Spring Craft Fair tickets to give away

My share of the week with my favourite Stampendous P107, lots of ink, grunge paste and frantage

Good morning Peeps, it's been another busy week for my fifth blog celebration with so many more beautiful entries. Still a week to go until I do the prize draws so time for you to join if you have not already done so or to enter a second time.

Before I go on to this week Favourite 4, I have two tickets to give away for the Country Living Magazine Spring Fair and I will select a winner from the comments on my blog between now and Friday and announce the winner on Saturday.

The Country Living Magazine Spring Fair offers ideas to get you inspired with ideas for your home and garden with an array of carefully selected exhibitors, from small producers to craftspeople from across the British Isles. It offers a Crafting Workshop:  With knitting, stitching, needlework and papercrafts. There is a late night Gala Evening on Thursday 20^th March where the Fair is open until 9pm and you can shop whilst enjoying complimentary wine, full details here.

So her are this weeks Top 4 as selected by our voting panel.........for those of you who missed the last two weeks, the panel consists of some my grandchildren and myself because I just couldn't choose from all the stunning entries alone.

Dora

This one was an instant hit with the farm scene, like the gold highlighting as well

Debbie

The panel liked the Spring daisies and I have to agree

Sharon

The panel like this Penny Black stamp from their Birthday cards so had to be in

SheMe

Fairies and little girls just go together don't they

Thanks for popping in, sorry we couldn't choose all your entries but that doesn't meant I have not enjoyed looking at every single one of them and appreciate you joining in the fun.

Monday Prickly Pear and Nicecrane shares

Photo beautifully enhanced by Ignacio

Good morning Peeps, hope you all had a good weekend.

As it's Monday it's my day to share this weeks DT piece for Prickly Pear and Nicecrane Designs and also one using the Cricut Mini which I confess I have rather neglected recently.

Lots of you have asked how things are health wise, well it's limbo land time at the moment, I now have to wait four week to see if the treatment did what they hoped or find out what comes next, so still a waiting game. No fun, but not a lot I can do about it.

So now for my cards, I have been such a lucky girl getting to play with Ignacio's new Spring designs and it's been a real treat as I love this time of year and never fail to be amazed by Nature and how everything bursts into life as if by magic. And in stark contract to last year when everything was very late, this year looks like being ahead of itself. You really do need to check out the new designs here.

For the top one I printed one of the Nicecrane Vintage Flowers images twice, cut out and decoupaged, cut a fancy oval with a die, placed some cord inside the oval and layered over a stamped sentiment, the backing DP is BoBunny..

My Prickly Pear piece uses Graphic 45 DP's,  I stamped three small panels using just the floral section of the Boot Flower stamp and coloured in, the sentiment is also from the Spring releases and some ribbons and lace to finish. All the Spring release stamps are available on the store website and extremely good value for money.

I love this bird and blossom image also one of the new Nicecrane Spring designs, teamed it up with an embossed and gilded background, a Penny Black sentiment and some added blossoms and ribbon to compliment the ones on the image.

My final card has a base created with the clever cut and weld facility on the Cricut Mini which allows you to make custom borders such as this one and your imagination is the only restriction. It's still available at lots of places for £99 so a great deal. I kept the card fairly simple, punching the corners of the image with a butterfly punch and matting onto coordinating cardstock. The border butterflies and dragonflies are shaded with Pan Pastels plus a couple of die cut ones.

Hope you all have a good week, scary to think we will be into March in a few days but hopefully Spring will be close behind.

Nicecrane

Nicecrane

Pan Pastels

Cricut

Craft Fairy

InLinkz.com

Ladies Day

Morning all, it's my turn to host our new challenge at Allsorts this week and I have chosen the theme of 'Ladies Day', basically something for a special lady be it Mothering Sunday, a Birthday or indeed so many other occasions. Our sponsors this week are Crimson Cloud and FlonzCraft.

Two cards from me this week, the one at the top using images from the Vintage Fashion Magazine design sheet from Nicecrane Designs. I fell in love with this sheet as soon as I saw it and knew exactly what I would make with it. The top of the three panels were cut and embossed with some dies I bought at the NEC made by Britannia Dies and other than that just matting and layering and some feathers, lace and ribbons to embellish.

The second card is another along the same lines as a Penny Black one a few weeks ago masking through an arch aperture but this time creating a New York styline using Pan Pastels to create the backdrop to the paper pieced Flonz Craft image.

I do hope you will join on our challenge this week and look forward to seeing all your creations.

Happy weekend all.

Flonz

Nicecrane

Craft Fairy

Pan Pastels

InLinkz.com

This weeks top picks

Another one using my favourite stamp Stampendous P107 along with Pan Pastels and Lavinia stamps

Afternoon Peeps, after a reasonable day yesterday we are back to the rain and murk, the poor bulbs and shrubs in the garden don't know if they are coming or going, yesterday it actually looked and felt like Spring and hubby even took an hour out of the office to prune and tie the raspberries, just as well as he would get drenched today.

It's time to share the favourites from the last weeks entries to my 5th Blog celebration, again some really stunning creations and I feel privileged to be able to look at them all. It seemed to work nicely last week with the grandchildren helping me out..............and spared me the touch job of having to make such hard decisions alone..............so we are employing the same little voting system this week.

If you have not already joined in I hope you will find time to do so, or of course you can join in a second time, you have until 5th March to be in with a chance of winning some of the fabulous spellbinder dies.

So here we go..............................

Ann

Needless to say the girls loved the shoe and as our 'voting panel' is mainly female it was a hit

Desire

They are intrigued by the clever embellishments and I rather like the colours

Julie

Another firm hit with all and guess what they want to do now ?

Pat

The fairy house was very popular with our female voting panel

I hope you enjoy looking at these fabulous creations as much as we did and just because your was not there doesn't mean we liked it any the less, they are all awesome.

Sneak peeks and Spring releases

Using the new Elegant Ladies CS and Graphic 45 DP's

Morning all you lovely Peeps, time for my Monday Prickly Pear DT share and also some previews of the new Nicecrane images. You sent me some lovely messages about my Prickly Pear Easter basket tutorial last week, I am so pleased you liked it and thank you for all your kind words.

For my Prickly Pear card above I have used one of the elegant crosses from the Easter 2 clear set which has four different crosses and sentiment and although I have gone with an Easter card there are so many other occasions these could be used for. I have used an embossing folder for the background, embossed the cross with detail white powder and made a Lily with Tonic's Lily punch and stamp set shading the edges with Pan Pastels and added some vines using a Cheery Lynn die.

Using Elegant Ladies II and Graphic 45 DP's

I find the Graphic 45 design papers lend themselves perfectly to the Nicecrane designs which sounds like a perfect excuse to 'need' them all and I I am itching to get my grubby mitts on the new ones released at CHA in January.

You might also like to know that Nicecrane are now creating custom made blog headers for $5, if you would like one created for your blog you can mail Ignacio here and he will work with you to create the individual look you are after

Happy Monday all, hope your week is a good one.

Nicecrane	Nicecrane	S/binders	Capture the Magic
Craft Fairy	Britannia dies	Prickly Pear	Tonic Lily

InLinkz.com

Agapanthus Cluster in purple and aqua

At Allsorts this week Helene is challenging us to incorporate some brads into our artwork,  a really good idea as I think most of us have a hoard of them but if you are like me they don't get enough use. Our sponsors are The Craft Fairy and DigiDarla.

So two cards for me, the top one is another using Stampendous P107 to tied in with my 5th Blogaversary candy celebration, if you have have not already joined in my original post and linky is here and lots of lovely Spellbinders to be won.

I used Dylusions for the background with the obligatory spritz of pearl Glimmer Mist and then random stamping with an assortment of stamps using distress and Adirondack inks, some lace and the little dragonflies are brads which I have had forever, so a perfect opportunity to use some of them. The little ribbon buckle was silver so I heat embossed it with some purple sparkle powder to ties in with my colours.

For my second card I have used the lovely Sweet Pea image from Inkylicious, a Birthday present from a crafty friend and coloured it in with my new Wink of Stella glitter pens.........a Christmas present to myself. I had my eye on them for a while and grabbed them when C&C had a deal on the full set with flexi pay as well and although as most people know I am not much good at colouring in I have found them lovely to work with along with the blender pen which came with the set. Although it doesn't show up on my photo they do give a lovely subtle shimmer.

I also stamped the backing vellum with the sweet pea stamp and dusted with Pan Pastels to create a subtle background which I then fixed with four brads.

Happy weekend all.

Stampendous

Craft Fairy

Craft Fairy

Dylusions

S/binders

InLinkz.com