Thank You.....it's been fun!!

I just wanted to say a huge Thank You to all those who pass through here, and especially those of you who've been so generous with your lovely feedback, but after 18 months as a DT member, I have decided the time has come for me to step down. My love of the little guys hasn't diminished, and I know I will continue to use my stamps, but I won't be showing any more off on this blog in future and my Magnolia projects will be incorporated with all my other stuff on my main blog.

Thank You to Pauline and the team in Boras for giving me the opportunity to have such a fun time with these stamps and kits, and my lovely DT buddies for your support and inspiration - I shall continue to visit you and wish you continued success!

Hugs to you all, Anne xxx

October is.....

This is from the 2008 Pink Collection. When you buy these stamps from Magnolia, you also have the chance to donate to this very worthy cause.

Thank You for popping in. xx

I wish it could be Christmas every day...

These latest stamps from Magnolia are soooo sweet and great fun to play with! My latest kit arrived last week and here's what I made

The DT also received a plain white box to decorate this time, and here's what I came up with:

And using one of my favourite stamps from last year's Winter collection, I made this tag card

All stamps, papers and embellishments are available now from Magnolia's Webshop.

Thank You for popping in! :o)

Green Christmas

Here's a card I just made for Friday Sketchers - I love these sketches but I keep forgetting to check in for the latest challenge so I think it's time I put a link on my sidebar for them! Here is Bea's fab sketch

and here's my take on it - still practising with distress inks - I've not quite got it yet but oh it's great fun trying! ;o)

Thanks for stopping by!

Santa Claus is coming to town

You'd better watch out, you'd better not cry, better not pout I'm telling you why

Santa Claus is coming to town......

and I can't wait!!! Keep your eyes peeled on the Magnolia blog for more information about the release of the Santa 2008 collection. Hopefully he'll be dropping through my door any day now too so I can't wait to get some samples up here!!

An Experimental Christmas Card

OK, bear with me - this was a bit of an experiment that didn't quite work out how I hoped it might. I have been so entranced with Aija's unbelievably stunning artwork that I had to try out her colouring technique for myself - it didn't work! LOL!! Never mind, I had great fun trying and now I've got the bit between my teeth, I can't give up till I've improved substantially!! What I do like is the depth of colour you get with distress inks though I find them less easy to control than ordinary watercolours. Thanks for popping by!

Christmas is coming...

... and I wanted to show off a couple of pieces I have made using one of my favourite stamps from 2007's Christmas collection. I cannot wait for the new Christmas 2008 stamps to be released, and if you want to pre-order the winter collection yourself, here's a link to take you straight there http://www.dreamcottage.nu/Club/index.html

First of all this is my tag for this weeks' Tag,You're It! challenge which is a sketch challenge,

The next card uses the same stamp along with the star and gifts stamps

And the next card is one which was inspired by a sketch I saw on Chris's blog last week but due to sickness (me AND the pooter!!!) I haven't had a chance to blog it yet, so here goes:

And just for the heck of it, here's a couple of cards I made earlier which I haven't got round to blogging yet.

Well that's all the cards I have for today, but before I go I really have to say an enormous THANK YOU to my lovely friend and Magnolia DT Buddy Claudia who's fabulous work is not only immaculate and fab, but truly inspirational. Claudia is one of the lovliest people in Blogland and has been extremely supportive of me this week, and I would love to return the compliment, so go check out her blog, if you haven't already seen it!! Thank You Claudia, you're a star! ;o)

Thank You for passing by!

Another Halloween

Here is another card I made this morning using the new Halloween stamps from Magnolia. This card is off to a new home with a lovely buddy of mine tomorrow, but I shan't say who because I don't want to spoil the surprise!! ;o) Hope you like!!

Ismaki Challenge

Blimey! Two Magnolia posts in one weekend - it must be a record! It's ages since I did one of these - working full time has deprived me of all my Blog challenges time but I noticed yesterday that Ismaki have a swivel card and I had to do it! I used to do these when I first got into cardmaking and then for some reason stopped doing them, and I haven't even considered doing one for goodness knows how long! Then I saw the blog and my mojo was fired up, so Thanks for the inspiration girls - even if I am last minute!!


I think the stamp was from the Christmas 2007 collection but I bought her, not for Christmas but for all-year-round projects because she's so versatile, though she has put in an appearance on one of my Christmas cards already this year!! Thanks for popping in!

Autumn Collection

Ooh, what a treat - some stamps, papers and embellies from the new Fall Collection dropped through my door on Thursday and I have been having a fab play - here's what I came up with.

I didn't get many stamps to play with this time - just 5, but I do love the ones I did get. I haven't got a clue about the papers but they are all available in the Magnolia shop. The tapestry stamps around Tilda are old one's from my own stash and the text stamp is my own that I made this morning just for these cards.

I love this kitty with it's back to us, and as soon as I stamped it, I just saw it sat on a windowsill looking at the moon, so that it what I have attempted to recreate here. The shelf is from the summer collection and the candy corns are rub-on's - again, the text is my own stamp.

This one is just soooo sweet - I think she's my favourite! I don't know if you can see the bottom of her dress or not but it's all sparkly because I used a tiny bit of irridescent glitter on it.

And finally - hmmm.... jury's still out on this one. You know when you have an idea and you go ahead with it and it's not quite how you imagined it was going to turn out? Well this is one of those times. I wanted to have a go at doing a pop-up card but I don't think I'll be doing very many more of them....! LOL!!!

I stamped the web and text with clear ink and dusted them with silver mica powder. It's tricky to see on photo's but it's really shimmery IRL. Tilda needed some grounding so I used some Flower Soft because I thought it looked like crunchy autumn leaves. Her trick or treat bag is a rub-on and again, the text is my own stamp.

Well that's all for now - I've used up all my DT papers so now I'm looking forward to having a play with some of my own! Thank You for popping in, and to those of you who have left comments, a huge cry of gratitude to you - it means such a lot!

Another sketch card

Just a real quickie to show off another card I made using the same sketch that I posted last week. This one is destined for another lovely friend who's an absolute gem and whose kindness has got me out of a few holes this summer holiday! Thanks for popping in!

A card for a special friend

OK, I studied and studied Ila's fabulous tutorial on using Prismas with OMS and, for the first time ever, I was really pleased with how it turned out, so Thank You Ila - your tutorial is FAB!!! And, as I was making a card for my lovely friend Sam I really wanted the technique to work well and I am now addicted to it. Here is the card I made. Thanks for popping in!

A Sketch Challenge for you

I know, I know, there's loads of them out there but I sat here yesterday making sketches with my PSE and I decided to share my first one with you - please feel free to put your own take on this and leave me a link to your blog so that I can come and have a drool over your creation too!

Here's the sketch:

and here's my card:

and here's a couple of other cards I've made this weekend:

Thanks for popping by - I hope some of you will get your Tilda's and Edwin's out and have a go with my sketch! :o)

New Stamps

Oooh, some gorgeous new stamps from Magnolia's latest releases landed on my doormat on Friday and here are the samples I have made with them.

The first two are from the new School collection and are soooo sweet

The next two I feel a bit silly about because I cannot find which collection they are from but they are so pretty and girly that I just wanted to play with these all the time. Here are the two samples I created with them and I daresay they'll be available on the site very soon

And the final two (for now!) are my most favourites and they're from the new Travel collection

You can't really see from some of the photos that I have been hotfoiling again, just a touch here and there to add a bit a metallic look in parts, so here's a close up of Edwin's cases so that you can get an idea

And just for now, that's it - these lot are off to Sweden tomorrow, hopefully to arrive in time for Magnolia's conventions. I hope you like them, and Thank You for popping in!

A couple of Sketch Challenges

A first for me - Friday Sketchers - I've only just discovered this blog so I had to have a go - lots of Magnolia images on display here which is what inspired me. Here is this weeks' sketch:
and here is my take on it:

Unbelivably this fabulous paper by Craft Buyer had almost all of the sketch incorporated into it already, I just played around with it!

Then I found this sketch on Bea's blog (I'm sure it was bigger than this???):

and this was really handy because I needed to make a card for a FB who is in need of a hug right now and I wanted to send her a hug through the post, so I used this sketch to help me and here's what I did:

Thanks for popping in!

More Summer 2008

I've been a bad Magnolia blogger lately - the reason being that I had to finish off my NVQ training and such a lot was going on at school as we approached the end of term. As our current theme was Seaside, I thought that my stamps were perfect to take into school and let the children use them on their Thank You cards! They had a FABULOUS time with them, and over the space of two weeks, I helped 60 Year 1 children make nearly 80 Thank You cards for their Reading Partners and Helpers. Lots of the children (boys as well as girls) loved them so much that they wanted to stamp out some of the images on seperate sheets of paper so that they could take them home and colour them in there. As a result, I had 3 Mums come to me to ask where they could get these stamps from and I was very happy to oblige and ordered them for them myself! It's so funny though - every house I've been in since the summer holiday started, has a card on it's mantlepiece with these images on!! My own son even brought one home, given to him by his Reading Partner!! LOL!

However I have caught up now and here are some more of my cards from the Summer 2008 collection. Thanks for popping in!!

In the sea!

Oh, oh, I am LOVING this new set of summer stamps from Magnolia! I have one or two currently as 'Work in Progress' but I finished this one off yesterday morning.

I decided not to use any other papers on this one because I wanted to keep it as simple as possible so I painted the whole thing in watercolours then applied a glittery 'sea foam' and raided my kids sandpit to create a real 'beach'! Here it is close up:

I have a fabby demo evening with my Magnolias lined up for tomorrow and I'm hoping the ladies (first time stampers!!) will let me take some pics of their own creations once they've had a play. Thanks for popping in and please pop back to see the other stamps - I'm onto them right away!! ;o)

Tartan Tilda!

Isn't it odd the way we see things differently. When this stamp first arrived my first reaction was "Highland Fling" so my Tilda got the full-blown tartan treatment. It was only later I realised that she's meant to be Parisienne!! LOL!! I still love my wee lassie though!