So how many days in a row is this blogger, I hear you say?? It is definitely a record on my part! Although I did almost get caught out as I almost forgot to schedule this one - eeek!

So what a busy week it's been, couldn't believe it was Friday already this morning. My life seems to be one long constant deadline and I don't know why this amazes me because quite honestly ever since I left school at 16 I've always had a job with big deadlines. You'd think I was used to it by now. In fact, I think I am kinda conditioned to be honest, I do find if I don't have a pressing deadline I kind of falter on the work front until I get behind and then have the pressure again! Must be a pyscho thing ; )

I did however, fail to check my diary properly since NEC and almost missed an important deadline this week which I really could have done without but hey ho. The VAT man will have to wait - again! I'm on Create and Craft next Wed at 8am and 10am and it will be Elfie Tracie's screen debut so please watch and email in to give her your support. I have no idea what she's doing, she's been extremely quiet so I hope she has been busy and hasn't just been sat quivering in a corner :D

I will also be back on air at 9am and 12noon on the following Sunday (27th) with Letraset shows if you're not bored to death of my colouring already. I'll also be showing you some great tricks with Safmat if you've not seen it before, an awesome product that basically lets you print off your own rub-ons! This should be in every crafter's wardrobe, full stop!

Anyway, before all that I have my last class of 2011 tomorrow and it's a full one this time which is good. There will be cake-a-plenty and we're making a lovely project which I have really enjoyed making this week using an exclusive stamp I've designed just for the class. I hope they like it, I think I will have achey breaky arms tomorrow after all the die-cutting I've had to do for the bloody thing!

So onto today's Belles n Whistles project of the day...have you fallen in love with this range of stamps yet? I know I have!...I chose this lovely stamp because online it's so hard to see the design clearly from the description and I think it's just lovely. Such a gentle image, this one and although it's really a Christmas one called Two Turtle Doves, I think you could use it for anniversaries and weddings and all sorts of other things too...

 A simple easel card using a scalloped card, lush ribbons and a Marianne's die-cut which is one of my fave dies ever. The papers and sentiment are from the Magical Winter CD. Coloured with Flexmarkers and Promarkers.

So that's my Saturday one. Tune in tomorrow when I'll be doing a blog candy giveaway! x

Alpaca's, bags, halloween and Birdhouses...

What a productive couple of days I've had! Woohoo! Nothing better than feeling like you've achieved something I think. Polkadoodles has some exciting things in the pipeline for the New Year and I can't wait to share them but for the moment I have to keep it under my bobble hat. Actually that should be my Button hat. This one. 

Adorable isn't it? A proper big wooden button that is humungous! The eagle eyed who were at NEC may have seen this beaut there and after 4 whole days of walking past said loveliness it had to be mine. It's made from Alpaca and is sooo soft. However I did nearly keel over when I had to part with my hard-earned moolah, those furry goat-deer-thingies must live on champagne and oysters the price they're charging! It seems I foiled a lovely secret gesture by the OH tho - as he'd already been and  bought me this bag about an hour before:
And he wasn't impressed that he bought brown and I bought grey! Only there was confusion as to what I bought and he got kerfuddled and went and swapped it for the wrong colour. Bless him! I was quite mortified acsh as I had already decided not to part with too much cash for the bag hence making do with the hat! He didn't tell me till we got home from NEC on the Sunday night, he's such a sweetheart really. I don't know why he didnt keep it for crimbo really, I think he just can't keep the secret long enough LOL!
Anyway, enough of bag and hat swoonage.
So I'm behind posting, as always. And it was halloween a few weeks ago which I adore!! Even though I was stacked I had to participate and made dairy free treats for Elfie Tracie's kiddywinks to enjoy...bless them they turned up full costume...

Little Jake had a particularly creepy face mask which freaked us all out A LOT! The dairy free treats are at the top and were rather nice I thought, they didnt last long, and the full on calorific full of crap packet mix worst cupcakes in the world ever are below. Thank goodness it was dark when I handed them out!








Each year we seem to get more trick or treaters and I think we're starting to get a rep for the pumpkin carving altho I was in a bit of a ruch this time and I didn't think they were a patch on last years...

We did have 3 but the other pics didn't come out great. I like the little hangman on this one tee hee...

Kuretake also had a Create and Craft show Halloween week and this picture is from one of the samples I made for the show, using Kurecolors, which are an alcohol based marker with really lush, rich pigments perfect for a strong scene like this one.
This is our Neighbours range of stamps again (of course, what else!) and I've freehand done the bats and cobwebs. Bit out of my normal colour realm this one but it fits the occasion, isn't that sky cool? Sadly I forgot to take a pic of the main card sample but it was fairly simples anyway as the pic did the talking.

So, onto the Card of the Day in my mini marathon.
As you know I am mad on Belles n Whistles and day 2 is this gorgeous stunner of a stamp...

 This is called Birdhouse Friends and is one of my favourites I must confess, you know me, hate

birds in real life but can't resist a birdhouse on a craft project! The card shape is created from Spellbinders Grand Nestabilities scallop dies - this die set is my fave of all time I think. I never quite "got" why you would want such a huge die but since I got my Calibur I totally get it now! Shaped cards for sure and this one is beyond versatile! I so hope they bring out more of these by Donna Salazar, they're awesome!

All I did was cut out the big scallop and fold it in half, cover with the polka dot paper which is from Pretty Sweet. I then took some of our gingham ruffle ribbon and glued it round the edge. In hindsight I wish I hadn't but hey, we all make mistakes! The rest is simples, bit of glitz and that was it really. I coloured this image with my Flexmarkers and prisma's but mainly the new Flex colours...

Those cute little flowers are one of our new lines on the website and are cheaper than chips so make sure you check them out, they're flying out the door right now.
See you tomorrow! xx

Christmas Angel

Third post in a row, woohoo! Here is my next Belles n Whistles card for you. I do rather like this, it's my fave shape again I'm afraid, you might get a little bored of seeing this one soon!  I've taken strips of papers and looped them at the top spine of the card so they're sitting proud. I know you would need a box to place this into but I do love making wacky shaped projects and hate the idea of being restricted creatively just because it might cost an extra £1 to send through the post. I can never really understand people who moan about how much it costs to send handmade cards - I know postage can be expensive but in the general scheme of how much we spend on our stash and the time we take to make things, an extra £1 in stamps is kind of a drop in the ocean really LOL!!
Anyway, I coloured the delightful Angel with my prisma pencils this time round, used a nestie die to cut her out and some snowflake dies. The ribbon is again from the website and is my all time favourite ribbon EVER! Lush quality velvet attached to ivory cotton lace underneath, it costs a bomb per metre but it goes a long way because it can only really be used as trim, it's too thick to tie in a bow. The papers are all from the Pretty Sweet CD.

See ya on the next post! x

NEC and other stuff...

I love how people can think of really exciting titles for their posts, I am null and void of such things.
So get me, scheduling posts, what's THAT all about ay!

So firstly, NEC news - oh my, HOW busy were we?? We will have to get a bigger stand next time, apologies if you were amongst the people who couldn't see our lovely wares because of space issues, it seems on the Saturday it was particularly manic! Maybe we should get one of those red ropes and issue a ticket to take your turn like at the deli counter in Tesco LOL! But seriously, HUGE thanks to everyone for your support, it was lovely to see so many of you and put tweet and facebook names to faces at last, and also just to have a gossip and get your feedback and suggestions, we always try to listen to what you think and what you want.  The show organisers said we won prize for the best stocked stand which was pretty cool and we did add LOADS of new products specially for the show, the remains of which are now online too - no less than 150 new lines I have to add, 150!!!

Don't you just love these cute little button jars in proper glass jars - a bargain, I have them all lined up on my desk! There are loads more embellies and ribbons which are just to die for on the website.

Those of you who were there will know that we showcased the brand new Flexmarker colours and were and for some reason still are the only retailer who seems to be stocking the single pens so go and fill your boots on the website! We brought TONS of stock with us and sold out by noon on Friday so had to get a special order shipped to the show for 9am Saturday ready for the busiest 2 days. Yep, you guessed it, we sold out again! There are now an additional 28 colours which are currently only available as single pens, not in packs, and this takes the colour collection to 52 of the original 76 promised. I have it on good authority that the remaining 24 will probably be released after Christmas. We have these on a truly amazing price deal so make sure you snap them up, I defy you, defy you I say! to find them at a better price! :D (I may live to regret that statement!). The new colours are completely lush and again are not Promarker colours, these include loads of browns and blues perfect for hair and jeans! buy buy buy! You neeeeeeed them!!
Talking of Letraset, I will be on Create & Craft on 23rd Nov at 8 and 10am with the lovely Tracie who will be making her TV debut alongside me - woohooo, go Elfie! She will be fab! All those of you who have the Pretty Sweet and the latest Pretty Tuff CD's need to tune in and those of you who don't also need to tune in LOL!  Obvs, I will be using the lovely Letraset products and then on Sun 27th Nov I will be back for 3 hours of Letraset dedicated shows at 9am and then 12-2pm on the Toolshed where I will be showing all the Letraset wares and goodies.
You may have seen on a couple of posts ago that I am organising a Colour Studio Workshop weekend in York in January - places are getting booked up fast and it's a great opportunity to really try and improve your colouring skills or just have a fab chillout day crafting and colouring. There will be a fab goodie bag to take home, plenty to do and a yummy hot/cold 3 course lunch. It's a great excuse to ask for a Christmas pressie u actually WANT and will be useful instead of all those fattening chocs and fluffy slippers and as York is so lovely to visit, drag the OH along and they can go sightseeing for a romantic weekend away (see, this is how I would sell it to my OH!). Anyway, please don't delay as places are going quickly, details are here.
So, here is today's peek of my card...

This adorable image is one of the fab Belles n Whistles stamps coloured with the lovely new Flexmarker colours. Papers and sentiment are from the Magical Winter collection and finished with Spellbinders ironwork die, a Mariannes die and a fab ribbon. Love the colours on this, it gives a real vintagey feel which reminds me of my childhood.

Ta-da!

Wowser where do I start? The last month has been manic! I have an absolute stack of lovely cards to share with you all that I made this week with the fabulous Belles n Whistles stamp range which we now stock online. I totally <3 this range of images from Elisabeth Bell and I was eager beaver to stock it as it's quite hard to get hold of here in the UK. So now we have it and I'm committed to keeping as much of the range as we can, getting it shipped all the way from the good ol' US of A as the new realeases happen. Talking of which we have just taken delivery this week of Elisabeth's new Christmas range, together with some of the favourites from last year, all adorable. I've gotten to know Elisabeth over the past couple of months by email and she is a total sweetheart, although she is far too beaut for her own good, I didn't know Australian's could be so good looking!
So anyway, trying not to make this too much of a mammoth post by droning on like I usually do. I found some lost piccies of my Craft Stamper projects which I made months and months ago to go with the freebie stamp I designed for the cover issue (better late than never). I was sent some gorge papers to use and for the life of me I can't remember what they were now but I was in love with them.  The little flower was the free stamp, from what I heard it seemed to be a really popular image...

Really simple to do, I just masked the image and stamped in a line straight onto the paper, then used glossy accents onto the actual flower head for some dimension...

This next card I totally adore, I must admit. I took an 8x8 card blank, cut it in half down the spine and then folded it in half again. I love this shape and it's one I'm using loads at the moment, I think it's really striking.
I folded different widths of paper over and tucked them under the stamped image to make loops. A bit of lace, paper twine, a felt button and a button made with my Epiphany button makes and some pins and bobs your uncle for this one, simples really but I think it's rather beaut...

This next one was rather complicated really. Or rather I made really hard work of it, you know when you just wish you'd never started, mainly because I cut all the paper down without measuring and then it didnt fit properly LOL!...

First I stamped a row of flowers and coloured them then cut them out in a long strip. These sit inside the frame at the back, with a sentiment stamp behind it.  I made lots of frames using strips of paper, making them fit one inside the other, tearing all the edges for some interest. I then made 2 concertina ends for the sides to make a sort of *tunnel* card, but with my take on it. I didn't like the top being uncovered so I made a roof type thing for it with the bits I had left. Finally I made some bunting and made it all criss cross to add a sense of depth and dimension. This really didn't photograph well, it's been skelling around on my desk for a month or so getting squished so it all looks out of kilter now LOL. It's not really a card, it's more a *thing* to sit on the mantelpiece LOL!
So that's it for today, I'm going to be posting all my other cards over the next 2 weeks! I think I have 15 to share so that's 15 days worth LOL!
ttfn! x