May 13

Well that time of year has hit us again - Dundee Food and Flower Festival - the book containing all the categories arrived in the post the other day. One category caught my eye, it involves using plastic carrier bags. So I contacted our local Asda, who kindly gave me some bags. Spent an evening or two cutting the bags into strips, and now have to loop them into a long strip ready for knitting, yes knitting. Once the project has been done I am to give them a picture for them to post up on their board as part of the re-cycling projects.

 Spent ages cutting the bags into strips and then making them into the balls. Knitting is well under way.

I am getting a unit from Storage4crafts. I am getting a bit of a windfall and thought this would tidy up the craft area, aka the dining room.  I have loads of the really useful boxes and this company make storage units that fit these boxes. Just hoping it makes the room tidier.  I just ordered the one meter unit. I also ordered Cropper Hopper ribbon boxes and have managed to store a good majority of the reels in them. I also ordered a metal ring and tag holder and have put a lot of loose ribbons on, need to get more boxes and tags.

*** update - unit here and fitted and it looks fantastic!

Made this beautiful card, from the Party Paws Luxury Card collection. I made this for my mother in law.  I had got the offer from Create and Craft, and then mounted the image onto an 8 x 8 card.  The image is decoupaged. I then used the buttons and paper ribbon from the pack along with gems. 

 

My little boy got christened in the middle of April, it was wet but we still had a fantastic day. My sister in law and her two girls made his cake and it was fantastic.

I go back to work shortly :-( but needs must.

See you all later

Kay xx

March 13

Did it again, have got into the reader’s gallery of Complete Cardmaking magazine, this time with the other entry for the nitwit competition last year. I was experimenting with the paper that I made, and came up with this card, I intend giving this to my mother in law for Mother’s Day. The image is from Angelica and Friends CD by Crafters Companion matted and layered onto black and cream card. It was put onto an 8” by 8” card. I then used red and black ribbon, black flowers with gold brad centre and made a bow. I made cards for Robert’s baptism. I got the CD that came with Complete Cardmaking and got the monkey image, and then matted on to silver card using one of my spellbinders die cuts. Then printed paper and made the you are invited to sign. This was then put onto small scalloped cards. The thank you cards I made from using images from Do Crafts “Woodland Folk” cd. Made everything in their digital designer. It is hard to believe that Robert is just over 3 months old. He is growing so fast, he has started to have bottom teeth but does not seem to be fazed by it, the health visitor is also suggesting that we start to wean him sooner rather than later due to his weight. He has already had two sets of injections and does not seem to be bothered by them. By 4 weeks he was sleeping right through the night and everyone keeps remarking how contented and happy he is. We managed a short trip to Sheffield over Easter to plant a tree in my late mother’s memory and scatter her ashes, he was a great hit with his auntie Jo and granddad John. Monkeys seem to be the theme with Robert, mainly because he act likes one! We have had to move him into his nursery as well as put him in the family cot as he has now outgrown the Moses basket.

My mojo went astray

Well it has been a long time since I last posted, hopefully things will be changing. After the death of my father in law, my mojo went awol, and therefore did not post or do any real crafting from that point. As my pregnancy progressed the sickness and tiredness disappeared after 4 ½ months but then came back along with swollen feet and hands. We took a fortnight off work in October to have a wee break and to visit my mum down in England. We went to York for a week and stayed in the centre of York and did a few sightseeing trips, unfortunely due to swollen feet and ankles I could not walk very far and at 7 months pregnant I got tired very easily. Unfortunely the trip to my mum was not a good one. I got a phone call from my mum’s partner, john on the Thursday of our first week. They had been away on a cruise for a 10 day break and on the last full day mum had not been well. They got back on the Wednesday and by the Thursday they had to call the doctor out, who thought she had a chest infection and was being admitted to hospital for intravenous antibiotics, and this is where she would be when we arrived on the Friday. We went to see her and although she was awake she was not very compis mentis, and could barely hold a conversation with us. On the Saturday she was barely awake. The phone went in the early hours of Sunday morning to say that her condition had detoriated; we then had a meeting with her doctor later that same day. The news was not good. It turns out she had advance lung cancer which had already spread to her liver and they thought it had already entered her brain. They were going to do a second scan on the Monday to confirm. We were told she only had days to live. They then took more blood and by this point a second consultant came along and that was revised to only hours. By teatime she had passed away. As you can image being 7 months pregnant, I was not really in a position to grieve plus I also had to deal with the paperwork and clearing out a house (another story!). Since coming back, I was then preparing for the birth of our child and trying to deal with two deaths in the space of four months. I ended up having a caesarean section on the 31 December and along came our son, Robert David James in honour of his two grandparents and my husband’s middle name. He has brought much joy to the two families and has helped making Christmas and New Year an easier time to bear.

Now, my life is my husband, his family and our son and totally complete. I had surprise in the post just after the new year, I had received my copy of the magazine Complete Cardmaking, in which I had subscription, but not getting to look at it properly did not see that a card I had submitted for a completion had made it into the readers gallery. I had used Nitwits products and had used some items from the Hey cupcake collection and the other items came from one of the Nitwit collections on a Complete Cardmaking CD. Obviously I had not won the completion but was happy on getting a CD called Magical Christmas Moments. A bit late for this Christmas but will be certainly using it for the cards this year.

I also did another couple of cards using the nitwit collections

I did a card for our wedding anniversary using the Docrafts Boofle CD, as my husband had commented that he had like the image of Boofle.

This card I had done for my youngest niece Ellie for her birthday. The image is from Crafts U print, but I mounted it onto white card with Black glitter card with silver peel off and black ribbon, apparently she loved it.

That is all for now, hopefully I will get back to you at the beginning of March. Kay xxx

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