salad days

Not a card to be seen lately - busy trying to keep the slugs at bay - I had an attempt at growing veg this year. The spuds are doing magnificently and I'm waiting patiently for a crop of white floury potatoes but my peas befell the cows from the field next door, they broke through and seemingly bored with grass took the top of my pea patch but there is still a nice crop coming on.
And so to why I have shown you my lunch - this is my first from my garden dinner. The salad leaves, scallion, beetroot and garden mint are all grown by me - the tomato came from a friend's greenhouse and had that gorgeous, warm smell that a tomato should have.
I thought it looked so bright and colourful, I could make it into a card!

lads n dads

My friend Jenny did it again - she rang this afternoon looking for a card for a 21 year old jockey and oh, she needs it for this evening.
Anyhow, it's not great and looks rather cobbled together (which tbh it is)- but it was all I could muster at such short notice.
The other is a Father's Day Card wallet - it looks incomplete because, well it isn't finished! It's for my friend's husband and she needs to add the photos of her kids. I quite like this - it's just made up from a folding board, it's an open top wallet with a pocket on the front and then has a card inside that uses a tab that loops over the top of the wallet and fastens on the front.
tfl
I have to go and make Father's Day cards from the girls - Aoif has "helped" with hers and I also have paint to clean up!

Christmas in June

I didn't manage to get my Paperplay challenge for last week up in time - so I'm determined that I will this week - the theme, set by Kate is Christmas. Eeeeek.
So here's 2 quick Christmas inspired invitations. The first uses 3 bugs in a rug paper and is a sidefold wallet card, the other a trifold card - both use a sizzix sizzlit bauble die.
tfl

paper play "twist" challenge and I'm late!

But at least I managed to get it done finally. My twist is a brown and green wedding card - not the usual colours and a second twist, it's a sizzix spinning platform in the centre that "twists" up when you open the card.
Papers are Sassafrass Lass.

wallet card

I'm in love with little wallet cards at the moment and was asked to do a birthday card for a girly girl who likes pigs! I came up with this and inside the card is a pic of a cute little piglet with "hope your day is piggin'perfect".

paper play challenge

I'm not finding much time to make things for fun, so I decided to try and participate in the paperplay challenges. There are always gorgeous cards and LO's for inspiration but somehow I'm late in my first attempt at playing. Oops - I used the sketch provided to make this card for my OH birthday.

not enough hours

I'm trying to get some of my cards onto a website and have reached the point where cardmaking and craft in general feels like a chore - I've a million different ideas but just not enough time or funds to put everything I'd like into action.
For now you can see my efforts here

So what do you do with a digital layout?

Elisa asked this on her blog last week - www.hybridalien.blogspot.com.
I don't do much digi scrapping but I use my computer a lot for cardmaking, particularly for sentiments and to add names to cards. If I had an A3 printer I might do more digital - but I have used A4 digi pages as a base for some pictures for my wall. I like to print off a background paper add the journalling then print it out, I then add a seperately printed photograph and embellish with traditional paper embellishments.
So here's one I did of DD1 - the quote was taken from a digi freebie by Summer Driggs a couple of years ago - I didn't have the file but I had kept the quote, I just used Word and different sized fonts and layered it over a digital paper file. Once I had printed it off I added the photo and a few blue rhinestones from Hickey's.

Quick Wedding Card

Other half is heading off to London at 5am for his pal's wedding. I have cried off - hauling a baby and a toddler onto an early morning Ryanair flight tomorrow and then back on Sunday morning is not my idea of fun. Especially as the itinerary consisted of arrive, pub, eat, pub, sleep - wedding, pub, probably not sleep,home.
Just as well I wasn't going ; as my errant carpenter needs his tail chasing - he is now at the end of week three of what was to be a week job and he vanished for 7 days over the bank holiday. I am sick of the mess and everywhere needs painting again and the furniture guy is meant to be coming tomorrow and there isn't room to manouvere a flat pack let alone the whole fully assembled furniture I have ordered.
So I've just been making a last minute card for the happy couple & I'm off to bed. The patterned paper is Making Memories with pen stitches around the edge
Stamped the Love stamp directly onto the card and then stamped another onto scrap card - cut out the pieces and applied them over the original letters. I offset them slightly and used foam pads for bit of height. I coloured the letters with felt pen scribbled onto plastic then applied to the image with a wet brush. I stamped a wooden square tile with a small whatever that is called flower and inked the edges, layered with Cardstock stickers from Daisy D's added some ivory ribbon, pale blue gems an odd button and a resin butterfly that fell off a fairy ornament.

Three years in the making

This little bear has taken me over 3 years to finish! I started him long before I had my first dd, I had cast, fired and painted his base coat and antiqued him - then in one of my many "organising" fits he ended up wrapped in newspaper and abandoned in the shed. So I am now in the process of "reorganising" (laugh in disbelief) and I was rehoming some ceramic pieces when I found him. As it happens dd broke her ceramic bear just this month, so I dusted him off and painted in his features. I think he has quite a cheeky look, just like my little madam. I'll have to put him out of reach of little fingers but this is Aoife's new bear, and we are going to call him Marco.