Happy New Year~ Oh Happy Day!

Hello everyone!

I am here today with a quick post to wish you a very happy New Year! May your 2016 be better and filled with lots of love and prosperity!

Here is my card to celebrate this happy day!! ^_^

I used an old Lawn Fawn stamp set Hello Sunshine for this card. I think I need more practice on using the distress ink for the background. It just looks a bit patchy! Boo~

Here are some more photos from the side and close up:

I white embossed all clouds and sentiment. Used lots of snippets of pattern papers and hand cut all the little flags. These birds are just so sweet. They are stamped, coloured in by using Copic Ciao marker pens and propped up by using foam squares. 

This card will also be going to the following challenges:

• Cute Card Thursday #406 - Anything Goes!
• Pixie's Snippets Playground - Weeks 208 and 209

I hope you like the card. Oh~ wish you have a happy day and in 2016 every day is a happy day!! ^_^

          

Baby, it's cold outside! Merry Christmas~

Hello my crafty friends!

I hope you all had a very happy Christmas! We had an amazing Christmas day and Boxing day. Seeing the exciting faces of the children opening their presents was just the best thing in the world! Now that the chaos and panic is over, I can finally sit down and calmly share some of the Christmas cards I made this year. Starting off with this cute alpaca Christmas card:

I mixed Perfect Pearls pigment powder in water and sprayed it all over the sky (created by using distress ink). This is the first time I used this technique and I love the effect when the water reacts to the distress ink and leaves it washed out with shimmery sparkle dots everywhere. It just creates a starry sky! Lawn Fawn's Forest border die was used to create the background. Snippets of white cards were used to create snow hills, Christmas tree (by Beth Hughes Designs) and the alpaca (Winter Alpaca stamps by Lawn Fawn). Here is a closer look of the card:

Although this is a fairly small 4" x 4" card, a lot of work has gone into it. Lots of layers, dimensions and textures!  

I am entering this card in the following challenges:

• Pixie's Snippets Playground- Week 208 and 209
• Lawnscaping Challenge #120- Merry Christmas
• Cute Card Thursday Challenge #405- Anything Goes

During these few quiet days, hopefully I will be able to blog more of my Christmas cards and, if I can, find time to craft would be even better!! ^_^

Thanks for visiting! See you soon~

          

Time to PARTY!

Hello all!

Hope you all had a good day today. Due to Hurricane Barney, it is currently very very windy here in the UK. I am just so glad that I am home already and not out there!!

Life has been so busy recently. I am regularly making cards but just find it hard to find time to blog them. It will be my youngest daughter's birthday in December. She is going to be 10 years old - going into two digits!!! OMG! Where has the time gone?! So, I am here to share the birthday invitations which I made over the weekend.

My daughter chose this Dancing Mae stamp by Some Odd Girls as the main image. Who wouldn't want to dance when there is a party!! ^_^ Actually when my daughter gave the invitations out today, one of the parents said Dancing Mae looks a bit like her! Hee hee! I guess she made a good choice of the stamp!!

The sentiment is from the Mixed Circular Sentiments by Lili of the Valley. Just love this stamp set as there are so many different messages that can be added in the centre of each circular sentiment. A very versatile set!

Here is a close up photo of the card.

As you can see I added a lot of Stickles glitter glue and Wink of Stella glitter brush to the image. Shiny image makes me happy!!

 

Well, I didn't make all the invitation cards towards the end. (My daughters wouldn't let me!! Ha ha!!) They love to join in and be part of it. So they coloured a majority of the images themselves (top row are coloured by my eldest daughter, the middle row are coloured by the birthday girl to be and the bottom row are coloured by me) and I stamped, cut, stuck and put the invitation cards together. Each one of them is different! I have to say they did a really good job and it was great fun crafting with them!  

I am entering the card I made to the following challenges:

• Friday Sketch Challenge #104: I followed the sketch closely.
  
• Pixie's Snippets Playgound - Week 203: Lots of thin stripes of snippets have been used! 
• Craft Your Passion Challenge 288- Always Anything Goes 

Hope you like these invitations and I will try to be back again very soon. Maybe share a Christmas card next? Enjoy the rest of your week.

          

Sending You Monster Thanks

Hello there!

Is it a Happy Monday or a Blue Monday for you today? Mine is an ok-ish Monday. Hopefully it will get better as the days go by.

Anyway, I am here today to share a card for Make the Day Special Stamp Store September Colour Challenge. You need to pick a minimum of 3 colours from any one of the 3 images below.

I couldn't make my mind up which 3 colours to pick so I decided to use all colours from the left image. So here is my card:

I used the Monster Mash stamp set and Cole's ABC's Dies, both from Lawn Fawn, for my card. I also used Cuttlebug- Swiss Dots embossing folder to add some texture for the background. Here are a couple more closer shots.

I don't know if you can see the sparkle? I literally used the clear Wink of Stella brush pen on nearly everything!! ^_^

This card is cheerful and full of colour. I am sure it will make the recipient smile! ^_^

I hope you like the card and thanks for reading.  

          

Another Thank You Card

Good evening everyone!

Hope you had a pretty good day today. I am here for a quick post. Just want to share another 4" x 4" thank you card with you.

I used my new Clearly Besotted stamp set- Honeycomb for this card. I really like this stamp set. It has 9 different patterned hexagons, which you can use on their own or stamped inside the honeycomb outline, as I did here. With these stamps, it is also very easy to create the honeycomb shape you like. I think Clearly Besotted is discontinuing this stamp set, so it is currently on sale with 50% off, while stock last. If you like this stamp set, you better take the advantage of the offer and be quick!

I am also braving with my colour combinations. Never used green, pink and orange together. I am not quite sure about them but I think they are ok together right?! The sentiment is from Mama Elephant - Tiny Heroes. I stamped on black card and heat embossed it with Hero Art White Embossing Powder.

At the top of the card, I used washi tape which I got from Taiwan this summer. Then, I added a pink and white bakers twine and a mint small button. I think they work well with my colour theme.

Challenges:

• NBUS Challenges #5 - Clearly Besotted- Honeycomb stamp set is my never-before-used-schtuff.

•  Virginia's View Challenge #18: Geometric Patterns 

• Craft Your Passion Challenge #279 - Always Anything Goes

I hope you like the card and thanks for stopping by.

          

I'm Back With A Butterfly Thank You Card

Hi There!

I am still here! ^_^ Just gave myself a summer holiday from blogging. We had a fantastic summer break as we went back home to Taiwan to visit my parents, sisters, family members and friends. We have been spoilt by everyone and none of us wanted to come back really!! But unfortunately, life has to go on. We will just have to keep our spirits up and look forward to our next trip to Taiwan again.

School has started for more than a week now and so I shall be back in blog world too!!

I will start with a small thank you card (4" x 4") today. Some lovely parents of my daughters' friends were extremely helpful during the summer holiday. They saved our lives by looking after our daughters while me and my husband went to work. So, I made some thank you cards and gave them a big box of Cadbury's chocolates each to show our appreciation.  Here is one of the cards that I am sharing today.

I am in the mood for a bright and colourful card. So, colours of  the rainbow it is!!

I am entering this card to the following challenges:

• NBUS Challenge #5 - I have used the Clearly Besotted Honeycomb Die for the first time. This card was put together quite easily with these two little dies. 

• Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 193 - Tiny colourful snippets of cards and papers have been used for all those hexagon shapes.

• Craft your Passion #278 - Always Anything Goes 

Thank you for coming back to visit me. I hope you like this card. I think it is quite sweet! ^_^  See you soon and enjoy the rest of your week!

          

Lawnscaping Blog Hop: Lawnscaping + Caffeine = Happiness

Hello crafty friends!

Welcome to the Lawnscaping June Blog Hop!!

You should have arrived here from Jennie M.'s blog. But if you are here first, not to worry! You will find the entire hop list towards the end of the post. Or, start from the beginning at Lawnscaping Challenges blog for more information.

Our blog hop theme this time is Coffee!! So here is my card. As I love interactive cards, I decided to create a shaker card!

I used the "watercolor smooshing" technique to create the pale blue background. This is a fun technique as you never know what it will turn out to look like. For the coffee rings, I literally used my daughter's plastic cup and dipped it in a watery brown ink puddle, then 'stamped' onto the water colour paper. They turned out better than I expected. ^_^

For this card, I used Summertime Charm stamp and die (for the jar), Love You A Latte stamp set (for cups, spoon, steam, coffee beans in jar and hearts next to the sentiment), Claire's ABCs (for the words "Brewin' Up") and Joy to the Woods stamp and die (for the hearts in jar). All stamps and dies are from Lawn Fawn. The "Birthday wishes" stamp is the only non Lawn Fawn stamp. It is from Holly Hobbie - Nature Walk stamp set. 

This jar is full of 'goodies'. It's a jar full of coffee beans, hearts, stars and shamrocks! (Can you spot them all?!) It is ready to brew up birthday wishes full of love and luck!

I also added Glossy Accents on the coffee inside the cup/ mug, it just gives them that liquid look. Gosh! I can almost smell that coffee. Feel I could just drink a cup of coffee now. I don't drink a lot of coffee, but I sure do love the smell and everything that is coffee flavoured. Such as: coffee cake, coffee ice cream, coffee flavoured chocolate, coffee yoghurt etc. Well, I do hope you have your coffee or your favourite beverage in hand and are ready to continue with this brilliant blog hop.

Before I send you off to the next blog, I should tell you the details of the PRIZES!! Leave a unique comment on this blog post for a chance to win. (No copy and pasting!!) There are lots of sponsors and lots of prizes up for grabs. Sponsors include: Lawn Fawn, Ellen Hutson, The Ink Road, Crafters Companion, Spectrum Noir, The Alley Way Stamps, Newtons Nook, Faber Castell and Right at Home!

Winners will be picked randomly along the blog hop. So, ensure you leave comments along the way. Comments must be left by 11:59pm EST on June 28th 2015. Winners will be announced on the Lawnscaping blog next week. Good luck!

I hope you like my card!! Your next stop on the hop is the lovely Ellen. Happy Hopping!

Lawnscaping Challenges

Niki G. 

Gray Whiskers Crafts

Melissa

Kristina B.

Lysa

Dianchik

Yolanda G. 

Jennie M. 

Julie C. -- you are here!!

Ellen 

Nina-Marie

Michele S. 

Anni

Michelle L.

Lydia

Oreet

Tammy H.

Shannon M. 

Kim

Kelly S. 

Trish K. 

Tanja

Amy

Kim H. 

Monica M. 

Beau Monde Designs

Valerie W. 

Maria

Wiebke

Maia Ink

http://melissabowden.com/

Vicki

Chitra

Tracy

Curl E. Cue's

Coralynn

Carisa

Dawn E.

Kate

Kristina P.

Thank you for stopping by!

*If you encounter any errors along the hop, please email Laurel directly at laurelbeard at me dot com. Please do not leave them in the comments.

A Tini Note

Happy Weekend!

I broke my favourite water glass at work ages ago. It had different patterned, coloured apples on it. This highball glass was very cute! Since then I haven't found another glass that I like. The other day my lovely colleague Jenny who sits next to me came back from her lunch break and she found and bought me a glass. It has different small flowers on it and it is so sweet! So to thank her for thinking of me and her wonderfulness, I made her this card.

It couldn't be more suitable to give her a shaker card of various shaped glasses to say thank you for my water glass!! ^_^ This is a small 4" x 4" card. I used the Free Spirits stamp set and its coordinating dies from Paper Smooches for this card. I used Versa Mark ink and clear embossing power to create a tone on tone back ground. Here is a picture from the side:

I filled these glasses by using nail art beads and a very small amount of sequins. I actually found these nail art beads in my local pound shop. It comes in these cute small jars with twelve beautiful colours.

These beads are so so tiny and they are fantastic for shaker cards. The thickness of a children's fun foam will be enough for these beads to run freely in their space. No bulkiness, easy to put the card in the post and twelve colours for a pound! You can't go wrong with that!! Hee hee!! ^_^

When I say sequins.... they are actually the middle part of the sequins. Crafters never let things go to waste! All those little circles that fall out from the centre of sequins, that is what I added!

 

I love this card so much, I made another two but filled in different coloured beads each time!

 

I am also entering this card to:

• Paper Smooches Spark: June 7-13 Anything Goes (wk1) challenge

 

• Make the Day Special Stamp Store: June Colour Challenge 

I picked the image on the right and I think I did use all the colours!! ^_^

 

Hope your weekend is going well and thank you for stopping by!

          

Let's Celebrate

Hello there!

Quick post today. I just want to share this card I made a couple of days ago.

Male cards are often difficult to make. I believe clean and simple is the trick! I used the Free Spirits stamp set from Paper Smooches for this card. No fuss, just simply stamp them directly on the card. This is probably one of the few fast cards I have made! ^_^

I don't know, maybe certain inks are just not made for solid stamps (I mainly use Memento dye inks and Brilliance pigment inks). Some are better than others. The champagne glass here turned out to be very blotchy. I also figured out that with some inks wiping across the solid stamp works better than tapping or dabbing on the stamp. The ink seems to go on much better. By wiping, it also gives you this nice fine line effect. This can be clearly seen on the far right hand side bottle. Anyone have this problem? Is it the ink or the stamp? Maybe I should invest in some better quality inks or should the solid stamps be treated in someway so that it takes the ink better?? Love to hear from all you crafty friends out there. 

 

I will be linking this card to the following challenges:

• CAS(E) this Sketch! #125   
  
• Paper Smooches SPARKs: May 31- June 6 Anything Goes (wk5) challenge  

• Craft Your Passion Challenges #264- Always Anything Goes
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes  

Thank you for stopping by. See you soon.

       

Designed by Me! - Babesyboo Part 1

Hello everyone!

Hope you all had a great weekend! Here in the UK today will be the last day of the half term break. Tomorrow kids will be back to school again, hooray! ^_^

I have something a bit different today. A long time ago... I think it was back in 2006/ 2007, even before clear stamps were popular and even before I started this blog. I had the chance to design some rubber stamps for Elzybells Art Stamps. (Gosh! That was a long time ago!) I wonder how many people remembered Elzybells stamps?? Unfortunately this brilliant online stamp shop is closed. However, Elizabeth, the owner of Elzybells Art Stamps, is now designing a range of greeting cards, personalised prints and other whimsically creative things. If you like Elzabeth's designs, you can purchase her creations at Cloud 9 Design and for news and updates on her work please visit her blog. I don't know what made me think of this, I guess seeing these rubber stamps, which I designed, brought back memories. Some of these rubber stamps are still brand new. Not been inked up yet!! OMG! That is just shocking! So I decided to create a series of blog posts to record and share my stamp designs. Also it will give me the chance to play with these stamps again, or for many of them it will be the first time they have been used! This is just for my own benefit but I do hope you will join me and like these Babesyboo stamp designs and card creations too.

Without further ado, here are the three stamps that I had fun playing with today.

Here is the card that I made by using these stamps:

These trio stamps are sunflowers, roses and daisies in various shaped vases. I used the "watercolor smooshing" technique to created the background. I also used the frame stamp and die from the Sizzix Words & Tags Framelits Die with Stamps set to frame these stamp images. Here is a closer look of the images:

The frame was cut several times and layered together to create dimension. I applied Glossy Accents on all vases and Crystal Stickles on all flowers. I do hope this card shows off these stamps perfectly in their own little frames! 

 

This card is also inspired by this week's Sketch Saturday #363 which is to pick any sketch from #215-#362. As I liked last weeks sketch so much, but didn't have the time to join in, I am so happy that I got the chance to use the sketch again this week. Here is what sketch #362 looks like:

I am also taking this card to the below challenges:

• Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes.
• Papertake Weekly Challnge: Take Your Pick. I picked Product Theme: Use glitter.

 

I hope you like this new series and I am looking forward to the next blog post where I will share more of my Babesyboo stamp designs.

 

Thank you for staying with me till the end. See you soon!

       

You're Special - A Spinning Slider Card

Hi Peeps!

I'm playing along in the Paper Smooches Designer Draft Challenge today. Here is the May sketch:

As soon as I saw the sketch I knew exactly what I was going to create. So here is my card:

It's a spinning slider card!! I haven't made a slider card for ages and I just love an interactive card. The bee and the flowers are free Paper Smooches digital stamps which you can get here. The sheep is from the Party Posse stamp set and the sentiment is from the Sentiment Sampler stamp set. 

All images have been coloured in by using Copic Ciao marker pens. I also used the Grassy Border Die from Lawn Fawn and layered two different coloured green cards together to create dimension. Ha! And I have a very very short video clip here just to show how this spinning slider card works! ^_^ 

I am also joining the:

• The Cutie Pie: Challenge #87- Layer It Up
• Craft Your Passion: Challenge #263- Always Anything Goes 

Thank you for stopping by and hope you like the card.