A rose...

...by any other name.

Today I bought some pretty card blanks which are proving to be a perfect base for more of Ignacio's Valentine images. "Be my Valentine CS" can be found here...



...and if you hop on over to the Nicecrane Design site you will find many more fabulous sheets of Valentine images.

This is the card I made earlier...



...using a rectangular 'Elegant Ribbon card' blank, I used the image of a pretty little miss with a basket of roses. The roses cascade to the floor so I decided to pick out a few to add some paper roses to...

 ...and I also added some flat-back gems to give a bit of sparkle...

 ...the image was mounted on some PP and wrapped with some pink organza ribbon...

...this angle gives a better view of the blooms & bling.

I love these card blanks and the die-cut design. It is great having something a little bit different to play with.

If you want to see what other members of the DT have been creating, hop on over to the Nicecrane blog and take a look. You will also get to see some previews of some of Ignacio's latest design sheets..............................................................................

Woop, woop...

...I was one of the winners.

After a week of fun challenges it was lovely to get an email saying that I had won a set of the Birthday digi stamps - and my winners badge above features JJ...how cool!.

Thank you Bugaboo for a great birthday celebration and thank you for my prize.....................

What's next on the calendar...

...it has to be Valentine's Day.

Whilst catching up on my blog reading over the weekend, I came across this clever idea over on the 'Polkadoodles and Studio 12' blog. As soon as I saw it I knew it would be a perfect way to use one of Ignacio's lovely images from the "Romantic Valentine I" set...

 ...which you can find in the Nicecrane shop here.

So the idea that I adapted from the site is a card that is more than a card...

 ...it is a gift as well...

 ...the base card is folded to create a box down the leading edge of the card which holds four tea-lights - held in place with some pretty ribbon.
I made my card out of red CS and then covered the inside, the top of the box and the front panel with some PP that came free with a magazine...

 ...the chosen image was attached at a slight angle and embellished with some roses and a couple of foil hearts...

...as I said, a card that is more than a card. It really is very easy to make and would be great for various occasions.

The Nicecrane DT have been making some fabulous items with Ignacio's latest images so why don't you hop over to the blog and take a look.............................................................

Happy 4th Birthday...

...Bugaboo Stamps!!!

To celebrate there has been a week of challenges over at the Catch the bug challenge blog.

The has been a super Blog hop and a different challenge each day.

Saturday 18 January - Bingo
I decided to go with Bugaboo image/cupcake/scallop...

 ...quite a CAS design for me. The Bugaboo image just happened to be a cupcake...

...and the card blank has scalloped lace printed down the side.

Sunday 19 January - Birthday celebration sketch
This was my take on the sketch that was provided for this challenge...

 ...I kept to a colour scheme of black/white/silver and fairly clean lines as I wanted this for a male birthday card...

...I used an off-cut of the wrapping paper I used on the gift to create one of the layers. The rest of the layers are all black or white CS and I coloured the cupcake image with black & silver pens. A strip of black washi tape with polka dots on and this one was finished.

Monday 20 January - Colour challenge
The photo showing the colours over at the challenge site had me stumped for a while as these are not colours that I would normally use. However, this is what I came up with...

...another CAS card and another cupcake...

...the black polka dot washi came in handy again too.

Tuesday 21 January - New release and/or Bling it up
Sticking with the cupcake image...

 ...I added some holographic miri card...

...and some stickles to give this card a bit of "bling". 

Wednesday 22 January - "Humour me" (something funny)
I do love the "JJ" images - they are so me!. So it had to be a JJ image for this challenge...

...isn't she fab...

...I have coloured her with Spectrum Noir pens.

Thursday 23 January - Just kidding around (something for the kids)
An angel teddy seemed the perfect thing for this challenge...

...coloured with Spectrum Noir pens and given a bit of sparkle with some crystal stickles...

...teddy has been rough cut and attached to a kraft card blank using 3D foam pads.

Friday 24 January - Freebie/Theme (the theme is to include something with increments of 4)
Last of the challenges and we are back to cupcakes but this time a stack of them...

 ...my increments of 4 are the four bands of washi tape and the four pieces of card candi...

...I went with a touch of red/white/blue on this one.

There we have it, my seven entries for the Bugaboo birthday challenge..............................................

Sunday morning catch-up...

...and a week that has been less than great.

As I sit here trying to catch up with all my blog reading and other stuff, the Sun is actually shining and we have a blue (albeit slightly hazy) sky - not sure how long this will last as the forecast is for rain...go figure.

Yep, Mother Nature has been throwing allsorts at us this week Sun, rain, frost, winds - but I suppose we should be thankful that we haven't had the 'white stuff' and freezing temperatures that they have been experiencing the other side of "The Pond".

Every morning on my way to the station I cross the river Hope - I live in Stanford-le-Hope which apparently means "Stone ford/bridge over the river Hope" - and it is not unusual to see the river a racing, churning, muddy mess overflowing its banks (it is in a gully at this point) when there has been a lot of rain. However, this week the water has been at the highest I have ever seen and was only a couple of feet short of walls/outbuildings of properties that run alongside. The train journey has been quite interesting too as the view from the train would lead you to believe you were looking out a rice-paddy fields...not fields of spring wheat trying to make some headway against the sodden ground.

So commuting hasn't been great as it isn't much fun travelling on crowded trains with lots of soggy people and then having to try and dry out at work.

Work has been a bit of a trial this week. I have finally lost 2 of my only 3 fully experienced staff. This is great for them as they have moved on due to promotion but leaves the team in a bit of a sticky patch. The team consists of two clerical grades and there has always been an imbalance between the grades and the type of work and whilst I am lucky that a couple of my lower grade staff are happy to 'reach up' because they wish to develop - it is not a situation that you can insist upon. This being the case, it is going to be 'interesting' to put it mildly, how we cope with just one trainee at the higher grade.

As the week muddled by we reached Thursday which has to be one of the most awful days...

I lost an earring!

The awful thing being, it was a pair that my late Dad bought me for my 21st Birthday, so has extreme sentimental value. Bless them; my staff dropped whatever they were doing when I realised what had happened and they were searching everywhere - under desks, on desks, in desks, through work that I had been dealing with...one even went and checked the bin in the kitchen...just in case!

It hasn't been found!

You know when you start to doubt yourself...even though a couple of folk at work had confirmed that I had both on when I got there - as soon as I got home every light in the house went on. I stripped the bed, checked the linen basket, walked over every inch of carpet with my eyes 'glued' to it more times than I can count...just to be sure!

No luck - and a fair few tears have been shed!

It doesn't look promising but I can't give up on the hope that it might be found when I least expect it.

All in all, not a great week which has resulted in little or no crafting. I need to get a grip - moping wont help so I need to concentrate on something else.

Bugaboo Stamps kicked off their 4th Birthday celebration yesterday with a blog-hop and the first of the week's challenges. I think I will do what I did for their Christmas Chaos event - I will start a post later with details of each day's challenge and add in the completed items as I go. I completed the 'hop' last night and there were some fun creations from the Bugaboo DT. Why don't you hop on over to the blog to see what's going on - or better still; why not join in.

Let's hope next week is a better one......................................................................

Knit one...

...Purl one.

One of the latest collection of images from Nicecrane Designs is "Fascinating Babies" and as a knitter, I just fell in love with this little crafting angel...

...and thought she was the perfect image for decorating a Knitter's note book.
Starting with a basic A5 hardback note book, I covered it with PP from the new "Sew Lovely" range by DoCraft and trimmed the spine & corners with another of the new washi tape designs from Scotch...

...the little knitting baby is adorable and to keep with the colour scheme...

 ...I edged the image with some of the washi tape. On the PP there are heart topped haberdashery pins and I just happened to have some heart-shaped beads in my stash that were the right colour.
The lettering is from another of the current DoCraft ranges - "Madame Payraud's"...

 ...and I used a Copic marker in the same aqua shade to edge the lettering.
A knitters note book has to have some knitting on it...

...I knitted a small panel which I then threaded onto cocktail sticks that I had made into mini knitting needles by sticking a couple of the beads to the top. The 'knitting' was attached to the book front using Glossy Accents.
There are five different images in this range...

...and if you would like to grab a set for yourselves, you can find it here.

I still have a pile of basic hardback note books so I'm off to have a think about how I can decorate them. In the meantime, why don't you hop over to the Nicecrane blog to take a look at what the DT have been creating........................................................................

Coming soon...

...a 4th birthday blog hop over at the Catch the bug challenge blog.

As you can see - Bugaboo will be turning Four so why not hop on over and see how you can take part in the celebrations...............................................................................

A couple of...

...crafty makes.

Ignacio over at Nicecrane Designs has continued to add new designs to his web-shop and one of the latest is the "Vintage Penmanship" collection. A lovely selection of illustrated swirls that you can add sentiments or quotes to and...

...which you can get here.
I decided to cover another diary as a gift for a friend...

...the basic black diary was covered with PP from Creative Impressions and the spine and corners were decorated with the new washi tape from Scotch.
I used the Penmanship swirl that contains a quill and a dove...

...the quill was coloured using Copic alcohol pens - I picked out colours from the washi tape - and the dove was just given a bit of shading. I inked the die-cut image with Distress inks in Antique linen & Frayed burlap. The "2014" was created using some silver peel-offs that were coloured using the same Copic shades as the quill. No fuss or flounces but an attractive, usable desk diary.

Ignacio sent this adorable set to the DT. Aren't the illustrations beautiful - such lovely artwork - and if you would like to obtain the "Sweet Birthday cards" set...

...just hop over to the Nicecrane site - you can get it from here.
I used the cute little miss with the rose to create this birthday card...

...with a mind to the high postal costs here in the UK, I kept it fairly flat and simple.
The base card blank was a pre-printed one that came free with a craft magazine...

...and the 3D butterflies do lay flat when in the envelope.
I rough cut the image and sentiment and attached them to the card using 3D foam...

...but only used a thin layer so not to make the card too bulky.
A quick and easy idea for a pretty birthday card...

...and if you would like to see more ideas for using the fabulous images from Nicecrane, hop over to the Nicecrane blog and see what the DT have been up to...........................................................



I survived...

...my first day back at work - just!!!

Not a good day.

With gale force winds there was no way an umbrella was going to be very effective so I headed out in my hooded Winter coat. It is exactly half a mile from my door to the station and you would have thought I'd swum every inch of it...

The pavements and roads were awash so it was like wading through ankle deep running water whilst being bombarded by the torrential driving rain - great fun (not).

Arrival at the station didn't reveal any problems - the indicator board showed my service to be on time (3 mins to wait) - half an hour later and three trains that had just disappeared from the indicator board...no announcements, no warnings...it was obvious there was a problem but at last a train turned up - luckily a semi-fast service (missing out some of the stations) so I was going to make up some of the lost time.

I finally made it into the office with 10 mins to spare...I had a telephone conference that I needed to take part in...so having squelched to my desk, dumped my coat & bag, I grabbed a couple of plastic carriers to sit on and made it in time for the conference.

What joy, sitting there with soaking wet feet and trousers - yuck.

I then spent most of the day trying to dry out...

The hand driers in the 'Ladies' proved to be useless so I dug out one of the fan heaters - I was dry by early afternoon but my coat took a while longer (glad there were no H&S reps about because the fan heater was balanced at a rather strange angle so as to aim the warm air at as much of my coat as possible).

The journey home was much less eventful.

So, I'm back at work (grrr), I survived my first day (just) and now I'm heading out into similar wet/windy weather.

Oh the joys - what a great start to 2014.............................................................

My first...

...bit of crafting for 2014.

I love pretty stationery and notebooks so I thought I would make myself a new notebook.

I have had a collection of boring A5 hardback notebooks tucked away for a while and it was one of these that received the 'make-over'.

This is what I put together using the new DoCrafts Papermania Capsule collection - Parisienne Blue...

...and one of the lovely images from Nicecrane Designs.
The image used is actually from the "Vintage Xmas Greeting Cards (ladies)" set of images but I think these ladies 'work' for many occasions...

 ...not just for Christmas. This particular lady has a slight blue tint to her so she works really well with this DoCrafts collection which consists of blues/creams/white.
The collection includes PPs - I used the 8x8 pad for this project. There are also shaped journal/note cards and large paper blooms...

...the shades of blue are lovely and I loved the crochet trim that is also part of the collection.
This collection of images from Nicecrane is so versatile and they are perfect for using on many different occasions so don't think you would be limited to just Christmas...

...if you would like to obtain this set of lovely ladies you can find them here.

There are new collections of images being added to the range all the time and if you would like to see how the DT have been using them, please hop on over to the Nicecrane blog to take a look.

I had all the best of intentions to get lots of crafting done during the two weeks I have had away from work but I just don't know where the time has gone. It is back to work on Monday (groan) and I feel like I haven't managed to get anything done. Hopefully, once all the Christmas decorations are packed away I'll be able to get to my craft stuff more easily and perhaps even get some more bits made..................................................................................

Happy New Year...

...to you all!!!

Here's hoping 2014 brings you all everything you could wish for.........................................................