Sad Day Today

Sorry to report that we have lost one of the little kittens that I posted about on Thursday.

It is the little black one who, it was quickly obvious, was not thriving.
She was not feeding and so my daughter in law and oldest grandaughter have been feeding her by hand with kitten milk every two hours day and night in an attempt to save her.

She did take the food but unfortunately died this morning despite all their efforts. It seems there was  an underlying problem that was not immediately obvious and that she could not have survived whatever was done but at least we know she died being loved and cared for and didn't starve to death -  poor little thing.

I'm pleased to say that her two sisters and one little brother are all doing well so we must be grateful for that!

My 'Grand kittens'

These four little kittens were born at 2.am on Wednesday morning to Lola who is the daughter of my cat Badger who is pictured in my sidebar with Lola's sister Sox who still lives with us.

Lola  is just under one year old now and lives with my daughter in law and  grandaughters. She is now a mother herself - which makes my Badger a Grandmother cat! 

I saw the babies today and they are just lovely! Needless to say I didn't get time to craft as I spent far too much time just watching them with their very proud little mother.

Just Saying Hello

This is a card I have made today using another of my favourite Sugar Nellie Didgi images. I think the little girl images are so sweet.

The card is actually white but because  it's very three dimensional the light kept getting into the scanner and it looks a little grey on here. She was coloured with my Promarkers as were the leaves attached to the white flowers.

I used my cuttlebug to emboss the backing to the image in white and it was then matted onto a red glitter circle - both circles cut with my Cricut. The sentiment was made using two separate stamps. The outer circle was from a freebie stamp given with the Stamper Magazine which had a different sentiment inside and the words were from a set I've had for ages.

I spent some time making the flowers and leaves I used and thought some of you might be interested in seeing how I made them  so  I have had a go at producing  the instructions which are below -  I hope they  might be of interest to some of you.

This is the first time I have spent a whole afternoon crafting for ages and I think I'm getting back into the swing. Pity I have a really busy week or two coming up as I won't be able to indulge myself very  often.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

Creating Paper Flowers

I have seen some lovely flowers on people's cards and thought I'd show you how I did those on my latest card. I hope you find it interesting.

I have a lot of plain white flowers that I bought from QVC ages ago - they can be coloured  how you wish but I have left them white for this particular card.

 These particular ones have six petals but you can use flowers with any number of petals using the same process and you could use flowers cut with a die too.

First of all I got my main materials together.

This was:

Three flowers of the same size.

Tacky Glue

Scissors

Then I cut one petal out of one of the flowers, two out of the second and left the third intact.



The pieces that have been cut out are not used for the flowers so can be thrown out - or saved of course if you feel like sticking them all together to make another flower if you are a really thrifty crafter!!

Then:

Put some tacky glue on the far right petal of each piece you have cut and stick it under the left side petal to close it into a flower shape again. You will then have two conical flower shapes, one smaller than the other and one full flower.



Bet you're well  ahead of me now --- it's time to stick them together.



Put a good dab of tacky glue in the centre of the whole flower.



Put the larger of the shapes you have made in to the centre of the full flower and hold in place for a moment or two using an embossing tool  or something similar.

Then do the same with the smaller piece and hold it down well - press a little while you are doing this  to help get the new flower shape. Then leave to dry.

When they are completely dry you can tease the petals a little to shape the flowers.





I wanted to frost these a little so I touched the petal edges with white frosty stickles and then put a gem in the centre of each. I think they would look lovely with pastel shades of stickles on the petal edges too.

I then wanted to add some leaves so chose a couple of larger flowers from the same pack and coloured them with a grass green Promarker. No doubt a leaf green would have been better but I didn't have one!

When they were cut like this they made really credible leaves.

Hope you like my first effort at a tutorial and that it isn't too old hat for you all!





Baby Boy

I think I havebeen neglecting the baby cards recently so have dug out another of my Sugar Nellie digi stamps. This one is called Bambino. although I guessif I coloured the hat pink I could call it Bambina.

I think it's such a lovely image of a baby.

I coloured the white linen textured card with a shaving brush and a denim ink pad, leaving a white circular shape behind the image. It's the first time I've used these brushes although I've had them for ages - I think they work well and I'm sure I'll use them again.

The flower is cut from a piece of paper from my stash - not sure whose it is I'm afraid but it matched the blue of the baby's hat quite well I thought. Both the hat and the baby are coloured with Promarkers.

The sentiment is computer generated and attached with a brad.

Hope you like it.

Hello to my lovely followers

It's lovely to see I have some followers! Some of you I already know and others I hope I will get to know soon - thank you for your interest in my little blog. It's very exciting to see my blog growing and to learn how to add all the different elements. etc.

I must thank Judi for inspiring me to get going in blogland and her help with some of my problems and Kathleen at Crafty Bloggers for all the help her blog has given me too.

I have been so busy playing with the blog that I haven't done any crafting so I think I had better try to put that right soon. Hope you are all having a good day.

Hi again -been busy today

I have uploaded a few more cards this afternoon from my stash. I hope you like them.

These cards are all 6x6 as I have been making more of them this size recently instead of A5. Just for a change. It took a while to get used to the different proportions but I think I am getting there now.

I have realised that my cards looked out of proportion on the blog because my computer monitor is a wide screen and it was stretching them - now I have adjusted it to look at the blog everything is back to normal. I thought I was doing something wrong when uploading them. Drrrrrr!

It's taking me quite a while to work out how to do things on here - largely because I'm the sort of person who does things first and only reads instructions when I am about to tear my hair out. Stupid I know but I'm too impatient to get going to read the help pages first.

Off to look at more Sugar Nellies I think.

Here she is again - Connie in blue this time. I have backed her with two mats made with the same MS punch as the one below and added blue flowers this time to match her shirt.

Hope you like her as much as I do - I'll have to go and look at somemore of these Sugar Nellie digi stamps methinks!!!

I just LOVE this image - it's a Sugar Nellie digital image. I came across it by accident while browsing the sites and have had to use it twice this weekend. She is a dream to colour in with Promarkers
.
I have backed this image with a frame made with a Clarity Corner Stamp

(are you seeing a pattern emerging here?) and then backed it with a square made with my newest Martha Stewart punch. I love this punch as it punches in two inch increments - much easier to manage.

The flowers are some I bought recently from QVC, They are all white so easy to colour with Promarkers.

This is a dark and moody card. I sell all my cards for charity so need to make lots of different styles of card. I guess this is good for me as I have to try to change my style regularly otherwise all the cards I offer for sale will look the same!

I often find the ones I don't much like are the ones to go first ---- not sure what that says about my tastes.

This one is backed with some paper that I have had for ages so can't tell you where it came from but the image is created with sponged alcohol inks and overstamped with a black ink pad. I have stitched the image on this time as I think it adds to the 'rough' look of the card. The sentiment is from Clarity Stamps.

This is one of my digi images - I think it is from Sarah Kay. I am enjoying using these digii stamps more and more as I love being able to change the size. I've collected quite a few now and a lot of them I haven't got round to using so watch this space!

This was quite a quick card so I have used peel offs for the sentiment. The image is coloured with Promarkers and the shaping was done with my corner chomping scissors.

Hope you are all having a good Sunday - did you watch Barbara Grey?

I intend to scan in a few more of my cards today if I get the time - not sure why they are looking an odd shape on my screen though. I wonder if they look that way to everyone? All the cards I have posted so far are A5 but they look a bit mishapen. Maybe I am doing something wrong?
Oh well - we shall see, practice makes (almost) perfect.

Saturday 12th March 2011

You can see I am not a very active blogger yet. I am still learning how to manage my blog so it's going to be a slow process I think. I have had a bit of a break from card making lately as my craft room has begun to resemble a tip and whenever I tidy it up and get enthusiastic about making something new - it is back to looking just as it did before!

I have made a few cards recently so shall try to add them this weekend.