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Showing posts from 2015

& so 2015 leaves us ................

............. Hi everyone - well another year almost upon us, I wonder what it will bring us all. If you have had a sad 2015 I hope 2016 will be happier. If you have been poorly in 2015 I hope 2016 will be a healthier year. If you have 2015 dreams & aspirations not quite achieved, then I hope they will be reached in 2016. If in 2015 you have achieved those dreams & aspirations I hope you have more to go forward with in 2016. I hope that you enjoyed all that I brought to the clubs in 2015 & thank you for your support. I also wish to say a special thank you to those ladies from the clubs who helped me with the meetings during the year. It was, & always is very much appreciated. I look forward to another crafty year with you all & wish you everything you wish yourselves. Happy New Year.

Some of my later Christmas card makes

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Good evening Well as I said earlier I am back to show you some of the later designs of the Christmas cards I made. These first two are of the embossed designs - I am sure I haven't shown them to you yet, although they may be similar to others; Next are some of those made from kits, part of a large pack from Hunkydory, that I won towards the end of 2014 -- I think it will all get used eventually; This next one is a digital design which I made for one of my non-rubber stamping groups; The final two are rubber stamped; That is all of them now.  Now it is time to get into birthday card mode & I have quite a few to make for January - especially the first couple of days. That's me for today.  Back tomorrow I hope. 'Bye for now.

club page updates

Good afternoon Just popping in quickly to let you know I have updated the club pages with the first details for 2016. Also I have updated the projects photos page with a sample of the card that you will be making. Please read the materials list carefully as I have added an optional extra. I will be back later with photos of some of the later Christmas cards that I made.

Thank you everyone

Hi everyone - how was your Christmas?  I hope everything went to plan & you had a good time. We were so sad to hear of the flooding around Bangor area & along the A55 - & hope that you have avoided being affected by this. Our son Gareth & his lovely wife were having a second Christmas Day yesterday with the other side of their families & had to postpone it because of the difficulty of some guests being able to get to them - such a shame.  I hope they will be able to reschedule without too much trouble. We had a lovely Christmas day with both of our sons & their lovely wives & during the course of the early evening we had a Skype link up with our daughter & her husband in the USA followed by a fun couple of hours with some quizzes. Now we are into a couple of days of chilling out, & for me to find out how to use my nice new camera Bob bought me for Christmas.  I should just about got to grips with it by next Christmas,  te he. Anyway the headi

Merry Christmas everyone

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Merry Christmas Everyone Have a wonderful Christmas

birthday greetings

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Today is the 24th December & a Mold II club member has a birthday Happy Birthday Dot Have a lovely day

Just chatting

Good evening everyone Well, it is almost here.  Have you got all your shopping done?  All the presents wrapped?  House decorated? In that case you are ready for Christmas.  I think we have done everything & got the things we need - with the exception of the turkey which Bob is collecting tomorrow morning, whilst I go off & relax for an hour while having my hair done. I haven't shown you all my Christmas cards I have made so over the Christmas break there will be some more photos put up here.  Also I have a member showcase, including one I found in an older magazine that I don't think has been shown - but I will check. I am not sure what days I will get on here over the festive period, but I am sure I will find some time somewhere. Have a lovely time.

Another Christmas card

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Good morning everyone & it looks like being a rather nice day. Today I have another of my Christmas card designs to show you & it is another stamped one. I use a newly bought Christmas stamp - of this beautiful bauble.  I stamped it onto white card & coloured with my pearlescent paints, then cut it out. I embossed a white card with the little 4-dot pattern & then mounted the bauble on sticky dots & added a little bow.  The hardest thing to do was the Seasons Greetings sentiment, because I could not get it to cut properly on either my Cuttlebug or E-bosser.  In fact I even tried it on my small Sidekick die cutting machine.  Bob bought it for me years ago when die-cutting was just beginning to open up for the crafter to do rather than buy them ready cut. That wouldn't cut it either.  So, in the end I used my Sidekick with an embossing mat & just embossed it, then trimmed the card to shape. When talking to a rubber stamping colleague, she said she alwa

birthday greetings

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Its the 20th December  & a member of Mold II club has a birthday Happy Birthday  Christine

Another Christmas card

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Good afternoon ladies & how are your preparations for Christmas going? I think I am almost uptodate - or more to the point - close to where I want to be.  A couple of parcels went off safely today, & I am left with a couple of cards to post tomorrow. It is amazing to think that it is only a week now to Christmas Day.  This mild weather is certainly fooling us isn't it! So today I have one of my stamped design Christmas cards to show you; I embossed white card with the holly embossing folder from Tattered Lace & layered it onto a square white card. The candle image was part of a freebie set in one of the recent magazine, which I die-cut with a fancy circle die that I have. The image was then coloured in with my pearlescent watercolour paints & a sentiment from the set stamped in black ink & then die cut with a small label die. Tomorrow I will show you another of my stamped designs. So that is it from me for today.

member showcase

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Hello again I am back with the second member showcase for today & this time it is of Annette of Mold II club who has a card & a letter featured in a recent magazine.  In fact the same magazine as Rita had, & what's more they were on the same page right next to each other. They look lovely Annette, very fresh & clean too. That's me for now - I think I still have a couple of cards I have made that I haven't shown you yet. Will probably do that tomorrow. 'Bye for now.

member showcase

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Good afternoon ladies I hope you have had a good weekend. Today I have two member showcases for you & each will be given their own post.  First is Rita of Mold II club with a card that has been featured in a magazine recently on the letters page; Well done again Rita.  I did see the magazine that had that free gift attached & in fact did weaken & buy it.  Looking forward to using it on cards in 2016. Back again shortly with the other member showcase.

another Christmas card

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Good evening ladies. Tonight I have another Christmas card photo for you.  It is one of another batch that I made this time for my friends with whom I lunch once a month.  We had our Christmas lunch today - the first one of the year.  The next one will be the one I cook on Christmas Day. Here is the card & it is a very simple design; The embossing folder I used was not as wide as the square card I was using, so after embossing the card I embossed a vertical line to left & right of the tree to frame it.  I added some white peel-offs -  a couple of snowflakes & a Merry Christmas greeting. That is me for today ladies, more tomorrow.  Night night.

more Christmas cards

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Good evening ladies Before I show you these Christmas cards I must make another apology about "typo errors".  You may remember a little while ago I had a problem with my computer & updated to Bob's computer as he had bought himself a new one. Well, it is since using this computer that I have been having these problems. I am not saying the computer is faulty - but I find the keyboard strange in some way & can't quite work out what way. As I type, letters are missed & there is no rhyme or reason to it. Once I have finished typing my post I do run it through a spell check option but of course some words do not get picked up as wrong.  So, unless I re-read it after the spell check I don't spot the errors. I will try & sop this happening.  Having said that - look - I typed "stop" & it put "sop". What did it do with my t? I definitely typed one. Anyway onto Christmas cards.  The ones I am going to show you today are more or le

A birthday card

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Good evening everyone I have just had a quick check on what it is was I wrote about last & noticed that I actually started with .................. "God evening" .................. Now computers are wonderful things & I always run a spell check - but of course it doesn't work in the example above.  So sorry about that. I have been quite busy over the weekend wiht making Christmas cards & most of it them in sets. One set was for the people with whom I go to lunch once a month & the the other set was the 15 for Bob. I have also made some other Christmas cards for me.  That is, the ones that I send out other than those already mentioned. But yesterday I took a few moments away from Christmas to make a birthday card for an elderly cousin of mine  - who will be 89 this week. I was quite fortunate in the fact that I did have a a basis for his card - my demo at the CSNW meeting last Wednesday of the one layer card.  I had done quite a few in those shades

a Christmas card

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God evening everyone Tonight I am showing you one of the Christmas designs that I have used, it's based on the one-layer design. If you look closely you can see that I actually added glitter. Having said hat this one was based on a one-layer card that is true,  but the finished card is not one-layer.  I had originally worked this design to use as a sample, but managed to get a line of ink a short distance above the main image strip which spoilt it.  So I cut away the strip, & layered it onto a piece of black card leaving a very thin border - then added it to the base card.  Waste not want not approach.  The other half of the card - which would have been the back will get used for some stamping for another card. This afternoon I popped over to Bromborough, to the retail park on the A41, to have a look at the new Range store. Obviously at the moment it is Christmas items that dominate - but they had quite a good craft section  & some things at very reasonable p

csnw photos part 2

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Hello again ladies. I am back this time with the photos of the project we did at the CSNW meeting last night, where the project was the one-layer card using Distress Inks - in particular the design with a "strip" across the card which was then decorated with stamps. Here are the photos; This is Verena's card - I just love that sentiment, not just for the words but the lovely flow of it. Lots of lovely snowfalkes too. This is Grace's ard  I love the cchoice of colour & agai aother fantastic sentiment. Joan has used snowflakes to decorate her card too - & again a greet sentiment & flourish. An Autumnal look for Ann's card - still works well for Christmas too! Elvena stepped away from Christmas & I love this really bold design. Adding colour to the flowers just makes this design pop. Kate's colour scheme has a slightly more earthy approach but that sponging in the background almost looks like mountains

csnw photos - part 1

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Good evening ladies, this will be a short post as at last night's CSNW meeting there was only one entry in the Show & Tell project.  I guess it partly stemmed from the fact that there were only 4 people at last month's meeting. The theme of the Show & Tell was to include the little floral card that I had given them in November. By floral card I mean the sort of card that you write on & attach to a bouquet of flowers.  This card was made by Ruth & I really like the way she has incorporated the card into this design.  She has cut down the floral card to a square & then cut 5 complimentary papers to go with it.  The floral card is the one in the top left hand corner.   Well done Ruth - all the ladies thought it was beautiful. I will be back again later with another post with the photos from the evenings project. 'Bye for ow.

birthday greetings

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Today is 2nd December  a Mold II member has a birthday Happy Birthday Elizabeth Have a lovely day Elizabeth

anniversary card

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Good evening ladies, how are you all? Tonight I have a photo for you of the card I made for my step-daughters wedding anniversary. She lives with her husband in the USA & we haven't seen her for about seven years now. Here is the card; The biggest problem with sending cards to the States is the postage - so they have to be as flat as they can be & still interesting.  I stamped this white card a while ago whilst giving one of my workshops at the garden centre.  I was showing the ladies how easy it is to make your own backgrounds. I kept it in a plastic wallet as I knew eventually it would be useful for a card. A couple of weeks ago I sat looking at it wondering what I would use it for when I noticed that I hadn't really thought about what stamps I was using, because this has butterflies & snowflakes!!  I then thought of Nicky - as her anniversary is a December anniversary - so the snowflakes would be OK.  Also isn't there a little saying along the

A Christmas card

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Good evening everyone How much more of this rain is there?  Well, I know there are quite a few days more because they said so on the weather forecast.  I went into Chester this morning to collect my glasses & got soaked. It was so dismal I didn't even stop & look around the Christmas market stalls. I have a photo of one of my recently made Christmas cards to show you today. I now have about 3 or 4 different designs & will gradually show them here. Here is today's photo; This one was inspired by the card & canvas I made during a recent workshop. I used a lot of Christmas tree designs last year & was going to stay clear of them this year - but this one got through. Also this morning I got my cards for the USA in the post - so they should arrive in time.  I sincerely hope so as one of the cards was a wedding aniversary card for my step-daughter & her husband. Well that is me for today - I will have some more photos tomorrow & then o

Just chatting

Good evening ladies Well I think we have had enough rain today to last the whole of December - but I dare say we will get more.  As it is the weekend again I hope the things you have got planned will not be affected by this weather. I had planned to collect my new glasses this morning, but as my opticians are in Chester & I remembered just in time that today is Black Friday - I decided to leave it until Monday.  I just didn't fancy crowds. So instead I decided to clear my desk so that there was enough room on there to carry on making cards. But after clearing my workspace, which meant putting some things back in the drawers - I decided  I needed to tidy the drawers as well.  Stamps that I am currently using have been sorted into a box on the side of my desk. Everything ready for some creativity - but none done today. Still it will be good for a fresh start tomorrow whilst Bob is watching some rugby. Whatever you are doing this weekend have a great time.  'Bye for

mold photos - part 2

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Good afternoon everyone. Today I have the photos from MoldII's project on Tuesday night, when Joanna & Janet from Mold club visited them & showed the bleach blocking technique.  Remember - not a bottle of bleach in sight Both these photos are of Carolyn's samples.  I love the script stamp - it adds such texture & you don't have to be able to read it, & isn't that oval gorgeous? Elma managed to get her sample layered onto a card.  Beautiful Elma. A couple of completed cards from Annette with her samples. I have that word stamp in the top photo - hmm! ideas! Christine has some prancing deers enjoying her bright & cheerful background. Helen experimented with different cosmetic sponges rather than the cut 'n dry foam.  I like it! A really delicate set of samples from Carol.  I particularly love the oval with the Dreamees flower stamp. Beautiful Carol. Once Rita had finished her first samp