Another ugly card blank used!

I am down to the last few of my ugly card blanks :-) There are a couple more of this steroid-Barbie pink left, then a couple of grey ones which I have glimmer misted.

I embossed some pink bazzill bling with a cuttle daisy embossing folder and mirri-matted it. Then I stamped the flower with a bright pink brilliance inkpad and mirri-matted that too. The swirl is a sizzix die, also out of one of the mirri card blanks, and the sentiment is from a Personal Impressions stamp set. Must admit, I am not too happy with this card, though I am not sure why, all the elements are OK. Maybe just because it is pink :-)

Garden Layout

This started out as a plain and simple page - just the photos on the colour-blocked paper, plus a title. As usual it evolved ......... I used some basic grey rub-ons at the base of the page to offset the symmetry a bit, then stamped a border top and bottom before deciding on a title. I do wish I would think of these things before I stick the pictures down - it was quite awkward putting the rub-ons around them!

Snowflake Christmas card

I have not quite stuck to my resolution here - I was not going to use any new card blanks until the old ones were gone - but this square one is new(ish). However I have still used up an old blank on it ...... when I was rifling through the drawer to see what cards were next on the "use it" list, I came across some mirri card ones, in gold and silver. Fifty. Of each. And I have no excuse for these, they were neither a mail order disappointment nor a misguided gift from a well intentioned friend - no, I bought these in a shop, several years ago, of my own free will :-) What I was thinking I don't know, was I ever really going to make 100 gold and silver cards??? Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

I had completely forgotten about them, but suddenly it occurred to me that I could use them for mirri card mats on other cards! This will probably use them up relatively fast. Hence the pictured card - I embossed some bazzill bling cardstock (Serendipity, I think) with a snowflake embossing folder and mirri-matted it. Then I stamped & embossed (detail silver powder) one of my new snowflake stamps onto stampin' up whisper white card and mirri-matted that too. I shuffled them around on the card until they looked right, used 1mm foam pads to put the image over the embossed square, and added a sentiment and a line down the side for balance.

Now, if I adapt this design for rectangular cards, I can use up more of the old blanks at the same time!

Two ATC's

These are the two ATC's I made at the July crop and have recently swapped. They have a smooshy inked background and 4 or 5 different stamps over the top!

Recipe - Cherry Cake

I got the basic cake recipe from a lady at work - it is from the first cookbook she bought at age 18 (a Good Housekeeping book) and she is over 60 now, so it is a well tested recipe!

Jan's Basic Cake
5oz self raising flour
3 oz sugar (caster or light soft brown)
3oz fat (soft margarine or softened butter)
1 egg
4 tbs milk

Mix all ingredients together.

After mixing, I stirred in 5oz fresh cherries and put the mixture into a 7" square shallow cake tin, trying to distribute the fruit evenly.

Bake at Gas 5, 180C, 170C fan for 20 - 25 minutes , cool in the tin on a wire rack. Cut into 8 bars.

Remember to take photograph before DS1 gets his mitts on cake....... oops too late :-) Luckily it did get in the picture in the previous post!

Life is just a bowl of cherries!

Well, actually several bowls. In fact - almost every bowl I had in the house! We picked 16 pounds of cherries from our tree on Wednesday evening - it was absolutely amazing. We have had the tree ten years or more and have never had a harvest as the birds usually get them all first, we have become resigned to the fact that the tree is just a giant bird feeder :-) But this year............. we couldn't believe it! The branches were weighed down with fruit and although the birds had had a fair amount there were still loads left.

So ........ what to do with them all? I sent DH on an emergency vodka run while DS1 and I continued picking. We sorted, washed and stoned all the cherries and started off 3 litres of cherry vodka. I packed a couple of pounds in a dry sugar pack for freezing and then we called it a night as we were shattered.... the rest of the fruit went into the fridge for processing the following day.

Yesterday I took some fruit into work to offer to colleagues and on the way home got some brandy - can we see a theme developing here...... :-) In the evening, while DS1 cooked tea, I chopped cherries for chutney and got it simmering while we ate. Then I mixed up a cherry cake and started off the cherry brandy. And that was the last of the fruit! The photo shows some chutney, brandy and the cake.



At the weekend we are going to take the ladder to the tree and see how many cherries there are on the branches we couldn't reach......... :-)

July Craft Weekend Part three

This started off as a very simple LO, just the patterned paper, the circle, and a bit of stamping, I got all that done on the crop day ....... but I kept looking at it ....... and it just didn't seem to be enough! So yesterday I added the top border, made up of lace, dragonflies and buttons, then painted a chipboard scroll and attached it along with a bit of bling - which is actually an earring from the cheap bling shop in Eastbourne :-)

July craft weekend Part Two

This is one of the LOs I did on Sunday at the crop. I used old papers - the side sections are a paper I bought in America in 2004! - and stamped the borders. The title is cut on the robo, the font is Hawaiian Punk. The photo is of DS1 and the first time he bleached his hair.... it was supposed to be blonde but went ginger, exactly the same colour as next door's cat :-)

July Craft Weekend Part One

It doesn't seem like any time since I blogged the June weekend LOL. I got 9 cards done on the Saturday, at the crop on Sunday I managed 3 LOs and 3 ATCs after spending most of the morning cross stitching :-)

Here are the Christmas cards, all very simple, I am saving the more complicated ones for nearer the time! Purple and white were the colours for the day, all papers from Craft Creations. More ugly and pastel card blanks used up!

LOs and ATCs in the next post - haven't photographed them yet :-)

Moving on - Christmas in July!

I spent most of yesterday ferrying DS1 to the Job Centre and back. He was in there for an hour and a half - luckily I had brought my stitching, so I got quite a lot of that done! Then I managed to take the wrong road out of Lewes and we came a very scenic route back home :-( By the time we got back I was so wiped out I didn't have energy for anything, never mind crafting!

By late afternoon I felt better and came up with these two Christmas cards, plus most of a third one. They use old card blanks, not the really ugly ones, but ones almost as bad - pastels!!! These were given to me for Christmas a few years ago, one pack of squares, one pack of large rectangles, 50 in each pack.... they are next on the list to use up :-) The papers are new, the first new papers I have bought this year - they are from Craft Creations, who have a really lovely range of Christmas papers.

The card on the left has a snowflake trail (Inkadinkado) stamped onto a nestie mat, the sentiment strip is done with the Fiskars apron lace punch. The card on the right has a Hero Arts 12" border stamped right around the card top and bottom, the centre band of paper and the peel off lines also go right around the card. The sentiment (Stampendous) is stamped onto a nestie mat.

I will be using these layouts for a lot of my Christmas cards, they are easy and effective and I have a lot of different papers and stamps to ring the changes! It will also make it easier to use up the old card blanks, as all I will have to do is pick the papers and stamps and not have to worry about coming up with a new idea :-)