Happy news

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Happy Thursday and a very warm welcome to the latest Tic Tac Toe challenge! This week, I've come up with a board that I hope will inspire you to join in with us.

Lots of different ways to use this board! Here's what I came up with using the bottom row Die Cut/Leaves/Pearls:

To make this card I first masked off the edges of a thick card base with low tack tape and sponged blue ink into the remaining space. The leaves were added using green ink and Uniko's Nature's Treasure stencil.

The sweet sentiment is from WPlus9's Strictly Sentiments 2 and was stamped in black ink. To finish the card, I added die cut flowers from Stampin' Up's Wrapped Flowers dies and decorated the centres with pearls.

So now it's your turn! Which row or column will you choose? Or perhaps you've been inspired by one of the diagonal lines on the tic tac toe board? Do hop over to the Tic Tac Toe Challenge blog and check out the gorgeous samples from my talented team mates. You'll find the Linky Tool at the bottom of the post and can use it to share your own creation with us. Have fun!

CHALLENGES

AND IN OTHER NEWS

This card was rustled up because we have been blessed with more good news... there is to be a new addition to the family! My eldest nephew and his wife are expecting their first baby later this year and I am absolutely thrilled to bits for them.

Sending hugs,

Hooray for good news!

Hello, crafting friends!

When my daughter phoned to tell me she'd been promoted at work, I fell on that good news like a thirsty traveller in a desert who finds a watering hole! Champagne corks popped! Dances were jigged around the kitchen! Hats were flung in the air (ok, not the hats!) And of course the craft stash came out :)

My dayughter enjoys trendy cute cards but I felt a promotion merited something a little more grown up. I got out my In The Meadow stamp set from Funky Fossil and used my stamping platform and some Stampin' Up water-based markers to ink up the individual parts of the flowers.

The panel was trimmed and attached to a card base and I added two sentiments: the 'congratulations' is from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks; and the 'so very proud of you' is from Clearly Besotted's Simply Said.

EDITED TO ADD AN AWARD

Delighted that this card was the Diamond Winner at Color My Heart Color Dare!

CHALLENGES

Once again, I was knocked out by the inspiration photo at Inspired By and couldn't wait to join in! The Color My Heart Color Dare Challenge did the same to me with the colours on challenge 426 - I picked Lagoon, Avocado and Lemonade. I'm also joining in with Watercooler Wednesday where Kath is hosting the Occasions challenge.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

For those that enjoyed the other day's family words that had been misheard by my youngest son, here's a story about my eldest. I had gone to collect him from school and his teacher asked if she could see me for a moment. My heart sank, imagining some problem, but she wanted to show me some work that he had done for her and that she had enjoyed. The children had been asked to write about something they'd done in the holidays and my son had opted to describe a picnic we'd had. He was pretty young, so there were the usual references to 'sossige roles' and 'yogert' but the teacher wanted to point out a food that had mystified her at first: 'canon bear'. She had soon realised that he was referring to Camembert cheese and couldn't resist sharing it with me.

It was also my eldest son who, as a very tiny and upset boy asked me if I could please 'wipe away his ears'! Love him!

Sending hugs,

Bloomin' cards!

Hello crafting pals!

Do you remember this post when I tried out a new die that had slithered into my shopping basket when I was supposed to be buying sensible things like glue and white card stock? I wasn't happy with the outcome but I am not one to give up, and today that die had another, more successful outing :) Come and see:

The die is Country Garden by Gemini and I used it to make two cards that are very different from each other. It's a large ornate die that could cover a card front, but I chose to use just parts of it today.

CARD ONE

The first card uses a piece of the die cut with all the little bits and pieces taken out to give a pretty lacy look. I used a restrained colour palette of white on cream and covered the die cut with a wide bordered frame cut with two of my Heffy Doodles stitched rectangle dies.

The sentiment uses a gorgeous banner from Be Merry, a WPlus9 Christmas set that I HAD to have for this very reason :) I stamped the congratulations from Clearly Besotted's Simply Said, snipped it out with paper snips and added it to the banner.

CARD TWO

To make the second card, I created a background on a card panel by masking off the edges and sponging ink gently from the edges into the centre. When the masks were removed, there was a nice crisp semi-frame.

The die was passed through my Big Shot three times using pink, blue and green card and I cut various parts out and grouped them together onto the background. The card was finished with a block sentiment from Uniko's Simply Said.

CHALLENGES
Both these cards use the same die, on different designs and for different occasions, so I'm linking up with the Twofer Challenge; I'll also enter both into the Happy Little Stampers Die Challenge where Anything Goes.

With Card One, I'm also joining in with Less is More, where the colours required are White and Cream.

Card Two was made with the fabulous bright colours from this week's Paper Players challenge; I'm also joining in with AAA Cards CAS challenge, where we are to use up to one third of the card front with the optional twist of a repeating image; last, but not least, I'm playing along with Addicted to CAS, where the code word is Flower.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
The Lockdown measures have been lifted slightly in the UK in a rather vague and confusing way. For example you can sit two metres away from two people in a park but, oddly, not if you know them! I think we just have to use our common sense and carry on behaving as if we are carriers of the virus and not wanting to put others at risk. I shall be going up to my favourite bluebell woods, a 15 minute drive away, but staying away from anyone else. That seems pretty safe to me and oh my goodness, I'm a bit giddy about the prospect of a trip out!

How are things going in your area? Do you have any plans to go out?

Be safe won't you,

High Flier

Hello crafting pals!

My grown up offspring are always doing things that make me proud of them. So I've decided that instead of scrambling about to make quick cards when I hear about their successes, I will create a stash of cards to keep on hand  - like this one:

I've gone a bit die crazy for this card! First I cut two card panels with my largest Heffy Doodles stitched rectangle, one in sky blue, the other in cloud white. The white one was cut in half on the diagonal with a Lawn Fawn Puffy Cloud Border die.

The swallow was cut with a Xcut Dinky Die I found at the Range a month or so ago. (Yesterday I was reading this post by Cat at Cat Luvs Paper, which made me determined to start using the craft stash I've bought but not yet used!) I cut one swallow in navy and one in white and layered them to add a bit of dimension.

The sentiment is made out of words from MFT's From Me To You and the gorgeous 'amazing' from Uniko's You Are, Yes You. I used my stamping platform to make sure I got the positioning right, stamping with navy ink and a splash of red.

CHALLENGES
I'm linking up with Just Add Ink where their gorgeous photo inspired my layout; Happy Little Stampers Die Challenge where Anything Goes this month; and also the Allsorts Challenge where they're looking for Anything With Wings.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

So Friday has come around but I'm not sure if any of us are really getting that Friday feeling at the moment are we? My weekend will involve spring cleaning, dog walking and plenty of crafting. How about you?

Hugs,