Is felt the best thing ever?

Well I think so. I am totally obsessed with putting felt lovelyness on my cards at the moment and here's a few of them:

This one is a birthday card for a friend. There is also a challenge over on the Crafts by Carolyn forum to include a tag on a card so I'll stick this one on there too.

Ingredients

Paper - American Crafts,

Papermania stamp

Felt letter and flower cut with Cuttlebug dies

Primas

Button

Another friend's birthday card:

Ingredients:

Paper - Basic Grey

Felt 'Pint' cut with a Quickutz die and background cut with Nestabilities

Stars cut with a Cuttlebug Die

'Happy Birthday' Papermania stamp

Studio G mini letter stamps

I managed to track down the new Cuttlebug cut and emboss Christmas tree set the other week, and I just had to make a felt Christmas card with it:

I just love the lime green and pink felt together.

Ingredients:
Cuttlebug and netabilities dies
Paper - K&CO Amy Butler range
Gingham ribbon from Crafts By Carolyn

Finally another Christmas card, but this time without felt (probably because I couldn't find the right shades to tone with the paper)

Ingredients:
Chipboard trees made with the Cuttlebug tree die
Basic Grey fruitcake paper
Cuttlebug tag die

I nearly forgot, if you want to see some fantastic felt lovelyness check out this blog.

Cheers

Ruthie x

A bit of catching up

As always I am late with stuff, but this time I have an excuse - well kind of! Last weeks Dare over on Daring Card Makers was to make a card featuring scallops:

I'm just loving all the new scallop punches that are out at the moment, circles, ovals, squares, edges etc, etc and then there's the corner rounder and slit punches that can be used to scallop edges as well.

Use your imagination, your scallop punches, your corner rounders, your cricuts and cuttlebugs to create any card to fit any style as long as it shows scallops.

Anyway, Thursday was Mr Craftybloggers birthday so I decided to tie his card in with the dare and I didn't really feel it was fair to post it until after his birthday (how's that for an excuse!). Here's the card complete with scalloped edges on the brown and lined paper, cut with very small scalloped scissors. I didn't opt for anything bigger as I thought I wouldn't be able to make it masculine enough.

The concert ticket was made from here: http://www.says-it.com/concertticket/

Patterned paper is Basic Grey and ribbon is papermania. The screw head brads are from Crafts By Carolyn

Now for my catch-ups from the newly revamped Her Space - My Space - His Space (Check out their new site). Previously Her Space - My Space they have had a bit of a makeover and are now embracing equal opps as the Boy Blogger is on the staff ;)

The first prompt is Sign:

Now onto Look. Struggled with this so opted for an easy one and followed Boy Bloggers lead. l try harder next time I promise! (I think I may have even used this shot before :( )

It is of course the statue of the late Eric Morecambe in Morecambe.

Today's prompt is for a pet portrait so I'm off to find someone's pet to photograph as Crafty Blogger HQ is petless.

Cheers

Ruthie x

Old Skool - A Joiner Themed Thank you.

Well the joiner has finished the crafty blogger kitchen (no pics yet as it still needs painting, and I've only got as far as the patchwork sample stage :( ) Anyway, I decided to thank Graham our fab joiner with a little card.

I went back in time for this one with a Sizzix doll. It seems ages since I did a character card, and you don't seem to see as many of them around these days , hence the Old Skool title. I don't have the doll dies, I just accumulated lots of bits from various ebay purchases over the years. Here's the finished product, complete with mini joiner.

Ingredients:
Card from papermill shop
Screw head brads from Crafts By Carolyn
Dies: Sizzix Doll body and clothes; quickutz tools and toolbox, Cuttlebug red tag sale alphabet

I have also been playing along with HerSpace:MySpace this week but not had chance to post so here's my catch-up

Leaf:

Autumn has arrived in my garden, not sure what happened to summer though!

Adventure:

This was one of the few days of summer we had this year - taken in May on a camping weekend in north Yorkshire.

Stack:

A stack of my Cuttlebug dies on a very well worn cutting mat.

Carved:

Yes, another shot of Morecambe and the Midland Hotel, taken last Saturday. These are the two seahorse carvings on the front of the building which were carved by Eric Gill. Aren't they beautiful.

Cheers,

Ruthie x

'Delicious' Home Baking

How apt that today's prompt on HS:MS is delicious as I spent yesterday making some rather scrummy double chocolate muffins. One survived till today so I could snap it for today's 'Delicious' prompt.

Purely in the interests of authenticity I had to check that it was delicious, and indeed it was :)

You can pick the recipe up here.

It was a gorgeous weekend here and I managed to get a couple of shots for HS:MS SOS. I've been playing with these two pics in photoshop. I'm not sure if I like the effects or not. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

This one uses a fake Lomo effect, the tutorial for which I picked up on the Elements village forum.

This one is my own recipe - going for a bit of a vintage vibe and mixing a few techniques.

Perhaps 'less is more' would be a better approach. At the moment I'm a bit like a child who's got in a grown up's craft box and can't resist throwing the entire contents onto one piece of work! At least photoshop has an undo function.

Cheers

Ruthie x

Row n Float

Just a flying visit to catch up with HS:MS challenges for Row and Float.

First is the row of columns on the opera house in Madrid.

Second is some boats (which hopefully float) on the front at Morecambe. I will run out of photos of Morecambe eventually!

Must dash, off to make a thank you card for the joiner who is making a fab job of the crafty blogger kitchen and to see what's happening on Corrie.

Cheers

Ruthie

The Felt Obsession Continues

Well, I just can't get enough of felt on my cards at the moment. I just love cutting it in my Cuttlebug. I think I may be stuck in a bit of a style rut to say the least. It was my mum's birthday this week and this is the card I made (festooned in felt of course).

Papers are SEI, letters are Cuttlebug red tag sale and I added the stitching using embroidery floss.

I am once again lagging behind with the HerSpace:MySpace prompts, but I did manage 'bag' with this shot of my totally lurverly Paul Smith Mini holdall. It was a pressie from Mr Crafty Blogger :)

Had a totally fab evening yesterday. The sun was shining and we headed of to Morecambe for the evening as there were fireworks as part of the Morecambe Seaside Festival. Before the fireworks we had a walk along the prom and a drink the the fabulous cafe at the Midland Hotel.

It's not the greatest photo but it does show how fab the bar is. (This is straight out of the camera so if anyone has any suggestions for how I can improve it using PSE 5 I would be really grateful.)

Of course we had to wait for the sun to go down before the fireworks could begin, but in Morecambe that means you are treated to the most fabulous sunsets:
Here's a couple of shots of the fireworks which were set off from the end of the Stone Jetty.

As it's Sunday it's also SOS day on HerSpace:MySpace and my entry is another shot I took last night.

Morecambe has the totally fab 'Sunset Ices' which parks on the prom near the Midland Hotel. Check out their website here, it's fab. It would have been rude not to sample one so Me and Mr Crafty Blogger both opted for the Stem Ginger ice cream which was yummy.

Cheers,

Ruthie

Purple Patch

On HS:MS we were challenged to find purple in our space. As I am back at work today that didn't leave much time for photography. Added to the fact that the weather is pants (very wet pants!!) I was left having to trawl through some pics from earlier in the summer. I was flicking through some of my new garden when I came across this one.

The reason it's tarted up with the border round was because I used it as our change of address cards when we moved. Obviously it said 'Change Of Address' rather than HS:MS Purple. The shot was taken in May this year in the garden of our old house. I love this plant, but when it flowers it only seems to last for a couple of weeks. At least it was in a pot so we have brought it with us to the new Crafty Blogger HQ.

Anyway I must go and dry out. I cycle to work and got caught in the biggest torrential downpour of the year on the way home. At least it has proved that my bargain £10 Aldi cycling jacket really is waterproof. The same can't be said of my trainers who may be receiving the last rights later.

Thanks to everyone who has commented on my blog. I'm hoping to catch up with you all and your purple adventures later. Unfortunately I've agreed to make Mr Crafty Blogger tea first!

Cheers,

Ruthie