A New Year and I will blog!

If there is anyone out there reading this Happy New Year to you, and for those of you who celebrate Christmas I hope Santa brought you some nice pressies. He did make a stop 'Chez Ruthie' and amongst other things dropped off one of these: It's a fab I-Pod doc with built in-DAB digital radio so it means I can listen to my favourite tunes and digi radio stations (6 Music and XFM) while I am in my craft room.

I've had some time off work over the holidays so I have been able to do a bit of crafting and joined in with this week's DCM Dare:

Team dare year end....4 of the best
Hi All. Today we have decided to revisit your most favourite dares of 2007. The four top dares, decided by the number of comments you made on them are (in no particular order): 'buttons', 'ribbons', ...'and cut' and 'frames'. We would like you to use this week as many of those dares as you like to make your card in any theme and any style.

I decided to use the dare to get ahead with some birthday cards for friends who are celebrating over the next few weeks.

No.1:

I combined a few elements on this one 'Ribbons', 'Frames' and 'Buttons'. I am not very good at hand cutting so confined the use of scissors to the scalloped edges.

Ingredients:
Paper - Making Memories Boho Chic
Frame - mountboard covered with MM paper and cut with a Cuttlebug die
Ribbons (and turquoise Primas) from a Christmas kit put together by Tracy at Creative Treasures
Buttons and pink and white Primas from 'Stash'

No.2

For this one I opted for the Ribbons part of the dare - no mean feat on a man card!. It's a Birthday card for my MG Midget owning car mad friend. He is no stranger to the Haynes manual as his Midget has been in bits for almost as long as I have known him. A typical man restoration project!

Most of the stuff for this card is from my stash and the ribbon on this one also comes from the Creative Treasuers Christmas kit - proving that a card kit is not just for Christmas! The bound spine idea comes from a fab tutorial here and I created the personalised faux stamp in Word.

I also manged to do a bit of crafting prior to Christmas, but as usual was on the last minute with cards for family. The afore mentioned Creative Treasuers kit came to the rescue for cards for my parents and in-laws:

My Mum & Dads:

My in-law's:

I just love the Figgy Pudding BG papers which came as part of the kit. It took a lot of courage to chop into them! Most of the bits and pieces came from the kit, I just added the checked ribbon and made the tree on the second card using mountboard cut with a sizzix die and triple embossed.

I also did a card from my Sister using some fab freebie papers designed by Kirsty Wiseman for Bubbly Funk:

The tree was hand cut, and the tag is a Sizzix die. Picture isn't the best due to the dark winter days.

Thanks for looking, and best wishes for a healthy, happy and crafty 2008!

Ruthie.