Some of my favourite makes from 2021

 Hello My Crafty Blog Friends and Visitors

I hope that you all had a good Christmas. We did get to stay with our Daughter and Son-in-law. We had a lovely meal together and plenty of walks with the dog. I am sharing our special family news: in June we will become Grandparents. I still can't quite believe it. As a family we feel very blessed. There is still a long way to go but the signs are looking good. 

My back has continued to be a problem. I have taken to use the laptop standing up in the kitchen, 

I thought I would share some of my favourite makes from the year.  Some of these bring back special memories. 

I have made a few Box cards this year. This is the one I made for our daughter's 30th birthday. I drew the paper myself. This reminds me of not only our lovely daughter but also of my love of doodling. 

This is another favourite design of card. It is a Diamond Point card and there are lots of instructions on YouTube for how to make them. On my blog this has been the most looked at card of the year. 

Here is the Christmas card I gave to my in-laws this year. They are both in their 90s and just recently they have started to need care. It is always nice to give them something special. The card was made entirely with John Next Door dies. 

This twisted easel card was my Father-in-Laws birthday card. He still gets out in his garden every day. 

I have been on the Beccy's Place design team for a long time. I do like using her images. The background was made with Snippets which I like doing a lot. There always seem to be more Snippets. 

Here is a special birthday card I made again all with John Next Door dies. I am very thrilled to be one of his Angels. 

I also love reusing old cards. This image worked so well with the paper. 

Here is the Christmas card I made for our Daughter and Son-in-law. Our daughter has always loved penguins. These are Two Jays penguins. I had fun colouring them and cutting them our. 

This is one of the cards that I made for the John Next Door Christmas box kit. I wrote two articles for the magazine, It is so lovely to get opportunities like this.  

Here is one of my favourite cards I made for Beccy's Place. I do love sunflowers. 

Lastly this is the Christmas card I made for our very good friends (the ones we go on Beatles trips with). Our Daughter drew them for us. I also drew the wreath. I know they were thrilled with this card. I am hoping to do more with our Daughter's images in the future. 

I won't be making so many cards going forward. I have decided to stay on the Beccy's Place Design team and on John's Team of Angels. I will only be making special cards for people in between. I expect I will be blogging a lot less. This was the first year for ages we sent bought Christmas Cards. 

Happy New Year to you all. I do hope that 2022 is kinder to all of us. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

Please follow my blog with Bloglovin

Not Just Cards Challenge Blog - July Challenge - Anything Goes

Hello My Crafty Blog Friends and Visitors

I hope you are all well and doing okay. We had a lovely day out yesterday. We went to Furzey Gardens on the edge of the the New Forest in Hampshire. We met our friends there and we shared a lovely picnic together as well as getting coffee  in the cafe. It was so lovely to be out and to see some gorgeous plants. I was even able to buy a couple of plants for our garden. This year our garden has become very important to us like it has to many people. 

Back to business the July challenge has started at the Not Just Cards Challenge Blog. The theme is the ever popular Anything Goes. 

I have a friend who loves Star Trek (so do I). For her birthday I asked my daughter to draw my friend and her husband as characters from the Next Generation series of Star Trek. My daughter obliged. She has been drawing us as Star Trek characters for years. The moon in the background is my own photograph.  The stars I added were made with a die from the Champagne Bottle die set from the John Next Door range. 

Our challenges are always fun. Click on the logo and you will be taken to the blog. 

When my friend saw the image she was just so thrilled. I have asked my daughter to draw me some Doctor Who themed images. I know people like seeing themselves as their favourite characters. 

There is a little story with the matching gift bag. My friend, saw a gift bag I made on Facebook and challenged me to make a Star Trek themed one. That's how it all started. 

Have a great weekend. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

Please follow my blog with Bloglovin

My Favourite Cards of 2017

Hello My Crafty Blog Friends

I hope you had an enjoyable Christmas. Ours went like this we sang in the Choir again on Christmas Eve and our daughter and son-in-law came to the service to see us and share a meal after. Then on Christmas Day we went to Newbury to share the day with our daughter, our son-in-law and our new in-laws. We had a lovely time together. On Boxing Day we visited my husband's parents in Aldershot they were having a drop in. It was lovely to see them and lots of other members of the family. Things are a bit calmer for us  now in between Christmas and New Year. I am hoping that we will see the new Star Wars film at some point.

I was thinking of doing a Top Five cards of the Year but is it so hard to choose so I have decided to do a card for each month.

January 

February

March

April 

May 

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

There you have it. This has been the year that our daughter got married. I retired. My colouring has improved. I purchased a stamping platform and that has improved my stamping. I have won a few challenges and been published in magazines a few times. We had some nice trips away. All in all it has been a good year for us. I wonder what next year will bring. 

Happy New Year to you and your families. 

Take care. 

Hugs Jackie

Please follow my blog with Bloglovin

Unicorn Challenge Blog Second Birthday

Hello My Crafty Blog Friends

Good morning. How are you? This is my second day of being retired everything is all a bit weird at the moment I am sure I will quickly get used to it. There is so much that I want to do.

Well the new challenge starts on the Unicorn Challenge blog and it is our second birthday (where did the time go?). To celebrate the theme this month is Birthday and we have not one but two wonderful sponsors Di's Digi Stamps and Fabrika Fantasy.

I had a look in the Di's Digi Stamp store and I couldn't resist this cute image. I used three shades of blue centura pearl card. I made a frame for the image with the Double Pierced Rectangles by Creative Expressions. The top layer was embossed with the Heart Lattice embossing folder also by Creative Expressions unfortunately I don't think it is available any more. 

Fabrika Fantasy have some wonderful images on their site.

Di's Digi Stamps also has some gorgeous image. We are very lucky to have been sponsored by them both this month. 

I treated myself to one of the images from Di's Digi Stamps this one is called Hedgehogs Bluebell Fun. The image was printed onto water colour paper and coloured with my Spectrum Noir Sparkle pens. 

I do love circle sentiments they often fit onto a card where others couldn't. This is a LOTV sentiment that came free with a magazine some time ago. I used my Tonic circle dies to cut the circles. 

These bluebell were cut with some Spellbinder dies. 

This is a good time to join our challenge with two sponsors. I am looking forward to seeing all the entries. 

I would like to enter challenge 13 at Angie's Digital Stamps, TTCRD Anything Goes Challenge for the week starting 5th Sept, Anything Goes Challenge at the Cuttlebug Mania Challenge Blog and challenge 493 at the Cute Card Thursday Challenge blog. 

Enjoy the rest of the week. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

Please follow my blog with Bloglovin

My New Dies

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

How is your week going? We have reached half way which is always good. Yesterday, along with lots of other people, we had snow! Did you see any? It didn't last long here and it was sunny very soon after.

When Sue Wilson released her latest collection of  dies I couldn't resist the Exquisite Poppy dies, the Olive branch dies, and the Stitched Lattice frames. I am very naughty. My Mother-in-law loves poppies and I decided to remake her birthday card.

I was so pleased with the way this card turned out and I just love the dies. I can see myself using them a lot. I cut the lattice twice once in white and once in blue and off set them one behind the other inside the stitched frame. 

I used the Just for you Oval set for the sentiment. 

Aren't the poppies gorgeous. 

I think my Mother-in-Law will like this card. She would have liked the other one too she is lovely. 

I would like to enter Pixie's Snippets Playground Week 226 , TTCRD challenge for 26th April till the 2nd May and Penny's Challenge 275.

Enjoy the rest of the week.

Happy Crafting.

Hugs Jackie

Not Just Cards Challenge Blog - First Birthday Blog Hop

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

This is an exciting and a different type of post from me  it is 

BLOG HOP TIME

Its Not Just Cards

1st Birthday 

so to celebrate we are having a challenge and a 

BLOG HOP

We have lots of prizes to be won by all our wonderful sponsors

Star Stampz

Aurora Wings

Lacy Sunshine

Nikki Burnette

All Dressed Up

Oddball

SLS Lines

Stitchy Bear

Moon flower

Diddybag

Crafty Sentiments

Julia Spiri

If you have come to my blog without doing the hop you can

Start here - http://notjustcardschallenges.blogspot.co.uk/

I am using an image from

This is my card. 

One lucky person who comments on my blog will win the image I have used. 

Good Luck. She is very cute.

Complete the hop to win lots of wonderful digis along the way. 

Don't forget to follow me as I will be posting MY winner on my blog next month  I don't want you to miss out!

If you get lost the list of blogs to hop to are here

Lori

Tina

Gabriela

Gran Margaret

Jackie  - You are here

Jan

Judy

Julie

Kemly

Lynda

Marleen

Monica B

Monica S

Traci

Valou

Have a great week.

I would like to enter the first challenge at Our Crafty Corner.

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie 

Happy 90th Birthday Grandad

Hi Bloggers

The day finally arrived and Grandad became 90 this weekend.



Here he is with his cake made by one of his Granddaughters (he has 5)  he is with his Nannie.

 

Here he is enjoying his meal surrounded by his family and friends.



This is his present organised by one of his Grandsons (he has 2). You should have seen his old one.



Just a quick reminder of the card I made he did like it especially as it opened up from flat. He had so many cards as there was a party arranged by friends yesterday.

Have a great week. I'll be back with more cards. I am still borrowing a laptop the desktop is beyond repair so we need to replace it.

Happy crafting.

Hugs Jackie

Pop-up Box card for a 90th Birthday

Hi Bloggers

I made this for my father-in-law who will be 90 next month. He always likes the cards that I make especially if they have an unusual shape I think he will like this one it has all his favourite colours.

It is quite a large card I made it from a sheet of A3 card that divided nicely into 10cm sections with 2cm left over for a tab to join the box together. This time I remembered not to score the back panel in half meaning that the background stays upright. 

I did lots of matting and layering. The blue mat I embossed with the Sue Wilson Checkboard PinPoint embossing folder it give it some texture.My father-in-law is partially sighted and he enjoys things that have texture.

This shows the slats that hold the dimensional elements I used a clear acetate to make it look like the stars were floating. 

This is the detail on the front panel. I kept checking to make sure I was putting it in the right place. 

This shows the detail of the die cuts . The stars were made with a dies that came free with a magazine and  the 90th was from an X-cut die set.

Don't forget this type of card will fold flat for posting. 

Thank you for visiting my blog.

Happy crafting

Hugs 

Jackie

Lighthouse by the Sea

Hi

I hope you have all had a great weekend. I have a lot of family stuff going on so I haven't got as much crafting done as I would have liked. I have some deadlines coming up and I really should be getting on with bits and pieces.

This will be my last nautically themed post for a while as Sam now has just released an exciting range of really cute Christmas stamps.

This will be my Father-in-laws birthday card. The background is made from an old map covered in Micro Beads so it is very touchy feely just right for his partial sight.

The Lighthouse was stamped onto white card with Black Archival ink and them heat embossed with clear detail powder. Then I coloured the image with Promarkers and pencils. I made a frame using two Spellbinder dies.

The Ship in a bottle stamp was stamped with Black Archival ink onto shrink plastic. I cut out the shapes and then heated them one a t time with my heat tool. It makes a cool embellishment. 

The sentiment was from the Lovely Labels stamp set.

So that is the last nautical project for a while. 

Here is a sneak peak of Sam's new stamps. 

Thanks for stopping by and for leaving any comments. 

Hugs Jackie