Falling Snowflakes

Two challenges I had to join in with this week are ColourQ and Freshly Made Sketches and yes you guessed..... I made another Christmas card :) So here is what I came up with when I combined the two...

Quite CAS I know but I thought the sketch could take it and I did overcome my glitter phobia and give the snowflakes and buttons some sparkle treatment too!!!
The snowflake die is a dienamics by MFT and the sentiment is from a set by Personal Impressions by Kirsty Wiseman.

I'm also entering this card into Simon Says Stamp and Wee Memories as they are both having an 'Anything Goes' challenge week :)

Well this week the Christmas Shopping will start in earnest as well as throwing some cards together...... I seem to work better under pressure, it focuses the mind. Last weeks trip was not successful, as predicted, but I get on better when I've had a pre shopping recce and I'm on my own!!!!

Right must dash... loads to do and I'll be back to blog hop later :)
Thanks for visiting me today.

Jenny X

Clean and Simple Deer!!

Greetings peeps ..... first of all I have to let you know about a couple of new badges on my blog :)

I was so excited to have won a 'Perfect Princess' badge at Freshly Made Sketches for this card on Tuesday and then yesterday I found out I have been showcased at Less is More for this card in the 'Cocktail' week. These awards mean a lot to me in what seems to be restricted craft time at the moment .... I'm sure some little goblin has stolen a few hours out of the day since the kids went back to school !!!!

My card for this post is based on the sketch at Clean & Simple, I had plans to combine it with other challenges but time has marched on and deadlines passed me by so whilst tidying my desk this morning all these pieces came together and I decided to go it alone ...

The three deer are a memory box die cut which was a RAK from Tracy at Dies to Die For, Tracy kindly includes a selection of sample die cuts in each order to tempt you and I think it may have worked in this case :o)
The deer were just plain white so I gave them the old Versamark and silver embossing powder treatment before mounting them onto the card and die cutting a digi sentiment from Pink Petticoat with the PTI double ended banner, three little gems.....job done :o)

If you look closely there are a few bloops within the embossing resulting from a bad touch up job but I only had the one die cut!....so don't look too closely *wink*

Simon Says Stamp are playing 'anything goes' again this week for the chance to win a $50 store voucher and it's a free for all at Wee Memories , so I'll pop this in both of those Challenges too :o)

James has been so well behaved this week without big sis around, I'd even go to say he's enjoyed the extra attention  :o)
Hannah has thoroughly enjoyed her work experience in London, getting a taste of commuting on the trains although the early starts and long days are now catching up with her .... I sense a long' lay in' coming on this weekend!
Thanks for looking and hope your enjoying the half term week if you have kiddies around you X

A favourite technique

First of all I'd like to thank you for the lovely comments on my last post, it has made me feel a lot better about the card, I simply cannot ignore the opinions of such a wide variety of talented crafters :) ......it's true we are our own worst critics!!

Today's card I'm much more excited about as it's been made using my favourite technique for the Wee Memories challenge this week in honour of World Cardmaking Day at the weekend....yep, dry embossing :)

I especially love being able to cut out the embossed pieces and mounting them on different coloured card stock as I've done here with this Lasting Impressions stencil which I've had in my stash for ages and with a family wedding coming up I knew I wanted to use it!
By using Black co-ordinations card I could sand the grooms shoe to show the design and then added a lace and a flower to the brides shoe for a bit of dimension. Photographing embossing is not easy so I hope you can make out the 'Perfect Pair' sentiment, lightening the photo too much blows out the detail!

If you remember my old embossing light box gave up on me a few weeks back and a detective process lead me to bulb failure which meant a new one as it's a sealed unit, so good old eBay came up with the goods :)  It's such a great tool to have and I love the ability to create my own embossed backgrounds with brass stencils..... never had a lot of success running brass stencils through the big shot!!

Thanks for your visit today as always, I have time for a bit of blog hopping now once I've grabbed a coffee :)

Edit to add : Please pop over to my daughters blog to see a fab pair of earrings she made for her friend, I love how realistic they look :) Thanks.

Jenny X

What's Black,White and Read all Over???

This is the riddle over at CASual Fridays this week and the answer is of course a book.....or newspaper according to my old joke book!
The challenge is to make a card inspired by a book and to use the colours black white and red which coincides nicely with the Play Date Cafe's colours as well this week, as so many others have realised too :)

I've thought a lot about this and have to say I'm not much of a bookworm now, as I was as a child ( I just don't have the time) so I thought about the books we had at home, and the colour inspiration too which just pointed to 101 Dalmations..... yep, I've always been animal mad !

The dalmatian paper came in a kids card stock pack so I photocopied and enlarged it onto matt card, made a collar,buckle and a tag too. Couldn't think of a sentiment inspired by the story so 'Yappy Birthday' it is!

Seeing as the card is sentiment focused I thought I would enter it into ...Wee Memories challenge this week too. Here are the bunch of challenges and links

PDCC#97

CFC#18

WMC#66

Just a quick question: Is anyone else experiencing delays in their published posts showing on followers dashboards?  My daughter follows my blog and she's noticed that my posts are taking hours to appear after publishing .... 12 hours in one case! This was happening before we switched to the new interface and Google Chrome and to be honest I hoped the change would fix it but it seems not! Any ideas what I can do? Is it the same for anyone else?

Here's hoping it will resolve itself , I'm scheduling this post to publish at 11am GMT on Monday 5th Sept , so lets see what happens!!! Oh tried scheduling and it didn't work, so I'll publish it as normal now at 8.45 AM GMT and see when it decides to appear!

Thanks so much for time, any comments gratefully received :)
Bye X

Back to School

Hello Everyone,

Well I've been a bad blogger this week, never quite catching up with all your blogs. Excuses : We still have no laptop so I'm sharing one computer with my crafty daughter who also loves to blog and we have been away on an impromptu sleep-over at my Brothers house too, but I will catch up this weekend ......  promise.

Just before we went to my brothers I made a card for this weeks ....Wee Memories challenge which is back to school. I apologise for the photo quality as Ive taken the photos this evening so I could enter it before the challenge closes !

I made a satchel on the front of a 5x7 inch card and the flap actually opens to reveal a pocket inside.
I love designing and making these novelty type of cards :)

The closures are sticky back magnets and the 'Back To School' is a rub on

At this point I wondered who and why would someone send a back to school card ?  I decided to utilise the pocket for three tab top file cards so a child could record info about their school year. I know Hannah would have loved something like this!

I've cut the tab tops with a Tim Holtz edge die and then used rub ons for the headings etc..

I suppose this idea is aimed more at younger children .... the sort that like secret diaries with padlocks on :)

Right I'm gonna get this posted and then go to bed as I'm shattered .... looking forward to a weekend at home so I can catch up with everyone.

Thanks for looking X