Pollyanna Pickering - Little Owl Birthday Card

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

How is your week going? Well yesterday  I walked out of work for the last time - I am now officially retired . I do have very  mixed emotions but I am sure that I have done the right thing. Being able to choose when to go on holiday will be a big thing.

I have been a bit intermittent with card making since the wedding. I went back to my favourite Pollyanna Pickering images for some inspiration.

I added some paper from a Creative World of Crafts pad. 

To match the image I added  die cut trees using the Winter Trees dies designed by Sue Wilson for Creative Expressions. 

This image is from a Pollyanna Pickering sketch pad. The Little Owls are so cute. 

Here are all the cards and presents I received yesterday. I had been working there for over 20 years. Some of the cards are very inventive I might be stealing some of the ideas for my own card making. 

This is another card for my stash owl cards are always popular. 

Enjoy the rest of the week. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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Flower Fairies Gift Collection from Cardmaking & Papercraft Magazine

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

Happy Weekend. I hope you are doing something nice. Yesterday we visited our daughter and her new husband. They have been married for exactly a week. Doesn't time go by quickly. We did have a brilliant time at the wedding. We have lots of lovely memories to cherish.

Well I keep treating myself to crafty bits and pieces the latest being the August issue of Cardmaking & Papercraft Magazine with its Flower Fairy Gift Collection. I remember the flower fairies from my youth and I know my mother-in-law loves them too.

The gorgeous paper came with the kit. There is gold foiling on the frames of the images so I added gold and purple mats and layers. 

This is a small picture of a Harebell. 

This is the Harebell Fairy she is very pretty. The paintings of the flower fairies were done in the 1920's by Cicely Mary Barker. 

The sentiment was cut with a a Spellbinders die I do like the font. 

I was very pleased with how this card turned out. There are lots of elements left in the kit so I will be making some more cards and other things. 

Enjoy the rest of the weekend. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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The Wedding Card I made for our Daughter and her new Husband.

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

The wedding is well and truly over. I have been very slow about getting the house sorted. We have managed to make ourselves very busy we were worried about feeling a bit flat after the wedding but that hasn't really happened. I will have a few days when I finish work to get some things sorted before we go on holiday.

I made a lot of things for the wedding and of course I made them a card as well.

As I had made things for the wedding I was able to use papers and elements from other makes for their card. 

This is the top of the card. 

The birdcage is an Apple Blossom die and the birds and branches are Sizzix dies. 

This is the lower part of the easel. 

These lovebirds were used on the invitations. 

This is the happy couple just after they had been married. You can see the things I made: the trees, the bouquet, the buttonhole and the little display for the table. This photo was taken by Chris Carter of Super Effective Photography. 

They had a lovely display, in their room at the hotel , of cards they had received. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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Mixed Media Plate and Fairies

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

How have you all been? It seems like ages since I have blogged. The wedding was brilliant we had such a lovely day. The zoo was such a good location for the wedding. When I have sorted my photos I will do a special blog post about the wedding. The happy couple went home after the wedding. Their honeymoon is in September.

The weekend before the wedding I made it to the Newbury Craft show. It was lovely because we had a good catch up with John Lockwood and he shared some of his plans with us and we saw Sam and some of his new stamps and stencils which you all know about now. He was demonstrating with mixed media plates that he was using with a Stamping Platform. I was impressed and I bought all three of the shapes of plate that were at the show. When you get home is it always difficult to remember what you have seen. Anyway in the week before the wedding I had a play.

Having watched John again on Hochanda I want to have another play. I used distress ink and stamps from my collection. I do seem to have a lot of fairy stamps. I used various stencils from my collection too. Though now I have seen John's stamps and stencils I want those too. All the black stamping was done with black archival ink. The frames were made with the Douvle  

This was the first card I made. 

All the cards were sprayed with Crafter's Companion Pearl Spray and Shine. 

I do want to make some Christmas cards with the mixed media plates. I think they will really speed up my card production. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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Sunflower - Thank You cards

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

How is your week going? As you can imagine we are very busy with the lead up to the wedding. This will be my last blog post for a while. Tomorrow we are setting off to Bristol for the wedding. We have a meeting at the venue where we hand over all the decorations and the table plans. Then on Friday everyone starts to gather and Saturday is the day of the wedding. Until we return home I won't be around much in blogland there just won't be time.

I love sunflowers they are just so cheerful so I treated myself to issue 148 of Papercraft Essentials magazine with its free sunflower stamp set and paper pad.

I have just invested in a Tim Holtz stamping platform and I am so glad I have. I just makes stamping so much easier and if you miss a bit it is so easy to go back and re-ink it. For batch making it is a dream I am going to use it to make some Christmas cards. I had all the stamps on the platform and I stamped them all at the same time. I cut the layers out with the Double Pierced Rectangle dies by Creative Expressions. I added a lattice cut with Trellis Edger die set I extended it to make it long enough it was very easy to line up. 

All the stamping was done onto water colour card with Watering Can archival ink. All the colouring was done with my Spectrum Noir Sparkle pens. I wanted to stamp the pot straight onto the card as I liked the shadow for the pot. 

The bee came from another stamp set. 

The sentiment came with the set. 

With all the stamps in place it was easy to make this smaller card. 

Sunflowers are so cheerful. I now have three thank you cards for the end of term. 

I would like to enter challenge 122 at the Creative Moments Challenge blog. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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Distress Oxides - Summer Weeds Woodware stamp

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

How has your weekend been? We were very busy on Saturday delivering things for other people to take to the wedding next week, collecting my parents case as they are now coming on the train  and we had a brief trip to the Newbury Craft show. After all this we did have a barbecue at our daughter's and her fiance's house which was lovely. We won't be calling him that much longer. Then on Sunday I finished the table plan. So all my crafty makes for the wedding are finished.

A few weeks ago at the Portsmouth Craft show I treated myself to three shades of Distress Oxides. I bought Faded Jeans, Broken China and Cracked Pistachio. I watched the online demo by Tim Holtz introducing them and on Friday I had a go.

To this is my first try. I put all three shades on my craft mat and spritzed them with water and wiped the paper through them. I did this a few times and I used a heat gun to dry the paper in between. I must admit I like the chalky finish. 

The stamp I used is by Woodware and is called Summer Weeds. I now have a Tim Holtz stamping platform and I used it here. I used Perfect Medium to stamp the image in fact I did that twice before I heat embossed with a black sparkly powder. 

There is no sentiment there wasn't really room. I can always add one later. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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Emerald City Crafts Blog Challenge

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

How is your week going? The fridge and the freezer are safely here and working perfectly.

The new Emerald City Crafts Challenge Blog first ever challenge starts today.

It is a  monthly challenge which starts on the first Friday of each month. The theme is always Anything Goes and that means you can create anything! Mixed media, tags, ATC's or cards.
The challenge will be open for 3 weeks. The winner and top 3 will receive a badge with their name added. The blog is run by Linda Simpson and she has an Etsy shop where she sells Ephemeral and papers.

The image came from a set of images that Linda sells. The music paper and the ribbon were in my stash. I added some texture with the stitched flag dies by Creative expressions and some distress ink. 

As there were poppies I decided to add die cut poppies. 

I do like making poppies. 

Why not join us for our first challenge. 

I would like to enter challenge 47 at the Crafting with Friends Challenge blog , challenge 134 at the Creative Fingers Challenge blog and challenge 47 at the A Bit More Time to Craft Challenge blog.

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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