Cycling Gold!

As mentioned in my previous post there has been no crafting at the weekend as I went to watch my husband Graeme at Newport velodrome.

He was competing in the National Masters Track Championships.  From age 30 and over all the riders compete within age categories at various events.

Graeme got a hard fought for silver in the scratch race (basically first over the line after many laps!) on Saturday, 4th in the Pursuit and then a blistering ride in the Points race yesterday netted the gold!!
It was a tad stressful - it was an 80 lap points race, every 10 laps the first 4 riders over the line get points (5,4,2 & 1) and if you lap the field you get 20 points.

Graeme lapped the field twice and because he was at the front also netted some points in between times - quite impressive and nice to have some of his team mates there to see it too.

Quite tired today so just a little browse at what to buy from the new Stampin' Up catalogue that goes live tomorrow!!

Love me, Love my DOG

A quick fly past between working and bike races with a card!

This is using another fab Woodware stamp called 'Huge Dog'!!

I've used the extra little stamps in the set to add the paw prints, woofs and little dog head.

Main words coloured in copics and all mounted on a 5x7" kraft card.

Off to Newport Velodrome for the rest for the rest of the weekend so sorry again for the slow down in posts.
Jill

Bicycle thanks

Apologies for the week off there - not intentional, some long days at work followed by some being out and about and keeping up with cards and I ran out of time for blogging.

Hope everyone has been enjoying the sun - I got rather roasted judging bike races yesterday but have been quilling today which has been good (can't share that with you yet though).

A bit of a last minute photo today (unsurprisingly!!) of the Thank You cards I made to be given to helpers this weekend.

Thanks to Tracy for this one!  I was having a little nosey at her sale cards recently and saw this bike die which I hadn't come across before so had to get it immediately of course.

I've also die cut some ovals to mount it on, a couple of Stampin' Up punches,  a sentiment and some card candi and 20 cards later here we are.

Sporting Father's Day

Well, considering I was initially very disappointed that I had to cancel my Plan A for today it has turned out to be a very pleasant day.

I had coffee (and a spot of cake) and a crafty chat with Val over at Aquarius blog, then coffee & a snack with a friend before popping to Sherborne on a craft reconnaissance mission!!

All very lovely in the sunshine - and hopefully fruitful on the mission side but I'll have to report on that another day.

These cards are a couple of Father's Day cards I've made this week.

The stamps are a Papermania set that I've stamped in memento rich cocoa and added a little bit more shading with brown pencil.  I have stamped the main image twice, the second one is cut out and 3D'd on - using thicker pads on the footballer as this was hand delivered, the rugby one was a commission to be posted.

The cards are 5x7" from Anna Marie and are layered up with gold, dark brown and more kraft card.

Finished with peel off sentiment and some matching card candi.  

Hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine.

Jill

Santa in June

Well, more by luck than judgement I have a Christmas card today - my first of the year!!

At the recent Stampin' Up training I went to we were shown a card made from framelits which I wanted to try.  A recent delivery of retired stock old olive & cherry cobbler card was to hand which started this card and as the colours reminded me of Christmas I found some stamps to go with them!

The santa image is from an SU set called Santa's List and the stamp on the back section of the card is from Pines & Poinsettia and is coloured with pens each time so the image has 3 colours on it.

The sentiment is also from this set, cut out and added to the front with 3D foam.  I think it's quite an effective style and I'm just having a play with a non-xmas one between actually doing some quilling.

Jill

Horsing about

Well, what a lovely day after a bit of rain first thing (and the thunder & lightning overnight which completely passed me by - I was exhausted!!).  The weather had been built up to be so bad today so I went out armed with waterproof and brolly this morning only to wander round with sunglasses in a t-shirt all day - ideal as I've been to a couple of outside events which has been rather lovely.

Back to crafting and as is often the case when I've done a card and someone sees it there is an element of copying!

My next commission was for a 50th birthday today for a lady that owned a horse.  After yesterday's card you will notice the banner bunting makes another appearance!

I've used 2 scalloped oval tonic dies for the base and added some great decoupage from Paper Nation I have in the stash.

Banner stamp is on kraft card and punched out, layered over some linen thread with little bows added to finish off.  I didn't have time to cut the individual letters for this sentiment so had to resort back to trusty peel offs.

Beach Wedding

A commission to share with you today and congratulations to the couple involved who got married yesterday!

Through a friend the Mother-of-the-Bride asked me to make a wedding card.

They had a great wedding invitation with bunting on and one of the guest requirements was to wear flip flops.

My task was to make a beach-themed card with bunting on with the name of the bride and groom on, a sentiment, sandcastle and flip flops!

The 'sea' on my card mirrors the wedding invitation, as does the colour of the base card.
I used the double sided adhesive sheet I bought at the show last week for the beach and added craft sand to it and cut out a couple of sandcastles.

The bunting is using an SU banner punch and the letters are a new addition to my stash as I get asked to personalise things a lot - I'm a huge fan of these already!!  They are Joy Craft dies.

At this point I should say the banners also mirror the colours on the wedding invitation!

Computer generated sentiment on a 3D banner and some little hearts to tie everything in.

And then the flip flops!! I remembered making some years ago from shrink plastic.  So I googled the process, found my shrink plastic and here we are.  The picture may not do them justice but they have wire on them for the 'thong' element and seed beads for decoration.

It's always a bit scary providing a card for such an occasion when you don't know those involved but my feedback was that it exceeded their expectations so it was worth the flip flop sticking trauma I had en-route!

Getting inky workshop!

My afternoon workshop with Jane Gill on Saturday resulted in this card:

The main background and the background the flowers are stamped on were created with the 'Creative Palette' (like a Gelli plate apparently which I know some followers have played with!).

This isn't the sort of thing I would usually play with but it was really enjoyable.  We did some test pieces first using different colour inks and a variety of 'things' to make patterns like combs, bubble wrap, bottle tops and sponges.

I played with one of my test pieces and will make this in to a card too sometime.

Both backgrounds used 3 different colour inks but in varying quantities.  The fab image is Woodware set JGS332 Spring Flowers which we stamped and embossed in white powder, then coloured with pens.

Really good to try something different and learn things from Jane and the lovely Jan who runs Japonica in Exmouth.

We even had a short break to go and watch 800 Royal Marines speed march past!!  You can read the story here - it was definitely worth seeing as they came past the end of the road.

Banksia workshop

The first 'show and tell' from the workshops I did on Saturday is this card:

This fabulous Banksia was made under the supervision of Jane Gill who is 'the' expert in punch craft.

The flower was actually made from nearly 30 of these punch suns!

It was great to do though and something I would like to do more of.

All the card is from a lovely textured pad that Woodware sell and the stamp is one of Jane's too of course!

Rather pleased with this and will show you the afternoon project tomorrow.

Especially for Val here is the confession of purchases from the papercraft show yesterday - probably the dullest selection ever!!

I topped up with white A4 card and 8x8" cards from Tim at Anna Marie and this is what else I bought!

Even from this the butterfly cards and candi embellishment pad were only bought as they were reduced and I couldn't resist.

I've used some of the A4 adhesive on a project today, needed a few envelopes but did treat myself to 3 stamps - I shall endeavour to use them and show you a card sometime.

One stamp I had planned to buy had sold out by the time I battled my way in to My Mums Craft Shop stand so I'll save that for another day.  It was quite a social too as we met up with several local crafters and had a few chats on the way round.