A cute child's bookmark

Are you giving books to any child this Christmas?  Why not make them a cute little magnetic bookmark.  These are ideal as they stay in place and cannot fall out of the book.  This encourages children to read more if they can easily find which page they are up to.

On the left is the actual bookmark (please excuse fuzzy photography) and on the right you can just see it peeping out from the pages of a book

The stamp set is a sneak peak from the new summer mini catalogue - Animal Stories that I was lucky enough to have received when I was Karen's guest at their Regional Training Day in September.  I couldn't tell you then what it was but can now.  

I made a few of these children's bookmarks to take this afternoon to Karen’s Christmas get-together she was having with her Stampin’ Up team (the WOW PaperKrafters – of which I am lucky enough to be an honorary member!).  These were for the swap and I received some neat swaps back which I will photograph and show you later.

Hope you had a nice day – I know I did.

A new look … what do you think?

Would love to have your feedback on this new layout.  I think a lot of people have given up clicking on links to my blog as it wasn’t formatting correctly and individual posts were appearing at the bottom of the page necessitating a lot of scrolling down to find them.
I am hoping that this will solve the problem and make it easier for my visitors to view. There is still a bit of tweaking to do such as adding in my list of sites I visit, but hope to have this done shortly.
Thanks and look forward to your comments.

A Stem Silhouettes birthday

This is such a lovely stamp set – versatile and practical as it can be used in conjunction with quite a number of other stamp sets.

Today I have used it to make a card for a man.  Kingsley is a keen gardener and though I didn’t quite want to make a flowery card for him, thought this was very appropriate.

I originally made this card, but with flowers instead of the stem silhouettes at one of Karen’s classes so decided to use this concept as it adapted to the stem silhouettes beautifully.

Kingsley is presently recovering from a heart bypass operation so hope he enjoys this and is back in his garden soon – oh, and Happy Birthday!.

PS:  Three blog posts in one day – a record for me!

More Christmas cards …

Variations of the same card that I have been making using the lovely Stampin’ Up set “A Wish for Peace”.  If only all wishes came true!

To get a better look at these, click on the picture to enlarge.

The card on the right has been made using the snowflake technique and looks quite effective.

Well back to creating.

Looking back & catching up

Looking back at recent posts have decided that I have definitely been very lax in posting photographs of projects I have made either by myself or at classes.
Well, now is catch-up time and I have been busy photographing these projects which I will now explain to you.
These are Christmas projects that I have made at either Karen’s classes or at Extravaganza at the beginning of the month.

A flat gift box (based on the pizza box).



          
Above:  Left is this cute box folded up and on the right you can see all the little drawers which slide into one another when closed.  To open, just take off the lid.
  
   
   Two more goodie boxes for Xmas.


Above:  An easy-to-make Christmas cracker and on the right a decorated Christmas candle.

Left:  Post-it holder.




Right:   Santa goodie bag.
        

This is a set of three gorgeous little Christmas gift cards.





You may find it hard to tell but the greetings panel is clear acetate stamped with Seasons Greetings in white craft ink.



I love this card, so simple yet so effective and a great way to use up all those scraps of designer papers.



Hope you have enjoyed seeing these.  A lot of them, complete with recipe can be found on Karen’s blog.  Thanks Karen for the great ideas.

Xmas is coming … fast!

And I am still mucking about making my cards and haven’t even started on other items such as gift card holders, gift boxes, candles, etc. etc.

So I’ve put a Christmas Countdown gadget on my blog – maybe that will hurry me up a bit.

Have been away for the last week staying down in the country at my youngest daughter’s.  We’ve been giving them a hand as they are so busy with their business but must admit we are now glad to be home relaxing again though it is nice to be feeling so much better enabling me to do more.

Took this photo of a wild turkey and its babies that were wandering in the paddock next to the house at my daughter’s.  Not sure what you call baby turkeys - turklings!

This absence, together with what seems to be an increasingly busy social life, hasn’t helped my Christmas preparations.

Hope to have something to show you soon – have a number of either partly finished or planned projects coming up.

Have a fun week all.

Better news this time

Have just been to the second of my two hospital check ups. Today was at the gynaecology oncology outpatients at Greenlane.  So relieved – my CA125 (cancer indicator) levels remain the same as 3 months ago and even though they are still not quite as low as they should be, the good news is that they have not risen any further.

Will have to go and have a scan again, but that’s mainly to give them a new reference point as I haven’t had a scan since my last surgery.

So as long as the scan is clear they don’t need to see me again until February next year – yippee, I can relax and enjoy the holiday season.

But just in case you think “great – she has nothing to complain about at the moment”  … think again!  I’ve somehow done some damage to the pupils of my eyes which according to the optometrist is due to my over-wearing my contact lenses, i.e. keeping them in for too long coupled with the fact that my eyes are drying out (another old-age thing apparently) and I haven’t used the lubricating eye drops as often as I should.  Doesn’t he realise that we gals have to stay up late making cards and scrapbooking, not to mention spending hours on the computer, and haven’t time to think of mere incidentals like this!

The upshot is that I am not allowed to wear my contacts at present, so have to try and manage with my emergency glasses.  My eyes have taken days to re-adjust to these and only now can I walk around without everything looking distorted and my feeling disorientated.  Hence  … no stamping except for this one card my daughter requested.

Not a particularly good photo – I don’t think I should have sat the card on a white table as it has made it look too white when in actual fact the cardstock and background of the patterned paper is Very Vanilla, the same as the ribbon.  You might get a better idea by clicking on the photo.

 

Regardless of my eyes, I really am feeling much happier about things at present.

Hope you all have a great Guy Fawkes, but please be careful.