Memorandum Monday

No sooner has one Monday gone then another one arrives in its place - so it is time to give Sian a wave over at From High in the Sky and report on my weekend.

Saturday was the Eurovision Song contest - so in line with family tradition I joined my Mum to watch it.  We don't take it seriously - it is always quite a giggle and we enjoy Graham Norton's funny commentary.  A special touch was asking everyone to raise a glass to Sir Terry Wogan at song 9, luckily we had just refilled our glasses with Prosecco.

Sunday found me busy crafting - I had a wedding card commission to finish (I will share very soon) and then I decided to get messy with Brushos - I haven't made any backgrounds in ages and I have depleted my stock of them.  So the kitchen and lounge looked like this - good job Mr P was at work and wasn't around to witness the mess - luckily I always put down loads of plastic so it is an easy job to clear away.  Empty pizza boxes that previously contained scrapbook supplies make a very good base for doing the messy crafting in!!

My next job is to overstamp these and gradually turn them into cards.

Monday seems to be a day for receiving happy post, first up I took delivery of these lovely notebooks - I'm planning to keep a travel journal on our grand Scottish road trip in June and a book with gridlines appealed - it made sense to avoid postage charges to order two and whilst looking up journal ideas I stumbled across a thing called bullet journals - hmmmm I think that second journal might come in very handy.

And the second bit of happy post was a lovely birthday goody bag from my dear friend Fine Bear Ted - he celebrated his 21st the other week and this is him with the card that I made for him.

The goody bag contained lots of sweets, a cake (which Mr P took to work), some novelties and a rather fetching pair of monkey sunglasses.

If we get a decent summer I will wearing the glasses a lot!!

Have a great week everyone - I will be making more holiday plans and getting ready for an imminent trip to Yorkshire.

Meeting Fine Bear Ted!

Trying to catch up with blogging some layouts made ages ago.

This one was done for a weekly challenge on UKScrappers back in March and the criteria was

• Use the sketch
• Square photos
• Use stars
• Use chevrons

Sadly I can't show you the sketch as it looks like I didn't save it.

The papers used are a mixture of Echo Park, LillyBee and Crate.  The photos are from a lovely evening spent in the company of Fine Bear Ted!  He was out for the evening with his lovely Mum who we always try to meet up with whenever we are in the North East (don't worry we did get her in some photos too and I am sure I will use them on a layout soon).

Reindeer Teds - Beat the Christmas Rush

Week 6 of the 52 cards challenge was to use mainly items from the same collection pack.  I rarely ever buy whole collections of stash but I did have a 6x6 pad with a stamp from the same collection (Forever Friends - Kraft Notes).

These are also my cards for February's Beat the Christmas Rush

I coloured the images with Promarkers, cut them out and then mounted them on an embossed circle of card.

 

The sentiment stamps are by Kaisercraft.

Engagement congratulations

Here is another card for this month's challenge over at Penny Black and More which is to use Dies and Punches.

I used a cute Penny Black teddy bear stamp and sentiment stamps from Crafty Impressions.  The hearts were all die cut with the Cheery Lynn Heart to Heart Lace Doily Dies.  I coloured the lace heart cut out with a Stampin' Up marker Pretty in Pink.  The papers are a magazine freebie.

The image was coloured with Promarkers - Almond, Vanilla, Blush, March Hare, Pastel Pink, Rose Pink and Denim Blue.

Congratulations to my god-daughter on her recent engagement xxx

Making hats for Fine Bear Ted!

Sometimes as a crafter you get to do some very different stuff.  One of Marillion's fans is a little bear called Fine Bear Ted! and he always goes to the PZ convention and other gigs.  Earlier this year in the countdown to the convention he decided he was going to wear a different hat each day in the 50 days run up to the convention starting and he put out an appeal on Facebook for people to make him hats as he didn't actually own 50.

The first hat I made for him was a very festive green and red Elf hat - I found out his head measurements and selected one of my many bears who shared his measurements to be my model.  This is Alec named after Alec Stewart the cricketer (most of my bears are named after cricketers!!) modelling the hat which I made from felt and hand stitched

 And a close up of the hat

And Fine Bear Ted wearing the hat -

Later on during the challenge Fine Bear Ted! put out an appeal for someone to make him a jester's hat and I agreed to do it but then after a while it dawned on me that perhaps he wanted a hat like Marillion's jester that use to appear on the artwork for their earlier albums rather than just an ordinary jester's hat.  I was right - yes please he would love a Marillion jester's hat - when I downloaded some photographs of the jester I wondered if I had overstretched myself in volunteering to make this!!

But armed with greaseproof paper I tentatively made a pattern and then did a mock up in scrap fabric, it sort of worked so then I got on with cutting out my felt.  I made the hat in two stages - I made the base of the hat with it's spines - basing the pattern on some children's dinosaur hats that I had found and then I made the ear pieces separately and attached them.  I don't think I made too bad a job of it in the end - here is Alec being my model again -

And here is Fine Bear Ted! looking really lovely in this hat -

 

Sadly he hasn't got to wear the hat at a Marillion gig yet - the plan was for me to hand deliver the hat to him at the PZ convention but sadly we didn't make it due to getting the 'flu so I had to post it.  Hopefully it won't be too long before Fine Bear Ted! can wear it to a gig!!

New baby gift and card

One of our neighbours has recently had a baby girl so I made this little basket filled up with goodies as a gift for her.

I learnt how to make the basket at one of Anita's aka The Inky Blossom classes.  We originally made the basket as a Christmas project to hold sweets.

I also needed to make a card too but don't really have any stamps for a new baby card, then I remembered that I had some decoupage sheets of Margaret Sherry designs from a magazine freebie yonks ago.  So I made this little card to go with the gift -

Get well soon

My brother has recently had a big op, so I am wishing him a speedy recovery.  This is the card that I made for him using a lovely Cuddly Buddly bear stamp.

I made the easel card using large octagon nestabilities.  The patterned paper is Bo Bunny and from my scraps pile.

A close up of the stamped image

Christmas in July Part 2

And some more Christmas cards -

I can't remember what the teddy bear stamps are called - they were a free gift with a magazine and I no longer have the packet that they came in.

Thank you for looking and thank you for all the lovely comments - I do take the time to read them all.

Happy Birthday Richard

Richard gets the sulks if I don't make him a handmade card for his birthday, so this is what I did this year for him -

I used a lovely teddy stamp from Cuddly Buddly which I watercoloured with derwent watercolour pencils.  The flowers are made using a retro flower punch and dewdrops for the centres.  The paper used is K&Co.
As usual he is working for his birthday but next month I am taking him to see David Gray at The Dome in Brighton so we will go for a nice meal at one of the bars or restaurants  in The Lanes and have a belated birthday meal.  I will spoil him before he goes to work tonight and give him his favourite smoked salmon and prawn salad, sadly only I get to have a glass of wine.