Cupcake Card...

The need for birthday cards seem to come in bursts for me. Need lots, not so many, and then lots again and so on. This time of the year it's "lots" again :)

I bought this big cupcake stamp about a year ago with the intention to use it for birthday cards. And this was a perfect time. I left a bit of the white cardbase at one side to create the spine and also to make it be able to stand up better.

It's coloured with Copics and some old hotfix (where I never actually bought the tool and only attach them with a little drop of glue) jewels plus some Glossy Accents for the cherry on top. Oh and lots of sparkly Stickles glitter glue of course :)

Got some more cards to get made now...

Back From Vacation...

We have just returned from spending an amazing 3 weeks in Sweden with my family. We really didn;t want to leave. And we were soooo lucky as we had fantastic weather too. I have never been as tanned in my life - and that was even within one week of being there! I have no idea how that worked LOL!

We had a lot of barbecues while there. And I mean a lot. I lost count after a while. But since we'd only had ONE this summer in the UK, and I love them, I was all for it... :)

We spent time at this amazing beach! Within walking distance. A beach which I have spent time on every year ever since I was born. Lots of nice memories and happiness connected to this place. :)

...and of course we had some ice-cream! From the best place I know. And a total summer tradition not to be missed. Oh and we might have had to go there a second time too before we left for the UK...

Coming near to the end of our Sweden trip, we also made a short trip with an overnight stay at the island of Bornholm (which belongs to Denmark).

Again we were so lucky with the weather for this trip and had an amazing time there. It's such a cosy little island and 2 days were just about perfect to see the most of it.

When we returned from Bornholm we had some more time left over for our beach in Sweden before it was time to get on the plane to the UK (and yes that is really how "busy" this beach is...there are only private roads from the houses near where we are so "tourists" never get to these parts).

...and now being back in the UK, well it feels like the summer is over :( The temperature is several degrees lower and we have seen mostly clouds. I feel like my tan is fading already. It would be nice to get some sunny days before the autumn is here...! :)

Flower Bargain...

A little while back I posted about the progress of our outside flower pots. As this is something I tend to do a "before" and "after" scrapbooking layout about most years, this year was no different:

So far I have only made the "before" layout. That is when the plants where planted in the pots. I have some "after photos" printed, but that's a job for another day...

I also wanted to document what a plant bargain we ran into. Over 120 plants (and yes, of the types that we were after anyway) and they were supposed to be £18 but we got them for just over £6. A real bargain! And as I type this, they are so, so pretty and colourful - totally brightens up the garden :)

Can't wait to make the follow up layout... :)

The Fluffy Cat... Or What Was The Name?

Quite recently we got some new neighbours. They had a cat with them. A super cute fluffy cat which was very friendly and frequently walks into our kitchen if we have the door open when it's warm...

We didn't know her name in the beginning and, as with all cats in the neighbourhood, we make up little names for them to refer to them by. Due to the long fur one this one we ended up calling her "Fluffy". "Oh Fluffy has come in to the kitchen again" and so on. Later, when speaking to our new neighbours, we found out that the cat's name was Gaga or Lady Gaga (yes, named after... of course!) So a little layout about our new friend was made :)

A Very Productive Time...

I spent a lot of last week in an empty house (think no furniture, no entertainment etc - nothing) waiting around while various workmen came and went. I packed up a little scrapbooking tool kit and some scrapbooking page kits to bring with me...

Each kit was very simple. A few papers (perhaps a sheet of cardstock in a few cases) some photos, alphabet and a few embellishments. I wasn't sure whether I'd do nothing or loads. I ended up coming home with 13 layouts. 13 new layouts for my 2012 album. It felt very good adding them to my album this morning for sure :) Definitely something I will try again.

Sometimes it's a lot quicker and easier to scrap when you only have a very small amount of supplies on hand.

Crossword Card With Butterflies...

I mentioned a while ago that I wanted to play with the Hero Arts Crossword stamp... and that I was thinking about doing a birthday card. Well here's the result:

I used the Hero Arts stamp. It's called "Crossword Background". And it's a nice big woodmounted stamp. I love these :) I just wish they didn't take up so much space! The butterflies are from an old Hero Arts butterfly stamp set and I used Memento Tuxedo Black ink, Copics, Stickles glitter glue and Glossy Accents on them. Plus 3D foam.

The border punch is by Fiskars, the alphabet stickers by LilyBee Designs and well I guess that's it... Oh no, and I also used a variety of brown-ish Distress Inks to make the crossword background look a bit like a really old newspaper. :)

Pretty Flowers...

When we planted our outside plants back in mid May they didn't look anything special. Just green and well... small I guess. We were even worried that we'd planted them too close together so they wouldn't be very happy...

Fast forward to yesterday and they now look like this:

I'm so glad we bought a huge mix of colours as I love how it looks almost like a rainbow of flowers. It just makes me so happy. Probably the best looking summer flowers we have had so far in our outside pots I think.

I'm guessing they like the so called "summer" weather. To me it's like ---> where's the summer? We have not had a day of what I would call summer weather since the really nice week and a half which was amazing back in mid May. And it doesn't look like it will be better either... Just checked the prognosis all the way until July the 16th. Depressing!! :(

Cupcake Bakery...

I've been working on quite a few birthday cards this week. For July and September birthdays. As I know I have some weeks where I won't be able to use my craft desk so I need to get them done ahead of time. Things are drying and well, honestly... I haven't really had the time to get them photgraphed yet. :)

Above is a layout which is a little bit different for me to make. I'm a fast scrapper which means I'm not a huge fan (simply because I don't take the time, not because I don't like it) of making my own embellishments. It doesn't really go with fast scrapping. However this time I had the idea already from the start of making some sort of sun on the layout so I decided to go with the idea and I really enjoyed it. Not something I will do every time (as it is a lot more time consuming) but definitely something I will try again in the future :)

Must make time to get more paper crafting in... somehow...! It makes me so happy :)

The New Distress Inks...

...they have a lot to answer for! LOL! There's no way I could resist the new seasonal distress inks by Tim Holtz. Especially this new summer pack. I think it's my all time favourite distress ink colours. That green....yum! And, finally, a hot pink - yay! And what a great blue! :)

Most of the other stuff that I got, I'd had in my online shopping basket for like... 2 months or more. Some paper, some washi tape... ok, quite a bit of washi tape, zig zag stamps and a cool crossword stamp by Hero Arts. I believe that this stamp is quite old now *reaches for stamp*....2009 it says, but I have been wanting it for a long time now and this was finally the time. I figured you could do lots of fun writing/titles in the grid with stamps, stickers etc.

Right, I'm off to start playing with ideas for a birthday card for mum. Probably using that Hero Arts stamp. It's not her birthday for a while yet but we have a busy summer ahead so I need to get it done while I can... :)

The Scarf...

Thanks Sharon for the comment on my last post and for wondering how the scarf is going. I'm making progress :) I'm not knitting every day or anything so I expect I won't have it finished too soon, but even if you only sit down for a short while you do notice that it's getting longer :) I have probably done about 60-70 centimetres at the moment (guessing).

Above is a photo of my work in progress. I picked the loom parts I needed to do the width (of the scarf) that I wanted and assembled it. It was really easy to start and I found some very helpful videos on Youtube too (not that it was really needed as such).

I'm using a quite varied yarn. I've had it for ages! It varies both in looks (colour and shimmer) and in texture (more thick and fluffy or more thin and wispy). And it's so soft and cosy!! Above you can see the "front side" of the scarf. I could have made both sides look the same by doing knit stitch in one direction and purl stitch in the other...

...but since I'm brand new to this I wanted to learn one step at a time and really get used to it, I'm doing only knit stitches. This means that the backside gets a different look (see above), more of a stripy effect. I like it :)

This is very much fun so far :)