Luvver-ly!

Wahey, my first blog award!

The rules for this award are to thank the sender:
THANKYOU KERYN!
List 3 things that I like about myself:
Oh jeez, thats a toughie... my ankles! um... my creativity n my wit when it doesnt let me down!
and forward to 7 other bloggers:
Well I've only got eight followers! Ooh wait its says nine now, have I got a secret admirer?! But I guess they already like me so I oughta try n make some new friends, lol... So:
SJ, Loraine, Julia, Spyder, Mary Anne, Darcy, Alison


Ok, to business! I've finally completed one of the many mini books that were littering my desk a few weeks back. For my sister in laws birthday, I chopped one of them in half and created an handbag friendly sized brag book, a third full with photos of her oldest daughter leaving two thirds for the twins she is expecting at the end of the year...

 And to complement it, a sunflower easel card, my first attempt at a non-square easel card, to go with it:

I have Loraine (two mentions in one post, my dear!) to thank for this for the stampin' up card we made the other week of which I said looked like a sunflower and she claimed the resemblance wasn't intentional so I decided to make one that was!

WOYWW 63 - Mish Mash!

Come on, thats positively bomb site material!!

On the left we have the result of a messy hour or so trying to follow my cousins smacking acetate tutorial - messy but SOOO much fun! I did a whole load of sheets in all the combinations of the colours I own (all four of em, lol) I also experimented with printing onto tracing paper and white glueing (PVA?) the images onto the ink splodges once they'd dried. My images are along a horticultural theme in line with the Daring Cardmakers challenge (think Julia might know summat bout that...?) and I'm really quite chuffed with how they've come out. I'll show u some closer up images, if/when they ever become cards! Not sure how well u can see but most of the rest of the piles consist of a load of cd-roms my cuz lent me and a load of incredibly funky base cards that her mom/my auntie has sent me! They're such a generous lot up there, lol!

Happy WOYWW everyone; ready, set...get nosey!!

p.s. I've added a gallery page which features some of the cards I didnt think were worthy of their own post, so take a peek...

Choose Your Own Sentiment...

What do you make of this then? A friend of mine is goin in for his driving instructor exam this week and he is convinced that he will fail so driving home from work the other day my creative juices started to flow (lets face it, got nothing else to concentrate on, lol) and I realised there were quite a lot of similarities between the words 'congratulations' and 'commiserations' (had to write them down when I got home to be sure) and lo a spinning card was born!

Its meant to be a steering wheel from a Bugatti (which I'm assured is a posh car!) and I had a right palava with the text - always my downfall, sadly - so the letters ended up being vellum ones left over from Chrimble, with a mixture of freebie Papercraft Inspirations letters cos I was running out of certain letters.

As you can just about see, the circle at the back moves round to reveal your choice of sentiment and the prop on the base says "on the result of your test!" (which it belatedly occured to me sounds slightly medical!)

I'm not that happy with it, but it went thru so many redesigns, its amazing it actually ever got made! I added a bit of comedy to the rear to distract from the awfulness - I just hope he likes it!

WOYWW 62 - Mini Book Madness

                                                             Is this better Keryn? Altho u can still see most of my cutting mat so probably not, lol. Who would've thought my butterfly shaped odds n sods tray would attract such attention?! No, its not crocs and theres nowt growing out of it.. except a pile of crap! Um, this weeks lil obsession is mini books, I've been thinking about making one for ages but that was as far as I got until I went to my boyf's over the weekend armed only with my laptop and scraps box and decided to finally try and follow one of the Create 10 lessons that I signed up for. I faffed about a bit n didnt really get anywhere til I opened lesson 10 and decided to have a go at the mini book. My first attempt was awful as I didnt have a ruler or knife but I got the basics down and got my head round the instructions and when I got back to my desk I made the black and white version - which I'm pretty chuffed with but not a clue what I'm gonna do with it! (the paper is all from Clare Curd's signature range, if you're interested) My best friend wants me to make her a pregnancy journal but she stated no dark colours so I started to make another one with some paper from a scrapbooking kit I bought from Home Bargains (the red thing to the left) but I got so far and decided I don't like the colours and I knew I would make a mess if I tried to take it apart so I kind of abandoned it and started again - the paper stood upright at the back of the mat is what I've started cutting out for third time lucky so we'll see if this one survives! Um, have I missed anything? Oh the shrink plastic butterfly wasn't a success, not sure if I need more practice or I just need to be more precise in my cutting but some of the finer detail split so they curled up and got stuck to themselves when I heated it. Really must get some printable plastic... Head over to Queens Julias palace for more WOYWW

Counting Rainbows

So Lili Of The Valley had a 50p sale on their die cuts and as my colouring in pretty much sucks, I thought I'd take advantage... and yep u guessed it, they aint seen the light of day since I opened the envelope! Oh well! I also bought this lil fella cos he's just so darn cute but they sell their stamps unmounted and I don't own ne U-mount  - or in fact even know how to use it! - so after sitting unopened on my shelf for a while I finally took the plunge and tried to spray mount him to various surfaces! ....It didn't really work but along the way I had the bright idea of stamping him onto another potential I'd nabbed for my advertures in Kraft-land, this time the inside of a 100% recycled decaf t-bag box (does that make it 200% recycled now?) and keeping the image to sepia tones. I tried the whole painting with Distress Inks thing but once it dried u could barely see it so I took all the shades of brown out of my pro-markers and kinda made it up as I went along.

Seein as its a Lili image I thought I'd try n squeeze it in for their challenge... and promptly missed the deadline! Luckily I intended to enter it for the Shabby Tea Room too, hence the inclusion of actual colour as this week is Blue, Cream & Brown (hope it fits!).

WOYWW 61 - I'm baaack!

It seems this WOYWW isn't only a one time deal and if I'm not careful u'll send the boys round so I'm back for a second round! I've taken all ur advice and blatantly cheated, I took this pic last night (Tues) and I ever so slightly staged it by taking the pic before I tidied up - cos lets face it after wud b pointless, really!

So what do we have, well I think I'm getting over my lil lost mojo hissy fit from the previous post. I made a cocktail themed card yday for my cousin, based on one of the quick cards in Papercraft Inspirations (but that had to be mailed today before u ask!) and I downloaded the latest freebie pyramage from Printable Heaven's French advertising collection (love love love old adverts!) which became one of the smallest cards in the world - not too sure how that happened! And then today I made a topiary tree using a small flower punch (again suggested by PI mag) which is frankly pretty damn cool! And on my desk is the most gorgeous of gorgeous marianne butterfly die and the shrink plastic I'm attempting to cut it out of... stay tuned to see if it works!

Get over to Julias Stamping Ground & enjoy your Whats On Your Workdesk Wednesday!