Fairy Special Birthday Wishes...

this is the card I made for my niece Adel - yes an unconventional spelling of the name, but it means personalised gifts/cards can be even more special as you don't come across them in the shops.

The image is a digi-stamp from Cardmaking & Papercraft magazine, given as a freebie if you bought the mag or available to buy individually from the website. I paper-pieced the image digitally using papers from Zoe Pearn but left her skin and hair blank and hand-coloured with Promarkers. I've used Stickles on the wings and crown, which played havoc with trying to get a decent photo, sorry!

I've used rub-ons to add her name and age, although I'd usually do this digitally before printing too.  The spotty backing paper is also from Zoe Pearn and I ran the scalloped card base through the printer too so it co-ordinated perfectly.  Finished off with a little quilted star.

not just for Christmas....

I'm kind of doing this backside first - showing the non-xmas cards made with papers from this digikit from Sweet Shoppe Designs before the actual xmas cards I've made, but I have my reasons...

As you might have guessed I've made this one for my sister's birthday which is on Friday.  It's a bit of a sore point that I often get her cards to her late, one year she rang me on the morning of her birthday (a Sunday) and had a 30 minute rant about not getting her cards in time.  Soooooo, this year I'm determined to be prepared and will despatch this card today!

Its such a miserable and dull day (weatherwise) today that I don't think I'd get any decent photos of my cards today so popped this one into the scanner.  Unfortunately the xmas cards I made with the same kit have a bit of dimension to them so aren't quite so scanner friendly.

I've used a fabulous new image, Lulabelle Shopping, from Digistamp Boutique for my card as I thought her dress was ideal for a bit of digital paper-piecing to perfectly coordinate with the backing papers. I really do love Zoe Pearn's paper designs and have a few of her digikits now but did hesitate about buying this one as I don't do a lot of xmas cards but I've managed to use 5 different papers in this card.

Lulabelle's hair and skin are of course coloured with Promarkers.

I'm entering this card into the September monthly challenge over at Digistamp Boutique, the Charisma Cardz challenge, Anything Goes,  and the Allsorts challenge, Plain and Simple.

Heaven, I'm in Heaven...

Crafty heaven of course! Bank holidays are definitely bad for my bank balance, lol!  No pics just yet (I've just got home and the light is really poor) but this (extended) weekend I have bought

• 8 x 8 card blanks
• Forever Friends wall decor sets for a bargain £1.99 each - they're a perfect fit for an 8x8 card!
• 2 wonderful DCWV 12x12 cardstock stacks for just £7.99 each
• a Martha Stewart scoreboard
• some self-adhesive wallpaper border stickers (6 sheets in a pack) with diggers and cars etc for only 69p per pack
• a couple of 8 x 8 baby-themed scrapbook kits (10 sheets of paper, stickers and chipboard frames etc) for only 99p each
• oh yes, and a laptop!
• and quite a few other things as well - my friend did ask if I have any room left in my home ;-)

In my defence (as if it were needed between crafters!) I did spend a lot of time at the weekend making some cards for my office to sell at a charity fun day this coming weekend.  I'll hopefully get to take some pics tomorrow before handing them over....

Edited to add - here are the pics of some of the cards, images are Digistamp Boutique (I played around with a couple of them to create the image I wanted for my Fathers Day cards), papers are Zoe Pearn and Nitwit and some of the images are coloured with Promarkers...

and finally...those wallpaper stickers from The Range - once they're snipped up they'll have cost less than 4p per image!