Holiday pics - tune out if you like!

Hello bloggers,


as I said before, you can now endure  enjoy some pics from my recent holiday to Portugal. We had a wonderful time and the kids were mostly good as gold. We spent the holiday together with my in-laws and my brother-in-law with his little family, everyone enjoyed it a lot!
Now without much further ado, some impressions:

My boys on the beach, aren't they sweet?

Vasco da Gama tower, Lisbon expo

Riding the hill train in Lisbon

The big and little kids...

my little family

Posing for mum

Go-carting in front of the Ozeanarium in Lisbon

one of the many beautiful flowers we saw

Obidos - beautiful old city where you can walk all around the city wall

Hubby playing for the camera, but he really is afraid of heights... *lol*

Streetview in Obidos

One of the many azulejos you find in Portugal - this is the entrance gate into Obidos

Magnificent old till in a shop in Obidos

My gorgeous boy :-)

little old me in the sunset...

Both my gorgeous ones again

Three generations of pool-jumpers in matching trunks

 *Lol * you're still here? Well done! Thanks for looking and I promise I'll post a card later today!

Hello again... have you missed me?

Hello there,

sorry I have been missing again and I feel terrible for letting the blogging slip again, but life has a funny way of getting in the way with children, husband, extended family and friends as well as mundane things like houshold chores and work demanding my attention. 

I am happy to say I have still been able to craft here and there but not much picture taking and therefore no blogging was possible. 

I am very lucky to be on the DT for Ruth of A Passion for Stamps because not only is she very talented but she is also very kind and understanding when I don't get to create with her lovely new images.

I had a little bit of time today to do some pleasure crafting and had a play with one of her new images - "Sweet Pea". It's gorgeous and I was itching to try it out. I also have seen some people playing with the "disappearing lines" technique and gave it a go with this image. I printed with the opacity of the lines down to 20% and coloured with Copics and coloured pencils.

I am quite happy with result and want to investigate this effect some more soon. I traced the shape of the PTI Mat Stack 3 die around the image and cut it out with scissors fussy cutting the buds to the side. The Sentiment is also by PTI and I created a faux mat around the panel by placing the die onto the lavender mat and tracing with a Versamark pen and brushing over with gold Perfect Pearls. The shimmer is glorious in real life but doesn't really show in the picture I am afraid. This was an addaptation of the current Make it Monday on Nichole Heady's blog, they do it with glitter instead of Perfect Pearls but I hope this qualifies as well.
I drew the lines on the side and top with the Versamark Pen as well, mounted the panel with foam pads for dimension and adhered to a card blank.

The card is actually only 10,5 x 10,5cm small as I was in the mood for a small notecard.


I am entering my card in the following challenges:
Make it Monday no.50 - Anything goes
Addicted to Stamps challenge no. 10 - Anything goes

Hope you like this card and I shall be back with some (more like loads!) of pictures of my recent holiday to Portugal. I got some fab pictures of my boys and some rather unfortunate ones of myself which helped me make my mind up about joining a slimming group next week! I will deliberate over wether to show you these or not *lol*

Workshop cards

Hello bloggers,

many thanks for your kind comments on my accident(s)! I am due to go to the doctors today to have a check-up on my head. Hope all is ok.
And my evening out with hubby was wonderful. We ate at a really nice restaurant that's not too far away called "The ginger fox". Their food is outstanding. We shared two starters of Tempura cuttlefish with cucumber and a soy/chili/coriander dressing and beefsteak carpaccio with marinated beetroot and horseradish sauce. I think I could just work my way through their starters and would always be happy. Mains were duck breast on crushed new potatoes, peas, samphire and black pudding for hubby and rib eye steak with garlic and paprika butter served with dripping chips and chargrilled strips of courgette. Yum! Hubby finished with a cheeseboard but I refrained from a pudding as I was feeling quite satisfied with what I had. A lovely chilean Pinot Noir washed everything down nicely.

Enough of this mouthwatering description, on to some cards.

One of my first workshops in the Glitterpot was an all-day Copic Introduction for Beginners. I chose to work on some Hero Arts flowers from a cling stamp set and a Penny Black wooden stamp. It gives people more options colour-wise, is quicker than more complex images and results can easily be made into quick cards.

Saying that, only one person in the class actually made a card during the workshop, everyone else was perfectly content on just colouring all day. I really enjoyed this class and hope my attendees had fun, too.

Here are the samples I had made up, showcasing how o create matching backgrounds as well as the colouring with Copics. The first one is clear embossed, the next two were stamped and outlined with markers. On the last card I used some masking to create a focal frame.

I'd love to know what you think!

P.S. Sorry for the picture quality recently, I took the pics next to a window for some daylight and got rather more of it than I bargained for *lol* Hope you can still see everything well enough!

Do things really come in threes?

Hello bloggers!

I really hope things come in threes, because that should mean I am through with some bad stuff for now!

About 3 weeks ago I fell down the stairs and got a rather large bruise on my behind as well as two smaller ones on my back and arm to show for it. The a few days ago I accidently bit very hard onto a fork and one of my front teeth crumbled a bit. Thankfully it only felt weird for a couple of days and now it's only a little chip that's come off (although I suspect the tooth is more fragile now...).

Well and now, on Thursday afternoon I had an accident in the bathroom. I hit the top of my head with the door handle while coming up from crouching and our door handles are kind of square with sharp corners. Ouch! I cursed a bit but thought not that much of it until I felt blood pouring out. As I couldn't see anything on top of my head I asked a friend from round the corner to look at it and she nearly gagged (but she is not good with blood and wounds to be honest *lol*). She pursuaded a very reluctant me to go to hospital where I was told it was good I had come in because it needed to be glued. So there, here I am now hoping, that's it for a while. Hate the thought of not being able to properly wash my hair for 4-5 days, only water, no shampoo. And brushing is hard, too as I have to avoid that area.

But enough now with the self-pity. I have some more stuff to show you later today from my classes and maybe I'll show you my husbands birthday card and gift wrapping as well. He turned 39 yesterday and we had a nice but uneventful day. And since he doesn't read my blog I can tell you, he's going to be taken out for a nice meal tonight. I told him, I am going on a Girls Night Out, but my girlfriend is coming to babysit, not pick me up ;-)

Glitterpot demo day cards - part 2

Hello bloggers,


today I am sharing the rest of the cards I made for the May demo days. These were all done with floral Penny Black stamps and Copics. I even snuck in a crochet flower I did out of some Basic Grey (I think) fibres I had lying around and made a couple of Easel cards, including my first circular one. Not much else to say about them, any questions, just ask :-)
And here we are:

Again, click on any image to see a larger version.

Glitterpot demo day cards

Hello bloggers! 


I know I have been rather quiet for a long while but that doesn't mean I haven't been making anything. Quite to the contrary actually. I have been making lots of samples for the Glitterpot demo days and for classes and thought I really ought to share a few of them with you all.
As there are so many I'll group them and share them bit by bit. Today I'm gonna show you a few Tilda cards I have made for the Spring Spectacular Demo Days in the Glitterpot on the last May weekend. I really enjoyed demonstrating and have just confirmed I'll be doing it again in September!
And here are my cards:

Click on any image to enlarge them.
I haven't done Tilda cards for ages before this as I had gone off them for a while, but doing these reminded me again of how great they are to colour. I have been using Happy Spring Tilda, Running Tilda, King Tilda and Castle Window. I used a masking technique to get Tilda to look out of the window. All imagesa re coloured with Copics and on the purpley one I used Copics (and DST plus glitter) to make the backing paper. On the last one I used a Copic refill to dye the seam binding ribbon to match the card.
The castle shape was cut by hand from grey cardstock and I sponged on Pumice Stone Distress Ink over a Post-it note mask to get the stone effect, enhanced by a bit of fine black pen. I think the rest is pretty self-explanatory but if you have any questions, as always, feel free to ask!


Bye for now, need to cook the kids dinner...

Bad, bad blogger - again!

Hello there,


I have been a bad blogger again and didn't post for over a month! I won't bore you with too much reasoning why, my life just has been (and still is) pretty busy. My workshops at home are going well and need prep work done and same with workshops for the Glitterpot. Just been there today for the first day of the Spring Spectacular demoing and it was fun. I am really enjoying working there but it means something had to give and rather than my family life I decided the blog could wait. I hope my readers understand.


I have been making cards all the time though and today I quickly want to share three of them. The first one was made for the Less is more challenge about 4 weeks ago ( I know....!) where the challenge was "Thank you". Never made it in time to take a picture and post it but like it anyway. It's one of Ruth's digis again, her flowers are just lovely!

I coloured the Rhododendron with Copics and stamped the sentiment, then drew the frame with a black pen.


Because I liked this layout I made two more cards with it for my mother and mother in law for mothers day (second Sunday in May):

The text is computer generated, the magnolia and camelia are coloured with Copics again.


Hope to be back with more soon! Thanks for stopping by!