, and the forecast is not good for the rest of the week! At least it's a good reason to lock ourselves in craft areas.

This is my first card for 2012 and is for a friend who I know doesn't come on the blogs.

For once, I haven't cut and folded my own card, this is from an 8x8 Papermania pack of Kraft cards. The corrugated and plain card card is from PDA.  Tools used are; Marianne dies, Go Kreate scalloped circle dies, SU stamp and punches, Martha Stewart flutterby punch. All punched and diecuts are pearlised card from stash. Paper inside card is from J&P Pictures. 

I hope you like because I am delighted with it :o)

Jackie xx

Another simple card

Good afternoon everyone. I'm a bit late today but I just had to get stuff done before turning the computer on! Then it was lunch time and I really enjoyed my stew and dumplings and I've got cheese and onion bread in the breadmaker so I will be having that for my tea :o)

 Anyway, on to my card,  for which I have used some of my new Marianne dies again, I love them.  

I used  nesties to frame the main image.  I roughly brayered plain white paper with Big and Juicy inkpad Spice, andthere is just a hint of SU stamps :o)

Jackie xx

Simple card

Good morning everyone. I hope you are all warm and well and not living in the areas that are set for gusts of up to 100 mph!

This is quite a simple card.  

I cut and folded white hammered card to 6x6 and covered with J&P paperwhich has been punched with Martha Stewart trellis punch.  The flower and grasses are from my brand new Marianne dies, and I used a tiny SU greeting stamp. 

That's it, so simple :o)

Jackie xx

A brilliant day anda at last, I made something.....

.....I feel as if I have been in a crafting wilderness this last two weeks, but I am hopefully back amonst friends now :o)

Sunday was a fantastic day when I hosted our crafting get together and we even had a friend and her hubby fly over from Spain to join us. We started the day with our usual bacon butties, then it was off to Byrkley Park for some ratail therapy where I managed to get some Marianne dies that I have been wanting. You will see some of them on my DLO below.  When we got back we had the soup that I had made the previous evening. It was an "allsorts" soup, I just threw anything I had to hand in it and even if I do say so myself it was good ;-)

A great afternoon of crafting, in which I made precisely nothing, was followed with Chicken casserole and veggies and the lovely Pam had made bread and butter pudding and brought it with her.

Did I hear someone snoring there? I had better get the piccies on then :o)

My apologies for the quality of the photographs, I used the wrong camera in low light because I hadn't got time to change the lens on the other one!

All of the photographs were played with in PSE5 and PSP11 and they are matted onto gold paper. The 12x12 backing paper is from stash.  For the title I used Calvin font in SCAL and cut it out on the Cricut. Marianne dies for the embellishments and the journalling was printed in Word, Harrinton font.

Have a wonderful day everyone :o)

Jackie xx

Good morning all.....

..... I can't believe it's a whole week since I last posted, I've had a very busy week with no crafting :o( It is more than a week since I made a card and I am feeling deprived!

At the moment I am preparing for a craft day at my house tomorrow, there will only be 6 of us this time because two can't make it, they will be sorely missed. On a lighter note, one of our group has flown in from Spain to be with us tomorrow. 

I will hopefully be able to catch up with commenting in the next couple of days or so.

Happy crafting everyone :o)

Jackie xx

Good morning all.....

..... Grab a cuppa and put your feet up because it's a long post ;o)

Here are a few photographs I took on Thursday when my daughter and I went off to Barnsdale Gardens.  Even at this time of the year there is plenty of colour :o)

There will be nothing else from me for a few days now although I will try and keep up with your posts. I have to get all my Christmas cards written and posted, and next weekend I am hosting a crafting get together so I have to prepare for that - I have to rearrange the furnitur e to get them all in. On top of that, I am in dispute with the taxman who tells me that I owe hime £704.65 so I am going through the last 4 1/2 years of payslips to see where he got that idea from! I think he just plucked that figure from the air. 

Aint life great when you are having fun!

Of course that blue sky didn't last very long!

From Barnsdale we went to Hambleton Bakery where we were greeted with the wonderful smells of old fashined breadmaking. Of course we bought bread and teacakes and foccaccio and..... then we went and parked up at Rutland water for our picnic. By now the sun had gone and the wind was not only blowing very strongly, it had gone very cold, so we sat in the car with our picnic and guess what, we had forgotten the teabags grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Never mind, we had pop :o) I hope I haven't bored you all to tears

Jackie xx

A few from my Castleton photographs

Good morning everyone on this very frosty start to the day!

At last, I have discovered a way to get true colours when taking pics of my cards in the bad winter light! I used my big camera - with the small lens - for these which is very good in poor light conditions and the colours are near perfect so you are seeing the cards as they really are :o)

All backings except the cow card are also own photographs, the first one being taken at Trent Lock on a beautful summer evening a couple of years ago, but the others taken at Castleton. 

As with the previous cards, I have played with the photographs in PSE5 and PSP 

Jackie xx

An apology and a few cards

Good morning everyone. I am so sorry I have not been visiting your blogs for a few days,  my mojo got lost while I had the frozen shoulder and I just couldn't get myself motivated at all! Anyway, I am back now and hopefully will catch up at least a little so here are a few cards I made with my recent swan photograph :o)

 Although the first one looks cream it is actually white base card, the light was so bad all day yesterday as the fog never really lifted!

I opened the photograph in Photoshop Elements 5 to create a png image then opened the original image and the png in Paint Shop Pro to create the toppers.

Punches and dies used are SU, Martha Stewart and Spellbinder, swirl cut on the Cricut from the SCAL shape library, Cuttlebug embossing folder used on the mat for the third card and SU stamp for the greeting on the top card :o)

Jackie xx

Thank you so much.....

.....for all of your kind wishes, my shoulder is so much better now, just a little twinge now and again as opposed to continuous pain.

I am off out today to lunch with an extended family/very distant cousin who is also a very dear friend, so no crafting for me today - sigh  :o)

Jackie xx

Not a poinsettia in sight !

Good morning everyone, I hope all is well with you :o)

I have not been able to make cards for a few days due to a frozen shoulder OUCH. If you have ever had one then you know how painful it is!

Anyhow, I finally managed to put a card together yesterday so here it is :o)

My apologies for the quality of the photograph but the light is not good for taking pics!

I cut the lattice on the Cricut using a Penny Duncan freebie svg.  McGill punched leaves and Woodware punched flowers, SU punch and sentiment. I sprayed the flowers with a smidgin of  CC gold spray. Flower centres is stickles :o)

Jackie xx