New Year's Eve

Hello....

 New Year's Eve 2014

Source

I just want to say 

"Thank You" 

To all you wonderful bloggers

For your creative inspiration, for sharing your ideas and advice and your talent... And most of all

For your friendship, for your encouragement, your lovely comments and the prayers and wishes you've offered up for me throughout this year ...

There have been good times and bad times to reflect upon and we have survived it all, this wonderful creative community of ours that reaches out across the world 

I look forward to spending another year in your company, sharing your loves, lives and friendship

May you have a wonderful New Year and be blessed with happiness

~ Ros ~

Cats Birthdays and Bargains

Hello!

How are you all? good I hope ...

Yesterday we ventured out for a coffee and visited Dunhelm which is a store that sells kitchen ware, bedding and home goods ... though I wasn't looking for anything other than a warm bed for the stray cat that is still here, despite every effort to find her owners ... Anyway, I ended up with a couple of bargains ... I got a beautiful Dorma bed throw reduced from £90 to £26!! PLUS I got the matching curtains reduced from £60 to £13! Now that's my kind of bargain ... I did get a bed for the cat too by the way...

Here's a photo I took a few days ago ... Isn't she lovely? 

Today is a very special birthday .. It's Mikey's 32nd birthday 

My goodness, where do the years go?? One minute I was struggling as a single parent to my child, running a home and holding down a job and then suddenly here I am ... My little boy is a man and every treasured memory is etched so deep in my heart that it feels like only yesterday

Here's the card I made for him

Yep, sequins and silver Lol!

I like them with the grunge stamps

A little tip for you ... You know that foam stuff that you find in packaging... It's about 5mm thick and similar to a sponge (Not the polystyrene kind) - It looks like this

Well, it's fabulous for using in shaker cards and to pop up dies cuts ... It goes through the Big Shot so easily and just springs back up ... I used it  as a backing for the "Birthday" word die

I would recommend using a wet adhesive though like an all purpose glue

I do hope you have a lovely week 

Till soon

~ Ros ~

White Christmas

Hi there!

I hope your Christmas was a good one...

I had a card ready for the Papertrey Ink Blog Hop but then forgot to post it yesterday ... I didn't realise it was a one day hop and our time difference kinda threw me - never mind 

This was the card

I've loved playing with the subtle gold and silver this christmas and this card would have been perfect for the blog hop with the PTI Sparkle die

 and yesterday we had some snowflakes of our own

It's pretty cold here right now 

I hope you are all cosy and warm where you are ...

Be safe

Hugs

~ Ros ~

Merry Christmas

To all my dear blog friends

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Wishing you Peace Joy and Love

Hugs

~ Ros ~

One more Birthday

Hello there ...

I'm just popping in with another Male birthday card

Last week my nephew Alan - daddy to Sophia - celebrated his 40th Birthday ... We've always been close, often disagreed and if I think he's wrong I tell him he's wrong, but I love him dearly.
 It's been a tough year for him and I guess for the family ...  I hope that the New Year brings him and Sophia much joy

The camera never co operates with anything shiny and I've given up trying to reason with it

The majority of this card was made from left overs ... How I love it when I can pull them together

My goal for the new year is to have a big clear out of craft stuff that I have hoarded and will never use ... When I started out ... like most of you I guess ... I collected things I thought I'd use ... gave most things a try before I found my own little niche ... what suited me and what I was comfortable with. I have a ton of things I collected for the Thursday club too ...

Pat said she's first in the queue for throw out stuff Lol!! She's already taken a lots of my old cards

Wishing you a wonderful day my friends

~ Ros ~

Shadow Box Cards

Hello ...

My this week has flown by! I can't believe it's Christmas in 5 days!

I have 3 shadow box cards to show you which I made ... I used the Silhouette Cameo so they were very simple to do and came together very quickly

I apologise for the poor quality photos but you can see how they turned out...

They really look pretty 

This one was for my husband ... He loves planes so I had to put a die cut one in there 

And this last one I made for my friend Pat

Aren't they sweet?

They even fold flat for posting ...

Are you all ready for the big day? I think I'm almost done ... In any event I intend to have a relaxing day tomorrow ... maybe do some baking.

Have a lovely weekend

Hugs

~ Ros ~

Non Shaker

Hi there!

I have another card to share and you could be forgiven for thinking this is another shaker ... Actually it's a non shaker ... the sequins are all stuck down

I have completely lost count of all the Christmas cards I've made ... I've still some to show you but there have been some where I've actually made a dozen of the same design

I vowed I wouldn't do it this year ... make all my own cards ... The shop bought cards are pretty and inexpensive and the postage is a lot less than it is for my cards

Somehow I still ended up making tons

I'm bushed ... feeling very exhausted today and I still have the Thursday club disco to attend this evening ...

Ce la vie!

Have a lovely day/evening

~ Ros ~

Camouflage Die Cuts

Hi there!

I've another birthday this week ... No, not me ... a friend's hubby ...

Thankfully "Make It Monday" over at Papertrey Ink gave me the inspiration for this card

I just love everything that Laura Bassen creates

This week it's camouflage die cuts and here's my card

You will probably recognise the Birthday word die from PTI ...

The ink I used is called Tide Pool (HA)

I love this technique ... It's simple but so effective

I hope you're having a great day ... Pat will be popping over to see me this morning and I'm looking forward to catching up with her ...

Keep safe and thanks so much for stopping by

~ Ros ~

City Crafter 242

Hello and good morning!

I'm hosting the challenge this week at City Crafter and this will be our last one before Christmas so I do hope you will join us

The challenge this week is a 

Christmas Colour Challenge

I'm asking that you make a Christmas Card, Tag or Project 

and that you use ALL the colours shown ... you can use neutrals too

I'm really thrilled to say that our Guest Designer this week is someone a lot of you know - the wonderful Darnell Knauss

Darnell is not only a very talented card maker but constantly makes me smile with her fun and witty posts - Click Here to be taken to her blog and you'll see exactly what I mean!

My card is a kind of nautical Christmas card using those cute penguins again

I was imagining being on a winter cruise when I created this ... Looking through the porthole and seeing these fun guys ... I know ... 

Just indulge me Lol!

I used all the colours and those keen eyed amongst you will see just a teeny bit of green too ... for the holly ... Oh well, it's Christmas

... And my penguins and I had fun!

I'm really looking forward to seeing your creations this week and we have a very generous sponsor 

Sweet Pea Stamps

... who will be awarding the winner 4 digital image stamps of their choice

Please click the link and go visit the store ... you will be enthralled with the beautiful stamps available!

Right ... I'm off to visit the City Crafter Blog to see what Darnell and the rest of my lovely team mates have come up with ...

Have a wonderful day!

~ Ros ~

December Birthdays

Hello!

I hope you're having a good start to your week...

I did get to see my Aunt at the weekend ... It's was so lovely to catch up but it is always so hard to say goodbye ... Hopefully it won't be too long before I can go back and stay for a few days

I have a few December birthdays to make cards for ... Last week it was a female friend's birthday so I made her a shaker card

Whilst shaker cards are not new to us in Blogland ... to many of my friends and family they are and it's always a joy to see their face when they receive one for the first time

This particular friend is a big fan of anything sparkly so I think my card fits the bill

Wishing you all a sparkly kind of day

Till soon be safe

~ Ros ~

Hearts

Hello there...

Today is a new word prompt at

Our Beautiful World

and it will be our last one for this year as we are taking a break for the Christmas period

This week's prompt has been chosen for us by Kirsty and the prompt is

"Hearts"

There are hearts just about everywhere in my home ... like the tiles on my pretty Christmas  tray

There are hearts in the pot pourri

Metal hanging hearts...

Burlap hearts 

...and felt hearts

Not to mention a handmade heart that hangs on my front door full of handmade flowers and trinkets that I made some years ago

I have a "thing" for hearts and I'm running out of places to put them

These are just a few of the many I have ... 

We love it if you shared your photos of hearts with us at 

Our Beautiful World this week

Maybe you have a story to go with them?

Thanks so much for looking in ... Have a lovely Sunday

Till soon

~ Ros ~

Bling It On

Hello there!

We're having crazy weather here ... We've just had a hail storm followed by blue skies ... It's been like that all morning...

Yesterday I decorated the house for Christmas and tomorrow,weather permitting, I'm hoping to travel to Lincoln to see my Aunt... She had to have her little kitty put to sleep last week so you can imagine how sad she is...

I've still got lots of cards to share ... some got sent before I remembered to photograph them Lol!

This one features the new dies I got from Simon Says Stamp again except I did something different with the tree die

Those little swirls should pop out so the tree looks like this

But I left them in and used foam dots to pop them up and then added pearls

You can see from this next photo how they are raised

I love it when you can use your dies different ways

... And use the left over pieces like those dots to add a little more interest

I'm linking this up to The Wednesday Challenge at Simon Says Stamp which is 

"Bling It On"

Thanks to all of you who responded to the blogger problem ... You are quite right ... there is no need to fill in the verification number - your comment publishes without it ... Who knew?

I hope you have a lovely day and that the season isn't stressing you too much

Keep safe

~ Ros ~

Glittery snowflakes and Blogger problems

Hello!

I don't know what's happening with Blogger ... Every blog I visited yesterday and today has had word verification on ... I'm told that mine did too even though it's switched off ... 

I hope it gets fixed soon - if it's still showing it's a Blogger problem 

Glittering snowflakes it the theme at City Crafter this week and I have 2 more cards to share ... One with gold accents and one with silver

This is the subtle gold I used a couple of days ago and the embossing folder is one I've had for the longest time... you can see the gold better in this photo

I used the inlaid die technique and both the word dies and the snowflake are from Simon Says Stamp

This is the silver version

and this time I used a grey card stock as my base

The shading on my BG is not sponged by the way ... I used a digital paper from Pink Petticoat's Ombre range ... 

I've a friend coming to visit this morning so I'd better say goodbye for now

Enjoy your day

Hugs

~ Ros ~

City Crafter 241

Hi there ...

It's time for a new challenge at City Crafter and this week the lovely Kirsty is hosting for us with a 

"Glittering Snowflake" 

challenge

Source

The colours and the simplicity of the inspiration photo inspired this card - not as overly ornate as some of my recent ones

The snowflake is a wooden one that I sprayed silver and then dipped into glitter

I used my long forgotten about glue pad to stamp some more snowflakes and then sprinkled glitter on them

Our GD this week is Mariken - Winner of week 236 Click on her name to go visit her lovely blog

We are also offering a GD spot to this week's winner so get out your sparkle and come join us this week! Remember there will only be one more challenge before we wrap up for the Christmas break

Don't forget to visit the City Crafter Blog to see what Mariken and the rest of our team have come up with

Have a beautiful day

~ Ros ~