Hello Tilda & Edwin, long time no see!

It's been a very long week. I have had no real child free time for over 3 weeks now. SO- after a rather noisy morning at the Pre-school I told myself I deserved a bit of me time! I had my lunch and headed straight for my craft room.

I ended up making a simple little card topper and greeting and I have popped it onto Ebay alongside one I made yesterday! I don't suppose they will be of much interest or sell, but I had fun making them and that's what matters!

I had forgotten how much fun colouring and adding the tiny little details could be!

x X x

Having a crafty sort out!

I am trying to find my missing crafty mojo hidden in the depths of a really messy craft room but unfortunately its gonna get a lot worse before I can see any improvement at all. A little while ago I discovered a long lost, rather large tool box lurking at the back of the spare wardrobe so I moved it into the craft room. There it sat, for weeks and weeks, possibly even months, me having to practically step over it every time I ventured in there. The worktops are not visble from underneath the piles of storage tubs, baskets, papers and general crafty clutter. Is it any wonder at all that I am not feeling inspired to get creative. Hey ho, onwards and upwards. I have cleared the contents of the large toolbox and stored into smaller boxes which fit onto my shelves and now I have some FLOOR! whooo hoooo! I can even whizz my office chair from my little worktop by the window over to the computer without crashing into anything! This morning I am starting to sort out my stamp collection. I feel it has been rather neglected as looking back at my creations over the last few years I have mainly used digi images. Don't get me wrong, I love digital images but I feel the need to a bit of rumaging around, organising, and storing in pretty little boxes! It's been so long since I crafted, I cannot even remember what I have! So far I have uncovered my little collection of Magnolia's, spurred on by a little purchase of 2 new stamps which arrived yesterday. Here is what I have uncovered so far:

I stamped several images yesterday and have since sat down with a nice cuppa and happily cut them all out.....next step.....................COPICS!!!!!!!

A Magnolia for mum!

Today is my darling mum's birthday so what better reason did I need to TRY to get creative. I had a new pad of papers from The Paper Cellar that I have never even used so after finding what I needed in the chaos I used to call my craft room, I set to work.

I took inspiration from the sketch challenge over at Just Magnolia and although I had a few near disasters with a rather old little pot of liquid pearls I really enjoyed my crafty time.

I really, really MUST tidy my little room so that I can actually open the door fully, see a bit more carpet and desktop and use what little ctraft time I have a bit more efficiently!

Happy Birthday Mum!

x X x

Crafts by Carolyn Challenge 1!!!

Yeah, I made a card other than a DT card...shock!!! LOL

The first challenge was put up on Crafts by Carolyn and we needed to pick a letter and make a card using 3 things beginning with that letter!

I chose "L" for lace, liquid pearls, leaves and a little extra love too!!

Come over and join in the fun and games!

Copic Colour Challenge # 54

Another Wednesday, another Copic Colour Challenge, and here are this week's colours;

I took the opportunity to make use of one of my new stamps and the new leafy die I treated myself to and here's what I came up with;

Pop over and join in with the Copic fun and take a peep at the rest of the DT's creations for inspiration. XXX

Playing Copic catch up!

Hello there, trying to play a bit of catch up here while I can. Had another hectic week with Statementing reviews, Physio and Occupational Therapy to squeeze in as well as work. We have all been full of coughs and colds, I am feeling rotten and on top of everything my mum was rushed back into hospital on Wednesday. Will things ever calm down!

Anyway, I didn't schedule this, there were a few technical issues and I have only just got around to blogging this week's DT card for the Copic Colour Challenge.

This week's colours are;

and here's what I came up with.

Eagerly waiting to see who is going to join us on the Design team, so watch this space!!!!!

Baby, baby!

Oh goodness, my next door neighbour came to me a while ago asking if I could make a couple of baby cards. A few day later, her next door neighbour asked the same as she had also had a baby born to her family. THEN her next door neighbour knocked on my door asking for 3 more baby cards as she has had a baby born in her family...LOL...I do hope it's not something in the water!

...AND, do you think I had any baby cards in my little stock box!!!!


Here is the first of the last batch!

I have made this with the recipe challenge over at Creative Treasures for inspiration. I hope the little bit of glitter and the heart charm with suffice as "bling!" I don't really do bling!

I wanted to leave the front clear of any wording as I am going to decorate and personalise the inside.

One down, two more to go...but then the next card on my list is a twin boys 1st Birthday card...GOODNESS, baby, baby, baby!

Be back later with this weeks Copic Colour Challenge card!

Copics Colour Challenge meets Edwin!

It was Lou's turn to choose the colours over on this week's Copics Colour Challenge and I realised there was a terrible, vast gap in my patterned papers....NO orange toned papers, so whilst taking Jack to the cinema on Monday I just HAD to pop over to the Paper Mill Shop and get myself a few boxes of card.....and funny enough a pack of orange tones papers jumped off the shelf and into my basket...isn't it funny how that happens!

Right, I diverse, back to the challenge. Here are this week's colours;

After a lot of dithering (but that's how Dingle crafting is) I decided to use one of my Magnolia stamps, topped off with one of the beautiful hydrangea blooms I treated myself to recently and the little calendar stamps from imaginisce.

I think these colours took me out of my comfort zone a bit but I am quite pleased with the result, nice and cheery and bright on such a dreary, dull and misty morning. Pop over to the Copics Colour Challenge blog to see what delights the rest of the Design Team have come up with and join in our challenge. Cannot wait to see how you all use the colours.

Copic Colour Challenge #2

Today has been a funny old day....the morning was awful, spent it on phone to LEA and schools regarding the complete lack of inclusion in Amelia's school and it seems the fight that is ahead of of us to get her into a Special School in September when she is due to start Juniors! I got quite emotional I am afraid to say, the thought of putting us all through another tribunal process is terrible but if it comes to it, we have no other choice!

I spent the afternoon with ten screaming two year olds and I am eagerly awaiting news of my last NVQ assignments I rushed through and submitted yesterday!!! EEK...I am all over the place but I have got a few things done and off my to do list ...for a while anyway!

Let's get on with a bit of crafting...I started this card this morning but dithered so much over what colours to substitute with in this weeks Copics Colour Challenge...I ran out of time before work this afternoon. This weeks colour are:

Now I really struggled with thes, perhaps the mood I was in this morning all the talk of tribunals didn't help but I just couldn't work out the closest colours to use!LOL Eventually I went for R27 as my nearest red, YG41 my nearest green and B23 as my nearest blue but I don't really feel happy that the combination is anywhere as is should be!! I obviously NEED more Copics to avoid this situation happening again! (wink, wink!)

What with my colour combination, my next stuggle was a patterned paper, I found a few but just wasn't happy....I was very hard to please earlier I will tell you now......so I settled for a very clean, simple and extremely basic approach. The pplan was to make the colours of the Copics do most of the work for me...I hope it worked!!

Tilda and Copics sketch card.

I couldn't resist a little Magnolia stamp a fellow crafter was selling the other day and today it arrived. So this afternoon a stamped a few images and let Amelia loose on one of them with her pens (NO WAY is she going anywhere near MY Copics! LOL) While that kept her occupied for all of 5 minutes, I made a vain attempt to make a card. That was just after lunch and I have been working on it in fits and starts all afternoon- basically when the children were calm!

I decided to try out this week's challenge over on Friday Sketchers.

I uhmm'ed and arhh'ed about using one of the many scraps of paper I have all over my little room....then I reached straight for the Basic Grey Two Scoops that arrived from Charmed the other day! Naughty...but rather nice to say the least! It was the candy sweet colours that appealled but unfortunately the lighting is awful once again. Must look into making a make shift light box thing! LOL

Copic colours I used ;

E00 skin white, E21 Baby skin pink, E02 Fruit pink, E 33 sand, E47 Dark brown, C3 Cool gray, C5 cool gray, RV42 Salmon pink, E04 natural lipstick, Bg10 Cool shadow, G21 Lime green, Yr23 yellow orchre.

Another colour challenge!!

I am loving these at the moment-what better excuse than to try out my copics!LOL

Over on Magnolia V Stampavie this week they want you to use the following colours:

so I went to my stash and ended up with this!

I used combinations of ;

E35 Chamois and E47 Dark Brown for the chocolate colour, YG95 Pale Olive and G99 Olive for the olive green, B32 Pale blue and Bg09 in place of not quite Navy.

Loving these colours!

Funny Thursday!

Not in the HA HA sense either. Just feeling so tired and fed up with all the school issues. I had a bit of a run in with the SENCO yesterday morning as Amelia's support is being mucked up again. It's been hovering over us all for so long now and the school are no better prepared to take in a child with Down Syndrome now than there were nearly 5 years ago when I first approached them about Amelia.

On top of all that, I ahd to collect Amelia from school yet again this morning as she had a bit of a funny tummy. Had to phone in work and I HATE letting anyone down!! Saying that she has been a pleasure to be with this afternoon, we had so much fun and the sound of her laughter kept me going for a while.

I have just finished making another card, again, I am not sure of it but I think that just the way I am at the moment-trying to do so many things and not really feeling successful in any of them.
Anyway, seeing as I now have a few more Copic colours to play with I decided to have another go at the Copic Colour Challenge.

I still haven't got any of the actual colours requested so I used;



Y17 Golden Yellow, YR04 Chrome Orange, YR16 Apricot, YR23 Yellow Ochre

B23 Phthalo Blue, B32 Pale Blue, BV 04 Blue Berry

I am loving my Copics!!!

A bit of a mix up!

That is mixing a magnolia stamp with the gorgeous Grow a little love stamp from Toodles and Binks. I combined them both with a bit of hap hazard doodling to join in this weeks's challenge over on A Spoon Full of Sugar.

I am really not happy with this card, just something that just doesn't work on it for me but hey ho it's another card in my box!

Tilda meets Basic Grey!

I locked myself away in my little room tonight with a few choccies and a large glass of wine and made another card. This time I decided to go for the Basic Grey Challenge for some inspiration.

For this weeks challenge we would like to see you use some chipboard in your creations, fear not if you don't have any chipboard though, a good alternative is to recycle think cardboard that is usually found in boxes, simply cut some shapes from it, decorate it how you please and your good to go, and of course not to forget to use at least one item from BasicGrey somewhere on your creation.

I used scraps of Basic Grey (Nathan I think) together with Larkspur (oh Baby) and Cannon (Oh Baby! Boy) for my Chipboard flowers and bookplate I covered my board in offcuts before running through my Sizzix machine. Inked the edges and finished with a light covering of metallic rub-ons.

And Yeah....another card off my to do list!

Another last minute card!!!

Mother and Father In Law are coming down tonight so I have made another last minute card. Still want to personalise it but wanted to get it done and ready just in case I don't 't get a chance later.

I used the sketch from this weeks Friday Sketchers blog. So glad I stamped and cut all those images back in October!!!

Panic is starting to set in!!

And there was me thinking I was so much more organised this year...well let's face it, this time last year the extension had only JUST finished and we were laying our dining room floor a few days before Christmas so we could put the tree up!!! LOL

We have most of our pressies, I am buying some cards!!! Have to make some more, write all of ours, write all of Amelia's, wrap everything, do the last odds and ends of shopping, catch up on some design team work, attend Christmas Concert, make a snowflake costume, attend Infants Assembly, make up hamper for raffle, pack kiddies bags as they are staying at Nanny & grandad's house for the weekend..................shall I go on!!! eeeek, better stop there before panic mode really kicks in and I do my headless chicken impression!


Anyway, after having poorly children off school for two days, I was relieved they were both well enough to go back to school today. Although I was working this afternoon it did give me a little bit of crafting time this morning - in fact I have now finished of a card order apart from the inserts, I will be crossing that off my list tomorrow hopefully after a bit of retail therapy ready for our big night out!



I do have a few cards to show you if you are still with me after all my waffle.


The first is a sparkly Dottie Creation using Ice Skating Dottie from the Christmas Download Bundle. One teacher's card complete - 7 more to go!!!

The next is the last card from the personalised order, a Christmas card for twin baby boys with an older brother and the lady wanted all of it incorporated into the card if possible. I took inspiration from two challenge for this one;

This week's Sketch Saturday and the Countdown to Chrismas Challenge- Day 2 over on Crafts by Carolyn where you need to create something using red, gold and green!

Right, crafting over with for today, off for a long soak in the bath. Tomorrow is another day!