Shimmering LOTV

So here we are at the end of another year (...quite glad to see the back of it really!)  Hope you have a fun evening whatever you're up to.  We're just having a few drinkies at home, it's just a quiet one this year as his brother died this week.  It wasn't entirely unexpected but still a shock when it happens and he'll be sorely missed.

This is just a quickie card as I wanted to have a go at the shimmering background technique that was featured on Stamp TV .... dead easy but I love the effect.  I didn't even add any colour to my image - this is one of the Lili of the Valley pre-printed and partially coloured images, but I thought it looked OK as it was.
Found this pretty ribbon in my stash but it doesn't really show up well in the pic ... its a sheer pink with a gold edge.

Sketch from Sketch and Stash challenge #51 (my stash is my LOTV images, I bought them a couple of months ago but I think this is only the second time I've used them ... so they're still New to me!)  The sketch was a free choice, so I used the one from #25

Craft your Days Away #10 - Punch it out (I used a Martha Stewart butterfly punch)

Colour Combo from The Play Date Cafe PDCC62

Popped balloons!

This is an oldie stamp I got aaaaaages ago from I Brake for Stamps .... I cut out an extra red balloon and popped it up on dimensionals.  Coloured with copics and the white strip on the red balloon has Smooch Illuminate on it for a bit of sparkle.

Sketch from Cute Card Thursday #144

Sir Stampalot December challenge - Travel the World

The Crafty Pad #102 - Anything Goes

Paper Sundaes #49 - cut it out

CES Challenge #17 - anything goes

My Top 10 cards of 2010

Well you've seen my 5 favourite cards for Christmas, so now Suzi at The Manic World of Mrs Weyremeaster is challenging you to choose your top 10.  It took me a couple of years to figure out my style but as you can see, I'm most definately a clean and simple stamper!  I'd love to know which you like best....

You've passed

So here's a quick and easy card from me tonight.  I think this little car stamp was one of the first sets I ever bought and it gets rediscovered now and then!  Coloured them with copic markers, cut them out and popped them up on dimensionals.  There's a bit of background stamping and some clear gloss on the hubs and windows, but they don't really show up in the pic.

Sketch from Unscripted Sketches #87

Paper Sundaes #49 - Cut it out

Sweet Stampin - Celebrations

Fab'n'funky #53 - Quick and Easy

Allsorts #83 - Anything Goes

Stamping Vacation - Name that card theme ... "Be on the way you need to be"

Simon Says ... Anything Goes

Hope you had a good Christmas ... its hard to belive its all over already!  We got loads of lovely goodies, and Ruby got some pressies too, though I'm not too sure if she likes her wee Santa hat from my brother and Sister-in-law! We had a great family Christmas down in Mum's and back again today for the leftovers heeheee!
Weather update... we had a heatwave today and the temp got above freezing, now its raining and the snow is melting. Hurrah!  On the minus side, the water pipes to my washing machine will hopefully have thawed so I've a mountain of washing to do tomorrow!  Any takers out there for my ironing (she said hopefully) ...?!!

Anyway, it was nice to put the Christmas card stuff away for a month or two and make a 'normal' card! 
Coloured my new LOTV image with copics and added some Smooch Illuminate on her tutu and then some frosted lace sticles just to be sure it sparkled!  There's also some red stickles on her headband and on the pressies too!  I've used some of my new twine I ordered recently from the Twinery - I bought the little sample pack and there's loads in it... the delivery to the UK was super quick too!

Colour Combo from Scrapmasters Paradise #79

Die Cut Dreams #79 - How Girlie can you get

Copic Creations #41 - sparkle

Simon Says - Anything Goes

ABC - K is for Keep it Simple

Sketch from Sketch and Stash #51 - Your choice ... so I chose this one from challenge 40

I've been tagged!

My bloggy buddy Benzi has just tagged me with some fun Four Things .... so here's my answers....

Four shows you watch
1. Desperate Housewives
2. Vampire Diaries
3. Shameless
4. Any cookery programme (though Greg does most of ours!)
5. I have to give a mention here to LOST ... 6 years wasted!

Four things you're passionate about
1. Family
2. Our wee doggy Ruby
3. my work
4. Crafting

Four words / phrases you say a lot
1. Ruby Down!
2. Ohhh isn't it cold
3. mmmm, what's for dinner?
4. (can't think of another)

Four places you'd like to go
1. Anywhere warm and sunny!
2. New York
3. New Zealand
4. Moscow

Four things you did yesterday
1. Went to work
2. Took Ruby for a walk in the Baltic weather! (her idea, not mine!)
3. Wrapped the last of my pressies
4. Blogged while watching telly

Four things you are looking forward to
1. The snow melting
2. Being off work till 6th January!
3. Springtime
4. Hopefully making it through the restructuring in work and having a job at the far end!

Four things you love about winter
1. Christmas / Christmas dinner
2. Wearing all your big jumpers and boots
3. My cosy sheepskin slippers, hurrah!
4. Nope that's it!  I don't really 'do' winter!

So that's me!  I'm not going to specifically tag anyone, as I know you are all busy and some have dodgy internet connection, so if you'd like to play along let me know and I'll come and check out your Four Things!

My favourite Christmas cards...

Debby has a wee challenge going on at the moment to pick your 5 favourite Christmas cards ... so here goes mine ....  (Funny enough most of them feature the High Hopes stamps that I won in a new release giveaway!)   Why don't you pop over to Debby's blog and join in the fun.

In the meantime, have a very Happy Christmas!  Hope Santa comes and brings you all loads of lovely crafty goodies!  I'd settle for Santa taking his icy weather home with him ... it was MINUS 17 this morning ... brrrrrrrrrr.

And FINALLY ...

... the hardest card of the season to make ... Greg's!  No idea why, but I always find his most difficult to make!  Maybe its because I want it to be special, but by the time I get the inspiration to make it I'm all Christmas-carded-out!  But I got some inspiration from the Stamp TV video on the faux window technique - dead easy but very effective!  I had intended to colour my sky, but then completely forgot ... Doh! 
I found this fab silver starry card when I was having a tidy up, but its so shiney its impossible to photograph - die cut the snowflake from the same c/s.

Colour combo of silver, blue and white from Simon Says Stamp
ABC Christmas challenge Z=Zero time left - I reused the F=Frosty challenge
Critter Sketch Challenge #45 - Anything Christmas
CES Challenge #17 - Anything goes
Stamping Vacation - Fountain of Youth challenge - use a snowman
Stampin for the Weekend #53 - Christmas
Fussy and Fancy Friday - snow

And I know I promised not to moan about the weather, but its past ridiculous now!  It's soooooo cooooold!  I don't think the temperature got above minus4 today and this afternoon on the way home from work it was minus10!  No sign of our snow melting anytime soon, so if you fancy a bucket or two shipped over just give me a shout ... you're more than welcome to it!!
Here's another couple of pics just in case you're somewhere nice and sunny and warm, and thinking you might like a wee bit of snow...!  (Trust me, you don't!!)

You'd never guess from this pic that it was Ruby's idea to go for a walk! 

I was quite happy to stay at home in the warmth with my toes in my cosy slippers!

Butterfly Wishes

So this was the only effort at crafting today ... think it took about 10 minutes tops!  Took my inspiration from the Featured Stamper at Splitcoaststampers - Mary Rose.  HERE is her fab original.

We had a lovely evening in my brother and Sister-n-Law's house celebrating my Mum's birthday today - this pic is me, my niece, my Mum, and my sis.  Do you like our princess tiaras?!!!
And here's a wee vid of my 7-year old nephew whacking the devil out of a pinata ...!

The Grinch Game

I'm playing the Grinch game ... are you?
Click HERE for more details!!

My first Card Box

Well we're still snowed in here, got another couple of inches last night, think we're up to about 9 or 10 inches, and it's snowing again! It was good fun (not!) digging the car out and digging a path for Ruby so she could get up the garden - even she didn't venture into the deep stuff, must have had enough snowball legs yesterday!

I forgot to take my camera with me when we went for a walk earlier, so here's a pic of my crazy neighbours' houses instead (taken pre-snow) They have a bit of a grudge match going on and every year they try to outdo each other, its hilarious! ...and no, my house doesn't look like this!!

 I thought I'd have a go at making a little box for some cards as a Christmas pressie and found a great tutorial on Splitcoaststampers ... I hadn't realised it would be so easy!

I used a little tag I'd made a few weeks ago as my topper and then added some papers to the box lid to match. 

(The white dots on the kraft BG are splodges of Arleens True Snow)

The sketch on the top of the box was taken from Crazy for Challenges #67

Stamp with Fun #89 - Christmas

Top Tip Tuesday #14 - Christmas inspired - my top tip is to look at the resources page on Splitcoaststampers for loads of project ideas and tutorials!

Winter Wonderland - Wrap it Up

My dog has no legs!

Awww, bless ... one of the disadvantages of being a Westie are that your legs are too short!!  We've apparently had the worst snow today in 25 years, and no sign of it stopping!  Now I've loved my Snow Day, but I've things to do and its Mum's birthday tomorrow too, so the weather would need to start co-operating here!!!

Ruby LOVES the snow, but it sticks to her wee legs like snowballs!  Unfortunately her walk ended with an untimley bath when she got home as it was the only way to get the clumps out of her legs!

One man and his dog!

Peggy's 80th Birthday Card

I love this cake stamp ... its perfect for those big birthday's and especially when you don't really know the person or what they like.  coloured with copic markers, clear gloss added to the icing and the cupcake wrapper is popped up on dimensionals.  I got a bit carried away with my green stickles and dotted them through the name and round all the green edges.  Blingtastic!
BTW the 80 and the Happy Birthday are silver peeloffs but it was dark when I took this pic and didn't photograph well.

Sketch from Sunday Sketch + Stamp #43

Polka Doodles #50 - Age Related

Totally Papercrafts #47 - Time to Party

CES Challege #16 - Anything but Christmas

Crafty Creations #98 provided my rosebud / pink theme

Bad news and Good news!

So the bad news is that the snow is back with a vengance .... the good news is that I couldn't get to work today!  I'm so glad that I don't have to take my feet out of my cosy slippers!  This is Greg out in our back garden pretending he's 6 years old again and making snowballs!

Work has been an absolute drag recently (we're restructuring and there's going to be some redundancies) so it was good to find my mojo after a week of doing no crafting.  This little duckie was a win on Toodles and Binks Christmas giveaway ... its still ongoing, so click HERE to go and try to win your own choice of T&B stamp!

Image coloured with copic markers and kraft BG stamped with versamark using a script stamp.  Clear gloss added to the duck's beak and legs

Sketch from Card Patterns #94

Craft Your Days Away #10 - Punch it out ... I used my Martha Stewart border and butterfly punches

One Stitch at a Time #43 - Anything Goes

Critter Sketch Challenge #44 - no patterned paper

Crafty Cardmakers challenge this week is to share your first card along with your latest.  I don't seem to have a copy on pc of my first card which was my Sister's wedding cards, but this is the earliest one listed on my Splitcoaststampers collection from Feb 2008:

Just remembered I had some saved on the DoCrafts site ... this one's from July 2006! ... terrible photo, but I remember thinking it was beautiful at the time!



Work mates' Christmas cards

Just a quick post as its the X-factor final tonight (at last ... it seems to drag on for aaaaaaaages!)
Got loads of cards made for my work mates this afternoon which was great as there was no crafting done yesterday at all ... it was my work's X-mas Do on Friday night, so lets just say I was feeling a tad delicate yesterday!!  hee hee!  But thankfully I got my energy back today, got all these cards made, the house cleaned AND the Christmas deccies put up!  Oh, and the other good news is that our snow has melted , hooray!

This card was inspired by this weeks Splitcoaststampers Featured Stamper - Lisa - HERE's her fab original, so it was perfect for mass production.

Your Next Stamp #31 - CAS Christmas

Allsorts challenge #82 - Last minute Christmas

Crafty Creations #97 - have a bear on your project

A Spoon Full of Sugar #133 - Christmas card

Stamping Vacation - NO NO Challenge ... No punches


And as these cards are for both male and female co-workers, I'm also entering it into Cards For Men #25 - Christmas