Very big apologies – some good and bad news.

I am sorry I have not been on since March but unfortunately life events took over. Bad news - as stated on my last blog, my father in law was ill, sadly his illness took over and that we were very concerned about how long he had with us on this planet. He passed away at the beginning of June, we take comfort that his last days were made comfortable by the hospital and that he went peacefully and without pain. We had to be brave as the following day, his youngest grandson had his first communion. The last few weeks we have been slowly coming to terms with things and helping my wonderful mother in law deal with things. Good News – my husband and I are expecting our first baby between Christmas and New Year. To let you understand, we had been trying for a while and discovered last summer when my father in law took ill, that I would have problems in trying to have children. In order to get the necessary treatment I had to lose a lot of weight. In fact I lost over 2 ½ stones! I had been for some tests and was just waiting on getting to my required body mass index where I would then be offered fertility treatment, when we discovered that I had fallen pregnant naturally. Given all that we have been through it has been some kind of miracle. We found out six weeks before my father in law died. We took the decision to tell immediate family sooner rather than later as I had started to have very bad sickness, tiredness and exhaustion and given the severity of my father in law illness, we did not want to hide it from them. As you can imagine this made things very difficult for us to deal with, especially as we knew that his dad will never know his new grandchild but we hope he is watching. Four days after my father in law’s funeral, my husband and I went for our first scan. Little miracle is doing well, my edd is 29 December! My husband wants to call it Santa if it is a boy! Can’t understand why I object! Did not help that when we found out, I was celebrating my big 40th birthday, I got a bottle of pink fizzy wine from my brother in law, I then also won a bottle of Cava in a prize draw, have to leave them sitting on the kitchen worktop until Christmas :-(.

Fudge, Fudge and Fudge - found a wonderful recipe for fudge in the Craft Seller Magazine and have made it a couple of times, yummy. I did raspberry fudge with white chocolate drizzled on the top (sorry no picture, got scoffed at work!!! Nearly managed it as a bribe to the HEO!) I made Strawberry Fudge topped with milk chocolate. Ymmmmmmmmmm , although at that time I was aware of being pregnant and could not stand the smell of it and had to give it away at work! I got some free fabric squares with Sew magazine and made a pin cushion very quickly, slowly discovering my love of sewing again. This is what I used to make a banner for the business.

I made this flower background using Craft Artist, and it is for sale on my new website, made it by accident while experimenting with the Craft Artist and very impress with how it turned out. I have also been knitting some snoods and done various colours, they will be up on the website shortly.

Here are a couple of archive pictures

I have made some changes to the shop, for the time being I will only accept payments through Paypal, but you are able to make payments without having to register for an account. I am offering free shipping to launch the store. Will be back soon, honest! Kay (and bump!)

Cake Pops

Is this the new trend?  I think it is. The Pension Centre where I work recently celebrated 10 years of being opening, which is quite scary as I will have worked there for 10 years in October!  Anyway, we held some celebrations and I made some cake pops for the buffet.  The theme was countries and we did Greece as a team.  I picked up lollisticks from Hobbycraft as well as blue chocolate, yes blue!  I had treated myself to a proper cake pop machine to make a proper cake rather than getting cake and using frosting or cream cheese to bind together, mainly because I have to restrict my dairy intake.  I then used icing to make the Greek flag.

I have been doing a lot of knitting recently and especially scarves.  I found this simple pattern in the Create and Craft magazine, and have managed to find lots of colours to do it in.  The picture below is in a purple which has strips of gold thread running through it.

I got the new Paintbox Poppets from Crafters Companion, and do adore it, the images are fantastic, I also got it in time to make my cards for mother’s day

Her e is the card I made for my father in law’s 75^th birthday last month.  I used Docrafts Forever Friends Retro CD. I had taken out a subscription for a digital magazine and that was the free gift.

I entered a card into a Nitwits completion that I saw using some of their digi kits, and must say found it extremely difficult to choose which kit I wanted!

Finally here are some cards from my archive.

Some other news, I have decided to change they way my shop will operate and will be in the process of changing things over, if you want me to make you anything then just contact me through the blog or email me at kcardsandcrafts@live.co.uk   Things are still hectic and my father in law is still very ill so if I don’t reply immediately please be patient.

Kay xxxx

Big apologies

Big big apologies.  The last few months have been very stress full.  Unfortunately my father in law took ill in the summer and is still not well and I have been going through personal issues to, hopefully 2012 will be a good year for us all.

Have managed to do some card making, on face book is a group for those that love Crafters Companion products, a fantastic lady by the name of Marie Richardson made this fantastic tea light card.  There is a link to the blog.  Here is my effort, went for the art deco look on the front, made from pearl baby blue centrica card. The circles were cut out using the nesties.  Need to find a way of doing without damaging the box!

We also had my Brother and Sister in law’s 25^th wedding anniversary at the beginning of October and use the template from B-C-E to make the easel card, and then used images from Humphrey’s CD.  Found the sentiment on the web, absolutely love it!

Did the following for the Crafters Companion competition, and used the snowman for a tent card, and Humphrey for the double easel card.

The stage show was fantastic had a great time and believe the muffins made went down a treat

I am going to try and include a card that I have made previously but not shown on here.  This one is a card I made for mother’s day.  I used Joanna Sheens Tales of the Orient, just matted and layered on to silver mirror card and set with black flower with a red brad in the middle.  All I do for the brads rather than put it through the card is, put it in and the open the wings out and then cut the excess off with a pair of sharp scissors, then stick down with a glue dot.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and prosperous New Year. See you in 2012.

Kay xxx

Award winning.......

Well not quite!, entered the Dundee Food and Flower Festival with a couple of entries for the first time this year, and I came second in the craft collection of designing three articles for a wedding an invitation, a favour and one own choice.   Was very happy with the result!

 

Not really been busy on the card front, too busy working, we also went away for a week in Tarland in Aberdeenshire, the sat nav took us up the cairn o mount, it is really steep!  The car already heavy laden with camping gear also struggled as the petrol light came on showing empty! Thankfully we had enough to get us to Aboyne but boy it is steep, on the way home I refused to let my husband go back that way! The weather was good and we had a good time exploring the area. We went to Braemar, Crathie and Balletar. Was going to go to Balmoral but the price put us off. In Braemar there was this fantastic shop that still made sweets by hand, oh god the smell was wonderful, as it was the really old fashioned sweeties! We then went down to North Berwick for a few days, we could not stay any longer as we had a twenty first birthday for a family member that day, and she had lost her uncle only two weeks before and we had missed his funeral due to our holiday in Aberdeenshire

We are going to be busy next week, we are stage crew in a production of Hi De Hi, by a local group who raise money for charities, if you happen to be Dundee and fancy a ticket, the show is at the Gardyne Theatre, showing Wednesday – Saturday, and if happens to be your birthday you may get a mention as well as a muffin from me!

Somebody mentioned on her blog about making milk cartons, so I found a pattern on the internet and reduced it down to make mini favour boxes, hope you like them.

 We were also at a wedding recently, and I made card from the Crafters Companion CD of Humphrey's corner.  I had originally done the box frame but did not like it, so just cut away the image and mounted it onto an easel card instead. Found the sentiment on line and used that rather than just a standard greeting.

 

Speak soon

Kay xxx