A bit of a catch up...

I seem to have got super busy this last week.    Thursday was my birthday and we went out to dinner with my son and his partner.   We had a good night with lots of laughter and great food.  Here is a picture of the gorgeous gift they gave me

Then over the weekend we went with our friends to Managwhai.  Haven't been up for a while.  The weather forecast was not looking good, but in the end, it was beautiful weather.  I went out for a walk on both days... Saturday a 50 min walk and today a 80 min walk.  I got some great photos of the walks

  A pair of Mallard ducks 

 Cute little bach at the end of our street

Harbour on Saturday.

and today I walked over to the Surf Beach 

It's hard to see but there were three dolphins surfing the waves with all the surfers.   Worth the hard walk to get there.  

We also went out for lunch at a nearby cafe for a lovely lunch.    After we got back I spend some time colouring and making some nail polish marbling I saw on Splitcoaststampers.  

 

I had a great time doing this colouring.  I'm loving the classes I am taking at Kit and Clowder.  I am learning so much about using my Prismacolor pencils. 

Thanks for taking the time to visit me.   Hope you all had a great weekend too.

Panda Birthday

It's my day to share at Die Cut Divas.... Our theme this month is Animals/Pets

Our lovely sponsor this month is Frantic Stamper Inc... and they have some awesome animal stamps you could use for our challenge.

They are also providing a cute little die for a prize for our winner this month

Super cute.

So here is my card.... a CAS cutie

This adorable Panda was stamped and cut with my ScanNCut machine.  I used my trusty Cuttlebug to emboss at each end of the panel with the cute little paw prints.  The butterfly is also cut with my machine.  Love the ScanNCut now I'm getting used to it.

Do come and join us for this months Animals/Pets challenge. 

Noel Christmas cards

I have a couple of Christmas cards to share today.  I did lots of colouring over the first few days of June for Kathy Racoosin's 30 Day colouring challenge.  I have also been spending some time working out how to use my ScanNCut and had found a great Noel text image, I wanted to try out on a card.  I set it up in Brother Canvas and decided I wanted to use it as an Eclipse card.  So I decided to stamp and colour a background to die cut.

I stamped the Hero Arts Poinsettia several times and coloured it.  I then cut it with the ScanNCut.  I cut several more white die cuts and one out of dark green card so I could layer the sentiment when I laid it back in the negative space.  I quite like the result, but think the background is just a touch too busy to see the sentiment that well. 

The next card came about as I was about to throw out the negative space of one of the white layers.   I looked at it and decided it was too good to throw away.  So here's what I did

I die cut a stitched rectangle and added some patterned paper behind the opening.  I added some Nuvo drops as embellishments. 

So that's my first two Christmas cards started. 

Thanks for stopping by. 

The Daily Marker 30 day challenge - Days 8, 9 and 10

I'm trying to do the daily challenge - some colouring every day for the 30 Days of June.... so far not too bad -
so here's Days 8, 9 and 10

Day 8:

A card for a friend who turned 60 on the 9th June.... Using a Bugaboo image coloured with Prismacolor pencils.

Day 9:

This one is for our friend's wife who's birthday is the next day (10th- she is a year younger)  I got some new Altenew stamps this week and used the Rustic Linen background with Old Paper distress ink to make a background.  I then stamped the Starry night stamps and used my Derwent Inktense pencils to watercolour them.  I cut the Happy die on my ScanNCut... a bit smaller than I'd have liked but it looks ok with stamped sentiment.

and Day :

This card is for the challenge at The Flower Challenge #21 - Use a previous challenge.  I chose Challenge #3 - Use an old stamp or die.  The stamp here is a Hero Arts one from 2010.  I used the Derwent Inktense pencils as they were still sitting on my desk.   Add some splatter and pencil does for the background.   Some gold washi tape completed the card.

Have enjoyed the mindfulness of colouring.  It is very therapeutic and relaxing if you just go with the flow and don't get caught up in trying too hard to get it right.

My son and his partner have just arrived to help hubby with some fix up jobs in the garage so it's time for me to go....

take care and take some time to colour this weekend

Kids cards

When I was at the beauty parlour the other week, my therapist was saying she has 13 nieces and nephews and was always looking for kids cards so I told her I'd make some.  Over the long weekend I got a few done...

 This one used some MFT Snuggle Bunnies and WPlus9 balloons.

The next two were inspired by Pinterest.  Used punched circles for my caterpillar and die cut circles for my birds. 

 Next is another MFT bunnies and the WPlus9 balloon

And my  final card uses MFT dragons

 I enjoyed making these cards and if she likes them, I do her some more.

Thanks for stopping by.

Polkadoodles Digi Choosday Craft Challenge - Outdoors

Hi there.... It's Chooseday again at Polkadoodles....

 

The theme is as always "Anything Goes" but the team challenge is Outdoor.... and oh what fun it was to choose an image to use... so many to choose from that would fit the bill... but I chose to use a cute little girl - Jump for Joy - Winnie Celebrations 3.   

I used some Patterned Paper from  Winnie Celebrations 3 Papers to paper piece her top.  And I found the perfect sentiment in Quotes - Winnie Special Moments.  I added some grass with a Fiskers punch.

I'm entering this into the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes.
Fussy and Fancy - Summer Fling 
Simply Papercrafts - anything goes 

Thanks for stopping by




.

AECP Level 1 assignment.

I have now completed the first 10 courses on the AECP Level 1 so Virginia has set me an interesting and challenging assignment...I need to use three techniques learnt and make it a masculine card or a card for a teenager.   I've been thinking and thinking what to do....  And finally a idea came to me...

My three techniques come from Easy Ink Blending.... my softly blended ink through the stencil (this is very subtle in the background), For the Guys.... using geometric shapes and Let It Shine.....using some gold embossing.

I used Sea Shores blue inks for my stamping and ink blending.  The geometric stamps are from Sohcahtoa set and the sentiment is from Birthday Bash and all the embossing was with Ranger Gold powder.  I added a few black spots from the Birthday Bash set to add some extra texture.

I have really enjoyed the courses so far... onward to the next 10 classes in Level 2.  Thanks Altenew for this awesome program and letting me be involved. 

If you are interested in learning about some of the participants, including me, HERE

Entering this into the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge - Anything Goes 
So Suzy Stamps May/June challenge - Masculine

thanks for visiting today.  

Peachy Keen - Swap cards

During May I took part in two swaps - one being the Sursee Swap over StampNation and one being the Card Chain Challenge..  The theme for the Sursee Swap was Peachy....

I used a letterpress technique with an embossing folder and some Catherine Pooler Bellini ink.  Added some die cut flowers and leaves.  The folder and the dies were a freebie with a magazine recently.  My card went to Michelle in Melbourne Australia.  The Sursee swap is where you send an encouragement card to your recipient.  You might not receive on in return this month, but sometime when you least expect it a beautiful encouraging card will arrive in your letterbox.

My CCC card went to Dee who lives in Kenya, but gets her CCC cards sent to her sister in England.   I used the same technique and ink colours

 I used the sketch from the CCC challenge for May.  I stamped the flowers from Altenew, used a stitched oval die and a Winnie & Walter digital SVG cut with my ScanNCut.

This weekend is a long weekend here in NZ... to celebrate the Queen's Birthday.  And with being off sick last week, I had done the housework and hubby was helping our friend with his renovations on Sat and today.... I got lots of time in my craft space.... lots of cards to share over the next few days.  And a little drama this morning when we had a couple of hours heavy rain that caused some flooding in our backyard, some leaks upstairs in our big windows - water pouring through the seals - but once the rain eased, all went back to normal... luckily I got buckets in place quickly to catch the drips.


Here's a peek at some colouring I did today

One card made with one of these cuties.  My ScanNCut had a bit of a work out.

Hope you all are having a fun fulled weekend and maybe taking part in Kathy Racoosin's 30 Day colouring challenge.