Ups, downs and roundabouts!!

Well this week has certainly been a mix of everything. Went to cardmaking Monday night instead of our usual Wednesday and made two fabulous cards for inserting gift vouchers. You'll see these on Jacque's blog. So impressed with the cute Crab & Co set that I bought one - very naughty as I had already placed a big order with Karen.

Hubby was going with some mates to Sydney early Thursday morning to race their radio-controlled yachts against the Sydney club. What a performance trying to organise transport for the boats as well as hubby, particularly as the boat used up all his baggage allowance so he had to either wear or fit his clothes into his cabin bag. Anyway yours truly crawled out of bed at 3:45 am and drove him and a sailing mate from Rotorua plus two boxed boats that barely fitted into his 4-wheel drive, out to the airport. For all your hubbies that may be interested, check out www.nautic12.org as these are the boats that my hubby not only sails, but makes and sells.

Came home and crawled back into bed as didn't sleep too well on the Wednesday night due to the fact that I had attended a checkup at Greenlane hospital's oncology outpatients clinic and the news wasn't exactly what I wanted or expected to hear. However no use jumping to conclusions and will have to wait and see what happens.

Thursday night Joan and David took pity on a poor boating widow, and invited me to dinner. Lovely meal and great company - thanks a lot. Karen also called around with my big bag of goodies!! Yippee, guess what I'll be doing while hubby's away - yes playing and making cards.

Here's two I have just made and must admit it is nice to be making flowery, feminine cards again. I seem to have had nothing but male cards to make lately.


This card I adapted from one we did in class. I used Cranberry Crisp and Basic Black cardstock. SU's Scribble This stamp set with the Scribble Jumbo wheel in the background.

The black card was embossed with the Cuttlebug Stylized Flowers folder. I also used glitter, and coloured with the Perfect Plum Stampin' Write marker (it actually came out darker than in the photo).


I'm really enjoying integrating the Cuttlebug embossing folders with the stamping techniques. Feel I've got the best of two worlds!


The next card I made, I really, really like.

I used the flower and leaves from the SU All Natural set and the little stamp from SU Tagger's Dozen set. The cardstock is Ruby Red and Chocolate Chip. I embossed the Chocolate Chip CS using the Cuttlebug Mesh embossing folder then tore off the lower right hand corner. I mounted the entire Ruby Red card onto a backing piece in the Chocolate Chip to give it a contrasting border.

Apart from the time spent cutting out the flowers and leaves (which you could do watching telly) it is a quick and easy card to make but looks stunning. I wanted to give the impression of flowers growing up over a mesh wire fence.

Take care, have fun and hope you can find some time to relax.

This has been a good week

I mentioned in my last blog that I was hoping my husband could get the shelves put up in half of the large wardrobe in my "craft room" (formerly known as the boys room as it is used by whichever grandson is visiting at any particular time). Sorry boys but you are getting much older now and don't stay as much but your bed is still there, you just have to share the room with all my stuff!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, YES we went to the hardware mega store on Wednesday, got the shelving etc. and came home and put it up. I now have everything tidily stored away and can actually find what I need. Thanks Nev. Now all I need to do is get him to put up some more shelves in the other spare bedroom so I can store all the stuff that I chucked out of the wardrobe in my craft room!!

Last night was our weekly cardmaking class at Jacque's house and we made these amazing Hidden Panel cards. To see photos check out Jacque's blog site - a link is on the left of this post. Still can't work out how we ended up with the secret panel - it just seemed to appear out of nowhere. Love my classes, we get to make such wonderful cards, meet great people and have a lot of fun.

Went out and about a bit today and managed to purchase a few bits and pieces for my cardmaking, but nothing major. Have a scrapbooking class in the morning at our local community house, so guess I should go and get everything ready to take and get to bed otherwise I won't be up in time. I'm definitely not a morning person!!

YES, I have enjoyed this week.

Thanks Joan for a great evening

Four cardmaking enthusiasts met tonight at my neighbour Joan's house. Joan had partly prepared two lovely Xmas cards for us to make combining her new Cricut machine xmas cutouts, stamping and embossing.

Here are the two cards I made:



I don't think mine turned out as nice as Joan's samples but we did have a fun evening, lots of laughs, and some of Joan's yummy sausage rolls for supper. Thanks again Joan.

Tomorrow I am hopeful that Neville (my hubby) will come with me to purchase some shelving and supports to put into the wardrobe in one of the spare bedrooms that I have commandeered as my hobby room. Finally I may have a place to put all my cardstock, stamps, stamp pads etc. etc. in some sort of order, so am keeping my fingers crossed that it will actually happen!

Guess I should get off to bed now .... zzzzzzzz