Pink & Grey Christmas

Hello!

It's been a while, I've been a little busy... making halloween costumes, the usual kiddy activities, music concerts and exams, housework...

Today I'm bringing you a quick little Christmas card that I whipped up yesterday just before transforming myself into a witch (dark purple eye shadow sure is difficult to budge when you're finished with it, LOL).

The colour combination I've chosen is from Just Add Ink Colour Challenge #91.

The layout is from Clean & Simple FTL#164

And my card is this one:

The stamp sets are PTI Snowflake Serenade and Christmas Friends. I heat embossed the bauble and the string. I also added some SU! Dazzling Diamonds glitter. The snowflakes were stamped in Versamark. I love grey snowflakes.

Before I go, I'll show you one of the costumes I created for yesterday's party. I have chopped my little girl's head off in the photo because I don't put my family photos in this blog, for their privacy (a real pity, because she looked SO cute). Her hair was yellow with ribbons made from the same material as the skirt all over her head.  She was Oscar the Grouch, and she loved her costume. The skirt can now be used by my eldest daughter, because the straps and Oscar's face were all just pinned on for the evening. My big girl is thrilled because this skirt is VERY twirly and floaty.

I hope you liked the card, and enjoyed the peek at my costume. :-)

Michelle
xxx

For Your Inspiration #16

Hello!

Welcome to another post for For Your Inspiration!  Steph has chosen another beautiful photo to inspire us this time, I'd love it if you would join us in Challenge number 16.

There is so much to inspire you there. I decided to use the lines created by the trees and the colours. My sentiment follows the angle of the horizon. The card is 10.5 x 10.5cm.

What I used (all SU!):
Card: Crumb Cake, Whisper White, Early Espresso, Soft Suede, Ruby Red (retired), Pumpkin Pie, Tempting Turquoise
Ink: Pumpkin Pie, Soft Suede
Stamps: Flight of the Butterfly

I'd love you to go and take a look at the other Design Team member's blogs and see what they've come up with. And our guest designer this week is so worth a visit, too!

Debbie
Debby
Keva
Peggy
Sara
Steph
E.T. (guest designer)

Thanks for stopping by today, and I'd love to see your response to the inspiration photo in the gallery.

Michelle
xxx

Storm

Hello!

Last week-end, my hubby and I were out on the front veranda watching a storm come over. Unfortunately, I didn't capture any of the spectacular lightning...but I did get some photos of those angry clouds!  Take a look...

They were rolling, tumbling, rumbling...

 In this one below, you can see that there is still light at the horizon, even though the rest of the sky was dark grey.

And then a window started opening up in the middle of the sky. So, so deep!

 The sunlight was peeking through a massive hole in the middle of these GIGANTIC clouds!

Then it started raining, so I retreated indoors for about 30 minutes. When I came back out, this is what I found:

Who would believe that only 30 minutes earlier there had been a spectacular storm underway?

I hope you enjoyed my show-and-tell.  Thanks for popping by.

Michelle
xxx

Christening Day

Hello!

Yesterday was Christening Day for one of my nieces. I looked everywhere for inspiration for a Christening card and sentiment, but it seems they are rare in blogland, or I was looking in the wrong places!  So I decided to just make a card I liked and to write my own sentiment inside.

The card:

You might guess her name is Elena.  The photo is a bit fuzzy, sorry!

I used the colours from CR84FN #40 again.

I SERIOUSLY love these colours.

I used SU! Card stock Soft Suede, Ruby Red, Crumb Cake, Very Vanilla
Ink was Real Red, Soft Suede, Crumb Cake
Ribbon is Soft Suede Taffeta
I also used Shimmer Mist all over the vanilla panel, and it sparkles so softly.
Stamps: PTI Outlines Alphabet, I have no idea what these babushka stamps are - I was given them without a name. They are clear stamps.


The Christening was wonderful. Elena was beautifully behaved right through the ceremony, and didn't flinch when she was baptised. She did give a little wipe of her forehead, but that was it. The party afterwards was superb. My step-family are Italian, and my sister's husband is Croatian, so we had the very best of Italian and Croatian food and hospitality. I seriously LOVE these family celebrations with the big extended family and our special friends.

Now I'm off to enjoy this beautiful blue-sky day (and perhaps squeeze in another card-making session later).

Michelle
xxx

ColourQ #106

Hello!

For my ColourQ entry this afternoon we have some dodgy photography on show. I didn't realise how LITTLE I use grey as my card base. When I've gone to photograph my grey card on my normal grey background, the card DISAPPEARED with only the front panel showing. So many variations of colour and positioning later (battling with the purple and grey skies outside), the final product is not so pretty, LOL!

This is my response to ColourQ #106:

I snuck in an extra colour, but shhh, don't tell anyone. My balloon baskets are actually grey with black stamped on them, but that is a bit hard to tell.

Here is the colour inspiration (isn't that backpack so cute?):

What I used:
Stamps: SU! A Little Treat, and PTI Botanical Silhouettes (sentiment)
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, SU! Daffodil Delight, Pumpkin Pie, Old Olive, Certainly Celery
Card: Basic Grey, Whisper White


So what do you think?

Michelle
xxx

OLW#68 and CR84FN#40

Hello!

I'm rushing out the door, so creative blog titles elude me! LOL.  I whipped up a couple of cards this morning to share with you.  The first is a response to One Layer Wednesday #68 and CR84FN Color Challenge #40.

Susan's challenge for OLW this week is to use triangles.  I think you can actually SEE the triangle in this one-layer card, yippee.  This time I created the stamping on a scrap piece of paper BEFORE stamping the card, just to make sure I could create the triangle that I had in my imagination.  I'm thinking of adding a couple of blingy bits to this card later. I like it as it is, but I also like a little bling.

The colours came from CR84FN:

I couldn't resist. I might come back and make some more cards in response to this colour challenge. I love them!

I used SU! Real Red, Soft Suede, and Crumb Cake. The stamp set is PTI Botanical Silhouettes.

My other card I made in response to a beautiful card I found on Pinterest and tracked down to Ingrid Danvers' blog.  Ingrid's card is this one:
                               
I wanted to make a one-layer card pretty much the same.  BUT I had a masking accident and my beautiful white space I had created was RUINED, so I added a green strip instead of the twine and white I'd planned.  Here is my card:

I still like it, but I'll try again to make what I have imagined.

Must rush off - it is gymnastics day for the little one.

What do you think of my cards today?   I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Michelle
xxx

Happy 9th Birthday!

Hello!

No cards this week-end. It was another busy birthday week for us this past week.  I'm about to pop off to bed to try to catch up on some sleep before I launch into the working week once again. But before I go, I thought I'd share my little bit of creativity for the week.

Well, actually, I copied someone else's creativity... but I did do the work myself, once I'd found the idea, LOL.

My eldest daughter turned 9 years old this week. 9 years! How does time pass so quickly?  She had a Hawaiian pool party planned with a few of her school friends. Saturday morning dawned. . .well, it actually didn't dawn... it began with a MONSTER storm that had the morning as dark as night - wild wind, lightning, thunder, torrential rain, everything a storm can be. It was amazing. And a little worrying, considering we were planning a pool party, eek.  Anyway, as the day progressed, the clouds slowly, ever so slowly, cleared. By the time party time arrived, we had some blue skies and some sunshine. A miracle. The fact that the pool was freezing cold was not a problem for this group of kids. They had fun in there anyway. Crazy.

So onto what this blog is actually about. The cake.  I like wandering through Pinterest. I collect ideas there. I also collect ideas on the internet and pin them back to Pinterest for safekeeping.  One of these ideas was an owl cake. My daughter liked this cake and requested it for her birthday.

This is my take on the cake (not a great photo, but you get the idea):

This was the idea, found HERE:

Close ups of my little owls:

And a Hula Skirt fruit platter that Super-Dad put together:

The kids loved it. The cake got lots and lots of positive attention. The party got many comments of "This is the BEST party ever!", which is very satisfying, considering I chose to NOT entertain the children, but left them to their own devices (under our supervision). They played in the pool, they played basketball, they played on the swingset (yes, 9 year olds will still do this, apparently), and they made their own disco party. They were well-behaved, polite, and had a wonderful time. My daughter has some very cool friends. My daughter is very cool, too.

Do you like my cake? It was red velvet cupcakes under all that decoration. They went down a treat.

Hopefully I'll be back to some more card making this week. Fingers crossed...

Michelle

xxx

For Your Inspiration #15

Hello!

Well it's that time again, another For Your Inspiration Challenge. And that means another amazing inspiration photograph. Yay!

Also, being the first challenge of the month, we have a sponsor, and this sponsor has some of the cutest digi-stamps around. Go over and take a look at Bugaboo Digi Stamps, they're gorgeous. Bugaboo have Catch The Bug Challenge Blog, which is worth a look too. Bugaboo Stamps are giving away 7 digi-stamps to one of our lucky participants this challenge. An extra reason to enter the FYI challenge, on top of the beautiful inspiration photo.

This photograph has so many different ideas to use. It was hard settling on just one. And so I didn't.

This is my first response to the photo, meet Clyde:

I liked the way Clyde's wings mirrored the shape of the windows in the cathedral. I also coloured him in similar colours.

What I used:
Stamp: Bugaboo Digi Clyde, and I forget where the sentiment came from
Card: Real Red, Daffodil Delight, Night of Navy, Watercolour paper
Ink: Night of Navy
Inktense Pencils

A couple of weeks ago I was cutting out kites with the Die-namics Fly A Kite die, and when I finished a row of kites, I found a lovely row of windows. My first thought was "Play School" (round, square, diamond window). My second thought was church windows. Then I thought, hang on a sec, here is another idea for the FYI challenge. It took me a couple of weeks from idea to execution, but I have made it in the knick of time.  Here it is:

The colours were selected by my littlest girl who needs a birthday card for one of her little friends this week-end. Apparently he likes green and blue, LOL.

What I used:
Stamps: Bugaboo Digi Clyde, SU! So Happy For You (sentiment)
Card: Crumb Cake, Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla, Green Galore, Night of Navy
Ink: Chocolate Chip
Inktense Pencils

So, off you go, whip up a card to enter into FYI #15.

Oh, but before you go, tell me what you think of my fun dragon cards, I love to hear from you.

Michelle
xxx