Red Letter Day

Am so excited just had to share this - my son and his partner got engaged today! Guess what I will be making tomorrow?

Mags

The missing card!

The picture of the missing card for my cousin's birthday has been found! I really thought I had deleted it, but no - it was just because it was a card for a couple of days before Christmas and I had made it ahead of time! and scanned it instead of taking a photo! (That'll learn me as they say!)

Just a simple cuttlebug embossing on dark blue card, and then highlighted with chalk, mounted on silver mirri and mounted on white card. another piece of the dark blue card also mounted on mirri with a Happy Birthday peel off. It did look better in real life than the scan. I do find photos are sometimes better than scans

Today's card and a photo from Christmas

I had the good fortune this Christmas of having a cyber pal to stay. We had great fun. She arrived on Christmas Eve and we spent Christmas Day with my daughter and her family. We were all there again on Boxing Day and were joined by my son and his family.

Having said I wouldn't be doing Christmas this year, I somehow ended up with another family get together on Saturday, when not only did my son and daughter and their families come for lunch, but also my husband's brother and his wife. Jacque was still with us - and some mutual friends popped across to see her - and also stayed for lunch. So 14 of us in all . The photo shows my "Sheenie" cyber pals, my daughter (also a Sheenie) and my two granddaughters (honorary Sheenies).

Jacque went home on Sunday - and I really miss her, she really became part of the family for a short while.

The "Sheenies"
Donna, Jacque, Moi, Jan
Bea, Ellie, & Dawn

Today I have knuckled down and made a card for my daughter's mother-in-law. I discovered she loves giraffes over Christmas, which was fortunate as I had already started to prepare the card before Christmas, using the Jayne Netley Mayhew CD. The card was a bit of a nightmare - as I tried originally tried to print the giraffe skin paper and the image straight on to fancy card (having layered it using Publisher) - but the printer had other ideas!

Colours aren't too brilliant - the ribbon is actually quite dark green, as is one of the backing papers between the giraffe skin paper and the floral paper!

Catching up!

Now that the Christmas celebrations are over, I can catch up with the blog. there was a card to go on before Christmas, but for life of me don't know what I did with the picture - duh! I probably deleted it from the camera by mistake!

I did mean to put this picture of this year's chocolate log on though! Large chocolate swiss roll (bought), covered in buttercream flavoured with orange water and then coated with three sorts of melted chocolate, plain, milk and white! Was a bit scrummy!

I haven't made these this year, but thought I would share a couple of novelty ideas with a swiss roll and a jaffa cake! My children likes helping with these when they were small.

Christmas Cakes!

Well here is the result - two of the three done - the third will be similar, but it is to be an ordinary "white" fruit cake, rather than a rich fruit cake so I cannot make it yet - although the poinsettia is done.

So here they are - two cakes and 8" and a 6" and a close up of one of the poinsettias.

I fairly pleased with them - they are by no means perfect, not up to the standard I would normally, but I think I am out of practise. Last night I couldn't get the poinsettias right - and as I flopped into bed, I suddenly realised what I had done wrong! too late! You probably won't notice but there is not enough movement in the leaves - duh!

Also the icing is not perfect - instead of leaving the cakes after I had covered them for a couple of days before I put the writing on, I did it whilst the icing was still soft and I have got knuckle marks - hey ho! they are only for the family.

Probably if I hadn't mentioned this you wouldn't have noticed, but I wanted to be honest! Perhaps if I take more photos in daylight without the flash - the imperfections won't show!

I am searching for inspiration for the family's Christmas cakes this year. Trying to think of something new is hard. Dawnywol has made me feel guilty as she made twelve 4" christmas cakes for all her staff, headteacher and for her daughter's teacher - putting me to shame this year - although I have made our cakes.

The first decision is floral or cute. I am tending toward floral for a change as I did cute last year. I have in my mind a single cream poinsettia, on the other hand our recent demo at sugarcraft club was a really funky turkey sitting on the cake - decisions, decisions. In the meantime here are a few past cakes whilst I decide!

One decision has been made - I am covering them with sugarpaste rather than Royal Icing. The following are all sugarpaste, showing various techniques I taught to students over the years. I love the candle ones - haven't done those for some time! perhaps it is time to go back to the beginning and start again!

How do you make a 4" cake you ask? you use an 8" cake mix and divide it between four heinz sponge pudding tins!

I was bored!

Withdrawal symptoms were kicking in having finished the Christmas cards, but decided to play with Andy's cd AGAIN! I needed a card to put our Postie's Xmas Box in so ........... made this one tonight. Even did a touch of decoupage, although scan doesn't show it that well. The back of the card has a postman's hat, another of the letters, and a peel off saying "Santa's little helper!"

a few more cakes ...

as promised a few more cakes of various styles. (the figures on the first one were bought by the bride).

A few more cakes

I haven't made any cards today - in fact I have been tidying my craft stuff up at the moment, and tackling that dreaded thing that begins with H and ends with a K!

In fact my halo needs polishing, as not only did I tidy up, but I did a bit of gardening, two washloads, and defrosted the freezer! So I thought today I would just show a few of my cakes. I have chosen a selection of Wedding cakes.

Will put some more on tomorrow. Hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyd making them. (Don't forget you can click on the images to make them bigger).

I probably should have mentioned that I have made all the flowers from sugar (apart from the gypsophilia which is special dried gyp for cakes) - and the roses on the first cake are set in a crocheted bell, (which my mum made on this occasion, but I have done some myself ). The crochet was stiffened with sugarwater and set over a bell shape to dry.

Another couple of cards for a giggle!

Again using images from Andy Carolan's Card Toonz Professional Nuttyness cd. I seem to be using this cd a bit lately - you know how it goes - you browse through a cd you haven't used for ages and suddenly you are thinking - "oooo I could use that image for ..... "

The first one is for the nurses at our Surgery (my husband has to visit them twice a week for dressings and we always end up in fits of laughter when we are there - so thought this would give them a giggle).

I have to visit the Dentist a couple of days before Christmas, and wouldn't normally bother to send him a card - but couldn't resist this image and had to use it, as it reminds me so much of him! (hope that's the only tooth he gets from me this Christmas, as he is threatening to remove one of mine!)

Happy Birthday Charley!

It is my eldest great-niece's 18th Birthday today. I wanted to do something a bit "whacky".

Fortunately Joanna Sheen is stocking the Booty'N'Boob templates, and the hanger and basque were in the set. Base card is stardream and the basque is mounted on blue shimmery glitter card from my KB stash. I punched holes in the basque with my japanese screw punch (again a purchase from Joanna) and laced with red ribbon from my Christmas Cake making stash! I made the top of the basque with pink/green glitter finish paper and added some peel-offs and a couple of roses (no guessing where I got them from - yes JS of course). I added the little card (again from my KB stash) to make it look like a gift and spelled out Charley's name on the hanger.

Can't wait to hear her reaction when she opens it later today!

I had a thought! - so an extra card today!

I had to collect some more Guide publications from the printers today (a reprographics section of a local insurance company) and suddenly thought - I ought to make the girls a card. So did this quickly this afternoon using Andy Carolan's Card Toonz Professional Nuttyness cd, in the hope that it might give them a giggle!

Two more from this year's cards - still simple - but then you know I only do simple. Star peel offs from my stash, with extra colouring with sakura pens, and a decoupaged card, from the pack of decoupage that I bought at the recent fundraiser.

The same but slightly different!

If you look carefully you will see these are the same but different - the images are different sizes! One for my daughter and husband and one for my son and partner. As both families have two cats - this was the obvious choice of image this year.

The image is from JS PamWest cd, and one of my favourites. Mounted on the two matching backing papers and some silver mirri-like paper from my stash (it was actually from some lovely packs from Lakeland - wish they still did craft stuff as these packs of paper were really excellent). I have enhanced the cats with a black sakura glaze pen to make them stand out more, and of course as they are for family white floradoodle poinsettias added. I also like the holly border peel-off that I bought from Crafty Ideas by Kaz, when we popped in the other week.

Cards for Granddaughters

A couple of weeks ago I had my eldest granddaughter Ellie for the day as she was off sick from school. Naturally we were crafting. She wanted to use the cat in the window peel-off, but as she was only messing about I was loathe to let her use it. However, we came to a compromise and I said I would put it on her Christmas card!

So to keep my promise I came up with the idea of using an image from the Joanna Sheen Pam West CD and use that as the background for the window. with a bit of tricky cutting out I made curtains from some sparkly pink/green paper and then mounted the whole lot on the image from the CD. Using peel-off pens I coloured the cat black, as that is the colour of her cat. The finished window was then mounted on some more backing paper from the Pam West cd - belonging to another Christmas cats image on the cd. I will post pictures with that image tomorrow. I then finished the card with some peel-offs her name and a floradoodle. Ellie is a true crafter and knows what parting with a floradoodle means!

To keep the theme going I then made a card for Beatrice in a similar fashion, using another window peel-off from the same sheet, and used the same technique and image for the window. Father Christmas was coloured with sakura pens and some stickles for his beard. Finished in similar way to Ellie's but with a different teddy peel-off. Again a flora doodle - as even at the age of two she loves these!

Ellie hasn't seen her card yet, but Bea has received hers and she loved it and talked me all through it, and I can report that she stroked her flora doodle - another crafter in the making!

Poinsettia Cards

Just a couple of simple ones using some of my cardstock stash and a decoupaged poinsettia.