Flowers and cards of support for us

Look....................

What a lucky girl I am.  My lovely Stampin' Up upline, Michelle Last has sent me this gorgeous display of flowers as she couldn't get to me last week to give me a hug.  I have also received some lovely cards from friends who are praying things will work out for my Sarah and praying for my pain to disappear.

Thank you so much ladies, I feel blessed with the friends I have, it really makes a difference chatting to friends too, so thank you to all of you who have listened to me this past week, I'm really grateful.

With love to you all.

Carole

xxx

Doin' what I like.......

......... with what I like!

It's been a difficult couple of months and with more unwanted news this Monday, I have decided life is just too short and I'm too old to be told what to do all the time!  I'm a crafter and you all know how much I like the major company that I usually support whole heartidly, but just sometimes there is a need to break a rule or two and with the news I've had this week, I'm doing what I like with what I like and sharing with all of you what I've used and whom I have gained the inspiration from because I want to!

I have taken a few on-line classes over the last year or two and many of these classes show all product types and companies including the one I have liked and supported most for quite a while.  So I feel it only fair to share with you the inspiration behind this lovely card I made today for a friends birthday.....

The inspiration came from Stephanie Ackerman, she is a fabulous doodle artist and has a lovely inspiring blog, you can take a look at it here.  I took one of her doodling classes last year and I took another one just the other month and enjoyed every minute. 

She has recently designed a set of stamps and one of them especially reminded me of my daughter Sarah, the stamp is an image of a sweet girl, her name is Ginger and reading how Stephanie described her personaility, Sarah jumped to my mind immediately.  What Stephanie didn't know was that Sarah likes to been seen out in riding boots, horses have so much more energy than she has.

With the image of Sarah, Ginger in mind, I just needed to get Ginger in my stash, so whilst shopping at the on-line American site (here)  I added a few more bits to my "cart", as you do, including the stamps used in the card above.

Obviously apart from the stamps everything else is from that lovely company I support so often.

Happy crafting.

Carole
x

Halloween treats

I have my neighbours little grandchildren popping roung later to trick or treat me.   Look what I've made for them:

I chose happy looking bats as they are only little! 

The treat boxes were made using my Stampin' Up Pillow Box die, the Square Lattice & Perfect Polka Dots embossing folders, the circle was cut from Peach Parfait card stock using the Stampin' Up Circles #2 die and the happy little bats were download and cut with my Silhouette. 

Have a happy day and thanks for popping in to see my blog today.

Carole
x

Afternoon with a real Princess

Hello everyone,

I've had such a lovely weekend.  Usually I am either working/teaching or we have visitors, usually the girls with their boyfriends.  Nobody ever mentioned that when they grew up our weekends might mean lots of fun, but also lots of cleaning and shopping before and then lots of cooking whilst they are all here (girls need clothes and boys need food and plenty of it!), followed by extra washing and ironing when they've gone back.  I alway love having them home though, playing mother hen has always been right up my street and I do feel a huge amount of sadness when they leave. 
Anyway, this weekend, I have played and played, both girls are happy where they are and I have no work commitments really pressing and as part of my on-going therepy, I've allowed myself to play!  I started a new on-line class last week and have spent lots of time making some lovely projects, which you will be able to see if you attend my crop on 19th November.  Today though, I spent time scrapbooking, David and I searched our loft yesterday morning looking for photos and we found a huge amount of them, photo's I'd forgotten we had.  I've only opened a couple of packets so far and when I found these photos, I knew I'd have to scrapbook them!

Normally if I'm scrapbooking I use very little product and spend very little time, but now I have given myself time, I thought I'd use both......time and lots of product.  We so often buy product and save it, we shouldn't save it we should definitely use it whilst we love it and whilst it's new!

This album page is made using one of the new scrapbooking kits from Stampin' Up that I bought this month, it's called Country Club.  Since I was little, green has been one of my favourite colours and in Country Club, Stampin' Up are using my favourite shade - Pear Pizzazz.

I teamed the Country Club Simply Scrappin' kit with Pear Pizzazz DSP and buttons from the Stampin' Up Regals collection.  I also used the Stampin' Up Sizzix Timelesss Type Junior Alphabet Sizzlits Dies for some of the letters and numbers.  I made the rosette using Pear Pizzazz Seam Binding Ribbon and Stampin' Up's Linen Thread to tie a little knot in the buttons.  The word "Celebrating" and the little horseshoe are die cut from my Silhouette.

Happy crafting and looking forward to sharing more at my crop on 19th November.... email me to book your space.

Thanks for looking at my blog today.

Carole
x

Crafting definitely helps with stress

I'm back, I needed to craft to help with my stress levels!  Sarah, my daughter, was lept on, on Saturday night in Oxford and her foot has been pretty severely injured.  The doctors (she has two, private ones, these days....she is so lucky and I'm so grateful to them!) saw her and sent her for x-rays and now we are waiting to see what the consultant has to say about the damage.

Crafting always makes me less stressed and I wanted to make a simple, clean looking card for one of my ladies, to let her know that I am thinking of her at the moment.  I came up with this one......

I was so pleased with it that I decided to make a whole set......

As I started making them, a request came in via our Pink Ladies Facebook group for samples of cards to be used at the NEC next week, so with no further ado and whilst everything was out I made two of each!  I hope you get to see them at the NEC if you are going.

I have used four of the new In Colours, Wisteria Wonder, Calypso Coral, Pool Party and Island Indigo.  I stamped on Whisper White using one of the new hostess sets, Simply Soft,  This is a two step stamping set so my Stamp-a-ma-jig came in handy too.  I have used my Fiskars trimmer to double emboss the edges of the Whisper White mat.

I'm feeling so much better and calmer after crafting today.

Happy crafting and thanks for popping by my blog today.

Carole
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