80th Birthday

In December, my FIL turned 8o.

As always, I struggle to design cards for men, so I cheated and used the same design (just different numbers, of course) as the 65 I made back in October (see here)

Christmas Bakes

It is always a busy bake time here on the lead up to Christmas, more so than when I lived in the UK, for two reasons:  I can’t buy mince pies here and DS has a nut allergy.

The week before Christmas saw me making mince pies and our Christmas cake.

Shame that the ‘s’ fell off the big mince pie (but nobody noticed). For the first time (ever), I made my own mincemeat, using a recipe from the “Hairy Bikers”. 

Our Christmas cake is a rich fruit cake, covered in fondant icing, with fondant icing holly.

A Christmas birthday

A friend of ours celebrates his birthday on Christmas day.  The challenge was to make a birthday card for him that was seasonal.

This is what I came up with:

First of all, I stamped  a pearly black card blank with snowflakes (one of my new stamps).  Then I added the copic coloured snowman (one of my favourite “old” stamps.  The greeting was done using the computer.

Crackers

As is tradition, I made the Christmas crackers again this year.  Each cracker has a motto, gift and cracker snap and I made 12.  I nearly drove myself crazy with the silly jokes!!

More Christmas cards

In keeping with tradition, DS has a Christmas card with his favourite logo on:

This card was made using the same fusion techniques as in my previous post.

And one for DH:

Christmas Cards

Each year I make a lot of Christmas cards for family & friends.  This year I tried something a little different – I like to call it “fusion”, simply because it uses multiple techniques.

 

Using a combination of heat embossing, rubber stamping (coloured with water colour pencils) and Pergamano, I came up with these 4 cards.

Mad about . . .

football.  Way back in November (well it seems like ages ago now!) I needed a card for my cousin (who has followed Arsenal forever).  This is what I came up with:

I used my new found Pergamano skills to design & make this card.  When DS saw it he politely informed me that I could make him the same for his Christmas card! Men huh!

Happy New Year!

 

Wishing all our readers a very Happy 2013.

Merry Christmas

 

October birthdays–part 3

I always find making cards for men difficult, but this one seemed to come together quite easily.  The ‘65’ was cut using the Craft Robo and then backed with matt silver paper.  The card blank was embossed using a Sizzix texturz plate, birthday circles  (Set#20 – 656372).

October birthdays–part 2

This time it is a card for my cousin.  Once again, my regular readers will know that my cousin likes all things oriental – this is what I came up with for her this year.

October Birthdays–part 1

This is one that I made for my Aunt.  She loves purple and butterflies (as well as other things, of course).  The butterflies are made in 3 parts, coloured with dorso crayons and then glued to the base design.  I was really pleased with the result and my Aunt was pleased with it too.

More birthday cards

DS celebrated his birthday in September too.  As my regular readers will know,  DS is a bit of slave to brands, so I always try to incorporate a logo somewhere in his card, although this is getting harder & harder to do.

Here are this years cards:

   

DS loved them (phew!)

A leaving card

Good friends of ours were leaving the Netherlands to return home to Columbia.  I wanted to make them a special card and this is what I came up with.  I based my colour choices on blue and white (very Dutch!) and I am pleased to report that they loved it.  The message inside said:  “Good friends never say goodbye, they simply say, see you soon”.

Lest we forget

50

Back in September DH was 50.  DS and I organised a “birthday weekend” for him which included a birthday party.

This is one of the invites – a 50 made from parchment with a cute baby pic.

      

I made him a 50 that lit up!

A 50 from wooden numbers – covered in pics of DH from the 50 years. . . . . . .

. . . . . and we decorated the front window with a big poster of DH as a baby, for all the world to see.

I also made him a scrapbook of his 50 years, with pictures and anecdotes.

Needless to say – he had a wonderful birthday.

Birthday & anniversary cards

 

A birthday card designed and made by me.

Two more birthday cards, with an Oriental theme

An anniversary card

Finally

A friend of mine from my school days (we started infant school together) recently got in touch.

It was great to hear from her after many years.  We had an awful lot to catch up on and then came her surprising news – she was getting married!!  My first words were “congratulations!!” and then she surprised me again by saying that I knew her husband to be.  It turns out that he was one of boys we went to school with, way back when, and it truly is the stuff that fairy tales are made of.  They should have got together when we were at senior school but both were to shy to do anything about it.  Years later, they met again, discovered they felt the same way about each other and finally got married in July – great eh?

A good excuse to try my newly learnt Pergamno skills on a wedding card!!

Best of times and worst of times

As I mentioned yesterday, my absence from the blogging world has been the best of times and the worst of times.

Best:

DS passed his final exams – yipee!!

DH & I passed our silver star dancing exam (with quite good marks, I’m pleased to add)

DS got accepted at the uni he wanted to go to.

Worst:

My dear friend & neighbour (the lady in the previous post) died suddenly at the end of June.  She was only 57!  She has left a gap in our lives, which will take some time to learn to live with.  I have some good memories of our friendship and I am lucky to have known her.

It’s been a while

My poor, neglected blog readers – it’s been too long and not through choice but I am back and over the next few weeks I shall post pics of all the recent (and not so recent) makes.

Where to begin.  It has been the best of times and also the worst of times.  My recovery from having pneumonia took longer than expected and proved to be quite a frustrating time.  To ease my frustration I decided to have another go at Parchment craft, with the idea of making an anniversary card for my dear friend (& neighbour).

I was quite pleased with the result and even more pleased that my friend liked it.

A few days later, we were talking over the fence (as you do) and my friend produced a bag full of Pergamano tools & papers and asked if I would like them.  Apparently, she had tried her hand at Pergamano and found that she didn’t like it.  I was thrilled to bits and have spent the summer teaching myself the different techniques involved in this beautiful craft – have I been successful, well you can judge for yourselves as I blog my attempts.