Thursday Thoughts

Ooops! Seems like I've been so focussed on not blogging every day that I forgot all about posting my ten on the tenth. So here I go a few days late.

My theme this month is Autumn changes.

1. Holly berries just beginning to ripen and turn red.

2. Trees turning colour at Belton House.

3. And a closer look at those leaves.

4. Cob nuts grabbed before the squirrels found them.

5. Conkers all shiny and bursting from their prickly shells.

6. A dandelion clock glistening with early morning dew. I took this photo on my walk round to my dad's, by the time I walked back early afternoon the grass had been cut and the clock had gone. Really brought home to me the importance of catching it while you can.

7. I tracked these toadstools over three days to capture how quickly they changed.

 

8. Autumn wouldn't be complete without pumpkins. Was very tempted by the pottery ones at a local garden centre.

9. The days get shorter and my early evening visit to my dad is now done in that beautiful twilight hour.

10. And best of all for me I get my boots out again!

 

Well that's my Autumn offering complete, hope you enjoyed looking. Thanks for visiting today.

Wednesday Words

It's a starry starry night over at Less is More and also a one layer week - always a challenge!

 

So out came my Clearly Besotted stars and some little ones I found in my stash too. I decided to ground my stars with the lines from Gorgeous Grunge - here I go again! And chose night of navy as my feature colour - seemed appropriate.

Then I decided it all needed a bit of sparkle and heat embossed some more of the little stars with the very twinkly WOW sparkle powder and added Wink of Stella to the larger stars.

Supplies:

Stamps: Clearly Besotted, Superstar; SU, Gorgeous Grunge; Penny Black, Wonder collection;

Ink: SU, night of navy; Versamark

Embossing: WOW!, sparkling snow
Embellishments: Wink of Stella, clear

Thanks for dropping by today and spending some time with me here.

Monday Moments

A feast of purple that makes my heart sing! That's the colours this week at Color Throwdown then.

And another Christmas card for my stash.

I stamped and heat embossed the reindeer onto blue card before using my inkylicious brushes to add the purple and black from the colour pallette.

The reindeer is beautifully sparkly in real life, shame about the photo.

Supplies:
Stamps: Honey Doo Crafts, Snowflake Reindeer; SU, Good Greetings
Inks: Ranger distress, black soot; Adirondack, purple twilight; Memento, tuxedo black; Versamark
Embossing: WOW!, sparkling snow
Embellishments: ribbon & sequins from my stash 

Thanks for your time today, it's much appreciated.

Saturday Slot

 Yay! One of my cards was picked as a winner over at CAS Colours & Sketches! Thanks so much, always a thrill to see my card pop up.

              

And now for their new challenge. A bit of a Christmassy colour selection and that suits me fine as I'm on a bit of a Christmas roll at the moment.

 

 And that's another card added to my Christmas stash.

I used a freebie magazine stamp for the wreath and heat embossed it in gold before adding a few red accents.  I then die cut it into shape.

Seems I went overboard with the diecuts on this card,  adding a square of vanilla textured card as a background and a tag for the sentiment. The last addition was my go to favourite - a twine threaded button.

Supplies:
Stamps: Penny Black, wonder collection; Uniko Studio, Background Builders Vines; SU, Good Greetings
Inks: SU, real red; Versamark
Embossing: Personal Impressions, mirror gold
Dies: Spellbinders, classic squares large & standard circles small; Clearly Besotted, Tag Along Die
Embellishments: Twine & button from my stash

Thanks for your time today. Be sure to enjoy your weekend.

Friday Focus

So I've taken a little break from blogging this week, more about the reasons later in this post. But I have been busy creating and preparing my December album cover, pages and a set of embellishments.

For the past three years I've used Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas as the basis for my album, but this year although I shall still follow Shimelle I'm going to mix it up a bit with other things too. And I've found this inspiring blog - Let's December Daily - that's really got me in the mood.

So here's my cover, which was inspired by Bec's 2013 cover:

And a peek at one of my pages.  I've used a Katie Pertiet digital set - December Days Borders -  to decorate some lined paper and this will be where I'll do my journalling - and add the odd embellishment or two.

And here are some of those embellishments:

Another thing I've been doing is looking back at my intentions for 2014 - blogged about here - and I'm pleased I'm on track with most of them. The day trips have now turned into afternoon trips as my dad needs more help - life getting in the way of good intentions as so often happens, but I have come to ACCEPT this.

 

But it's the first one that I really need to take stock of. Until this week I've slipped back into daily blogging and manic card making, so it's got to stop! So now I'm reverting back to 'not every day' and making sure the challenges I enter are either multiple or the ones that really speak to me. It's just ridiculous to do anything else.

I've also caught up with my envelope calendar and the pages for my 1st of the month pages.

October's pocket:

The weather photo:

The inspirational quote:

My journalling:

A day in my life 1st November:

Thanks for dropping by my blog today. I do appreciate your time and am happy you spent some of it here with me.

Tuesday Talk

Another briliant sketch from CAS(E) this Sketch and a non traditional Christmas colour theme at Less is More. So another Christmas card made - it just had to be done!

   

Out came those cute sheep wearing woolly jumpers and a very neutral colour scheme - definitely non-traditional me thinks.

The star is glittered up with Wink of Stella - looks good in real life.

Supplies:
Stamps: Inky Doodles, Christmas jumpers
Ink: Memento, tuxedo black
Promarkers: sandstone, umber, caramel, satin, cool grey 5
Punch: tonic, snowflakes
Embellishments: Wink of Stella, clear

Short and sweet today. Thanks for looking.

Monday Moments

Another Christmas card made for my box and this one uses the sketch for Crazy for CAS.

After I'd stamped the three trees I trimmed two of them down to make a medium and a small tree to reflect the different sized circles from the sketch. The largest tree was mounted onto pads.

I made a snowy landscape with an embossing folder and used a die to cut an impression of a hill. 

The addition of a star in the sky and a stamped sentiment and I was done.

Supplies:
Stamps: Clearly Besotted, Modern Christmas; Inky Doodles, star from Christmas Jumpers
Inks: SU, old olive; Memento, rich cocoa, London fog
Embossing: Cuttlebug, swiss dots
Die: Paper Smooches, stitched

Thanks for looking today, hope your week gets off to a great start.