MIA some of the reasons I have been missing

 Hello My Crafty Blog Friends and Visitors

I just thought I would give you a heads up as to what has been happening. 

On Saturday 21st May my loving Mother-in-law had a fall and the paramedics were called out. This time she wasn't taken into hospital. My brother-in-law had trouble getting her to bed in the night and he asked us all to meet at the house on Sunday morning. We arrived at 10:00 am and found my Mother-in-law on the floor again. The paramedics were called again and this time she went to hospital. 

In the meantime my Father-in-law was being difficult and he was reluctant to leave the bathroom. Eventually we got him downstairs and he had some food. In the evening he went to bed as normal. 

On the morning of 23rd May my brother-in-law went into the house and found my Father-in-law on the floor. The paramedics were called and he was taken into hospital the same one as his wife. 

Early on Tuesday 24th May we got a call saying that my Father-in law had passed away. He had been refusing medication. He died of a heart attack. We went to see our daughter to comfort her. Then we went to the hospital to visit my Mother-in-law. 

In the early hours of the morning of 25th May we got a call from our daughter she had gone into labour 2 weeks early. We had to stay at home to let in the people rebuilding our conservatory. Then we dashed up to Andover to sit with our daughter and son-in-law's dog. Our daughter had a very difficult time. She started in Andover hospital but then she had to move to Winchester hospital. She was in labour for 31 hours and ended up having a C-Section and little Issac was born at 8:30 on Thursday 26th May. Our daughter had an infection and had to stay in hospital until 30th May (her birthday). We split our time between Andover to dog sit, Frimley to visit my mother-in-law, home and funeral planning. On Saturday 28th May we found fraud on my parents bank account. 

My father-in-law's funeral was on Monday 13th June. It was a proper military affair with flags and pipes if he had been there he would have loved it. After the funeral we visited my mother-in-law. She passed away two days later on Wednesday 15th June. Her funeral was on Tuesday 12th July. This was much easier to arrange as she had left details on what she wanted. 

We have been having a financial assessment for my parents which as taken a lot of prep. We have been supporting our daughter and son-in-law a lot. 

I just haven't felt like making anything. 

We hadn't visited my parents for a while there was just no time to fit it in. We went last week and when we showed them pictures of their great grandson my mum in a moment of lucidity asked for a photo. 

Meet Issac he is a delight. I am wondering about making something like this for us to have at home. We have a meeting at my parent's house next week I will take this then. 

Sorry about the long tale of woe. 

Take care. 

Hugs Jackie

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Regal Alphabet New Baby Card

 Hello My Crafty Blog Friends and Visitors

How was your week? Have you got something nice planned for the weekend? John Lockwood AKA John Next Door has some new dies releasing on Create and Craft on Sunday. I have made a few samples and I will be sharing them over the next few day. 

Here is a new baby card that I  made using the Regal Alphabet Dies . 

The grid cuts out the tiles and you can cut them in lots of different colours. The letter cut out from the squares. I had lots of fun with grids, squares and colours. The teddy is from the Box Insert Baby Bear die set. 

I have lots more cards to share with you. I will be back for a few days. 

Have a good weekend. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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New Baby card in Blue

 Hello My Crafty Blog Friends and Visitors

How is your week going? Not much going on here but that is too be expected. Zoom is working overtime in our house. 

Just before Christmas the best friends of our daughter and son-in-law had a much longed for baby boy. This is the card that I made for them. 

This is a tri-shutter card. I have made them for babies before. It is a good way of showcasing a lot of smaller dies. The backing paper is an older Tattered Lace paper. I used dies from Tattered Lace, Creative Expressions and Crafter's Companion. There is lots of scoring and cutting to make this design. 

This card folds up as small as this. It is still a bit thick for posting. This one went in a parcel. 

This was posted before Christmas but I have no idea if it arrived or not. I hope it did enjoy making this one. 

Stay safe and take care. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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Always Fun Challenges - Colour Inspiration

Hello My Crafty Blog Friends and Visitors

How was your weekend? I hope you are ready for the week ahead.

A quick update on my dad. He is still in hospital his sodium level is down to normal and his potassium are rising. There is now a problem with his heart and he is waiting for a pacemaker to be fitted. We are travelling up everyday to Fleet from Southampton. We feed my mum and take her to visit dad, take her home put her to bed and get home about 9:00. My husband works in the morning before be travel up he is using his annual leave. I think this will be going on for a while. Because of all this I am stepping down from this Design Team and there maybe some others I am afraid. 

Being Monday it is time for the new challenge at Always Fun Challenges and this time there is Colour Inspiration.

When I saw the colours they made me think of a baby card. I wanted to make another tri-shutter card for a baby girl and this seemed to be the ideal opportunity.  The shape is easy to make and make and fun to decorate. I used a selection dies to decorate this card. 

This is the colour inspiration. 

Why not join our challenge they are always fun. 

One of our nieces is expecting and now I am ready with a card. 

Happy Crating

Hugs Jackie

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Crafty Catz Challenge blog - Anything Goes with the optional twist of Baby Cards

Hello My Crafty Blog Friends and Visitors

Welcome to my second post of the day. You all know that on a Friday a new challenge starts on the Crafty Catz Challenge blog. The theme is Anything Goes with the optional twist of making a Baby Card. The Design team have done a great job using their own images. The sponsor is Di's Digi Stamps.

I decided to make a baby card for my stash so I didn't want it to be gender specific. 

There are many wonderful images in the store if you click on the logo you will be taken there. 

I stamped this image with Watering Can archival and then coloured it with my Spectrum Noir sparkle pens. The stamp is by Penny Black and is called Baby Hammock. I have had this stamp for a while. 

I cut the sentiment with a small die. 

I hope that you have a great weekend. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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A Baby card for New Grandparents.

Hello My Crafty Blog Friends and Visitors

How was your weekend? I hope you did something nice. I have been working on the image for the wedding invitations I am making for our nephew and his fiancee. The artwork has come in three parts that need putting together. It has been rather tricky. My husband had to do the scanning at his work as the main image was on A3 paper. He often ends up helping me when I make wedding invites it takes team work.

One of my best friends became a grandmother for the first time last week which is all very exciting. The new baby is a little girl and everyone is doing well. I made a card to celebrate.

So the new baby is a girl so the card had to be pink. I got all my baby themed dies and I put them together. It was quite a quick make. 

The baby blocks are by Tattered Lace I picked them up in a sale. 

The babygro is a Crafter's Companion die. 

Another Tattered Lace die one of my favourites. 

Look who is staying with us for a couple of weeks while my daughter and her husband are in America at a convention. They are very cute. 

It is such a big thing to become a grandparent and my friend never thought she would. 

Have a great week.

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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New Baby Card

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

I hope you are having a great week. The weather here has been rather kind.

I was asked to make a new baby card for a colleague of my husband. The request was for it to be not gender specific.

I decided to go for yellows and greens. The paper and card were in my stash. I cut a frame for the image with Innsbruck die set from the Austrian Collection designed by Sue Wilson for Creative Expressions. 

The cute hedgehog is a stamp by Penny Black called Baby Hammock. I added the sentiments top and bottom from a stamp set by LC Designs. All the stamps were stamped with Watering Can Archival and the image was coloured with my Spectrum Noir Sparkle pens. 

I used the Delicate Daisy dies and the Faux Quilled Leaves single leaf to create the flowers and leaves. Those are Sue Wilson dies too. 

I was pleased with how this card turned out. I often make cards for people at my husband's work.

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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New Baby Cards

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

I hope you had a great weekend and are ready for the week ahead. I have one week to go and then it will be the  half term holiday for me. I can report that the day wedding invitations are all finished. When the wedding website is finished we will be able to send them out.

When we went to the Newbury Craft Show, a few weeks ago,  I treated myself to some LC Designs stamps there was an offer 3 for £12 well it would have been rude not to.  I decided to make some new baby cards for my stash, using one of the new stamps, as I know of a few people having babies soon.

The stamp is adorable and it fits so well in an oval. I used some Tattered Lace dies from the Oval Shutter die set to cut the central panel and the lacy border. 

The stamp was stamped onto water colour card with Watering Can archival ink and coloured with my Spectrum Noir Sparkle pens. It is very easy to colour. 

I said I'd made two here is the boy's version. 

It is a lovely stamp and so easy to adapt. I think I might play around with where the sentiment goes next time I used it. 

Here are the cards together. Have a great week. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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New Baby Card

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

I hope you are having a good week.The weather here has been a bit variable but it is nice when the sun is out. After all we all need our Vitamin D.

One of my husband's work colleague's wife has just had a baby boy. I was asked to make a card for everyone at the office to sign. I seem to make this type of card quite often.

This is an 8" x 8" card and it has an extra insert so there is lots of room to sign. As this card was for a baby boy it had to be blue. The frame  for the image was made with the Double Pierced Squares sets A and B by Sue Wilson. The bunting is another Tattered Lace die. 

This is my go to Congratulations die it is made by Tattered Lace, 

This was cut with an Emerald die set that I won from Hochanda. I can't say I don't win anything. 

This little guy comes from the LOTV Occasions 3 stamp set. Of course depending on the colours the baby can be a girl. It is a very useful stamp. The little hearts came with the Mr and Mrs die set by Sue Wilson. 

I have joined Bloglovin and I would love it if you followed me there of course I would follow you in return. 

I would like to enter Challenge 54 at the Dies R Us Challenge Blog. 

Enjoy the rest of the week. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

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Fantasy Stampers - New Baby

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

Welcome to the weekend. I wonder what you have planned? We are off to look at another wedding venue with our daughter and her fiancé. This time we are going to Beaulieu, the home of the national motor museum, in the New Forest.

Today is also the day  for a new challenge on the Fantasy Stampers Challenge Blog and the theme is New Baby.

I made this card with one of the stamps that comes in the LOTV Occasions 3 stamp set. It is such a useful set there is this baby, a bride and groom, a sick teddy with a nurse and two bunnies in love. It is the baby stamp I have used the most. When my husband said that he needed a new baby card for someone at work I knew exactly which stamp to use. Being a stamp you can colour it how you want to make either a girl baby or a boy baby you can even make twins or triplets. 

As a baby girl had been born I coloured the image in soft pinks using my Promarkers. I used the Double Pierced Square dies to cut the image and the mats.

The sentiment comes with the stamp set. 

I was told that the couple liked the card. We did put a small gift in as well. 

If you check back on the Fantasy Stampers Challenge Blog tomorrow the winners of the last challenge will be announced. I will be on my way to Ally Pally I have a shopping list and I am buying some bits for other people. I will also be seeing John Lockwood to get back the cards I sent him for his TV shows. I sent him a message and he has packed them so hopefully that will be okay. 

Have a great weekend. 

Happy Crafting 

Hugs Jackie

Delightful Digi's Baby Blue Teddy Bear

Hi My Crafty Blog Friends

How has your week been so far? Yesterday I was on a school trip to our local hands on science centre. It is an amazing place to go and nowhere does it say "don't touch". I do always get very tired after a trip,  a nice cup of tea usually sorts it out.

This is my latest card for  Delightful Digi's using the O-Sew- Sweet collection.

Click on the logo to visit the blog to buy the images you see.

I used the Ted image and the quilt background in blue. 

I printed the image twice. I kept one as a background and coloured Ted with Promarkers and the cushion with some Spectrum Noir pencils. Then I coloured the feet and the head on another image and cut them out and I used some gel glue to hold them away from the main image. The heart I cut out and covered with Flower Soft to give it some texture. 

I think this would make a nice card for a birth announcement that is why I choose the sentiment "With Love" also available from Delightful Digi's

I hope the rest of the week is kind to you. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie

Welcome to the World

Hi Bloggers

We have just got back from a weekend away in Buckinghamshire where we visited Bletchley Park for the second time (we had return tickets). We were there on a lovely day and the sun lit up the autumn trees beautifully. It is a very interesting place to visit and they keep making improvements to  the visitor's experience. This time the car parks were better and there was more choice of places to eat.

Before we went away a friend of ours gave birth to a baby boy. I knew in time so I was able make a card for her before we went.

I had the image already all I did was to add a little blue to it with Promarkers. I teamed it with papers from my stash and oh boy do I have a lot of paper.

I cut a heart and the decoration was made with a Marianne die. The other embellishments I had in 

my stash. 

Congratulations was cut with a Brittania die.

 

This is the outfit I bought for the baby. If they don't like it, or have too many I did get a gift receipt so they can choose what to do.

While we were away I visited  TK Maxx in Milton Keynes and I always look at the few craft bits they have when I visit one . This time I got lucky and I found a Theresa Collins 12" x 12" paper pad. The paper is lovely quality and I probably shouldn't have but I did buy it. 

I hope she likes the card and the present. 

Have a great week I am back to work tomorrow half term is over. 

Happy Crafting

Hugs Jackie