Another Hedgie Birthday!

Hello, I'm back again from my weekend away with my family. While the weather was pretty cold and wet at times, we had a lovely time together celebrating our girls' birthday. Here's the card I made for Hayley, I used the Annabelle Stamps Bling Sketch Challenge for my layout, there's still time to enter this challenge, you have until Friday to get your entry in.

I used another Penny Black Hedgie stamp, I have a heap of these cute stamps that haven't seen much inking lately. I coloured the image with Copic Markers and added a bit of Dimensional Magic to the flower centres. The greeting is from a Hero Arts clear set and I've curved it around to fit the shape of the Nestabilities circle die. The patterned paper is by Kaisercraft, I used both sides of a double-sided sheet. The cardstock is Stampin' Up Certainly Celery and Cameo Coral, the ribbon is also SU Certainly Celery. Embellishments are a Prima flower, Hero Arts gem flower and Kaisercraft rhinestones.

Hope you are having a great day, the sun is shining here this morning but I bet it's still cold outside!

Hedgie Birthday!

Hi everyone, sorry my posts are getting a little further apart, but I have so much else going on these days I hope you understand. Today is my twin daughters' birthdays and this is the card I made for Jo - hopefully she's not reading this as I'm not seeing her until tomorrow!

I used this week's sketch from Card Patterns #71 . My main image is of course one of Penny Black's hedgehog stamps, such cute characters. I've coloured the image with Copic Markers. The flowers borders are by Heidi Grace and the sentiment is computer generated using a Kim Hughes font. The green gingham paper is by Christine Re, and all cardstock is by Stampin' Up. Embellishments are some purple gingham ribbon, some painted wood flowers and metal brads.

We are heading down to Torquay tomorrow to visit my daughter Hayley, Jo and family are coming too so we can have a little belated birthday celebration for them both. I'll be back in a couple of days and I'll post the card I made for Hayley then.

Thanks so much for stopping by, I love to read your comments, they brighten my day!

Flower Card

I'm back again as promised with another card today, I'm on a roll here, LOL! This card is for Annabelle Stamps Sketch Challenge, and I'm almost down to the wire again with only one day left to get my card finished in time. Well, I did actually finish this one a few days ago, just hadn't got it photographed until today.

My flower stamp is by Hero Arts, the greeting is from a Heidi Grace stamp set. I coloured the image with Copic Markers, the bling (Sprinkles) and pearls are both from Annabelle Stamps, the Design Paper is from Heidi Grace. Also added some Prima flowers, buttons and ribbon from my stash and Stampin' Up cardstock - Old Olive and Creamy Caramel.

Hope you are having a great day, it's very chilly here in Melbourne today!

Seeing Stars!

Today is the last day to get your challenge in for this month's Inkurable Stampers challenge - "Stars." You could interpret this anyway you liked. Well, just call me Queen of the Last Minute, I've finally worked out what I was going to do for this challenge. I decided to make a Christmas card, at least I now have one Christmas card for my stash.

For my card, I started with some white cardstock and applied some Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists - I used Midnight Blue and Bronze. I cut an extra piece of white cardstock to represent some snowy hills - I put this through my Cuttlebug and embossed with the Swiss Dots folder, then covered it in Frosted Lace Ranger Stickles and adhered it to the bottom of the Blue/Bronze panel. I stamped the Kaisercraft trees, using Versafine Onyx Black ink, onto a separate piece of white cardstock, cut around the trees then applied some Tattered Angels Vintage Pink Glimmer Mist to them. I also coloured the stars with a gold Krylon pen, I used a gold star brad on one tree as it didn't survive my cutting, oopsie! I popped the trees onto some dimensional tape and adhered them to my background.

I stamped the Stampa Rosa 'Christmas' and the Pink Paislee stars onto white cardstock using Brilliance Cosmic Copper ink. I cut around the images and gave the stars a spray with the Midnight Blue Glimmer Mist and put them and the greeting on dimensional tape too. I layered my background onto some textured gold cardstock and onto a Stampin' Up 'Not Quite Navy' folded card.


See below for a close up view. Thanks for looking, I do have another card and will upload it tomorrow.

....and now for something completely different!

I made this card for my friend Vicky's birthday yesterday. Stampotique Originals are a little bizarre, but I know Vicky loves them so I used the 'Moth Fab' image for her card.

Andrea's (Andrea's Stampin' Moments blog) Simply Saturday challenge this week was to use a background stamp on a one-layered card. I used a large Inkadinkado background stamp and stamped it directly onto my mauve card using purple Hero Arts dye ink, I highlighted the 'happy birthday' with a white Signo gel pen and also used the pen to draw a rectangle around the background. I coloured 'Moth Fab' with Copic and Prismacolor Markers then cut her out and layered her to the left side on dimensional foam. I just added some Kaisercraft Rhinestones as an embellishment for an easy card.

Hope you enjoyed looking at something a little different this time, please let me know what you think!

Annabelle Stamps New Release and Giveaways!

Annabelle Stamps is about to have a new release of stamps and there will be giveaways to be had!

The previews will begin on June 22nd, click on the blinkie in my sidebar to find out how you can win some free stamps and while you're there do check out the current challenges!

Brush Flower Card.

I seem to be using green and brown shades a lot lately, here's a card I've made for the latest Annabelle's Bling Sketch Challenge over at Annabelle Stamps Blog. For once, I've even finished my card early! If you'd like to enter this challenge you have until Friday June 18th, and there's also a prize up for grabs!

For my background piece I've used a technique from the latest Technique Junkie Newsletter called 'Glimmer Marbling'. I've stamped directly onto my background piece, all the stamps are by Penny Black, then layered the pieces onto black cardstock. I've added a strip of green grosgrain ribbon underneath and a row of Kaiser black rhinestones at the bottom of the card. The cardstock is from Pedigree Paper - if you happen to live in Melbourne, Pedigree Paper has a factory outlet shop that you can visit, just click on the link for the address.

On a personal note, my new chemotherapy regime seems to be much better for me. I have an infusion that lasts for around 45mins.......much better than the 4 hours for the previous regime, and it's so far so good with the new chemo tablets. I'm certainly not as tired and I've not had any nausea either......fingers crossed it stays that way!

Thanks for stopping by today, hope you are all having a lovely day!

Birds and branches!

Hi everyone, I have a card for you today and I'll also give you a bit of a personal update on myself at the end of this post.

My card uses Annabelle's Bling Sketch at Annabelle Stamps Blog and I can also use it for this week's 'Say it with Ribbon' challenge, also at Annabelle Stamps Blog.

My main image is from Hero Arts Birds 'n' Butterflies stamp set. I used Impress Olive Green dye ink onto Stampin' Up Kraft cardstock, I'm not really happy with using dye ink with clear stamps as the ink tends to bead and not give a good impression.......as has happened with this one! I should have stamped it in Versamark before the dye ink but forgot. I stamped the greeting (by Flourishes) using Dark Brown Colorbox chalk ink, but it turned out a bit light in colour too on the SU Old Olive cardstock. I also used Stampin' Up Chocolate Chip cardstock and ribbon, a Cuttlebug folder for the embossing and the bling is from Annabelle Stamps.

Now for my update! I had a CT scan 2 weeks ago, I was supposed to get the results last week, but for reasons I won't go into, the hospital was forced into lockdown and I was unable to keep that appointment or have my chemo which was scheduled that day! I had chemo the next day but had to wait another week to see my Oncologist. Anyway, it was good news of sorts, there is no sign of any tumours on the scan which we are all quite happy about. The not so good news is that I still have to continue with chemo as they think this will be better for me in the long run. It's not all bad though as I'm starting a new regime as of next Monday. I will have chemo every 3 weeks instead of every 2 weeks and it will be a much shorter infusion time as they have stopped one of the chemo drugs.....which is the one that causes the most nausea, so hopefully I will no longer be feeling nauseous after chemo. The best part is that I no longer have to go home wearing an infusion pump for the next 48hrs, I can have that drug in tablet form instead.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I won't get any adverse side effects from the new tablets as I have to take them twice a day for 2 weeks, then I get the 3rd week off them. I'm glad I don't have to have the chemo that causes nausea anymore as it has been making me feel pretty bad after the last few cycles, and I'm hoping I might have a bit more energy as I've been feeling pretty tired overall lately.

I think that about wraps it up! Thanks so much to everyone who is concerned about me, I really appreciate your caring. I hope you are all having a lovely day, it has taken most of the day for the sun to shine through here........but at last we have a lovely blue sky. I might even venture out for my daily walk now, it was way too cold earlier. Talk to you all soon.

Dragonfly Birthday.

I've just come back from Bendigo after visiting my Dad. It's his birthday on Tuesday, so we made this visit a birthday celebration and took him out for a nice lunch. I made him this card using this week's Get Sketchy #40 sketch.

I stamped the dragonfly onto white cardstock, sponged some Tim Holtz Distress Inks around it and used some Kindyglitz on the body and the wings. I stamped the dragonfly again onto acetate, put more Kindyglitz on the reverse side and just cut out the wings when it had dried and stuck them over the 1st image using dimensionals. I should have taken a side-on photo to show the dimension, but forgot to! The background piece is brown Core'dinations cardstock embossed with a Cuttlebug folder, other cardstock is Stampin' Up 'Not Quite Navy' and 'Kraft'. Not sure who makes the dragonfly stamp, it was a magazine freebie, the greeting is by Flourishes.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Postcard From Paris!

The May theme for Inkurable Stampers is to create some Mail Art - envelopes, postcards etc. using at least one stamp. I haven't done any mail art before so this is a first for me. Actually, I'll qualify that, it's the first time I've done any STAMPED mail art! When I was still at school my best friend's family moved interstate. This was way back in the dark ages before anybody had ever heard of the internet, email or mobile phones and text messages, and we did actually write and send letters the old fashioned way. Anyways we would send letters to each other and would put a few little messages and doodles on the backs of the envelopes, but this transgressed quickly into filling up the whole back of the envelope and then we started on the fronts too........until you could barely see where the name and address were written! We were having fun doing this.....but then my friend's postie threatened not to deliver my letters if we didn't stop putting all that stuff on the envelopes......the big spoilsport!

I decided to make a postcard with a French theme for my challenge entry and used heaps of stamps! I didn't realize I had so many postal themed stamps until I started looking through my catalogue of stamped images.......some of them have never even been used before and I've had them for ages!

The techniques I've used are masking......and lots of it, and sponging with Tim Holtz Distress Inks. I used Tea Dye, Shabby Shutters and Broken China inks on the front of the postcard and Antique Linen on the back of the postcard. I also used a white Signo gel pen to highlight the Postcard word.

The photo below shows the front of my postcard, I've used heaps of stamps here and I'll try and list all the stamp credits underneath the photo.



Stampin' Up - French Script background stamp, Merci, Bonjour and Mon Amie are from the 'Carte Postale' set.
Inkadinkado - Postcard word.
Stampington - The Stroll (naked lady wearing a hat).
Stamp-It - Paris in the Spring (large stamp on the left with girl and large Eiffel Tower).
Hampton Arts - Paris Moments (I only used a small portion of this stamp - the Paris postmark).
Buzz & Bloom - 'Belle' word (from Those Girls in Their Hats set)
Cherry Pie Art Stamps - Post Francaise postoid stamp.
Card Stamp & Scrap - corner flower (from Journal Blocks set)
Ink and The Dog - background words (behind the naked lady).
Unidentified stamps - 'Journey' and 'Travel' words, and the small Eiffel Tower.
I think the wavy lines postmark is by Stamp Magick.

Stamp credits for the back of the postcard:
Stampin' Up - 'Carte Postale' word (from the Carte Postale set)
Studio Astarte - Rubber Stamp Mail Centre postoid and bird with letter.
Not sure, but I think the 'Greetings from Far Far Away' and the Postcard stamp (which includes the lines, 'place postage here' and 'original stamp art by:') are also by Stamp Magick.

This challenge ends at the end of this month so there is still plenty of time to enter. The challenges are open to Australian and International participants and Sarah alway has great prizes on offer for the best Australian entry, best International entry and best Australian Newbie entry - that is for first time entrants to Inkurable Stampers challenges. Check out the details HERE at Inkurable Stampers to find out how to enter.

Hope you like my Mail Art, I had fun doing something a little different this time. Have a great day!