...one...

I cannot believe how quickly time is passing by these days. We celebrated a friend's little boy's 1st birthday today, and when we were chatting realised we haven't caught up since before Christmas! All our children are growing and changing at a phenomenal rate, and before I know it my own baby girl will be turning 1.... and my big girl will be 6...

For the birthday boy's card, I used the fabulous colour challenge from Color Throwdown:

I realised I haven't been stamping much on my cards of late (loving embossing and die cuts!), so thought I'd challenge to include a bit more stamping. It wasn't much, but at least it's more than a greeting :)

The little man of the moment had a great party, his Mum loved the card and both my girls were alseep within 10 mins of leaving the party, so I'd class that as a fabulous day!


Thanks for visiting and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Retro Stars

Hello again! I hope you've had a relaxing weekend - it has been a lot cooler here and a bit wet, so we took our girls down to watch the Todd River flowing yesterday (for those of you overseas, the Todd River is a dry river through Alice Springs and only flows rarely - it hasn't flowed for 18 months); it was the first time for the little one seeing it flow. Today I've been able to spend a bit of time at my craft desk - yay!

I haven't played along with ColourQ or Stampin' Royalty for a while, but this week's challenges were perfect for a fun 4 year old boys card; great retro colours from ColourQ, and 'Dressing Down (No Embellishments)' from Stampin' Royalty.

I have been wanting to try 'fully embossed panels', so I adhered the stars to the background panel before running the whole panel through the Big Shot. I'm really happy with the effect (this is actually the second card I did today with this!) - no embellishements required!!

Have a great week and thanks for visiting!

Three T-Rexs

Hello again!

Apologies for the lack of postings again - I am seriously in awe of those of you who have two or more children and still manage to find time to indulge your passions :) I have managed to squeeze in some time over the past couple of days to finish some long overdue projects.

Today I have used the latest Sweet Sunday Sketch to make a card for my godson (not sure if I'll get it in for the challenge on time though....) HAD to use Dinoroar for him and of course his age is an important addition at three! I pulled the colours from the DSP, used the new 1" square and postage stamp punches for the dinos and faux sueded some Baja Breeze for the panel.

Thanks for visiting
Hope you have a great weekend!

Fourth Birthday Party This Way

We've had a busy day of birthday parties today - two in the one day, overlapping in time and thank goodness at the same location! So, last night I stayed up making cards for the birthday boys.

My card today was for the first party and this picture featured over at Stampin' Royalty for this weeks challenge provided the inspiration (and it's also in the current catalogue!):

I took inspiration from the pennants and the colours of the lollies in the jars - nice and bright for a 4 year old full of energy!

As this card was for a boy, I cut the scallops off the pennant stamp from the new set Party This Way and strung them together with hemp twine (and mounted them with dimensionals); the '4' comes from the BDay Party RubOns - a great collection of birthday rubons. I created a bit more of a party fell with a cluster of balloons, and used Stampin' Write markers to colour the arrow.

This card contains 5 layers, so also fits the bill for this weeks Pile It On Challenge - Layers. It's been a while since I joined in over there.

It's still raining here; I thought living in the desert we'd hardly see rain, but apparently it's the third wettest year in recorded history.... So here's hoping it settles soon.

Thanks for visiting.

Stamps: Party This Way

Card: Yoyo Yellow, Real Red, Bashful Blue, Whisper White

Ink: Yoyo Yellow, Real Red, Bashful Blue, Green Galore

Other: Hemp Twine, Bday Party Rub-Ons

Punchy Punches

It took me a little while to get around to venturing into using punches, and now I use them on almost every project, which is particularly handy when a challenge is around punches like over at Stampin' Royalty at the moment.

I've seen these Onesie cards featuring on a few blogs over the last year or so and thought they would be good to make for a friend who has recently given birth to BEAUTIFUL twin girls. I like to make a card for each baby, both different as each baby is unique. The 'press studs' at the bottom were a handy way to use up a few retired eyelets too :) I've kept them quite simple, with most of the details being punch-derived.

I couldn't resist posting this little cutie for this challenge either. I love making this little stegosaurus!! This time he's featuring in Baja Breeze and Soft Suede (which are very boy-ish colours, so this fits with the criteria of Pile It On this week), with DSP from the Level 3 Hostess Set - Hand Drawn Bundle. Details on what was used to make this little fellow can be found at this post.

And last but not least, here's a creation by Luana (remember, she's 3!) for her Nanny for Mother's Day!! I now have no loose hearts floating around the craft area!

Thanks for visiting!

Onesie Cards

Stamps: Nursery Necessities, Big Deal Alphabet

Card: Blush Blossom, Almost Amythest, Pretty in Pink, Certainly Celery, Whisper White

Ink: Blush Blossom, Almost Amethyst, Pretty in Pink, Certainly Celery

Punches: 1 3/8" Circle, Scallop Circle, 1 1/4" Circle, Wide Oval

Other: Soft Subtles Eyelets (retired)

First Time for a ColourQ Challenge

I've seen another colour challenge appearing frequently on blogs I visit, ColourQ, so I thought I'd pop on over and check it out myself. Arielle has put together some great challenges, so I thought I'd play along when I can. I missed last week, but not this week!!! Aren't the colours just great?! I am planning on using them for a scrapbook page for Mum's (very late) calendar too, but have run out of time tonight (and I'm not sure if this challenge is cards only or not).

The son of my friend in Germany is turning 3 soon. I have been a terrible friend and have not kept in fabulous contact (they last time we saw each other in person was 1999), and now I feel extra guilty as I received a care package from her the other day with some lovely bits and bobs for Luana and Haribo lollies for me - they are so good!! So, I have organised myself and made this card for her little man. Those animals from Animal Stories in the Summer Mini are just too cute! I've also edged the Whisper White mounted panels in Real Red to add a little bit more dimension.

Now I just need to remember to send this so it arrives in time for his birthday!

Stamps: Animal Stories (Summer Mini), Best Friends Numbers (retired)

Card: Brilliant Blue, Real Red, Tempting Turquoise, Yoyo Yellow, Whisper White

Ink: Real Red, Tempting Turquoise, Yoyo Yellow

Punches: 1 1/4" Circle, 1 3/8" Circle

Other: paper piercer

Listen to the chorus of the Brontesaurus....

Remember that song? I sang it all week when I was making my cute little stegosaurus cards (see this post and this one), and I've been singing it all this week since I made this super cute brontesaurus card for my Godson's 1st birthday.

This weeks colour challenge from Makeesha worked really well with what I was wanting to do, and I paired it with Taylored Expressions 100th Sketch (Taylor's celebrating this week (and rightly so!), so go and check out her blog).

I had so much fun designing this dino, and he's not quite as fiddly as the stegosaurus. The hardest part was trying to get the small oval into the right place in the punch to trim it down a bit.

The circles in the sketch let me pull out my brand spanking new circle scissors plus - it's great!! I distressed and inked the edges of the 'hill', and popped up the dino circle as well as the dino with dimensionals.

Thanks girls for helping me make this special card. Our little man had a great birthday party on the weekend; Happy First Birthday buddy!!! XXXXX

Stamps: Family Phrases, Itty Bitty Backgrounds (retired)

Card: Brocade Blue, Mellow Moss, Ruby Red, Very Vanilla

DSP: Brocade Blue Prints (Level 1 Hostess)

Ink: Brocade Blue, Mellow Moss

Punches: Small Oval, Wide Oval, Word Window, Crop-o-Dile, Small Star

Other: Circle Scissors Plus, Paper Piercer, Vintage Brads, Lots of Letters On Board Chipboard, Journalling marker

Here Comes the Stegosaurus

I think dinosaurs are pretty cool and the stegosaurus is my favourite. When I was pregnant I found a shop that sold plush dinos, but no stegosaurus :( I'm quite happy Luana has got into 'Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs' - she was actually telling me all their names today! So, I was a bit excited about Leah's July Challenge and had planned what I was going to make weeks ago, but it was left 'til today to actually make the card - oops! And Luana was having a velcro day, so not much time for stamping...

Leah pulled the colours Pacific Point. Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, Riding Hood Red and Whisper White. I (of course) had to run with the dinosaur theme too!

I know there are some very talented paper crafters out there, and using punches to create critters is not one of my strong points, so I did a bit of a search and found this cute little fellow on Kristen's Kreations and as an added bonus, it was a stegosaurus!! I tried really hard to think how I could do a triceratops using the scallop circle punch too, but creativity eluded me... If you know, could you please leave a comment!! Thanks!
I've made a couple of little adjustments to Kristen's original - I added in an extra layer of spine plates to emulate the double row, and I've added in tail spikes too which I just cut free hand. The reason Luana was telling me all about Harry's Dinosaurs is because I went on-line to double check Steggy's colours - he's a light blue with purple spine plates, so my little fella became Baja Breeze with Pacific Point spine plates! (I made an all Kiwi Kiss one as a prototype, so I'll pop him on a card and show you all at some stage). The rest of the card is quite straight forward - many thanks to my brother for humouring me and giving me suggestions on the layout!!

Thanks again Leah - this was a lot of fun!!

Stamps: Birthday Wish

Card: Pacific Point, Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, Riding Hood Red, Whisper White

Paper: Urban Oasis, Washington Apple, Hand Drawn (from the Level 3 Hostess Bundle Hand Drawn)

Ink: Riding Hood Red

Punches: word window, 1 3/8" circle, small oval, large oval, 5 petal flower, Crop-o-dile, 1 1/4" square, 1 3/8" square

Other: paper piercer, Basic Black Stampin' Write Journaller