All in the sentiment and Saturday candy

Today it's my turn to host the challenge at Allsorts and I have chosen the theme 'It's all in the sentiment", there are some wonderful inspirational quotes and sentiments available which I love using on my work and hope you will join in this week and show us your favourites.

Our sponsor this week is Nicecrane Designs who I wrote about earlier in the week and I am having great fun working with their latest products. There are links to all the products I have used in the thumbnails at the bottom of the post so you can check out for yourself these and all the other lovely designs.

The top card uses what I think is my all time favourite Penny Black quote which I have simply stamped onto some Teresa Collins DP, a nestie frame and two decoupaged butterflies from Nicecrane Butterfly Twinches sheet.

This second piece is the result of a bit of a play with the Cricut Mini yesterday, the frame and base card being one cut on the machine laid over an image from the Harrison Fisher ladies sheet and another Penny Black image. Some Cheery Lynne leaves and rose made from the Tonic Rose punch and stamp set.

And my Saturday candy is back and this week I have a little collection of nautical inspired crafting goodies to be won, as it's a few weeks since I ran this as I had my Cricut candy running I will quickly run through how it works...............

• Add the Saturday Candy logo to your sidebar
• Be a follower of my blog
• A random winner will be selected from all comments left on my blog between now and Friday, so two comments during the week two chances of winning and so on.
• The winner will be announced next Saturday

I also have another little share using ore of Igancio's images as he asked me a few days ago if I could cerate a collection of bookmarks with his images.

I made these using images from the Victorian Young Ladies, Harrison Fisher and Ladies Hats sheets, such beautiful quality and clarity and for someone like me who can't colour in for toffee absolutely perfect. You can find them here or follow the thumbnail links below.

That's it for today Peeps and hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Victorian Christmas

Morning all, it's a bright and sunny morning here in the Fens again, not over hot but nice and comfy for working.

Now I know this is not the normal me here, but sometimes I like to go a bit girly and this image from Ignacio's of Nicecrane Designs new Victorian Young Ladies sheet really appeals to me and I could instantly visualise a Christmas card using this image.

It's also a first for me to make Christmas cards so early other than those for TV and sample boards, so I think now I have started I really should keep the momentum going and I just might avoid the late November panic.

So to make my card I printed and cut her out and laid her over the Domed Window frame from Ruth's Pick of the Bunch collection which I then layered over a piece of Graphic 45 with a Christmas carol. The poinsettias are also from the same Tonic collection punch and stamp sets and the holly leaves and swirls are Cheery Lynn.

I also have another one using Ignacio's Butterfly Twinchies. I have to admit I wasn't too happy with this one, but he saw it on my Pinterest board and asked me to blog it so here it is. The main butterfly has been printed and decoupaged with three layers, they do lend themselves to this so well, then a smaller one for the base of the easel card. I used the Timmy butterfly border for the top edge and shaded with Pan Pastels, did a little stamping behind the main image and finally printed a couple more butterflies on a small print template, so altogether there are four different ones on this card all from the same image sheet.

Thanks for taking a look and as always I really appreciate your kind comments.

Tortoiseshell Butterfly

Hello all you crafty Peeps, I hope you are enjoying the bank holiday weekend, the weather is a bit of a mixed bunch but at least it's still fairly warm.

A while ago a lovely man called Ignacio invited me to join his design team, it's taken me a while but after he sent me his beautiful butterfly images I didn't need much persuading and I'm very proud to say I am now part of the team at Nicecrane Designs. He is a talented artist and graphic designer and his images and design sheets are in the main Vintage inspired offering beautifully detailed sheets from flowers to butterflies and Vintage fashion as well as many traditional well loved nursery characters.

I thought I would share one of my first makes with you using the beautiful Tortoiseshell Butterfly.....thumbnail link below.......which I printed out twice to decoupage. The background is Dylusions pure sunshine, squeezed orange postbox red plus a spritz of pearl Glimmer Mist. Onto this I stamped Stampendous P107 and heat embossed with detailed gold which I also added around the edges, then added a piece of recycled corrugated which I embossed with Frantage and also embossed some of that onto the thorax of the butterfly.

I will be adding this and some future work to my new Pinterest boards, it's still very much work in progress and I need to spend a bit of time getting to understand it all properly, but I am slowly finding some of my blogland friends there as well.

Whatever you have planned, I hope you enjoy the rest of the holiday Monday.

Cricut candy winner

Hello everyone, as promised I am here to announce the very lucky winner of the Cricut candy bundle and to say thank you all so very much for joining in.

There was no way I could choose the winner myself so I put all the numbers into a hat........well large casserole dish...............a nice orange Le Creuset one actually if you want to visualise the activity..........and asked hubby to pick a ticket and this is what came out...................

********Entry number 51********

who is 

********Kelly********

Huuuuuuuge congratulations Kelly, when you have stopped jumping up and down please mail me with your full name and postal addy. The box is all packaged ready so all I need to do is add your details and arrange for a courier to collect it.

And to all of you who were not lucky please don't despair as I will be resuming my weekly candy on Saturday and I also have a rather nice little bundle of Christmas crafting goodies which I will be offering very soon as well.

A few more days to enter Cricut candy

I am so please that one of my blogging friends just left me a message to say she tried to enter my candy earlier this week but it was closed. 


So I just checked the link and sure enough it had closed itself several days earlier than planned. So in order not to disappoint anyone I have just re-opened it until Sunday and will do the draw Bank Holiday. You can add your name to the link here.

In the garden

It's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week Helene is challenging us to use acetate on our work. Our sponsors this week are Crimson Cloud and My Heart Pieces.

I don't have any problems with acetate but photographing it is another thing as most of us know. Unusually for me not a lot of stamping other than the flowers behind the little girl as I wanted to concentrate on the pretty Graphic 45 DP. I cut the fence and flower border section from a piece of the paper and fixed it to the reverse side of a sheet of acetate and used the borders from the same sheet of paper to frame it. Next I cut out the little girl and bird from the shame sheet and placed them over the stamped background, then arched the acetate to create a dome effect over her.

Thanks for popping in to take a peek and hope you have a lovely weekend.

Lovely Lupins

Morning Peeps, it's feeling much fresher here this morning with a nice drop of overnight rain, my in house weather man recorded 1/8 inch so not a lot really and still sticky with overnight temperatures of 17deg.

A warm welcome to my new followers and thanks for all your kind comments on my last post, I had a few mails asking questions about the new machine and have answered best I can. For those of you who entered my Cricut candy bundle I will be doing the draw over the weekend and announcing the lucky winner, so if you have not already added your name there are a couple of days left to do so.

Just a quick card share of one I made yesterday using Ruth's Passions for Stamps new Lupin image, it's one of those she drew after we discussed cottage garden flowers a while back, so thank you Ruth it's beautiful. If you would like to buy it you will find it here. I do love lupins and we usually have a glorious show of them in the gardens but for whatever reason they along with the Digitalis were really poor this year so I can only think it was the long winter and strange Spring we had.

Have a good Thursday everyone and for those of you in the UK, lets hope the weather remembers it's a Bank Holiday this weekend.