If at first you don't succeed...

go and have a glass of wine or cry in a darkened room.
those are my two preferred options but sometimes I put my big girl pants on and just deal with it.
Case in point is my card for this weeks Daring Cardmakers where the theme is Under the Weather and we were to make weather themed get well cards

 I made this card - it had clouds and sunshine and a rainbow and it was a shaker card (the most successful I had ever made)

It is ok, not bad even but I was left feeling well, meh.
So I decided to suck it up and make another card

sooo much better. I used lots of lovely patterns from a Pink Paislee 6x6 pad (the same one my teamie Nat used) and a set of Sending Sunshine dies. The remake has a lot of Papermania coloured cardstock and a Paper Smooches larger rainbow and it just works much better.

here's a little close up of the vellum clouds which I love (show off)

I've made a couple of layouts recently.
The last for my Sabbatical album

This one uses some old Cosmo Cricket papers and die cuts along with some chipboard clouds and a few leftovers from old Quirky Kits (the butterfly sticker and the ampersand badge)

 I now own some greaseproof type paper that makes using this doily die a breeze!

I love these clouds so much. Cathrine ought to be impressed that I used three on a layout about her. Or not...

And this one uses the so awesome DIY Boutique by Simple Stories, some Lawn Fawn sparklies and some vellum...

Since last we met...

• I have celebrated Easter
• Driven for 13 hours on one day (it did include a bonus 3 hour round trip because my luggage had been deposited at my sons house in Middlesbrough when I needed it in Bradford)
• Drove from Bradford to Swansea (another fun filled 6 hour) to spend some lovely days with my parents and catch up with my school friends. It is a bonus that they are all in the same place :)
• Had a Sunday off and went to worship in a Church in Plymouth where a previous Minister has etched all the windows. Puts my crafting endeavours into a cocked hat (whatever that means). Phil was asked to take photos of them and I went along for the ride. Apparently they are not easy to photograph but he did a great job.

We then had another Prezzo meal to use up our Tesco vouchers (its a hard life), during which the mild toothache I had been experiencing over a few weeks developed into something nasty....

• Spent the next few days were either drug or pain fuelled due to a nasty abcess. Much better now!

And that is my fortnight...
I am only behind one Daring Card so quite a result really.
Last week the nice as pie Jo chose the theme "I like pie"  and we had to take our inspiration from all those Maths diagrams we used at school and use a pie chart or other mathematical diagram (venn diagrams, bar charts, graph etc ) on our cards.
The problem with coming late to the party is that all the pies were taken so I decided to be brave and attempt a graph. This will do for our wedding anniversary in May...

 I had saved the words on the left from a cut apart sheet from the last Quirky Kit as I love the phrase. I cut it down a bit and went over the words with white pen as it was rather more cream initially and they STILL don't make cream pens (wish they would). Using some black paper and a white chalkboard pen (again from a Quirky Kit) I made a simple graph. I decided to add some sparkly hearts (cut two sizes from cream glitter card and brushed the edges with Distress Ink). I layered some Prima Papers, all inked with Vintage Photo; a Studio Calico arrow and some Freckled Fawn sequins.

This week Nat shared her love obsession with Arrow. It is a good show I have to say with humour; twists; a mighty fine lead and enough campness to keep me happy. Its a bit like original Batman really (which I love), although Oliver Queen has a better physique... (I watch it for the art, honest)
So we were challenged to come up with Arrow themed cards - do look on the blog for some cool links and inspiration.

I kept it quite simple. The Studio Calico arrows are a perfect colour match to my beloved 8x8 October Afternoon Midway 8x8 pad. I cut some of the papers and gave some Black Soot inking. That also featured on the Simple Stories letters but I kept my Clearly Besotted birthday die cut clean and clear. It was done in a Flash (oops wrong show)

I made a few more cards this week using Simple Stories papers and stickers from the DIY collection.

This one makes me smile most

I think because this

reminds me of this

Happy Easter!

Lent is over, the tomb is empty, angels are singing and Jesus is being recognised/not recognised all at the same time.
I just made a few cards this year - it is a rather busy time for me :) They are both copies/interpretations of cards I saw on the internet but I can't find where they came from. They are not quite the same but the inspiration is clear so sorry to those whose ideas I have "cased"

 This one uses a sunray die cut and a spellbinders cross (with glamour dust accents). The sentiment is from Paper Smooches Easter Blessings

 The original of this card was more artsy and beautiful but I still like the simple distress ink background. Again all the stamps are from Paper Smooches. I added a small sparkly punched heart and backed the piece with card embossed with a Cuttlebug folder.

This Friday, as well as being Good Friday was the first of the month so it was time for an Elemental Inspiration over at Daring Cardmakers. We have the fabulous Enfys Cashmore as a Guest Designer this month, so do visit the blog to see her beautiful card alongside the Design Team.
Here is the picture we were to take at least 3 elements from

and here is my card

a bit more vibrant than the original, but i just had to use my brand new Mermaid Lagoon distress ink pad. Oh what a lovely colour. (I'm not sure about this month's Grubby Yellow or whatever it is really called. I have a feeling I will end up buying it anyway as I am weak). A dotty stencil and white texture paste were used to add the polka dots from the paper cup
I used a WPlus9 flower stamp set and Antique Linen distress ink on watercolour paper, colouring the images with my Gabai watercolour set. I am very heavy handed with watercolours so lost all the details, so I put some back with a gold pen. I hand cut the elements as I wanted them to have a narrow outline around them.
I added a scrap of white crochet lace and layered the flowers on top, using foam pads to give dimension. A Clearly Besotted sentiment was embossed with Tinselled Gold powder and anchored with a Prima gold dot.

Happy Easter :)

Oh my days

I am a terrible Daring Cardmaker.
It was my week to set the dare and I haven't been around the blogs or commented let alone put anything here. So sorry everyone. And it was a challenge that everyone fulfilled perfectly. I should have thought that with last Friday being super busy  this week would only be more so. Not helped by the fact that I was distracted by having all my babies home, just for a week. They are all a bit under the weather though so the parents are trying to steer clear apart from feeding and washing and Game of Thrones.

I asked everyone to be inspired by Nat.
I have a wonderful bunch of talented team mates and I am in awe of their creativity. But I was a devoted fan of Nat even before she joined the team. We both used to subscribe to Self Addressed kits and I always loved to see what she created. As with everyone, her style has evolved over the years but has always had that elusive (to me!) stylish something. Here is my interpretation

It does feel a little "Single White Female" as I have used a paper pad that Nat herself has been using recently. In fairness, I bought it because I can FINALLY scrap some of my wedding photos. It seems to have taken 27 years for peach to come back into fashion (27 years married next month - ulp! that makes me sound seriously old). This time with GOLD!!!! (I'm loving gold so much it deserves the ott treatment)
I used the MME Fancy That papers and vellum die cut, which I backed with white card to make it show up better. I also used a paper pad with some pale cream patterns on - can't remember who by though. One of these was cut using a doily die and I also added some gold foil stripes to one of the others (gold foil plus extra sticky DST is becoming a bit of a habit). I thought it needed some gold Beadazzles but they went a bit wrong on the big flower. They could almost be lily stamen type things I guess. A Paper Smooches die provided the sentiment. This die cuts into 4 parts and is really fiddly btw...

I managed one whole card for the March UKS card challenge.

 which used a sketch

Yes I didn't even vary the element in it. Although my strip of paper was bigger...
The butterfly was engoldened (new word) by using a Stamp n bond powder and gold foil. I found I had mixed success and needed to reheat the glue quite a lot. Still it is kinda pretty.

I added more gold to the patterned paper behind it using a glue stick and gold Glamour Dust. The bottom corner swirl was already there but I tried doodling the one in the top corner.

Here is my Lent work book. I may have a bit of catching up to do in it... Easter Saturday is going to have to count as Lent for me

 I gessoed the cover and sprayed a variety of inks. I cut two Sizzix die panels in black and stamped Kaisercraft background stamps around the edge. A Docrafts deep embossing folder was used with vellum and I die cut the letters with two different alphas.

I am trying to do more fancy lettering. The backgrounds are done with Distress Ink