Cupcake anyone...?

Hi folks! How's it going? We're having glorious sunshine here in Essex at the moment! Things are going well here. My Mum's procedure went well. She's come home with another stent in (boo) but they removed the drain! Yay! She is even thinking of going home in the next week or so which will be a bit wierd as she's been living here for 4 months now!!!!!

So I've got a bit of a long post today. I've made 3 cards and a bookmark for you to view. I'm also doing alot of work on my next Bind-It-All project which is a craft organiser. I can't wait to share it with you as I think it'll be super useful and I haven't seen that anyone has done anything similar.

Onto my first card.....

First up today is an old fav Stamping Bella stamp- Cupcakeabella. My Mum has asked me to make a card for one of her friend's birthdays who is a bit partial to cakes so I thought this would be perfect! I coloured her with a mixture of watercolour pencils and lyra pencils and paper pieced her dress. The gorgeous papers are by Heidi Grace Designs. The sentiment stamp is Hero Arts from their cupcake set. Do please click on the image to see it in more detail, for some reason it looks a bit dark in this photo.

I'd like to enter this into:

Simon Says Stamp- 1 image, 2 papers, 3 types of embellies

Alphabet Challenge- use ribbon

Cupcake Challenge- pink polka dots (they're pink & lilac, hope ok!)

Sketch Saturday

My Time To Craft- jewels

Here is a close up of her! Doesn't that cupcake look yummy?!!

Crafty stash used: Stamps (Stamping Bella, Hero Arts); Copics; Watercolour pencils; Lyra pencils; Papers (Heidi Grace); Assorted cardstock; Nesties; Ribbon (Stampin Up); Pearls (Wild Orchid Crafts?); Buttons (Walmart); Flowers (Prima); Gem (Prima)

Next up is a card for my friend's little girl using this cutie Penny Black teddy. I coloured her with watercolour pencils and lyra pencils. The papers are by My Mind's Eye. The decorative strip is by K&Co. The sentiment is Papertrey Ink.

I'd like to enter this into:

Friday Sketchers

Cute Card Thursday- signs of Spring

Dutch Dare- who's who in the zoo

Stamping for the weekend- spring

Charisma Cardz- four legged friends

Diecut Dreams- Spring garden

ABC Challenge- pink

Crafty stash used: Image (Penny Black); Stamp (Papertrey Ink); Copics; Lyra pencils; Watercolour pencils; Papers (MME); Assorted cardstock; Nesties; Decorative strip (K&Co); Buttons; Brads (Woodware); Gem (freebie)

Next up is a card for our friend's 40th birthday using this fab Riley stamp. Riley is coloured with copics and his t-shirt is paper pieced. The sentiment is a Pink Petticoat one punched out with my Stampin Up window punch. The beer glass is a diecut I bought off Ebay ages ago. The little stars are a Die-namic strip which I cut into individual stars to decorate.

I'd like to enter this into:

Create4fun-sketch

Crafty Catz- special birthdays

Stamp Something- use something digi - my sentiment

Crafty stash used: Stamp (Riley); Sentiment (Pink Petticoat); Copics; Papers (Basic Grey); Stars (Die-namics die); Punch (Stampin Up); Beer die-cut (Ebay)

Lastly up is a non-card item!!! I'm doing really well this year for sticking to my crafting aims- one of which is to make some non-card gifts. I made this magnetic bookmark using the iTop Brad Maker I got in the US last year on hols. I was really chuffed with myself as I made the whole thing from scratch and had to figure out how the whole magnet thing was going to work.

I used scraps of papers which is great for using up your scrappy stash and used my sewing machine to add some texture. So I initially made the brad using the brad maker. Here you see my bookmark "at rest" lol....

Here you can now see it open and see the magnet which grips onto the back of the brad. I used one half of a magnet-daddy to do this.

Here you see the bookmark "at work"!! It grips really well to the page and the brad doesn't make the book bulge too much when the book is shut. I like how the flower looks onto the book page.

I'd like to enter this into:

Cutie Sunday- bookmark

I'm going to make more of these for friend's during the year so I will do a tutorial if anyone's interested to show how easy the iTop is to use.

Crafty stash used: iTop brad maker; brad daddies; magnet daddies; flower; paper scraps; assorted cardstock; sewing machine

And lastly some naughty new crafty stash. Really, all this stress is no good for my purse!!!!! Another one of my new crafty "resolutions" was to try some different things/styles so I decided I wanted to do some vintage cards, especially for Christmas. I looked around for some stamps that were really versatile and coordinated with each other and came up with this lot from Waltzing Mouse Stamps. I'm a bit reticent about using them now as it's so out of my comfort zone!!! Doh!!! Does anyone else have that problem? Watch this space!

Thanks so much for taking the time to drop by today- I know it's been a bit of a loooong post! Hope you have a fun week and get to enjoy some of this lovely sunshine we're having at the moment. xxx