When The Boys Are Away . . .

Yesterday, Sunday, it was Mother's Day here in the UK.  However, hubby plans were to go to see his pals to watch the Old Firm game and teenage son was going away to Largs with his pals.  It was just going to be me and the dog at home!  When I mentioned this fact to aforementioned teenage son, he said "Just think about it, you'll have the house to yourself and plenty of peace and quiet!".  

Late on Saturday night I had an unexpected email from Amazon telling me that the Tim Holtz Mixed Media #5 die set (the one with the roses) that I had ordered ages ago was finally being dispatched out and would arrive the next day.  So with both boys away doing other things I would have a few hours to myself to play with my new dies.

I had everything ready and waiting for my parcel to arrive and quite literally just as hubby left the house the delivery driver arrived with my dies.  When I was playing I realised that one of the dies in particular was lending itself to making a card that fits in with the Freshly Made Sketch for this week.  

OK, I know, I already have one in this week, but . . .  

 

 

It had to be Distress Ink - Fired Brick and Barn Door reds with some Mown Grass, Peeled Paint for the flowers and an added hint of Wild Honey on the butterfly.  

Of course I had to play with the other two dies as well.  For the other rose die, I used Wild Honey & Mustard Seed with the same two greens as before.

The more ornate die I kept simple by just using it with a matt metalic gold cardstock.

Life In The Fast Lane

Life in the fast lane is going at a snails pace!  My teenage son has very kindly just treated me to a new to me laptop!   I only got it today so have been trying to get used to it - slowly!  The new keyboard is smaller than the last one as this has a separate number pad so I am a bit hit and miss with the typing!!!

Freshly Made Sketches Challenge

Good Grief ! Part 1 - Love Hearts

Good grief - two weeks in a row and two more posts!!!

Bit like a bus you wait for ages for one and then they all appear at once I have actually managed to put together a couple of more posts!

Not been sleeping too well so these are some insomniac specials.  I was having a look at this weeks challenge at Freshly Made Sketches and hauled out one of my die folders and see what there was that I could use.  Valentine's Day is only a couple of weeks away so I had a look for something appropriate that would fit with this week's sketch

Once I'd found the dies I wanted to use I couldn't make up my mind how to put it together so instead on one version I came up with two:

It's been how long???

Wow, I didn't realise it had been over 5 months since I last posted on my blog!

There's been a lot going on, some good but unfortunately a lot that's not been quite so great and I've just not had the enthusiasm I perhaps should have had.

Whilst I have still been following the Freshly Made Sketches Challenges and have even made a few things I haven't posted anything, mainly due to the time it takes me to remember to take the photos, the link has closed!  This weekend the planets have, eventually, aligned and I made not one but two cards and taken photos in plenty of time (with a couple of hours or so to spare) to actually enter something - hooray!!!

I actually had a wee laugh when I saw this week's sketch as, as a wee pick me up, I had just treated myself to the Tonic Studios Design Collection Magazine & Kit 4 which had a set of 10 "Hello Beautiful" Layering Hearts dies, 8 stamps, an A6 embossing folder and some papers.  Yippee, off to a good start, I had something in the design I could work with!

I have a few Tonic dies, especially after being alerted to some great bargains on the CraftyDevils website last year.  This "Just for You" die being one of them . . .
 

and "Dance All Night" being another . . .

 

Birthday Kiss

Couldn't believe my eyes on Thursday when I went into a local shop to see all the summer things being move off the shelves and lots & lots of gift sets taking their place.  I said to the assistant, "Please tell me this isn't the Christmas stock coming in already." to which she replied "Sorry, but it is!" For goodness sake the kids just started back at school the previous day & we haven't even had Hallowe'en yet!  I totally hate this horrible over commercialisation of Christmas. 

Rant over!

Yesterday was hubby's birthday which meant lunch at the local Chinese buffet restaurant - my downfall is finishing off with my favourite Chinese toffee apples and toffee bananas.  Weigh in this morning showed a pound on & I had been so close to getting my next sticker last time.  Oh well, back to keeping notes of everything to pass my lips so it doesn't go on my hips!


As I had been making cards for hubby's birthday (one was a commission from our son) I thought I should try this week's Freshly Made Sketches Challenge

 

I've purchased a few unbranded dies lately, one of which was rather a large pair of puckered lips so as this kind of, sort of, reminded me of the back of an envelope I though SWALK!


I had already cut out the lips in a glitter card to check out how good they were at cutting out (some branded dies have had problems cutting out using this card) but it cut cleanly first time and was added to my stash.  I decided to keep it black and white to set off the hot pink lips.

When I saw this in close up it reminded me a little of the opening credits to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".  Maybe should have made the lips bright red instead of hot pink!

Butterflies

Yippee! The sun is bright, the skies are blue - it would appear that Spring really has sprung! Hard to believe that there was snow on the hills a week or so ago - some parts of Scotland were warmer than some parts of the Mediterranean!

Had my son out for some driving lessons at the weekend - didn't get off to a good start as when we got to the car rental company he suddenly remembered that he'd left his licence at home! Back in my car to get the paperwork from home and then back again - fortunately they let us get the hire car for the full 2 hours we had booked. I took him a bit further afield this time to a local industrial estate which has quiet roads on a Sunday and plenty of them to get a good bit of driving done instead of a lot of stops and starts on smaller roads - even went over our mileage allowance. He actually felt as though he was doing some "proper" driving - and managed to overcome his reluctance to get out of 2nd & finally got the car into 4th gear! He just needs to calm down a wee bit with his overenthusiastic steering technique. Once again, thank goodness for dual controls - he wanted to do some tree hugging!

This week's Freshly Made Sketches Sketch had me scratching my head a bit - probably because I left it to the last minute.

When we were out driving yesterday we saw butterflies just about everywhere we went so with that as a theme I decided on the Butterfly Floral Lattice from Kaisercraft.

I knew I wanted to use some distress inks in the background so decided to make my own background paper - several attempts with sprays later, I decided that using the ink pads and a blender tool may be a better, easier, idea. I have used graduated brown, green & pink colours down one side then sprayed it with some bleach solution and came up with this. 

I wasn't too sure which sentiment I wanted to use, the sketch shows a sentiment going across the width of the card. I wanted something that didn't take away from the image so in the absence of any velum (I know I have some somewhere if only I could find it!) I decided on strands of twine across the card and a small sentiment that would fit into the white area.

I Used

Cardstock

A6 Card Blank - Anita

Smooth Uncoated White 300gsm - Fabiano

Stamps

Butterfly Floral Lattice - Kaisercraft

Love (from Flutterby set) -Debbie Moore 

Inks

Assorted Distress Ink Pads - Tim Holtz

Versafine Vintage Sepia - Tsukinenko