The Other Side Of Me

It was a birthday for one of the card swap group members earlier in the week and this is what I made for her: The cardstock is crumb cake and the stamp is from the Faith In Nature set, which I think was a hostess set a while back.  I also got to use my jewellery tag punch, which is something I wish I could use more often, it's so sweet.  I popped on some pearls, and Bob's your uncle!  A really fun card to make actually, I might make another one soon. I will be back soon with some Christmas cards as I've finally posted ones to the card swap group so it doesn't matter if they appear on here now, so watch this space. Happy crafting! Jane x

This is my second go at a Project Life type of page.  Can I just say I have nothing against PL at all, I think it all looks fantastic, but I just can't afford it and have so much dsp in my house, it would be insanity to go and buy some more. So this is how I'm doing my pages.  The colour scheme for this one is Baja Breeze (good way to use up retired cardstock too, you see) and Cherry Cobbler.  There is a bit of dsp from Echo Park on the first page, which I really love.  This way I get to keep some for myself.  It's the same paper I used to make the Christmas card in my previous post. The biggest development (and there is a pun here, much as I'd like to avoid it) is that I found a photo developing shop in town that develops photos straight from my phone with a great deal of ease.  They print off two photos on a sheet of 4"x6" paper so you can cut them in half, and that's what I've done on these pages.  I was so excited at being able to do this! Her...

Hello y'all! I seem to have got a bit of my mojo back as I've bought a new set of Christmas stamps, but I can't show you what I'm making with those until I start posting them out as some of the recipients read my blog. In the meantime, I've set a challenge for the Card Swap group to make a card using their all-time stamp set.  I imagine there was a lot of rummaging through boxes to find old friends!  This is what I made to send to Sue Ralph: You may well recognise that it's made with the French Foliage stamp set.  I love this set.  I always feel very artistic and creative with it and have never made something I didn't like.  I thought I'd add some of my favourite neutral ribbon and use my favourite punch on it as well!  Hope you like it, I know Sue did! Thanks for looking in today, I love to read your comments, so let me know what you think. Back soon, Happy crafting Jane xx

Well August has been a very busy month for card making.  I haven't been able to post as many as I'd like as I've been so busy in other ways as well.  Here's a card I made for one of the residents, though: I've had an image saved on Pinterest for some time that's very similar to this, so I've cased it.  The website seems to be called Betty's Stampin Stuff and here is the link to her blog  http://www.bettysstampnstuff.blogspot.co.uk/  although this is not a direct link to her version of the card, but I would like to credit her with the original.  The colour scheme is Calypso Coral, Crumb Cake and white.  The script stamp is from French Foliage, with a flourish stamp that isn't SU (I'm not sure who it's by to be honest!)  I was thrilled when I inked it up to see it already had butterflies on it, so it worked perfectly with the embossed ones.  Thanks for looking in today.  I'm off to practise some french and make a wedding card!...

Hello, sorry I am a bit late with this post, peeps, but April turned out to be a very hectic month, with cardmaking and everything else. Quite early in April I received this fab card from Margaret King, as part of our card swaps: Sorry the photo doesn't do it justice really, you can get a better look at it and see all the details (and the fun Margaret had making it!) here .  She is a very talented crafter and her blog is well worth a perusal.  I love her style, she is the queen of the neutral card! This is a lovely combination of Early Espresso and Pool Party, which I'm definitely going to have to play with very soon.  Thankyou Margaret, it's such a lovely card.   It was also Margaret's birthday in April, so the whole group made her a card.  This is what I came up with: Remember, I'm making this for someone who loves her neutrals, so it was with a sweating brow I pulled this stamp out for the first time.  The stamp is from the Po...

Hello all! Just popping in with a quick post today. I've seen some beautiful colour combinations recently and had to have a go at some of my own.  I wanted to make a card for my Floor Manager at work, and this is what I came up with: It's a Z fold card made using Baja Breeze cardstock.  I inked up my Summer Silhouettes stamp set and away I went.  The colours are Early Espresso, Baja Breeze and Crumb Cake.  This was such a simple card to make.  The dsp is part of the Twitterpated set and the Happy Birthday is from the old Elementary Elegance stamp set.  A very sweet combo, I'm sure you'll agree. Well I think that's it really, thanks for looking in today.  Maybe you'll give these colours a try. Back soon with some card swaps. Jane xx

My lovely Auntie Rose was 70 this month.  To me she will always be about 45, which is ridiculous, as I'm older than that now myself!  She lives right down on the south coast, so I sent her some flowers.  Of course I had to make a card to go with it, and here it is: The dsp is from a Prima set called Botanicals and it's full of these beautifully soft colours.  The cardstock is Crumb Cake and I stamped my dress form image on it in Soft Suede ink.  I then stamped the same image onto a piece of the same dsp and cut it out.  It looks beautiful on the Crumb Cake.  Before that I ran the cardstock through the Bigshot in the oval designer frames embossing folder.  This came out beautifully smooth and so I punched out an oval of the dsp and aded it to the centre.  I stamped 'Happiest Birthday' from the Apothecary Art set and cut it into a nice long banner shape.  I've propped the centre of it up on sticky fixers to give it a bit of dimension...

Oh my, I am head over heels in love with a new stamp set.  I made this card last week for a resident: This French Foliage stamp set has got to be one of the most versatile I've ever come across.  There is no limit to what you can do with it. The base card is more mustard. The next layer is very vanilla. I've stamped the script stamp in crumb cake on it, then the leaf in more mustard with early espresso rolled round the edges before stamping, which creates a fabulous effect.  I've made the tag and stamped a small section of very vanilla cardstock again.  I've used the little 'Paris' stamp on this piece and the ink blotch stamp in more mustard.  Every time I stamped something I gasped at how fab it was as it appeared on the paper.  I bet everyone who has this stamp set feels the same way about it.  It's by far the most 'artistic' set I've ever used. The tag has a button and twine at the top and a little butterfly on the sentiment o...

I started off the year making Christmas cards and was doing quite well, but there's no incentive in June and July, is there?  So, let the panic begin! Actually I've decided to make at least 2 cards each time I make something I like, so this is what I made on Tuesday: Again, I seem to have used a cluster of different products, but I really like the end result.  And I do think by the time you've got one the way you like it, you may as well make another one. The base is real red, C6 size.  On top of that is a piece of crumb cake, with white snowflakes on it, from a set that was free with my mag.  On top of that is a piece of very vanilla, with my LOTV music stamp stamped on in crumb cake.  On top of that is this beautiful reindeer in chocolate chip.  I was just playing about with stamping something dark onto something light, and this is what I ended up with. But what I really wanted to  ask today is, "Do you know your stamping style?"...

I have been working on a very special card.  Our youngest daughter Abby and her hubby have finally had a dream come true and been able to foster a beautiful little boy.  They have been longing for this day, so I wanted to celebrate with them.  We went to visit on Sunday and I was able to take this card along with me: I've used lots of different items to make my vision a reality here, and I'm so glad I've got all these items to make this card possible! I started off by stamping the Teddy Bo (free with Simply Cards and Papercraft back in May or June) in Soft Suede ink.  Up until then I'd intended to make the card in red, blue and green, but I fell in love with the colour as soon as it touched the paper, and the rest fell into place after that. The balloons have been stamped in river rock, crumb cake and choc chip and cut out with my balloon dies and propped up on dimensionals after I'd taped some linen thread to the back.  I stamped just Teddy Bo's paw out, ...

Hello there!  I am a big fan of The Paper Players challenge blog and follow it avidly week by week (yes I spend a lot of time reading blogs!) and so finally I'm able to join in this week.  It's a colour challenge: Now here's the silly thing... when I saw these colours I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them, but when I actually tried it, it didn't work!  So I played and played and had practically every stamp out that I own, and then in the end, this is what I made: The thing that's brilliant about these challenges is that they're helping me to learn about proportion, i.e. whether everything is to scale (you know what it's like when you have a tiny stamp that disappears on your card) and the way colours work together.  Years ago (yes, I'm quite old!) there was a brilliant book called Colour Me Beautiful which explained very cleverly about how to dress and keep colour and pattern in proportion.  It talked about main colours and accent c...

Good afternoon, everyone!  I've managed to snatch five minutes in a hectic day.  Firstly I must say what a fantastic day I had yesterday at the cardmaking workshop.  I arrived at 10am, left at 3.45 and apart from a brief stop for a gorgeous lunch, did nothing but craft.  It was bliss, and I would like to say a huge thankyou to Anne and Jo for putting it on for us.  It must be a lot of work for them from the planning stage onwards, but I can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of it (and there's another one in April!)  I will be showing you the cards we made as soon as I can. But for today, it gives me great pleasure to be able to enter a card for the LIM challenge .  This week Mandi and Chrissie want us to use punches or die cuts on our cards, but keeping to the clean and simple style.  I can't believe how many entries there are on there already, but I've decided not to look at them until my card is on, so here is my entry: This is another c...