Well, blow me...

...I'm posting on my long suffering dormant blog.  Not a lot has happened since my last post. Life goes on. I have often wanted to add a little project or two but have been put off by all the photo editing and stuff. You all know what I mean. I've made loads of things but my style hasn't really moved on. I don't much care for all the die cutting stuff that's out there. I have a die cutting machine, The Wizard, one of the first but I don't quite get the die cut thingy. I like to see them on other peoples cards but I can see me owning hundreds of dies and only using them once. Anyway. I decided to post a few things now and again. sometimes from my phone camera, without the faffing, partly for my own record. Here's the first couple.

The image is from Meljens designs.

And another Meljens. The papers for this one are from the DCWV Girl stack which I got from TK Maxx ages ago.    xx

Speedy recovery cards.

A quick update on Speedy. Wednesday and Thursday were not very good days for him. They took him off the morphine and replaced it with paracetamol which isn't as strong. He was in quite a lot of pain as morphine causes constipation, as well as the fact that they "inflated" him to do the op. He was warned of the windy pops before the op, but there wasn't much of that happening. It was just staying inside and bloating him even more. Today he felt much better, and when the doctor asked him, ( this is so funny.......well I think it is anyway ), had he passed any wind this morning he said " a little bit". At this, the bloke in the next bed poked his head through the curtain and said. "You did two bloody big uns in the night, nearly frightened me to death"! Needless to say this was why he's feeling better today,lol.

I made him and his sister,Diane matching cards. This is Speedy's.

And this is Diane's.

The images are Meljens Digis again and the paper was free in a mag a few months ago.

I added the caption on the computer.

More cards arrived this morning but I left the house before they arrived so I'll take them tomorrow.

Speedy is Sorted !!

Yes peeps, Speedy has 3 kidneys! His transplant went really well yesterday and his new kidney started to work straight away. All the surgeons are made up. He came back up to the ward sporting a bag full of pee!! He was really groggy and wired up to the hilt. I left him in a semi awake state.
I went back today and this is Speedy under the influence of lots of morphine and a bit of ice cream.

A few minutes after this ,there was a bit of a trauma because his morphine ran out at the same time as he needed to cough. The pain came back, and as 2 qualified nurses had to deal with the replacement as it was a certain type of drug, he had to wait what seemed like ages but was probably about 15 minutes. It wasn't nice to see him in so much pain and I had a go at the nurses when they arrived but this is what the NHS is turning into. The second nurse was dealing with something equally urgent and we had to wait.

Anyway, as much as I love him to bits, enough of him. Without his sister Diane this wouldn't be happening. She was always the family hero anyway. She was in nursing as a career, and she and her husband Gareth, along with Speedy, took on the major role in looking after after their dad in his later years after he had a stroke. Dad has now departed and Diane spends a lot of time at Mothers helping her as she is almost blind now.

Monday was a very emotional day for her husband and myself. He must be so proud of his wife. I know I'm very proud of my sister in law. Thank you Diane. Love you so much. xx.

Once again thanks for all cards received so far, and those yet to come.

Another Anniversary Card.

A quick post today as I need to get ready for work. Another anniversary card, this time for my mum in law to give to her son.

Made with another Meljens digi image. The paper is from Craftwork cards. I got it earlier in the year when they were doing those goodie bags for a fiver. Card base is 6" x6".

Challenges.  Sweet stampin'  Anything but birthdays.
                   Alphabet challenge. P,  pretty pastels

Target weight 9st 2lb.  Today,  still 9st 3lb.

Love is Sweet.

Evening all. I'm a bit late today as I've been out shopping. I still had birthday money ( yes, from July ) which I hadn't spent as I've been waiting for the Autumn stuff to come into the shops.  I got myself a couple of nice knitted tops and some jeans. I got them from Wallis. They are boot cut with just enough elastic in the waist to hoist them over my bum. There's no sticky out bit at the front where the button would be so they make my stomach look quite flat. I got a dark navy pair and another pair the colour of............wait for it..........Caramac, lol. I' ve got quite a few creamy and beige tops and they look good with teal green too.
When I did get home I had to knuckle down and make a couple of cards I'd been putting off. It's my sister in law's Anniversary on Monday so Mum in law asked me to make one for her to give.

This is the one for me and Speedy to send. I don't really have much stuff for making wedding/ anniversary cards but Meljens came to the rescue with this image. The hearts are also Meljens which I resized to fit. I coloured them and added glossy accents before cutting them out.

The paper is from Craftwok Cards and the card base is 6" x6".

Challenges.  Creative Card Crew. Anything goes.
                    Deep Ocean Challenge blog. Hearts.
                    Do you stack up.  Friendly critters.

Whoops, nearly forgot.

I was sitting here eating my brekkie when i remembered my poor old blog. So it's going to be very quick,lol.

Image from Free Extras. Paper from stash, maybe Papermania. Sentiment done on computer.

Close up of image.

EDIT. Back from work now and found a couple of challenges
            Cute Card Thursday Clean and simple.
            Stampin Royalty. Photo Inspiration.
           


Weight 9st 2lb (target weight). Boring, I'll have to stuff myself tomorow, lol.

Speedy's Home.

Just a quickie to say Speedy's home and well. They told me at midday yesterday he was being discharged so i had to get the next train as i didn't want him coming home on his own. We got home at about 5pm. He's wired up to a portable heart monitor. He's got to go about his life as usual, then go back with it on Monday so they can see how his heart has coped. His heartbeat is back to normal. It was the beta blockers which were a too high dose.

Thank you for all your well wishes and here's one i made earlier. Image is a freebie from Meljens Designs.




Target weight 9st 2lb.  Today,  9st 1lb.  I'll have to run around Liverpool more often, lol.

New Job...........

.....No, not me, lol. A friend of mine asked me to make a card for someone who is a qualified midwife but has just started a new job as a doctor at an anti natal clinic. Much cleaner I'd have thought. He suggested a stork with a baby so i had a Meljen moment.

The main background paper is K&Co  and the spotty one is My Mind's Eye. The good luck was added before printing out and the "you go girl " is from TLC.  I bought a license from Paulette to be able to sell cards with her sentiments. It;s all too easy to "sneak sell", but i wouldn't feel right in this case. Paulette uploads every day, sometimes more then once and does fabulous sentiments for free. She also has a shop with digis for sale but up to now all I've done is to snag the freebies with the odd thank you, so i thought a licence purchase was in order and well worth the tenner. I've got £2 back already with this card ( no fancy colouring on these £2 jobs) and I've made loads more this week. The right words make such a difference.

Challenges, Papercrafting journey. Feathered friends.

Target weight, 9st 2lb.  Today's weight,  9st 2lb.

Funny Anniversary Card.

Morning all. I won't say "good" because it isn't, not here anyway. I hope it brightens up later as there is a street carnival up the road and we are nipping along to take a peek.The street is quite multicultural as there are Polish, Indian and Caribbean food shops and quite a few ethnic eateries as well as good old English pubs. I think they are trying to attract more people to the area as although this used to be the main walking route from the train station into the city centre there has been a free bus service for a couple of years now which has not been good for businesses.
Anyway meanwhile here's today's card. It's Speedy's sister's anniversary next week. Her and hubby are well into retirement so i thought i'd use my third stamp from Imag-e-nation (link in last post) for a bit of a laugh.

The papers are from my huge pad of K & Company "360 best of" papers. It was just under £30 but has loads of different styles and is well worth the money.

The glossy accents has been out again (see link in sidebar for flower digi). This time it's on the glasses too. The caption is from TLC again. I love my Fiskars deckle scissors. They are great for trimming a layer of coloured card around a smallish sentiment without having to cut it dead straight. Card base is 6"x6.

Challenges.  Simply Create. special day/event.
                   Stamp Something. Add a sentiment.

Meljens Easter Card.

I don't really send many Easter cards but i couldn't resist this little Meljens image from Whimsy stamps so I made one each for the two mums.

The daisy background paper is K&CO.  It goes so well with the little punched daisies. The leaves are done with an X Cut botanicals punch. The daisy centres are card candy coloured with promarkers.

It's another sunny day so I've been out and about while it lasts. Chester is full of howling kids at the moment. Every shop I've been in has been full of them running around and even playing football with daddy in Tesco! Still i did manage to find another bargain dress on the sale rail at Wallis so it was worth it. Off to do a bit of the dreaded housework now then maybe a bit of fun in my den, well after I've scouted for a couple of challenges to enter.

Digital Tuesday. Pretty Punches.

Creative Inspirations. Easter.

Dream Valley. Easter.

Quirky Crafts. Easter.

A few quickies.

 I got into work yesterday and noticed my little stand of cards for sale was looking a bit bleak so I've had to do a few rush cards.

Two for the men.

And one for the ladies.

All made with a Penny Black stamp and a few scraps. To be honest these little quickies sell better than the fancier ones even though they are only 50p more.
Off to make some more quickies now but here's a piccie of some Easter gifts i made with the leftover tags from the last post. The little rabbits are from good old Aldi.

Quick little Easter idea.

I was strolling around Morrisons last week and i came across some gingerbread Easter bunnies. They were in the bread section in a plastic tub, you know, the ones they have the mini flapjacks etc in. There were 35 for £1.99. I could feel a little Easter gift coming on.

I searched Google images for the Easter bunny and made up the little ditty. I thought if i put 5 bunnies in each bag i'd get 7 bags. Nope, there were 2 broken ones so me and speedy had to eat  5 biccies between us. Shame,lol.

I hope i've given you enough time to get some of these done before next week. The bags are the ones used foe 4x6 cards and the font is Riesling.

Happy Mother's Day.

Off to mum's now. Be back later. xx

Mothers day card.

Happy Friday everyone. I hope you have a good one. If not, then don't worry, there's another one next week,lol.I made my mother's day cards yesterday. I struggled a bit at first but i got there in the end.

The image is by Meljen's and was designed with mother's day in mind. It's quite a wide image and i sized it down a bit but it wasn't until i'd coloured them and started the cards that i realised they were still a bit wide. Instead of doing the logical thing and using a 5"x7" base i insisted on cramming it onto a 6" square. I'm happy (ish ) with the end result though. The circle sentiment is from Netties blog

The image is coloured with promarkers and the papers are from my best of K&CO. pad.

Entering into Scrapbook Sisters mothers day challenge
                    My time to craft, Mum's the word
                    Paper Playtime digi monday, Anything Goes.



Target weight 9st 2lb.  Today's weight 9st 3lb.   (To anyone new to my blog, this is very boring but necessary. I reached my target ages ago,give or take the odd pound, but if i don't do this every Friday i will fall right off the wagon,lol)

Thank you Laura.

These little cards would be nothing without the hilarious image by Laura at Pop N Stick.  As soon as i saw it i had to make some Happy Spring cards for my family.

Look at that funny little face, lol. Isn't it just so cute? Here's a close up.

The card bases are 5"x5" from Tesco and the paper is K& Co. The glitter glue is Hobbycraft's own at £1.25. In my opinion it is as good as Stickles and the bottle is bigger.

I added the sentiment ( again, inspired by Laura ) on the computer before printing out. I'm not going to enter into any challenges with this card because as i said, it would be nothing without the image and it is so similar to Laura's card it wouldn't be fellow bloggerly of me,lol.

On the subject of challenges, i won top 5 at Meljens again with my little rabbit in the bath further down the page.

Right,........ things to do,  places to go,  debt to get into............................

A Load of Leprechaun.........

Well, i've been a good girl for far too long and have fallen off the smut wagon,lol. Remember the Christmas reindeer s**t bags?  Someone i gave one to said it might be an idea to make some for ST Patricks day. Since then i've been obsessed with finding something green.  I was about to give in and just use chocolate raisins when i spotted these at Julian Graves. I was beside myself with glee !!

I bought 3 bags at £1.89 each.  The seed had been planted and now i'd got the fertiliser. All i needed to do now was to Google a suitable image and there were quite a few to choose from. I chose one which i could get away without colouring..

I made up the little poem weeks ago( naughty word scuffed out of photo but is there in real life) and just needed to add the little drawing and print them out. Feel free to copy my little ditty, blogging is about sharing and having fun.

I put 15 little bread sticks in each bag (the ones used for 4"x6" cards with tops chopped off) and got 7 bags out of each packet. Cheap laughs hey?  The best bit?  My boss's name is Patrick and he's just as smutty as me. We'll have heap big fun giving these out next week. Look out regular customers.......

I'm working this morning but was woken extra early by the local  ASBO blackbird shouting and bawling in the tree outside. Where's my gun?

Target weight 9st 2lb.  Today's weight 9st 3lb. One back on thanks to pancake day and the Cadbury's rep dishing out the new Big Race bars.....yummy...go on , you know you want to.........

Quick Jokey Card.

Speedy, the hubby is a mechanic. One of his customers (who drinks with him in the local pub ) rang him last week to say he'd broken down in his new car. Of course speedy's first question was " are you sure the fuel hasn't ran out. " Yes, there's fuel in it " was the reply. so off he goes to rescue this bloke and guess what? Yep....no fuel,lol. So of course, the poor bloke has never heard the last of it down the pub. Not wanting to be left  out, i made him a quick card.

Well, i uploaded this card and to my horror i realised i'd spelled diesel wrong but i've managed to prize the image layer off and quickly redo it. Phew, i would have been another laughing stock. The image is another of Meljens freebies and the papers are from my scraps. I've put an insert inside with "......... REGULARLY!"  printed on it. The printed frame was a freebie from Wendy,  HERE

Guilty Purchase.

I've been loving all the free digi stamps lately but it was only a matter of time before i started feeling a bit guilty about just nabbing them and not giving anything back except for the odd "thank you" here and there. So i've bought a few of Meljens designs from Whimsy Stamps.

This one is called lovebirds and cost $3 which is just under £2. I was never really interested in digi stamps until the last couple of weeks when i realised  they had quite a bit going for them. I'd always been a bit envious of Americans as their companies seem to have new release every few weeks. Digis eliminate the p&p costs and the waiting for them to arrive. Also they don't clutter the craftroom, So I think i'm becoming a fan.

The paper is from Craftwork Cards and the card base is 6" x 6". The sentiment was added on the computer before printing out. The font i've used is Freehand 591 BT.

I added a bit of pink chalk around the image on this one and cream on the wedding one.

It's so dark again today. I was going to do a bit of colouring this afternoon but i'll have to have a rethink on that one. Never mind..............................

Happy Valentines Day.

Or for the purists, Happy St. Valentines Day. At last the sun is shining and i've been able to photograph some of my cards. Every day off i've had lately has been dark and dull.
So here's Speedy's card.

The image is one of Meljens freebies ( don't you just love her) and can be found HERE. If you scroll down the page there is a link to 23 freebies. It's written in bright pink on the left hand side.  The little hearts are also Meljens but i re sized them as the original is quite a lot bigger.

I put a coat of glossy accents on the hearts and some stickles around the cookie. I was half way though making the card when i noticed the computer generated sentiment is placed slightly too low and the loops on the Y's have been chopped off a bit. Never mind Speedy didn't notice,lol.
We are going out for a meal tonight at a local Hotel. We always go there as they've had the same chef for 20 years and the food is always spot on.
I'm off into town now to do a bit of boring food shopping.

I'm Clean, and Thanks.

After a few days of not being able to click on my blog because of a pop up saying " threat detected and suspended" , "clean computer". Speedy's computer surgeon mate has freed me from disease,lol. He said it was something to do with the gadgets/ adverts and Blogger or Microsoft would probably spot it and sort it out. He meanwhile put me onto google chrome which didn't show the warnings but the warning still popped up when using Yahoo or my desktop button.. . This morning i clicked on my blog using my old desktop button and guess what? He was right the warning didn't pop up. It seems it's been spotted and sorted just as he said. Thank you so much John.

I was looking through my little card stand at work and i noticed , for want of a better word it was bereft of sympathy and thank you cards. I bought this little Thank You stamp by Inkadinkado from Hobbycraft in the sale for £2.,99. The papers and 5"x5" cards are from a goody bag from Craftwork  Cards, a bargain but not my usual stuff so i'm determined to get my money back from selling cards made with the contents.

The daisies are made from a punch and some Card Candy included in the goody bag

 Ohhh!!!,  Listen to this then. Me and Speedy joined a small ( 7 of us ) syndicate doing the 3 number Irish Lottery about 4 weeks ago. Well, our numbers came up last night and we all won about £70 each !! Probably beginners luck but as someone who works in a newsagent selling lotto, this is most encouraging.  I buy 2 lotto and 1 thunder ball every Saturday and have won nothing for at least 10 months. A lot of people have said the Irish lottery is better. We'll see how it goes over the next few months......................