One set of alphabet stamps

The birthday card season for me really begins from April when I have a whole plethora of birthdays (and thankyous!) to address up until August, where it calms down a bit. Oh except that I will have wedding craft mania then!  

I have been a bit smitten with my alphabet stamps (and that manuscript paper) so all three attempts today make use of them. 

This is for a close family member's E's 60th birthday which is today!  Happy birthday E!


He's a bit of a fan of many types of music- jazz, rock and all that and so I thought I'd celebrate that in this card! I watched an origami tutorial on Youtube to make the shirt.  Thank goodness for Youtube- there's NO way I could have followed a book instruction on this! I used peeloffs for the instruments and backed onto a variety of metallic cards.  Not so much a fan of this ink pad- it smudged a dozen times and didn't like most of the papers I tried it on!


Next up was a belated birthday card for one of my favourite bloggers, Katie at www.hooklineandsinkher2.blogspot.com Katie makes no bones about her love of cake (er- every blog post is it?) and so a TOWIC (much nicer version of TOWIE) was definitely the way forward!



Finally, it was CBC's birthday so I made use of his love of maps and bicycles in this card- using a bike stamp I bought to make the first card I ever made for CBC, combined with reused road atlas and old Royal Academy of Music concert programme.

I must find the pictures of that first ever card at some point- it's one of the cards I have been most proud of (and the most time-consuming- it must have been 10 hours in the make!)


Link-parties galore!!
Linking to:

Sarah's Super handmade Sunday


Linking to Creative Mondays with Claire Justine xoxo
and Cynthia at Feeding Big's In and out link party

Lakota, Lakota, wherefore art thou Lakota?  I come proferring Tahdahs!!!

Tray bake

You wish.
I wish indeed!



This may be my most spectacularly rubbish upcycle or make EVAH!  But I shall still share it in case it inspires you to show me how to do it better or you think of some scabby unloved tea-tray too!
Old boring, scabby wooden tray in the kitchen has sat unloved and unused for ages.  Was going to visit a charity shop near you but I decided to have a little mess around before I did anything so drastic!

I dug out a daisy shaped paper punch, some acrylic paints and a big stubby paint-brush (and some scrap card) and cut myself a template which I then used to make a line of daisies. It looked bare and boring so I found one of my most disliked/avoided craft devices, the rubber stamp, (despite this fact, I seem to have loads of them, mostly gifts, bumper pack items or bargain bin finds) and proceeded to make it look even worse by adding rows of fern on either side using more acrylics!  Next time, I'll do decoupage instead!

You're wondering about the cake, right?  Surely we all appreciate a gratuitous cake shot (a Cadbury's chocolate cream gateau that was tragically found on the Reduced to Quick Sale counter at Tescos. I had to rescue it in order to help it achieve its destiny of lining one greedy person's many persons' stomachs. It is delicious, incidently.  I still have half to go!



I always end up left up with a bit of acrylic paint left which it seems a shame to chuck as it is expensive so I made a sort of swirly pattern on the back of a cracker box.  I then cut them up to make these two Easter cards (also using some scraps of card hanging around) and some Anita's daffodil stickers to give a lovely Spring look!
Somehow, sitting there watching Ella Enchanted as I did this, I ended up using the corrugated coffee card leftovers to make hearts and made this other masculine Love card!  I suppose it could be a Valentines!

I just got back from attending a Lindy class in London.  Usually, I feel really psyched after these but I really had trouble with the moves tonight- it involved a quick spin using single step footwork (as opposed to a triple step) and I just kept landing awkardly/badly and an immediate contrasting turn in the opposite direction which threw me off each time.  I felt like my partners thought 'what on earth is she doing?'  Plus I sat and watched the Intermediate class after (whilst waiting for CBC) and discovered I could have joined in if I had really wanted to, which is a shame as they learnt a realllllllly cool move called 'Around the World' (like the Yo-yo!).  I paid the extra to do some social dance after but CBC had a horrid day and wasn't in the mood for dancing but at least we went to Wagamamas and I ate far more ramen than is healthy for one person to do!

Hope you are well!x

The link party:

Lakota's Ta Dah Tuesday featuring one fab Angry Birds cake!


Claire Justine's Creative Mondays

Cynthia's In and out of the kitchen linkie.
and the Daring Card Makers Spring challenge for this week!

Be sure to go and visit!