The Frog Prince

The new Quarterly Assortment is in the Sweet Shoppe Designs store now. If you haven't seen it I would really recomend that you pop over. Basically it's a collection of mini kits from each designer at The Sweet Shoppe (so that's 23 kits) for the bargainous price of $3.99 and there is some really gorgeous stuff in there!

I used the papers and word art from Kristin Cronin Barrow's kit to make this sweet little card and added the frog stamps by Hero Arts and some coiled wire to make little springs and papertrey ribbon

Sweet Shoppe cards ...

I'm really enjoying being on holiday from work and spending some extra time in my craft room. Today I made a card for the Sweet Shoppe which I love so much (I don't think I'l be able to give this one away) I'm not sure if it's the colours or the patterns but I will certainly be using these papers lots in the future! The card had to have a box as it's so thick with layers and embellishments

I even had time to decorate the inside and I used my favourite huge Hero Art stamps for the greeting

Cards by the bucketload!

Well, not really buckets but a few that I made this morning whilst sitting at my newly arranged and tidied crafting desk with my doggie snoozing - and snoring! - on my feet :lol:

The challenge this week over on the Hero Arts blog was to make monochromatic cards so I set about it this morning making first the crocodile card and then the pink birthday card. After this I made the other pink 'celebrate' card just because I could and I wanted to use one of these new flowers that I bought when I was in Newcastle through the week.

This final card is made with my new watering can stamp that I bought just because I thought it looked like a useful sort of stamp and I had that flowery paper sitting on my desk left over from another card

Hero Arts challenge...

This weeks Hero Arts challenge was to create a card or project taking inspiration from some of the entries to their recent win a day on the blog competition. I spotted a gorgeous flower shaped card by Shanna Vineyard on her blog and in the flickr group for the competition which I 'cardlifted' for this weeks challenge

You can't tell from the photograph very well but I outlined all the flowers on the paper with a glitter pen which looks very nice in real life and of course I used some of my Hero Arts stamps for the greeting and the butterfly which I coloured with glitter pens too.

(credits here)

Lucky Day ...

Yesterday must have been my lucky day. As well as winning the prize on the Hero Arts blog I got an email from the lottery telling me I had won £10 on Wednesdays lottery draw :)

Hip Hip Hooray - I wonder what today will bring? :lol:

There is another challenge this week on the Hero Arts blog - combining different alphabet or greetings stamps to create a message. Luckily Debbie came up trumps as usual and my new set of HA stamps arrived yesterday morning so of course I had to have a play - I even got out the box of really old stash to rootle through and pulled out some very old papers (one of them was copyright 2004 so practically an antique!!) I also used some of Kates doodles as they went perfectly and I used a greeting stamp but masked off some of the words and replaced them with my favourite Making Memories teeny tiny alphabet stickers.

(Stamps - Hero Arts - Sending Happy Thoughts #CL305, Hero Arts - Elephants #CL280, Ink - Stazon and Memento, Digital toadstool elements - Woodland Whimsy doodle set by Kate Hadfield at The LilyPad, Alphabet Stickers - Making Memories, Papers - K&Company, KI Memories and Lasting Impressions (I really dug deep in my old stash for these!!), Cardstock - Stampin Up, Colour medium - ProMarkers, Black pen - Letraset, Goggle eyes)

Anyway, it's almost 3AM now so I am away to my bed. I will miss my late night crafting session when I go back to work next week

I've won a prize! ...

I am so excited as my lovely friends have just pointed me in the direction of the Hero Arts blog and I have won a prize in last weeks Beyond Paper challenge!!!!!

I made this little sweetie bag and they picked me as the fresh face winner - yipppeeee!!

I am amazed as there are so many fantastic creations in their flickr gallery but I am very pleased with myself and I am grinning!

Lots of cards ...

I am so enjoying having a holiday from work and have spent every evening for the past few days playing in my craft room making cards :)

(Papers - Nancy Kubo ,Stamp - ElzyBells art stamps, Ink - Stazon, Colours - ProMarkers, Font - SP Toby, Punches - Martha Stewart and EK Success, Flower - Prima, Button - Doodlebug, Ribbon - Stampin Up and Beresfords, Brads - Basic Grey)

(Papers - Doodlebug and KI Memories, Stamp - ElzyBells Art Staps, Colours - ProMarkers, Cardstock - Coredinations, Punches - EK Success, Marvy and Nestabilities, Flower - Prima, Embossing Folder - Cuttlebug, Brad - Basic Grey, Ribbon - MayArts, Font - Sp You've Got Mail)


(Happy Place by Fee Jardine at Sweet Shoppe Designs, DJB Lizzy Fizzed Out computer font by Darcy Baldwin at Sweet Shoppe Designs, American Crafts ribbon)

(Paper and image stamp - Pink Petticoat, Colours - ProMarkers, Cardstock - Papermill, Punches - Martha Stewart and Fiskars, Buttons - Autumn Leaves, Thread - DMC, Ribbon - Beresfords)

(Paper and image stamp - Pink Petticoat, Colours - ProMarkers, Cardstock - Papermill, Punch - Stampin Up, Dies - Nestabilities, Stamp - Autumn Leaves, Ink - Stampin Up, Ribbon - Beresfords)

(Paper and image stamp - Pink Petticoat, Colours - ProMarkers, Dies - Nestabilities, Ribbon - Beresfords, Font - Pea Martha)

(Paper - Shabby Princess, Image stamp - Pink Petticoat, Colours - ProMarkers, Dies - Nestabilities, Punch - Stampin Up, Stamp - Autumn Leaves, Ink - Stampin Up, Ribbon - MayArts and Stampin Up, Cardstock - Stampin Up)

(Image stamp - Pink Petticoat, Papers - Bloom and Grow by Zoe Pearn at Sweet Shoppe Designs, Greeting stamp - Melissa Francis, Ink - Stazon, Cardstock - Coredinations, Brads - Papermania, Punches - Woodware, Marvy and Fiskars, Paperstring - IKEA, Colours - ProMarkers)

(Image stamp and paper by Pink Petticoat, Cardstock - Stampin Up, Paper frill - Bazzill, Ribbon - May Arts, Colours - ProMarkers, Glitter)

Phewwww - that was a lot! I also joined in with the Hero Arts blog challenge for the first time, stamping on something other than paper and card. I made this little birthday favour bag by stamping directly onto the bag and colouring with my pens

I'm off to a crop early in the morning so I had better get myself away to bed or I won't be wanting to get up

Catching Up ...

Oh wow, the last couple of weeks have been really busy and mostly filled with Haggis. He's able to go out and about now so we've been showing him our little corner of the world and we've also enrolled him in Puppy School. Our first session was last week and we haven't been expelled yet - there's time yet mind you!!

The beginning of last week was taken up with a horrible visit to the Dentists for me and a day off work to recover from my ordeal :( We've also been decorating. My brother and his fiance have finally moved out of our house into their own which meant I could move out of the spare room and back into my own larger bedroom which they've had for the last year which in turn means that the spare room can be turned back into my craft room!! Hip Hip Hooray I can't wait to have all of my supplies in one room instead of being spread out in storage around the rest of the house and even the shed and greenhouse out in the garden! I've been to IKEA today for new storage stuff and shelves and tomorrow we're putting my work benches back in and moving my furniture in and then hopefully I can set about organising everything.

I have spent some time over the last few weeks making cards and playing with paper so I have stack of photographs to share :) But first here is my baby

I finally got around to using the hostess stamps from my Stampin' up collection and my promarkers - I love both and will definitley be buying more markers


I love this new digital kit by Melissa Bennett at Sweet Shoppe Designs, it's an Easter kit but I loved the colours and thought it would be good for a wedding card that we needed and then of course I couldn't resist the little bunny :)

I also used it to make some little Easter goodies for the kids in my class. I bought the test tubes from ebay before Christmas but never actually got round to using them but when I saw these teeny tiny little chocolate eggs at the supermarket I thought they would look so cute in the test tubes

I've had a few visits from the postman too, including these gorgeous stamps from Papertrey Ink and the heart punches that fit exactly which makes life very easy and some from Hero Arts too, the happy birthday greeting stamp is just the right length for my size of cards and I can see it being used loads!

I went to Hobbycraft through the week too and stocked up on some new dies for my bigshot as well as a stack of bling and brads because a girl just can't have enough of either and I love to have them in lots of colours. And just because I was in the mood for emptying my piggy bank I invested in a couple more sets of the nestabilities dies including these fab labels. I can see these becoming my next 'must have the whole collection' addiction :lol: